The Linz Tattoo by Nicholas Guild Read Free Book Online Page A

damage.”
    He laughed, as if he had made a little joke,
but the other man stared at her with cold, hostile eyes. And then
the general walked away.
    Finally, when they were alone together, the
corporal looked around, shaking his head in disgust. He wouldn’t
come in but stood outside in the sunshine.
    “You have made your mess in here, eh,
Jewess?” he said. It wasn’t really a question.
    Esther kept her eyes on the ground. There was
nothing to be gained from answering back, except a beating. She
would say nothing—she would not even weep. These people allowed one
nothing, not even the luxury of a little shame.
    She would be silent. . .
    “Come along, then.”
    . . . . .
    The distant sound of boot heels told her that
she had about ten seconds before the Russian guards would bang open
the dormitory door to proclaim the beginning of her one hundred and
eleventh day of imprisonment. She let her feet slide over the edge
of the bunk bed and began feeling for her clogs—otherwise there
would be no time to put them on, not unless one was willing to risk
punishment for tardiness at morning inspection, and today of all
days Esther wished not to incur any official displeasure,
    “STAHYAT SMEERNO!”
    Awake or asleep, it made no difference. Women
threw themselves out of their bunks, dropping down to attention so
that they seemed to have gone rigid at the precise instant of
impact with the cement floor. Half of them, as they stood there
with their arms pressed against their sides, hadn’t even opened
their eyes yet.
    The guards walked along the rows checking not
so much that everyone was there—why should anyone not be there?
where would they have gone?—but simply as an exercise of authority.
A woman discovered without her shoulders properly squared or who
looked as if she might have just stopped whispering, or simply
someone of whom, for some mysterious reason of their own, they had
decided to make on example, would find herself on report and
sentenced to spend the rest of the month in the laundry room, where
the temperature never dropped below sixty degrees and the air was
filled with unbreathable, rye-saturated steam.
    There were always three of them. They would
fan out through the dormitory and then collect together again at
the door, where they would shout out the orders of the day—in
Russian first, and then with a German translation. They seemed to
think they were making some enormous concession to admit that such
a language as German even existed.
    Esther didn’t look at them as they made their
way down the aisles of bunk beds; she kept her eyes focused on
nothing, staring straight ahead without, apparently, seeing
anything. It had been the rule at Chelmno that a prisoner could be
beaten simply for looking at one of the SS guards, and something of
the same attitude applied here too. Attention was attention. You
weren’t even supposed to be alive, merely erect.
    Filatov stopped directly in front of her. He
smiled, and she knew what to expect. It was his day to frighten
little girls.
    “You have business with the tribunal this
morning, eh?” he murmured, in his hideous, undulating, Russianized
German. His face was no more than a few inches from her own, and
she could smell his breath, like stale cooking grease. He was
short, with wide, doughy features and heavy ears, and every word he
spoke somehow seemed to convey a shrouded menace. “I wonder what
you will get. How would you like to stay here with us until you are
an old lady, eh?”
    Esther never moved. She never glanced at him.
He wasn’t there, and she was made of cold, white marble.
    After a while he tired of the game,
straightened up and drew a long strip of paper from the inside of
his overcoat.
    “You will report to the guardroom at once
after showering.” he barked. It was as if he were addressing the
entire room. “You will hear the sentence of the court at nine.”
    It seemed to give him enormous
satisfaction.
    . . . . .
    “Come along, then,” the