his teeth. He swallowed. The woman's eyes opened. She looked at him and he fought to keep the bloodied morsel down. It lodged in his throat as life went from the woman's eyes. He swallowed again, once, twice. The meat was accepted.
That was the real beginning of Janusz Palusinski's survival. He had found a food supply. He was filled neither with joy nor shame, merely relief that he had a means to exist.
Exist he did, even though he was violently ill for days after that first eating of human flesh; his stomach was not accustomed to such richness. He was lucky to recover, for his general weakness might have allowed permanent damage. But Janusz was resilient, if nothing else. From then on he was more cautious about how much he cut from the piled corpses, often concealing small segments in his loose clothing to be consumed late at night beneath his thin blanket. The amount he was able to eat was never enough to have any marked effect on his physique, and that was fortunate, for such a change would have been easily noticed amidst the walking skeletons of the Majdanek concentration camp. But it was sufficient to strengthen him and thus renew his desire to survive.
Disaster, for him, came months later when for no apparent reason he was taken off the burial detail.
Perhaps the German soldiers themselves had grown sick of his eagerness to crawl among the dead, or perhaps they felt he had become too privileged. Whatever the reason, Janusz's specialist services were no longer required. His condition deteriorated rapidly with no regular sustenance.
He became as the others of the camp, a shuffling corpse, eyes enlarged as his skin shrivelled, his bones jutting with deep hollows between. He began to have fits of coughing that drained him of any strength he had left, and bloodspots speckled his palm when he took his hand away from his mouth. Delirium soon followed. Finally he was moved to a but where those who were dying were left without food or care, their passing hastened by lack of both.
He had no idea of how long he had lain there, it could have been days, it might only have been hours.
But something had drawn his senses towards one focal point. It was a smell. Familiar. From the past. He stared into the greyness above and his tongue ran across dry, cracked lips, failing to moisten them. He drew up his knees as hunger cramped his stomach and his head lolled listlessly when the pain passed.
That faint smell, what was it? So familiar. He was a boy again, and he stood in the centre of the room watching a door. Mamusia and Tatus had shut him out. They always did when they did things to each other, unless they thought he was sleeping. He could hear them laughing, and then he could hear them moaning as if they were hurting one another. But one night, when they thought he was asleep, he had watched them across the bedroom . . . and hadn't liked what he saw . . . but had wanted to be part of it
. . . to enjoy the game with them, to be hurt in the same way . . . but he knew it was forbidden . . . The faint smell. The boy looked towards the table, towards the source. The meat was dark red, blood seeping onto the rough wooden surface. He moved closer.
Janusz recognised the odour of raw liver. But it wasn't possible. He was no longer a child and this place was not his home. No, this was the death hut. The smell though. It was here. There was raw liver somewhere nearby. His smile made his lips bleed.
For the first time he heard the dull moans and they were around him, not from behind a closed door.
And the smell was with the moans.
He let his head fall to one side and in the pre-dawn light saw the shapeless bundle next to him. There was hardly anything left of the man, and he barely moved. But the smell was from him and it was mouth-watering. Janusz's arm trembled when he reached towards the figure.
The man was not sleeping, nor was he really conscious. He was near death and that proximity was comforting for him. Most of the pain had gone to some distant point, so far away it could scarcely be felt.
He sunk further within himself and realised that the journey inwards was the way to final peace. Yet something was moving him, interrupting his floating descent. Something was caressing his stomach. Pain was coming close once more, and the man did not want that. He tried to protest, but a murmur that was only a sigh was all the sound he managed. Sharp agony now. And something hard covering his mouth and nose, stopping any more sighs, any more breathing. The agony increased as something gnawed into his belly and he was too feeble to protest further. But the pain was becoming dulled, bliss was washing through him, for his senses were leaving and he, at long last, was leaving with them and it was good, so ultimately good.
No one went near the but that day, nor the next. No corpses were taken away, no more of the dying were dumped inside. It was to be five days before the door of the Majdanek death but was opened again, and then by Russian soldiers, for this was the summer of 1944 and the German invaders were being driven from Poland.
The Russians, already hardened by their own suffering in the terrible war, and by the atrocities they had witnessed during the march across their neighbouring country, were sickened by what they found inside the hut. Only one man was still alive and he, understandably, was demented by what had happened around him. He lay on a floor that was filled with corpses. Many had been mutilated, for it seemed rats had found their way inside and fed off his dead and dying compatriots.
Unfortunately for the Polish people, once the Russians had occupied their country they felt no compunction to leave. Poland came under Communist control, and oppression, although never as severe as under Nazi rule, remained the norm. Again farmers and factory workers found themselves working for the State rather than for themselves, with the government dictating at what rates produce should be sold.
Janusz Palusinski, who bore the indelible mark of German brutality on his wrist and never failed to let the tattoo show on any occasion that sympathy might help better his cause, came to thrive under the system, for scrounging and self-interest was the ideal apprenticeship for a black-marketeer. It took him a full year to recover from his treatment by the Nazis (although a whole lifetime would never erase the damage to his psyche) but his will to survive at all costs had been enhanced rather than depleted. He did not return to his father's farm for two reasons: he was not sure of the reception he would get from the villagers who must have known that it was he who had betrayed the partisans and those who helped them; he had no desire to become a farmer once more. During the year of recuperation, most of which took place in a small hospital just outside Lukow, he read through the published crimes of the Nazi regime, always searching for mention of his own village, and one day he came across what he had been looking for.
Listed were the names of locals and villagers who had been shot for giving aid to the underground movement. A hundred and thirty-two people were on that list, his parents among them. Even now, when concern for his own wellbeing was no longer acute, he felt no remorse, not even for the fate of his own mother. Such emotion, never strong within him anyway, had been entirely eradicated over the last few years.
As time passed, life began to flourish for Janusz, who took to the illegal trade he dealt in as if born to it.
He supplied goods-hungry farmers and food-hungry manufacturers with wh they desired, trade between the two factions being lucrative to the middle-man. But he always operated in a small way in those early years, never wishing to rise in fortune so much that became visible to the authorities.
Janusz could have survived very comfortably under the Communist system, except that the older he grew the more he ppered and the more he prospered, the greedier he became.
He bought a four-storey house in the suburbs of Lodz and, as front which legitimately enabled him to visit farmers arou the country, he maintained a small farm equipment spare-part workshop. Middle-age had softened his caution though, and went against his own basic rule. He had gained too much and was no longer invisible.
The authorities began to take an interest in the activities Janusz Palusinski. His spare-parts business was discreetly roves gated and it was found that the profits derived from it by no means accounted for the relative luxury the owner appeared to be living in. His movements were watched. Party officials came to his house to question him. His answers were not entirely satisfactory. Th took away all documents found in his home, warning him th would return as soon as the papers had been thoroughly studied and that he was to keep himself available until such time. Janus stole away that same night, taking with him what little cash he had and leaving behind his automobile, knowing how easy it was for the authorities to trace any vehicle on the roads of Poland. He left the city on foot, sleeping in cheap lodging houses at night, travelling by bus during the day, too afraid even to take trains. His journey led him towards the north, in the direction of the great forests. He had no idea why, panic and self- preservation driving him onwards without calculation, only instinct telling him that the dark forests were a place to lose oneself and to be lost to others. He was aware of the severe punishment dealt to those caught trading on the black market and was sure that his mind would never stand another term of imprisonment—too many dreadful memories would have been rekindled. There was no grand plan to his escape, no considered scheme for invisibility once more. Janusz fled merely because he had no other choice.
