Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Peter Orenstein laughs, attaches himself to the bottle and drains it in a few gulps. ‘If I’m describing things as they are, Amara, it’s only for you; the others disgust me, I don’t know who they are and I don’t want to know. You think yourself superior because you’ve never descended to the lowest dregs of self-disgust; we were all killers, the strongest against the weakest, even against those we should have helped and supported. There is no peace, there never can be any peace for us because they made us do things that will always make us feel dirty, horribly filthy and stained; but how they flew, those rapacious creatures, I saw them rise into the air with their great wings that cast gigantic shadows, I envied them their freedom to fly over the camp, their eyes always alert and if they caught sight of a prey even the least bit appetising, they would snap their wings shut and hurl themselves at the earth, expert at snatching up the right body in a single beakful … some were too fat to rise again in flight, but others no, they cried out like falcons … corrupt, you understand? Corrupt and degraded, that’s what they enjoyed, reducing us to the same condition as themselves, robbing us of our self-esteem … they tried repeatedly and they succeeded, at least with me they did … the political prisoners survived better, they were united, had clandestine organisations, mutual solidarity, a network of informers, but isolated individuals like me, what could we do? Drag off the dead bodies of our friends, wipe away their faeces, fling them on the barrows, push them up to the ovens and shove them in three at a time. Do you know what they discovered? That if a woman’s body was put in with two men, the men burned better. Because women’s bodies have reserves of fat that we men lack, what a laugh … fat hiding heaven knows where in all that starvation but it did exist … all the more of course if the woman had just been brought by train from some city where she had been able to eat something … and you can sit with your legs apart holding the head of a corpse and clipping off all its hair without feeling anything at all; you can open the mouth of some dead gaffer and wrench out a gold tooth with pliers before washing it in formalin, carefully removing any remaining fragments of flesh before cleaning it properly with a little brush specially made for the purpose and throwing it into a bucket for your fellow-worker to add to a collection for heating and melting down as part of a gold bar to be handed to the official camp treasurer to be forwarded to the Reichsbank, you understand that, lovely? A human being is capable of doing absolutely anything to survive and that fact is our most disgusting and unpardonable quality, that deadened us more effectively than anything else.’

He puts his hand up to his head, pulling his few remaining grey hairs with a horrible grimace as if to help him draw breath before continuing.

‘My hair grew back to some extent when I came out and started eating again, but I had become bald inside, stripped of thought and feeling … everything seemed to have changed with the end of the war: I was alive, you see, how could anything else matter compared to that? I thought I could distance myself for ever from that thieving whoring child who had performed disgusting acrobatics in order to survive, but how could I escape myself now that I was putting on weight and my hair was growing again, and I was even once more becoming a conscious being? I changed my name and way of life and went into a monastery but didn’t take vows, everything I tried soon disgusted me … I got married and had a son, and I thought that had solved the problem. But no, when my son was a year old I started kicking him, he horrified me … my wife ran away with the child, even if she understood, she did understand me, but she could not leave the child exposed to my frenzy.’

Amara watches him with her eyes full of tears, and sees him run, staggering and bumping against the furniture, towards the bedroom. He returns immediately, holding a small piece of greasy paper.

He offers it to her with an awkward gesture.

‘Here’s the proof, Signora Maria Amara Doubting-Thomas … You’re incapable of believing in anything unless you can touch it, so here you are … take this paper … do you recognise it?’

Amara grasps with trembling hands the ragged scrap the man is holding. The crumpled remains of a letter she wrote in 1940, when she was writing to him at the Schulerstrasse address in Vienna.

‘No more doubts, little sister?’

He plants his legs wide apart in front of her. Raises an arm and reaches her an open-handed smack. Not a violent slap. He is too drunk for his hand to have any more force than a wet rag. His red eyes bulging, he spits at her.

Amara gazes sadly at him with blood beginning to run from her nose. She cannot move. Tears pour down her cheeks uncontrollably. Hans and Horvath come back into the room and immobilise the man by pinning his hands behind his back.

‘Let go, imbeciles! Let go or I’ll kill you!’

Like a furious child, he fastens his teeth into the hand of Hans, who cries out in pain.

‘Get out of here, you scoundrels, villains, out, out, out!’ he screams at the top of his voice. The veins in his neck bulge and his eyes are bloodshot even if he is unsteady on his feet after all the alcohol he has swallowed.

‘Please let him go!’ says Amara, rising to her feet.

But at that moment Brunhilde enters the room. Strong, solicitous, competent, very young and beautiful, she grasps him passionately by his shoulders, and almost hoisting him onto her back, bears him away murmuring words of love in his ear.

Is it possible to die without dying? To lose oneself without losing one’s body? Lying on her bed at the Pension Blumental, Amara asks herself how she will ever again be able to move her legs since each seems to weigh a ton, and reconciles herself to never being able to get out of bed again. Her head is somewhere else, watching her from a corner of the ceiling. Though the eyes so thoughtfully observing her are not her own. Dry tears are lacerating the skin of her cheekbones. She wants to vomit but cannot. She would like the window open but opening it is beyond her. Why are those cold, distant eyes fixed on her from above? Where are her arms? Her throat is trying to swallow something sticky that isn’t saliva. Perhaps the blood that filtered from her nose when Emanuele slapped her.

What have they made of you? asks a voice she doesn’t recognise as her own. She has no more tears, no more saliva, and her breath rises like a sob from her dry throat. Someone has placed an icebag on her head. There’s a smell of onions.

They’ve stuck a needle into her arm. So perhaps she’s not in Frau Morgan’s pension, but somewhere else. A hospital? Her eyes are blind yet she is aware of a thick fog penetrated by other eyes which she could swear are her own. But how can she be up there fixed to the ceiling when she is at the same time down here nailed to this bed? What have they done to you? What have they done to you, Emanuele? she can feel her lips moving but no voice comes out. Blood is still oozing in her throat. And the eyes are bothering her because they are burning too brightly, as intrusive as lamps.

What has happened inside her head? Why can’t she remember? Her temples are throbbing with pain. A pain she cannot chase away, but she has no idea what is causing it.

Then she gradually becomes aware of a boy slipping away between ruined barrack buildings. It’s him, it must be him. She wants to tell him she understands him. She calls: Emanuele! He turns and limps slowly towards her and when he is really near her an enormous, cold, dirty open hand, heavy as a rock, strikes her mouth. Emanuele! she cries, but he moves quickly away. She sees him withdraw into a corner with an officer in a glittering uniform.