The Linz Tattoo by Nicholas Guild Read Free Book Online

even the wood of the barracks walls had that gray,
lifeless look, and there was a halo of darkness around everything.
The road was the dividing line between the human and the non-human,
between the masters of the earth and their slaves.
    What am I doing on this side? she kept asking
herself. What do they want with me? She had just turned fifteen
that year, and her mother had been a woman of strict principles, so
certain possible answers did not occur to her.
    A little after noon a soldier brought her a
tin plate of stew. There were chunks of meat in it and it was so
hot that at first she could barely eat any; she couldn’t remember
when anything had ever tasted so delicious. The soldier was young,
hardly older than herself, and skinny enough that his uniform was
noticeably too large for him. The hair on the sides of his head was
cut so short that one could see the scalp through it. At first he
stood with his back to her and wouldn’t answer any of her
questions, but after a bit he forgot himself enough to be
human.
    “It’s to be a labor camp,” he said, pointing
to the bare wooden buildings across the road. “The main body of
prisoners hasn’t arrived yet, only the construction gangs. They
will be assembling bomb fuses.”
    “And the SS has assigned a general to run
this place?” she asked, a little startled at her own temerity—it
wasn’t safe to question such things. “Even the commandant at
Chelmno was only a colonel.”
    “I can t talk about that.” The soldier
shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other and
then turned his back again for a moment and then stared hard at
Esther’s nearly empty plate. “You’ve eaten enough, I think.”
    So there was some secret about their presence
here. It had struck her from the beginning—these were combat
troops. They didn’t behave like camp guards, even their uniforms
were different.
    The young soldier took her by the arm and led
her to a small outbuilding that might have been a garage. He
unlocked the double doors and thrust her inside. There were no
windows and no light, so she had only an instant in which to look
around her. There was nothing to see; even the cement floor had
been swept clean.
    “You’ll stay here until you hear different,”
he said, and padlocked the doors shut behind him.
    She stayed in there for a week. After the
first night they brought her a blanket, and once a doctor visited
her. Twice a day someone came to bring her food and a large canteen
of water, but they never spoke.
    It wasn’t so bad. Every time the doors opened
and the sunlight streamed in on her, her heart began beating wildly
and she wondered if they were coming to take her away to be
executed, but otherwise she was almost happy. Death was always
near, but she had learned at Chelmno that it was foolish to think
more than a few hours ahead. For the rest, she could sleep as much
as she wanted, and in spite of her confinement, she wasn’t bored.
The absence of hunger and physical suffering was too much of a
novelty for her to be bored. At Chelmno she had felt weak and
slightly sick to her stomach, all the time. Her legs had always
felt heavy and strengthless, so that walking more than a few yards
had been like balancing on a wire. But that was gone now. She felt
as if she would be willing to stay just like this, curled up on an
army blanket, thinking about fresh bread and the taste of cooked
carrots, for the rest of her life.
    But finally they did come for her.
    There were two of them. In the blinding light
of mid afternoon, she recognized the general who had pointed her
out at Chelmno. He was standing with his tunic unbuttoned, the
white undershirt showing beneath it, and his cap was held in his
right hand. The man beside him had a corporal’s stripes on his arm;
there was a rifle slung from his shoulder.
    “I think we have fattened her up enough.” the
general said, gesturing at her with his cap. “Take her with you,
but see that they don’t do any real