“Perfect, Seppl! We’ll launch the public library right away!”
“I find this business with the books a total madness.” And he sighs as he heads off. “But is there anything in this place that isn’t mad?”
Dita leaves the hut happy, but also nervous, as she thinks about how she’s going to organize things. She’s busy thinking when she runs into Margit, who’s been waiting for her outside. Just then, they see a man coming out of the makeshift hospital barrack. He pulls a cart; in it, a body covered with a piece of canvas. It’s so common to see corpses going past that hardly anyone seems to notice anymore. The two girls walk on in silence until they come across Renée, a young friend of Margit’s. Her clothes are covered with mud after a day spent working in the drainage ditches, and the bags under her eyes make her look older.
“You really lucked out with your work assignment, Renée!”
“Bad luck follows me everywhere…” she says somewhat enigmatically to make sure she captures the attention of the two girls.
She gestures for them to follow her down an alleyway between two of the huts. They find a spot at the back of one of them, a few meters away from a group of men who, given the way they are whispering and looking around warily, must be talking politics. The three girls huddle together to try and keep warm, and then Renée starts to talk.
“There’s a guard who looks at me.”
The other two girls exchange puzzled looks. Margit has no idea how to respond, but Dita gets cheeky.
“That’s why they pay the guards, Renée. To watch the prisoners.”
“But he looks at me in a different way.… He stares. He waits until I step out of line once roll call is over, and then he follows me with his eyes; I can feel them. And he does the same thing again with the afternoon head count.”
Dita is on the verge of making another joke at Renée’s expense, telling her she’s very vain, but she notices how worried the girl is and opts to keep quiet.
“At first it didn’t seem significant, but this afternoon, while he was patrolling the camp, he detoured from the middle of the Lagerstrasse and came over to the drain where we were working. I didn’t dare turn around, but I could tell he was very close by. Then he walked away.”
“Maybe he was just inspecting the work being done on the ditch.”
“But he went right back to the middle of the Lagerstrasse and didn’t make any other detours till he got to the end. It’s as if he was keeping an eye only on me.”
“Are you sure it’s always the same SS guard?”
“Yes. He’s short, so he’s easy to spot.” And she covers her face with her hands as she says this. “I’m frightened.”
“That girl gets too easily flustered,” says Dita somewhat contemptuously when Renée leaves them.
“She’s scared. I am, too. Aren’t you ever afraid, Dita? You’re the one who should be most scared, and yet you’re the least frightened of all of us.”
“Nonsense! Of course I’m afraid. I just don’t go around trumpeting it.”
“Sometimes you need to talk about things.”
They remain silent for a minute and then say good-bye. Dita returns to the Lagerstrasse. It has started to snow, and people are gathering in their huts. These are hotbeds of infection, but at least it’s not quite so cold inside. Dita can see the door of her hut, Barrack 16, in the distance. There isn’t the usual crowd of people milling in the doorway. Married couples often take advantage of the hour before curfew to be together. She soon realizes why no one’s there. Notes from Puccini’s opera Tosca are floating in the air. Dita recognizes it because it’s one of her father’s favorites. Someone’s whistling the notes with precision, and when she looks more carefully, she makes out the figure of a man with the flat cap of an SS officer leaning against the frame of the door.
“My God…”
He seems to be waiting for someone. But no one wants him waiting for them. Dita stops; she doesn’t know if she’s been spotted. A group of four women overtakes her. They chat anxiously about their husbands as they walk briskly. Dita takes two strides, lowers her head, and walks right behind them so they’ll provide cover for her. Just as they get to the door of the hut, she scoots around the women and almost races inside.
She runs to her row of bunks and leaps up onto her bed. For the first time ever, she’s pleased to see that her bunkmate is already there, and she burrows beside her dirty feet, as if she believes that by doing so, she’ll be able to hide from that all-seeing medical captain. There’s no sound of hurried footsteps or German commands. Mengele isn’t chasing after her, and she feels momentary relief.
She doesn’t know that no one has ever seen Mengele running. Why run? he thinks. Prisoners have nowhere to hide. It’s like catching fish in a barrel.
Her mother tells Dita not to worry, there’s still time before the curfew. Dita nods and even manages to fake a smile.
Dita says good night first to her mother, and then to her bunkmate’s filthy socks, which smell like overripe cheese. She gets no reply; she no longer expects one. She wonders what Mengele was doing there, at the entrance to her hut. If he was waiting for her—if he believes she could be hiding something from the camp commanders—why doesn’t he arrest her? She has no idea. Mengele cuts open thousands of stomachs and looks inside them with greedy eyes, but no one has been able to see what’s inside his head. The lights are turned off, and she finally feels safe. But then she realizes she’s mistaken.
When Mengele threatened her, she was unsure if she should tell the leaders of Block 31. They would relieve her of her responsibility. But everyone would think she’d asked to give up her position out of fear. And so she has made the library more accessible and more visible. She’s risked more, so that no one is left in any doubt: Dita Adler is not afraid of any Nazi.
But is this right? she asks herself.
If she puts herself at risk, she’s putting everyone else at risk. If they find her with the books, they’ll shut down Block 31. The dream of leading anything like a normal life will be over for five hundred children. She has sacrificed sound judgment to her foolish wish to appear brave.
Dita opens her eyes, and the dirty socks still lurk in the dark. She can’t hide the truth in the thin canvas compartments under her smock. Truth weighs too much. It ends up tearing the bottom out of any lining, dropping noisily, and shattering everything. She thinks about Hirsch. He is a totally transparent man, and she has no right to hide the facts from him.
Fredy doesn’t deserve that.
Dita decides that she’ll talk to him the next day. She’ll explain that Dr. Mengele is keeping a close eye on her and that the library—and Block 31—is at risk. Hirsch will relieve her of the position, of course. No one will look at her with admiration anymore. That makes her feel a little sad. It’s easy to commend the hero whose actions are visible. But how do you measure the bravery of those who step aside?