The Storyteller (44 page)

“A torch flickered on the damp walls of the cave
 . . .”

He frowned. “Torches don’t flicker. Firelight does. And even so, that’s too clichéd.”

I looked up at him. I never quite knew what to say when he criticized my writing like this. Was I supposed to defend myself? Or was that presuming that I had any say in this strange partnership?

“Firelight dances like a ballerina,” the
Hauptscharführer
said. “It hovers like a ghost. You see?”

I nodded, making a note in the margin of the book.

“Go on,” he commanded.

“There was a sudden draft, and the torch illuminating my path was extinguished. I stood shivering in the dark, unable to see even a foot in front of myself. Then I heard a rustle, a movement. I spun around. ‘Aleksander?’ I whispered. ‘Is that you?’ 
”

I looked up to find the
Hauptscharführer
hanging on my words.

“In the dark, there was a soft growl, almost a purr. The rasp of a match. A scent of sulfur. The torch blazed to life again. Crouched before me in a pool of blood was a man with wild eyes and knotted hair. More blood dripped from his mouth and covered his hands, which held a haunch of meat. I fell back, struggling to find air . . . That haunch of meat he was devouring had a hand, fingers. They were still clutching the top of a gilded cane I could not have forgotten if I tried. Baruch Beiler was no longer missing.”

There was a knock at the door; a junior officer stuck his head inside. “Herr
Hauptscharführer,
” he said. “It is already two o’clock—”

I snapped the book shut and began to roll a new form into my typewriter.

“I am fully capable of telling time,” the
Hauptscharführer
called out. “It will be time to go when I
say
it is time to go.” He waited for the door to close. “You will not start typing yet,” he said. “Continue.”

I nodded, fumbling with the leather journal again and clearing my throat.

“I felt my vision fading, my head spinning. ‘It wasn’t a wild animal,’ I forced out. ‘It was you.’ The cannibal smiled, his teeth slick and stained crimson. ‘Wild animal . . .
upiór.
Why split hairs?’ ”

The
Hauptscharführer
laughed.

“ ‘You killed Baruch Beiler.’

“ ‘Hypocrite. Can you honestly say you didn’t wish him dead?’ I considered all the times the man had come to the cottage, demanding tax money we did not have, extorting deals from my father that only dragged us deeper and deeper into debt. I looked at this beast, and suddenly felt like I was going to be sick. ‘My father,’ I whispered. ‘You killed him, too?’ When the
upiór
did not answer, I flew at him, using my nails and my fury as weapons. I raked at his flesh and kicked and swung. Either I would avenge my father’s death or I would die trying.”

I continued, describing the arrival of Aleks, the torture of Ania as she tried to reconcile the man she was falling in love with, with a man whose brother was a beast. And what after all did that make
him
?

I spoke of her frantic flight from the cave, of Aleks chasing after her, of her accusation that he’d had the power to keep her father from being murdered, and didn’t.
“ ‘Your father is not the only person to ever love you,’ ”
I read.
“ ‘And you cannot blame Casimir for his death.’ He turned away so that his face was in shadow. ‘Because I am the one who killed him.’ ”

When I finished, my final words remained trapped in the office like the smoke of a rich man’s cigar, redolent and sharp. The
Hauptscharführer
clapped: slowly, twice, and then with sustained fervor. “Brava,” he said. “I did not see that coming.”

I blushed. “Thank you.” Folding the journal closed again, I sat with my hands in my lap, waiting to be dismissed.

But instead, the
Hauptscharführer
leaned forward. “Tell me more about him,” he said. “Aleksander.”

“But I’ve read you all I have written up to this point.”

“Yes, but you know more than you’ve written. Was he born a murderer?”

“That’s not how it works with an
upiór.
You have to be the victim of an unnatural death.”

“And yet,” the
Hauptscharführer
pointed out, “both Aleksander and Casimir suffer the same unfortunate fate. Coincidence? Or just bad luck?”

He was talking about my characters as if they were real. Which, to me, they were.

“Casimir died while avenging Aleksander’s murder,” I said. “Which is
why Aleks feels the need to protect him, now. And since Casimir is the younger
upiór,
he’s not yet able to control his appetite, the way Aleksander can.”

“So in theory both of these men had normal childhoods. They had parents who loved them, and who took them to church, and celebrated their birthdays. They went to school. They worked as paperboys or laborers or artists. And then one day, due to circumstances, they awakened with a terrible thirst for blood.”

“That’s what the legends say.”

“But you, you are the
writer.
You can say anything,” he pointed out. “Look at Ania. In that one moment, she was ready to kill the man she believed had murdered her father. And yet, she is painted as a heroine.”

I had not thought about this, but it was true. There was no black and white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. Ania was just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

“Was there something in their upbringing, in their history, in their genetics, that made them the way they are now?” the
Hauptscharführer
asked. “Some fatal, hidden flaw? Surely there are plenty of men who die and who don’t suffer the fate of being reborn as an
upiór.
”

“I . . . I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s the fact that Aleksander doesn’t
want
to be an
upiór
that makes him different.”

“You mean, a monster with remorse,” the
Hauptscharführer
mused. Then he stood and took his heavy wool coat from its hanger. On his desk was a second ration of soup he had not touched. “Tomorrow,” he announced. “Ten more pages.”

He stepped out of the office, locking the door behind himself. I carefully tied the leather journal again with the ribbon that circled it, and set it beside my typewriter. I crossed to the desk and picked up the soup.

Suddenly I heard the lock turn in the door. I dropped the soup, spilling it on the hardwood beneath the desk. The
Hauptscharführer
was standing there, waiting for me to turn to him.

I trembled, wondering what he would say when he saw the puddle at
my feet. But he did not seem to notice. “What do you think it was like the first time Aleksander bled one of his victims?” he asked. “Do you think even then he felt shame? Disgust?”

I shook my head. “He couldn’t help himself.”

“Does that make it any less detestable?”

“For the victim?” I asked. “Or for the
upiór
?”

The officer stared at me, his eyes narrowed. “Is there a difference?”

I did not answer. Moments later, when the key turned again in the lock, I got down on my hands and knees and lapped up what I could from the floor.

 • • • 

One morning after a storm, when the snow had blanketed the camp, Darija and I stepped outside the block to march to work. We shuffled behind other women, all wrapped in ragged layers, freezing. The path, which we took every day, marched us along the far side of the fence at the entrance ramp to the camp. Sometimes we would see the new railroad cars arriving; sometimes there was a selection going on as we passed. Sometimes we shuffled past a line of people waiting for the shower they would not survive.

That day as we passed, a new group of prisoners was being belched out of one of the cars. They stood like we had on the platform, carrying their belongings, yelling out names of loved ones.

Suddenly, we saw her.

She was dressed from head to toe in white silk. On her head, a veil streamed out behind her in the cold wind. She was looking around, even as she was herded into line for the selection.

The rest of us women all stopped, riveted by this sight.

It was, unbelievably, not the most depressing thing we had ever seen: a bride, ripped from her own wedding, separated from her groom, and put on a transport to Auschwitz.

On the contrary, it gave us hope.

It meant that no matter what was happening in this camp, no matter
how many Jews they managed to round up and kill, there were still more of us out there: living lives, falling in love, getting married, assuming that tomorrow would come.

 • • • 

The main camp of Auschwitz was a village. There was a grocer, a canteen, a cinema, and a theater hall that showcased opera singers and musicians, some of whom were Jews. There was a photography darkroom and a soccer stadium. There was a sporting club that the officers could join, and there were matches: prisoners who had been boxers, for example, pitted against each other while the officers bet on them. There was alcohol, too. The officers were given rations, but from what I saw, occasionally they pooled them to get drunk together.

I knew all this because, as the weeks went by, the
Hauptscharführer
would occasionally send me on an errand for him. I was to pick up cigarettes one day, laundry the next. I became his
Läuferin,
a runner, who would carry messages wherever necessary. He would send me to Kanada from time to time to deliver notes to the junior officers who patrolled when he was in his office. As the winter came, and the temperatures dropped, I would throw caution to the wind and do what I could for Darija and the others. When the
Hauptscharführer
left to go to the Officers’ Club for a meal or across the camp for a meeting, and I knew he would be gone for an extended length of time, I would type up a note on his letterhead requesting that prisoner A18557—Darija—be brought in for questioning. Darija and I would hurry back to the office, where for at least a half hour she could warm herself before having to go back to work in the freezing barracks of Kanada.

There were others like me—privileged prisoners. We would nod to each other as we passed in the village, doing our jobs. We walked the finest of lines: people hated us because we had it easy, but they valued us because we were able to steal things that made their lives better—food they could eat, cigarettes and whiskey they could use to bribe the guards. For a bottle of vodka that Darija took from a suitcase in Kanada,
I was able to trade a rind from a squash and some lamp oil from a prisoner working in the Officers’ Club. We hollowed out eight thumbprints in the rind, added a wick made of yarn from a sweater, and in this way made candles to celebrate Chanukah. There was a rumor that a Jewish secretary who worked for an officer elsewhere in the camp had managed to swap a pair of reading glasses for a kitten, which was still inexplicably alive in the block where she lived. We were considered untouchable, because of our protectors—some SS men who, for whatever reason, had found us useful. For some, I imagined, that was because of sex. But as the weeks rolled into months, the
Hauptscharführer
still did not lay a hand on me—in anger or in lust. All he wanted, really, was my story.

From time to time he would casually mention something about himself, which was interesting, because I had forgotten that we prisoners were not the only ones who had a life before this one. He had wanted to study at Heidelberg—classics. He had hoped to be a poet himself; or if not, the editor of a literary journal. He had been writing a thesis on the
Iliad
when he was compelled to fight for his country.

He did not like his brother very much.

I knew this, from their interactions. Whenever the
Schutzhaftlagerführer
dropped in to speak with him, I found myself huddling smaller in my chair, as if I could make myself disappear. He did not notice me, most of the time. I was that insignificant to him. The
Schutzhaftlagerführer
drank a lot, and when he did, he got angry. I had seen this, of course, at
Appell
. But sometimes the
Hauptscharführer
would receive a phone call, and he would have to go to the village to bring his brother back to officers’ quarters. The next day the
Schutzhaftlagerführer
would come to the office. He would say that the nightmares were what made him do it, that he had to drink to forget what he’d seen in the field. It was as close as he could get to an apology, I supposed. But then, as if this very contrition was distasteful, he would start raging again. The
Schutzhaftlagerführer
would say that
he
was the head of the women’s camp and that everyone answered to
him
. Sometimes, to punctuate this, he would sweep his hand across all the papers on the desk or knock over the coatrack or throw the adding machine across the room.

I wondered if the other officers knew that the two men were related. If, like me, they wondered how two such different individuals might have emerged from the same womb.

One of the other perks of my job was knowing when the
Schutzhaftlagerführer
was likely to be on an angry tear, since these tears followed his bouts of private contrition like clockwork.

I was not stupid. I knew that what the
Hauptscharführer
saw in my book was not simply entertainment but an allegory, a way to understand the complicated relationship between himself and his brother, between his past and his present, his conscience and his actions. If one brother was a monster, did it follow that the other had to be one, too?

One day, the
Hauptscharführer
had dispatched me to the village to pick up a bottle of aspirin from the pharmacy. It was snowing hard, and the drifts were so deep that my feet in their wooden clogs were soaked. I wore the coat I had been given, and a pink wool cap and mittens that Darija had stolen from Kanada for me as a Chanukah gift. The trip, which usually took only ten minutes, was twice as long due to the howling wind and the spitting ice.