The Librarian of Auschwitz(100)
She really dislikes approaching the fence, but hunger is like a worm that never stops gnawing your innards. It can barely be soothed at night with a piece of bread and a hint of margarine and, if she’s not lucky enough to catch something floating in her soup, it has to wait another twenty-four hours before something solid hits her stomach. Dita isn’t prepared to miss any chance of putting something in her belly, even if she doesn’t understand what the Polish boy is saying.
To avoid attracting the attention of the soldiers in the towers, Dita gestures for the boy to wait and goes into the latrine barrack. She races through the revolting hut and comes out the back door. She’s now at the back of the building, close to the fence. She’s scared she’ll find bodies on the ground, because that’s where they usually bring the people who have died during the night, but the area is clear. The Polish boy has a hooked nose, and his ears stick out like fans. He’s not very handsome, but he has such a cheerful smile that Dita finds him cute. He, in turn, signals to her to wait a moment and goes back inside the rear of his hut as if he were in search of something.
The only person visible in that back part of BIIb is a gaunt prisoner who has lit a fire a few huts away and is burning bundles of ragged clothes. Dita doesn’t know if he has been ordered to burn them because they are infested with lice or because they belonged to someone who died of a contagious disease. Either way, handling infected rags isn’t a great job, but it’s better than many others. From a distance he looks like an old man, but he’s probably not even forty yet.
While she waits for the carpenter boy to return, she keeps herself entertained by watching the ragged clothes burn, shrinking and twisting in the flames before they disintegrate in a puff of smoke. And at that very moment, she senses a presence behind her. When she turns around, the tall black figure of Dr. Mengele is standing two paces away from her. He’s not whistling; he’s not making any sound or movement. He’s just looking at her. Maybe he followed her here. Maybe he thinks the Polish boy is a contact from the Resistance. The man burning the clothes rises and scurries off. At last, she’s on her own with Mengele.
She wonders how she’ll explain the pockets on the inside of her dress when they do a body search. Or if it’s really worth justifying anything. Mengele doesn’t interrogate his prisoners; he’s interested only in their internal organs.
The medical captain says nothing. Dita feels compelled to apologize for her presence at the fence:
“Ich wollte mit dem Mann dort sprechen—” I wanted to speak with the man who’s over there.
She speaks without much conviction. The man is no longer by the fire.
Mengele stares at her intently, and Dita realizes that his eyes are half closed, and he has the expression of someone who’s trying to recall something he’s on the verge of remembering. She recalls what the seamstress said to her: You’re a bad liar. Right then she is absolutely convinced that Dr. Mengele hasn’t believed her, and she feels her body suddenly grow cold, as if it’s already on that chilly marble slab on which he’ll slit her open.
Mengele gives a brief nod. It’s true, he was trying to remember something—it had slipped his mind—but now he’s got it. He almost smiles, reaching for his belt, his hand just a few centimeters from his gun. Dita tries not to shake. At this very moment Dita asks for something very small, a tiny concession—she begs that she won’t shake in her last moment, or wet herself. A last shred of dignity. That’s all.
Mengele continues to nod, then starts to whistle. And Dita realizes that he’s not exactly looking at her; his gaze is passing through her. She is so insignificant to him that he hasn’t even noticed her. He turns on his heel and marches off whistling contentedly.
Bach occasionally eludes him.
Dita watches his tall, black, horrible figure move away. And then it comes to her: He doesn’t remember me at all. He has no idea who I am. He was never pursuing me.…
He never waited for her at the door of the hut, or took note of her in his little book; the way he looked at her was no different from the way he looked at everyone else. It was all just the routine, macabre joke of someone who told the children to call him Uncle Pepi, who smiled as he stroked their hair and then plunged an injection of hydrochloric acid into them to study its deadly impact.
Dita gives a sigh of relief, unburdened. Although she’s still in danger, of course. That’s Auschwitz.…
It would be wise to go quickly to her hut; Mengele might return. But she’s curious to find out why the Polish carpenter boy was calling her so urgently.
Would it simply be some promise of love? Dita’s not interested in romance, especially not with some Pole she can’t understand, whose ears look like bowls. She doesn’t want anyone to tell her what to do.
But despite all this, she stands obstinately rooted to the spot.
The Polish boy saw Mengele coming and stayed hidden in the empty hut. When he sees that Mengele has gone, he reappears on the other side of the fence. Dita doesn’t see anything in his hands and feels tricked. The boy looks to one side and the other and then takes a few hurried steps to the fence. He’s still smiling. Dita doesn’t find his ears so big anymore; his smile wipes out everything else.
Her heart stops beating when the young carpenter puts his closed fist through a gap in the barbed wire fence. When he opens his fist, something white drops out and rolls to Dita’s feet. At first sight, it looks to her like a huge pearl. It is a pearl: a boiled egg. She hasn’t eaten an egg in two years. She can hardly even remember what they taste like. She takes it in both hands as if it were delicate, and looks up at the boy who has pulled his hand back through the thousands of volts that snake through the wires.