18

Max has a permanent headache. He thinks it might be daytime but in the underground burrow it always seems like the dark night of the soul. The fatigue in his limbs is another form of darkness. So little light flows through him now. Death awaits up above in the world of natural light and yet often down here it is the monotony of life he finds himself cursing. He listens to the sounds of a couple making love. The animal noises. There’s no hint of beauty in the sounds. Max thinks back to his lovers. There were five. He tries to recall a moment which most defined each of them. But he is soon concentrating wholly on Sabina. He remembers the radiance in the air whenever she moved her hands towards him. The wonder of her bones beneath his hands. The shock of pleasure he often derived from the sight of her face. She gave him goodness in all the close attention she bestowed on him and this goodness is the glow inside him that is faltering now. Happiness, he would like to tell someone, only comes once in life. He has had his share, shortlived as it was. Then he sees her dead body down near his feet. And it’s as if all his memories of her are being carried away like pollen on an autumnal wind. The face of the Nazi who shot her is soon leering at him. Larger than life. He won’t get out of the way, won’t let him see Sabina again. There was a discussion in the bunker earlier about what punishment should be meted out to the German population after the war. One woman thought a swastika should be tattooed on every German’s forehead, even the children. “They’ve murdered our children.” Max stayed silent. The end of the war seeming as remote to him as any other judgement day.

He listens to the couple making love and is tempted to touch Clara who is pressed beside him. Her body heat a foreign agent in his blood. Maddening suddenly how much he wants to cup her breasts, slip his hands inside her panties, lose himself in the musk of her arousal. He hates himself for this betrayal of Sabina. Every return of desire makes him wretched. Then he hears a voice up above. The couple stop making love. A man is telling them to surrender. He’s speaking in Yiddish. He is telling them that they will not be shot if they come out. But there’s terror in his voice, cracking it and pitching it on a strained octave.

There’s a rumour that Jewish informers have their own dormitories in the German barracks and have access to prostitutes and lavish meals.

A woman begins sobbing. Someone lights a match. When the flame settles and illuminates a huddle of faces they look ghoulish, like the living dead. Max imagines it must be easier to kill people who no longer look human, who already look half dead. Clara takes his hand. He finds it hard to believe she derives any strength from the agitated pumping of his blood. The last hand he held was Eugenia’s when, firstly, he stopped her from going to her death with Ora and then later when he escorted her through Warsaw’s streets to what he hopes is safety. It moves him briefly to realise how intimately and memorably you can take a life into your custody by holding a hand.

Max crawls out of the burrow. His eyes, bleary with sleeplessness, stream with tears in the dazzle of the light of day. He has to remove his hand from the gun in his pocket to shield them. The ground seems to rise and fall beneath him, as if he is standing on a moored boat. German voices, skittish with rage, are shouting. A woman who can’t stop coughing is shot. He looks through the tears in his eyes at the barren broken landscape, dune upon dune of collapsed masonry. They are ordered to place their hands on their heads. He tries to catch the eye of the Jew who has betrayed them. He doesn’t understand the logic of this man. The Germans will surely kill him anyway. And yet he has sentenced twenty Jews to death in order to stay alive for another half hour. Not a good half hour either. A nightmare half hour of anxiety and dread and shame. To feel the need of preserving his life at the expense of a dozen others he must either be very vain about his importance or a frightful coward. Once again Max feels the Jewish youth were right to hold the adult population in contempt.

The SS officer isn’t Sabina’s murderer. He’s a short stout man with swollen lips. Perhaps his best friend, perhaps they go out whoring together in Warsaw? He shows no sign of anger or hatred. He is a bureaucrat doing his job. No doubt they will all become a number he writes down at a desk later while sipping cognac. Max remembers his father once telling him that you shouldn’t fight if your opponent is stronger than you are. Another piece of bad advice from his well-meaning father.

When all the occupants of the bunker have emerged they are told to strip. An SS soldier rips the watch from the wrist of a Jewish man and then spits in his face. Max is hair-triggered with tension, as if about to be launched from a crossbow. The pistol as if discharging electricity in his trouser pocket. He has to make a decision. His thoughts refuse to remain intact for very long. As if a gale blasts through his head. Clara, by his side, crouches down as if to take off her shoes but she has picked up a twisted piece of iron. He can sense some wild impulse bristling through her. Then she is charging at the nearest German guard and attacks him with her weapon. Another German drags her off, throws her to the ground. He is about to shoot her when the SS officer stops him. Max finds he has taken his pistol from his pocket. He doesn’t remember performing the act. He aims it at the nearest German guard. The German sees it and there is panic in his eyes. When Max pulls the trigger, the German looks shocked for a moment. He looks down at his uniform. There is no sign of a wound. Max pulls the trigger again. There’s something wrong. It feels like a toy gun he is firing. He remembers Ala’s advice to clean it, which he never did. Then he is struck from behind and falls to the ground. The SS officer stops the guard from shooting him too. Max is pulled to his feet, blood dripping down into his eyes, and then marched with the others towards the Umschlagplatz and the cattle train.