One of them, a Czech with a steely look, says Hirsch is buying time. They all look at him, asking him to explain what he means.
“They’re not going to destroy him. He’s useful to the Nazis. He’s prepared valuable reports for them and anyway, he’s German. Hirsch is waiting for Mengele to claim him, to remove him from here any moment; that’s what he’s waiting for.”
A tense silence hangs briefly in the air.
“That’s a low comment typical of Communists like you! Fredy has taken risks for the sake of the children hundreds of times more often than you!” Renata Bubeník yells at him.
The Czech starts to shout, too, calling her a stupid Zionist and saying that they’ve heard Hirsch asking the Kapo in his current hut if there’s been any message for him.
Rudi stands up and tries to make peace. He now realizes why it’s so important to find a leader, a single voice, someone capable of bringing such a mixed group of people together and convincing them to rise up as one.
When everyone else leaves, Alice comes to sit beside Rudi and share the wait, because that’s all they can do now, wait for Hirsch’s reply. Alice’s presence is a relief in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. She finds it hard to believe that the Nazis will kill all of them, even the children. Death is something terrible but foreign to her, as though it could happen to others but not to her. Rudi tells her it’s horrible, but Schmulewski can’t be wrong about something like this. Then he asks her to change the topic. They talk about life after Auschwitz, about how much she likes country houses, about her favorite foods, the names she’d like to give her children one day … about real life, and not this nightmare in which they are trapped. For a short while, a future seems possible.
The minutes pass. And the weight of tension is almost unbearable. Rudi thinks about Hirsch’s burden. Alice is talking to him, but he’s no longer listening. There’s a stifling heaviness in the air. There’s a clock inside his head with an infernal tick-tock that’s driving him mad.
An hour goes by, and there’s no news from Hirsch.
Minutes pass; another hour. No sign of Hirsch.
Alice fell silent some time ago, and her head is resting in Rudi’s lap. Rudi starts to become aware that death is very near.
*
Meanwhile, in the family camp next door, classes have been suspended in Block 31. The teachers from the December transport, who are now in charge of the school, are too concerned. Some try to organize games for the children, but the children themselves are restless. They want to know where their classmates are going, and they aren’t at all interested in guessing games or songs. It’s an afternoon of lethargy and tense calmness. There’s no fuel for the fire, and it’s colder than ever. One of the assistants arrives and tells everyone that new Kapos have been named to replace the Jewish barrack heads of the September transport.
Dita sticks her head outside every now and again to see what’s happening in camp BIIa, where half her former companions are now located. She can see people walking along the main street in the quarantine camp; some even walk up to the fence, but security is tight and the soldiers immediately move them on.
The atmosphere is so charged that Dita thinks it would be foolish to move the books, which remain carefully hidden in what was, until yesterday, Hirsch’s den, and is now occupied by Lichtenstern. The new head has exchanged his meal ration for half a dozen cigarettes. He’s smoked them one after another, and continues to pace up and down the hut like a caged lion.
Everyone is concerned about what’s going to happen to the September transport people. Out of solidarity and compassion, no doubt, but also because whatever happens to those people might be a preview of what lies in wait for them three months from now, when their six months in the camp are over.
19.
In BIIa, Rudi can’t wait a moment longer.
He springs up energetically and looks at Alice without saying a word. He cracks his knuckles and decides to go over to Hirsch’s hut and force him to make a decision. And he won’t accept any answer but yes. The uprising has to explode without further delay.
He leaves the hut feeling very anxious, but the farther along the busy main street of the camp he gets, the bolder he becomes, and the more decisive his stride. He’s prepared to resolve Hirsch’s doubts and objections forcefully. He walks purposefully, inhaling deeply so he’ll be able to confront any obstacle the leader of the family camp might offer him: He’s ready to overcome them all so that the whistle sounds and the rebellion breaks out. While he was waiting, he went through an exhaustive replay of any objections Hirsch might put in front of him, and he’s prepared a definitive answer for each one. Rudi has a lofty view of himself—he is convinced he’s anticipated every possibility and can overcome them all.
It’s true that Rudi has answers to all the questions. He hasn’t left anything out, and there’s no way they can be rebutted. But what he hasn’t prepared for is that there won’t be an objection. There’s no way he could have anticipated the scene that awaits him when he reaches the hut in which Hirsch has a tiny room of his own.
The determined registrar walks energetically into the hut, knocks on Hirsch’s door, and when there’s no answer, resolutely walks in. He sees Fredy stretched out on his bunk. When he approaches the bunk to wake him, he notices with alarm that Fredy is breathing with great difficulty, his face blue. Hirsch is dying.
Rudi races from the hut, shouting for help like a madman. He returns with two doctors who were already gathering their few instruments in preparation for their return to the family camp before nightfall, as Mengele had ordered. Their examination of Rudi is short. They repeat it two more times and consult each other in whispers with grave expressions on their faces.
“It’s a serious case of poisoning; an overdose of sedatives. There’s nothing we can do for him.”
Alfred Hirsch’s life is expiring.
Rudi Rosenberg feels his heart skip a beat and almost faints. He has to lean against the wooden wall to remain upright. He looks over, undoubtedly for the last time, at the great athlete. The metal whistle on Hirsch’s chest is still. He realizes with horror that, in the end, the great man has been unable to bear the thought of taking his young charges to certain death. He has decided to depart first.
Rosenberg, overwhelmed with anxiety, thinks there might just be time to find another leader, that Schmulewski will find some other way of starting the revolt. He rushes off, but when he tries to leave the camp to go and talk to the head of the Resistance, things have changed: He encounters a swarm of SS guards. The quarantine camp has been sealed. Nobody can enter or leave, under any circumstances.