Dec. 30, 2010 at 6:04am with 1 note
What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo #3 By now it was 7.30.  It was strange sitting there in the darkening evening, alone in this huge building. There would be people in other offices elsewhere, she knew, and downstairs there was the unsmiling security, waiting to close the frontier post between herself and tell her to leave the precious laptop behind in no man’s land. But right at this moment, it felt as if all that was in the building were the silent exhibition halls below, the great grey concrete pillars and heavy metal girders, the ceiling glass looking up to the darkening sky, - and herself.  What would it be like to spend the night here?  She willed a night-in-the-museum movie to begin rolling in her mind.  Himmler to stop standing next to his men, on site in Minsk, and step into the military vehicle en route to his next meeting.  The gaunt, bearded man to turn from the camera and push his cart down the filthy street; the ceaseless brutal ghetto grind to turn.  Until she recoiled at her bad taste, she tried to release the frozen screams of the open-mouthed, fleeing, naked women in their underwear, to hear it echoing from Liepaja.  But she need not have worried – the exhibits would not come to life. Not even as a mental exercise.  Everything was labeled and framed.  Everything was in place.  There were maps and lists. There were tables of ranks. There were diagrams of the mother-camps and the sub-camps, and there were arrows showing the odysseys the prisoners took in between, in the last year of the war.   The photos could not be freed. The films would not break from their familiar loop.   When someone talked of the horror of a particular transport, the nightmare shootings of the passengers just after arrival, she would glimpse out of one eye a tiny anxious figure, a tiny possibility that the routine might be broken.  She would ask, was this the November ’41 Berlin Riga transport? The one that had left Berlin on the 29th November, the one where the Berlin Jews had been shot on arrival?  The news of the shootings had ricocheted round the Berlin Ministries in whispers.  Until then, the civil servants had known that the Eastern Front was a vicious war. They knew that the Bolsheviks and Russian Jews were being shot en masse.  They accepted it.  But this was new. Was Germany ready now to sacrifice its own? Its old professors, its shoe shop owners, its veterans?  Yes, it was that transport, the Berlin Riga one.  It was known.  She would be visited by an almost unnoticed current of relief.  There would be a little sensation of triumph that she had recognized the right one.  If she thought hard, she would know the transport’s number.  She would give the speaker back a detail of her own – that Himmler had hauled the shooters back to Berlin for consultation, or rather their boss.   The German Jews were not supposed to be shot yet.  Eight days later Heydrich had sent the invitations out for a meeting with top civil servants at the Wannsee lake. This too was all known. It was safe.   She shut the laptop and lay her head down and closed her eyes. The film would not come to life.  What was it, then?  Something had been following her around for months.  She could not breathe.  She was tempted to wander into the library, but at night the mobile bookshelves were switched off.  It would be purely random luck for the shelf numbers she wanted to have been left accessible. And there were so many shelves. The librarian told her the other day that there were now more books about the Holocaust than there had been victims.  She idly multiplied up, feeling her cheek against the Sony’s cool burnished metal. That meant a few hundred thousand characters for every person killed.  A tree had been felled and pulped in every victim’s honor.  For every month of killing, there had been now a whole year of writing.  And still there was no end.   She opened her eyes and let her head slide to the edge of the table, her hair hanging over the edge.   She let her cheek rest on the edge and then slid her head over a little further, so she could feel the warm rasp of the wood on her cheek.  She felt the fabric of her bra slightly uncomfortably pulling against her nipple, felt her rib cage against the table edge.  She looked under the table.  On the far side, under the chairs there was a body.  It was in shadow, it couldn’t be real, it was staged, it was madness, but it was a body. Oh my God. Oh my God.  He was in shadow, but she knew who he was.  Her first thought was that she had willed it to happen, but of course she hadn’t. She rushed round, her chair flew back and fell, it made a noise, she felt his skin.  She had seen a dead body once. It had been the aunt of a former Catholic boyfriend, lying in state.  But she had not been close enough family to touch it.  The aunt had been prepared by a professional, had looked at peace.  She felt the skin – he was as cold as the books said bodies were. The body had no life.  Even in deathly pallor, the dark circles under the eyes were still visible.  Oh my God.  It was so inert, the body, there didn’t seem even any point in trying to remember how to do CPR.  The room was silent, she was tempted to flee.  She bashed her head hard on the table, standing up.  Dazed, she tried to remember what the emergency number was? Fucking hell. This couldn’t be happening.  She grabbed the fellows’ information manual, found the number.  She could hardly speak.  I think he’s dead. He’s one of the fellows. No I didn’t, he’s not breathing. Is there any what? No I don’t think so. She rushed back to look at the body and then breathlessly picked up the receiver again. Oh my God. There was blood on the carpet, under his neck.  She heard the elevator, and then there was running, and then the scene was no longer hers to wish out of existence. The security was there, someone was trying resuscitation. Two uniforms were kneeling and in the way. But when they moved the body a little, she could see there was a lot of blood underneath.  She thought, ashamed that it had even crossed her mind, that they weren’t going to worry now if she took the computer home.  But when they started questioning her, started saying “you say you were sitting here”, she realized she would be leaving it behind after all. Do I need a lawyer? 

What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo #3

By now it was 7.30.  It was strange sitting there in the darkening evening, alone in this huge building. There would be people in other offices elsewhere, she knew, and downstairs there was the unsmiling security, waiting to close the frontier post between herself and tell her to leave the precious laptop behind in no man’s land. But right at this moment, it felt as if all that was in the building were the silent exhibition halls below, the great grey concrete pillars and heavy metal girders, the ceiling glass looking up to the darkening sky, - and herself.  What would it be like to spend the night here?  She willed a night-in-the-museum movie to begin rolling in her mind.  Himmler to stop standing next to his men, on site in Minsk, and step into the military vehicle en route to his next meeting.  The gaunt, bearded man to turn from the camera and push his cart down the filthy street; the ceaseless brutal ghetto grind to turn.  Until she recoiled at her bad taste, she tried to release the frozen screams of the open-mouthed, fleeing, naked women in their underwear, to hear it echoing from Liepaja.  But she need not have worried – the exhibits would not come to life. Not even as a mental exercise.  Everything was labeled and framed.  Everything was in place.  There were maps and lists. There were tables of ranks. There were diagrams of the mother-camps and the sub-camps, and there were arrows showing the odysseys the prisoners took in between, in the last year of the war.   The photos could not be freed. The films would not break from their familiar loop.

 

When someone talked of the horror of a particular transport, the nightmare shootings of the passengers just after arrival, she would glimpse out of one eye a tiny anxious figure, a tiny possibility that the routine might be broken.  She would ask, was this the November ’41 Berlin Riga transport? The one that had left Berlin on the 29th November, the one where the Berlin Jews had been shot on arrival?  The news of the shootings had ricocheted round the Berlin Ministries in whispers.  Until then, the civil servants had known that the Eastern Front was a vicious war. They knew that the Bolsheviks and Russian Jews were being shot en masse.  They accepted it.  But this was new. Was Germany ready now to sacrifice its own? Its old professors, its shoe shop owners, its veterans?  Yes, it was that transport, the Berlin Riga one.  It was known.  She would be visited by an almost unnoticed current of relief.  There would be a little sensation of triumph that she had recognized the right one.  If she thought hard, she would know the transport’s number.  She would give the speaker back a detail of her own – that Himmler had hauled the shooters back to Berlin for consultation, or rather their boss.   The German Jews were not supposed to be shot yet.  Eight days later Heydrich had sent the invitations out for a meeting with top civil servants at the Wannsee lake. This too was all known. It was safe.

 

She shut the laptop and lay her head down and closed her eyes. The film would not come to life.  What was it, then?  Something had been following her around for months.  She could not breathe.  She was tempted to wander into the library, but at night the mobile bookshelves were switched off.  It would be purely random luck for the shelf numbers she wanted to have been left accessible. And there were so many shelves. The librarian told her the other day that there were now more books about the Holocaust than there had been victims.  She idly multiplied up, feeling her cheek against the Sony’s cool burnished metal. That meant a few hundred thousand characters for every person killed.  A tree had been felled and pulped in every victim’s honor.  For every month of killing, there had been now a whole year of writing.  And still there was no end.

 

She opened her eyes and let her head slide to the edge of the table, her hair hanging over the edge.   She let her cheek rest on the edge and then slid her head over a little further, so she could feel the warm rasp of the wood on her cheek.  She felt the fabric of her bra slightly uncomfortably pulling against her nipple, felt her rib cage against the table edge.  She looked under the table.  On the far side, under the chairs there was a body.  It was in shadow, it couldn’t be real, it was staged, it was madness, but it was a body. Oh my God. Oh my God.  He was in shadow, but she knew who he was.  Her first thought was that she had willed it to happen, but of course she hadn’t. She rushed round, her chair flew back and fell, it made a noise, she felt his skin.  She had seen a dead body once. It had been the aunt of a former Catholic boyfriend, lying in state.  But she had not been close enough family to touch it.  The aunt had been prepared by a professional, had looked at peace.  She felt the skin – he was as cold as the books said bodies were. The body had no life.  Even in deathly pallor, the dark circles under the eyes were still visible.  Oh my God.  It was so inert, the body, there didn’t seem even any point in trying to remember how to do CPR.  The room was silent, she was tempted to flee.  She bashed her head hard on the table, standing up.  Dazed, she tried to remember what the emergency number was? Fucking hell. This couldn’t be happening.  She grabbed the fellows’ information manual, found the number.  She could hardly speak.  I think he’s dead. He’s one of the fellows. No I didn’t, he’s not breathing. Is there any what? No I don’t think so. She rushed back to look at the body and then breathlessly picked up the receiver again. Oh my God. There was blood on the carpet, under his neck.  She heard the elevator, and then there was running, and then the scene was no longer hers to wish out of existence. The security was there, someone was trying resuscitation. Two uniforms were kneeling and in the way. But when they moved the body a little, she could see there was a lot of blood underneath.  She thought, ashamed that it had even crossed her mind, that they weren’t going to worry now if she took the computer home.  But when they started questioning her, started saying “you say you were sitting here”, she realized she would be leaving it behind after all. Do I need a lawyer? 

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