Deviation Read online

  I preferred the submerged hatred of the concentration camp.

  Gradually the sounds fade away and are lost in the night, leaving a wake of muffled moaning, the rustle of clothing, the shuffling of hurried footsteps punctuated by curt peremptory shouts and the thud of imperious military boots.

  The toilet door cautiously opens a crack and Jeanine’s face appears in the opening, looking around.

  “Carlà?”

  “I’m over here.” I come out from behind the toilets, where I had stretched out and flattened myself against the floor.

  “Move, hurry up.” She grabs my hand. “Sure, keep to yourself, make me run after you!” she whispers to me, shaking her head. “Do you really think we talk just for the sake of talking?”

  “Shut up, please,” I implore in a whisper.

  “Shut up yourself! After I’m risking my neck for you!” Pulling me by the hand, Jeanine precedes me, creeping along the barracks, then rushing ahead to stop abruptly at every turn. Getting down on all fours, we cross the space between one barrack and another, then we’re back on our feet along another row of barracks, again crawling on all fours, who knows how many times, the camp is endless, finally a door opens partway and we slip through into a dark room. As soon as we’ve entered, someone turns the blue lamp over the stove back on and Jeanine flops down noisily on a pallet.

  “We made it!”

  “Those bastards make the transfers at night now!” a man’s voice says.

  “What do you mean, ‘now,’ they always do,” retorts Paolo, standing against the door.

  “They try everything to intensify the anxiety here, and drive the rest of us crazy,” exclaims the Gascon student, sitting on a straw mattress.

  As they talk, Jeanine watches them, hands behind her head, humming a French children’s tune:

  Malborough s’en va-t-en guerre

  mironton mironton mirontaine

  qui sait quand reviendra …*

  “And if you go and say that,” Paolo continues in French, “they’ll think you’re crazy: What’s so criminal about making people travel at night? Force majeure due to the scarcity and overcrowding of trains!” he sneers.

  “That’s the point: to get on people’s nerves while always being on the side of reason,” the Gascon student agrees.

  Jeanine sits up: “That’s enough high-minded politics!” she interrupts. “It’s become an obsession.”

  “She’s right,” Paolo approves, “we’re playing their game.”

  “Even speaking ill of them works in their favor,” the Gascon sighs.

  “But aren’t you overestimating them?” Jeanine snorts, shrugging. “They aren’t really all that smart!”

  A baby frets and a woman’s subdued voice consoles him. They are Russian.

  The Gascon student comes over to me as I go on standing by the stove: “Sit down, mademoiselle, they told me you speak French quite well.” He has a conspiratorial air, like a character in a novel.

  “Pretty well.”

  “The Russians are in their beds,” he continues, “you see? They won’t bother us, they left a corner in the back for us. Such a hospitable people! Such a lofty sense of live and let live!” And before I can take a breath, he begins a disquisition on the Slavic spirit.

  Meanwhile, Jeanine is calling me: “Carlà, come over here by me, hurry up, it’s time to call it a night.”

  The other fugitives would like to approach to question me. A Russian or two leans over to look.

  “I can stay and talk with you if this promiscuity is too much for you,” the Gascon is telling me.

  “Thanks, I’m sleepy,” I say, and lie down beside Jeanine, who huddles against the wall.

  “Just think,” she says, laughing, “we’re the only two promising girls in here. We have lots of choices.”

  “But I’m sleepy, Jeanine.”

  Jeanine claps her hands: “Okay then! Polò sleeps alone tonight.” She laughs delightedly at teasing him. “If anything, I’ll leave you for a bit,” she adds.

  Figures move to the pallets, clamber up in pairs. I spot a woman in her thirties, filthy and unkempt, her hair puffed up like a nest.

  “The one with the lice?” I ask Jeanine.

  “Right.” We laugh like accomplices under the blanket.

  Paolo comes over: “I’m going out.”

  “Do what you like!” Jeanine sulks, and he goes away.

  “Where’s he going?” I ask.

  “To drink.”

  “But where?”

  “He climbs over the fence and comes back at dawn. He does it all the time.”

  “And they don’t catch him?”

  “Not him. There are foreigners outside who come around at night to sell alcohol. It’s too long a story to tell now. Let’s make the most of it and get some sleep.” She holds my hand and curls up.

  Silence spreads over me like a sheet while, on the various beds, movements and gasps of heavy breathing can be heard, rapacious advances.

  “Keep it down a bit, can’t you!” Jeanine protests, sitting up abruptly. “You’re not alone in here, you know. We have this Italian mademoiselle with us now!” She turns to me quietly: “We have nightlife here!” she confides proudly.

  A siren wails, filling the night; it’s still wailing as the rumble of planes builds in the oppressive silence and a heavy bombardment begins, seemingly uprooting everything beyond our thin wooden walls. We can’t take cover, because in Dachau—in the transit camp as well as in the concentration camp—there are no shelters for foreigners, only for the Germans posted there.

  In the darkness the raid precipitates, the frenzy in the beds intensifies, as though everyone is excited by the voracity of the bombs. The door creaks as it’s thrown open. The silhouette of a man staggers in the frame.

  “It’s not him,” Jeanine says, irritated.

  “Jeanine,” the man yells hoarsely, “I’ll kill you.”

  “Ugh, it’s François,” Jeanine tells me with a trilling laugh. She turns around on the pallet: “He’s mad at me. Just because I went with him once, he always wants me. I’m not his!”

  The inebriated Frenchman turns on the light. A shiver of fear spreads through the barrack. It’s the pale student, still a boy, seen near the toilets during the presentation stroll.

  Huddled up, Jeanine shouts, “Turn it off, pig!”

  François grabs the poker from the stove and lunges, grinding his teeth: “I’m going to kill you.”

  Men jump down from the straw mattresses; someone turns off the light.

  The drunk turns it back on.

  A bomb, which seems to rise from the bowels of the earth, as if a lid were lifted up, explodes in a huge burst. After a moment, just in time to make sure that our barrack is still standing, the men rush at François: “Turn it off,” they order, fuming with contempt, “they’ll see us, you filthy bastard.”

  The light is turned off, on, off.

  The deep rumble seems to recede; a charged silence hangs over everything.

  “Pig!” Jeanine’s silvery voice enunciates the word clearly and spills into a delicious laugh. The response is a shout, as the drunk rushes in the direction of Jeanine’s voice.

  The men push him back, swearing at the girl.

  “Jeanine!” the raging young man shouts. “Jeanine!” There is an anguished grief in his voice.

  Jeanine’s words ring out again: “Cuckoo!” and she laughs, drawing more swearing and expletives.

  “Cuckoo,” she teases, “cuckoo.”

  “Throw a bucket of water on his head,” someone shouts.

  “Where is he?”

  “Near the stove.”

  “If anyone moves, he’ll be sorry,” the boy answers coldly. “I have a knife in my hand.” The men stand back.

  “Lean a couple of mattresses against the windows and turn on the light.”

  The light is switched on: François is in front of Jeanine and me, his eyes wild. Jeanine screams, the drunk springs forward, I leap up.
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  “Give me the knife,” I say.

  “Leave me alone,” he says, coming forward, pointing the knife at me. “Get out of my way.”

  “Give me the knife,” I repeat, moving toward him as well, not taking my eyes off him. He can’t be more than eighteen; he looks like a schoolboy. No one around us dares lay a hand on him for fear that he might hurt me. He backs away, pleading.

  “I don’t want anything from you. Stay out of it.” He retreats farther back, among the mattresses.

  “Give me the knife, or I’ll throw a bucket of water in your face.”

  “He’s a raving wino!” Jeanine jeers, encouraged by my involvement.

  When he hears Jeanine’s voice, his eyes light up and he emits a kind of painful bellow.

  “I have nothing against you.” He stares at me. “Get out of my way, I said.”

  “No.” I smile at him.

  He moves toward me again. Lunging forward, I try to wrest the knife from him, but he’s quicker, and wounds me. I’m holding my left hand against my chest and at first it scares me to see it covered in blood. I press harder. François sees it and, thinking he’s stabbed me through the heart, drops the knife and cringes in the corner, looking both frightened and fierce.

  Apprehensively I move my hand away from my chest: there’s only a superficial cut on my index finger.

  “He’s a bit player,” Jeanine remarks, irritated. At which the drunk, more flushed and menacing than before, comes out of his corner, knocks down the robust young man who was trying to keep him there, picks up the knife still on the floor, and yells, “I’ll kill you!” His voice is drowned in a belch.

  Meanwhile, I’ve reached the bucket of water that a Russian woman has been trying to hand me surreptitiously and I grab it. I start to swing it, but François spots me:

  “There she is again. What do you want?” He looks at the bucket. “Don’t throw the water at me,” he pleads, his eyes wide. “Don’t throw the water at me,” he says, weeping, and comes toward me again with the knife in his hand. “Stop her, I haven’t done anything.” He looks around, terrified. “Stop her!” Snarling, he suddenly roars: “I’ll kill you!” He rushes at me, and quick as a flash I pour the water over him.

  He collapses with a convulsive shudder. They undress him, make him lie down. They turn off the light. A growing rumble sucks away every breath before a stunning blow shakes the barrack, pitiably accompanied by the drunk’s wails and sobs.

  “You shouldn’t take risks like that for no reason,” the Gascon murmurs to me tonelessly. He flips on his cigarette lighter, and by the glow of the flame, looking into my eyes, he explains that the relationship between my principled act and its base occasion was disproportionate. His eyes verge on green, his features are regular though not exceptional, there’s something clammy about them. He tells me that François is a high school student who left home due to disagreements with his parents. Jeanine also ran away from home, chasing after a German soldier-boy’s chocolate bar like a horse after a lump of sugar, after which she ended up here, more to avoid working than anything else. Paolo is a petty officer in the navy, a career man, the most intelligent and most mature person in here, but with no real drive.

  Meanwhile, I look over at Jeanine, who has placidly gone to sleep. The bombing has moved farther off, its reverberations muffled as they reach us. The Gascon goes on talking without raising or lowering his voice. He is an engineering student, he was rounded up in Paris, but he’s from the Pyrenees, “where the trees are very tall,” he says, “and the air full of wild scents, the earth damp, savory.” He narrows his eyes: “If you only knew how peaceful it is up there, the looming mountains, brief glimpses of sky amid the green…”

  I realize that I got distracted and I go back to staring at his lips.

  “The sunsets are a never-ending rosy pink,” he murmurs, “rosy but reserved, know what I mean? Not sudden and brief, like those conflagrations that light up the whole sky for an instant and then die away. It’s more like you were seeing it all through water, you follow me? And the air you breathe in is fresh, invigorating to the lungs.”

  I can’t keep my eyes open, sitting on the pallet next to the Gascon student, who in the musty odor of the barrack is breathing in the scents of his land.

  The all-clear sounds.

  The boy looks at his wristwatch.

  “It’s three o’clock,” he says.

  A man sits down next to me: it’s the natty young Italian, clean-shaven, hair slicked back, whom Jeanine had called a fashion plate during our presentation walk.

  “Signorina, I’ve been watching you throughout the evening, and I haven’t been able to figure out what you think about all this, how you view it.”

  “This what?”

  “This horrible situation, these people! You may speak freely, because they don’t understand Italian, and even if they did, do you care? But the Nazis will have to pay for their savage brutality. Only the contempt and rancor that I harbor toward them save me from this motley assemblage.”

  I remain silent, considering: I just can’t feel any disgust.

  “I don’t think it’s so easy to judge,” I say at last.

  “Are you still able to feel alive in all this chaos?”

  “Yes.”

  “You even feel some interest, maybe!”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you say that? Just look at things objectively for a moment: this monstrousness can’t teach anybody anything. And that’s only to speak of ourselves! Think of the ones who haven’t been here, what can they be expected to gain from it? There is nothing universal about our suffering, there is only paroxysm, inhumanity, triviality. I want to forget it all as soon as possible, erase it all.”

  I lie down on the pallet next to Jeanine. The elegant Italian gets up and walks away. The Gascon student has fallen asleep sitting up. A man gropes his way among the wooden structures that support the mattresses and wakes Jeanine. They whisper. Jeanine is telling him her adventures, in blunt, coarse language.

  “You’re really a gamine,” the man remarks, amused. But Jeanine seems to pride herself on his enjoyment and goes on to tell him one of her salacious replies to the Germans: “I don’t go with them!” she exclaims, full of patriotic ardor. And just as serious and determined, she adds, “At least not until now.” She bursts out laughing and asks him what he’d be willing to give her.

  The man sits down beside her, lighting a match whose flame illuminates Jeanine. She gives him a mischievous look: “After all, you men are all the same.” He’s small, well-proportioned, with a clever face and spirited eyes; he explains that, if it’s just an occasional thing, he’d pay her a good fee; if, instead, they were to make it a steady thing, then he’d feed her well and show her a good time.

  “I’m the one showing you a good time!” Jeanine retorts. She sits up, the negotiations intensify, Jeanine raises her voice, turns up her nose, argues, stamps her foot. Finally, she stands up with a big laugh.

  “I don’t like you enough,” she says, leaning over him. Then she turns toward me: “Oh, Carlà woke up!” she exclaims, then says abruptly to the man: “Go away.” Immediately distracted, she goes back to speaking with me. “You’re a nouille,” she says, “but it doesn’t matter. I don’t fuss over things. However, Polò said to make sure I don’t let you go outside. You have to listen to him because he’s the group leader.”

  The man lights a cigarette and goes away.

  “Did you see that?” Jeanine whispers. “I always say no, sorry, to him, you know, because of Polò. Not for him, since he wouldn’t know, but because of people talking—take La Scopina, that one is syphilitic besides. I don’t want to make him look bad. But then again Polò is penniless. I’ll end up meeting that guy behind the kitchen.” She sits up and leans forward: “There she is,” she mutters, “why does she always come here to sleep?”

  La Scopina stops at the foot of our mattresses, a cigarette in her mouth. She’s followed by a man who shines a flashlight o
n her, the two faces coming into the light: hers pasty, broad, and expressionless, his pockmarked, eyes crawling shamelessly over her body.

  “It’s the Moroccan capitalist,” Jeanine whispers, nudging me.

  The two agree on a pair of shoes, which he is holding, for two hours of sex. They disappear into a bed.

  “Disgusting!” Jeanine says. “You can’t even sleep in peace.” She pricks up her ears: “It’s raining.”

  The rain hammers away against the wooden wall behind my head, adding its feverish pounding to the muted jabbering circulating through the unbreathable air of this low-ceilinged room.

  The bright light goes on again, and the glare lends everyone’s faces a dour, dazed expression.

  “It’s four o’clock,” Jeanine says. “They even waste electricity just to hassle us.”

  The door opens again and Benito enters sideways, looking around quickly with haunted eyes, a large bundle under his arm. His clothes are clinging to him, soaking wet, making him seem even skinnier and gawkier, hair slicked down over his forehead and ears sticking out. He tiptoes in and shakes the water off himself at the stove. He opens the bundle, which contains copious slices of bread. Fingering them, he shakes his head in distress: “That’s all we needed, rain! It had to go and rain right now.” He pats the bread with his hand; a slice falls on the floor with a thud, like a stone.

  The fugitives, always famished, spot Benito and call out to him from their beds, not bothering to get up:

  “There’s our savior. Bread for the hungry.”

  “The great Benito! Bread for the ravenous.”

  “Over here, bread for the humble.”

  And he, docile and overwhelmed, dashes here and there, a modest, pleased smile on his lips, waving his hand in denial:

  “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. It’s good bread, even though the rain ruined it a little, otherwise the bread is good. Tomorrow, however,” he promises with a mysterious expression, “tomorrow, you’ll see, I’ll bring you some eggs.” Winking, he brings his index finger to his mouth: “Leave it to Benito, you’ll see!”

  “Hooray for Benito.”

  Jeanine is the only one to get up and go to him. “Poor man,” she says, “such a dejected look. You had yourself quite a shower, be careful you don’t kick the bucket, my dear little fellow!”