Chapter 8

Karl Neuenrade was not only the only waiter at the Gemustert-Essen-Keller in Celle, he was also the proprietor; his wife was the cook, and his daughter sat at the cash register, her rotting teeth and straggly mustache protection against the most salacious or sex-starved customer.

Life had been good to Karl Neuenrade. Early in his restaurant career he had established excellent relations with the farmers in the Celle area, so that the rationing that had been austere during the war, and which became even more draconian following the war, did not greatly affect him or his fancy food. There was, however, one cloud on Karl Neuenrade’s horizon, and it was one that grew in size each day that passed following the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. It was the fact that during the war, while his wife and daughter had run the restaurant and run it quite profitably, Karl had served as the SS sergeant in charge of the prisoner food program at the Belsenlager, and as such was known to many of the prisoners, especially those who had worked in the cookhouses. As soon as the camp had been liberated and turned over to the British by Joseph Kramer, the commandant, Karl Neuenrade had hurried home and removed the sign pointing down the steps to his restaurant, informing all customers that it was out being repainted. Nor did the sign go back up again in a hurry, and while its absence undoubtedly caused the loss of some customers, it was better than having the place inundated with ex-prisoners. The ploy seemed to have been successful; while every other restaurant in Celle had been forced to serve God knows how many free meals to the men in the striped blouses as they made their way through Celle on their way home, the Gemustert-Essen-Keller saw none.

June passed, and July and August, and in September, when apparently all the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen had either left the camp or had settled into the former German Army quarters for a long, long stay, Karl Neuenrade congratulated himself on his foresight as far as the sign was concerned, and mounted it once more on the wrought-iron frame that swung over the cellar steps.

He moved a mere few minutes too quickly, for no sooner had he come back downstairs from hanging the sign, dusting his fingers and feeling pleased with himself, than a group of shadows on the steps indicated a clutch of customers, and three men descended. Karl came forward with a smile to greet them—they were early for lunch, but the Gemustert-Essen-Keller was always prepared—and then saw to his consternation they all wore striped shirts and the striped caps he had feared.

They seated themselves at a table in the middle of the room, and smiled at him. Karl stared at them resentfully. He worked hard for his money, while these—these—these loafers still expected to sponge meals simply because they had the hard luck of being in a concentration camp. The war was over! It was time to forget the war and the camps and get back to normalcy! Still, when Karl considered the very size of the huge one of the trio, sitting there with the patience of a hungry bear, not to mention the icy look in the slate-blue eyes of the second one—familiar, those eyes; from one of the cookhouses, Karl thought—plus the ugly sneer on the face of the one-eyed one, he realized a free meal would not only be charitable but could be the lesser of two evils. If the three decided to tear his place apart, could he expect any relief from the police? Not a hope! Most of the police were too afraid of being denounced as former SS themselves to take any action against the men in the striped shirts and caps.

Wolf seemed to resent the look in Karl’s eye; the delay also did not sit well with him. He tipped up the patch over his eye socket in the manner of a person politely tipping his hat.

“May we order now?” Karl Neuenrade moved hastily back from the revolting sight, and covered his confusion by bringing up his order pad and wetting his pencil with his tongue. “Good!” Wolf said approvingly, and studied the blackboard on the wall. “I’ll start with some schnapps—something drinkable—then beer with lunch, which will be the schnitzel with potatoes. And some salad, of course …”

Karl Neuenrade’s face burned as he filled the orders and watched his good food being devoured, his best liquors consumed. They should have all been killed, these people, these Jew animals; and decent folks like himself would not have to suffer, now!

They finished their meal, belched politely to indicate their appreciation of the cuisine, and marched up the steps in file without—as Karl had so bitterly known—making the slightest effort to dig into their pockets. Still, digging into their pockets would have been pointless; all they would have encountered would have been their fingers.

“Bastard,” Wolf said genially. “Did you see the look on his face? We’re lucky he didn’t try to poison us.”

“He tried for the past year at Belsen,” Grossman said sourly. “He was in charge of the prisoner food there.”

“And he didn’t do badly,” Brodsky conceded, and led the way toward the edge of town and the autobahn leading south.

For some reason difficult for them to understand, that day all traffic seemed destined for Bremen or Hamburg to the north. All that came along in their direction was an occasional mule-drawn cart, or an even more occasional official-looking limousine passing at high speed, with the British officers inside looking glum and paying no attention to the three waving their arms at the side of the road. Afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen and they were still less than fifteen miles from the camp. They looked at each other.

“Well?” Wolf said. “Do we go back? That ought to be easy; everything seems to be heading that way. Start out tomorrow again, earlier? Or stop in Celle and take lessons in hitching a ride?”

“We don’t go back,” Brodsky said with finality, and started hiking down the road. The others hurried to catch up. The afternoon sun burned; it was hot and the packs with their spare clothing and a few tins of food seemed to gain weight with every step. Still, they were finally out of the camp and moving, and that was the important thing. They had walked for over an hour when Brodsky suddenly called out, “Sing!” and Grossman unconsciously started singing. His steps matched the rhythm, his weary mind back in his earliest days in a uniform, marching along, singing as he swung in step with the others:

“Deutschland, Deutschland, Über Alles—”

He suddenly realized that nobody else was singing and looked up from the road to find both Wolf and Brodsky staring at him curiously. He forced a smile and began again:

“Deutschland, Deutschland, Alles Über—”

Brodsky laughed. The three swung down the road, singing, but Grossman inwardly was cringing. And what if he had unconsciously started to sing the “Horst Wessel” song instead?

The farmhouse was set far back from the road, as if ashamed to have its disrepair noted by passers-by, a low sprawling building almost of another age, badly in need of paint. Behind it and a short distance away was a sagging barn with roof shingles missing, and which seemed to be held together mainly by the fading posters that had been plastered on its sides many years before. At first glance the house seemed deserted, but then they noticed the thin wisp of smoke that was curling from the chimney. The three men looked at one another.

“I think we’ve walked as far as can be expected of hitchhikers for one day,” Wolf said.

“I’m hungry,” Grossman said. “Do you suppose there’s any food inside?”

“We can only hope and pray,” Wolf said piously.

“And we could all use a good night’s rest,” Brodsky added, making the vote unanimous.

They walked down the weed-choked lane leading to the house, aware of the good smell of burning wood as they approached. Brodsky stepped up to the side door of the house and rapped upon it authoritatively. There was no immediate response, and Brodsky raised his large fist to repeat the knock when the door suddenly opened and a woman stood there, a shotgun in her hands. Brodsky brought his hand down and in the same motion simply picked the gun from the woman’s hand. He broke it open, removed the shells, and tucked the gun under his arm. The woman was staring at them in momentary shock at having lost her weapon; her eyes were wide with fear. She was a middle-aged woman with straggling hair already touched with gray, wearing tom slippers over bare feet, with a man’s shirt that was too small for her ample bust, and a wrinkled skirt that was strained by her wide hips. She started to back away, to try to close the door, but Brodsky’s hand prevented it.

“We’re not here to hurt you or rob you,” he said with as much assurance as he could get into his harsh voice. “We only want something to eat.”

“And a place to sleep,” Grossman added.

“Which can be in the barn,” Wolf added. He tapped his striped shirt. “Fortunately, we’ve been well trained not to be fussy.”

The woman hesitated.

“We’ll cut some firewood for you,” Brodsky said, as if that settled the matter, and walked into the house, bringing the gun with him. He leaned it against the wall and looked around. The room was furnished in typical German farmland style, with a massive sofa and heavy chairs upholstered in worn, faded velour. Old-fashioned photographs studied the intruders from the papered walls, interspersed with crocheted mottos in cheap frames; there was a foot-pedal-operated organ against one wall. “Pretty,” he said approvingly, and walked through to the kitchen, where he nodded in satisfaction. There was a wood fire in the firebox of the oven, bread on the table, several thick sausages hung from the roof beams, and an open tin of some sort of meat lay on the counter. There was also an ax in one corner. He picked up the ax and went out through the back kitchen door to the rear of the house. The sound of wood being chopped came to them.

“If you want, I can cook,” Wolf said, and smiled. The woman shrank back before the horrible grimace. “I used to be a professional cook, once,” he said to Grossman. “You didn’t know that, did you? Now I just scare people …”

But the woman was already in the kitchen, hurriedly putting three plates on the table.

Moonlight slotted the darkness of the bam, angling through the missing shingles, playing across Brodsky’s strong face, touching the permanent sneer on Wolf’s lips and softening it. Grossman turned restlessly, unable to sleep, and then came slowly and silently to his feet. He looked down at the other two and then stepped softly over them and walked quietly out of the barn and toward the house.

There was a light in the kitchen. He stood at a window, peering in. The woman, her side to him, was standing at an ironing board, ironing clothes. Her thick arms moved back and forth, pausing only to move the blouse she was working on, or to exchange one iron for another, placing the cool one on a gas ring, touching her wetted finger against the fresh one to test its heat. She had partially unbuttoned her restraining shirt and her heavy breasts swung slightly with the rhythm of her ironing stroke.

God! Grossman thought, feeling the stirring in his loins. A woman like this, old, fat, barefoot, plain! And to be reduced to rape! But it had been over a year since he had had a woman, and for the first time since he had entered Belsen he was feeling the insistent necessity for sex. He wet his lips and moved stealthily to the door, turning the handle as quietly as he could. The door opened with a creak of unoiled hinges; the woman swung around instantly, the hot iron coming up protectively before her full bosom. She stared at him.

“What do you want?”

“A—a drink of water, if you please …”

She tilted her head abruptly toward the pump handle at one end of the sink; he walked past her slowly, wanting desperately to brush one arm suggestively against her heavy breasts but fearing to have the hot iron thrust into his face. A failure, even with this monster, he thought bitterly, and found himself at the sink, actually pumping water, bringing up the dipper and drinking deeply, his hand trembling.

The woman was standing still, watching him, a strange look on her face. The iron had been set on the gas ring. “What’s your name?” she asked softly.

“Gross—” He had to stop and clear his throat; it had tightened up on him. “Grossman. Benjamin Grossman. What’s yours?”

“Ilsa. Ilsa Pohl.”

She stood staring at him, her face revealing nothing. Slowly he put down the dipper and came to face her. She looked into his eyes steadily for several moments, and then reached for his hand, bringing it up, placing it inside her shirt. He felt the soft fullness of her breast, the turgid hardness of the nipple, slightly damp with perspiration; and then she was leading him urgently to the next room. She closed the door to the kitchen and in the darkness pulled him down to the sofa, raising her skirt, fumbling at his belt, breathing harshly. He felt her callused hand on him, caressing him fiercely. They coupled savagely, with the woman whispering “Bitte, bitte, bitte, bitte, bitte” endlessly as they pounded at each other, until he climaxed with a sweetness and a fulfillment he could not recall before, forgiving her the drabness of her appearance, forgiving her everything. Beneath him the woman lay, panting quietly, pulsing internally against his slowly reducing organ. He started to raise himself but she drew him to her, holding him tightly. “Later,” she whispered. “Don’t go out, yet. Don’t go out. It’s been such a long time …”

And when at last he had shrunk so as to withdraw involuntarily, she still held him to her, rubbing her large breasts against him, until at last she realized it was over. She swung her feet to the floor and started to button her shirt. Her voice was low.

“Was it good?”

“It was very good,” he said honestly. “And for you?” He was surprised to hear himself ask; he had never asked before.

“It was wonderful. Very wonderful.” She reached for his hand and held it tightly, rubbing her breasts with it. “Must you really go tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“This used to be a good farm before the war,” she said slowly, and then hesitated as if comparing in her mind the way the farm was then and the way it looked now. “When Hans was alive, and our son. It could be a good farm again. It needs a man.” She moved his hand to her crotch, over her skirt, pressing it into her, moving it slowly up and down. “I need a man, too. Stay.”

“I’m sorry—”

“For a few days, at least. To see how it goes, how you like it.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” Grossman said, and for a moment he really was sorry. It had been exceptionally exciting sex. Who would have thought, with an older woman, with fat hips and a plain face, with heavy legs and straggling hair and callused hands? And the circumcision had certainly not reduced pleasure, which was good to know. But to be in this place? Him, on a farm, with this woman? It was ridiculous. “I have to go,” he said quietly. “I have to go to Switzerland, on business. Maybe after that, I may come back.”

“You won’t,” the woman said expressionlessly, and released his hand. She straightened her skirt and smiled in the darkness, a resigned smile. “But it was good,” she said softly, promising herself the memory for a long time, to enjoy in the manless nights until someone else came, if they ever did. “It was very good …”

And when he got back to the bam and lay down, he found Brodsky’s eyes open and staring at him curiously. He lay down and rolled over, and then rolled back.

“A drink of water,” he said shortly, and rolled back again, settling his head on his arm, unaware of the woman smell that filled the air, and fell asleep instantly.

They had walked less than a mile the following day before a British truck stopped for them, taking them as far as Würzburg, the soldiers sharing their rations with them, letting them sleep in the truck outside the British depot that night, and even bringing them some blankets to soften the hard floor boards of the truck. And the following morning they had barely reached the outskirts of the town when an American truck convoy came through, the stars and stripes painted on the brown hoods, and the lead truck stopped for water at a gas station that had only water to offer.

A husky sergeant dropped from the cab of the truck and looked the three of them over while the driver, a corporal, filled the radiator. The convoy rolled past, churning up dust. The sergeant nodded and spoke around the stub of an unlit cigar in one corner of his mouth. “Campies, huh?”

“Yes, sir. Bergen-Belsen.”

It was Brodsky who answered. His English was poor, but better than the other two, who spoke no English at all. Brodsky had picked some of it up in Palestine from the British there, and the rest at Buchenwald from an inmate from Latvia who had mastered the tongue during a two-week visit to London before the war.

“Where you characters goin’?”

“Munich.”

“That’s American. You guys got passes to cross into our zone?”

Brodsky didn’t know what to say. Wolf was the only one with a legitimate pass to cross into the American Zone; his home had been in Tutzing on the Starnbergersee, and he considered himself a citizen of Munich. All Brodsky and Grossman carried was a bit of paper saying they had been inmates of Bergen-Belsen. The sergeant looked tough and authoritative, precisely the type to turn them in. But for what crime? They were well within the British Zone, and the American sergeant couldn’t really do anything to them for telling the truth.

“One of us,” Brodsky said hesitatingly.

“Only one, huh?” The sergeant removed the unlit cigar stub long enough to spit, and then tucked it back in the corner of his mouth. “You guys got anything to wear except them zebra shirts and them beanies? Any other duds in them packs?”

Brodsky thought he understood, but it left him more confused than ever. He hesitated. Until now their striped blouses and caps had served them well. The sergeant didn’t look as if he were going to wait all day for an answer; the convoy was rolling past. But since Brodsky could see no sense in the question, he could see no danger in an honest answer.

“We have British fatigue blouses—”

“Well,” said the sergeant, “then take off them Dodger uniforms and get into whatever else you got. And shove them Sing-Sing hats into your pockets. No sense lettin’ the fuckin’ MPs have no field day goin’ across the line. Cocksuckers hold you up for hours like they got Brownie points, the pricks!”

Ninety-five per cent of this made no sense to Brodsky, but he did get the idea that the burly sergeant, for some unfathomable reason of his own, wanted them to take off their caps and change shirts. Maybe he didn’t like people from the camps; a lot of people didn’t. Well, they could always change back once the sergeant had taken his truck and gone his way. Brodsky explained the strange situation to the other two, and all three removed their shirts and caps, dug the British blouses from their knapsacks, and slipped them on. And then stood back from the truck as the bulky sergeant climbed in. He leaned out of the window, staring at them incredulously.

“Well, what the fuck you guys waitin’ for? A hand-carved invitation? Hop in!”

It was the abrupt gesture of his thumb toward the back of the truck that did it, certainly not the confusing language. The three eagerly tossed their packs in back and tumbled in after them as the corporal took off. The last thing they heard before the roar of the engine drowned out all other sounds was the sergeant snarling at the corporal.

“They payin’ you by the hour, Johnson? Step on the fuckin’ gas, for crissake! We’re supposed to be leadin’ this fuckin’ convoy, not eatin’ their fuckin’ dust!”

Felsdorf was too much like the camps they had been liberated from for most of the refugees there to be truly comfortable. The bare wood buildings set on the flat uninspiring plain were terrifyingly familiar. True, the food was good and plentiful, there was adequate water, clean water, not only for drinking but for bathing as well, and the latrines were both housed and clean, and kept clean by ex-SS from nearby Dachau who hoped their newly acquired devotion to cleanliness would earn them a modicum of forgiveness, or at least protection. The medical care was excellent, and there was dental care as well. The authorities were both thoughtful and helpful when they could be; there were no locks on either the barracks doors or on the gate, which was largely ornamental in any event. But it was the sense of returning to a camp, any camp, added to the chilling feeling for many that they were here because they had no other place to go, and would have to stay in the concentration-camp replica for months if not for years. It made for disquiet among those refugees who were not Jews; the few Jews there had the hope of a future in Palestine ahead of them, at least. As tenuous as that hope was, it was better than the despair of endless camp life.

The second day at Felsdorf, Benjamin Grossman, accompanied by Morris Wolf, decided to go into Munich, leaving Brodsky to get acquainted with the camp, as well as to keep an eye on their belongings. Pilfering was not unknown in the refugee camps; concentration-camp habits died hard. And besides, Brodsky had never known Munich and had no particular interest in seeing it.

The two men hitched a ride to the St. Paul Platz across the Bavarian Ring from the Theresienwiese, coming down from the outskirts of the city through the Nymphenberger Park, appalled at the destruction about them. They walked slowly up the Landwehr Strasse, through the rubble that marked the narrow winding streets that constituted the Old City. At St. Peter’s Platz they paused and looked about them. There was debris everywhere, the ruins of a once beautiful city. The Peterskirche had been heavily bombed; its thick walls gaped at the open sky with jagged stone teeth. The Neue Veste, lying between Max Josef Platz and the Hofgarten, had been leveled; the former Residenz looked like a huge park with stone shards doing for grass.

They took the one tram line that had been put back into service and rode to the end of the line at the Ostbahnhof on Orleans Strasse, aware of the side glances their striped shirts and caps earned them, but not caring much. Besides, wearing them meant not having to pay fares with money they did not possess. On each side as the tram swayed along the crooked curving tracks, the hard evidence of the destruction of war and the Allied bombing was clearly visible. The four-story houses along the Wiener Strasse, once elegant homes shaded by tall elm and linden, were now split and sliding into the street. Furniture could be seen clinging precariously to the upper, sloping floors, the rooms exposed to view, all modesty gone.

They climbed down from the tram at Steins-dorf Strasse and walked along the Isar, stunned by the destruction, the wreckage, the utter waste. The river was clogged with wreckage: a half-sunk barge had its cargo of grain of some sort dribbling from a gaping wound in one side. Small children were scooping up the smelly mess in tins while rats watched them jealously from the sloping deck.

At Kohl Strasse, Wolf paused and pointed.

“I had a friend who lived there.” His finger indicated a cleared lot; there was nothing to show there had ever been a building at the site. In the center of the bare lot an old man fed bits of rubbish onto a fire, although the day was warm. There were tears in Wolf’s one good eye; he wiped them away fiercely. “My first job was just around the corner. I washed the floors of a small cafe. I was eleven. It was a good job. It was a good cafe. They fed me.”

He sighed; they moved on. At Blumen Strasse an old woman rummaged in a garbage pile, a stick in one hand to protect her against two gaunt children awaiting the opportunity to replace her in her search.

“I don’t know whether to cheer or to curse,” Wolf said sadly.

They returned to the camp resolved not to return to the city until they were ready to move on, and even then to avoid it if they could. It was too depressing.

Since the formation of the Felsdorf camp, a Mossad Aliyah Bet man had passed through as frequently as his limited time would allow. Together with the Jewish Agency and other groups, he had helped the authorities to organize such activities as theater, concerts either by the refugees themselves or by visiting artists, and discussion groups, activities to occupy the minds of all, but for the Jews a means of passing the time until the Mossad was ready to help them reach Italy and eventually—hopefully—Palestine. There were occasional travel lectures on Palestine and its wonders, complete with lantern slides, always of the most beautiful views, the loveliest beaches, the widest boulevards, the greenest kibbutz, the richest orchards. Even the few slides taken of the Dead Sea area were photographed from angles that made the surrounding hills appear majestic rather than starkly barren; the Negev and the Wilderness of Zin became challenging rather than hopelessly desolate. It was a needless ploy on the part of the Mossad; the Jews at Felsdorf were merely awaiting the word to go.

All but a Jew named Benjamin Grossman.

By the end of the second week the others from Bergen-Belsen had arrived, those who were to be in the first contingent from that group to leave for Italy. There was a meeting of them, for the decision had been made to severely limit the size of the groups traveling together and gather them again in Italy near the ship the Mossad was readying for their trip. Twenty-six had come from Bergen-Belsen in the first group; twenty of them Polish Jews, five Lithuanians, and Wolf the only German. The meeting was held in the mess hall after supper, and Grossman refused to attend. To begin with, he was anxious to get to Switzerland, and the Jews, with their endless meetings and their ceaseless discussions, did not seem to him to be of much help. Then, too, the meetings were conducted in Yiddish, which was, after all, the lingua franca of the Jews in the camps, and while Grossman had picked up considerable Yiddish in his year at Belsen—since it was only a bastardization of German in the first place—the language still grated on his ears. It was still Jew language, and now that the war was over and he was no longer in a concentration camp—and also now that he was near his money in Switzerland and freedom-he felt about the language as he had always felt about it. It was an inferior means of communication between inferior peoples.

The night of the meeting, when Brodsky and Wolf had returned to the room they shared with Grossman, he put the question to them squarely:

“All right! We’ve been here two weeks; your people are finally all here. When do we leave this place?”

Both Wolf and Brodsky looked at him in surprise. There had been a touch of arrogance in his voice, of command, they had never heard before. Wolf shrugged and went to his cot; Brodsky, in typical fashion, overlooked the tone of voice, putting it down to nerves.

“When the Mossad says so,” he said patiently.

“And just when will that be? Next year? The year after? Never?”

“Soon, I hope.”

“Soon, you hope! You don’t even know what route you’ll be taking! I’m only a hundred miles from Konstanz right now, and from there all you have to do is cross a street and you’re in Kreutzingler, in Switzerland. What am I doing sitting here, waiting for you people? I must be mad!”

“I’m on your side,” Wolf said agreeably. “You must be mad.”

“A hundred miles is a hundred miles,” Brodsky said quietly. “If we go through Lindau, when we reach Austria you’ll be within walking distance of the frontier.”

“If!”

“Let’s go back to your being mad,” Wolf said affably. He was sitting on his bed cross-legged, an ugly gnome with an eye patch, spiky black hair, and a twisted cheek and curled lip. “At Konstanz they’ll have more guards than we had at Belsen.”

Grossman looked from one to the other, his irritation growing, slowly becoming anger and then fury. Who were they to tell him what to do? Then, with an impulse he would have utterly rejected in his earlier life as a careful planner, he swung open his locker and dragged his pack from it. He opened it and took out the British army blouse, laid it on a chair beside his cot, and tossed the pack with its rations and other clothing onto Brodsky’s bed. He took off his striped shirt and added it to the pile, retaining only the striped cap, which he jammed into a pocket. It was, after all, free transportation, that cap. Which was another thing: the Germans wouldn’t be letting people travel free much longer, ex-camp inmates or not. Time was running out for him in every sense.

“I won’t be needing any of that,” he said evenly, pointing. “I’ll be off in the morning.”

Brodsky looked irritated.

“Ben, don’t be a fool! You’re making a snap decision because you’re angry, God knows why. Think a bit. Hasn’t anything I’ve said to you about Palestine these past weeks—these past months—meant anything at all to you?”

Grossman looked at him. “Hasn’t anything I’ve said to you about Switzerland meant anything at all to you?”

Brodsky stared in frustration at the things on his bed.

“So, if you have to go, at least take some of the tinned goods and some of the clothes. It’s almost October. It gets cold in Switzerland.”

“I don’t expect—” He had been on the verge of saying he didn’t expect to be there long, but he caught the words in time. It will be a good thing when I get away from this bunch, he thought. One of these days I’d be blurting out something that would get me in trouble. “—to freeze. I’m not going mountain climbing or skiing. And the less I carry, the faster I travel.”

“Grossman, I agree,” Wolf said genially from across the room. “Besides, why waste good rations and clothing? If you’re going to try and cross at Konstanz, they’d only end up in the Bodensee and get wet.”

Brodsky threw up his hands in disgust. For a moment Grossman forgot the other man was a Jew. His anger left him; they had been friends after a fashion.

“I’m not doing this blindly, Max,” he said quietly.

“Grossman,” Wolf said, not argumentatively but merely stating a fact, “you’re doing this blindly.”

Grossman ignored him, addressing himself to Brodsky.

“There’s a regular military bus that leaves the Maximilian Plata in Munich, going to Stuttgart. I’ll drop off it at the Ulm road, south. They tell me there’s plenty of traffic on that road, coming down from Regensburg and even from Nuremberg, heading for France. I’m sure I’ll have no trouble getting a ride as far as Tuttlingen. Maybe even Singen. From there, worse comes to worse, I can walk to Konstanz.”

“A twenty-mile stroll,” Wolf observed. “Just the thing to work up an appetite before dinner.”

“I don’t have to get there early,” Grossman went on, continuing to address Brodsky, ignoring Wolf. “In fact, I don’t want to get there until very late. By morning I’ll be well inside Switzerland, far from the border.”

“Be sure and get there after the guards knock off for the night,” Wolf suggested. “They work only twenty-four hours a day.”

Brodsky shook his head hopelessly. “Do you have any money?”

“Who has money?”

“I do,” Brodsky said simply, and dug into his pocket. “It’s from the Mossad, for our group. You’ll need some.”

“Don’t give him paper money,” Wolf advised. “It’ll only get wet when they throw him into the lake.”

Brodsky paid no attention. He peeled off several notes and thrust them at Grossman. They were American ten-dollar bills, money accepted in any country in those confused times. Grossman didn’t refuse; he folded them into a small wad and slipped them into his watch pocket. He had suspected the Mossad might have given Brodsky some cash for the intended trip; it was like the Jew not to mention it before.

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

Brodsky looked at him, puzzled by the tone. Wolf raised his eyebrows, his one good eye glancing up at the ceiling in supplication and then down again. “Better get some sleep, all of us,” Brodsky said. “What time are you leaving in the morning?”

“As soon as it’s light,” Grossman said, and started to strip off his trousers. Max flipped off the light and started to undress in the dark. He slid into bed and glanced across the darkened room.

“Good night, Ben.”

“Good night.”

But Wolf had the last word.

“Good night, all,” he said, “and Grossman, I hope you know how to swim!”

Dawn had just started to lighten the eastern sky when Grossman rolled over, considered the now visible windowpane, and then silently swung his feet to the floor. He winced slightly at the dampness of the bare wood and quickly pulled on his socks. His trousers followed, then the British fatigue blouse, then the heavy shoes “organized” at Belsen, and finally the little striped cap. He came to his feet, staring down at the sleeping men. They were Jews it was true, but actually not as bad as most Jews. He had spent a full year with them; Brodsky had been helpful during that time. In a way he would miss seeing him each day; in a way he would even miss Wolf’s sardonic humor, biting as it could be at times. But they were now as much of the past as Maidanek and Mittendorf, or Buchenwald and Schlossberg, or Bergen-Belsen and the dead Kapo, Soli Yaganzys. The future was ahead, when he was inside Switzerland. It was time to go.

He walked as quietly as he could to the door, opening it silently, and tiptoed down the steps to the ground floor. There was a faint click as the outside door of the barracks closed behind him. Across the room Max Brodsky sat up and climbed silently from his bed. In the half-light Wolf pushed himself up on one elbow.

“What are you getting up for?”

Brodsky looked sheepish. “I can’t let him go alone …”

Wolf stared in disbelief. “You’re going to Switzerland?”

“No, no! I’ll be back. It’s just—well, he may need help in getting across the border …”

Wolf snorted.

“For this he’ll need more than the great Max Brodsky. He’ll need the American Seventh Army, plus a declaration of war against the Swiss. You think they really need people like Grossman? The man’s a nut. He’s a menace. Let him go. Let the Swiss worry about him.”

“He’s my friend,” Brodsky said quietly. “He’s also neither as strong as he thinks he is, nor as self-sufficient. He didn’t think this out; he made up his mind at the spur of the moment. He’ll need help.” He shrugged. “What’s it cost to help a friend?”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t cost you getting to Palestine,” Wolf said somberly. “Or your life.” He didn’t sound like the usual sardonic Wolf; he was deadly serious. “Max, let him go. I mean it. Grossman’s a strange person. I don’t think I like him.”

“You don’t understand him.”

“I don’t understand alligators, either, but I don’t chase them. I think maybe I do understand Grossman and you don’t,” Wolf said. “He’s the German kind of German Jew.”

Max was pulling on his trousers, buttoning them.

“Now I don’t understand you. What kind of a German Jew are you?”

“A different kind,” Wolf said quietly. “Grossman’s a German first, then—maybe—a Jew.”

Brodsky smiled. “I thought Hitler removed that distinction.”

Wolf shook his head; he was deadly serious.

“Max, you don’t understand. Some of the German Jews, I’m ashamed to say, mostly from the north, from Hamburg, from Berlin, from Prussia—they always wanted to prove they were more German than the Kaiser. Yiddish was a language they deplored; Russian Jews were all Litvaks even if they came from Odessa; Zionism was a dirty word. It meant there was a country somewhere, a certain place on earth, that had a greater claim on the Jews than Germany did, and those flag-waving patriots couldn’t explain that. And since they couldn’t explain it, they obviously couldn’t accept it.” He shrugged. “I’ve known more than one German Jew who bragged about his saber cut from Heidelberg, can you imagine?”

“In Poland,” Max said, putting on his blouse and buttoning it, “we thought all German Jews were like that.”

“No,” Wolf said seriously, “not all. Oh, there were Jews in Germany who had no real objection to Hitler when he first came along. They even thought he was going to be good for Germany—until he started to kill them personally, of course. He had told them exactly what he planned to do in Mein Kampf, when it was first published back in 1925, but I guess they thought he was just using poetic license. Even after Kristallnacht in November of ’38, when the synagogues went up in flames, when all the Jewish shops were demolished and twenty thousand Jews were dragged from their beds and beaten in the streets and then put in prison—even then these Jews, these superpatriots, these extra-German Germans, claimed that it wasn’t Hitler’s fault. It was the fault of his subordinates. Or, even if Hitler knew about it and condoned it, it was a temporary aberration on his part that would pass. With castor oil, maybe, it would pass.” His voice was bitter. “After all, how could Germany exist without its Jews? Its liberated, educated Jews? Its scientific, cultured Jews? Its rich and comfortable—and German—Jews?”

Max suddenly thought he understood.

“You were a Communist …”

“That was the charge when they beat me up and threw me into Dachau back in 1936,” Wolf said quietly. “I was one of the founding fathers of that camp, they owe me a medal. Was I a Communist? No. What I was, was the secretary of our union. What I wasn’t was a rich, influential Jew. I was a cook in a cheap restaurant in a working-class neighborhood in Munich. Not that it helped the rich, influential Jews very much; the ones who stuck around waiting for Hitler to change, ended up going up a chimney, someplace. Me, I’m still alive at least. And if I can’t get a job as a cook in Palestine, I can always get a job in a side show of a circus with my face.”

“In Palestine you can cook, farm, do what you want.” Max was tying his shoe laces.

“Max,” Wolf said in desperation, trying to continue the conversation in order to delay Brodsky’s departure, “before the camps, before Dachau and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, I don’t suppose I was much of a Jew. I don’t know how much of a Jew I am today, certainly not a religious Jew, if believing in your kind of God is necessary. But I know that Germany is not for any Jew. I know that Germany is not for me. But Grossman—Germany is for him.” He looked at Brodsky in despair as the large man walked to the door. “Max, don’t go. Believe me, Grossman isn’t worth it.”

Brodsky paused and looked back.

“Every Jew is worth it,” he said quietly. “There aren’t all that many of us left.”