Spark of Life (37 page)

A flight of swallows appeared suddenly above the camp. For a long time they circled high up in wide spirals, then came down and shot screeching over the barrack. Their blue glistening wings almost touched the roof.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen birds in the camp,” said Ahasver.

“They’re looking for somewhere to nest,” declared Bucher.

“Here?” guffawed Lebenthal.

“They no longer have the church spires.”

The smoke above the town had cleared a little. “True enough,” said Sulzbacher. “The last spire has collapsed.”

“Here!” Shaking his head, Lebenthal glanced up at the swallows which were now circling round the barrack, uttering shrill cries. “And that’s what they’re coming back from Africa for! Here of all places!”

“There’s no place for them in town as long as it’s burning.”

They all gazed down. “What a sight!” said Rosen.

“There must be a lot of towns burning like that,” said Ahasver. “Bigger and more important ones. Think what they must look like!”

“Poor Germany!” said someone crouching nearby.

“What?”

“Poor Germany.”

“My God!” said Lebenthal. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” Berger said. “And it’s true.”

It turned warm. In the evening the barrack learned that the crematorium had been damaged, too. One of its exterior walls had fallen in and the gallows had been knocked sideways; but the chimney continued smoking full blast.

The sky grew cloudy. The air became more and more sultry. The Small camp received no evening meal. The barracks were quiet. Those who could, lay outside. It seemed to them as though the heavy air ought to yield some nourishment. The clouds, turning denser, more livid, looked like sacks out of which food might fall. Lebenthal returned tired from a patrol around the camp. He reported that only four barracks in the labor camp had received an evening meal. Rumor had it that the commissary had been damaged. There had been no check-ups in the barracks, he said. Apparently the SS hadn’t yet discovered the disappearance of the weapons.

It grew continuously warmer. The town lay in a strange sulfurous light. Although the sun had set long ago, the clouds still hung full of the yellow living light that refused to yield.

“There’s a thunderstorm coming,” said Berger. He lay pale beside 509.

“I hope so.”

Berger looked at him. Sweat ran into his eyes. Very slowly he turned his head, and suddenly blood gushed from his mouth. It seemed so effortless and natural that in the first instant 509 couldn’t believe it. Then he raised himself. “What’s wrong? Berger! Berger!”

Berger doubled up and then lay still. “Nothing.”

“Is that a hemorrhage?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“Stomach.”

“Stomach?”

Berger nodded. He spat out the blood still in his mouth. “Nothing serious,” he whispered.

“Serious enough. What shall we do? Tell me what we can do!”

“Nothing. Let me lie. Lie quiet.”

“Shall we carry you in? You can have a bunk to yourself. We’ll throw a few others out.”

“Just let me lie here.”

509 suddenly felt utter despair. He had seen so many people die and had nearly died himself so often that he had believed an individual death could no longer affect him much. But now it hit him as it had the first time. It seemed to him that he was losing the one and only friend of his life. He promptly lost all hope. Berger was already smiling at him again from a face covered with sweat—but 509 had a vision of him lying motionless on the edge of the concrete road.

“Someone must still have something to eat! Or be able to get some medicine! Lebenthal!”

“Nothing to eat,” said Berger. He raised one hand and opened his eyes. “Believe me. I’ll tell you what I need. And when. Nothing now. Nothing, believe me. It’s only the stomach.”

He closed his eyes again.

After the last whistle Lewinsky emerged from the barrack. He squatted beside 509. “Why is it you’re not in the Party?” he asked.

509 glanced at Berger. Berger’s breathing was regular. “Why d’you want to know that just now?” he retorted.

“It’s a pity. I wish you were one of us.”

509 knew what Lewinsky meant. In the camp’s underground organization the Communists formed an extremely tough, reserved and energetic group. Though they co-operated with the others, they never entirely trusted them and pursued their own special aims. They always protected and promoted their own people first.

“We could use you,” said Lewinsky. “What were you actually before? Professionally, I mean?”

“Editor,” answered 509 and was himself surprised at how strange it sounded.

“We could make particularly good use of editors.”

509 didn’t answer. He knew that a discussion with a Communist was as pointless as one with a Nazi. “Have you any idea what sort of block senior we’re going to get?” he asked after a short while.

“Yes. Probably one of our own people. In any case, he’s sure to be political. We’ve got a new one in our barrack. He’s one of us.”

“In that case you’ll go back again?”

“In a day or two. That has nothing to do with the block senior.”

“Have you heard anything else?”

Lewinsky gave 509 a searching glance. Then he moved closer.

“We expect the camp to be taken over in about two weeks.”

“What?”

“Yes. In two weeks.”

“You mean the liberation?”

“The liberation and our taking over. We’ve got to take over when the SS pulls out.”

“Who’s
we?
”

Lewinsky hesitated a moment. “The future camp management,” he said then. “There has to be one and it’s already being organized. Otherwise there’d be nothing but confusion. We must be prepared to take over at once. The maintenance of the camp must be continued without interruption. That’s the most important thing. Maintenance, supplies, administration—thousands of people can’t disperse at the same time and run in all directions.”

“Certainly not here. Here not everyone can run.”

“That has also to be taken into account. Doctors, medicine, transport facilities, bringing up of food supplies, requisitions in the villages—”

“And how are you planning to do all this?”

“We will be helped, that’s certain. But it’s we who have to organize it. The British or Americans who liberate us are fighting troops. They won’t be equipped to administer a concentration camp right away. That we must do. With their help, of course.”

509 saw Lewinsky’s head outlined against the cloudy sky. It was bulky and round, without any softness. “Strange, isn’t it,” he said, “how we take our enemy’s help for granted?”

“I’ve slept,” said Berger. “I’m all right again. It was just the stomach, nothing else.”

“You’re sick. And it’s not the stomach,” answered 509. “I’ve never heard of anyone spitting blood from the stomach.”

Berger’s eyes had opened wide. “I dreamed something extraordinary. It was very clear and real. I was operating. The bright light—”

He looked into the night.

“Lewinsky believes we’ll be free in two weeks, Ephraim,” said 509 gently. “They’re getting news all the time now.”

Berger didn’t move. It seemed as though he hadn’t heard anything.

“I was operating,” he said. “I was about to make an incision. A stomach resection. I’d just started and suddenly I didn’t know how to go on. I had forgotten everything. I broke out in a sweat. The patient lay there, opened, anesthetized—and I didn’t know how to go on. I’d forgotten how to operate. It was terrible.”

“Forget it. It was a nightmare. Nothing else. The things I’ve dreamed! And just think of the things we’re going to dream about when we’re out of here!”

Suddenly, quite distinctly, 509 smelled eggs and bacon. He tried not to think of it. “It won’t all be rejoicing,” he said. “That’s certain.”

“Ten years.” Berger was still staring at the sky. “Ten years of nothing. Away. Gone! No work done. I never thought of it until now. It’s possible I’ve forgotten a great deal. Even now I don’t quite know how an operation is performed. I can’t remember exactly. During the first years in the camp I used to re-enact operations in my mind at night. To keep in touch. Then I gave it up. It’s possible I’ve forgotten it—”

“It leaves one’s memory, but one doesn’t really forget. It’s like languages or bicycling.”

“One can lose the technique. The hands. The precision. One can become uncertain. Or lose touch. In ten years a lot has happened. A lot been discovered. I don’t know anything about it. I’ve just grown older—older and more tired.”

“Strange,” said 509. “Just by chance, a moment ago, I thought of my old profession, too. Lewinsky had asked me about it. He
thinks we’ll get out of here in a couple of weeks. Can you imagine that?”

Berger shook his head absent-mindedly. “What’s happened to time?” he said. “It used to be unlimited. Now you say two weeks. And all of a sudden one asks: What’s happened to the ten years?”

The burning town glowed in the valley. Though night had fallen, it was still sultry. Waves of steam began to rise. Lightning flashed. Two more fires glowed on the horizon—distant bombed towns.

“Shouldn’t we be glad for the time being that it’s possible for us even to think what we’re thinking, Ephraim?”

“Yes. You’re right.”

“We’re already thinking like human beings again—about what it’ll be like after we get out. When were we able to do that before? Everything else will come right on its own.”

Berger nodded. “And if I have to spend the rest of my days darning stockings when I get out of here! Nevertheless—”

The sky was torn by a flash of lightning and thunder slowly followed from afar. “D’you want to go inside?” asked 509. “Can you manage to stand up, or crawl?”

The storm broke at eleven o’clock. Flashes of lightning brightened the sky and for seconds there was cast up a pale moon landscape with the craters and ruins of the destroyed town. Berger was fast asleep. 509 sat in the frame of the door; since Handke had been killed Barrack 22 was once more free for him. He kept the revolver and ammunition hidden under his jacket. He was afraid that in the event of a downpour of rain they might get wet and become useless in the hole under his bunk.

That night, however, it rained little. The storm kept on spreading,
dividing itself, and for a long time there were several storms flinging lightning at one another like swords from horizon to horizon. Two weeks, thought 509, and saw the landscape beyond the barbed wire flare up and fade again. It seemed to resemble another world which imperceptibly, during recent weeks, had drawn nearer and nearer, had grown out of a lost no-man’s land of hopelessness, and now lay already close to the barbed wire, waiting, with the smell of rain and fields, of destruction and fire, but also with that of growth and forests and green. He felt how the flashes of lightning passed through him, illuminating that world—and how at the same time a long-lost past rose up, pale, distant, almost incomprehensible and inaccessible. He shivered in the warm night. He wasn’t as sure of himself as he had pretended to be to Berger. He could remember the past and it seemed to him much, and moved him; but whether it was enough after the years here he didn’t know. There had been too much death between then and now. He knew only that life meant getting out of the camp, but soon after that everything became uncertain and overwhelming and blurred, and far beyond it he could not see. Lewinsky could, but he thought as a member of the Party. The Party would take him up and he would be in it; that for him was enough. What was it, then? thought 509, what was this that called, beyond the primitive desire to live? Revenge? With revenge alone, little was achieved. Revenge belonged to the other, the sinister part that had to be settled, but what came after that? He felt a few warm raindrops on his face, like tears from nowhere. Who had any tears left? They had been burned out, dried out years ago. The occasional mute tugging, the diminishing of something which already had seemed almost nothing—this was the only thing that proved there was still something to be lost. A thermometer that long ago had indicated the lowest degree of feeling—and that it was growing colder one realized only by the
fact that occasionally a frozen limb, a finger, a foot, dropped off, almost without pain.

The flashes of lightning followed one another faster, and under long rolling thunder the hill opposite lay very clear in the twitching, shadowless light—the remote white house and garden. Bucher, thought 509. Bucher still had something. He was young and he had Ruth. Someone who would leave with him. But would it last? Who cared about that? Who, after all, expected guarantees? And who could give them?

509 leaned back. What nonsense I’m thinking, he thought. Berger must have infected me. We’re just tired. He breathed slowly and through the stench of the ground and the barrack he thought he smelled once more the spring and the burgeoning. This came back, every year, with swallows and blossoms; indifferent to war and death and grief and hope. It came. It was there. That was enough.

He pulled the door to, and crept into his corner. The lightning continued flashing all through the night. The ghostly light fell through the broken windows and the barrack appeared to be a ship gliding noiselessly along a subterranean stream between rocky shores, a ship filled with dead who by some dark magic still breathed—and among them a few living who had not given themselves up for lost.