A Change of Skin
He went to the railroad, where they were working now, every morning, passing through the town that had become a single ghetto, returning at night across a field that had once been planted to beets but now was fallow with open ditches that had to be avoided. Beyond the field was the rutted dirt road that led to the fortress. The darkness was silent. Sometimes a faint buzzing behind his back, a sound that could not be defined. Then the lights of the fortress opaque in the ground fog. And no one spoke, Isabel. It was a place that has to be remembered like a silent movie. Did you ever see Caligari? No, how can you know what it was. They made a poll among youths: who is Hitler? No one knew, Pussycat, no one remembered now, no one young had heard anyone talk about him. Have you noticed that? And Franz talks to you, the most youthful of all of us: the walls of Theresienstadt stood straight, the mansard roofs and the gardens of the old buildings were all straight and nevertheless nothing seemed straight, it all seemed oblique, to exist in an insane space with insane coordinates of its own, to be like a stage backdrop where the lines are all drawn to recede as if straight in the true perspective of a scene, but in reality are all slanted and distorted. A backdrop seen from too close, without the illusion. Shadows that were real colliding with painted shadows and creating a maze of false light and true light, apparent distance and true distance. And everything richly ornamented, that mania for the decorative, as if there were an effort to make the lunacy of an asylum viable and normal. Have you never heard of Caligari? Above all, the silence. Sometimes he tried to hear something, anything, and found that he could hear only his own breathing. And she, later, if they had ever talked, could have told him that in the silence of Theresienstadt there had been secret music, singers who looked just like everyone else and came and went by day without drawing attention to themselves. Their sheets of music were passed from hand to hand and one day two old men were able to smuggle violins and violas to their meeting place. A cello that had been hidden in an abandoned barn arrived in a cart beneath a load of hay. She could have told him, if they had talked, but they never talked. All he knew was that a work crew one day discovered an entire set of orchestral instruments hidden behind a bricked-up wall. In their cases and wrapped against the dampness, a complete set, brasses, woodwinds, drums.
The Commandant was not angry but on the contrary pleased. “A stroke of luck. We need to prepare a ceremony for the official visit. What could be better than a concert?”
“Again and again we try to justify ourselves for what we did.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The words never matter.”
“Why don’t they matter?”
“Because they are always the same. The words everyone knows.”
“Then what does matter?”
“That we were fighting a final battle, Isabel. The last battle of the ancient German dream of heroism.”
“Bewegung!”
The command rang up and down the corridors and staircases of the old building the Jews were using as a hospital. There was to be a concert. A concert hall had to be made ready. The attic here was enormous. Boots on the stone floor. Shots fired merely for the noise. Beds overturned. Cries of surprise, fear. Those who were strong enough walked to the street themselves, some leaned on others. Most, too weak to stand, were simply dragged outside, where friends and relatives were beginning to gather, no one understanding what was happening, why the hospital was being emptied. The patients stretched their arms out and relatives ran to help their kin, acquaintances to help those they recognized or thought they recognized. The Commandant had mobilized all available transport: the three tractors and their twelve towed wagons, the two trucks, the sixteen farm carts, the forty-eight horse-drawn Jewish hearses, and a number of wheelchairs. But these were not enough and many of the patients simply lay down on the stones or wandered around dazed or were led away by relatives who themselves did not know what to do. Meanwhile the guards went up into the huge attic and brought down the heaped-up coffins and threw them into the truck that carried corpses to the crematorium. New corpses no one knew about were discovered, and Franz, looking on, smelled the stink of death among the living stinks of men and women who no longer could smell themselves. He walked toward a child and an old man dead two days or five days or a week. But not Ulrich. Ulrich refused. And one night Ulrich disappeared. In about two hours the attic was cleared and Franz remained there alone beneath the immense roof supported by perpendicular beams. He walked through the empty rooms where there had never been anything that could burn, neither mattress nor blanket nor pillow.
“The order has been executed. You can transform it into a theater now.”
He will tell you that the Scriptures speak of the time of love and the time of death but forget the time of waiting. And one night, returning, he reached the dirt road that led to the prison—he embraced you, Isabel, and told you twice that Ulrich did not want to wait—one night returning from the railroad he was overtaken by a convoy of seven trucks that moved heavily in the muddy, deeply rutted road and again and again stalled and guards and prisoners alike shouted and ran to help the soldiers who got out and pushed, sinking in the mud up to the tops of their boots. He jumped on the running board of the first truck to guide it, for he knew the road. A young corporal wearing glasses was the driver and beside him sat a sergeant with a machine gun on his knees. The corporal was still in his teens and his blue eyes were made huge by the thickness of his glasses. Franz told him here to the right, here swing off the road altogether and cut across the field, now back to the road but hold to the left, here right again. The corporal never looked at him. He drove with concentration and seriousness. He was doing his duty and doing it well. Maybe at other times he cracked jokes with his companion, but not now. It was certain that only a few months ago he had gone to the Volkschule and studied calculus or world literature. Maybe he had liked music. Schoolboys were sometimes taken to hear concerts or operas. Or at least that was how it had once been.
I promised her that I would come back. But the time of returning was not our time yet. Our time was only the time of waiting. Don’t yell, Franz. I hear you.
He knew that an order had been issued: the musicians and singers at the camp and in the ghetto city were to remain. They were not to be shipped off to the death camps, they would remain and be saved. Maestro Professor Schachter would be allowed to continue his musical efforts, and although the children would have to depart, others would arrive to replace them in the child’s opera. The musicians and singers would remain. Though they could, of course, if they wished, climb into the cattle cars with their relatives and accompany them. The children, the orphans, and the widows were being sent away simply for humanitarian reasons: there would be fewer people now and all would live better.
Now, possibly, the theater in his home town had been bombed out. What city was he from? Franz did not know, for the corporal had not spoken. And beside him sat the sergeant, silent, cradling the machine gun. Franz said nothing to him. To the left. Careful now. More to the left, there’s a deep hole, a well of a hole. And after the war they would all be able to go back to their cities and towns and live normal lives again. The Wallenstein Gardens were awaiting his return. The musicians would be in their accustomed places beneath the baroque portal. She would be waiting for him too, sitting in the same row as always. The great German Requiem of Brahms would begin. Franz and the corporal laughed. The sergeant looked at him sourly.
“Why don’t you keep this road in better shape?”
“The railroad is more important.”
“Don’t you have workers enough for both?”
“No. This is a very small camp.”
“Bah. And you, what the hell do you do here?”
“I’m the architect assigned to the camp.”
“Bah.”
The sergeant laughed and the face of the young corporal was motionless as the floodlights at the corners of the fortress glinted on his glasses and blinded him. He raised a hand to his eyes and braked.
“What are you stopping for?” the sergeant yelled.
The bumper of the truck behind hit them. Someone swore. The corporal said nothing. A shower of sparks showed that the current of the electric fence had been turned off so that the men in black could open the gate. Isabel, why are you moving away from me? Here, come back.
“This is where you get off,” said the sergeant to Franz. Then to the corporal, “Chin up now, man. Remember you’re a soldier.”
The corporal adjusted his glasses, stiffened his head, and smiled. Franz swung down and the trucks moved past him. Slowly he walked into the fortress. Voices of command, repeated shouts. And a hidden sound of singing, buried but penetrating. He asked a passing officer what the singing was and the officer said he didn’t know. Another officer, walking swiftly by, said that it was the Jews practicing in the stockrooms and cellars. The Commandant had given them orders to sing, to rehearse an opera or something. The Jews that had been recruited by Raphael Schachter: Germans, Austrians, Dutchmen, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, the whole caboodle. As Franz walked to the side and listened, their voices rose:
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus
The loudspeaker:
“Achtung!”
The echo, “Achtuuung!”
“Take your places!”
In groups of five the guards ran to the rear of the trucks, which were still moving slowly with motors roaring and exhausts open. The trucks’ headlights went out. Dogs were barking furiously. The small band, standing on a mound beyond the trucks, a band made up of six women prisoners, began to play again. The director moved her arms, her gray baton, and the Merry Widow Waltz began, two violins, a flute, a double bass, cymbals. The loudspeaker:
“Stand by. Open the doors.”
And she would have told him if they had ever spoken with each other again that in the beginning Maestro Raphael Schachter had only two pianos, one provided by the president of the Jewish community, the other the one used in the fortress to accompany movies with music. He needed four soloists, a choir of a hundred and fifty voices, and as many instruments and musicians as was possible. The instruments appeared: the cello that had been hidden in the barn in the farm cart beneath straw, the cache of orchestral instruments that had been concealed behind the bricked-up wall, the violins and violas of the two old men, the double basses that had been tossed aside in a storeroom among top hats and dress forms and glass paperweights. Schachter gathered his soloists, his instrumentalists, and his choir, feeling safe and protected by the Commandant’s orders that the musicians and performers were to remain, were not to be interfered with. But when the children and old folks were packed off east in cattle cars, three of his soloists elected to go with them. Every convoy that departed took performers away, every convoy that arrived brought replacements who had to be trained and rehearsed. At one time he was missing twenty-four voices from his choir and twelve musicians from his orchestra. Again and again he had to start over from the beginning.
Rex tremendae majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis.
The newcomers began to get down from the trucks. The rear doors had been unlocked and swung open, and in each group of guards, one raised his arms to help the prisoners down, a second sang out numbers which a third checked against a list, and the remaining two held their machine guns and looked on. The waltz tripped into the frozen night. Dogs howled. And the prisoners got down, some accepting the guard’s raised arms, some jumping down unaided, all silent, motionless for a moment, some rubbing their eyes, others bowing their heads, some laughing, others crying. Comrades looked for comrades, husbands for wives, parents for children. Old men wearing overcoats and hats. Men with their coat lapels and collars turned up against the cold. Women bundled in blankets, with children in their arms. Girls in woolen socks, scarves around their heads. Boys in short pants, woolen caps. Little girls carrying dolls. Cardboard suitcases, boxes tied with twine, bundles of clothing, a sewing machine, a cobbler’s bench, a violin case. Stars pinned to lapels or sewn to their backs. Many did not get down from the trucks. They were dead on their feet, as dead as all were silent.
The Commandant informed Berlin that for the day of the official visit to confer decorations there would be a banquet and a concert. Franz, standing beside the canteen stove, remarked that the facilities that the Commandant had granted the musicians and chorus, and now at last their performance, indicated that things were not going so well at the camp. Almost proof that they had failed. Those gathered about him laughed and raised their mugs of beer beneath the Bavarian lanterns.
The old man carrying the cobbler’s bench stopped and looked around smiling as if pleased by the scene and the music. A dark-haired little girl dropped her doll and its porcelain head broke in half. Franz, remembering a dead dwarf in a refrigerator, smiled. The little girl cried and tried to put the head of her doll together again. The old man caressed her gently and wrapped her in his shawl, saying over and over, “Vacation. It’s vacation.”
“Isabel. Forgive me, Isabel. I heard you.”
“When, Franz?”
“Earlier, when Javier was with you. I couldn’t help it.”
“But what I told him was different. We were talking about splitting, Franz, playing it alone. Do you understand me? Alone.”
“Not alone, Isabel, you can’t. If you take something, no matter what it is, it’s because someone else has given it up. Ulrich refused to do that. I stood in his place and witnessed what he refused to accept.”
“Franz, I don’t know who Ulrich was. You have to explain everything. I’m not going to tell anyone. Never, I swear it. It’s between you and me and no one else will know. Understand me, Franz, I take all my chances alone. That was what I was telling Javier. I don’t rely on any man, anyone. Not now. Maybe it was better when I did. But I don’t know. All I know is that all of a sudden you find yourself kicked in the teeth, and I say to hell with that. You can trust me, Franz. I’ll never repeat one word you tell me.”
“Franz! Franz, Franz!”
A woman tried to move away from her group, spreading her arms toward a man in another group who answered her quietly as she was drawn back: “Here, Teresa! I’m all right. Teresa, Teresa.”
The orchestra played a Lehar medley and Franz hummed the words. I always go to Maxim’s at night. And there with the grisettes I await the new sun. Loló. Frufrú. Margot. The guards formed the prisoners in files. From the Hundenkommando came the barking of the dogs.
“For-ward!”
They walked in file across the bridge then into the fortress beneath the rain-bleached legend, Arbeit Macht Frei.
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis
Voca me cum benedictis.
“In Berlin they no longer have such diversions,” the Commandant smiled. “It will be an agreeable interlude for everyone. Visitors, ourselves, and, not least, the Jews.”
But she knew, and she would have told Franz if they had ever spoken again, that Epstein, the president of the Jewish community, had said to Schachter: “You are shaming us. These are our people you have gathered together and now they are going to sing for our oppressors. You have made our suffering worse. The sick have been thrown out of the hospital. So much suffering, merely for a show. No, Schachter, it isn’t right. You will be honoring those who oppress us. At their request. They will think that you have surrendered everything to them. You, Maestro, a Czech. Maybe they will give you a medal yet. Do something. Cancel the concert. Do something. I am helpless. But I tell you, it isn’t right. I’m afraid.”
Under the faint light that hung above the keystone of the arch the prisoners entered as the small band reached its final crescendo and the waltz ended. They were conducted to the receiving room, a hundred and forty of them. There they were made to face the wall. A long line of backs, but that did not matter, their backs were the same as their faces. Twenty i
n the first group, while the rest waited in a file that stretched all the way to the bridge. The room had bare yellow walls. Their backs were their names. Burian knew it and walked slowly, studying them as they stood facing the wall. Guards collected the suitcases, the bundles and boxes the prisoners had set down on the floor beside them. Burian himself took the cobbler’s bench from the old man, who turned and looked and smiled. Every word or movement of protest was squelched. Burian gave an order. They removed their watches, medallions, combs and hair ornaments, cuff links.
“Name?”
“Marketa Silberstein.”
The guard with the notebook spoke a number and wrote it down. Burian walked back and forth, watching them. An ear uncovered by drawn back hair trembled. Franz stared. He knew that hair. He remembered her.
“David Rosen.”
“Six-five-seven-eight-two.”
“Kamilla.”
“Kamilla what?”
“It’s Kamilla Neuberg. She’s my daughter.”
“Six-five-seven-eight-three.”
Burian stopped behind a young man who was leaning his arm against the wall. Next to him was the girl. She was small and was wearing sandals. She leaned her forehead against the wall too. Burian touched her shoulder and pulled her back. He took the violin case she was holding. Franz was about to step forward. The same green eyes. The same clean-lined facial bones. Franz slowly kissed Isabel; she rubbed his head.
“Always, Isabel, always…”
“What? Always what?”
“You always have to give up something so that the other can go on living.”