Deviation Page 8

  Her attention is attracted by the door slowly opening: a girl is stealthily creeping in and looking around warily. Under a military jacket she’s wearing a tattered silk dress. She closes the door, sees that Jeanine is watching, and smiles at her, revealing long, yellow teeth, her lips rimmed with worn-off lipstick. She sits behind the stove, as I had, and talks with Jeanine, looking at her with big myopic bright eyes. Her hair is worn cropped, a boyish cut with bangs, and the long strands on her forehead seem like thready legs incessantly tickling the short, slanting hair of her eyebrows.

  A young man plops down next to me with a thump. “You must be the new girl!” he says. “I’m Jean de Lille.”

  I close my eyes, hoping to sleep, but then I realize that the introduction ritual is continuing despite me. It’s a major help for me to know whom I can turn to, so I have to stay awake. Meanwhile, Jean de Lille tells me he was deported as a hostage, but being here is almost worse than being in the labor camps. And he starts explaining the differences that I’m well aware of—though I don’t tell him—between the various camps. There are five types: in addition to the transit camps for everybody (Durchgangslager), there are the camps for free workers where volunteers are sent (Freiarbeitslager); camps for prisoners of war (Kriegsgefangenenlager); labor camps (Arbeitslager), where those deported following a roundup are interned along with hostages, the families of political prisoners, partisans, and foreign deserters; and finally, there are the concentration camps (Konzentrationslager), which hold the victims of the racial purges—namely, Jews—as well as political suspects, saboteurs, illegal prostitutes, pimps and lesbians, common criminals, thieves, murderers, fences, rapists, and the list goes on, “which is not to mention the so-called final solution camps, you get me? Annihilation.”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding.

  “They seized me at the factory,” he says. “I’m a worker. When they bomb us, I think I’m hearing the racket at my old foundry. In Lille I worked in the blast furnaces. And you?”

  “Roundup.”

  He leans over to my ear: “Where did you escape from?”

  I tilt my head: “Back there,” I whisper.

  “A concentration camp?” He’s astounded. “How come they didn’t put you in a labor camp?” But then he laughs: “Yeah, of course, what can you expect, what’s one slut more or less.” He gives me a look. “It happens.”

  He has sat up and is resting his head against a wooden post of our bunk. He has a wholesome, open face and willful hazel eyes; speaking slowly, looking adamantly straight ahead, he curses the Nazis, his obscene, brutal words standing in singular contrast to the thoughtful, quiet expression on his face.

  Moving closer to me, he lies down again, on his side, he too stinking of sweat.

  “Tonight they were bombing as though they were being paid on commission!” he says. “Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come on, let’s make love,” he sighs resignedly.

  I shake my head no.

  “Ah.” He relaxes. He looks at me almost affectionately and, stretching out comfortably beside me, confesses that he’s sick and tired of this life where fucking is all there is, and that this is the first time since he came to Germany that he’s been able to spend fifteen minutes with a woman without having to get right down to business. He explains that women are leeches and never leave a man in peace. All of them, you know? He confides that he likes me well enough and would willingly have satisfied me, but that he’d rather talk—he’s troubled, he has a secret, he turns over practically on top of me and pinches my cheek: “I’m going to escape today,” he whispers. “What do you think, will I make it?”

  “In daylight?”

  “In daylight. It may seem strange, but there’s less surveillance than at night.”

  “How?”

  “I got hold of a free worker’s documents—he died in a bombing. The factory where he worked was destroyed as well. With those papers in hand, I’ll go to the Labor Bureau. After a couple of months of exemplary boulot, I’ll request a leave. And once I get to Lille, I’ll go into hiding. That’s it.” Bending toward the light a moment, he pulls out his ID papers, winks at me: “I’m no fool, huh?”

  His imminent freedom suddenly merges with his persona, and, listening to him, I take a sudden liking to him, as if he could free me as well. I get up from the bed to go and lie down someplace else: “Be careful, Jean.”

  “Did I bore you?” he asks, surprised. (“Ch’t’ai emmerdée?”)

  “No. But you should sleep—if not, when the time comes, you’ll be too tense. You only have a few hours.”

  “Hey, you’re right, but you know”—he pulls my arm—“the thought of a little fuck with you is almost tempting, what do you say?” He looks at me frankly.

  I laugh wholeheartedly. “Good luck.”

  Enough, I don’t want to hear or see anything or anyone, I want to go to sleep. I wander through the soggy, foul-smelling air in search of an empty pallet. Let’s hope Jean de Lille makes it.

  But the newcomer with the bangs gestures to me from behind the stove.

  “You’re from over there, right?” she asks me in French.

  “Yes.”

  “Are there dogs here?”

  “So far I haven’t seen any.”

  “Do many die here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “These people.” She looks around. “Can they be trusted?”

  “Yes. None of the others know who we are, and between ourselves we have no choice but to help one another. But tell me, did anything happen after I…”

  “When?”

  “Seven weeks ago.”

  “Pick a number!” She shrugs.

  “The Italian girl, from Block Four, at the barrack.”

  “Oh!” she interrupts. “Maybe…” And she clams up.

  “Well?” I press her.

  “I don’t know the details. I was in for…” She dismisses her explanation with a wave and goes on: “In short, as you see, being a common criminal, I didn’t hang around with the other types. But you know how it is, don’t you? All of us with no soup in the evening and…” She falls silent again, then shudders: “The other day they caught two outside here and shot them in the courtyard. A girl was screaming and they stifled her with chloroform.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, a Jewish girl, they say. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “Don’t stay here, right in the middle of the room—go to a corner.”

  “I’m cold,” she says, but she gets up and moves away.

  Jeanine calls me:

  “She’s French, but I don’t like her, her neck and ears aren’t right. However, if the others want to let her join us anyway, let them. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not proposing anything. Let’s go to sleep, it must be almost six, and at seven we have to disappear, because there’s roll call in the barracks.”

  We hear the door slam.

  “It must be Polò coming back! But I won’t let him see me, that’ll teach him not to go roaming,” Jeanine says. Then: “Nah! It’s the coal man.”

  A shambling, worn-out man with a skimpy necktie comes in.

  La Scopina appears, short of breath, flushed, and disheveled.

  “Don’t be so upset, my dear,” the coal man says. “You were upset by the bombing, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He strokes her hair. The Moroccan’s face pops out, observing the couple with a knowing smile.

  “I’ve been looking for you in all the barracks,” the coal man says gently. He sits down on an empty pallet near Jeanine’s and mine; La Scopina lies down and rests her head on her friend’s lap as he encircles her face with his arm.

  “Look how beautiful she is!” the man says, stroking her face with a hand grimy with coal. I sit up and in the dim light of the wooden four-poster look at the woman’s slack face.

  “She looks like an ad for Cadum baby talc.”

  Jeanine splutters derisiv
ely, and La Scopina straightens up, furious: “Shut up and mind your own business.”

  “Which is?” Jeanine leaps up, glaring at her defiantly.

  “I won’t say.”

  “No, go ahead, say it, that way I’ll talk too.”

  “You know very well why you’re left in peace here.”

  “Why squabble?” the coal man intercedes gently.

  “She’s a snotty brat!” La Scopina shrugs and lies down again with her head on her friend’s lap. Jeanine snorts angrily, but doesn’t respond.

  I get up, smiling at Cadum baby talc to please the coal man.

  The door flies open, letting an opaque dawn filter through, and Paolo walks in whistling.

  The Gascon student wakes up with a start, looks at me: “It’s awful,” he says, “you can’t get a single moment’s sleep. Look at the Russians, though, they don’t hear or see anything, it’s like they aren’t even here. Western civilization on the other hand frays the nerves and makes us touchy.” He goes on—and on, and on—to explain the damaging effects on the nervous system of a coddled lifestyle dependent for generations on creature comforts.

  Jeanine is on the alert.

  “Where have you been, with all the bombs?”

  “You know where,” Paolo replies.

  “Busgiardò [liar]!” she spits at him in her accented Italian. And turns over, facedown, as a sign of protest.

  “Good, you’re doing me a favor,” Paolo retorts, “because I’m dead on my feet.”

  An irritated shrug from Jeanine, who then falls asleep.

  The Gascon has gotten as far as Tsar Peter the Great.

  La Scopina wants the coal man to open up his pants.

  I move, squeezing among the people crammed together. On the floor in a corner the newcomer with the bangs is making love with François, accompanied by lots of scratching, biting, and shrill giggling.

  I head toward the center of the barrack, under the lamp.

  “Signorina,” the natty Italian with the dark slicked-back hair calls me, “can’t you find a quiet place?”

  I flop down next to him with a sigh: “That’s right, I can’t. At this rate I won’t make it to the end of the war. At our camp it was different: we were all women and at night the silent stillness drove me crazy.”

  “Are we already having regrets?” He tells me that he is engaged to a German girl, that they love each other very much, that he can’t live away from her, that he is anti-Nazi.

  I get up again without even saying a word, and I run into Paolo, standing near the window. He grabs my arm: “Carla,” he says, panting, “it’s starting.”

  “What?”

  His features are changing. From her bed Jeanine cries out and rushes to him.

  “Polò, Polò,” she calls hoarsely, slapping him.

  Paolo goes limp; we hold him up by the armpits.

  “Give us some space!” Jeanine yells.

  He’s drooling, his eyes are staring fixedly, and his legs dangle as if disjointed. As we try to drag him onto a pallet, he slips out of our arms and falls backward onto the floor, striking his head on the boards, and starts kicking and writhing. His eyes become bloodshot, he grinds his teeth with a harsh scraping sound, foamy spittle runs down his face.

  Jeanine sits on his chest, heedless of the blows and kicks. “It’s delirium tremens,” she tells me. “Hold his head. Someone get me some water.” Paolo goes on rolling his eyes and grating his teeth. Jeanine moistens the hem of her dress and bathes his forehead. With deft hands she tries to clamp shut his jaw.

  “He always winds up biting his tongue. I can sense when it’s about to happen to him. He can’t stay cooped up indoors, he knows it. It’s suffocating in here, he shouldn’t tire himself, he shouldn’t get drenched, but does he listen, no, now there he is like a cockroach on its back! Drink this, drink!” Meanwhile, she bathes his forehead and closes his eyes, leans down quickly to kiss his brow. “Stay still, rhino. I go with him on purpose, what do you think. I can see it coming soon, the day when he’ll be loufoque [crazy]. Lie still, I tell you!”

  Squirming even harder, Paolo hurls her onto the ground, against the corner of a bed.

  “Hold him down, I said!” she yells, still on the floor. “Otherwise he’ll hurt himself, he’ll crack his head!” She leaps up and tries to jump on top of him as he kicks to break free. A few men restrain her while others try to immobilize Paolo, who, released from Jeanine’s weight, has started whimpering like an animal.

  “Drink!” Jeanine shouts at him, staring at him like a madwoman. “Drink as much as you can, you damn fool, you good-for-nothing you. Gag him, tie him up, I tell you—he’s even more worked up than usual today!”

  Finally, they manage to tie him up and move him onto a pallet.

  Jeanine gets up quickly. “The other night,” she tells me, “it happened to him in the toilet, I’d gone there with him because I saw it coming, he started beating me up, I stayed with him until I realized he was about to strangle me, and then I ran for it. But once I was outside, I knew I couldn’t leave him there like that, so I stayed outside the door to listen. It went on for so long. I was a block of ice. He was ranting like a mad dog. When I didn’t hear anything more, I went back in, I sat on the floor next to him and rested his head in my lap until he came to. Meanwhile, men were coming and going to piss. But you know what? I’ve got half a mind to dump him.” The electric light goes off and we are left suspended in the bleak, milky light of early morning that filters through the two windows. In the gloom it seems like the rain is coming down even harder, directly over us.

  “Now the party’s over,” Jeanine sighs. “Soon the fumigation games will begin. They start at eight. We have to get out of here. Put on one of the Russians’ skirts, your overalls stink of Germany a kilometer away. Now how on earth am I supposed to move this pachyderm?” She points to Paolo. “It’s a shame, but with the risk of a German raid, you have to be always on the alert, sleep with one eye open. Can you see why I sometimes feel tired? I can’t leave him snoring like that. They’ll end up taking him for a four-engine bomber and sound the alarm.” She laughs to herself.

  “Polò, wake up, Polò. Damn this war. Polò.”

  *

  As if electrified, the fugitives climb through the windows, jump out, and disappear in the rain.

  “Beat it,” the coal man fusses, “here they are for roll call.”

  I run to the toilet.

  La Scopina appears ahead of me: “Make yourself scarce, there’s a guard in front of the toilet.”

  I head for the garbage dump. In the drab grayness I make out the concentration camp’s barbed wire fence. It’s plunged in a silence that to me seems menacing and deadly. The rain drenches me to the bone. The sound of footsteps. I drop to the ground. I wish I never had to move again, that I could just lie there on that garbage, become one with that ever-present garbage.

  The rumble of trucks, shouts, the shrill sound of military whistles.

  I dream that Jeanine and I go to steal a sheep on some dangerous rocks. We find a lamb and break its legs, but it’s a small child instead. We don’t know where to hide him and we bury him at night. Then we go to an illusive village, which we can’t get into, but we creep along it furtively. Finally, we come to a small cottage. The door is wide open and the light inside is on. A beautiful girl with long dark hair tied at the back of her neck comes toward us in her nightgown.

  “Don’t kill her,” I whisper to Jeanine.

  “Why would I kill her?” she replies.

  Standing on either side of the girl, we push her out of the house and warn her that thieves are coming to steal her treasure.

  “Don’t go back inside,” Jeanine says, giving me a meaningful look, “I’ll go in and hide it. You, stay out here with Carlà, don’t let them see you, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

  The beautiful girl follows me along the road and I make her lie down in a ditch at the foot of the wall.

  “Here they are,” I say, and cove
r her face with a sheet. I wave to Jeanine, who is watching me. Jeanine slams doors and overturns pieces of furniture; then she comes over on tiptoe, behind the girl who is stretched out, and with a hatchet splits her skull. I hear voices and I sit on the victim’s head while Jeanine sits on her belly. When silence returns, I remove the sheet; in front of me lies a cheerful little old lady, with two pointy teeth protruding from her lower lip; she looks at me astonished, bleeding from the eyes.

  I lift her up, shove her in a sack, squeezing her in, and load her on my back. Jeanine is carrying the treasure. When we get to the dangerous rocks, we throw the woman and the treasure in a ravine and go to the police station to turn ourselves in.

  “What are you doing here?” someone says, shaking me. I can’t move my limbs, which feel enormous and floppy, like sponges swollen with water.

  I turn my head: a German guard is leaning over me. I’m gripped by a terror that dulls my wits.

  “I’m innocent!” I cry. “I’m innocent!”

  The soldier narrows his blue eyes.

  “Get up or you’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “I fell.”

  The guard slips a flask off his belt and pours a spurt of cognac in my mouth.

  “Go back to your barrack, it’s time for disinfection.”

  The sound of the word disinfection brings me back to reality, yet given my lethargy, I feel like I’m still dreaming. Still, I have a flash of cunning:

  “I have to go to the toilet,” I say.

  “Go ahead, don’t take long.”

  The guard helps me stand and props me up. Suddenly remembering that he’s a Nazi, I gather my strength and rush past him, kicking and splashing through the water. He catches up with me, grabs my arm, opens the door to the toilet, and shoves me inside.

  A pale light filters down from a skylight as the rain beats insistently, its incessant, tedious pounding a complement to the squalor. La Pidocchiosa, the one with the lice, is sitting on one of the toilet bowls.

  “You’re sleepy, huh? It’s comfortable in here. I come here to take a rest too. I don’t like this life, my fine girl, that’s why I don’t get ahead. I work just enough to be able to procure the bare minimum needed to eat and smoke, I don’t think that’s a lot, but I don’t enjoy it at all. The trouble is that this temperament of mine holds me back. Jeanine, for instance, is successful: sixteen years old, and she does it for personal pleasure, doesn’t haggle about price! Me, though … nobody wants me.”