The Chosen Ones (24 page)

and the entire crew naturally burst out laughing so it was no good trying to find out more. But once they had returned to the Bunker that afternoon, Zavlacky sat down next to Adrian and said that he had better not expect to be allowed to stay. The punishment bunker was a transit station, just like everywhere else. Sooner or later, they would all be called to appear in front of the commission. Adrian didn't even know what the commission was all about. The commission, Zavlacky explained, is the authority that decides if you're smart enough to be sent to labour camp or if you're to join the idiots. And, when Adrian just kept staring at him (Miseryguts:
don't say you fancied that punishment meant sitting around in a heated bunker all day long …
) Zavlacky went on to say that he knew of several Bunker inmates who had been sent off to labour camp. Some said it was like a concentration camp though they didn't treat you like the Commies or the Jews. For a bit, Adrian kept staring at them (Miseryguts:
hey, are you to join the idiots or what?
) and then asked, was there really no other choice? Zavlacky suggested: try to sell it to the commission that you're too stupid to be in a camp but just smart enough not to end up with the idiots, it's not easy but some people make it, nodding towards Gangly who was sitting a bit further away but started at once to chatter and grin as if he couldn't agree more.

A Parcel
   From that day on, Adrian expected to be called to appear in front of the commission. He wasn't. Instead, he received a parcel. It was two days until Christmas Eve. His mother had written his name on the parcel in large letters and, to prevent any mistakes, drawn a ring around the number of his old pavilion. So, she hadn't been informed about his failed escape attempt, nor where he might end up next. The parcel contained a box of dry biscuits (Adrian shared them at once with Zavlacky and Gangly), a sweater and a pair
of socks knitted in thick, grey wool. He couldn't recall ever having seen his mother knit. She wouldn't have been able to afford the yarn, didn't have the time, what with four young children to look after, and, besides, had she had no time to spare, there were other more important things to do. Where did that yarn come from? And was the sweater even meant for him? He tried to put it on and when he saw his bare arms sticking out of the far too short sleeves, the lump forming in his throat swelled and, in the end, even Gangly looked away. The sweater must have been for Helmut, or did his mother truly think he still was that small?

Christmas
   At this time last year, they had been housed at Ybbs and all Adrian remembered of that Christmas celebration was tired apples being handed out and the booming sound of the river on the other side of the thick, ice-cold walls. The river was heard so distinctly then, as if there had been no other sounds to listen to that freezing winter's night. It was as cold this year. On the morning of Christmas Eve, they had to scrub their section of the pavilion. Kohler opened all the cell doors and organised two bucket chains: one lot of boys dealt with the buckets and basins full of hot, soapy water from the kitchen, and the other with the buckets of clean rinsing water. Within a few hours, the section was awash with floor-soap foam and water and, because the pavilion wasn't ever properly heated, the floors soon turned as slippery as oiled glass. It was particularly bad just inside the front door, propped open by Kohler. Inevitably, someone slipped on the wet floor, a frail-looking boy called Felix Rausch. He was on the hot-water team, so boiling water washed over him and he had to be carried, screaming with pain, to casualty. The outcome of this incident was that they were late for the hospital board's specially arranged Christmas party that every ward and section of the entire institution
were under strict orders to attend. The talk was of a
Weihnachtsfest
, but actually, everything to do with Christmas was forbidden. Not even Christmassy words, so glitteringly light and heart-warming, like
Weihnachtsfeier
or
Weihnachtslieder
, were allowed. You're to say ‘Feast of Light', Kohler told them, no argument. But there was not much light to be seen in the snowy yard in front of pavilion 3, where the punishment-block boys were lined up to wait for Felix, the burns patient, to come outside. And there he was at last, a strange-looking figure leaning on Kohler. Felix's head had been bandaged so generously that only the tip of his nose and half of one ear stuck out. Now that their number was complete, they marched off across the creaking layer of snow. Large banners with swastikas on them had been hung from the second floor windows of the institution's theatre and, outside its entrance, Hitlerjugend youths formed a guard of honour. They held large flaming torches that gave off a sour smell of oil and smoke. But inside the theatre it was dark – and so silent; an almost tangible silence, like in a crypt. Adrian craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of some of the children from his old pavilion but all he could see was a sea of stiff backs, slightly bent as if for a beating. There was a large podium set up on the stage and on it all the nurses and other members of staff were on parade, their faces turned to the audience. A little to the left of centre, he spotted Mutsch and Demeter, neatly attired in starched uniforms. There was a lectern, too, with swastika flags placed on either side of it. The board members as well as the administrative staff, including accountants and secretaries, stood around the lectern and Doctor Krenek himself stood behind it, speaking from a large bundle of notes. But although he spoke loudly and enunciated clearly, it was as if the words wouldn't quite take off from his mouth but instead hung on like large bubbles and, all the while, even more word-bubbles were pushing forward from wherever
they were created.
Unser über alles geliebter Führer
– the leader we love more than anyone and anything – made one bubble;
der Endsieg
and then
der ewige Tag eines grossdeutschen Reiches
were other bubbles – the final victory, and the eternal day of the greater German Reich – and all the while more saliva-sprinkled bubbles kept being produced, now about the soldiers who fought in snow and ice for their German homeland, and as he spoke, he stroked his head with his hand, again and again. Had something had got stuck in his hair? Adrian was just going to point this out to the boy next to him when he – it was Miseryguts – said:

He whispered but articulated every syllable very clearly. A wave of subdued laughter ran through the row of boys. In the next moment Doctor Krenek inevitably lifted his hand to his head again and Zavlacky followed up with:

The whisper was just as quiet, almost inaudible, but impossible not to hear. By then they couldn't keep their laughter down anymore. It fizzed and fermented with such irresistible force that the only way seemed to be to bend forward and try to strangle it between your knees. Adrian just had time to see Kohler's alarmed face turn towards them from the row in front. Just as well that it grew no worse, as far as the anxious Kohler was concerned, because when the laughter was about to spread to the rows in front and behind them, everything
was drowned out by the enormous roar made when the entire audience stood as one man and shouted:

Doctor Krenek had just that moment produced another huge bubble with
Heil Hitler
inside and stood with his right hand stretched up and out. All around him and the lectern, and all over the podium, where the doctors and nurses and allied staff were standing, either in professional whites or in their best outfits, arms were raised in the German greeting. In the audience, the model patients in their grey institutional uniforms aped everyone else, held up their arms and shouted
Heil Hitler!
in their hoarse voices. All joined in, except Miseryguts who muttered
Grüss Gott
. But by then Kohler had already got the group moving. Because they had been among the last to get in, they were let out early. Even before the singing had had time to erupt inside the theatre, they were ordered to line up in
Zweiereiher
and run back to their pavilion. They truly sounded like chain-gang prisoners as they jogged along, breathing heavily, the cold prickling around their eyes. When they arrived, they were not even allowed to go into the Bunker but were told to undress immediately and go to bed. Adrian slept with the ugly, far too small and roughly knitted sweater jammed between his legs, and went to sleep wondering if being
brazen
might be something as seemingly innocent as to take one's cap off to show one's shaved head. When he got down into the Bunker the next morning, neither Miseryguts nor Zavlacky was there. Adrian asked around to find out where they had gone but nobody knew. Gangly only showed his yellow teeth in his usual grin and talked wildly. Felix Rausch, the boy whose face had been scalded, had vanished and his destination was also unknown.

Facing the Commission
   Four days into the New Year, on Monday 4 January 1943, Adrian Ziegler finally appeared in front of the commission. The interrogation took place in pavilion 1, the same pavilion in which Doctor Gross on another January day two years earlier had measured and described all Adrian's unseemly flaws. Half a dozen people were seated behind tables placed in a semi-circle around the central area of the room where he was told to stand at
Habt-Acht
. The director of the reform school Doctor Krenek, occupied the middle of the semi-circle as the would-be leader of the inquisition. To Krenek's left and right, grimly concentrated men and women sat behind piles of documents and folders. Many of them he had never seen before but he assumed they must be the providers of ‘expertise' – pedagogically trained staff from the social services department who had been called in to attend the questioning. He did recognise the psychologist Edeltraud Baar and one of the teachers from the school pavilion, a Mr Ritter. The usual Führer portrait hung on the wall behind just behind Ritter. One of the experts, who seemed to function as some kind of secretary because he was writing all the time, addressed Adrian without even looking up from his notes, telling him to state his name and when he was born, and then, because he obviously wasn't speaking distinctly enough, demanded that he repeated the answers several times. When at last everyone was satisfied, Doctor Krenek opened one of the folders and started to read aloud in a declamatory, almost indignant voice from what seemed to be an official compilation of various reports, all about Adrian.