Alexander Altmann A10567 (4 page)

By the time Alexander returned, his bunkmates were queuing for breakfast. He slipped into line and waited. His body craved food and Alexander hoped that the barrel the Rat had dragged into the centre of the room contained soup: a hot chicken broth or a hearty bean soup. The Rat pried the lid from the metal tureen and the smell of wormwood wafted into the room. It was coffee – the same dark, dirty water that they served in Birkenau. Alexander neared the front of the queue, his hunger woken by the loaf of bread he’d devoured at dinner, so that it ripped at his insides. He saw the boy in front of him lift his tin bowl to catch the liquid dripping off the Rat’s ladle, heard the tinny clunk of metal hitting metal as the boy, impatient for food, stepped too close. The room grew quiet and the inmate, sensing his mistake, pulled his bowl from the Rat’s spoon.

The block leader’s rodent face grew more pointed. “You want coffee so bad?” he shouted. “So, drink.” He thrust the boy’s head into the tureen and held him there, face down in the murky water, for five long seconds, then ten. After fifteen seconds the boy’s arms stopped flailing. Twenty seconds and the bubbles stopped. The Rat pulled the boy from the tureen and threw him to the floor where he lay, dripping and spluttering, but alive.

Alexander inched forwards and held out his bowl.

He noticed the priest’s eyes follow him back to his bunk. Alexander lifted his bowl to his lips and drank the dirty water down. Every last drop. The priest stared up at him. He was still in bed.

“They’re not going to bring you food,” Alexander said. “And neither will I.”

“Father Jablonski isn’t hungry.” The block leader grabbed Alexander’s collar and pushed him towards the door. “
Geh Raus!
Outside! It’s time for muster.”

Alexander guessed it was around four am. The sky was black and the moon was close to the horizon. If he was back home, he’d be sneaking from the house to saddle his horse before dawn.

“Rows of five!” The Rat stopped under a floodlight, his pointed nose elongated under the lamp’s glow.

Alexander fell into line and Isidor stood to attention beside him. “He’s refusing to eat,” Isidor whispered.

“Who?” Alexander whispered back.

“Father Jablonski.” Isidor stared straight ahead and spoke through his teeth. “He’s a Czech priest, imprisoned for speaking out against Hitler. After he saw a boy shot in the head at rollcall, he stopped eating.”

A whistle sounded and the men were divided into their work details.

“Your kapo will take it from here. Do as he says.” The block leader nodded at the man beside him. Alexander was surprised to find the kapo in the same striped uniform he wore. He looked him up and down. The kapo was a giant, almost two metres tall, Alexander guessed, though it was hard to tell as the man was stooped. Alexander watched him chew on a fingernail before spitting it out. He wore a yellow star on his blue-and-white shirt and grey trousers that were too short for his long, hairy legs. The pale sun crept over the horizon and Alexander saw that the man’s skin was rough as leather, his nails chewed down to the quick.

The man dragged his feet as he walked between them, counting out aloud.

“
Dwadzie cia osiem
.” He spat the words out in Polish. Twenty-eight. There were twenty-eight men in the Horse Platoon, twenty-nine including the kapo.

“
Alles Raus!
” he shouted into the nearest man’s ear. The inmate stumbled, clasping his ear. A bemused SS officer looked on. The kapo swatted the inmate’s hand away with a metal stick. “
Alles Raus!
” he screamed again, and the men hurried forwards.

The camp band struck up a march and Alexander walked through the open gate, Isidor behind him. Three girls with long, glossy hair and painted lips leaned out of a second floor window to watch the parade. Alexander stared up at the window, surprised to find women in the camp. He craned his neck to look past the women, hoping perhaps to catch a glimpse of his mother in the room behind them.

“You can’t afford them, Jew-boy.” An officer hurled a stone at Alexander’s head and laughed. Alexander rubbed his ear where the stone had clipped him and looked up at the women again. They wore low-cut blouses and blew kisses to the officers.

“Whores,” the man in front of Alexander swore under his breath.

Alexander kept walking. Up ahead the crematoria spewed dirty smoke into the sky. A black sadness settled over him. He thought he should say a prayer for his sister, but he didn’t know the right words – the Hebrew words.

The sun rose in the sky and Alexander watched his shadow slip in front of him. He saw his bony arms swinging by his sides and his legs, like toothpicks, march in time to the music. He saw the silhouettes of the armed guards and their German shepherds straining at their leads and the dim outline of the birch trees that lined the entrance to the camp. When the inmates reached the main gate, the kapo shouted “
Mutzen ab!
” and the men pulled their caps from their heads and turned to face the right. Alexander copied them and turned to see an SS officer watching as they passed, a high-ranking officer with a dozen badges pinned to his coat. He had dark bushy eyebrows and cold green eyes. The men walked past the checkpoint, put their caps back on and turned in unison to face the front. Alexander was a beat behind them. He swung his head around and hoped no one noticed.

Outside the camp, sparrows darted between the trees. Alexander watched them swoop between the branches and envied their freedom. He looked at the fields and the trees and the grass and the leaves, so green and so alive. His sister was dead but the sun was still shining.

“You’ll be working for Herr Ziegler, Commander of the Horse Platoon.” The kapo left the front of the column to march beside Alexander and Isidor. “He’ll assign you a horse. The commander and the other officers pick up their horses most mornings. You’ll work five am till midday, then one till six pm, seven days a week. Every morning you’ll brush, feed and water your horse. You’ll do the same at night. In between you’ll clean the stable and prepare your horse’s feed. Don’t let the animal lose weight or condition.”

Alexander could feel the kapo’s eyes boring into him, but he didn’t dare look up. “If I tell you that your officer requires his mount, saddle up his horse and be waiting outside for him when he arrives. Take your cap off and hold the stirrups for him. Once he’s comfortable on the horse, hand him the reins and move away fast or he’ll run you over.” Alexander turned to look at the kapo, to see if his words were meant as a warning or a taunt, but the man had moved back up the line, his long legs carrying him to the front of the column.

Alexander wasn’t worried. He knew how to handle horses. And working seven days a week didn’t bother him. He was happy to escape Auschwitz for the stables. Back at home – before he was forced from the farm and taken to Birkenau – whenever he felt sad or confused he’d escape to the barn. If he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d slip out the back door and creep from the house with a carrot or an apple. Just opening the stable door and stepping into the warm barn made him feel better. He loved the sweet smell of hay and the crunch of it under his boots. And the horses. He loved all of them: the plough horse, the mare who pulled the milk cart, the spirited Arabian his father bought to help herd the cattle, and the copper-coloured pony his parents gave Lili on her fifth birthday. But there was one he loved more than the rest. Sari. His father had bought the horse as a yearling and Alexander and the filly had grown up together. They’d both started out timid and knock-kneed but had become strong. Whenever he wasn’t at school or doing chores, he’d lead her to the tall grass by the river or ride her out over the fields. He’d taught her to jump poles and fences and to come at his whistle. She came, not out of obedience, but because she wanted to be near him.

“So, is this horse thing difficult?” Isidor interrupted his thoughts. Alexander swung around to look at him. “I mean, I’ve been to a farm …” Isidor quickened his pace, his breath warm on Alexander’s neck, “… on a school trip. I milked a cow. How hard can it be?”

Alexander snapped his head forwards and clenched his fists. They were bookended by guards; the boy’s mouth would get them both killed.

“I just need a few pointers,” Isidor whispered.

Alexander swung his arms harder. When the men entered a forest, the kapo held up his giant hand and the inmates stopped. The officers slung their guns over their shoulders and sat down in the tall grass to smoke while the prisoners stood in a cluster and waited.

“Were you serious?” Alexander asked Isidor when he saw the other inmates talk among themselves. “You’ve never worked with horses?”

Isidor shrugged. “I’m a city boy.”

Alexander stared at him. He needn’t have worried about the boy becoming his friend. They had nothing in common. Isidor lived in the city and Alexander hated the city. He hated the stinking smoke and the ugly factories. He hated the overcrowded streets and the tiny apartments with their concrete backyards. Alexander lived to ride horses. Isidor had never sat on one. Alexander deserved this job. Isidor had stolen it from some poor farmer whose hand hadn’t shot up fast enough at rollcall.

“So, I figured you can teach me,” Isidor said.

“And what do I get out of it?” Alexander shot back.

“My friendship,” Isidor ventured.

Friendship? Alexander almost laughed out loud. A friend was someone you played stickball with. Someone you clambered up trees after and waded into rivers with to catch frogs. A friend was someone you spent your winters with building snow forts. A boy like Anton Hudak. If Anton was still his friend.

“I’m not looking for a friend,” Alexander said, wondering if he’d ever be able to erase the image of his best friend standing at the bus stop in Hlavna Street wearing a brown uniform and a swastika armband.

“We all need friends,” Isidor whispered, “especially here.”

“You’re wrong.” If he’d learned anything these past few months it was that to care meant to be weak. His survival depended on him being impervious to other people’s feelings, as well as his own. If I was soft, he thought, would I have been able to throw a baby over a fence? Alexander’s fingernails punctured his palms as he recalled his aunt and uncle returning from Budapest to find the rest of their family behind the ghetto walls. Ruth and Jacob had left for Budapest, and had asked Alexander’s mother to mind their baby while they were gone. A week later the Altmanns were forced from their farm. With no one to leave her sister’s four-month-old baby with, Alexander’s mother had taken Sammy into the ghetto with them.
Throw him over
, his aunt Ruth had whispered, reaching her fingers through the gaps in the fence to stroke Sammy’s face.
Quick, before the guards come
. Alexander hadn’t wanted to, but he’d had no choice.
You’re a rock
, he’d told himself.
You’re a brick wall
. Do it. He lifted his cousin above his head and, with trembling hands, launched Sammy into the air.

Alexander’s heart skipped a beat, as it had that day in the ghetto when his aunt, reaching up with splayed fingertips, caught the child.

“I can help you,” Isidor continued. “I know people and I know how this place works. I know where to get food and I know where to find socks.”

Alexander wriggled his blistered toes. If he didn’t help the boy, Isidor would end up endangering a horse because of his inexperience and it might end badly for all of them. Really badly. He had no choice. Alexander rubbed his stomach and wondered what to ask for first – a carrot or an apple.

Alexander spoke quickly as the guards rose to their feet. “The first tip is never walk behind a horse or directly in front of it. They’re both blind spots and the horse will run over the top of you or swing into you and knock you flat.” Isidor’s eyes widened and Alexander sneered. Not so cocky now, are you, city boy?

Alexander heard the horses before he saw them. The hills echoed with the sound of their pounding hooves and, as he neared the gate, the air grew thick with the unmistakable smell of saddle leather. He walked through the gate and breathed in, saw the acres of green and the glossy manes. So many horses.

The inmates filed into the yard and the horses stopped, their ears pricked. A dozen of them walked to the paddock fence and, as Alexander walked past, a soft-eyed chestnut put her face forwards. Alexander reached out to stroke her neck. Horses didn’t care if you were a Jew or a German. He ran his hands over her soft skin. As long as you fed them. As long as you’re fair.

“
Vorrücken!
” the kapo yelled, brandishing his stick. Alexander pulled his hand from the mare and hurried through the yard. Squinting into the sun, he saw that the paddock was the size of three soccer fields, and beyond it was more green – acres of pasture on which the horses could graze.

Potatoes! Alexander’s heart drummed against his chest. Just beyond the fenced pasture was a rectangle of tilled ground streaked with flowering shrubs in neat rows: a potato field. Alexander’s mouth watered. Mashed potatoes. His stomach twisted. Fried potatoes, potatoes drenched in sour cream …

“
Halt! Stillen!
” the kapo yelled and the men stopped next to a small fenced enclosure. Beside the ring was a stable, above the entrance a painted sign which read:
On the back of a horse is paradise on earth
. Alexander stared up at the building. It was nothing like the stable his father had built for their five horses, their goat and his dog, Spitz, but the sight of its slanted tin roof and wide stable doors catapulted Alexander back home to the farm at six Gregor Lane and the garden tucked behind the stable, sewn with corn, potato and beans. Who are you kidding? he thought. The farm was nothing like that by the time you left. The Germans had taken most of the horses, trampled the vegetable patch and dismantled the tractor for spare parts.

This stable was much larger, big enough to hold thirty horses.

“
Achtung!
” the kapo yelled and the men stood to attention. A dozen guards stood facing the men, their hands on their guns. The kapo stiffened and looked to the gate. Alexander followed his gaze and, through a cloud of dust, saw first a galloping horse – its white coat gleaming in the sun, its mane slapping its neck – and then its rider. They pounded towards the inmates in huge strides that tore the grass under the horse’s thundering hooves, and came to a stop centimetres from where the men stood. To ride again – Alexander’s breath caught in his throat – to feel the reins biting into your hands and that powerful engine beneath you. Alexander wanted to run his hands over the stallion’s strong flanks. It was an Arabian, deep chested and strong in the quarters, about four years old and fifteen hands high.