Roots of Evil(100)

And then a figure seated in one of the deep, high-backed chairs stood up and walked towards her. The light from the iron stove fell across his face, and there was a moment when one eye caught the red glow, and seemed to swell and to grow to monstrous proportions. Alice stared at him, a wholly different horror rushing at her.

Leo Dreyer. Leo Dreyer here in Auschwitz, as cool and as in command as ever. He was again wearing a monocle, the black silk string lying across his face like a sleeping insect, and even through her fear Alice could feel the authority that radiated from him.

‘So,’ he said, softly, ‘you thought you would escape the realities of Buchenwald by making that devil’s bargain with the fool Karl Koch, did you, baroness?’

‘It took you a long time to realize how much of a fool he was,’ retorted Alice.

‘It does not matter. He is being suitably dealt with,’ said Dreyer. ‘You were more the fool to think you could double-cross us. But you, also, will be dealt with.’

‘How, precisely? And what is your idea of suitable? I ask out of a sense of involvement rather than vulgar curiosity,’ said Alice, and thought: well, that came out more or less all right, although there was a hint of a tremor towards the end. Damn.

If Dreyer had heard the tremor he gave no sign. He said, ‘Tonight, my dear, you are going to pay for your na?ve arrogance at Buchenwald. Tonight Mildner’s men are going to draw lots for you.’



At these words the men moved forwards, and while two of them held her arms behind her back, two more undressed her. They took their time, laughing when she aimed a kick at them, laying each item of clothing on a chair, considering her body at every stage.

‘A bit too thin for my taste,’ said one of them, and the other said, dismissively, ‘But that’s the camps. They always look half-starved.’

They carried her to a long deep sofa, and one of them stood guard while the others grouped themselves around the table and took it in turns to cut a pack of playing cards set out by the youngest of the officers.

‘Highest to go first,’ said one of them, glancing at Mildner, who nodded carelessly. The men paused to refill their glasses: Alice thought they were drinking schnapps or perhaps kümmel. Some of them were clearly becoming a bit intoxicated, but none of them seemed incapable. Neither Dreyer nor Mildner took part in the card-cutting, and when it was done Mildner moved detachedly to the door, as if to stand guard, but Leo Dreyer remained where he was, one arm resting lightly on the high narrow mantel over the stove.

‘Try not to impregnate the bitch,’ he said offhandedly, and for the first time Alice saw a flicker of embarrassment on some of the faces and understood that while most of them felt no particular awkwardness or guilt about raping this traitor, they were uncomfortable at the idea of doing it in front of one another.

During the hour that followed Leo Dreyer scarcely took his eyes from Alice. He stood facing the deep old sofa, one hand leaning negligently on the high mantel over the stove, unobtrusively sipping his drink – except that there could never be anything in the least unobtrusive about him. Once he gestured to the young officer to refill his glass, but other than this he hardly moved. The light from the stove washed over him, and Alice knew that when the worst of tonight’s memories had faded a little (and please God they would fade), this was the image that would have burned itself indelibly into her mind. Leo Dreyer standing watching her, the hideously magnified eye behind the monocle washed to living fire by the stove’s light.

But what you don’t know, you vicious cruel creature, she said to this hateful image, is that after you threw me out of your house I lived among Vienna’s back streets and alleyways, and I survived by selling my body. And if I could cope then with being f*cked by half a dozen men in one night, I can cope with it now.

The small private obscenity helped to steady her, and it brought the defiance flooding back. I can’t escape this, but I can try to disconcert these animals. How? Well, perhaps by reminding them who I am and what I have been. Leo Dreyer knew the truth about her, but for reasons Alice had not yet fathomed, he seemed to be letting the legend stand. So to these German officers she was still the infamous baroness – the decadent aristocrat whose lovers were said to be legion, and whose private entertainments were whispered to be Bacchanalian in the extreme. Lucretia von Wolff, rumoured to have committed every sin in the calendar, and whose sexual proclivities had been unfavourably compared to those of Messalina…

As the first man approached her, Alice smiled at him and held out her arms.



The small unexpected act did not stop them, of course – Alice had known it would not – but it certainly gave them pause. They glanced furtively at one another as if each of them needed to check his colleagues’ reactions before doing anything on his own account, and this brought Alice a small shred of courage and self-esteem. You see? she said silently to Leo Dreyer. You thought I would be beaten and humiliated but I’m neither of those things and I never will be!

Even so, what followed was an appalling ordeal. The men were all relatively clean, and most of them had clearly bathed or showered in the last forty-eight hours – Alice knew from those long-ago black days that this was something for which to be grateful. But the enforced and brutal intimacy inflicted a mental uncleanness on her mind that she feared might never wash away.

Only one of the men displayed any degree of sensitivity, and that was the very young officer who had poured out drinks. He was fourth in line, and as he approached her he avoided meeting her eyes as if he found the whole business shameful. But his excitement was stronger and more frenzied than the others, and when he finally shuddered in climax Alice cried out in pain from the uncontrolled thrusting. As he withdrew he put out his hand to touch her face as if in apology, and their eyes met. But then he seemed to recollect his surroundings and he got up quickly, turning away, embarrassedly fastening his trousers.