Heinrich awoke suddenly and with a small gasp. This wasn’t out of the ordinary; almost every
night he found himself lurching out of his light slumber – it was the only time
of slumber afforded him with nine-to-a-bunk and air as cold inside the hut as outside
– lurching out of his slumber, his insides twisting with agony as he realized
that his nightly terrors were actually more pleasant than the gloomy
circumstances of the waking world. No
one really slept here. No rest for the
wicked, they say, and if that were truth, then they were the damned souls of
all ages past, weighted down by eons of polluting karma, collected in this day
to suffer their earned torments together.
Every hour the wails of another man who had realized just how hopeless
his situation was roused the entire hut and sent chills down the spines of
those who still held on to their humanity.
But this night, something was different. Something had changed within Heinrich. He had started out of sleep, as he often did,
his face pressed into the filthy hair of the man laying next to him, as it did
every night, the cold air taunting him, as it always did, but this time, he
felt nothing. No twisting in the
gut. No inclination to cry out in
despair. Heinrich realized that, as of
this very moment, he had given up on life.
And the idea did not disturb him at all.
Ideas were for the living.
Heinrich was no more, though the husk he’d once inhabited continued to
pulse with shallow breath.
In two hours, the thing that had once been Heinrich was
marching pointlessly up and down the central square of the camp, covered in a
threadbare rag that was called a shirt in this place. The guard barked out orders to them in his
shrill, whining manner, and Heinrich and his 70-or-so bunkmates would stop or turn
about or fall out as he directed them.
Two other guards strolled about the outside of the group, randomly, it
seemed, lashing out with the sticks they carried at the prisoners. Just 30 more minutes of this, and this shift
would be herded into the mess hall to eat their breakfast of lukewarm water
with a hint of celery seed.
Heinrich was on the outside of the group, and though he
moved about on command, his eyes were fixed up at the sky, unblinking. Already twice one guard had swung his stick
at Heinrich’s shoulders, but had received only a blank stare in return. This so infuriated and unnerved the guard
that he’d stomped off the other corner of the square and clubbed across the
head his least favourite prisoner. The
poor man fell to the ground, unmoving, and the two patrolling guards, after
yelling at him to get up for half a minute, eventually dragged him to the dirt
path surrounding the square and dumped him there.
Heinrich watched without reaction, and pulled from the
fold that served as a pocket a single thin cigarette. Two weeks ago, when his work detail had been
loaned out to a factory in the town attached to the camp, the workers had been
so productive that the factory owner had awarded them ‘Workmen’s Bonuses’: a
pack of five cigarettes each. These were
of no use to the prisoners themselves, as actually smoking them was a privilege
afforded only to the most highly-placed prisoners, though who had shown an
unusual aptitude for cruelty to their fellow captives, however, the cigarettes
did prove useful to trade to the guards and mess hall attendants for lighter
treatment and a little extra celery seed.
Now, however, Heinrich pulled out his remaining cigarette and stuck it
in between his thin lips. It sat there,
unlit.
His friend Gustav, who was standing in the row behind
him, hissed angrily.
“Hey!
Heinz! Hey! Hey!
What are you doing, Hey? You’ll
get beaten! Hey! Come on, you’ll get us all beat!”
Heinrich turned to look at the man speaking to
him. He said nothing, only blinked, and
turned back. Gustav grumbled angrily.
“Thinks he’s a big man, hey?” Gustav whispered to the man behind him. “I guess it’s finally gotten to him. He’s a crazy now.”
Oddly enough, Heinrich wasn’t beaten, and the whole
group was led to the mess hall early to wait outside until the previous shift
finished, and while the guards figured out what to do with their fallen
prisoner. Men whispered among themselves
that, if fallen Franz could no longer stand, he’d probably just end up
shot. Gustav sidled up by Heinrich and
whispered in his ear, out of sight of the new guards.
“He’s a goner, hey?
Don’t you think? He’s gone. He’s no use to them anymore.”
And Heinrich said nothing, but he blinked twice and
then looked to the sky, looking, but seeing nothing.
That day Heinrich found himself in a work detail of 20
men about half way between the camp and the town. They were tasked with beginning a new arm of
the road, but first they had to tear down the old stone wall that stood in the
middle of the intended path, a path probably chosen for the fact that it was
obstructed by these remains of a farm house from decades before.
The guards had handed out shovels and told the captives
that they had better start digging, because the days were short and if they
didn’t have the wall down while the sun was still in the sky, they would have
found they were digging their own grave.
And so the men dug, trying to chip through the cold ground, trying to
find the foundation to stones stood upon.
After an hour, Heinrich stopped. He laid his shovel on the ground, and marched
off to the edge of the group. He sat on
the ground, and looked at his hands. A
guard quickly took noticed of him. He
kicked Heinrich in the side and Heinrich fell over. He just lay on the hard ground.
“Get up!” The guard cursed. “You dog, get up! Who do you think you are?” But Heinrich did nothing, except look at his
hands. The guard grabbed a shovel from a
prisoner.
“Get up!” he screamed, furious that he had not
instantly been obeyed. “Get up or I will
take your repulsive Jew head off with this spade!”
Heinrich pulled himself back up into a sitting
position, and looked expressionlessly into the eyes of his tormentor. Anger wept across the guard’s face, and he
brought the flat end of the shovel down on the top of Heinrich’s head, a
warning blow of sorts.
Heinrich fell again, dazed, but amid the shouts of the
guards who had joined in the stir, he stood up and stumbled into the middle of
the work detail. The first guard threw
the shovel after him.
“Get to work! If
you value your life, you’ll pick up that shovel right this instant!”
But Heinrich paid him no heed. He stared up at the wall in front of
him. He regarded it will a perplexed
expression. The enraged guard stormed
toward him, drawing a gun.
“You worthless, thieving Jew son-of-a-“
But the cry rang out from one of the captives, “Look
out! It’s coming!” And the whole host of prisoners and guards
scramble away from the leaning stone wall.
It was surely about to fall, and Gustav looked back as he ran out of its
path. There stood Heinrich, looking at
the wall at it tipped toward him.
“Heinz!” he
yelled, “Hey! Move! You schlemiel! Move!”
But Heinrich stood his ground. The wall sharply fell forward, and just
before it took Heinrich out of sight, Gustav saw Heinrich, smiling, his arms stretched
wide open, welcoming the end that now befell him.
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