The Librarian of Auschwitz(42)
When Alice leaves, Hirsch looks around and then shuts himself inside his cubicle again. But the hut isn’t actually empty. There’s someone huddled behind the woodpile who’s been silently listening.
Dita’s father has been unsuccessfully battling a cold for days, and her mother has forced him to abandon their outdoor lessons, so Dita has spent her afternoons keeping guard in her hideout at the back of the hut. She’s been waiting for the secret SS contact to reappear, but her surveillance hasn’t produced any results so far. If there’s no one she can trust, then she’ll just have to solve the Hirsch mystery on her own. Fredy has emerged from his cubicle periodically to do push-ups and sit-ups, or lift stools as if they were weights. Miriam Edelstein has dropped in on the odd afternoon, but that’s it. Dita misses her conversations with Margit, who she knows sits down for a chat with Renée now and again.
Hirsch, convinced that the hut is empty, has turned out the lights, so it’s dark inside. Dita hugs herself tightly to try and keep warm. The shiver reminds her of the patients in the Berghof spa, who would lie down at night facing the Alps so that the cold, dry mountain air would clear their lungs of tuberculosis. These weeks in the Lager have made it difficult for her to remember the intensive reading of The Magic Mountain she enjoyed in Terezín. The book had such an impact on her that the characters have become part of her store of memories.
The Berghof reminded Dita of the ghetto. Life had been better there than in Auschwitz. It was much less violent and horrific than the factory of pain in which they now struggle to survive, despite the fact that Terezín was a spa where no one was cured.
Hans Castorp arrived for a stay of a few days, which became months and then years. Whenever it looked like he might leave, Dr. Behrens detected a slight problem in his lung and he had to extend his stay. Dita had been in Terezín for a year when she started to read the book, and at that stage she had no idea when she would be able to leave that city-prison. Given the rumors about the world beyond those walls—the Nazis relentlessly advancing through a war-torn Europe with millions already dead and camps where Jews were being sent for extermination—it occurred to her that the walls might be imprisoning her, but they were also protecting her. Much the same could be said of Hans and the Berghof sanatorium he no longer wanted to leave to face his world.
She exchanged her labor in Terezín’s perimeter gardens for more comfortable duties in a military garment workshop and, as time passed, while her mother lost energy and her father made ever fewer witty observations, Dita kept reading. The story of Hans fascinated her, and she kept him company until he reached the critical moment of his life. It was carnival night and, taking advantage of the freedom provided by the masks they were all wearing, he dared to speak for the first time to Mme. Chauchat, a very beautiful Russian woman with whom he was hopelessly in love, despite the fact that they had never exchanged more than a few exquisitely polite words of greeting. In the stiflingly ceremonious atmosphere of the Berghof, protected by carnival dispensation, he had dared to address her informally and call her Clawdia. Dita closes her eyes and relives that moment when he prostrates himself so romantically before Clawdia and, in a gallant and impassioned manner, declares his rash love.
Dita likes the incredibly elegant Mme. Chauchat, with her almond eyes, who is usually the last to enter the regal dining room and shuts the door loudly enough to make Hans jump in his seat. The first few times, it irritates him, but then he is swept up by her Tartar beauty. In that moment of freedom offered by carnival, when those speaking are not people trapped within the strict rules of social etiquette but masks, Mme. Chauchat says to Hans, “All Europe knows that you Germans love order more than freedom.”
And Dita, tucked up in her hidey-hole of wooden boards, nods in agreement.
Mme. Chauchat is so right.
Dita thinks she’d like to be Mme. Chauchat, such a cultured, refined, and independent woman: When she entered a room, all the boys would steal a look at her. After the undoubtedly daring but charming compliments of the young German, which the Russian lady finds not the least bit offensive, something completely unexpected happens. Mme. Chauchat opts for a change of environment and leaves for Daghestan, or maybe Spain.
If Dita had been Mme. Chauchat, she would have been unable to resist the charm and graciousness of a gentleman like Hans. It’s not that she lacks the bravery to roam the world, because when this nightmare war is over, she’d like to go anywhere with her family. Maybe even to that land of Palestine Fredy Hirsch talks about so much.
Just then, she hears the sound of the hut door opening. When she carefully peers out, she sees the same tall figure in boots and a dark cape that she saw the first time. Her heart jumps in her chest.
The much anticipated moment of truth has arrived. But does she really want to confront it? Each time the truth is revealed, something falls apart. She sighs and thinks it would be best if she left the hut; she is racked with uncertainty. But she needs to know the truth.
Dita had once read a piece about spies in one of the magazines her parents kept on the coffee table in the living room. The article suggested you could hear conversations through walls by putting your ear up to the bottom of a glass placed against the wall. She tiptoes up to the wall of the Block?ltester’s cubicle, breakfast bowl in hand. It’s risky. If they catch her spying, who knows what will happen to her.
As she places the metal container against the wall, she realizes she can hear perfectly well just by putting her ear to the wooden divider. There’s even a small hole in the panel through which she can see inside.