Харлан Эллисон - More Wandering Stars - An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Here we learn to trust our dreams,” Viktor said. “They make as much sense as this….” He made the gesture of rising smoke and gazed toward the ovens, which were spewing fire and black ash.

The western portion of the sky was yellow, but over the ovens it was red and purple and dark blue. Although it horrified Stephen to consider it, there was a macabre beauty here. If he survived, he would never forget these sense impressions, which were stronger than anything he had ever experienced before. Being so close to death, he was, perhaps for the first time, really living. In the camp, one did not even consider suicide. One grasped for every moment, sucked at life like an infant, lived as if there were no future.

The guards shouted at the prisoners to form a column; it was time to march back to the barracks.

While the others milled about, Stephen and Viktor lifted the Musselmann out of the gully. Everyone nearby tried to distract the guards. When the march began, Stephen and Viktor held the Musselmann between them, for he could barely stand.

“Come on, dead one, carry your weight,” Viktor said. “Are you so dead that you cannot hear me? Are you as dead as the rest of your family?” The Musselmann groaned and dragged his legs. Viktor kicked him. “You’ll walk or we’ll leave you here for the guards to find.”

“Let him be,” Stephen said.

“Are you dead or do you have a name?” Viktor continued.

“Berek,” croaked the Musselmann. “I am not dead.”

“Then, we have a fine bunk for you,” Viktor said. “You can smell the stink of the sick for another night before the guards make a selection.” Viktor made the gesture of smoke rising.

Stephen stared at the barracks ahead. They seemed to waver as the heat rose from the ground. He counted every step. He would drop soon; he could not go on, could not carry the Musselmann.

He began to mumble in English.

“So you’re speaking American again,” Viktor said.

Stephen shook himself awake, placed one foot before the other.

“Dreaming of an American lover?”

“I don’t know English and I have no American lover.”

“Then, who is this Josie you keep talking about in your sleep…?”

“Why were you screaming?” Josie asks as she washes his face with a cold washcloth.

“I don’t remember screaming,” Stephen says. He discovers a fever blister on his lip. Expecting to find an intravenous needle in his wrist, he raises his arm.

“You don’t need an I.V.,” Josie says. “You just have a bit of a fever. Dr. Volk has prescribed some new medication for it.”

“What time is it?” Stephen stares at the whorls in the ceiling.

“Almost 3 P.M. I’ll be going off soon.”

“Then I’ve slept most of the day away,” Stephen says, feeling something crawling inside him. He worries that his dreams still have a hold on him. “Am I having another relapse?”

“You’ll do fine,” Josie says.

“I should be fine now; I don’t want to dream anymore.”

“Did you dream again, do you remember anything?”

“I dreamed that I saved the Musselmann,” Stephen says.

“What was his name?” asks Josie.

“Berek, I think. Is that the man you knew?”

Josie nods and Stephen smiles at her. “Maybe that’s the end of the dreams,” he says; but she does not respond. He asks to see the photograph again.

“Not just now,” Josie says.

“But I have to see it. I want to see if I can recognize myself….”

Stephen dreamed he was dead, but it was only the fever. Viktor sat beside him on the floor and watched the others. The sick were moaning and crying; they slept on the cramped platform, as if proximity to one another could ensure a few more hours of life. Wan moonlight seemed to fill the barrack.

Stephen awakened, feverish. “I’m burning up,” he whispered to Viktor.

“Well,” Viktor said, “you’ve got your Musselmann. If he lives, you live. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“I don’t remember; I just knew that I couldn’t let him die.”

“You’d better go back to sleep; you’ll need your strength. Or we may have to carry you , tomorrow.”

Stephen tried to sleep, but the fever was making lights and spots before his eyes. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of a dark country filled with gemstones and great quarries of ice and glass.

“What?” Stephen asked, as he sat up suddenly, awakened from dampblack dreams. He looked around and saw that everyone was watching Berek, who was sitting under the window at the far end of the room.

Berek was singing the Kol Nidre very softly. It was the Yom Kippur prayer, sung on the most holy of days. He repeated the prayer three times, and then once again in a louder voice. The others responded, intoned the prayer as a recitative. Viktor was crying quietly, and Stephen imagined that the holy spirit animated Berek. Surely, he told himself, that face and those pale, unseeing eyes were those of a dead man. He remembered the story of the golem, shuddered, found himself singing and pulsing with fever.

When the prayer was over, Berek fell back into his fever trance. The others became silent, then slept. But there was something new in the barrack with them tonight, a palpable exultation. Stephen looked around at the sleepers and thought, We’re surviving, more dead than alive, but surviving….

“You were right about that Musselmann,” Viktor whispered. “It’s good that we saved him.”

“Perhaps we should sit with him,” Stephen said. “He’s alone.” But Viktor was already asleep; and Stephen was suddenly afraid that if he sat beside Berek, he would be consumed by his holy fire.

As Stephen fell through sleep and dreams, his face burned with fever.

Again he wakes up screaming.

“Josie,” he says, “I can remember the dream, but there’s something else, something I can’t see, something terrible….”

“Not to worry,” Josie says, “it’s the fever.” But she looks worried, and Stephen is sure that she knows something he does not.

“Tell me what happened to Viktor and Berek,” Stephen says. He presses his hands together to stop them from shaking.

“They lived, just as you are going to live and have a good life.”

Stephen calms down and tells her his dream.

“So you see,” she says, “you’re even dreaming about surviving.”

“I’m burning up.”

“Dr. Volk says you’re doing very well.” Josie sits beside him, and he watches the fever patterns shift behind his closed eyelids.

“Tell me what happens next, Josie.”

“You’re going to get well.”

“There’s something else….”

“Shush, now, there’s nothing else.” She pauses, then says, “Mr. Gregory is supposed to visit you tonight. He’s getting around a bit, he’s been back and forth all day in his wheelchair. He tells me that you two have made some sort of a deal about dividing up all the nurses.”

Stephen smiles, opens his eyes, and says, “It was Gregory’s idea. Tell me what’s wrong with him.”

“All right, he has cancer, but he doesn’t know it and you must keep it a secret. They cut the nerve in his leg because the pain was so bad. He’s quite comfortable now, but remember, you can’t repeat what I’ve told you.”

“Is he going to live?” Stephen asks. “He’s told me about all the new projects he’s planning, so I guess he’s expecting to get out of here.”

“He’s not going to live very long, and the doctor didn’t want to break his spirit.”

“I think he should be told.”

“That’s not your decision to make, nor mine.”

“Am I going to die, Josie?”

“No!” she says, touching his arm to reassure him.

“How do I know that’s the truth?”