The Librarian of Auschwitz(54)

How can you sum up a life in just two very short words?

“Will we be able to go inside to see him?” asks Liesl.

“I’m sorry, but they’ve already taken him away.”

Dita and her mother ought to know that. The bodies are picked up at first light, piled onto a cart, and taken away to be incinerated in the ovens.

Dita’s mother seems to sway back and forth for a moment, on the verge of breaking down. At first glance, the news of his death hasn’t overly unsettled her; she probably knew from the moment she saw him lying on his bunk. Not being able to say good-bye to him has been a blow. Liesl quickly recovers her composure, however, and puts her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to console her.

“At least your father didn’t suffer.”

Dita, who senses her blood is beginning to boil, finds being addressed as a child even more irritating than her mother’s words.

“Didn’t suffer?” she replies, brusquely shrugging off her mother’s hand. “They took away his world, his house, his dignity, his health … and finally, they let him die alone, like a dog, on a flea-infested pallet. Isn’t that enough suffering?” And she almost shouts those last few words.

“That’s what God wanted, Edita. We must resign ourselves.”

Dita shakes her head again and again in disagreement.

“I don’t feel like resigning myself!” she screams in the middle of the Lagerstrasse. But hardly anyone pays any attention to her. “If I had God in front of me, I’d tell him what I thought of him and his twisted sense of compassion.”

She feels bad, and even worse when she realizes she’s been very rude to her mother just when what her mother most needs is comfort and support, but she can’t stop feeling furious at her mother’s docility. She’s relieved when Mrs. Turnovská arrives, wrapped in her enormous shawl. She must already know what has happened. She squeezes Dita’s arm affectionately, and warmly hugs Liesl, who grabs hold of her friend with unexpected feeling. This is what I should have done, Dita thinks to herself, hug my mother. But she can’t; she’s too angry to give hugs. She feels the urge to bite and destroy, just as they have destroyed her.

Three more women, whom Dita barely knows by sight, appear and start to cry noisily. Dita, her own eyes dry, looks at them in utter bewilderment. They approach her mother, but Mrs. Turnovská steps in.

“Get away from her! Go!”

“We just want to express our condolences to the lady.”

“If you don’t leave in the next ten seconds, I’ll kick you on your way!”

Liesl is too shocked to understand what’s going on, and Dita doesn’t have the strength to apologize to the women and ask them to stay.

“What are you doing, Mrs. Turnovská? Has the whole world gone mad?”

“They’re scavengers. They know that family members of the dead lose their appetites when they are upset, so they pretend to cry crocodile tears and then make off with your food ration.”

Dita is stunned; she hates the whole world at that moment. She asks Mrs. Turnovská to look after her mother and walks away. It’s not that she’s having difficulty getting used to the idea that she’ll never be with her father again, but rather that she doesn’t want to get used to it. She’s not prepared to accept it, she’s not going to resign herself to it, not now, not ever. She walks off, her hands clenched and her knuckles white. A white-hot rage burns inside her.

He’ll never come back from work in his double-breasted suit and felt hat, or glue his ear to the radio as he gazes up at the ceiling; he’ll never sit her on his knees again to show her the countries of the world or gently scold her for her crooked writing.

And she can’t even cry for him; her eyes are dry. And that makes her even madder. Since she has nowhere else to go, her feet take her to Block 31. The children are busy with breakfast, and she goes to the back of the hut without stopping, heading for her refuge behind the woodpile. She’s startled to find a solitary figure seated on the bench in the corner.

Morgenstern greets her with his old-fashioned politeness, but this time Dita doesn’t smile, and the old professor stops his theatrical bowing.

“My father…” And as she says it, Dita feels her blood start to boil as it runs through her veins. And a single word rises in her throat like bile:

“Murderers!”

She rolls it around her mouth, and repeats it five, ten, fifty times.

“Murderers, murderers, murderers, murderers…!”

She kicks a stool and then grabs it and brandishes it like a mace. She wants to smash something, but doesn’t know what. She wants to hit someone, but doesn’t know who. Her eyes are wild, and her anxiety is making her gasp. Professor Morgenstern stands up with surprising agility for such a frail-looking old man and removes the stool gently but firmly from her hand.

“I’ll kill them!” Dita cries out angrily. “I’ll get hold of a gun and kill them!”

“No, Edita, no,” he says to her, very gently. “Our hatred is a victory for them.”

Dita trembles, and the professor puts his arms around her. She buries her head in the old man’s arms. Several teachers and a troop of curious boys and girls poke their heads over the top of the woodpile, alarmed by the noise, and the professor puts a finger to his lips to tell them to be quiet, and then signals with his head for them to go away. Amazed to see the professor so serious, they obey, and leave them on their own.