Deviation Read online

  The door flies open, and the guard appears again: “Beat it, you!” he tells La Pidocchiosa. “Go on, scram!” He turns to me: “Get going, you too, and cover yourself.” He watches me until I go into my barrack. I lie next to a Russian woman with a scabby newborn suckling at her white, firm breast and I fall asleep again.

  Harsh, irritated voices as hands rip off my clothes. I sit up on the bed.

  Several guards are marching back and forth in the barrack impatiently inciting us. The Nazi, yanking on my collar to wake me, tore my overalls with just one tug; they fall apart as I try to slip them off, stripping for disinfection. François and the French girl with the bangs are also caught in the net. A guard drags over a sack in which each of us must put our clothes. Other guards, in front of the pallets, make everyone strip naked, men and women, one by one. I hide my overalls under the mattress, and no one notices. The Russians are pale and silent. A stocky, pasty-white woman, stark naked, presses her son to her breast, refusing to undress him.

  The guards look at her, fed up.

  By now all of us are exposed, standing between the wooden frames of the bunks. This is the third time I’ve been caught in a disinfection. The Russians are sure that they’re about to be led to die at the slaughterhouse.

  The men weigh their chances with crafty composure, and the women, hugging their cowering, terrified children, refuse to come out of their corners.

  The Nazi guards pull out revolvers and herd the groups to the door.

  The defenseless masses huddle like sheep as the rain gropes at them frenziedly. The sack full of clothes is thrown into a vehicle stopped in front of the barrack.

  I am between François, shamefaced, on one side and the French girl with the bangs, uncaring, on the other.

  We are lined up by the Nazis, who are bundled up in raincoats, the rain beating hard on the smooth visors of their military caps.

  The SS jump into the truck, which starts moving, and we’re ordered to march behind in a column.

  The vehicle accelerates quickly and we start running to keep up with it. Prodded by a motorcycle that follows behind us, honking its horn, we bump into one another, as the sharp stones of the gravel jab the soles of our bare feet. The rain pelts down on us, drenching us.

  “Even the rain here is a Nazi!” mutters the girl with the bangs, who is running beside me.

  With a sudden screeching of brakes, the truck stops in front of another barrack. Surging forward as they run, those in the front rows slam their faces against the rear door. Some are bleeding from the nose. The guards jump down easily in their leather boots. Other naked figures come out of the barrack, shivering with cold when the rain hits them.

  All eyes are so filled with hatred, bloodshot from the fury of humiliation and the craving for revenge, that if the Nazis only realized it, they wouldn’t go around with such cool, detached insensitivity, but would be a little more anxious about their own well-being. But, then again, they do know: our rage excites them, and our hatred slides off their impassivity like rain off their top-quality, well-made raincoats.

  The naked newcomers line up with us. The guards jump back in the truck, which sets out again. We resume running like a pack of dogs, trembling from the cold and from rage, freezing outside and burning inside. The guards seated in the truck follow us with their eyes, checking out our bodies, and, short of gesturing, exchange comments and appraisals of us. We cross the camp’s lengthy yard, skirting the other barracks, crying in pain from the sharp gravel, shivering from the chill rain, jumping and splashing one another with filthy water, holding each other up, chasing the truck that accelerates, then slows down, urged on by the shrill honking of the motorcycle following us.

  We stop again, and our ranks grow to about a hundred.

  Those already disinfected look out from the barracks, watching us with dazed sadness or making barbed remarks as they give us the once-over, depending on their mood. By the time we stop in front of a concrete hangar where the truck unloads the sacks of clothes, we are all covered in mud from the water kicked up by our running. Some of the foreigners strike indecent poses in front of the SS to provoke them, but they don’t pay any attention to us. I am preoccupied by the thought that I have nothing to put on after this is over, that I won’t be able to come out after the disinfection, that I’ll be the only one naked, and this prospect is so upsetting that the shame of my current nudity, imposed by the Nazis, seems bearable by comparison.

  As we wait in front of the concrete hangar, the rain lets up and abruptly stops.

  The dripping bodies seem to suddenly come to life. The women start raising a fuss: their shouts are no longer the earlier brief, anguished cries, and the naked men guffaw.

  The guards seem almost jovial as they herd us along, slapping at us like you do with cows at a fair; we start running again, jumbled together, without the truck to lead us. The soft forms of the women flop and plop; a weeping girl stumbles at every step because she’s busy trying to cover herself with her hands; a disheveled woman with a suckling baby in her arms falls.

  The ones in front go the wrong way, do an about-face, now they’re coming toward us; we’re a mass of flesh and hair, surrounded by shouts and orders as we’re shoved about.

  Nude children cling to the hands and thighs of the women and cry instinctively, looking around wide-eyed without understanding, squeezed and helpless in the frenzied atmosphere.

  Finally, sweaty and feverish, we arrive at a large concrete building.

  In groups of thirty, we are placed in a dark room about a dozen meters wide where, from showers placed in the ceiling, a hot liquid with a sulphurous smell is squirted on us, which burns the skin like acid.

  Everyone tries to move away, jumping in the dark, shrieking, to shield themselves from that rain of disinfectant that stings and forms rivulets at our feet.

  We then go to another big room where there are large sinks all around with small containers of liquid soap and rough cloth towels. The women press to one side, some try to cover up, others, a smaller group, are inclined to display themselves. The men, most of whom are aroused, wash up, spraying water on the women and laughing as they approach them.

  The girl with the bangs dries herself off with provocative squirming while yelling, “Pigs, you never miss a chance!”

  “We’re not stupid!” a man says, stepping forward. Even naked you can tell he’s a newcomer.

  Awkwardly François tries to rub himself against the girl.

  “Stop it,” she says, whipping him with her towel. “I don’t like that!” She’s washing herself with one leg raised and propped on a sink. “You’re a child—you remind me of my adolescent years. I can teach you a lot of things, you know. Just remember that I like dark corners and timid men who need to talk a lot. Also champagne, cigarettes.”

  François, with his paltry, emaciated chest, looks at her and listens, entranced, his eyes already a bit feverish.

  She smiles down on him like a goddess; her body is thin, slightly sagging, marked by bruises and traces of scabies.

  The children’s wailing becomes uncertain and irritable, more lost than ever. Their mothers kiss them feverishly as they wash them.

  Someone taps me on the shoulder.

  “What a pleasant surprise!” It’s the Gascon student. “So I’m not the only one of our group who ended up here.”

  My initial irritation is followed by the hope that he can help me.

  “I have no clothes,” I tell him right away, “how will I get out of here?”

  The Gascon shakes his head: “I understand noblesse oblige, but this time it will really be necessary to steal. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” He turns, pointing out some foreigners who are grabbing the naked women from behind and humping them quickly while peering around with frightened eyes.

  “How easily they’ve managed to transform men into beasts!” he says, the corners of his mouth turned down.

  Three guards burst into the washroom and with contemptuous indignation
urge us foreigners to hurry up. At their appearance a chill spreads through the crowd and we file out silently, heading to the body-hair disinfection room. We are let into the room in groups of twelve: a guard at the door counts us off, men and women together, without distinction.

  The door closes behind us. Men in white coats give each of us a tube of ointment to smear on our groins and armpits: it’s to kill crab lice.

  As soon as the ointment is applied, another group of twelve is let into the room, while the first group proceeds to the head-hair room. Those who have scalp lice have their heads shaved by nurses with rubber gloves.

  I do not have head lice (I got rid of them at Thomasbräu with kerosene), and I move on with the small group of people who still have their hair.

  Next we go on to the skin-diseases room. Each of these rooms is really a very small cubicle, well-lit with powerful bulbs. In each room there are three doctors and some nurses. In the body-hair room I was asked generalities, which I of course answered falsely, and I was given a folder, which I must hand over to the various specialists in turn; in it are recorded the results of their examinations, which are quite scrupulously performed. The doctors are almost all young, aloof, disoriented, and tired. After the skin-diseases room we move on to the genital-examination room; only here are the women examined separately from the men. Then in the lungs room we are given chest X-rays. In the next room an elderly doctor listens to our hearts through a stethoscope; he appears rather nervous, as if he doesn’t quite sympathize with his assignment and is about to give it all up and flee. However, he too examines us meticulously and dictates his diagnoses to the nurse. When it’s my turn he studies me: “Your heart is fine,” he says to me softly, then dictates loudly: cardiac murmur, et cetera. The nose and throat are next. Finally, a tetanus shot in the chest. Many collapse, especially men.

  The mothers are grudgingly glad about these medical exams for their children.

  We come out into a large room behind the hangar where we left our clothing. The clothes, still scorching hot from the disinfection they underwent, are piled on long tables numbered with the corresponding barrack number—that is, the number of the sack from which the garments were taken.

  The foreigners crowd around to retrieve their personal belongings from the piles. I look around for the Gascon. Squabbles arise, with remarks about one another’s anatomical configuration. I find the Gascon student, who’s already clothed, and he hands me a dress:

  “Hurry up, let’s get out of here. I took it from the volunteers’ table.”

  “What?” I ask, surprised. “Are the volunteers also disinfected this way?”

  “Of course! This is an edifying rite, part of the body cult practiced in the Nazi temple of the Sports Palace: a real man is healthy, nudity is healthy. My dear, they don’t do anything without a noble motive! They have to reform mankind, right? And they’re full of just pretexts to excuse their brutality. On the other hand, I see that you too have kept your hair,” he laughs. “Class is immediately recognizable!”

  My warm new garment makes me shiver with pleasure. We go outside where we are again lined up. The Gascon student yanks my arm, however, and drags me behind a barrack:

  “Photographs and fingerprints,” he whispers. “We have to avoid it at all costs. Let’s go join those people over there.”

  Hundreds of people, dressed every which way, standing three by three with aluminum bowls in their hands, are waiting in line in front of a long kitchen barrack. It’s time to distribute rations.

  Those who have received their food go back to eat it in their own barrack.

  “Will they give us food?” I ask, ravenous.

  The Gascon chuckles, walking briskly: “No, we’re just passing by to mix in with the ones disinfected earlier. Photographs mean death. Records with photos are sent around to police departments to search for suspected foreigners hiding in the great Reich. If nothing shows up against the subject, they give him an Ausweis (ID card). Otherwise, he gets punished according to German war regulations, which state, for some reason, that we’re all to be considered German soldiers, therefore deserters. You gave a false name, right?”

  “Of course.”

  While the Gascon talks about the consequences of absurdity typical of totalitarian states, we reach our barrack.

  We find a few escapees at the window: “And today we ate as well!” Jean de Lille exclaims.

  “Yeah, that too!” The Gascon student nods.

  “One less thing to think about, right?” murmurs the French girl with the bangs, who got away before us.

  “Here’s our little saint!” Jeanine’s lively voice rings through the air: “Where the hell have you been?”

  “At disinfection.”

  She laughs heartily: “Imagine how much good it does, with these filthy straw mattresses!” She slaps her forehead. “Why on earth do those guys do it. You, of course, don’t have any sense: Polò and I ended up in the toilets, you should stick with me, how many times must I tell you? There are the toilets!!!! By the way, Benito had something to tell you, so much the worse for you.”

  “Couldn’t he tell it to me now?”

  “You really don’t deserve it; but let’s go, come on.” She laughs. She jumps out the window. She’s wearing a blouse of immaculate white cotton that highlights her immature breasts, a short dark skirt, white socks, and shoes with laces. She has a red sweater tied around her waist.

  “You got spruced up?” I laugh, seeing her.

  “You too, apparently! Come on.” She takes my hand and leads me away firmly, even more chirpy in the snow that has begun to drift down lightly and is settling gently on us and on the things around us. “Well,” she laughs. “It’s the actor I told you about, sweetie,” she whispers in my ear, “he did me up good as new, but mum’s the word, otherwise they’ll talk about me.” She raises her voice: “What do you expect! La Scopina is envious, that’s why she says I’m syphilitic and that the Germans sent me here. But everybody knows I ran away! I didn’t come from the hospital like her!” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffs loudly: “I’m sixteen, you know!” She’s crying.

  We’ve reached the garbage dump, where we find Benito, who gives me a huge chunk of bread with two cucumbers. Jeanine lets off steam and sighs. Finally, she takes a pair of cotton stockings out from under her blouse.

  “My gift to you,” she says, “put them on right away, last night I noticed your legs were purple under your overalls.” She laughs again, her eyes shining and mischievous, a dimple in her cheek.

  I turn aside to put them on, I don’t have any garters; Benito pulls some twine out of his pocket. I slip the stockings on and tie them up, they stay up just fine with two strings attached to a string tied around my waist.

  Jeanine claps her hands delightedly.

  “Now let’s go.” She hugs me, glances over at Benito, who devours her with his eyes, like a dog, and overcome by a sudden impulse she says, “Go on alone, I’ll join you later.” Then she adds, “Only a minute, you know, he’s so kind, the poor guy, and so lonely, and he’s not so unattractive after all.”

  I go back to the barrack breathing in the insubstantiality of things in the rising mist. I approach the fence to peer at the concentration camp in the distance. The barracks there emerge indistinctly, desolate and kindly. Who knows what my companions are doing?

  Their faces come back to me, frightened, brash, and anguished, reduced to a swarm of horrible, wonderful insects.

  *

  “This is the day I’ve been waiting for,” Jean de Lille says, excited and pale. “It’s time: the Germans are busy photographing the people with nothing on and feeding the ones wearing clothes.”

  The Russians haven’t returned yet; we’re alone in the barrack: Jean de Lille and I, Paolo and Jeanine, Benito and La Pidocchiosa, La Scopina and the coal man, the girl with the bangs and François, the Gascon student, Jeanine’s French prisoner, the elegant Italian, and the Moroccan.

  “It’s tim
e,” Jean de Lille repeats.

  “I’ll go over there,” the coal man tells him, “get a move on.” He winks and goes out.

  “Right,” Jean de Lille agrees.

  Jeanine rushes toward him: “I’m coming with you!”

  Paolo pulls her back: “You’re staying here and that’s that.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Jeanine repeats, shaken by hysterical sobs.

  “The war will end soon,” the worker from Lille reassures her, stroking her head.

  The Gascon student whispers in my ear, “If you like, if you want, I’ll leave everything and we can go too.”

  “They tricked me, those swine tricked me,” Jeanine wails, crushed.

  “I’m hungry,” the girl with the bangs says.

  “Calm down, Jeanine.”

  “Take me with you!” Jeanine shrieks, clinging to the worker.

  “That’s enough!” Paolo slaps her, and La Scopina clamps the girl’s mouth shut.

  The worker from Lille is in a panic: “Do you want to attract their attention? You’re doing it on purpose!”

  “You calm down too!” Paolo snaps at him.

  Jeanine raises her tearstained face.

  “Your time will come too,” Jean de Lille tells her.

  He shakes hands with everyone: “Good luck.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Cheer up, don’t look that way,” Paolo says, “you look like a fugitive! Come on, let’s do the ritual farewell.”

  And in a whispered breath: “Here’s to freedom, hip hip…”

  “Hooray,” the others respond in muted tones, their expressions supportive and determined.

  “Goodbye.”

  The door opens a crack; the worker from Lille slips through the opening.

  None of us speaks.