He hasn’t been assigned guard duty, and command headquarters don’t allow the SS to roam around the family camp, but the sergeant at the control booth is a friend of his, so he gets through without any difficulty. The guards stand to attention as he goes by. He likes that.
They’re just finishing the afternoon roll call. He knows the group to which the Czech girl is assigned, and so, when they are dismissed, he spots her among the flood of women. He walks toward her, but the girl sees him coming and walks more quickly. He quickens his stride, but the only way he can stop her is to grab hold of her wrist. Her bones are thin, and her skin is rough, but he’s filled with unusual joy at being so close to her. Finally, she lifts her head and looks at him for the first time: She has brilliant blue eyes and looks terrified. He notices that other inmates have stopped a few paces away. The SS officer turns menacingly, and the group of spectators immediately dissolves. It feels good to inspire fear in others, and it’s easy to get used to doing it.
“My name is Viktor.”
She remains silent, and he quickly lets go of her wrist.
“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just … wanted to know your name.”
The girl is trembling, and she almost can’t get the words out of her mouth.
“My name is Renée Neumann, sir,” she replies. “Have I done something wrong? Are you going to punish me?”
“No, no! Nothing like that! It’s just that I saw you.…” The SS officer hesitates; he can’t find the words. “I just wanted to be your friend.”
Renée looks at him in amazement. Friend? You can obey an SS officer; you can flatter him or become his informer in order to gain some perks, even become his lover. But can you be the friend of someone in the SS? Can you be the friend of your own executioner?
Since she’s still looking at him perplexed and not saying a word, Pestek lowers his head and quietly says to her, “I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m another one of those crazy SS people. Well, I am, but I’m not so crazy. I don’t like what’s happening to you. It makes me sick.”
Renée keeps her mouth shut. She has no idea what all this is about, and she’s confused. She’s heard all too often about guards who pretend to hate the Reich so that they’ll gain the trust of the inmates, pretending to be their friends and then pumping them for information about the Resistance. She’s frightened.
The officer takes something small out of his pocket and holds it out to her. It’s a square box made of lacquered wood. He tries to place it on the palm of her hand, but she steps back.
“It’s for you. It’s a present.”
She looks at the yellow box with suspicion. He lifts the small lid, and a sweet, metallic tune starts to play.
“It’s a music box,” he tells her with a smile of satisfaction.
Renée studies the object he’s holding out to her for a few moments but gives no sign of taking it. He nods his head and grins, waiting for her enthusiastic response.
Renée shows no enthusiasm. Her mouth is a straight line, and her eyes are blank.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?” he asks, upset.
“You can’t eat it,” she replies. Her voice is abrasive, even more so than the cold February breeze, which strips everything bare.
Pestek feels ashamed when he realizes his own stupidity. He has spent the past week looking for a music box. He went back and forth; he negotiated with his fellow SS guards and with all sorts of Jewish dealers until he found one. He bribed, begged, and threatened; he searched high and low until he finally got it. And it’s only now that he understands it’s a useless gift. In a place where the inmates are cold and hungry, the one thing that occurs to him as a present for the girl is a stupid music box.
You can’t eat it.…
He squeezes his hand shut so tightly you can hear the crunch of the little music box, which he’s crushed as if it were a sparrow.
“Forgive me,” he says sorrowfully. “I’m a complete idiot. I don’t understand anything.”
It seems to Renée that the SS officer is genuinely crestfallen, as if his discomfort were not a pretense and what she thought of him really mattered.
“What would you like me to bring you?”
She doesn’t answer. She knows there are girls who sell their bodies for a ration of bread. The expression on her face is one of such indignation that Pestek realizes he’s made another mistake.
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want anything in return. I just want to do something good in the midst of all the awful things we do here every day.”
Renée still doesn’t say a word. The SS guard realizes it’s not going to be easy to gain her confidence. The girl tugs at one of her curls and pulls it down to her mouth in that movement he adores.
“Would you like me to come back and see you another day?”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes sweep the camp’s muddy ground. He’s SS—he can do what he likes; he doesn’t have to ask her permission to speak to her. Or to do whatever he wants to do. She doesn’t say anything, but Pestek is so excited that he interprets her silence as a discreet yes.
After all, she hasn’t said no.
He smiles happily and says good-bye with an awkward wave of his hand.
“I’ll see you soon, Renée.”
She watches the SS officer walk away and stands motionless for a long time, perplexed. Silver cogs, springs, and golden splinters are left in the mud.
*
It’s not easy for Dita. Her father’s absence weighs unbearably on her. How can something that no longer exists be so heavy? How can emptiness have weight?
She could barely get down from her bunk this morning. She did it so slowly that she infuriated her bad-tempered bunkmate, who started to swear in the filthiest language Dita had ever heard. At any other time, Dita would have been terrified by the old woman’s fury, but she didn’t even have the energy to be frightened. She turned her head and fixed the woman with a stare of such indifference that, to her surprise, the woman stopped swearing and didn’t say another word until Dita had finished her slow descent.
Following the afternoon roll call and the order to fall out, the children from Block 31 noisily march off either to play or go and meet their parents. In a vegetative state, Dita slowly begins to gather together her books, and drags herself over to the Block?ltester’s cubicle to hide them. Fredy is going through some packages.
“I was keeping something for you, for when you have to carry out repairs on your books,” says Hirsch.