She finds Margit sitting at the foot of a bunk with her mother and her sister Helga, who is two years younger than Margit. She greets the family. Then Margit’s mother, who knows that the teenagers are happier talking about things on their own, says she’s going to find one of her neighbors. Helga stays where she is, but her eyes are drooping and she’s almost asleep. She’s mentally and physically exhausted because she was very unlucky with the job she was given sorting mountains of clothes of the dead people.
Undertaking such hard physical labor with just a liquid drink in the morning, soup at midday, and a piece of bread at night would leave anyone exhausted. Dita, with her habit of giving everyone a nickname, secretly calls Helga Sleeping Beauty, but hasn’t called her that out loud since she realized that Margit didn’t find the nickname the least bit amusing. But in fact it is exactly what she is: an extremely thin, almost emaciated adolescent who falls asleep from exhaustion as soon as she sits down anywhere.
“Your mother has left us on our own.… How considerate she is!” Dita says.
“Mothers know what they have to do,” Margit replies.
“I was thinking about my mother as I was coming over here. You know her. She seems so fainthearted, but she’s so much stronger than I could ever have imagined. Since my father’s death, she’s continued to work in that stinking workshop without a single word of complaint; she hasn’t even caught a cold in that wooden icebox we sleep in.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I once overheard a couple of young women who sleep near us … Do you know what they call my mother and her friends?”
“What?”
“The Old Hens Club.”
“That’s terrible.”
“But they’re right. Sometimes they all begin to speak at once from their bunks and they make a racket like hens in a farmyard.”
Margit smiles. She’s very discreet, and she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make fun of older people, but she’s also pleased to hear Dita joking again. It’s a good sign.
“And what have you heard about Renée?” Dita asks.
Margit becomes serious. “She’s been avoiding me for days.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well, not just me. As soon as she finishes work, she goes off with her mother and doesn’t speak to anyone.”
“But why?”
“People are gossiping.”
“What do you mean, gossiping? About Renée? Why?”
Margit feels a bit uncomfortable because she can’t find the right words to tell her friend.
“She’s on good terms with an SS officer.”
There are certain lines that can’t be crossed in Auschwitz–Birkenau, and that’s one of them.
“Are you sure it’s not just a rumor? You know people invent all sorts of things.”
“No, Dita. I’ve seen her talking to him. They stand beside the entry guard post because people usually don’t go there. But you can see them perfectly from Barracks One and Three.”
“Do they kiss?”
“Good God, I hope not. I get the shivers just thinking about that.”
“I’d rather kiss a pig.”
Margit doubles over with laughter, and Dita realizes she’s starting to speak like the good soldier ?vejk. What’s even worse is that she quite likes the idea.
At that very moment, a few huts away, Renée is removing nits from her mother’s hair. It keeps her hands and her eyes busy but otherwise leaves her free to think.
She already knows that the other women criticize her. She doesn’t think it’s a good thing to accept the friendship of a member of the SS, either, even someone as well-mannered and attentive as Viktor.
Viktor?
Friendly or otherwise, he is a prison guard. Even worse, an executioner. But he behaves himself with her. He gave her the fine-toothed comb with which she’s freeing her mother of the lice. He also brought her a small jar of red currant jam. She and her mother had spread it on their nightly pieces of lumpy bread and enjoyed their dinner for the first time in months. They hadn’t tasted that flavor for such a long time! Vitamin contributions like that can prevent illness and save your life.
Should she be unfriendly to this young SS man who has never asked her for anything in return? Should she reject his gifts and tell him she wants nothing to do with him?
She knows that many of the women who criticize her would take what they could if they were in the same position. They’d take it for their husbands or their children or whoever, but they’d take it. It’s easy to be honorable when people don’t put an open bottle of red currant jam and a slice of bread in front of you.
Viktor says he’d like them to get engaged when all this is over. She never replies. He talks to her of Romania, describes his village and how they celebrate their main feast day with sack races and an enormous sweet-and-sour stew in the square. Renée would like to hate him; she knows it’s her duty to hate him. But hate is too much like love: Neither of them is a matter of choice.
*
Night falls in Auschwitz. Trains continue to arrive in the darkness, depositing more disoriented innocents who tremble like leaves, and the red glow of the chimneys marks out the ovens that never stop. The inmates of the family camp try to sleep on their flea-infested mattresses and to overcome their fear-inspired insomnia. Every night gained is a small victory.
In the morning, another round of face-washing in the metal troughs, and the immodest lowering of underwear and hiking of dresses to perform bodily functions along with three hundred other people. Then the painfully slow head count on another freezing day. The cold ground turns their clogs into shoes of ice. The guards leave the camp, their lists dotted with crosses beside the names of those who have not survived the night. Finally, Fredy Hirsch closes the barrack door and raises an eyebrow. The children raucously break ranks and go to their stools, a few teachers stop by the library, and a new day begins in Block 31.
What Dita craves is the lunchtime soup. It’s comforting. And more to the point, it marks the start of the afternoon when she can share again the adventures of that spendthrift soldier who’s always putting his foot in it and who has become her friend. One of the Austrian officers in charge of ?vejk’s battalion is a brute called Dauerling. His superiors value him because he treats his soldiers severely, even hitting them at times.
Reading is a pleasure.
But there are always people ready to spoil any party. Busybody Mrs. Nasty, unmistakable with her dirty bun and display of wobbling skin, leans into Dita’s refuge. She’s with another teacher who has tiny, almost microscopic eyes.
The two women plant themselves in front of Dita, scowl, and order her to show them what she is reading. She holds out the sheets of paper and one of them grabs the book. The pages come loose and the worn threads that hold them to the spine are on the verge of breaking. Dita makes a face, but she bites her tongue.
As the teacher reads, her eyes widen more and more. The loose skin under her chin wobbles with indignation. Dita fights the urge to smile at the thought that Mrs. Nasty’s expression is no different from that of some of the officers in ?vejk’s regiment at some of his witty remarks.
“This is unacceptable and indecent! No girl your age should read this perverse material. There are inadmissible blasphemies in here.”