K Jeter - The Kingdom of Shadows

When his keepers had let him go from the camp, they had warned him not to speak of the things he had seen there. To speak, to put into words the memories shouting inside his skull, would be crime enough. They would come for him again and take him back there. And he wouldn’t leave another time, except the way the others in the camp did, by way of the smokestacks. The birds of the sky would learn his name in the grey stormclouds. So he had kept silent, and Pavli and his brother Matthi and all the other Lazarenes kept their questions inside themselves, and let the trembling, hunch-shouldered figure pass among them like one who had returned from the dead.

The lock of the fellow’s silence had broken underneath the canvas arch of the truck. In the moonlight that had angled through the truck’s canvas flaps, Pavli had seen the fellow’s hands clenching, the tendons drawing tight beneath the skin. Then at last his sharp-boned fingers had clutched Pavli’s forearm, drawing him closer so that he could whisper his warnings, everything that he could no longer keep inside.

“You’re lucky you look so young… that helps.” The fellow’s lips had brushed against the curve of Pavli’s ear. “But not a child. They get rid of children first, because they’re weak and cannot work. So you must always try to look strong and healthy. Throw your shoulders back when they line you up, and don’t start coughing no matter how sick you are.” The fellow’s breath had broken into panting, from the effort of imparting all the life-or-death information he had brought out of the camp. “When you grow pale, slap yourself, or rub your cheeks with little twigs, anything to get the blood up into your face. The pale ones are Muselmanner, they’ve already died, everybody knows it…”

All the way, during the long night hours of the journey in the truck, the whispers had continued. Once the fellow had started, once broken the commandment to remain silent about what he’d seen, he couldn’t stop. Everything the false gypsy said made the assumption – a truth so obvious, like the dawning blue of the sky above the newly fenced enclosure, that it didn’t need to be spoken – that they had entered into a world ruled by murderers. The same as the world outside, but here, behind the keen-toothed wire, the murderers no longer had to pretend to be anything other than what they were. And one had to throw one’s shoulders back and rub blood up into one’s face, to please them and be allowed to live another day.

A trill of birdsong sounded from the tops of the trees beyond the fence. Pavli looked up and saw a flash of green and black darting into the sky, scared away by the gate being pulled open to admit another truck. Two more were visible farther along the road, working their way along the narrow forest road. The trucks held the rest of the Lazarene Community, the men and women and the children of his blood. He wondered if any had escaped, had managed to hide in the city’s back alleys before the rounding-up had begun. Would it matter if there had been? He knew that he wouldn’t have wanted to be such a one, sneaking from one dark corner to another. If his brother had tried to send him away – and Matthi had spoken of it – he would have come back, he would have run toward the crowd in the street, surrounded by the hard-eyed SS men. He would have pushed his way between the rifles and taken his place with the rest.

Because I wouldn’t want to be left behind, thought Pavli as he watched the bird flicker and disappear into the sky. He kept silent; the other wouldn’t have understood. I’d rather be here than be left behind, all alone.

The guards began unloading the people from the newly arrived truck. The younger men jumped down and helped their elders. Pavli stood on tiptoe, craning his neck, despite the desperate tug on his sleeve and hissing from his companion. He managed to catch a glimpse of his brother. Matthi had been separated from him in the confusion of the street, the press of bodies lashed by the orders barked at them. Pavli couldn’t tell if Matthi had spotted him in turn; before he could call out his brother’s name, he was nearly knocked off his feet by the crowd surging backward like a single creature.

A scuffle had broken out at the back of the truck, and the guards waded into it, the stocks of their rifles raised in their hands. Pavli stood where he was, letting the crowd thin before him so that he could see what was happening.

A man with his head swathed in dirty bandages, his clothing torn and darkened with his own blood, knelt on the muddy ground, his broken hands clawing at the belt of the uniformed figure standing before him. The SS officer gazed down with cold disdain as a sobbing cry emerged from the toothless mouth.

“ Ich bin kein Jude! ” The words rose to a howl. “I’m not a Jew!” The figure managed to drag himself upright, eyes taking in with horror the sea of watching faces and the barbed wire written along the sky. “I’m not, it’s a mistake… it’s always been a mistake, I tell you…”

The officer struck the figure across the face, sending him sprawling. “Why do you speak such nonsense?” The officer glanced at the huddled Lazarenes, then back to the sobbing creature at his feet. “There are no Jews here at all. Why would there be?”

No words came from the mouth of what had been a human being, only red spittle and a moan of terror.

Pavli watched, feeling his own hands grow damp with sweat. The broken man hadn’t been with the Lazarenes when they’d been driven into the street. A black car had pulled up and the two men in the back seat, in civilian clothes – the car had came from the direction of the Gestapo headquarters on the Prinz-Albrecht-Stra?e – had dragged the silent figure out between them. A chill scent of prison cells, an odor of damp iron in darkened spaces, had clung to the near-unconscious man. He’d dangled limp as dirty laundry as he was handed over to the SS guards manning the trucks; his last beating had rendered him mute.

Two guards hoisted a ragdoll up by its arms. The eyes in the black-and-red face looked beseechingly at the crowd, as though someone might step forward and bestow his freedom.

Before, in the street back in Berlin, Pavli had caught only a glimpse of the man before he’d been loaded into one of the trucks. Now Pavli recognized him. Underneath the bruises and crusted blood was a face he’d seen in his uncle’s camera shop, a face that had once glowed with smug self-satisfaction, the knowledge of one’s own cleverness. The man once had bragged of the plans he’d made, that would save him and his family from the knife-edged winds that were already blowing across the land, a storm that would batter his foolish and improvident brethren…

The thing of dirty rags and swollen flesh was the father of the angel in the shop’s window. Marte Helle’s father.

“What a fool,” muttered Pavli’s dark companion. His voice held the perfect contempt of one who’d steeled his heart for survival, despising those who stayed human and fated for death. “He’s in for it now.”

The broken man had achieved freedom of a sort: the gate had been opened long enough for the two guards to drag him out, his heels inscribing two lines in the mud. The guards disappeared with him into the dark ranks of trees.

Pavli whispered from the corner of his mouth. “Will they shoot him?”

“No -” The other shook his head. “They won’t waste a bullet on him. One of them can just stand on his throat until he’s quiet.”

The guards came back a little while later, by themselves, one of them smoking a cigarette, the other wiping his hands with a cloth he tucked back into the pocket of his uniform jacket.

Some of the elders and the women with small children had sat down on the ground. The mothers kept the restless children close to themselves, hushing them when they cried, rocking the infants in their arms and shielding their pink faces from the sun.