Kapo, p.16
Kapo, page 16
There she stood a long time without moving. New coats and heads both covered and uncovered pressed into the store; some passed her, stopped in front of her, concealing her. Her combs disappeared, reappeared, her profile. Then she was turned in the opposite direction, toward the counter. Her coat sleeves bent, and long-fingered hands emerged to put things from the counter into her shopping bag. Then her coat stopped flexing and moved out of the frame of the display window.
Lamian waited. He went back to the corner. Yes, she was going home, by the same street, with the same listless gait, except now the shopping bag, full and bulging, pulled her down on one side, making her shoulders uneven.
He followed, as if she were a magnet, though it was clear that he would not learn anything more about her. She had simply bought the groceries she needed, and would now make herself lunch. A dish of potatoes or green beans, or perhaps something less common, more refined, like cauliflower or asparagus, to which she would add a veal cutlet or two, tossing them in with the vegetables or broiling them separately. She would move back and forth as she had earlier in the store, cutting, peeling, turning the stove on and off, watching as the ingredients fell apart and changed color; she would breath in their aroma, which would tantalize the membranes of her nose, throat, and stomach, coaxing forth the juices of hunger, and she would surrender completely to the promise of surfeit and pleasure.
Her sole pleasure, perhaps, since the camp, a pleasure that had grown into a passion. The sense of triumph at the moment of fulfillment. She would hum something from her memory while her spoon stirred in the pan, releasing those wonderful smells. And she would continue to murmur the song she had begun while she shoveled the finished meal down her gullet. Or even sing out loud, not thinking of the danger from the morning train that hung over her like a black cloud. If he were to ring the doorbell she was now approaching, interrupt her in her mealtime song, that orgy of pleasure, her mouth would drop open, her voice rise to a shriek, a scream, and crumbs would spray into his face, and half-chewed pieces of food, and spittle and stomach gases.
BUT THAT WAS HIS HUNGER, NOT HERS, LAMIAN DECIDED, at the observation post where he had again stationed himself. After Helena Lifka disappeared into her house, his stomach began to quake, as if a new attack was about to begin. But instead of the pain that cut horizontally across his belly, there was a dull pressure, as if a stone were caught there. His mouth filled with saliva, reminding him that he. had eaten nothing since morning, and little the previous day.
He cast a glance in the direction of the corner store, where he could buy food. In other words, leave his post. He would lose nothing by doing so, for he wasn’t going to muster the courage to ring or knock at the door, and he had failed to approach Helena Lifka when she was in the street. Which he didn’t regret. She would only wail, “You won’t let me eat! Even now, you won’t let me eat until you’ve finished torturing me!” He did not want to torture her, but he knew he would, must, if he persisted in his desire to see her.
For the time being, then, he would leave. But he didn’t set out immediately; he resisted the call of hunger. It seemed ludicrous, this hunger, his as well as hers; it tickled his gorge into a guffaw that sent hiccuping ripples through his chest. Swallowing chunks from the body of another in order to fill one’s own. Like stuffing a bird with straw, a dead bird made to seem otherwise by parting its beak a little and spreading its wings, and putting glass beads with an inimical gleam in place of its lifeless eyes.
He was such a bird, wings spread toward that other, similar bird across the street.
She was preparing her meal, maybe already eating: it was despicable, insulting, and he felt like running to that door and knocking, not to introduce himself and suggest that they thrash over the past together, but to scold her, curse her for an old fool, slave to her stomach, for which she was ready to forget.
He didn’t want her to forget. That was why he had come—so that she wouldn’t forget. Or was it so that he wouldn’t forget? In any case he had to leave this doorway, where there was an unbearable draft (in the gloom behind him were hallways, passageways, perhaps leading to a garden) and where his insides were churning with hunger.
Eat with her? Knock, not to scold or curse but to request a place at her table, sitting at it and watching as she bustled back and forth in front of the stove, peeling and mixing and stirring to that unconscious hum of hers, which he would now accompany with his own hum, making a duet of famished former prisoners.
What an opera! An opera mundi. The two of them, gaping mouths agleam with the gold of false teeth, trumpeting their hunger and the joy that it would soon be satisfied. That old familiar duo, Lifka and Lamian, or, since the first letters of their names already matched so well, L&L. Performing at festivals that featured a new kind of singing, in which the notes were subject not to the laws of harmony but to the demands of the body itself. Concerts on every continent, since the need for food was basic and universal. Their itinerary arranged by a team of secretaries, with little flags pinned to a map on the wall; special consideration given to spots with concentrations of former prisoners, who could attend the performances at a reduced rate. Moving encounters, ovations. “Bravo! We couldn’t do better at Dachau! Or we at Bergen-Belsen! Auschwitz is still Auschwitz, tops in everything.”
“Im Lager Auschwitz war ich zwar so manchen Monat, so manches Jahr,” he recalled the tune. But that was a real song, a classic, intended not to mock but reminisce. What jackass thought it up? An inmate from Vienna, according to a camp legend. The kind of song the German guards were partial to, since they, too, felt their stay in the camp was an unerasable part of their lives, and readily grew sentimental over it. “Kommando, singen!” the order would resound in the warm May day, a day of white and yellow butterflies, a day whose end would see many of them, butterflies and singers alike, back inside the wires of death; and the prisoners would obediently open their mouths and let the tender notes roll from their throats, adjusting the cadence to their weak, unsteady steps.
Revolting. All that mimicking of life in the non-life inside the wire, all those attempts to preserve a few kernels of humanity. Gathering after supper in the cubicles to drink together a can of denatured alcohol obtained in exchange for cigarettes from the Russians, who siphoned it from the tanks of wrecked planes on the junk heap next to the runway. Christmas, Easter, New Year’s—with song again, but this time hushed, quavering song, so the guard wouldn’t hear, for it hadn’t been ordered. Toys made of scraps of wood and iron scavenged from workshop floors, which handy prisoners would spend weeks carving and trimming into some shape and then, with a smile, present to a Gypsy child or a little Pole hanging around the wire: “Here, go play!”
That need for civility and kindness, which vanished at the first warning from a guard or Kapo, or was cut short by a blow, a swagger stick to the head from which there was no awakening. The honor of trying turned abruptly into nothing. All those diversions of gentleness crumbling into suffering, drowned in suffering, and trampled into the bricks of former bones, former flesh, former blood, former convolutions of the brain. Into nothing.
And so would their song, that cry of hunger and long-awaited pleasure by two who shared the same memories. It would spring from silence only to be replaced by silence. Was that why he had come, instead of keeping silent, silent until the end? To prove, whimpering, sniveling—to prove to whom?—that even in those black dregs he had existed, that something which possessed form and harmony—like those handmade toys—could be extracted from him, even if it was only a song of hunger, a scream of hunger, the wail of a doddering old man who had barely eaten in the last twenty hours and whose legs were weak from standing!
ANGRILY, HE STRODE DOWN THE STREET TO THE CORNER store, but when he looked through the glass door and again saw a curtain of queueing overcoats—new people, no doubt—the will to go in deserted him. What he really needed now, more than food, was to get away to some quiet place, shed his coat and hat and take a breather; a place where he could empty his bladder and wash his hands, settle his bones on a chair at a bar table, and relax.
He turned the corner. Which way was the center of town? He set his course by the recollection of his taxi ride, following it backward. First he went down a quiet street with no shops except for a dry cleaner’s, then turned right, into a wider street which ran parallel to Bogdan Zimonjić and was lined with residential buildings. Proceeding from intersection to intersection, he at last found himself amid busier traffic.
Cars, people going in and out of doorways and gates arched with canvas or truncated near the top by raised blinds. He searched among the signs, stopping frequently, until on the third corner he came across what he wanted: three windows of frosted glass, tall swinging doors with SNACKERY written above them, and a separate sign that said SHORT ORDERS AND BEER in smaller letters, jutting from the wall on rods. He pushed open the doors and found himself in a room with tables ranged along the walls to the left and right. In the middle bulged the long semicircle of a massive bar paneled in dark wood. Behind this fortresslike structure stood two waitresses in bright dresses.
On the right all the tables were occupied; on the left, by a window, sat a single customer. Lamian chose a table near the bar. Behind it was an empty coatrack, so he first hung up his coat and hat, then decided, as long as he was still standing, to look for the men’s room. He didn’t have far to look: the door was right by the coatrack, frameless but equipped with a handle. Inside was a small anteroom with a sink; from there a second door, open and emitting a pungent odor, led to the toilet. Closing the door made the room dark, so he opened it again and looked for the switch. He found it, clicked it on, but no light.
What to do? Leaving the door ajar behind him, he fumbled in his pockets and found some matches, lit one, then stepped carefully to the toilet, unbuttoned his trousers, and urinated. By this time the match had burned out, so he felt for the chain and found it; but pulling on it produced nothing but a metallic thump above his head. Lighting another match, he went back out to the sink and ran water over his hands. He would have washed more thoroughly, but there was nothing to dry himself with and he didn’t want to be seen in the restaurant with a wet face, so he merely rubbed his hands, pressed the door handle with his elbow, and went out.
The table he had chosen was no longer free: a soldier was sitting there, or, rather, judging by the silver ribbons on his shoulders, a noncommissioned officer, a handsome blond youth with close-cropped hair, a grave face, and a glass of beer in front of him. Since it appeared that Lamian couldn’t have a table to himself, he decided to join this man, who could be expected not to have companions or to linger too long in the restaurant. Bowing slightly, he asked permission to join him and, when the soldier nodded indifferently, sat down.
The waitress, a strapping woman who wore a green crown-shaped band around her brown hair and a wide pleated skirt, also green, came out from behind the bar and approached not Lamian but the soldier. She stood over him, putting her hand, which held a crumpled napkin, on the back of the chair, and said something in a low voice. The soldier threw back his head and laughed, showing large white teeth, but didn’t answer, only shrugged slightly. She then mentioned times, a woman’s name, the bus, the rain, and went away. The soldier, still smiling, brought his glass to his lips, drained it, took out a cigarette, and lit it.
Lamian also reached for a cigarette and began to smoke. Hunger was burning in his stomach. He looked around for the waitress. She was standing behind the bar now with the other waitress, who was darker and of a somewhat smaller build, but they looked alike because of the same green uniform. He coughed to get her attention, said he wanted something to eat. She turned absently, went over to the next table, without a word took the folded menu from in front of the single customer there, set it before Lamian, and again leaned toward the soldier. Lamian spread the menu out and immediately noted that it was not typed but printed, and therefore fixed. The list of beverages covered the entire left page and half of the right; only at the bottom of the right page, under the heading “Short Orders,” did a few dishes appear.
And not a single one of them was familiar; they were merely fancy names, like Wine Stuffing and Minced Appetizer. Only Hunter’s Plate near the bottom suggested ordinary food, so that was what he ordered as the waitress was bending toward the soldier. Lamian’s glance fell on the half-empty glass in the soldier’s large, sunburned hand, and he added, “A beer, too, please” as he closed the menu.
The woman still didn’t look at him but did tear herself away from the soldier and went behind the bar, and with a half-smile on her face returned with a glass of beer and a plate of food, which she set in front of Lamian, as an afterthought moving the plate closer to him with a few feminine gestures, then tossing a “Not much longer” to the soldier as she went back behind the bar.
Lamian looked at the plate: on it lay a bun, and on top of the bun, fastened with a toothpick sticking straight up, a ball of something dark and grainy with a slice of red pepper, oily bright, along the edge. He searched the table for cutlery; there was none. Then he realized that he couldn’t use a knife and fork on this multistory dish anyway, so he grabbed the end of the toothpick, lifted it with the ball, turned the ball and sniffed—he could smell onion—before finally taking a cautious bite. It was ground meat, heavily seasoned. He broke off a piece of the bun, put it in his mouth, then hesitantly lifted the pepper with two fingers and bit off the end. The food was not succulent, only hot, spiky dry. But it was food and, washed down with some beer, filled his ravenous stomach. There was too little of it, however; that he could see before he had eaten half the bun and an equal share of the meatball and pepper, so he looked around for the waitress with the intention of renewing his order.
Neither waitress was anywhere to be seen. Lamian noticed a new customer, an older man, approaching from the door, and was surprised to see that the man looked Jewish. Not so much because of something Levantine in the face, which was long and pale, with brown, slightly protuberant, troubled eyes, a broad, prominent nose, thick lips, and a diffident, withdrawn chin—such features were often found in the Balkans—but because of the man’s bearing. Lamian unerringly recognized, in the bearing, the sign of that otherness—but to him likeness—which he had always seen as Jewish.
The man wore only a suit, no overcoat or hat, which was at odds with the season, autumn, and at odds, too, with his age. The suit was dark gray, almost black, clean but carried with neither grace nor care, over a shirt that was white but well worn, the top button undone. There was no tie, as if he had thrown on his clothes in haste. A city person, that much was obvious, but lacking the middle-class confidence which comes with position, and becomes more rigid the higher the position. He approached with the gangly walk of an itinerant locksmith or tramp, though the suit said that he was neither. Heading for the table with the lone customer and performing a vague bow that testified to his experience in cafés, he grabbed the back of the nearest chair, pulled it clumsily, weakly, from the table, as far as was necessary, and sat down opposite the man.
Hunched, he turned and raised a white, long-fingered hand unshaped by physical work and waved it as shakily as he had walked. Surprisingly, the waitress, the same one who had served Lamian, appeared out of nowhere—she must have been watching from behind the curtain in back of the bar—and came over. In a raspy voice, the man ordered. Lamian couldn’t make out what the order was, but he was sure he didn’t hear the name of a single dish that was on the menu. The woman answered with a loud, drawled “Okay,” then left with a swish of her pleated skirt. Lamian tried to stop her, to add his order, but it was too late; she had already passed him, playfully touching the soldier’s arm on her way.
Lamian quickly finished the Hunter’s Plate, only to find that his hunger was greater than before. The way, he remembered, he would gulp down a pot of watery soup and it would be worthless against the gaping void within him, a void like a wound from a murderer’s blade. He felt that wound not only in his neck, where he imagined it, but everywhere. He had become one entire wound, a hole of pain, his entrails laid bare, exposed. He had the urge to wrap himself in his arms, for protection, and half expected the new customer to do the same.
It irritated him to see the man instead sitting relaxed in his chair, almost slouching, as if there was no threat and this café really was a place where anyone could enter, sit down, order what he wanted, and wait calmly while the food was being prepared. As if no knife lay in ambush, gleaming suddenly in the hand of the soldier sitting next to Lamian, or the hand of the man who sat across from the newcomer—to be plunged into belly, side, or throat, the newcomer’s or Lamian’s own.
Slit open, gasping, they would crumple, while the slayer wiped the knife on his clothing and bent down to watch with curiosity, avidly, how the blood spurted, how the severed tendons in the neck released the final puffs of air from the lungs, in little bubbles that grew like balloons and then burst.
Didn’t the man know? Or did he have that much faith in his disguise, in that dark gray suit, so ordinary, and in the air of assurance which signified a regular café goer, the bow which implied equality, the very boldness with which he sauntered into the midst of these local customers, acting as if he, too, were local, a neighbor even, from one of the houses nearby, who simply dropped in wearing a suit but no coat, here at the nearest convenient watering hole, this snackery, to have a bite and then leave?
Would they let him leave? The one he’d gone up to, introducing himself and then sitting at his table, would that man go along with the masquerade and not denounce him as an interloper, an unauthorized user of the café’s warmth and security? Or would he denounce him and unleash his fury on him?
