Caryl Phillips - The Nature of Blood

What I now know of the condition I've learnt largely because of Eva Stern. Not because I possess any intimate knowledge of her case history. I hardly knew her. I interviewed her just the once. But it was she who started me thinking about the problem in general. These days they call me an expert, or more properly a specialist, but initially I could find only the odd article. I have to admit that I was guessing as I was going along. Not entirely satisfactory, but I couldn't afford to be too precious. These people's conditions were generally chronic. They needed time to forget, on the one hand, and on the other hand time to learn to trust people again. Sadly, neither of these processes can be rushed. Eventually, we all have to submit to the whim of time. However, I couldn't help wondering what the situation must have been like over there. I knew there had to be thousands of these survivors, and as a result there would be countless fellows doing research in this area. After the situation with Eva, I thought about doing a paper myself. About their clearly defined emotional anaesthesia, or psychic numbing. Eva, in fact all of them, they were so detached. But, at least to begin with, I didn't have enough information.

My wife smiles, and I reach over and clutch this faithful jewel to my bosom. The light from the lamp illuminates the sheen of her skin and I almost swoon with delight. She is both smooth and unblemished, and beneath her breast I can feel the gentle pounding of her heart. Her legs are gracefully entwined in the confusion of the sheet, but with one hand I reach down and strip away the offending garment. Tonight there is no reason to worry that our bedroom hours might be interrupted by messengers from the doge, or concern ourselves with the furtive nature of our coming together. We are man and wife in a union known broadly to all, and acknowledged by the doge himself. There is time for love, then our revels, then more love. And then, when my duties here on Cyprus achieve a happy conclusion, we shall return home to Venice and commence our new life of peace in the remarkable city-state. She whispers my name. And again, my name.

Margot died on a cold grey morning in a country that was not her own. After she left her parents, and her sister Eva, she spent eighteen months in hiding at the top of a house in a tiny room which held only a single bed, a chair and a tall wardrobe. She was not allowed to leave the room, she was not allowed to use the bathroom, she was not allowed to have any contact with her former life. Her Mama and Papa had explained to her that, depending on how things developed, the hiding parents might let her live openly among them. Alternatively, for her own safety, they might choose to lock her up. They chose to lock her up. On the day of their separation, Eva sat on Margot's bed and stared idly through the window as her sister packed her suitcase. As the day faded, Margot told Eva about some of the things she had discussed with her new friends. The most important news was that Peter had heard of Uncle Stephan, and apparently their uncle was a real hero. And then the man arrived, pocketed the money and took the seventeen-year-old Margot away, and from the moment she stepped out of her parents' four-storey house she was no longer a child. A nice couple, they climbed the stairs, and brought her food, and permitted her to whisper her Jewish prayers, but otherwise she was to be quiet at all times. (They told a frightened Margot about the searches. Many had been discovered. And there were terrible rumours about their fate.) Above her bed they hung a crucifix, which she ignored. They encouraged Margot to practise how to hold her nose so that she might sneeze quietly. Quiet, like a cat. Eventually Margot discovered an imaginary friend named Siggi, who never spoke. And from behind closed doors, Margot listened to her country change, while inside she, too, was changing. To experience loneliness at any age is painful, but so young, and without the warm memories to offset the bewildering isolation and the worried speculation. It marks a person. She could feel this. A year passed and she grew accustomed to watching the early daylight at the edge of the curtains, and then witnessing the sun lighting up the floral pattern of the wallpaper. She thought all the while of Mama and Papa, and she tried to forgive them for turning her over to these people. In particular, Margot thought of her little sister Eva, and how once, when they were younger and playing together, she had kicked her. Margot thought endlessly of her cruelty and she hoped that her dear sister might have forgiven her. Apparently, there was no way of communicating with Eva. Her hiding father told her that things were very bad, and then one night, when his wife was out, he came to visit her. He looked at her, and touched her, but Margot dare not scream, for to scream would be to betray her hiding place. (Right now you're a very pretty girl, but as you get older your racial character will show.) And then he kissed her, and he tried to open her lips with his big mouth, and Margot felt the weight of his heavy hands upon her. How hard this man concentrated as he pushed, the beads of sweat popping on to his brow, individual, evenly spaced. Margot began to count. Siggi said nothing. And then he peeled himself clear of her body and left. Inside she bled, and her mind tumbled down a flight of stairs and struck its head. During the night, the rain fell like applause and Margot remembered that Papa used to say that a storm was nothing more than God moving around his furniture. In the morning she awoke to discover her nightgown gathered up about her waist, and her face bathed in the thin spokes of light that filtered around the edge of the curtains. As she lay curled in shame, she realized that her swollen tongue was now too large for her dry mouth. She made a decision. Margot swung her legs off the side of the bed and felt the damp chill of the linoleum. She would cut her hair short, her thick fluent hair that Peter liked to touch. Cut it off. When, a week later, the man visited her again, she slid to the floor so she would not fall, and then she screamed. Both she and her hiding parents were escorted down the three flights of stairs and emptied out into the street. The light dazzled her and she raised an arm to protect her eyes. The hiding parents went one way and Margot another, towards a train, her hands lacing and unlacing as she walked. One year later, in a country to the east that was not her own, she died on a cold grey morning, naked among naked strangers. She paid dearly for the sin of being born. (Did you think of me that morning as I stumbled naked and shivering towards my death? Did you think of me?)

The process of gassing takes place in the following manner. The helpless victims are brought into a reception hall where they are instructed to undress. Most keep their underwear about them, but they are quickly encouraged to remove these last vestiges of modesty. In order to maintain the illusion that they are going to shower, a group of men dressed in white coats issue each person with a small bar of soap and a towel. The victims are then ushered into the gas chamber in such ludicrous numbers that the illusion is immediately shattered. In the gas chamber there is no room for the victims to turn around, let alone raise their arms up above their heads. In order to introduce yet more people into this limited space, shots are often fired to encourage those near the door to push towards the back. Those in the far corners are sometimes crushed to death before the procedure even begins. Once everybody is inside, the heavy doors are slammed shut, and sealed and bolted from the outside. There is no escape. After a short interval, which allows the room temperature to rise to a desired level, men wearing gas masks and bearing canisters of the required preparation clamber up on to the roof of the building. They open trap doors, then shake the contents of the cans (which are marked Zyklon B — for use against vermin) — a product of a Hamburg-based company — into the traps and then quickly retire. This product is a cyanide mixture which is known to turn, at a predetermined temperature, into a noxious and highly effective poisonous gas. After only three minutes, every single inhabitant in the chamber is dead, and nobody has been known to survive the ordeal. The chamber is then opened and aired by men who, for obvious reasons, must still wear gas masks. After five minutes it is deemed safe, and new men appear — prisoners — who cart the bodies on flat trucks to the furnace rooms where the burning takes place. The hearths of the furnaces are charged with coke. Once the cremation chamber has been brought to a good red heat (approximately 800 °C), the corpses are introduced. They burn rapidly. As soon as the remains of the corpses have fallen through the grid to the ash-collection channel below, they can be pulled forwards by means of a scraper, towards the ash-removal door. Here, they should be left for another twenty minutes to disintegrate fully before being scraped out and into a container. In the meantime, further corpses can be introduced into the chambers. All bones will have disintegrated, but some small particles may remain. The ash is white and is easily scattered.