Arnost Lustig - Lovely Green Eyes

Skinny examined the faces of passers-by as we walked. Suppose Ramon hadn’t died in the gas chamber but had got lost? What if her father had lost his memory and was now trying to find out who he was? Maybe he had lost his sense of time and place? Imagine if it wasn’t true that her father had flung himself against the wire in Birkenau? The people who said they saw him die could have been mistaken, and by some miracle he might have survived. She almost forgot that she’d seen him herself. Was her memory playing tricks? The same might be true of her mother. If she was still alive three days before the end of the war, then perhaps she was now walking about, searching, as so many others were.

We had one advantage: we did not pity one another, we had everything still ahead of us. All of us lost practically everybody to the murderers — nine out of every ten people. Pity for the fate of others only came a lot later. At that time, the band in the café, a decent meal and a clean bed were worth a lot.

“Tabula rasa” she said to Adler one day.

“What’s that?” he wanted to know.

“A clean slate.”

“That I am not,” Adler said. “Are you?”

In the kosher restaurant at 18 Maislova Street we met an American officer.

“Eighteen is my lucky number,” Skinny said to the doorman as we entered.

“Why?”

“I was in Block 18 in Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

“Eighteen is the Jewish number of life,” the doorman told her.

“What does that mean?”

“That you’re still alive,” said the doorman, who had lost his daughter. “Run along and eat, Number 18. You’re luckier than you know.”

Just then the American arrived. The next table was occupied, so he asked whether we minded if he joined us.

“Not as yet,” Adler joked.

We frequented Maislova 18 because it was free for us. The American had come from Subcarpathian Ruthenia. He was trying to trace his parents. He had seen Germany on its knees. Anyone in Berlin wishing to buy a coat, a pair of trousers or a pullover needed a special permit, and as a rule they were turned down. One Chesterfield cigarette cost ioo marks, one-third of a worker’s monthly wage. For a bar of chocolate the Germans were offering young girls or their mothers. They were searching the refuse bins for unfinished American, British or New Zealand tins of food. Everything was in ruins. The black market was flourishing. He had been looking for his father’s brother, his three sisters, his grandfather on his father’s side, the first Jew to receive the German Iron Cross for heroism in World War I. He had found no-one, not a single member of his extended family.

The American was looking at Skinny. To him she was a person who had come back from that secret German-Jewish war, in which only one side was armed and the other not at all. Within World War II there was another war, an even greater one, concealed.

The American believed that Europe needed re-education. Skinny laughed. Was he going to send Europe to school? Adler, holding up his soup spoon like a pointer, said that he had attended a re-education lecture in the Buchenwald camp near Weimar. He tried to explain to the American that we had jettisoned the old morality and acquired a new one as early as in the first form of our primary schools. It was a more accurate and certainly a more flexible one. Higher was lower, nearer was further away, black was white and right was wrong. The only things that remained unchanged were day and night; because those were difficult to exchange. Our education had continued in the east. There, no-one complained any longer, as the people in Lodz still did when they had to eat rats.

The American was silent. There was decency in him, as well as sadness and an echo of something that he couldn’t grasp. He was clearly searching for a key to us and did not find it. His name was Rex Weiner; he was married, lived somewhere near Chicago and had a small daughter by his American wife. He was an airforce colonel. We guessed that the rank of colonel was not dealt out in the US forces like a hand of cards. He watched us finish our soup and we realized that he hadn’t touched his and that it must be quite cold by now. He noticed that all three of us were looking at his plate. If we were not offended, would we allow him to order for us? All courses — starters, main course, dessert. Fruit and lemonade. We did allow him.

Skinny, unexpectedly, was all smiles. Rex Weiner’s story pleased her. He questioned his own motivations; he didn’t interrogate us. She would have liked to help him to understand. There was nothing worse than mistaken beliefs. Her wish was a wish for justice tempered by retribution, and for retribution tempered by justice.

Colonel Weiner’s war philosophy was simple: kill anyone who tries to kill you. Adler identified with it enthusiastically. He omitted to say that he was rather glad that so far he hadn’t had to kill. When the time came he would not hesitate. And never again would he get on a transport so obediently.

A moment later the smile disappeared from Skinny’s face. On one of the Japanese-occupied islands in the Pacific, a young man whom the colonel knew had tried to escape from a prison camp. The Japanese guards forced him to drink one glass of water after another, until his stomach was inflated and rigid and he couldn’t get another drop of water down. Then, with drawn swords and threatening to cut off the heads of anyone who didn’t obey, they ordered the other prisoners to kick the young man in his stomach. They were allowed to stop only when the man’s stomach burst and he died.

Rex Weiner spoke almost in a whisper. Infamy, though it had no name and seemed inconceivable, nevertheless existed.

Were we not alone? Was it not ridiculous that men should invent a hell with everlasting fire in which sinners would burn until Judgement Day? You didn’t have to see it. Imagination was enough.

Adler would not find it easy to write his book about the concentration camps. All around us there was a tinkling of forks and spoons, a clatter of plates, a hum of words, snippets of conversation. It was a fine sunny day, the war was over.

“You can share our bread, boots or cigarettes,” Skinny said.

Colonel Weiner was taken aback. “We share the terror of death,” he replied.

Skinny thought of her father and mother, and of her little brother who, in her mind, would always remain little, never grow up and never grow old. She thought about what she had shared with him.

Slowly, as if we had known each other for years, Colonel Weiner said: “Terror, but also hope.”

He called the waiter and paid. He left a tip on the table. We felt close to him and distant at the same time without being able to explain why. He got up, politely said goodbye and walked out. We never saw him again.

We tried to laugh at everything one could laugh about and at everything that suddenly seemed too much. Deep down perhaps we laughed at ourselves. A trap for ourselves and others. We kept bandying proverbs about; possibly because we believed there might be some wisdom in old sayings. It occurred to Adler that we would not find it easy to use words now because it was doubtful how much validity each of them still had, even though a word might sound reliable.

Wasn’t it ridiculous that 10,000 years ago people believed that the soul resided in the teeth? Later they thought it was in their shadow. The Jews discovered that the soul was in the blood, including the blood of certain animals, which was why they should not be eaten. This was not something we worried about in the restaurant of the Jewish Community. But as far as Adler was concerned, or myself or Skinny, they could, as a memento of the good old days, have served us boiled or fried pig’s blood — even in tins with German labels — and we would have polished it off.