Jaume Cabré - Confessions

And then Höss told him, loudly, about that pathetic episode with Soldier Bruno something or other, until, as if he were Dietmar Kehlmann at the Berliner Theater, he ended with the famous line take away this carrion. He had told it to about twenty people and, as far as Doctor Voigt knew, always concluded with the same shrill ending.

‘My parents, who were fervent Catholics in a predominantly Lutheran, if not Calvinist, Germany, wanted me to be a priest. I spent quite some time considering it.’

Envious wretch.

‘You would have made a good priest, Obersturbannführer Höss.’

‘I imagine so.’

And conceited.

‘I’m sure: everything you do, you do well.’

‘What you’ve just made out to be a virtue, could also be my ruin. And especially now that Reichsführer Himmler is going to visit us.’

‘Why?’

‘Because as Oberlagerführer, I am responsible for all the failings of the system. For example, I only have two or three cans at the most left from the last shipment of Zyklon gas and the quartermaster hasn’t even thought to tell me to make a new order. And so I’ll have to ask for favours, get some lorries to come here that probably should be somewhere else, and stifle my craving to yell at the quartermaster because we are all working at our limit, here at Auschwitz.’

‘I imagine that the experience of Dachau …’

‘From a psychological point of view, the difference is vast. At Dachau we had prisoners.’

‘From what I understand huge numbers of them died and still do.’

This doctor is an imbecile, thought Höss. Let’s call a spade a spade.

‘Yes, Doctor Voigt, but Dachau is a prison camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau is designed, created and calculated to exterminate rats. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews aren’t human, I would think we are living in hell, with one door that leads to a gas chamber and another place that’s cremation ovens and their flames, or the open pits in the forest, where we burn the remaining units, because we can’t keep up with all the material they send us. This is the first time I’ve talked about these things with someone not involved in the camp, Doctor.’

And who does this brainless piece of shit think he was then?

‘It’s good to vent every once in a while, Obersturmbannführer Höss.’

It feels good to really get things off your chest, even if it’s with a conceited, stupid doctor like this one, thought Höss.

‘I’m counting on your professional secrecy, because the Reichsführer …’

‘Naturally. You, who are a Christian … In short, a psychiatrist is like a confessor, the confessor you could have been.’

‘My men have to be strong to carry out the task they have been entrusted with. The other day a soldier, more than thirty years old, not some teenager, burst into tears in one of the barracks in front of his comrades.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Bruno, Bruno, wake up!’

Although it’s hard to believe, the Oberlagerführer, the Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, was about to relate the entire scene again from start to finish as soon as he drank his second glass of wine. By the fourth or fifth, his eyes were glassy. Then he began to be incoherent and inadvertently let slip that he was fixated on a Jewish girl. The doctor was shocked but he concealed it, telling himself that it could be very interesting information to use in periods of hardship. So the next day he spoke with Gefreiter Hänsch and very politely asked him whom the Obersturmbannführer was referring to. It was simple: his maid. And he jotted it down in his ‘just in case’ notebook.

A few days later, he had to once again tend to the odious task of selecting merchandise. Shielded, Doctor Voigt observed the soldiers, who tried to forcefully convince the women to let their children be taken away. He saw the selection that Doctor Budden made, the ten girls and boys that he had ordered, and then he noticed an old woman who was coughing and weeping. He went over to her.

‘What’s this?’

He touched the case with his hand, but the old shrew stepped back; who did that contemptible hag think she was, he thought. The old woman clung to the case in such a way that it was impossible to get it from her. Sturmbannführer Voigt pulled out his pistol, aimed it at the back of the woman’s worn, grey neck and fired; the weak pac! was barely heard amid the general wailing. And the disgusting crone splattered blood on the violin case. The doctor ordered Emmanuel to clean it off and bring it to his office at once; meanwhile he headed off as he put away his weapon, followed by many terrified eyes.

‘Here’s the thing you asked for,’ said Emmanuel, a few minutes later. And he put the case down on the desk. It was a fine one; that was what had caught Doctor Voigt’s eye. A fine case doesn’t usually hide a bad instrument. A person who spends money on a case has already spent plenty on the instrument. And if the instrument is good, you hold on to it for dear life, even if you are headed to Auschwitz.

‘Break the lock.’

‘How, commander?’

‘Use your imagination.’ Suddenly startled: ‘But don’t shoot it!’

The assistant opened it with a non-standard issue knife, a detail which Voigt wrote down in his ‘just in case’ notebook. He waved him off and, somewhat excited, opened the violin case. There was an instrument inside, yes; but at first glance he could already see it was nothing … No, wait a minute. He picked it up and read the label inside: Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit 1764. Would you look at that.

Höss, that idiot clodhopper, had him come in at three, wrinkled his nose and dared to tell him that, as a temporary guest to the Lager, you have no right to make a scene by executing a unit in the reception and selection area, Doctor Voigt.

‘She refused to obey me.’

‘What was she carrying?’

‘A violin.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘It’s nothing valuable, Obersturmbannführer.’

‘Doesn’t matter, but I still want to see it.’

‘Trust me, it’s of no interest.’

‘That’s an order.’

Doctor Voigt opened the door to the pharmacy’s cabinet and said, with a soft voice and a fawning smile, ‘As you wish, Obersturmbannführer.’

As he examined it and checked its scars, Rudolf Höss said I don’t know any musician who can tell me what it’s worth.

‘Must I remind you that I am the one who found it, Obersturmbannführer?’

Rudolf Höss lifted his head, surprised by Doctor Voigt’s excessively curt tone. He let a few seconds pass so the other man would have a chance to realise that he had realised what there was to realise, although he wasn’t altogether sure what that was.

‘Didn’t you say it wasn’t worth anything?’

‘It’s not. But I like it.’

‘Well, I’m going to keep it, Doctor Voigt. In compensation for …’

He didn’t know in compensation for what. So he let it trail off with a dot dot dot as he put the instrument back in its case and closed it.

‘How disgusting.’ He extended his arms to look at it. ‘That’s blood, right?’

He leaned back against the wall.

‘Because of your little whim, I’ll have to change the case.’

‘I’ll do it, because I’m keeping it.’

‘You are mistaken, my friend: I’m keeping it.’

‘You are not keeping it, Obersturmbannführer.’

Rudolf Höss grabbed the case by the handle, as if he was preparing to come to blows. Now he clearly saw that the instrument was valuable. From the Doctor Commander’s boldness, it must be very valuable. He smiled, but he had to stop smiling when he heard the words of Doctor Voigt, who brought his breath and his thickset nose close to Höss’s face: ‘You can’t keep it because I will report you.’