Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

He will tell you that the Scriptures speak of the time of love and the time of death but forget the time of waiting. And one night, returning, he reached the dirt road that led to the prison — he embraced you, Isabel, and told you twice that Ulrich did not want to wait — one night returning from the railroad he was overtaken by a convoy of seven trucks that moved heavily in the muddy, deeply rutted road and again and again stalled and guards and prisoners alike shouted and ran to help the soldiers who got out and pushed, sinking in the mud up to the tops of their boots. He jumped on the running board of the first truck to guide it, for he knew the road. A young corporal wearing glasses was the driver and beside him sat a sergeant with a machine gun on his knees. The corporal was still in his teens and his blue eyes were made huge by the thickness of his glasses. Franz told him here to the right, here swing off the road altogether and cut across the field, now back to the road but hold to the left, here right again. The corporal never looked at him. He drove with concentration and seriousness. He was doing his duty and doing it well. Maybe at other times he cracked jokes with his companion, but not now. It was certain that only a few months ago he had gone to the Volkschule and studied calculus or world literature. Maybe he had liked music. Schoolboys were sometimes taken to hear concerts or operas. Or at least that was how it had once been.

I promised her that I would come back. But the time of returning was not our time yet. Our time was only the time of waiting. Don’t yell, Franz. I hear you.

He knew that an order had been issued: the musicians and singers at the camp and in the ghetto city were to remain. They were not to be shipped off to the death camps, they would remain and be saved. Maestro Professor Schachter would be allowed to continue his musical efforts, and although the children would have to depart, others would arrive to replace them in the child’s opera. The musicians and singers would remain. Though they could, of course, if they wished, climb into the cattle cars with their relatives and accompany them. The children, the orphans, and the widows were being sent away simply for humanitarian reasons: there would be fewer people now and all would live better.

Now, possibly, the theater in his home town had been bombed out. What city was he from? Franz did not know, for the corporal had not spoken. And beside him sat the sergeant, silent, cradling the machine gun. Franz said nothing to him. To the left. Careful now. More to the left, there’s a deep hole, a well of a hole. And after the war they would all be able to go back to their cities and towns and live normal lives again. The Wallenstein Gardens were awaiting his return. The musicians would be in their accustomed places beneath the baroque portal. She would be waiting for him too, sitting in the same row as always. The great German Requiem of Brahms would begin. Franz and the corporal laughed. The sergeant looked at him sourly.

“Why don’t you keep this road in better shape?”

“The railroad is more important.”

“Don’t you have workers enough for both?”

“No. This is a very small camp.”

“Bah. And you, what the hell do you do here?”

“I’m the architect assigned to the camp.”

“Bah.”

The sergeant laughed and the face of the young corporal was motionless as the floodlights at the corners of the fortress glinted on his glasses and blinded him. He raised a hand to his eyes and braked.

“What are you stopping for?” the sergeant yelled.

The bumper of the truck behind hit them. Someone swore. The corporal said nothing. A shower of sparks showed that the current of the electric fence had been turned off so that the men in black could open the gate. Isabel, why are you moving away from me? Here, come back.

“This is where you get off,” said the sergeant to Franz. Then to the corporal, “Chin up now, man. Remember you’re a soldier.”

The corporal adjusted his glasses, stiffened his head, and smiled. Franz swung down and the trucks moved past him. Slowly he walked into the fortress. Voices of command, repeated shouts. And a hidden sound of singing, buried but penetrating. He asked a passing officer what the singing was and the officer said he didn’t know. Another officer, walking swiftly by, said that it was the Jews practicing in the stockrooms and cellars. The Commandant had given them orders to sing, to rehearse an opera or something. The Jews that had been recruited by Raphael Schachter: Germans, Austrians, Dutchmen, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, the whole caboodle. As Franz walked to the side and listened, their voices rose:

Lacrimosa dies illa,

Qua resurget ex favilla

Judicandus homo reus

The loudspeaker:

“Achtung!”

The echo, “Achtuuung!”

“Take your places!”

In groups of five the guards ran to the rear of the trucks, which were still moving slowly with motors roaring and exhausts open. The trucks’ headlights went out. Dogs were barking furiously. The small band, standing on a mound beyond the trucks, a band made up of six women prisoners, began to play again. The director moved her arms, her gray baton, and the Merry Widow Waltz began, two violins, a flute, a double bass, cymbals. The loudspeaker:

“Stand by. Open the doors.”

And she would have told him if they had ever spoken with each other again that in the beginning Maestro Raphael Schachter had only two pianos, one provided by the president of the Jewish community, the other the one used in the fortress to accompany movies with music. He needed four soloists, a choir of a hundred and fifty voices, and as many instruments and musicians as was possible. The instruments appeared: the cello that had been hidden in the barn in the farm cart beneath straw, the cache of orchestral instruments that had been concealed behind the bricked-up wall, the violins and violas of the two old men, the double basses that had been tossed aside in a storeroom among top hats and dress forms and glass paperweights. Schachter gathered his soloists, his instrumentalists, and his choir, feeling safe and protected by the Commandant’s orders that the musicians and performers were to remain, were not to be interfered with. But when the children and old folks were packed off east in cattle cars, three of his soloists elected to go with them. Every convoy that departed took performers away, every convoy that arrived brought replacements who had to be trained and rehearsed. At one time he was missing twenty-four voices from his choir and twelve musicians from his orchestra. Again and again he had to start over from the beginning.

Rex tremendae majestatis,

Qui salvandos salvas gratis,

Salva me, fons pietatis.

The newcomers began to get down from the trucks. The rear doors had been unlocked and swung open, and in each group of guards, one raised his arms to help the prisoners down, a second sang out numbers which a third checked against a list, and the remaining two held their machine guns and looked on. The waltz tripped into the frozen night. Dogs howled. And the prisoners got down, some accepting the guard’s raised arms, some jumping down unaided, all silent, motionless for a moment, some rubbing their eyes, others bowing their heads, some laughing, others crying. Comrades looked for comrades, husbands for wives, parents for children. Old men wearing overcoats and hats. Men with their coat lapels and collars turned up against the cold. Women bundled in blankets, with children in their arms. Girls in woolen socks, scarves around their heads. Boys in short pants, woolen caps. Little girls carrying dolls. Cardboard suitcases, boxes tied with twine, bundles of clothing, a sewing machine, a cobbler’s bench, a violin case. Stars pinned to lapels or sewn to their backs. Many did not get down from the trucks. They were dead on their feet, as dead as all were silent.