Lee Child - First Thrills

Joachim tensed, but ignored him.

The man inhaled slowly. “I’m Herman Schmidt. We met at El Dorado on the Motz Strasse, in Berlin. Ernst Vogel was scheduled to sing. Remember?”

“No.” Joachim watched the white puff of air that accompanied the word. “Never been to Berlin, except to get to Oranienburg.” He glanced around the car. Had he told anyone of his shop in Berlin?

Herman stared at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”

He straightened on the bench. “Always was.”

“Being different didn’t used to be so difficult.”

Both sat silently. Joachim listened to the clatter of the train’s wheels and the high scream of the wind. The metal door clanked against the side of the car. Perhaps it had fallen off once and been refastened too loosely. Through the high window fragile black limbs of bare winter trees appeared and disappeared, each tree a sign that they were one step closer to their final destination.

“My name was in someone’s address book.” Herman’s voice cut through the wind. “Some imbeciles didn’t even know enough to throw them away.”

Joachim flinched. If informers heard Herman, it could cost Joachim his life. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m certain you don’t,” Herman said sarcastically. “Where are we going?”

He lied. “Don’t know. Another camp. They’re all the same.”

Herman picked at his ragged cuticles. “I’ve never been to a camp. What are they like?”

Joachim looked at him for the first time. Herman suddenly seemed plump and healthy in the clear, cold afternoon light stabbing through the window. “Bad. For you, even worse.”

Herman pointed to his pink triangle. “Because of this?”

“It’s the worst kind to have.” Joachim glanced involuntarily down the car at the bowed, bald heads of the other prisoners. No one paid them attention.

“You’ve been very careful, I see.” Herman twisted the right corner of his mouth into a smile.

“I’m here because I’m Jewish.”

Herman studied his face. “We could jump the guards when they stop the train. I’m still strong.”

The man on Joachim’s right shifted on the bench. Joachim froze. What if he overheard them?

“They have guns,” Joachim whispered. “I’ve never seen anyone escape like that. But I’ve seen men die trying. It’s reckless.”

Herman sighed. “I was never very good at being careful.”

Joachim stared blankly at the sliding door in front of him. Rust had bled deep lines into the metal. Loneliness howled through him like the wind through the open door. “I’ve always been good at it.”

Herman ran his palms along his cheeks, as if he just woke. “Good at what?”

“Being careful.”

Herman slid to a sitting position with his back to the door and wrinkled his nose. The smell of so many unwashed men crowded into the car obviously bothered him.

“It’s not a simple thing to do,” Joachim said.

Herman embraced his round knees. “I should be in Berlin. Studying for my degree in engineering or reading the paper and thanking the Führer for ridding the country of vermin like you. Of vermin like me.”

Joachim scratched a flea bite on his shrunken calf. It itched, but he tried not to think about it.

“Then I’d have dinner with my landlady, Frau Biedekin. She’s an exquisite cook. We’d have potatoes, smothered with butter. We’d have sauerbraten, since today is Sunday. For dessert, let’s see-”

Joachim’s stomach clamped into a tight knot. “Stop it!”

Herman snorted. “Is it more than you can stomach?”

Joachim glared at him until Herman stopped laughing.

“That’s the only way you’ll get it,” Herman said. “By dreaming.”

“Dreaming is not,” Joachim hesitated, searching for the right word, “careful.”

“I believe I mentioned that I was no good at being careful.”

Joachim shrugged, the coarse material of his jacket scraping across his shoulders. “Dream, then. Just quietly.”

“If you can’t escape from them in dreams, they’ve defeated you.”

“What do you know? You’ve never even been to a camp,” Joachim said. “Tell me about dreams in a month, friend.”

“If I can’t tell you about dreams then, I hope to have the sense to end it.”

Joachim drew in a sharp breath.

“Life,” Herman said as he stood, “is more than mere survival.”

Joachim shook his head. “Not right now.”

“No!” Herman’s voice echoed off the sides of the car. Several prisoners swiveled their heads toward him. No one spoke.

Joachim pretended to be asleep. He sat with his chin against his chest, swaying with the movement of the train, listening to the wind whine, and watching shadows cast inside the car by passing trees.

“You know it’s about more than simple survival,” Herman finally whispered at Joachim. “You were in Berlin with us. You remember good food and love and music and dance.”

Joachim gripped his bony knees, knuckles whitening. “I wasn’t there.”

Herman studied Joachim. “Do you want to know what became of the rest of the group? Francis? Ernst? Kurt?”

Joachim inhaled. One, two, three times. “I don’t know any Francis or Ernst or Kurt.”

Herman stared at his own soft hands. “Not even Kurt? Everyone knows Kurt, even the Gestapo. They got my name from his address book. I’m surprised yours wasn’t in there, too.”

A hot pain stabbed Joachim’s neck. Relax, he ordered himself.

“I saw you together.” Herman pointed a pudgy finger at him. “Everyone was together with Kurt.”

He concentrated on relaxing his muscles, despite the cold and Herman’s voice.

“Remember how graceful Kurt was?” Herman’s hands sketched arcs in the air. “He should have been a dancer, not a soldier. He flowed when he moved, like a cat.”

Joachim clenched his right fist, the one that Herman could not see. “I don’t know any Kurt,” he answered in a level voice.

“That wasn’t you holding his hand at El Dorado that February? Or was it Silhouette? One of those clubs. Weren’t they wonderful? And the pianos. I love piano music, although I never learned to play myself.”

Joachim said nothing. His mother had forced him to practice two hours a day.

“It’s a wonderful thing to make beautiful sounds with your fingers.”

Joachim shifted his gaze to the floor; the slats were coated with about a centimeter of freezing mud and crisscrossed with ridges created by his shoes. “It would do you no good now.”

“Just knowing would be enough.” Herman scratched his back against the door. “I could play the songs in my head and beat time on the ground.”

Joachim wanted to warn him. “Will that help when you’re hungry? Or tired? Or cold?”

Herman nodded. “If I can feel the music, I won’t think about my stomach, or my body.”

Joachim pulled his arms tighter around himself. His elbows cut into his hands, almost numbing them. “You will.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ve never been there.” Joachim crossed his legs, savoring the thin ribbon of warmth where his right leg lay on top of his left. “You can’t know.”

“I don’t need to know what it’s like there to know myself.”

“You won’t last long. Your kind never does.”

“Is that why you’re afraid that the people here will recognize you? Are you afraid they’ll realize your triangle should be as pink as mine?”

Joachim prayed that the man on his right slept. That everyone in his end of the car slept. “No, it shouldn’t. I’m Jewish, but I’m no fag.” He stressed “fag,” trying to make it sound hard and ugly.

“Wasn’t Kurt the most exquisite fag?” Herman’s voice caressed the word. “But not after the Gestapo was through with him.”