‘No, you the right man.’
Lamont drew a breath through his nostrils and with all the strength he could muster threw off the man’s forearm and ducked slightly so that when the knife moved in as he had known it would, it came in contact with the skin of his skull rather than into his neck. Feeling the blade against his head made the anger rise up in him and he fell onto his assailant who in turn fell onto the ground. The man still had not relinquished his grip on the knife but now Lamont at least had an even chance. As they rolled on the ground Lamont felt the knife cut his right hand. With his other hand he took a swing at the man’s face. The connection wasn’t perfect but the man felt it.
‘What the fuck you want?’
‘I want you to stay the fuck away from my mother!’
‘Mister, you got the wrong man.’
‘She told me you come around.’
‘I don’t know what you talkin’ ‘bout.’
‘You leave her alone, you know what’s good for you.’
‘Show you what’s good for you.’
‘Leave her out of it, Lamont.’
When he heard his name he rolled away from the man slightly. His assailant’s hoody had come off by this time and Lamont stood over the man, panting.
‘You a damn fool! You cover up your head so’s I won’t know who you are. But you don’t want me comin’ near your mother.’
‘That’s right,’ said the man, also panting, and now slowly getting up off the ground.
‘So I have to know who you are, fool. You the son of your mother.’
‘Yeah? Everybody the son of their mother.’
‘Take off the balaclava, Kevin, you damn fool.’
‘You scare her, Lamont. Why? She never done nothin’ to you,’ said Kevin Sweeney, the younger brother of Michael Sweeney, Lamont’s childhood friend, the one whose armed robbery had led to Lamont’s incarceration. Now his head was uncovered to reveal a bloodied ear where Lamont had hit him.
‘You’re comin’ with me, shithead.’
‘Where we goin’?’
With Michael’s little brother in tow, Lamont flagged a gypsy cab to take them both to the Emergency Room at Jacobi. Lamont explained why he had visited Michael and Kevin’s mother those months ago.
‘So you sayin’ you all about Chantal?’
‘No, relax yourself, Kevin. I’m lookin’ for my daughter. Chantal’s her mother so that’s where I start and I thought you might know where Chantal might be at.’
‘I don’t know where Chantal –’
‘I don’t care if you damn well married her, fool! I’m just lookin’ for my –’
‘Lamont,’ Kevin said sadly in the back of the cab, ‘I ain’t seen Chantal for years, like five or six years. She never wanted me, not really. I admit, I thought she was fine but …’
‘I can’t tell my grandma I’m sittin’ in the hospital. She don’t need to hear that. Damn you, Kevin! Fuck! How am I gonna work now?’ Lamont said, looking at his injured hand. ‘They might have to put stitches in my damn hand. This gonna need stitches! You dumber n’ your brother!’
‘Yeah, I heard that,’ Kevin said quietly.
‘He still inside?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen to me, you gonna put your hand in your pocket for this here cab ride. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, I help you out. I like to do what’s right. Think maybe they could look at my ear? You fierce, man!’
Lamont had to have several stitches put in his hand. He made a call to his grandmother telling her that he’d injured his hand at work and was waiting in ER for treatment.
‘No, it’s not too serious but I don’t know how long I’ll be so don’t wait dinner and don’t wait up … Well, I’ll just warm up what’s left when I get home.’
She was the only one in his life who cared enough about him to be lied to, it occurred to him as he put the receiver down and went back to the line he’d been in. When he got home he saw that she had left a note for him on the kitchen table explaining that there was a plate for him in the refrigerator. Beside the note was a glass of Seneca apple juice she’d left for him just as she used to when he was a child. Over the stitches they had put a bandage and that’s what his grandmother saw the next morning before they both headed out to work. For quite some time nobody at work noticed his injury or thought to comment on it. He was making his rounds collecting the garbage from the patients’ rooms as quietly and as inconspicuously as possible when he heard a voice coming weakly to him from inside one of the rooms.
‘The hand, Mr Lamont, it’s still not healed? It’s the same one?’
‘Hey, Mr Mandelbrot!’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, it’s the same one. How you doin’?’ He asked the question as a matter of form and without thinking. The old man had been readmitted but he was dying. Lamont could see that. It was a different room from the one on the ninth floor the old man was originally in. That, and the old man’s health, were all that had changed.
‘You find your wife yet?’
‘We weren’t married but –’
‘Your daughter?’
‘Not yet.’
Henryk Mandelbrot wanted to test him to see what he remembered of the chapters of his life but Lamont had to make his rounds and wasn’t able to stop.
‘I remember it, Mr Mandelbrot. How could I ever forget it?’
‘All of it?’
‘I think so.’
‘So we’ll see.’
‘I can’t stop now. I’ll come see you at the end of my shift.’
‘Don’t take too long. You know I’m dying.’
‘No you’re not,’ Lamont Williams said perfunctorily, as a matter of course.
‘You’ll see; that’s what I’m here for.’
‘I’ll come back at the end of my shift.’
He was true to his word and when he came back at the end of his day he noticed that the patient looked even thinner, not merely than he had been in the other room, but thinner than earlier in the day; thinner, weaker and more vulnerable.
‘So we have to continue where we left off before I got interrupted.’
‘Interrupted?’
‘A few months of life … in Great Neck … It interrupted us. You have to tell me what you remember.’
Lamont Williams smiled. With the exception of a few minor details, which Mr Mandelbrot wasted no time correcting, Lamont had remembered everything the patient had told him.
‘That’s all you told me. You got to stick around ‘cause I don’t know how the story ends.’
‘It ends in a few days, maybe a few hours,’ the old man whispered. ‘I will tell you the end.’
‘No, Mr Mandelbrot, you should save your strength.’
‘What should I save it for?’
‘For your family?’
‘They were here. Already they came. You see that? Bring it here.’
Lamont went over to a shelf on the opposite wall where a vase full of red and yellow roses sat beside a silver menorah, a nine-branched candelabrum and, as requested, he brought the menorah over to the bedside.
‘Do you know what this is, Mr Lamont?’
‘It’s a candleholder, a Jewish candleholder. For Christmas, you use it at Christmas, right?’
‘You know about the Maccabees? Probably not.’
‘No, I don’t –’
‘If I live long enough I’ll tell you about them, but it’s more important I finish about what happened to me.’
‘You want me to put this back on the shelf?’
‘Not yet. It’s silver.’
‘It’s very nice.’
‘My son and daughter-in-law brought it here. I’m glad now they did.’
‘Sure.’
‘When I die I want you to take it.’
‘No, Mr Mandelbrot, I –’
‘You have to remember what I’ve –’
‘Mr Mandelbrot, I don’t need this to remember you.’
‘It’s not me, it’s all of them, all
what I told you. This is your responsibility now. Do you understand this?’
‘But I don’t need this to remember –’
‘But how will I know you remember? You take it and I’ll know.’
‘Mr Mandelbrot, I can’t take it. It’s yours.’
‘Yes, it’s mine so if I want to give it to someone I can.’
‘But Mr Mandelbrot, I can’t.’
‘You keep saying that. Do you remember the first day I met you? You brought me up from the street where they were all smoking. Do you remember?’
‘I remember.’
‘You said the same thing that day too.’
‘What?’
‘ “I can’t.” But you did. If you hadn’t done that we wouldn’t be here now talking like this. Like two old friends.’
‘Like two old friends,’ Lamont Williams repeated quietly.
‘Old people don’t make many new friends, Mr Lamont. Think about it. So a friend can give another friend a gift, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Of course right. Look, I haven’t come all this way …’ The old man swallowed and, as though talking for his life, he took Lamont’s hand in both of his before continuing.
‘You think I’m joking, Mr Lamont? They’ll put it in a cupboard as soon as they get home from the funeral. And don’t ever have grandchildren. Your death will only interrupt them. Their whole life is a party. They don’t listen to me when I’m alive. They understand suffering like they understand … like … like they understand Chinese. You’re a quiet man, Mr Lamont, but you … you understand Chinese. You understand? You’ll take it home and put it somewhere where you can see it, maybe every day. When you look at it you’ll know I’ll be asking you, “Did you tell someone?” It won’t be easy. At first they won’t listen, and if they do listen, they won’t believe you, but you’ll keep going and you’ll tell them what they did to your friend and his people. It’s my gift.’
*
The tide of events outside Auschwitz-Birkenau often affected what went on inside the camp. In July 1944 the Hungarian Head of State, Admiral Horthy, in response to international pressure halted the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. More than 400,000 Hungarian Jews had already perished in the gas chambers there and although the deportations were to continue elsewhere after a German-backed putsch later that year, by October the transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz had ceased. No group of prisoners was better placed to realise this than the Sonderkommando. In September some 200 members of the Sonderkommando were murdered by the SS without the knowledge of the remaining members. Tricked into believing they were being transferred to a subcamp at nearby Gleiwitz, they were instead taken to the gas chambers normally used for disinfecting clothes at Kanada. But it was impossible to keep this from the Kanada Kommando whose members included a young woman in the resistance, Rosa Rabinowicz. The remaining Sonderkommando would have learned the fate of their colleagues within days had they not learned of it even sooner.
For the only time ever in the history of the operation of the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the SS ordered a lockdown of the Sonderkommando that day and took it upon themselves to perform the usual tasks of the Sonderkommando on the pretext that it was the bodies of the civilian casualties of an air raid that were being burned. The pretext for the lockdown made no sense since the Sonderkommando had always been forced to work no matter who it was that was being burned. When the lockdown was over, men on the next shift were able to confirm the worst fears of the Sonderkommando men. Being inexperienced at the burning of corpses, the SS had done a poor job. When Zalman Gradowski started work he found the incompletely burned bodies the SS had left behind. In horror Gradowski opened the oven door to find the charred body of a Sonderkommando member he recognised. It was a Greek Jew only recently dragooned into the Sonderkommando, one of the 200 men Gradowski knew had been selected ostensibly to be rehoused at Gleiwitz. Other stokers too were able to recognise their colleagues from the partially charred remains they found and within hours of the beginning of the very next shift after the lockdown the news had spread. The SS were exterminating the Sonderkommando and before the end of the very next shift everybody knew it.
On learning of the murder of these 200 Sonderkommando men, the two Zalmans, Gradowski and Lewental, each buried the record they had been keeping of the precise nature of the mass killing operation they had been forced to participate in, so certain were they that, since fewer of them were going to be needed, more if not most of the Sonderkommando were in danger of imminent liquidation. Gradowski, Lewental and the others within the Sonderkommando resistance yet again urged the camp’s combined resistance groups, or, as they called themselves, the joint Auschwitz Military Council, to start a general uprising of the kind they had been talking about for months. When faced with the usual response, namely that the time was still not right, the Sonderkommando resistance sent two emissaries to plead personally and with the greatest urgency with representatives of the joint Auschwitz Military Council one more time.
Chaim Neuhof and Henryk Mandelbrot were dispatched to argue the case for the Sonderkommando. They were in effect pleading not merely for a chance to save their own lives but also for a chance to put a spoke in the wheels of the killing machinery. Each day a cart would go around the camp collecting the corpses of the slave-labour prisoners who had died in the previous twenty-four hours. On this day Neuhof and Mandelbrot were designated by the Sonderkommando resistance to be in charge of the cart. This was how they managed to secure a secret meeting with three delegates of the Auschwitz Military Council, a man known only as ‘Rot’ and two other men, Dürmayer and Kazuba. When the cart was sufficiently full of corpses, Rot, Dürmayer and Kazuba approached it carrying a corpse of their own. They had found a convenient pretext to be in contact with the Sonderkommando men.
‘You are Rot?’ Neuhof asked, looking at Dürmayer.
‘No, he is,’ Dürmayer explained, pointing with his head.
‘What’s all this about?’ Rot asked.
‘You know what this is about. We’ve been sent to urge you once more to start the action now.’
‘What do you mean “now”?’ Rot asked.
‘Now! As soon as possible. You let us know when you’re ready and we’ll –’
‘To have any chance of success we need support from outside. We’ve explained that to you people countless times.’
‘Whether that’s true or not –’
‘Trust me, it’s true,’ Rot interrupted.
‘Trust you!’ Henryk Mandelbrot said under his breath. Whether they heard or not, all three of them ignored the comment. He seemed the junior of the two Sonderkommando men after all. They had never seen or heard of him before.
‘We hear the rumours too. The Russians can’t be very far away,’ Mandelbrot said.
‘No, they’re not so far away. But they’re not so close either,’ said Dürmayer.
‘I don’t know how many times we have to tell you. For this to work we’re going to need all arms of the operation to be functioning,’ Kazuba said.
‘What does that mean, “all arms”?’ Henryk Mandelbrot asked.
‘It means that the Russians must be almost here before our people on the outside will work with our people on the inside and the internationals.’
‘What do you mean, “our people”?’ Mandelbrot asked.
‘Who brought this Jew?’ Rot asked.
‘He means the Polish Home Army,’ said Neuhof.
‘What about us?’ Mandelbrot asked.
‘Of course this will be the time for you people to join in too.’
‘We can’t wait for everything to be right with you!’ countered Mandelbrot, at which point Kazuba noticed an SS man coming towards them and he alerted the others with a facial gesture.
‘This is one we bribe,’ said Rot quietly.
‘Well, we’re about to see if it’s enough,’ said Chaim Neuhof.
‘You men. Wait there.’ The guard was
now level with the cart of corpses. ‘What are you doing?’
‘This man died during the night and we’re getting rid of his corpse before he causes disease among the other prisoners … so they can keep working,’ answered Dürmayer.
The guard looked carefully at all five of them. ‘Why does it take five of you for this?’ he asked.
‘I saw these men bring him over to the cart and … well, I knew this man, sir –’
‘So you’ve come to say goodbye. He might be dead but the uniform is still useful.’
‘The Jews save the uniform before they cremate him.’
‘Be sure you do,’ he said. Turning to leave, he struck Mandelbrot to the ground with the butt of his rifle and walked off. Neuhof and Dürmayer helped Mandelbrot to his feet. He was bleeding from the side of the head. When they were sure the SS man had gone they continued their meeting.
‘We can’t wait,’ said Neuhof.
‘They’ll run out of transports soon and then they’ll liquidate us,’ said Mandelbrot, wiping the blood from the side of his head.
‘Liquidate who?’
‘The Sonderkommando, and we’re the only ones who can tell what really happened here, how they killed twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Look,’ said Kazuba, ‘the longer we wait the more support we’ll have from outside. The Germans still control the area surrounding the camp. As long as this situation prevails the prisoners are safer in the camp than they are on the run outside it.’
‘Not all of them.’
‘You mean not the Jews.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
‘I can’t risk the whole operation only for the Jews.’
‘But we’re the only ones who can’t wait.’
‘Exactly, as you say, the only ones. I accept that the Jews are in a special position. You’re unlike anybody else here. I’m sorry. I didn’t put you in this situation. This is what happens when you live in someone else’s country.’
‘In someone else’s country? I’m a Polish Jew. We’ve been here a thousand years!’ countered Neuhof.
‘From Poland, Greece, Belgium, France, Italy, from all over Europe,’ Kazuba continued almost in a whisper, ‘they collect you people, put the yellow stars on you. Have you noticed – they place you together, not with others from Poland, Greece, Belgium, France and Italy? They put you together with each other. Wherever it is you’re from, you’re Jews. That’s why your position here is different from everyone else’s.’