The Storyteller (43 page)

The
Hauptscharführer
hesitated. “Then tell me,” he said, “what happens next?”

 • • • 

To say I was stunned would be an understatement. Not only did the
Hauptscharführer
not lay a hand on me but he kept me in his office for the rest of the day, typing out lists of all the items that had been salvaged in Kanada. These, I would learn, were sent to various places around Europe that were still controlled by the Germans, along with the goods themselves. This, he told me, was my new assignment. I would take dictation, type letters, answer the phone (in German, of course), and take messages for him. When he left to walk through the barracks of Kanada, his usual routine, he did not leave me alone. Instead, he had another officer stand guard inside the office, to make sure I did not do anything suspicious. The whole time I was typing, my fingers shook on the keys. When the
Hauptscharführer
returned, he sat down at his desk without saying a word. He began to punch numbers into an adding machine. Its
long white tongue curled over the edge of his desk as he worked his way through a stack of papers.

By late afternoon, my head was swimming. Unlike in Kanada, I had not been given soup at lunch. However limited that sustenance was, it was still food. When the
Hauptscharführer
came back after one of his patrols of Kanada with a muffin and a coffee, my stomach growled so loudly that I knew that in our close quarters, he could hear it.

Shortly afterward there was a knock on the office door, and I jumped in my chair. The
Hauptscharführer
called out for the visitor to enter. I kept my eyes trained on the page in front of me, but immediately recognized the voice of the
Schutzhaftlagerführer,
which sounded like smoke falling over the edge of a blade. “What a pisshole of a day,” he said, throwing open the door. “Come, I need to dull my senses at the canteen before I have to suffer through
Appell.
”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
He
had to suffer through
Appell
?

His eyes fell on me, head bent, diligently typing. “Well,” he said. “What is this?”

“I needed a secretary, Reiner. I told you that a month ago. The amount of paper that gets processed through this office grows bigger every day.”

“And I told you I’d take care of it.”

“It was taking you too long. Write me up, if it makes you feel better.” He shrugged. “I took matters into my own hands.”

The
Schutzhaftlagerführer
walked around me in a half circle. “By taking one of my workers?”

“One of
my
workers,” the
Hauptscharführer
said.

“Without my permission.”

“For God’s sake, Reiner. You can find another. This one happens to be fluent in German.”

“Wirklich?
”
he said. Really?

He was talking to me, but since I had my back to him, I didn’t know he was waiting for a response. Suddenly, something crashed down on the back of my skull. I fell out of my chair onto my knees, reeling. “You will
answer when you are spoken to!” The
Schutzhaftlagerführer
stood over me with his hand raised.

Before he could strike me again, his brother took a firm grasp of his arm. “I would request that you trust me to discipline my own staff.”

The
Schutzhaftlagerführe
r
’s eyes glittered. “You would ask this of your superior, Franz?”

“No,” the
Hauptscharführer
replied. “I would ask this of my brother.”

The tension dissipated then, like steam through a window. “So you’ve decided to adopt a pet.” The
Schutzhaftlagerführer
laughed. “You would not be the first officer to do so, although I question your judgment when there are fine
volksdeutsche
girls who are ready and willing.”

I dragged myself onto the chair again, running my tongue across my teeth to make sure none had been knocked loose. I wondered if this was what the
Hauptscharführer
planned for me. If I’d been brought here to be his whore.

That was a whole new level of punishment I hadn’t considered.

I had not yet heard of a female prisoner being sexually abused by an officer. It was not that they were such gentlemen. But relationships were against the rules, and these officers were big on rules. Plus, we were Jews, and therefore completely undesirable. To lie with one of us was to lie with vermin.

“Let’s talk about this in the canteen,” the
Hauptscharführer
suggested. He left the remains of his muffin on his desk. As he passed me, he said, “You will clean up my desk while I’m gone.”

I nodded, looking away. I could feel the
Schutzhaftlagerführe
r
’s eyes raking over my face, my knobby body hidden beneath the work dress. “Just remember, Franz,” he said. “Stray dogs bite.”

This time the
Hauptscharführer
did not have a junior officer babysit me. Instead, he locked me into the office. This trust unnerved me. The interest in my writing, the news that he was making me his secretary—a job that would allow me to be warm all day long, now that winter was coming, and that could not be considered hard labor by any means. Why show me kindness, if he planned to rape me?

So it’s not rape.

The thought fell like a stone into the well of my mind.

It would never happen. I’d slit my throat with a letter opener before I developed any kind of relationship with an SS officer.

I silently sent a thank-you to Aron, who had been my first, so that this German did not have to be.

I crossed to his desk. How long had it been since I had a muffin? My father had baked them, sometimes, with stone-ground cornmeal and the finest white sugar. This one was dark, with currants caught in the cake.

I pressed my fingers to the wax paper, gathering up the crumbs. Half of it I tucked into a little torn corner of the paper, and slipped into my dress, saving it for later. I would share it with Darija. Then I licked my fingers clean. The flavor nearly brought me to my knees. I drank the last sips of coffee, too, before carefully putting the paper into the trash, and drying the cup.

Immediately, I began to panic. What if this was not a show of trust, but another test? What if he came back and checked the garbage can to see if I had stolen his food? I played out the scenarios in my mind. The two brothers would enter, and the
Schutzhaftlagerführer
would say, “I told you so, Franz.” And then the
Hauptscharführer
would shrug and turn me over to his brother for the whipping I had been expecting this morning. If stealing photographs from the dead was bad, surely taking food that belonged to an officer was much worse.

By the time the
Hauptscharführer
unlocked the office door and entered again—alone—I was so nervous that my teeth were chattering. He frowned at me. “You are cold?” I could smell beer on his breath.

I nodded, although I had not been this warm for weeks.

He did not look in the trash. He glanced around the room cursorily, then sat down on the corner of his desk and picked up the stack of photographs. “I must confiscate these. You understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

It took me a moment to realize that he was holding something out to me. A small leather journal, and a fountain pen. “You will take these instead.”

Hesitantly, I took the gifts. The pen was heavy in my hand. It was all I could do to not hold the journal up to my nose, breathe in the scent of the paper and the hide.

“This arrangement,” he said formally. “It suits you?”

As if I had a choice.

Was I willing to trade my body in order to feed my mind? Because that was the deal he was striking, or so his brother had said. For a price, I could write all I wanted. And I would be assigned to a job anyone else would have killed for.

When I did not answer, he sighed and stood. “Come,” he said.

I started shaking again, so violently that he stepped away from me. It was time for me to pay up. I crossed my arms, hugging the journal to my chest, wondering where he would take me. To officers’ quarters, I supposed.

I could do this. I would go somewhere else, in my mind. I would close my eyes and I would think of Ania and Aleksander and a world I could control. Just as my story had calmed Darija, just as it had soothed the others in my block, I would use it to numb myself.

I clenched my teeth as we walked outside. Although it was no longer raining, there were massive mud puddles. The
Hauptscharführer
strode right through them in his heavy boots, as I struggled to keep up. But instead of turning toward the other side of the camp, where the officers lived, he led me to the entrance to my block. The women had already come back from work and were waiting for
Appell.

The
Hauptscharführer
called for the
Blockälteste,
who immediately began to ingratiate herself. “This prisoner will now be working for me,” he announced. “This book and pen she holds are my possessions. Should they go missing, you will personally answer to me and to the
Schutzhaftlagerführer.
Is that clear?”

The Beast nodded, mute. Behind her, there was a buzz of silence; the curiosity of the other women was palpable. Then the
Hauptscharführer
turned to me. “By tomorrow? Ten more pages.”

And then, instead of taking me to his quarters and raping me, he left.

The Beast immediately sneered. “He may be protecting you now, but when he gets tired of what’s between your legs he’ll find someone else.”

I pushed past her, to where Darija was waiting. “What did he do to you?” she asked, grabbing on to my forearms. “I’ve been worried sick all day.”

I sank down, taking in everything that happened, the strangest turn of events. “He did absolutely nothing,” I told her. “No punishment. If anything I got a promotion, because I can speak German. I’m working for an officer who recites poetry and who asked for more of my
upiór
story.”

Darija’s brow furrowed. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, amazed. “He didn’t touch me. And look . . .” I took the muffin crumbs from where they were tucked in the waistband of my dress and let her have them. “He saved this for me.”

“He gave you food?” Darija gasped.

“Well, not exactly. But he left it behind.”

Darija tasted the muffin. Her eyes drifted shut, pure rapture. But a moment later, she fixed her gaze on me. “You can put a pig in a ball gown, Minka. That doesn’t make it a debutante.”

 • • • 

The next morning after
Appell
I presented myself at the
Hauptscharführe
r
’s office. He was not there, but a junior officer who was waiting unlocked the door for me so that I could go inside. I realized that he was probably at Kanada, patrolling the barracks where Darija and the others worked.

There was a stack of forms to be typed on my makeshift desk beside the typewriter.

Hanging on the back of the chair was a woman’s cardigan sweater.

 • • • 

This is how my routine settled: every morning, I would report to the
Hauptscharführe
r
’s office. There would be work waiting for me while he
made his rounds in Kanada. At midday, the
Hauptscharführer
brought lunch from the main camp back to his office. Often he got a second ration of soup or a slice of bread. Yet he never finished either; instead he would leave these in the trash when he left the office, knowing full well I would eat them.

Every day as he ate his lunch, I would read aloud what I had written the night before. And then he would ask me questions: Does Ania know that Damian is trying to frame Aleksander? Will we ever see Casimir committing murder?

But most of his questions were about Aleksander.

Is the love you feel for a brother different from the love you feel for a woman? Would you sacrifice one for the other? What must it cost Aleks to hide who he really is in order to save Ania?

I could not admit this even to Darija, but I began to look forward to going to work—in particular, to lunchtime. It was as if the camp fell away while I was reading to the
Hauptscharführer.
He listened so carefully that it made me forget that outside there were guards abusing prisoners and people being gassed to death and men pulling their bodies from the shower rooms to stack like wood in the crematoria. When I was reading my own work, I got lost in the story, and I could have been anywhere—back in my bedroom in Łód
; scribbling down ideas in the hallway outside Herr Bauer’s classroom; sharing a hot chocolate at a café with Darija; curled in the window seat at my father’s bakery. I was not stupid enough to presume that the officer and I were equals, but during those moments, I felt at least as if my voice still mattered.

One day, the
Hauptscharführer
tilted back his chair and propped his boots on his desk as I read to him. I had reached a cliffhanger, the moment where Ania enters the dank cave looking for Aleksander and instead finds his brutal brother. My voice shook as I described her navigating her way in the darkness, her boots crunching on the hard-backed shells of beetles and the tails of rats.