Arnost Lustig - Lovely Green Eyes

She thought all this in the instant between nodding her head and raising it again. Ja, nein .

“Name, day, month, year of birth. Place of birth.”

The Hauptsturmführer was sharpening one of his pencils with a pocket knife. He stifled a belch and took a sip of mineral water.

“Last place of work.”

Those were easy questions.

“Dr Krueger’s surgery.”

“Is that so?” said Hauptsturmführer Schneidhuber. “Have you any Jewish relations?”

“No.”

“There was never talk in your family about anyone, no matter how distant?”

“No. Not that I remember.”

“Good. You’re sure that you only have Aryan blood?”

“I have Aryan blood,” she replied, in the firmest voice she could manage.

There was no way back now. She gave her old Prague address to avoid making a mistake later on. She heard herself speaking as if the voice were not her own. Her blood was no longer throbbing in her temples as it had while she was waiting her turn. She tried not to think of their Prague flat which had been taken over by the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung. The Germans had made sure that the flat would go to a German.

“What’s your height? You don’t look short.”

She told him, not sure whether to straighten up or make herself shorter.

The Hauptsturmführer was anxious now to pack up his things and lie down. He had come from Hamburg by fast train, but because of enemy air-raids they had been held up eight times. He was exhausted. He went through her questionnaire quickly, but he didn’t skip anything. Nor did he recognise that what confronted him was concealed stubbornness. What he had seen during the day had been mostly resignation rather than defiance. As Skinny stood facing the doctor she heard within herself only one voice out of the many she was suppressing. Hers was a small lie compared to the German lie: that the gas chambers were only shower rooms where they could freshen up after their journey.

The Hauptsturmführer heard only eagerness, willingness, perhaps a keen and ambitious desire to serve Germany. Her voice was hoarse with excitement and resolution. The doctor knew that in Krueger’s surgery she had become used to working with the human body. She would be prepared for touching the bodies of German soldiers.

Skinny had not anticipated the questions for which the Hauptsturmführer had a long column and to which he now turned.

“If you had to choose between a rat and a rabbit, which would you choose?”

“The rabbit,” she said.

“Why?”

“For its soft fur.”

“Between an ox and a cockerel?”

“The cockerel.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Between a pig and a horse?”

“The horse. It’s cleaner, faster and cleverer.”

“Good. What about between a lamb and a snake?”

The Hauptsturmführer might — for his own amusement — have enriched the questionnaire, but he didn’t feel like it. It was getting late. And it was dark. Very well, we shall see, he thought. A whore did not have to brim over with intelligence. He was thinking of the paper he would write about lymphatic glands.

Dr Schneidhuber finally ordered her to lift her skirt. She knew about this already from the ramp, from when they had arrived. Legs apart! She obeyed. She had long legs, childish thighs, yes, but that shouldn’t be a problem. At that moment the Hauptsturmführer’s voice sounded almost genial. He had not said yet that she had passed.

“Ich bin unfruchtbar.” I’m sterile.

“How do you know?”

“Dr Krueger used x-rays on me. Twice. From the front and behind, with my legs apart.”

She was beginning to interest him.

“How sure are you of this?”

“As sure as there’s a God above me.”

“Suppose he’s below you in hell?” Dr Schneidhuber smiled.

“ Gott macht die Nüsse, aber er knackt sie nicht auf. ” God makes the nuts, but he doesn’t crack them. It sounded to him as if she were boasting that she was blind, deaf and dumb. He felt more at ease with an Aryan than he did with Jewish subhumans, on whom he would start his experiments the next day. He signed her questionnaire at the bottom. She followed every one of his movements wordlessly. He put the questionnaire into his briefcase. That someone else would go into the gas chamber in her place in the morning so the numbers would be right — this she did not think about. The doctor drank some mineral water and picked up his cap.

“You’ll have to grow your hair,” he said. “You haven’t got much now. Why? Did you have lice?”

He told the girls it would be for a year. To serve frontline soldiers was an honour. Duty to Germany came before all else. Cleanliness, order, obedience. They would wash and sew their own underwear. There would be enough time for needlework. Embroidery, crocheting, knitting sweaters and woollen face-masks for themselves and the troops.

He left some porridge at the bottom of his bowl. It was cold now. He picked up his riding crop. Its handle was made of African hippopotamus hide. He allowed one of the girls to finish his porridge. She licked out the bowl and the spoon, not knowing when she would get her next meal. He picked up the telephone. They would leave under escort at once. Yes, they were all ready, things had moved fast. When would the light come back on? Five minutes? All right, better late than never. They could take their coats with them. Skinny did not have one and didn’t know whose she could take in the next 15 minutes, so that she wouldn’t have to travel in just a dress. She mingled with the girls; it was always better to be in the middle of a crowd than at the head or the tail.

Those he had not picked for the brothel would find plenty of work as nurses, Dr Schneidhuber added. Morgen gehts los , he thought to himself. Tomorrow they’ll be off.

The guards were bored. They were not allowed to have any dealings with the prostitutes, though some did. This was an infringement of the prohibition for both parties and if they were caught, it meant punishment. The guilty S S man would go to the front, to join an Einsatzgruppe, or be sent to prison. The army whore, if she was lucky, would go to Festung Breslau, to the “Hotel for Foreigners” which they knew only by reputation. In any case she would get a thrashing on her bare bottom.

By the wall where the executions took place when the quarry was too deep in snow, the previous detachment of guards had organized dog fights. They would catch stray dogs on the wasteland, keep them hungry, then choose three of similar size, one of them a weaker one. The two stonger ones would tear the third to pieces and lick up its blood. The guards had another trick. They would take a pair of dogs and by giving them nothing to drink, even snow, they became so dehydrated that their blood would not run so much. They would bet their wages on which dog would win the fight. The dog that survived would drink the blood of the defeated one to quench its thirst.

In November the guards had invited Madam Kulikowa to a dog fight. A sheepdog which had won two fights let itself be torn to pieces in the third. It had no strength left. Its blood splashed all the way to the wall, mingling with the dried bloodstains of the executed.

Oberführer Schimmelpfennig saw a confirmation of the laws of nature in the brutality of the dog fights. The ancient Germanic tribes were instinctively right when, instead of praying, they relied on the flight of birds, the behaviour of horses and dogs; the mirror of lakes, the whiteness of hoarfrost. He didn’t need the whores to confirm his conviction of the closeness of human and animal behaviour. The soldiers confirmed it too. Consciously or unconsciously he felt close to his distant ancestors. Did not the wasteland with the quarry resemble a giant emerging from frozen mist? The rats in the snow with their ravenous teeth reminded S chimmelpfennig of squirrels fanning quarrels according to the wisdom of the ancients, spreading dissension.