The Librarian of Auschwitz(62)

A very pleasant afternoon in Auschwitz?

Dita wonders if her mother is starting to lose her mind. Maybe that might not be such a bad thing. They’ve been through some very hard days in this horrible month of February.

“There’s still an hour before curfew. Go and visit Margit in her hut!”

Liesl does this often in the evening: throws Dita out of their hut, tells her to go and see her friends, makes sure she doesn’t stay inside surrounded by widows.

As Dita walks toward Barrack 8, she feels the books swaying slightly under her dress. She thinks her mother has shown amazing strength since the death of her husband.

She finds Margit sitting at the foot of a bunk with her mother and her sister Helga, who is two years younger than Margit. She greets the family. Then Margit’s mother, who knows that the teenagers are happier talking about things on their own, says she’s going to find one of her neighbors. Helga stays where she is, but her eyes are drooping and she’s almost asleep. She’s mentally and physically exhausted because she was very unlucky with the job she was given sorting mountains of clothes of the dead people.

Undertaking such hard physical labor with just a liquid drink in the morning, soup at midday, and a piece of bread at night would leave anyone exhausted. Dita, with her habit of giving everyone a nickname, secretly calls Helga Sleeping Beauty, but hasn’t called her that out loud since she realized that Margit didn’t find the nickname the least bit amusing. But in fact it is exactly what she is: an extremely thin, almost emaciated adolescent who falls asleep from exhaustion as soon as she sits down anywhere.

“Your mother has left us on our own.… How considerate she is!” Dita says.

“Mothers know what they have to do,” Margit replies.

“I was thinking about my mother as I was coming over here. You know her. She seems so fainthearted, but she’s so much stronger than I could ever have imagined. Since my father’s death, she’s continued to work in that stinking workshop without a single word of complaint; she hasn’t even caught a cold in that wooden icebox we sleep in.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I once overheard a couple of young women who sleep near us … Do you know what they call my mother and her friends?”

“What?”

“The Old Hens Club.”

“That’s terrible.”

“But they’re right. Sometimes they all begin to speak at once from their bunks and they make a racket like hens in a farmyard.”

Margit smiles. She’s very discreet, and she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make fun of older people, but she’s also pleased to hear Dita joking again. It’s a good sign.

“And what have you heard about Renée?” Dita asks.

Margit becomes serious. “She’s been avoiding me for days.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, not just me. As soon as she finishes work, she goes off with her mother and doesn’t speak to anyone.”

“But why?”

“People are gossiping.”

“What do you mean, gossiping? About Renée? Why?”

Margit feels a bit uncomfortable because she can’t find the right words to tell her friend.

“She’s on good terms with an SS officer.”

There are certain lines that can’t be crossed in Auschwitz–Birkenau, and that’s one of them.

“Are you sure it’s not just a rumor? You know people invent all sorts of things.”

“No, Dita. I’ve seen her talking to him. They stand beside the entry guard post because people usually don’t go there. But you can see them perfectly from Barracks One and Three.”

“Do they kiss?”

“Good God, I hope not. I get the shivers just thinking about that.”

“I’d rather kiss a pig.”

Margit doubles over with laughter, and Dita realizes she’s starting to speak like the good soldier ?vejk. What’s even worse is that she quite likes the idea.

At that very moment, a few huts away, Renée is removing nits from her mother’s hair. It keeps her hands and her eyes busy but otherwise leaves her free to think.

She already knows that the other women criticize her. She doesn’t think it’s a good thing to accept the friendship of a member of the SS, either, even someone as well-mannered and attentive as Viktor.

Viktor?

Friendly or otherwise, he is a prison guard. Even worse, an executioner. But he behaves himself with her. He gave her the fine-toothed comb with which she’s freeing her mother of the lice. He also brought her a small jar of red currant jam. She and her mother had spread it on their nightly pieces of lumpy bread and enjoyed their dinner for the first time in months. They hadn’t tasted that flavor for such a long time! Vitamin contributions like that can prevent illness and save your life.

Should she be unfriendly to this young SS man who has never asked her for anything in return? Should she reject his gifts and tell him she wants nothing to do with him?

She knows that many of the women who criticize her would take what they could if they were in the same position. They’d take it for their husbands or their children or whoever, but they’d take it. It’s easy to be honorable when people don’t put an open bottle of red currant jam and a slice of bread in front of you.