Arnost Lustig - Lovely Green Eyes

It was as though from morning to evening he was fed on something distasteful. He was disgusted by his surroundings, by the animality of the soldiers who came here with an eagerness worthy of a better purpose. He was disgusted by the company of the prostitutes, by his collaboration with Madam Kulikowa. He looked down his nose at the guards, even though they belonged to the same élite unit as himself, the Waffen-SS. He watched them as he used to watch the birds, the wolves, and the rats. He found the Madam distasteful, even if she performed like a virtuoso. He did not care for her solos or recitals. He had not been to a concert for two and a half years, not even on his home leave in Berlin. Was finding himself among tarts really the pinnacle of his career as a medical officer? They were sending him suspect and unscreened girls. If it did not mean such a lot of administrative trouble he would have found out from the Gestapo at Auschwitz-Birkenau about the youngest whore. Was Kauders a German name or a Jewish one? His vigilance and concern were tearing his nerves but he had lost his zeal. He had made it a condition that he did not want anyone below 14 or over 20, and the Wehrkreis was complying. So why was he anxious? He liked to think that the machine was still functioning properly.

He had a feeling that he was not living well, but wouldn’t admit to himself that things were slipping through his fingers. He proceeded with an unshakeable conviction that man was basically evil just as animals were evil, and anyone good behaved calculatingly and was therefore suspect.

He glanced at the gilded tin eagle on the gate, its head and beak thrusting from a white collar, its thick rough neck and huge wings. He would have to replace the mouldy mattresses in the cubicles. They squeaked. But he couldn’t really complain. No. 232 Ost ran like clockwork. Yet, as far as his military and medical career was concerned, he was treading water. Gone were yesterday’s dreams of advance, by the army and by himself, collectively and individually. He had every right, when the inspectors from the Wehrkreis came, to liken No. 232 Ost to a railway station with sixteen tracks and a punctual timetable. That was something at least, if not everything.

On the walls, which were topped with concertinas of barbed wire, the ravens were perching. They seemed to him like vultures.

The guards standing behind their machine guns were watching the green Daimler of an Einsatzgruppen officer through their field glasses. It was moving cautiously, skidding in places. Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin of the Einsatzkommando der Einsatzgruppen parked by the wall, in the same spot at which he had tied up his horse the last time that he had been here. With the assistance of two guards he covered his windscreen and rear window with tarpaulins to stop them from icing over. It was obvious that he knew his way around. He moved confidently, as if he had come to have breakfast here.

He’d been on an operation. Just as he was a passionate football player and driver, so he was a useful member of a Jagdkommando. Wherever he served, he did so without fear and with total enthusiasm. He felt that he was getting better with time. It was alchemy of age and experience, the two going hand in hand. And there was a growing sense of belonging. He was becoming part of the Einsatzgruppen just as the Einsatzgruppen were becoming part of him. It was something elemental, it inspired him and became the foundation of his self-assurance. He felt himself straightening and growing, secure in the knowledge that there was no blemish on his military character. As to his army profile, name and reputation, he had no doubts. It would be ideal if he were just a soldier. Nothing but the Einsatzgruppen.

Something provoked his irritation. Somebody had torn out the wall hook and ring to which he tethered his horse. Had they donated the metal to help make guns? Or had it been done to annoy him? He had his reservations about the administrative efficiency of No. 232 Ost. The army was getting too bureaucratic. Not so the Einsatzgruppen. For many Germans the organization was no longer what it should be. The era of comradeship between Wehrmacht and Waffen-S S was over. Somebody only had to tear a hook out of the wall and his good humour was extinguished. That was not what he had come here for. He had his own ideas about running things. What would he tether his horse to next time? He despised organizations and individuals who had a logical reason for everything, even the most trivial decisions. He would punish excuses by shooting. The army was full of pen prushers. He was glad to have joined the Einsatzgruppen, on whom no army regulations or laws were binding. He would not like to see the Herrenwaffe change from a company of the brave into a bureaucracy.

As the snowflakes sailed down, he quoted from Adelbert von Chamisso, one of his teachers:

Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag. Du weisst nun meine Heimlichkeit, So halt den Mund und sei gescheit…

He wished that he had written such a jewel himself.

With his right arm raised he saluted the Oberführer, who was watching some men unloading boxes of books, covered in snow. It was enough to make him sick. The army were retreating, and Berlin was sending them literature via Cracow.

Obersturmführer Sarazin disappeared into the building.

The Lebensborn and the field brothel — two related institutions, the former giving way to the latter as the requirements of the Herrenvolk and its army changed. For the Party and the army high command, Sarazin had the gratitude of a son, a closer filial relationship than he had enjoyed with his own father. He was filled with warm recollections of the Lebensborn. His seven days there had given him, day by day and night by night, the self-assurance a man has when he has impregnated a woman. That deep, irrepressible primitive feeling. The triumphal attitude of a man who has conquered a woman or to whom a woman has submitted, a woman he has helped to have a child, his child. The sense of immortality a man has when he looks up at the stars. He remembered a few of the women’s names, mostly just their first names. He was never quite sure he remembered those names correctly, but that was unimportant. It was part of the rules of the game not to ask to whom he was giving a child, just as the women did not ask who he was. All that was needed was mutual attraction and orders from above. The authorities would deal with everything else. The future of the Reich was being laid down, and from the best material. As the German children would be, so would the nation. As the children were brought up, from swaddling clothes and dummy, to kindergarten to elementary school, and from there to secondary school and university, then to the army — so would the country be in the years to come. This knowledge was enough for inspiration and arousal, for a sense of satisfaction. Added to this was the secrecy, like the secrecy of the night, the lure of a woman’s body in the cubicle with its curtains drawn to ensure that the combination of darkness and light stimulated the participants. It was wonderful not to know who that woman was. The Lebensborn, the Spring of Life, was an island in a white snowy sea, a silver moon with its invisible side in a deep-blue cradle.

He listened to the sound of his boots on the floor, the impact of 38 steel nails in each sole and the metal edge around the heel. For a moment his memories of the Lebensborn — the first steps towards a Germany without frontiers, towards a vast territory running from the Rhine to the Ural — merged with the prospect of having an unknown young whore, one he had ordered for himself. The Madam had told him her name, but he had forgotten it.

Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin didn’t like Big Leopolda Kulikowa. Stout women always reminded him of cows. He had reconciled himself to the fact that he couldn’t eliminate all the people he did not like. He had his vision of an ideal world. A slightly arrogant one, perhaps, but wasn’t arrogance beautiful? If it were up to him, the world would already look different — something like an overpopulated paradise.