Kapo, p.2
Kapo, page 2
Together they found the volume with 11000–16000 on its spine label. Transferring it to the desk, they opened it and began paging through it, reading the numbers under their breath. As they paged, Jelinek felt among his papers for the cigarette, then dropped it into the pocket of his tunic. Finally they found a page with a number at the top that began with 13, and near the bottom, the number 13698, and to the right of that: Helena Lifka, Jüdin, Szabadka 1925.
Lina’s claim was thus verified and Lamian’s desperation justified, but the name of the place the prisoner came from, by its very unfamiliarity, wove a touch of relief into his distress. Relief, because it lessened the responsibility, it removed the threat of having to confront his victim someday, should both of them survive the camp.
He crossed out the number on his slip of paper, where it was written beside another number, and he forbade Lina to send her to him again, and not just her, but any Jew. With a laugh, Lina promised not to, obviously thinking that he’d been infected with the racial arrogance of the Germans. At the same time, he took care of prisoner No. 13698, from a distance. He asked Lina about her, as if to show there were no hard feelings, or as if to make a joke of the whole thing. Through bribes of a sweater and warm socks, he arranged that the prisoner he had banished from his love life be given a double ration of bread, and before the camp was evacuated, he got Jelinek to move her, in exchange for cigarettes, to a light-duty block.
Only then did he breathe easy, believing he had atoned for his transgression by increasing her chances of staying alive. But he refrained from finding out whether or not she had taken advantage of the opportunity. Without admitting this even to himself, he hoped she hadn’t, he hoped she was dead. He never thought that someday he might want to find her. Instead, he drove her from his mind, as he did the other victims of his crimes, crimes committed under duress, crimes committed to ensure his own survival, for which the abuse of his power as Kapo was every bit as necessary as food and clothing.
But the deciphering of Szabadka as another name for the Yugoslav town of Subotica, a town in Upper Bačka, stripped him of his security. It showed him that he had made a mistake, not only in forcing Helena Lifka onto his naked lap and into his bunk, but also in thinking that he could forget about her. She was not a foreigner, she was a Yugoslav Jew, as he was; she had been taken captive in the same German advance, and had returned, if she returned, to the same homeland, the same country. And so she might appear at any time, either looking for him because she learned he was a Yugoslav, or else coming across him by chance while traveling through Banja Luka, on some business or family matter—by chance, like the Hungarian newspaper that carried, at the top of its front page, the Hungarian name for Subotica.
IT FRIGHTENED HIM, THE THOUGHT OF COMING FACE TO face with her, of her reproaches, accusations. He wanted to flee, as if she were already looking for him, as if she had been the traveler who left the Hungarian paper under the bench—not at all by chance, but to warn him of her presence, to torment him before she took her revenge, tomorrow, when her presence would become public condemnation and public shame.
Blinds lowered, he sat sweating in his stuffy mousehole of a rented room, with its creaky, worm-eaten furniture provided by the landlord. It seemed to him, as the warm summer afternoon wore on, that the pursuers Helena Lifka had assembled in the town were closing in, because she had lived here all along, and he never knew it. She had taken her denunciation to the authorities, to the police, the detectives of the security police, the members of the Veterans’ Association, National Front, and Party committees, and to all the neighbors, too, going to them when the offices were closed, telling them the true identity of Vilko Lamian, the man they knew as a withdrawn, taciturn lodger in their street, a conscientious employee of the land registry, and a solitary walker on his way to a Sunday or holiday outing in the surrounding hills. She would reveal the beast he was: fiend, torturer, one of Hitler’s Kapos, archenemy and archtraitor hidden in his lair in the guise of a meek citizen who kept to himself.
They’re coming to spit on me, seize me, hurl me to the ground and trample on me, beat me until I’m half dead, then they’ll take off my clothes and wash me, and nurse me back to health so I can be dragged before the court, before the people, exhibited as a monster. Photographed, interrogated, my depravity described in detail, an eternal blot on my race and tribe, my name a symbol of evil until some greater criminal is discovered.
He felt the tightening circle on the skin of his face and hands. The air itself was thick with his capture. They were coming closer; he heard the scrape of their shoes, the rasp of their breath—even as he told himself it was only the sound of evening strollers in the streets, the sound of the landlord Čabrinović and his ailing wife as they sighed and moved about, filling the empty hours with complaints about the neighbors and about him, their tenant, or discussing the next day’s marketing list.
Treacherous reassurances; the enemy trying to keep him in this trap. Carefully, to make no noise, he stood up and tiptoed from behind the table to the door and turned out the light. He stood there, deciding how to greet them if they burst in. Grab the nearest chair and flail away until they overpowered him, or thwart them by cutting his own throat? In the drawer he had a pocketknife, one of the first things he had bought in Banja Luka, on impulse, seeing it displayed with other wares at a stall he had passed while shopping for vegetables. Ever since he threw away the Kapo’s knife concealed along his calf, he had felt unprotected.
He went to the table, slowly, silently opened the drawer, and felt for the knife, took it out and opened it. They won’t take me alive, not again. They’ll find the corpse sprawled on the floor, and Helena Lifka’s eyes will widen in horror at the spreading pool of blood around me.
He relished the scene: his body on the floor, face up, with a gaping wound in the chest, and his pursuers one after the other edging their way into the circle around him. And she the behind-the-scenes instigator, pushing her way through, putting her tender woman’s hand to his chest, pressing in unintentional pantomime of the blade as it entered the flesh between his ribs; she would be speechless, deprived of her revenge, prevented from bringing him to shame.
Hatred welled within him, and he almost wished that this would come to pass. But at the same time he knew that it was mostly play-acting; the woman didn’t know his real name or that he was still alive, and it was unlikely that she would find him in this small town in the heart of Bosnia, and more unlikely for her to put a folded newspaper under the bench in front of him, as a warning.
He went over the events of the past few days: all of his movements, to the office and back, the behavior of his colleagues and clients, his trip to Podbrdje, the conversations, the measurements taken and recorded. He could find nothing suspicious in any gesture or glance. He had learned how to look into people’s minds, from the littlest signals they gave without knowing it; that was why he had survived.
Again he tiptoed to the door and listened. He could hear a soft, murmuring conversation. Čabrinović and his wife were in the kitchen across the hall, eating their supper early to leave the room free for him. He gripped the knife and cautiously turned the door handle, still ready to plunge the blade into his chest if people rushed in. No one did. He opened the door a crack, peered into the hallway, which was half-lit by the frosted glass of the kitchen door. He looked down the hall, making sure it was empty before he put his hand into his pocket, open knife laid along the palm, and tiptoed out.
In the hallway now, he could hear their conversation—“and tie it with rope” and “you push it through from below.” Comprehensible phrases, but strange, of obscure origin, as in the barracks cubicle, when you lifted your head in the middle of the night and the moans and sobs came to you in waves. He sneaked to the front door at the end of the hallway, crouched low, slowly slipped the keyhole cover to one side, and put his eye to the opening. A patch of courtyard in semidarkness, no human shadow anywhere, no elbow or knee. But he still didn’t dare go outside. He stood up, went back to the other end of the hallway, the door of the woodshed. Opened it, went inside and down the steps, stopped to listen, then squeezed between the rows of stacked logs, breathing their damp smell of Jasenovac and the forest before going to the window and through its dusty panes observing the rear courtyard.
Slowly, without letting go of the knife, he turned the rusty window lock, opened the window, again listened, then bent down and felt with his free hand for one stump, then another, stacking them, stepping on the top one and climbing onto the sill. Gripping the knife tightly, he dropped into the courtyard, crouched beneath the window, eyes straining to penetrate the darkness.
Bushes; two walnut trees on the left; a path overgrown with weeds. Were they hiding there? He squatted patiently, ears pricked, watching, determined to be more vigilant than any attacker. Only when his knees began to ache (the knees were always the first), did he straighten up.
Carefully he put the knife in his pocket and approached the courtyard wall. Reaching up, he hoisted himself to the top and looked over. The narrow street beyond the wall was deserted, enveloping darkness, lit only by a few kitchen windows in neighboring houses, where people were having supper. Lowering himself to the ground again, he went along the wall to the gate, opened it, walked out. He turned left. The street took him to a small square whose name he didn’t know. Here children were playing with hoops taken from a barrel, and several people were passing through on the opposite side, disappearing into a street.
Lamian didn’t look at them; by their step he knew they weren’t after anyone; they were preoccupied with themselves, harmless. He scanned the windows and doorways to see if someone was hiding there, if he would have to take his hand from his pocket and stab first him, then himself.
From the square he went into the street which the people had entered a moment ago, then turned left, a right angle, to his own street, Teodor Kursula, and his gate. He looked around unobtrusively as he opened it, then went into the courtyard and from there into the hallway. As he reached the door to his room, he heard the kitchen door open and turned to see Čabrinović looking at him, stooped, cap on his head. “Weren’t you in, Mr. Lamian?” “I went out for a while, Mr. Čabrinović,” Lamian answered casually. “I’ll eat now.”
He went into his room, turned on the light, took out the knife, closed it, put it back in the drawer, shut the drawer. He waited for Čabrinović and his wife to go shuffling down the hall to their bedroom, then went back down the hallway to the woodshed, down the steps, closed the window, returned to his room.
He took a deep breath, then went to the table and again studied the Hungarian newspaper. Reading the headlines, the columns of fine type that descended to the bottom of the page, he guessed at their meaning, because there was an occasional technical word, international, like “traktorok” for tractor, which somehow gave the gist, though he understood virtually nothing.
He grew tired, then hungry. His agreement with the Čabrinovićes was that he could cook his supper after they went to bed. In the kitchen, he opened the window a crack to let out the smoke from their cooking. Putting a piece of wood on the still smoldering fire, he took some potatoes from the bin in the pantry, where they were kept with the greens. He cleaned eight large potatoes, dropped them into a pot, covered them with water, and set them on the stove. He sat smoking while he waited. Still unaccustomed to being full, he found every meal a pleasure. There was no need to improve it with spices, dignify it with plates and cutlery; it was the food itself that mattered, the amount, not the taste, the fact that he could eat as much as he wanted. That was why he preferred to eat alone, and only one hot dish. At midday after work, he couldn’t, his hunger didn’t allow him to wait for the Čabrinovićes to vacate the kitchen, so he would buy something cold on the way home from work and eat it in his room. But at supper, he let himself go.
As he ate, he thought seriously about running away, preferably now, tonight. Cram his few belongings into a suitcase and leave without a word, perhaps a brief note on the kitchen table, with the rent for the rest of the month.
He’d go straight to the station and get on the first train that pulled out, regardless of its destination. It soothed him to picture the wood-paneled partitions of the coach, enclosing him, separating him from the outside world. To sit there alone, or with a few drowsy travelers, feeling, beyond those strong partitions, the cold created by the movement of the train, but he would be insulated from the cold, and protected from any hand poised to shove its way in and grab him.
I have an identity card in my pocket, not a number tattooed on my forearm, not a red triangle on my tunic and trouser leg, not a pass from Riegler that I must return, but a proper, permanent identity card issued by the police in Banja Luka and bearing the name of Vilko Lamian, born in Bjelovar, nationality Yugoslav, citizenship Yugoslav, civil servant by profession, entitled to disembark from a train anywhere in the country and present himself to the authorities, rent a room, look for work.
Certain documents, yes, would have to be enclosed in his application for employment, but these documents were in a filing cabinet in the Banja Luka City Hall, and copies could be provided at the request of the institution or firm wishing to hire him. He imagined the letter, with its official letterhead, number, date, typed out by some obedient, uninterested typist, not a prisoner, not afraid, but trusting, letting him dictate the official phrases himself, which request “the file of Comrade Vilko Lamian, for the personnel records of our organization,” and add, on a separate sheet, a convincing explanation, preferably—indeed, necessarily—in his own hand, to the effect, for example, that the unexpected illness of a close relative forced him to depart without saying good-bye, hence this new job in this new location.
Which would occasion surprise, suspicion, he thought bitterly as he shoved a still-scalding potato into his mouth with his fingers. The resulting burn made his eyes well up with tears. No, that was no good; he had to prepare his departure gradually, planting the reasons, reasons that would sound natural to everyone, so that when he finally left, it would be understood and accepted by all who knew him.
Through the night, he tried to think of the most convincing story, came up with several, with excitement, only to reject them in disappointment. Finally, just before dawn, when he was jumpy with fatigue, he decided on housing problems. The intense desire to have his own apartment, which he hadn’t been able to obtain in Banja Luka, having to settle for a furnished room in the house of Čabrinović, a pre-war merchant. True, he had not applied for an independent apartment, as the other newly arrived officials had done, but this reticence would be explained in retrospect, he hoped, by his shyness, familiar enough to everyone by now. There was no contradiction: a shy person, too, could be dissatisfied. With this thought, he fell asleep.
When the alarm clock jolted him awake in the morning, he was dazed and stunned, as during those too-early reveilles in the camp. He jumped out of bed, shoulders hunched and head drawn in, in anticipation of blows. Then he realized where he was and that he was in no immediate danger, that a hearty breakfast awaited him before he set out to the office, where he had a desk and chair and could stretch out his legs or tuck them in as he pleased. Only then did he remember last night’s decision, and fell into self-pitying despair. Go away—but where? To which city, which village? Across which border?
How disconcertingly random and arbitrary the choice would be, and he understood that this arbitrariness had crept in only since his freedom, because as long as he was a prisoner and dreamed of escape, he always set some known place as his final goal and haven. The Radaković farm in Prnjavor outside Bjelovar, for example, where after finishing the tenth grade he had been driven by his father in the company car, and where he had entertained himself in the great outdoors with jovial cowherds and stablehands, while his father negotiated with the owner over the repayment of some debt. Or his room at 37 Ilica Street in Zagreb, in the second-floor apartment that belonged to Jančuška, a tailor of women’s clothing. He had lived there as a student for two months before moving to 8 Trnska Street and the house of Mrs. Basarabić, a retired teacher. Or the shed in Nevesinje that belonged to Ivanda the railroad switchman, where he had hidden for several nights, a soldier trying to evade capture.
In his thoughts, he had clung to those places, longing for them in all their familiar detail, only to forsake them sadly, one by one, knowing that escape was impossible: he would be caught, beaten, taken to the gallows, and hung on the central parade ground before the ranks of prisoners—as Edeko had been, and Mala, and all the other unsuccessful escapees (they were all unsuccessful). He would be caught long before he had a chance to find out whether those who had once helped him would take him in and hide him.
They probably wouldn’t have; it was precisely those people and places that were the least suited for hiding him, because his pursuers, if they hadn’t already laid their hands on him in the swamps around Auschwitz, would surely have looked for him among those very people and in those very places.
Now, when he didn’t expect pursuit, the old places were no good, because his flight was not from pursuit but from chance, and chance—for the arrival of former prisoner Helena Lifka, the newspaper printed in her city, taken on her trip, and later discarded in the truck, was chance—could intervene anywhere, in any community, large or small, noisy or quiet, on a train or ship, in a theater or at the horse races, in the land registry in Banja Luka, or in any office in any town or any village.
