But this evening, Anna’s list of tasks is interrupted by a word the Obersturmführer utters an inch from her ear. Auschwitz. So he has been in Poland, then. The Obersturmführer has mentioned Auschwitz before, since he has been arranging transports of Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald to this bigger camp. (The time this takes, which could be spent on other, more worthy disciplinary causes! The hours of maintaining the camp records!) Anna also knows about Auschwitz from the rumors contained in the prisoners’ condoms. And rumors they must be, of course; it is beyond belief, what the prisoners say. Marching the Jews straight from the trains to gas chambers, the crematoria? Even the SS wouldn’t be so insane as to squander such a massive labor force in the middle of a war, particularly given the invasion of Mother Russia. No, this must be the invention of a mind deranged from overwork and starvation. Such tales grow from such conditions, even as mushrooms will sprout from a pile of dung.
Nonetheless, the repetition of the word makes Anna pay attention, for once, to the Obersturmführer ’s monologue.
I’m sorry, I didn’t catch what you just said, she murmurs.
The Obersturmführer blinks at her as if one of the pillows has spoken; then, looking pleased, he rotates his damaged shoulder beneath Anna’s head, joggling her a bit closer. The smell of him, meat and smoke and his Kölnischwasser, 4711, drifts from beneath his arm.
I was just remarking what a help it will be to us in our own experiments, he repeats, the chance to watch Mengele at work. Of course, our chaps mostly prevent outbreaks, preserve the healthy, instead of making great scientific strides. We don’t have the equipment for it, for one thing. But we do the best we can; we do our part with what limited resources we have.
And what is it you do? Anna asks.
Oh, the usual. We’re trying to develop an inoculation against typhus, for instance—though that hasn’t been quite successful yet, as most of the specimens die. But we have made some progress in curing the homosexual disease—you know what this is? You do? You are a constant surprise to me, Anna! Well, as I said, the advances are very small but perhaps significant in the long run, involving castration, that kind of thing. Which is why, as I was saying, it was so instructive to observe Mengele, since on the day we were allowed into his laboratory, he was performing surgery on the reproductive organs.
On a homosexual? Anna whispers.
The Obersturmführer laughs. No, that’s nothing to Mengele; that’s for pikers like us. He was working on a Jewess, a former prostitute. He was sewing up her—The Obersturmführer glances sideways at Anna and clears his throat.
—her feminine opening. What happens when she is not permitted her monthly flow? Do the internal organs wither, stop functioning? Fascinating prospect. Impractical for use on the general population, but scientifically . . .
Anna feels her stomach muscles convulsing. Cold sweat breaks out beneath her arms, on her neck. She puts a hand to her mouth as if stifling a belch.
Excuse me, she says.
Certainly. In any case, that’s what Mengele is, first and foremost, a scientist, perhaps the Reich’s most valuable. Though what a surgeon he must have been as a civilian! We stood in the balcony with a hundred others, mirrors placed all about the table so we could see. He must have been under enormous pressure. And the Jewess kept moving. But did Mengele’s hands falter? Not once! Golden hands, as swift as hummingbirds.
Anna knows she is going to be sick. She sits up, breathing shallowly and staring into the hallway; she focuses on the lamplight, lying in a skewed rectangle on the floor. Then a shadow moves, eclipsing it.
Trudie? she calls. Go downstairs.
The shadow doesn’t move.
Anna squints at it. Behind her, the Obersturmführer has fallen silent, a bad sign. Anna sinks back onto his damaged shoulder, as he has not yet signaled that he wishes her to do otherwise.
She is coming apart, imagining things, seeing shadows that aren’t there.
Even the way Anna sleeps now is unfamiliar to her: each morning she wakes with a stiff neck, unable to turn her head more than a few degrees to either side. She has slept on her back, her arms flung above her head, in a position of abject surrender.
Trudy, January 1997
26
SLEEP DEPRIVATION, TRUDY HAS COME TO REALIZE, IS A form of torture. The Nazis knew this, of course: one of the Gestapo’s favored interrogation methods, quieter and less messy than the extraction of fingernails or breaking bones, was to isolate subjects in a room where the lights were never extinguished, shocking them with a low dosage of electricity whenever they started to doze off. Trudy thinks she can now understand, to some degree, why people were so forthcoming with information after only a few days of this treatment. Since the continuation of her Project she sleeps little, and when she does her dreams are frequent and bad. She is lost in a forest, diminished to child-size, the hoary trunks of trees towering on all sides: calling out and searching for something she is doomed never to find. Or she is a Berlin hausfrau, wandering from room to room in an endless, unheated flat, rubbing her arms and stooping to peer through windows for something dreadful that never comes. Trudy is ever hungry and always cold; she thrashes awake to find she has kicked the covers onto the floor. And although he hasn’t made another appearance per se, Trudy senses that she has also dreamed of Saint Nikolaus; he is somewhere nearby, the officer, engineering bureaucratic destruction at his desk or eating a leg of chicken, wiping on the sleeve of his tunic a mouth glistening with grease.
Actively afraid of the dreams, Trudy takes to swallowing sleeping pills to ward them off. But the drugs don’t work; they keep her perversely alert, sweating and twitchy, staring owl-eyed at the ceiling until, just before dawn, she succumbs to a soupy doze from which she jerks violently awake with the sensation of falling. As Trudy slumps sour-stomached over the kitchen table with her first coffee of the day, watching the sky turn from black to gray to white, she debates over and over the wisdom of proceeding with this Project. She vows each time that this afternoon’s interview will be her last. Then she gets up and goes into her study, where she listens to a recording of Thomas Mann reading Lotte in Weimar in German while she memorizes the day’s questions. She can’t give it up now. Whether because of word-of-mouth—Frau Kluge spreading the news of Trudy’s sympathetic ear and access to the university’s checkbook—or because they have seen her advertisements, Trudy has more subjects than she can handle.
At first deciding to continue her interviews simply to overcome her fear of doing so, Trudy has discovered her anxiety un-founded: none of them has been as shocking as Frau Kluge’s. The women profess relative ignorance of the Nazi regime and regret over its consequences; they speak of bombs, of hunger, of husbands killed or returning terribly changed, disfigured or missing limbs or wraithlike and prone to strange tempers. Of cold and illness and privation. The garden-variety grim tales. So Trudy, far from having her confidence further eroded, feels it growing with each interview. She has a talent, it seems, for interrogation. And although Trudy despises her trust-invoking methods—widening her blue eyes, touching her blond hair, wearing her high black boots, her Stiefel—she also takes acerbic satisfaction from their success. There is more than that, too: sometimes, when lying awake and waiting with dread for sleep to overtake her, Trudy has to admit to a certain comfort, the relief of accepting her genetic predisposition—to her odd sense, in those neat houses, of coming home. Sitting in tidy kitchens much like hers, Trudy rediscovers things she didn’t know she had lost: the tang of Teewurst on the tongue, the delicious sibilance of a forgotten German word. And as much as she hates herself for it, Trudy finds she is hungry for her subjects’ praise, for their delighted clapping over her fluency, for their compliments on her appearance and their treating her—though they are sometimes not much older than she—like one of their own Kinder, their children.
Mrs. Rose-Grete Fischer, Trudy’s seventh subject, is a case in point. She welcomes Trudy and Thomas—who has mercifully agreed to film more intervie
ws, even sounding a bit startled at Trudy’s assumption that he wouldn’t—into her bungalow with a flutter of hands. While Thomas sets up his equipment in the living room, mumbling happily to himself about the open space and comfortable armchairs, Trudy sits with Rose-Grete in the kitchen, nibbling a slice of Kaffeekuchen. This, too, Trudy has come to expect; most of her subjects have proven more hospitable than Frau Kluge, and although in her current state Trudy doesn’t dare eat much for fear of nodding off under Thomas’s hot lights, she always takes a little something so as not to offend her hosts.
Rose-Grete watches Trudy appreciatively from the corner of her eye.
You are a good girl, she says, to take the time to visit an old lady. To be interested in what she has to say.
Trudy smiles at her, a trifle uncomfortably. Rose-Grete is a tiny woman, all delicate bones poking at skin the texture of an old peach, and at sixty-eight is still lovely but for the eye patch she wears, which lends her something of a piratical air. Trudy longs to know why she wears it, but as Rose-Grete hasn’t brought the subject up, Trudy is determined to act as if she hasn’t noticed it either. It is difficult not to stare at the black triangle of cloth, though, and when Trudy concentrates on Rose-Grete’s remaining eye, she feels as though her gaze is unnaturally and insultingly forced.
She takes a bite of cake and evades Rose-Grete’s lopsided appraisal by looking around the woman’s kitchen. It is small but cheerful, the walls yellow, the table cluttered with the detritus of widowhood: a wicker basket containing fruit and prescription bottles, a magnifying glass, a litter of Social Security check stubs on the sunflowered oilcloth. The heat from the radiator beneath the window creates a shimmering distortion through which Trudy sees birds hopping around a backyard feeder.
She glances at the refrigerator, anticipating the ubiquitous family photographs, but there is only a stainless steel sheet with a few dents in the center.
Do you have children? Trudy asks—one of the best questions, she has discovered, for fostering rapport.
But Rose-Grete has turned her head so as to be able to see the yard.
You like my little friends? she says. Look there, that cardinal, the big fat fellow. He is my favorite. He is greedy to a fault, pushing aside the others to get the seed. But every morning he visits, without fail. Often he comes to the windowsill and sits there, like so. I sometimes think he knows what I am thinking.
She leans over and taps the pane. The birds scatter, with a flurry of wings, into the air.
Oop-la! says Rose-Grete, laughing. Then she turns to Trudy.
You must think me foolish, she says. But they are good company, my little friends, if fickle. It is not easy to grow old alone.
She draws a napkin toward her and smoothes it with the flat of her palm. Trudy waits.
I do have children, Rose-Grete says to the napkin. Two sons. But they live far away, and they cannot be bothered to come and see their old mother anymore.
That’s a shame, says Trudy, thinking guiltily of Anna, whom she has not visited since the Christmas ordeal at the Good Samaritan Center two weeks ago.
Yes, it is, isn’t it?...Rose-Grete sighs and begins folding the napkin into squares. My firstborn son telephones every so often: Mother, how are you feeling? Have you been to the doctor? What does the doctor say? But I know he does this only out of duty. And the other, Friedrich—Freddy—lives now in England, and I do not hear much from him at all.
I’m sorry.
Rose-Grete looks shyly at Trudy and smiles.
I always wished I had a girl, she says softly. It is different with mothers and daughters, yes? There is a closeness that is not possible with sons. You and your mother, you are close, I am sure.
Trudy busies herself with the remains of her cake, using the tines of her fork to push the crumbs into a pile.
Um, she says.
She can feel Rose-Grete’s eye fixed upon her. After a moment the older woman touches Trudy’s hand. It is like being brushed with a small bundle of sticks.
I have embarrassed you, Rose-Grete says. But there is no need to answer. I can tell you are a good daughter. You will take more cake?
Trudy shakes her head.
I couldn’t eat another thing, she says—truthfully, as her throat is suddenly tight.
Rose-Grete nudges the pan of Kaffeekuchen toward Trudy.
Please, she says. It will only go to waste otherwise.
Please, she repeats.
Trudy obediently cuts a second slice of cake.
THE GERMAN PROJECT
Interview 7
SUBJECT: Mrs. Rose-Grete Fischer (née Rosalinde Margarethe Guertner) DATE/LOCATION: January 11, 1997; Edina, MN
Q: Rose-Grete, I’m going to start by asking you a few simple questions, all right?
A: Yes, fine.
Q: Where and when were you born?
A: I was born in 1928, in a town called Lübben. Although to call it a town is to give it high praise, since really it was a village, a tiny speck of a place near the Polish border. Located in the Spreewald, with perhaps only five hundred population, very poor. Farmers and lumbermen mostly, though my parents owned a small shop, what Americans would call a general store...You have said your own father was a farmer?
Q: Yes, that’s right . . . Rose-Grete, were you and your family living in Lübben when the war began?
A: Yes, we were there for the duration. I stayed in Lübben until I came to this country.
Q: Can you tell me what you remember about the start of the war?
A: Well, it was not for us how it was for the rest of Europe. Or at least in the big cities. For us there was no immediate—how do you say it, impact? It trickled through to us in bits and pieces. Some of the young men were called up to serve, of course. And the Jews of the village . . . But most of what was happening, because we were such a small place, we found out from newspapers brought in from other towns, sometimes a week or two old. And rumors.
Q: Rose-Grete, you mentioned the Jews of your village. What happened to them?
A: In the beginning— Well, I was only eleven when the war began, you know; I didn’t understand much of anything. Most of what I know was learned from listening at doors.
Q: Do you remember anything you heard, specifically?
A: Only that my parents were always fighting during this time. Quietly, and when they thought we children were asleep, but still we knew what they were quarreling about. They had heard the rumors too, about the Nazis and especially the Ein-satzgruppen, the special units whose job it was to come and take away all the Jews. Nobody knew what would happen to them after, and nobody asked questions. Everyone was scared, you see. But we knew it could not be anything good. So some of the people in the town hid the Jews or helped them escape to the forest, where there were Partisan bands.
My father wanted to help in this fashion. He was a religious man and he thought it was a sin, what the Nazis were doing. But my mother begged him not to get involved. No, Peder, please, the children, you must think of them—that is what I remember her saying.
Q: So he didn’t hide any Jews or help them escape.
A: If he could have seen what would happen when the Ein-satzgruppen came, I am sure he would have— But no. In the end he did not.
Q: When did the Einsatzgruppen come to Lübben?
A: In . . .1944, I believe. I was sixteen years then, so it must have been 1944.
Q: Can you tell me what you remember about that?
A: I— One moment, please. It is not so easy for me to talk about this.
Q: Take your time. All the time you need.
A: Thank you. You are very kind.
long pause]
A: What I remember first is that many people rejoiced when [the Einsatzgruppen came. I remember them standing by the main road and cheering and giving the Nazi salute, like so! I think this is because there were plenty of native Poles in Lübben, and the Poles hate Jews as much or more than we Germans did. Not many people know this, but it is true.
r /> In any case, come they did, and a few days later I...Well, my parents sent me on an errand. It was very hot, that I remember; it was then late June, a beautiful summer day. I remember the heat especially well because I had to walk many kilometers to a farm to barter some of our eggs for raspberries. For my mother. She was pregnant, and craving them, and we did not stock any fruit in our grocery. But we did keep hens, and so I went to trade eggs for the berries and some fresh bread. And I . . .
On the way back I decided to take a shortcut through the forest. Because it was cooler. I didn’t know it was forbidden to be there. I didn’t know what they were doing. I wanted only to get out of the sun, the road was so hot and so dusty.
So I was walking through the woods with the berries and the bread for my mother, and all of the sudden I heard pop-pop-pop-pop- pop, just like . . . like firecrackers. But it was not firecrackers, it was gunshots. And I was so young and so stupid, I followed the sound to a clearing, and there I saw them. The Jews and the Ein-satzgruppen. The Jews had been made to undress and were standing at the edge of a pit. And the Einsatzgruppen were shooting them in groups of four or five.
Well, I was absolutely horrified. I remember being more shocked at first that they were naked than that they were being . . . slaughtered in this way. I had never before seen anyone naked except my mother, and I was . . . I was just so shocked and so confused. I remember thinking, Why don’t they run? Better to be shot in the back while running than waiting for it, and perhaps one or two could get away to the Partisans . . .And the shame of it, the women and the children naked with the men, I had never seen such a thing. How I wanted to hide my face. But I could not. I stood and watched while they prayed, some of them, and held hands and begged and cried and were shot. The women and babies along with the men. Nobody was spared.