“Hans,” asks Liesl, “how did you know with such certainty that Edita was telling the truth? It seemed so incredible…!”
“I didn’t know. But it’s a trick they use in the courts. You bluff: You pretend you’re absolutely certain about something although you aren’t really, and the accused is betrayed by his own insecurity. He thinks he’s been found out and falls to pieces.”
“And if he hadn’t been an informer?”
“I would have apologized. But,” he adds, winking at his daughter, “I knew I was holding a good hand.”
One of the men in the group approaches and places a friendly hand on Hans’s shoulder.
“I’d forgotten you were a lawyer.”
“Me too.”
There’s still one thing to do to finish off Mr. Tomá?ek’s career as an informer: activate Radio Birkenau. The Adler family go to see Mrs. Turnovská. The good woman entrusts herself a number of times to God and several biblical patriarchs, and then sets things in motion. Within forty-eight hours, the entire camp has been alerted and Mr. Tomá?ek has fallen from grace.
12.
Rudi Rosenberg heads around the back of his hut in the quarantine camp and walks up to the electrified fence. Alice Munk is waiting for him on the other side. They both stop three paces from the fence and then, despite the thousands of volts running through the wires, advance one more step. They slowly sit down so they won’t arouse the guards’ suspicion.
It’s another of the many afternoons that Rudi gets together with Alice to talk. Alice tells him about her family of wealthy industrialists from the north of Prague, and how much she’d like to go home. Rosenberg talks about his dream of going to America the day this nightmare of war and camps is over.
“It’s the land of opportunity. Business is sacred. It’s the only place in the world where a poor man can become the president of a nation.”
It’s freezing cold, and the ground is covered with frost. Rudi is wearing a cloth jacket, but Alice has only a worn sweater and an old woolen shawl. When Rudi notices that her lips are turning blue and she’s shivering, he tells her she’d better go back to her hut, but she refuses.
She’s happier sharing this afternoon outdoors in freezing intimacy than inside a hut full of women who reek of sweat and illness—and occasionally, of resentment.
When the cold becomes unbearable, they stand up and walk in step on either side of the fence. The guards have become used to their presence. Rudi gets tobacco for some of them, and sometimes acts as interpreter with the Russian and Czech soldiers, so their afternoon meetings near the fence are tolerated for now.
Rudi talks to Alice about amusing moments in his life as registrar. He doesn’t want to tell her about what he sees in the eyes of recent camp arrivals on the other side of his registration table. So now and then, he invents funny anecdotes to make his stories more entertaining. When Alice speaks of the hundreds of people arriving daily, he tells her it’s only the terminally ill who are gassed, that she shouldn’t be distressed, and immediately changes the topic of conversation.
“I’ve brought you a present…”
He pulls his hand out of his pocket and opens his fist. What’s on display is tiny, but Alice’s eyes open wide when she recognizes its enormous value. It’s a clove of garlic.
Rudi has become something of an expert at keeping an eye on the soldier in the nearest guard tower. When the barrel of his gun suggests he has his back to them, he takes two quick steps to the fence. He mustn’t touch the wire, but he can’t dither. He’s got ten seconds before the guard turns back to face them. He pinches his fingers together and carefully introduces them into the appropriate gap. Five seconds. He releases the garlic clove. Alice reaches out and snaps it up. Four seconds. They both return to their original spots, a few paces from the fence.
There’s admiration and fear on Alice’s face. Rudi is pleased. There aren’t many people willing to insert their fingers in the deadly fences. Some black marketeers toss goods over the tops of the fences that separate the camps, but Rudi believes that sort of action is too visible from a long way off, and there are too many tongues, and too many eyes, in the Lager.
“Eat it, Alice. It’s got lots of vitamins.”
“But then I won’t be able to give you a kiss…”
“Come on, Alice, it’s important. You must eat. You’re very thin.”
“Don’t you like me?” asks Alice, flirting.
Rudi sighs.
“You know I’m mad about you. And your hair is particularly lovely today.”
“You noticed!”
“But you have to eat that garlic. It cost me a lot to get it.”
“And I’m really, really grateful.”
But she hides it in her hand rather than eating it. Rudi swears silently.
“You did the same thing the other day when I brought you a stick of celery.”
Then Alice gives him a teasing look and lifts her chin as if she were signaling to him. And Rudi finally notices and claps his hand to his forehead.
“Alice, you’re crazy!”
He hasn’t realized until this very moment that Alice is wearing a purple hairband. Perhaps a little childish, but a luxury item in this place. It has cost him a celery stick. Alice laughs.
“No, don’t do it! Winter isn’t over, you’ve got hardly any warm clothing, and you have to eat. Don’t you understand? The person in charge of the corpse cart picks up a dozen people a day in your camp—people who die of exhaustion, malnutrition, or just a simple cold. A cold kills you here, Alice. We’re very weak. You’ve got to eat!” And for the first time, his voice hardens as he speaks to Alice: “I want you to eat that garlic clove right now!”
He had to hand over the names and ranks of the most recently arrived Russian officers to a certain helper in the kitchen in order to get the garlic. Rudi neither knows nor wants to know why he wants the list, but it’s valuable information. Favors like that could even cost him his life.
Alice looks at him sadly, and he can see a tear in her eye.
“You don’t understand, Rudi.”
That’s all she says. She’s not very talkative. And no, Rudi doesn’t understand. Exchanging a celery stalk, so nutritious and hard to get hold of, for a useless piece of wire covered in velvet, made quickly and on the run in one of the camp workshops, seems stupid to him. He doesn’t understand that Alice will soon turn sixteen. After spending all her adolescence trapped in the ugliness of war, feeling beautiful for one afternoon makes Alice happy. And that is more nourishing than an entire field of celery.