VI Lamentando

Katherina sat at her father’s desk. Though she had been home for half an hour, she still felt slightly breathless, as if she had fled something terrifying and only just found refuge. She felt foolish now, having left the café so abruptly and run back to her father’s house. The people in the restaurant must have thought she was crazy. What was she running from anyhow?

She shook her head in a sort of internal dialogue. Two weeks before, she had been so sure of herself. She knew where she had come from and where all signs indicated she was going. But the floor seemed to have dropped away from under her. The man who had been the rock on which she had built her identity had been living a lie before he killed himself, and now a woman she had just met claimed to know her deepest desires. What were her deepest desires, anyhow? She wasn’t ready to explore that darkness.

She glanced around the room, at Sergei Marow’s books and records, and the journal of his life, and laughed bitterly. Her plight was so trivial, so banal compared to his. He—his whole generation, in fact—had looked into the abyss, had seen cruelty and evil in its pure, uncompromised form, while all she had to anguish over was flirtation. She felt suddenly ashamed, wallowing in her silly fears when in front of her lay his chronicle of cataclysm. She owed him her respect and her attention, so she opened the journal again to where she had left off.

January 29, 1944

The Russians have broken through to Leningrad. Incredible, that the Germans besieged the city for nearly 900 days. I get sick thinking of what it was like to be locked inside, trying to survive on the tiny trickle of food brought across Lake Ladoga. There are stories already now of people living on snow and sawdust, and Moscow reports that some million people died of starvation. What has happened to my cousins, I wonder. Kyril and Irena, I think they were called. Most likely they’re soldiers now, but what about the others? Strange, you go to war thinking that the people back home somehow stay safe.

The retreating Germans wrecked the Catherine and Alexander Palaces and destroyed most of the other historical structures in the Tsar’s park at Tsarskoe Selo. Even the Bolsheviks didn’t do that.

February 2, 1944

It’s been a year exactly since Stalingrad. Hollow nausea when I remember, and yet I can’t get the images out of my mind. Karlovsky tormenting me with a cruel choice. Then the devil’s gauntlet on the floor. Accusing me. Will this weight ever be lifted from my chest?

February 14, 1944

Headquarters has moved the medical staff again, following Commander Chuikov’s troops westward. I’m slowly heading back to Germany. Back to what, I wonder.

There are round-the-clock bombings of Berlin now. The US Air Force bombs during daylight and the RAF at night. Dr. Tchelechev was gleeful at the news. I keep thinking of my parents. Are they still alive? Joining the Red Army, I have betrayed them too. Will Berlin surrender? Probably not, and so I will be part of a military storm that may destroy it.

March 24, 1944

Transferred to Poznan but was called on again by Commdr. Chuikov. His hands are infected again. When he lets them get dirty we go through the same round. He’s a simple man and thinks of munitions, not microorganisms. They both can kill, just as painfully.

I’ve treated him off and on for over a year now, in the beginning daily, now maybe once every two weeks. Although the men like him a lot and he is almost fatherly to them, he’s never talked much to me, except about his disease. I can’t blame him; he knows I came from the other side. But having your hands held for over a year does form a kind of bond. Out of nowhere he asked, “When the war’s over, what will you tell your children? ”

I was caught off guard. “Assuming I survive so long, I can’t imagine having children. Not after all the horrors I’ve seen. ”

He shook his head. “The horrors are why we must have children. To have hope. ”

I had no hope, but had to answer something. “I’ll tell them about the hero I was privileged to serve. ”

He was no fool. “What a liar you are, ” he said, and cuffed me on the shoulder. “You serve me because the alternative is captivity. Now get out of here and go save more of my soldiers’ lives. ”

It made me think. What would I say to my children? “Don’t be like me, ” I’d say to them. “Show more courage than I did. ”

April 8, 1944

We are meeting partisans now as we move west. Sometimes small bands of men who fled to avoid being rounded up for slave labor in the Reich or for forced service in the Wehrmacht. Half guerilla fighters and half bandits, they’ve spent the years derailing trains, disrupting German supply lines, and are a world unto themselves.

But in heavily forested terrain, like the Briansk, they are in their hundreds, well organized and supplied from Moscow. Sometimes, when they know we are approaching, they occupy a town, preparing for our arrival. Where possible, the army drafts them into its ranks, using them for reconnaissance missions. I’ve examined a lot of them before their induction and most are in poor condition. Some 20% have tuberculosis. The young ones are still fired up, ready to fight for the Motherland, but the older ones seem just relieved to have regular meals again, even if it’s kasha and American Spam.

May 12, 1944

We’ve moved again, to yet another evacuation hospital. Chuikov’s army is advancing so rapidly westward that we’re short of plasma again due to distance from the nearest field depot. Some of the men presented with typhoid symptoms and we transferred them to another hospital to avoid contamination. The more wounded we treat, the more Moscow sends in medals to boost morale. Ribbons for dying, ribbons for killing, ribbons for managing to stay alive. All the new officers’ uniforms have gold braid, and with their rows of dangling medals, they look like opera costumes.

June 6, 1944

The English and Americans have landed in Normandy. Troops and materials flow over France. The direction of the war seems irreversible now. It’s all the same to me. I was part of Hitler’s war machine, and now I’m part of Stalin’s.

But the news of the invasion made the commander cheerful today. The minute I arrived, he asked if I liked music. I thought he meant something Russian—a patriotic song or something sentimental with the balalaika. I said yes, and he uncovered a little record player that he had acquired some place. He laid on a disk and it was, of all things, opera arias in Russian. I hadn’t heard opera in over a year, and so it was almost blissful to tend to his hands while familiar arias played in the background. From Boris Godunov, Rusalka, Onegin, Mazepa. Then, halfway through the disk, the music wrenched me away from that peace. Though it was sung in Russian, I recognized the words ego gorjachie laski, “burning caresses. ” It was the Berlioz “D’amour l’ardente flamme, ” and it pierced my heart like a blade. I remembered the hand that caressed me and then was mangled. A hand that now most certainly is withered and dead.

The commander had his eyes shut, caught up in the music while I rubbed cream on his hands. “Music is a blessing to the soul, ” he said with Russian pathos.

“A curse, too, ” I mumbled, though I don’t think he heard me.

July 23, 1944

Chuikov’s troops have liberated Majdanek in Lublin, though it looks like it was evacuated some time ago. The only prisoners left behind are Russians, defectors from the Red Army. They were half starved, but I doubt things will get better for them in the camps the Soviets will transfer them to. There are also a lot of Polish peasants and Byelorussians, partisan fighters and their families. Some of them, the ones who are still somewhat fit, have joined the Russian forces to drive the Germans out of Lublin.

They tell us that the fields all around are strewn with ashes from the crematorium. Fields covered now with cabbages. The men are reporting the piles of shoes, thousands of shoes. No one knows why.

Katherina knew why. With the advantage of nearly forty years of hindsight, she knew of the industry that supplied prison goods and prison labor. A whole economy built on forced labor and the recycling of prisoners’ possessions. Majdanek, she had read in school, was in part a factory that took the shoes of the dead and repaired them for use in Germany.

She also knew what had to come in the following diary entries, since the Red Army was advancing through Poland. She held the yellowing paper of the journal in her fingertips for a moment, and then, bracing herself, she turned to the next entry.

She was right. The terrible word burned on the page.

Auschwitz.

January 29, 1945

I have met evil and it has my face.

Two days ago the Russian 60th Army liberated Auschwitz. I was here at the medic station in Cracow, and some of us were assigned to go back there to make a medical report.

Not much to see at first. It consists of three camps spread over wide areas. The usual wire fences and barracks. A few hundred survivors standing around. No exact count yet, but there are about 6000 or 7000 prisoners still there—Poles, Gypsies, Jews. Frail, some too weak to stand. We examined a few dozen of them, took pictures, brought in bread and kasha. They had already organized a kitchen. I talked to them in German.

The SS had evacuated all the other prisoners westward. In fact, we saw some corpses along the road about ten kilometers before the camp, shot, I suppose, when they couldn’t keep going. Otherwise, it was a camp like all others.

Then one of the freed prisoners must have heard me speaking German because he approached me. “Come with me, ” he said, with no explanation, and I followed him. He led me across a wide field to a two-story warehouse. “We call it Canada. ’Cause it’s the land of plenty. ”

I had to get used to the dim light inside the great hall but then I saw what he meant. Luggage. The room was filled with thousands of suitcases, satchels, bags, some of them spilling out contents, but most still unpacked. “The last arrivals, ” he said. “SS didn’t have time to process the luggage. But upstairs is the stuff from the trains before. ” He led me up a flight of stairs to the second story of the warehouse. The rooms were filled with articles sorted by category. Porcelain, household items in one room, men’s clothing in another. Farther down the corridor he led me to rooms containing women’s dresses, shoes, children’s outfits, infant clothing.

“The Germans brought infants to this camp? ” I asked.

He didn’t answer and just led me through a doorway to a second hall and more tables. On one row of them lay framed pictures, writing materials, books. On another, walking sticks, crutches. A corner table was heaped high with eyeglasses. Thousands of eyeglasses.

“You’ll love this, ” he said, and guided me toward a room at the end of the corridor. Unlike the others, it was locked, but he carried a key. Just inside the door was a covered wooden box, which he opened dramatically. Inside were lumps of gold. I examined one and then dropped it, my stomach heaving. A gold tooth. The box was filled with gold teeth, caps, and fillings, which had been pried out of people’s mouths. Kilos of them.

Next to the box, sacks of hair. Soft brown hair from young women, crisp gray hair from the old ones. Harvested hair.

“Is that it, then? ” I asked him. I wanted more than anything to get out of there.

“No, ” he said calmly. “Just one more thing. ”

He led me outside and down a long path to a red brick building. It smelled of charcoal or soot or something I couldn’t name.

“The SS dismantled and blew up a lot of things before they left, but you can still see some of it, ” he said, going in. The remains of two brick chambers stood on one side of the room behind a small hill of rubble. “The crematorium, ” he announced unemotionally, and added, “The inmates died in lots of ways—some of them fast, others slow—but here is where they mostly ended. ”

The smell and the thought of what had gone on there was unbearable, so I fled. He followed me, not letting me escape. “Oh, but it wasn’t all bad. ” His tone was suddenly sarcastic. “During all that…” He tilted his head toward the crematorium door. “We had classical music. Inmate orchestras, a couple of them. They played concerts when the transports arrived, when the labor details marched out, when the unlucky ones went to the gas chambers. Cheered things right up! So very German, don’t you think? ”

He looked me in the eye for the first time, I suppose because we had been speaking German and he wondered about me.

“I have to go now. ” I offered my hand but he wouldn’t take it. “I’m not one of them, ” I said, half lying.

“We’re all ‘one of them, ’” he answered coldly. “I’m a Kapo. Do you think I could have stayed alive here for three years if I hadn’t helped them? ” Then he added, “But I’m a Pole, and you look too much like the SS man on the railway platform. The one who took my children. ” He walked away.

I’ve known since Stalingrad that there’s no god, only the devil, and he’s tainted me. Apparently, you can even see it in my face.

February 14, 1945

The British and Americans have firebombed Dresden. City of refugees and a treasure house of Baroque architecture. No military reason, no strategic advantage. Simple revenge—tenfold. Clever how they do it. They just keep bombing until the whole city catches fire and everything in it cooks. A hundred thousand people? Two hundred thousand? All civilians, refugees. Roasted.

It seems the Allies cremate people as well, though it’s while they’re still alive.

Appalled, Katherina let the journal fall onto her lap and stared at the closed volume as if it held demons. She had learned about the concentration camps in school, but had always remained detached from the subject. It did not occur to her that they could touch her own family. But her father had been there—thank god, on the side of the liberators—and had stood on the blood- and guilt-soaked ground. She had a new respect for him now, though the entry told her nothing about the personal guilt he carried with him. Clearly there were more revelations to come.

She was equally horrified that the music of Bach and Mozart was used to lure the innocent into the camp or to render them docile for slavery or execution. She winced, imagining the sad concerts. Music was all she had, and it sickened her to think it had become a tool of monsters. She had the final rehearsal of Carmina Burana tomorrow, but how could she care about it in the face of what she now knew?

Unable to sit another moment, she got up from the sofa. She needed air. Her coat hung just inside the back door and she threw it on before stumbling into the garden. The ground was still snow-covered, but the path from the door was swept, so she walked a bit, to have movement and cold air on her face. Overhead the midnight sky was clear and stars were everywhere. Brilliant, guiltless stars. She envied them their innocence.

In a spontaneous movement, she scooped up snow from the top of a hedge and rubbed it over her face. The shock of it was cathartic, and she felt briefly cleansed by the chill. The journal was of the past, after all, and she was in the present. The music that she sang was innocent, like the stars. Now she could go back into the house and sleep.

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