“Is that really your fiancé?”
“No!”
He started at the unexpected, incensed shout.
“I’m sorry for asking. It’s not my business, of course—”
“It has nothing to do with you!” She wasn’t crying anymore, just trembling with her entire body. “Why didn’t he just die? I so hoped – no, I prayed – that some Ivan would shoot his brains out or run him over with his tank or impale him on his bayonet! But no, bastards like him never die. Good people do but pigs like him survive just about anything! Like rats! And then they crawl out of their crevices and bring back their diseases and poison people’s lives again! Why didn’t he die?!”
She kept marching on and Tadek had nothing else to do but walk by her side and not ask any more questions. He was itching to ask whether the fellow, whom she clearly knew from before, brought her any news of her father but Tadek knew, deep inside, that had he asked her that now, she’d never talk to him again.
11
At night, he lay with his eyes open, still not used to having his own bed, still surrounded by too much of the silence without his comrades next to him, snoring and moaning in their sleep whenever the events of the day would catch up with them and seep deep into the consciousness and poison even the dreams with their horror. For the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, there was no escape from their daily labors, even in sleep. Their clothes, their hair, and skin stank sweetly of burnt flesh and even the alcohol, generously provided by the SS, didn’t erase the sight of the entangled bodies in the gas chamber. They dreamed of tearing dead mothers and children apart with their hooks and of cremating humanity itself day after day.
Tadek hated the nights. Even more so, he loathed the nightmares they brought with them – never about the frontline fighting, only about the camp, for some reason.
Soft steps behind his door. He stilled his breath and listened. A knock came a full minute later, uncertain and quiet. Tadek slid off his bed and opened the door. Gerlinde stood before him, her hair loose and tangled, eyes gleaming softly in the darkness. She smelled of cognac, the bottle of which she was still squeezing by the neck. In her other hand, two glasses.
“Were you sleeping?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re never imposing.”
She padded past him, barefoot and swaying slightly. “Leave the door open. I don’t want to turn on the light and it’s too dark without it. The nightlight in the hallway should be just fine…” She was babbling, to avoid something she wanted and didn’t want to talk about, at the same time.
Tadek watched her pour two fingers of amber liquid into the first glass but put his hand above the second when she moved to fill it. “You drink yours. I don’t drink.”
“Why’s that? Some religious guff or some such?” Her voice was harsh and the tone mocking but Tadek recognized the hidden pain behind it far too well.
“No. I used to drink a lot at the camp. I don’t want to look at liquor anymore. It reminds me of things.”
“Sorry. I should have thought.”
“It’s all right.” He sat on top of the covers and waited for her to talk.
For some time, she wandered around aimlessly, her teeth biting the edge of the glass. She sipped from it from time to time and touched the things in his room but the words still didn’t come.
“We don’t have to talk,” Tadek suggested quietly. “We can just sit and be quiet.”
She sat next to him, her hands with the glass in them – almost empty now – folded on her lap. Her legs were white marble against the black floor. The moonlight soaked her hair in silver.
“Do you feel better when you tell people things? About the camp?”
“Sometimes. Depends on which people. If I know that they’ll think that I’m lying then what’s the point? Then, I don’t tell them anything.”
“When you tell me things.” Gerlinde rephrased her question.
“Yes. Because now you believe me.”
“If I tell you something, you think you’ll believe me?”
“I will. I know you by now. I know you’re not a liar.”
She pressed his hand for a second but pulled away at once.
“I do know him, Tadeusz. Alfred. Alfred von Rombach, Gruppenführer von Rombach’s son. Sturmbannführer von Rombach’s nephew. All, as golden pheasant as they come. They were family friends. A long line of Prussian Junkers turned high-ranking SS men, Reichstag members… You understand.”
“Tak.” Tadek hadn’t realized he’d switched to Polish. The admission, no matter how expected, caught him unawares.
“Tak,” she mocked and shifted her weight slightly. “We grew up together. He’s only a year older than me. Golden child, just like I was. The marriage between us was a somewhat decided matter ever since… as long as I remember myself, really. They always put us together in photos and we looked so very good next to each other. He was in the Hitlerjugend and I was a BDM girl. Vati liked him a lot. Reichsmarschall, too. The von Rombachs were often guests in his hunting lodge together with us. Vati wouldn’t go hunting himself and he would often joke that it was easier for him to shoot a man than an animal. He loved all animals. He had a very soft heart when it came to anything innocent…” She caught herself straying and shook her head as though to clear it. The gesture came out angry, abrupt. “A year ago, in the fall of 1944, during the Harvest celebratory dinner – I’m not sure what precisely we were celebrating at that point as the rationing got even to us – he gave me a promise ring. A sort of pre-engagement ring. In front of both our families. Gruppenführer von
