But You Did Not Come Back by Marceline Loridan-Ivens Read Free Book Online Page B

with time, the darkness of the camps over my life has merged with your absence. And it is having to live without you that weighs down on me.
    Your picture is in my room now. I inherited it after Mama died. It’s a photo taken in the 1930s: All you see is your chest and head; the picture doesn’t show that you were of average height. You’re wearing a dark pin-striped suit, you look strong. I put it above my dresser. On the opposite wall, I hung a drawing of a naked woman—she’s lying stretched out, smiling, languorous; I left it to her to entice you. So that you’d stop looking at me. So I could get undressed in peace without you seeing me.
    I don’t like my body. It’s as if it still bears the mark of the first man who ever looked at me, a Nazi. I’d never been seen naked before that, never, especially not with my new young woman’s body that had just given me breasts and all the rest; modesty was obligatory in the family. So for a long time, I associated getting undressed with death, with hatred, with the icy stare of Mengele, the camp demon who was in charge of the selection, who made us turn all around, naked, prodded by his baton so he could decide who would live andwho would die. I think he inspected me when I first arrived and again when I left the camp. The others said, “That’s Mengele,” I didn’t know what he looked like, but after the war I recognized him: his black hair with not a single strand out of place, his cap tilted slightly to one side, his eyes that looked right through you, then sent you to the right or to the left, without you knowing which of the lines would lead to death. I used to pinch my cheeks to give them some color before standing in front of him and his team of SS doctors as they sized us up, scornful and mocking; I tried to hide my wounds, my infected, festering boils, I wanted to show him a body that was still beautiful, still strong.
    My frozen toes will be numb forever. The infections left whitish circles on my arms and legs where the skin is fine and limp. For a long time, I had marks on my neck where I’d been hit with batons. And if I’ve remained hard, thin, it’s because I’ve often stood in front of my mirror, ten, twenty, or thirty years later, and thought, Have tostay slim and svelte so I don’t get sent to the gas chamber next time.
    I never had children. I never wanted any. You would have reproached me for that, of course. The body of a woman—mine, my mother’s, the body of all the others whose stomachs swell up and then empty—was distorted by the camps, forever. I find flesh and its elasticity horrifying. Back there, I saw skin, breasts, and stomachs sag, I saw women hunched over, crumpled up, I saw bodies deteriorate so quickly, become emaciated, disgusting, the road to the crematorium. I hated being herded together, the intimacy that was violated, the deformity, the light touch of bodies nearing the end. We were mirrors for each other. The bodies around us were a forewarning and brought us closer to what we were becoming ourselves. Not a single woman got her period anymore; some of them wondered if they were putting bromide in our food, but it was just that the natural cycles of life had stopped. Motherhood had no meaning anymore: Babies were the first to be sent to thegas chamber. Once in a while, beauty remained intact somehow, leaving some bodies more dignified than others. “You’re too beautiful to die,” Stenia had said to my friend Simone. She was a Polish criminal who’d become second in command of the camp. There came a time, though, when you couldn’t tell us apart, except to distinguish between those who were holding up and those who’d given in. I was holding up. But I had nothing good to pass on to a child. I’ve even found it difficult to warm to the children of my brother, my sister, and my friends.
    It took many experiences with other people to get used to living, get used to myself. And a lot of time to be able to love. I got