The Tattooist of Auschwitz(54)

Lale looks around. ‘Gathered.’

‘You leave by truck in about an hour. Line up at the gate. Your name is on the list,’ he laughs.

‘My name?’

‘Yes. You need to keep your arm with its number hidden, OK?’

‘I get to answer to my name?’

‘Yes – don’t forget. Good luck.’

‘Before you go, I’d like to give you something.’

The guard looks perplexed.

From his mouth Lale takes a diamond, wipes it on his shirt and hands it to him. ‘Now you can’t say you never got anything from a Jew.’

?

Vienna. Who wouldn’t want to visit Vienna? It was a dream destination for Lale in his playboy days. The very word sounds romantic, full of style and possibility. But he knows it will now fail to live up to this perception.

The guards are indifferent to Lale and the others when they arrive. They find a block and are told where and when to get their meals. Lale’s thoughts are dominated by Gita and by how he can get to her. Being shunted from camp to camp to camp – he cannot bear it much longer.

For several days he observes his surroundings. He sees the camp commandant doddering about and wonders how he is still breathing. He chats to amenable guards and tries to understand the dynamic among the prisoners. Once he discovers that he is probably the only Slovakian prisoner here, he decides to keep to himself. Poles, Russians and a few Italians sit around all day talking with their countrymen, leaving Lale largely isolated.

One day, two young men sidle up to him. ‘They say you were the T?towierer at Auschwitz.’

‘Who are “they”?’

‘Someone said they thought they knew you there and that you tattooed the prisoners.’

Lale grabs the young man’s hand and pulls up his sleeve. No number. He turns to the second man.

‘What about you, were you there?’

‘No, but is it true what they say?’

‘I was the T?towierer, but so what?’

‘Nothing. Just asking.’

The boys walk away. Lale goes back to his daydreaming. He doesn’t see the approaching SS officers until they yank him to his feet and frogmarch him to a nearby building. Lale finds himself standing in front of the ageing commandant, who nods to one of the SS officers. The officer pulls up Lale’s sleeve, revealing his number.

‘You were in Auschwitz?’ the commandant asks.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Were you the T?towierer there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So you are a Jew?’

‘No, sir, I am a Catholic.’

The commandant raises a brow. ‘Oh? I didn’t know they had Catholics in Auschwitz.’

‘They had all religions there, sir, along with criminals and politicals.’

‘Are you a criminal?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And you’re not a Jew?’

‘No, sir. I’m Catholic.’

‘You have answered “no” twice. I will ask you only once more. Are you a Jew?’

‘No, I am not. Here – let me prove it to you.’ With that, Lale undoes the string holding up his trousers and they fall to the floor. He hooks his fingers into the back of his underpants and starts to pull them down.

‘Stop. I don’t need to see. OK, you can go.’

Pulling his trousers back up, trying to control his breathing, which threatens to give him away, Lale hurries from the office. In an outer office he stops and slumps in a chair. The officer behind a nearby desk looks at him.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m good, just a bit dizzy. Do you know what the date is?’

‘It’s the 22nd, no, wait, the 23rd of April. Why?’

‘Nothing. Thanks. Goodbye.’

Outside, Lale looks at the prisoners sitting lazily around the compound and at the guards who look even lazier. Three years. You’ve taken three years of my life. You will not have one more day. At the back of the blocks, Lale walks along the fence, shaking it, looking for a weak point. It doesn’t take him long to find one. The fence comes away at ground level and he is able to pull it towards him. Not even bothering to see if anyone is watching, he crawls under and walks calmly away.

Forest provides him with cover from any patrolling Germans. As he walks deeper in he hears the sound of cannons and rifle fire. He doesn’t know whether to walk towards it or run the other way. During a brief ceasefire he hears the running of a stream. To reach it, he must get closer to the shooting, but he’s always had a good internal compass and that direction feels right. If it is the Russians, or even the Americans, on the other side of the stream, he will gladly surrender to them. As the daylight fades into evening he can see the flash of gunfire and cannons in the distance. Still, it is the water he wants to get to, and hopefully a bridge and a route away. When he gets there, a river confronts him rather than a stream. He looks across and listens to the cannon fire. It must be the Russians. I’m coming your way. Lowering himself into the water, Lale is shocked at the freezing cold. He swims slowly out into the river, careful not to disturb the water too much with his strokes in case he’s seen. Pausing, he raises his head and listens. The gunfire is closer. ‘Shit,’ he mutters. He stops swimming and lets the current carry him directly under the crossfire, just another log or dead body to be ignored. When he thinks he has safely cleared the warring armies, he swims frantically to the far bank. He hauls himself out and drags his drenched body into the trees, before collapsing in shivers and passing out.