So he set about writing the plays in his mind, reimagining them. He constructed dialogue, using the language he remembered, and improvising the rest out of the darkness in which he found himself, constructing a sort of amalgam of punishment and poetry. His steps around and around became the meter of his verse. Sometimes he spoke the words and sometimes he thought them. He wasn’t sure when he was doing one thing or the other. It seemed natural, to him at least, that he should begin with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
‘Now, fair Hippolyta,’ he whispered, ‘our nuptial hour draws on apace; four happy days bring in another moon. But I think how slow the old moon wanes. She draws out my desires.
‘Four days will soon become four nights and dream away the time. Why not seven indeed, since we are seven nights here? And the moon, unseen but yet there somewhere, shall see the nights of our solemnities.
‘Go Philostrate, stir up the Athenian youth to merriments, wake up the nimble spirit of mirth, send melancholy, dark melancholy, this my melancholy, send it to funerals. It is not fit for our inner light. Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my pacing, remember? And I won thy love marching in circles, but I will wed thee differently, elsewhere and at a later time with triumphant reveling.’
And so it went on.
There were periods where he could not remember what came next, and he paused in his reciting to sort it out. But it mattered less and less, because as the play unfolded, it got further and further from Shakespeare’s version and closer and closer to his own. It took him many hours to finish his Midsummer Night’s Dream. He collapsed on the floor, not knowing whether it was night or day. He wept as he fell into a terrible sleep.
He took on Macbeth next, then Hamlet, then The Tempest, each one seeming more appropriate to the moment than the last. Once – he didn’t know whether it was night or day, or how long he had been there – his madness was interrupted by the small trapdoor at the bottom of the entry door opening and spilling light into the cell. ‘Geismeier!’ someone whispered. ‘Geismeier!’
‘Yes,’ Willi said. It was more a croak than a voice.
‘Here,’ said the voice at the door, and two hands reached in with a tin of hot soup – real soup with vegetables and even bits of meat, and a large hunk of bread.
‘Thank you,’ said Willi, taking the food.
‘We’re not dogs, Geismeier!’ said the other voice. It was Neudeck, the kapo. ‘You and me, Geismeier. We’re not animals!’
One day – it could have been a week or a month as far as Willi knew – the door opened. Willi was blinded by the light. He was taken by the arms – despite all the pacing, he was unsteady on his feet. He was taken to a shower room and told to wash himself, but the water was cold and there was no soap. He rinsed the feces and urine from his legs and feet, the filth from his hands and face as best he could. He was given no other clothes, so he put his filthy clothes back on.
Willi was marched to the interrogation room and the gigantic Hauptsturmführer was there again, his hat cocked at the same rakish angle, as though he had been waiting the entire time. Muddled Shakespeare tumbled through Willi’s mind. ‘The hour’s now come; the very minute bids thee ope thine ear; obey and be attentive.’ He almost spoke the words, but recognized his own madness and kept silent.
‘Let’s try again, Geismeier, shall we?’ said the captain. He spoke almost gently, reacting to Willi’s physical state. Willi looked a wreck. His eyes were wild, his beard had grown, his hair had started falling out. And despite the shower, he stank. The two kapos moved to the corners of the room to be as far from Willi as they could get. The captain held a white handkerchief in front of his nose and mouth, a gesture that was both dainty and ridiculous. Nevertheless, now that he considered Geismeier’s state, he was satisfied with the results of the punishment and obviously with himself.
‘So, Geismeier, are you finally ready to talk?’
To the captain’s surprise, Willi said, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well, Geismeier, now you’re behaving in a reasonable manner.’ He moved the handkerchief from his face, as though Willi’s reasonableness might make him stink less. But it didn’t, so he covered his nose and mouth again.
‘So, Geismeier, do you remember that you impersonated a detective?’
‘I do,’ said Willi.
‘You do what?’ said the captain, just to make sure he was talking to a rational man.
‘I remember impersonating a detective.’
The captain was astonished and relieved that the admission had come so easily. He hated doing interrogations at Dachau. ‘And do you remember why you decided to impersonate a police detective, which I’m sure you know is a grave offense?’
‘I remember that as well,’ said Willi. ‘I was trying to do what the police had evidently been unable or unwilling to do, and that is to find the serial killer, the man who was killing all those women. He had already killed …’ Willi had momentarily forgotten how many women had been murdered. ‘Is it nine?’
‘No, it’s even more,’ said the Hauptsturmführer. ‘It’s thirteen.’ He knew because he had been paying close attention to this story. The Hauptsturmführer had been raised the only male in a house full of doting sisters and aunts. They had fussed over him like a collective of very attentive nursemaids, granting his every wish, ignoring his follies, and treating him like a prince. And now he lived
