We’d quarreled earlier, but he’d sung me a song in the square, so I wasn’t sure where we stood. Neither of us spoke until we were sure almost everyone was asleep. Putting the extra bread I’d received from Konrad into his hand, I said, “You’re too thin.”
“No,” he said. “We carry rocks up those death stairs one by one. As we were down, they made the Jewish unit begin the line. When the first few reached the top, the kapo beat them. Some kept up, but others fell backward. The others down the line fell like tiles in a game of dominoes.”
He shook his head. “Not angry. Sad.” With his arm around me, he pulled me close. “I can never be angry with you.”
I felt his body responding to the nearness of mine, and although my fear of getting caught was immense, I didn’t pull away. Peter’s hand touched my face as he pressed his stubbly cheek against mine. With a slight shift, his mouth was at my neck, lips pressing against the flesh as his hand moved to my chest, then to my belly.
Carefully, he maneuvered his hand up under my shirt. His breath at the back of my neck sent goose pimples rising. I straightened my legs as he pressed himself to my backside. Peter rocked against me as his hand slid down into my pants. My hips bucked and my eyes closed at the feel of him hard and perfect behind me.
I reached behind me to hold him, but he allowed no room for that, so all I could do was awkwardly hold his hip as he moved. Our breath sounded loud to my ears, so I attempted to hold it, but the release of tension and the climax of his touch forced the air from my lungs. As I lay, satisfied, he moved faster, driving his groin into my backside over and over, making the entire bunk sway until he finished.
We were not the only ones who engaged in sexual relationships in our barracks, or in the other barracks for that matter. Beyond the relationship like that of mine and Konrad, inmates often turned to each other for physical comfort, even those who did not wear the pink triangle.
While our connection pleased me, I didn’t understand how Peter could still want me when he knew what I did with Konrad every evening. He’d never asked about the day Konrad chose me, but he had to know what the men had done to me.
My Peter was amazing! Others might not have ever wanted to touch me again, but not him. Tonight, more than in the past, he seemed more loving with his caresses.
However affectionate he was in the night, in the day he waffled on how he felt. He would look at me with such tenderness that there was no mistaking how he truly felt for me, but when we were able to share a few words in those short moments when Konrad was not listening, he sounded accusatory and harsh.
One evening after Konrad had ripped his nails down my neck while we had sex, Peter looked at them, eyes soft as he took in the red, weeping lines, but then asked, “Was it good?”
“I could hear you. We all could.” I could see the muscle in his jaw tighten, just as his hands fisted into balls. “You sounded like you were enjoying yourself.”
I tried to keep the tears in. “I’m doing it to help us survive! I’m doing it for extra food to keep us alive.”
“I’d rather not eat if it means letting that man touch you! He’s a killer; that’s why he wears the green. They say he killed a fifteen year old boy in Berlin over a beer!”
“Then it’s better it’s me and not one of the younger boys here. It’s not as if I had a choice in this. Do you honestly believe I want him inside of me?”
His hand moved to my cheek despite the danger of being so open about touching, and he brushed his thumb against my cheekbone, wiping away the evidence of my sadness. His eyes, which had dulled a bit since entering the camp, held mine. They blazed, and I knew it was because he was telling me he loved me.
Werner elbowed me in the back, sending me forward. Peter turned to yell at him, but saw Konrad entering for inspection. The loss of Peter’s touch was profound. I felt it in my gut, but when our eyes lost the connection, I felt alone, left wandering, searching for the light of Peter again.
Konrad had passed by.
“What is?”
“My sanity.”
I never knew what day it was or how long
it’d been since Peter and I had arrived at Mauthausen. The days were long and endless. I could never be satisfied with getting to the end of one day because there was always another waiting to replace it.
Many men died. I became immune to the sadness of it all. The only thing those left alive could feel was gratitude that there was more space in the barrack when one or ten men died or were sent to the hospital barrack. Not that the extra room ever lasted long. The Reich took great care to send us new homosexuals to replace those killed.
The summer heat was beginning to kill off more men as the work never changed. I was lucky to have been placed as a musician, but I saw the fatigue in Peter. He was barely able to walk upright anymore. His back was bent, but worse than his body was his broken mind. The change was slow, but noticeable.
We had our stolen moments of love—a touch of the elbow, a smile and a wink, his hand on my hip as we slept, small words exchanged—but they were fewer now. The Nazis had succeeded in the complete degradation of humanity. Some of our most intimate moments came from me washing his body when we were lucky enough to have access to the cold water. The effort it took for him to reach around to his back probably would have killed him, so I did it for him.
Other men were worse off, of course. The extra food, mainly bread, but sometimes sausages, kept Peter in better condition. Our bunkmate, Werner, died and was soon replaced by two men, making it even more difficult to share moments with my lover.
One night after fulfilling my obligation to Konrad, I returned to Peter, finding him a weeping mess. I had never seen him this way. “What is it?”
“They have girls here. Brought from other camps. The rest of the men pay the SS to use them, but we have to… They made me try to….”
News of the girls was not new to me. I had heard the brothel had been set up for the kapos and other prisoners who were allowed to receive money or other tradable items from home. Queers were never to receive anything from the outside. Jews were not given either privilege—use of the women or packages from home, and while we queers didn’t want the women, most were being forced.
I ran my index finger discreetly down the back of his neck. “Next time, think of me. Get a blonde and think of me.”
By the end of the week, Peter wouldn’t look at me. The shame and humiliation was evident in his curved body and his quiet voice. “I had to.”
That night, I curled myself around him, my mouth at his ear, whispering. “You do what you have to do to survive. We both must do what it takes. I love you, and don’t—”
“We’re going to France one day.”
“Yes.”
“What will we do there, Kurt?”
I nuzzled my face into his neck. “We’ll make love on the beaches, and play music that everyone will want to hear.”
Peter’s sleep was fitful. As exhausted as he was, he woke several times each night. I would wake with him, putting a hand to his chest or head and soothing him back into slumber. Staying up to watch over him, I received less rest than anyone in the barracks, but it was worth it. Peter needed it more than I. So far, I had been unsuccessful in getting him transferred to the orchestra, so his hard labor in the quarry only broke him more.
after I yawned.
“I am well.”
“It’s those men in your bunk keeping you up. If it was allowed, you could stay with me.” He ran a hand down my torso.
His eyes narrowed as his jaw tightened. He pushed me over so I faced away from him. His massive hands gripped my backside roughly.
I let him position me how he liked and stayed as silent as possible through the sex. He wasn’t kind or gentle like Peter, but he wasn’t as violent as the men who had claimed me that day that now seemed so long ago. Like Peter and the girls he was forced to have intercourse with, the activities with Konrad were not even close to an expression of love. Shame hung heavy over it, the filth of it all covering me like dirt that would not wash away.
After he had used me, Konrad gave me more food. Although prisoners were not allowed to use the pockets in our pants, I tucked the bread and small, nearly rotten sausages into them.
“No, I—” A hard slap across the face ended my words. It twisted my body, causing me to go off-balance and fall to the floor. I looked up, Konrad looming over me.
“Do you think I don’t see? Do you think your bunkmates don’t tell me? They’re eager for what I can offer them.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
He kicked me with the ball of his foot and when I was spread out on the floor, he placed his foot over my mouth and pressed down. I could only see the angry set of his eyes. “Your
lover
.”
Konrad sat down on my chest, holding my hands above my head. “You’re not taking the food for yourself. You’re giving it to him.”
This time it was his fist crashing into me that took my words. I struggled for a moment, but quickly realized I could not win. He beat me until I couldn’t move. The violence must have excited him because before I could leave, he forced me to take him into my mouth again.
After washing up, I returned to the dormitory, keeping my eyes to the ground. All of the food had been taken from me except for a small scrap of bread. As I lay down between the men who had betrayed me and my Peter, I pressed it into his hand.
He moved closer to me, kissing my neck. I wriggled away as best I could. Peter rose up on his elbow to look at my battered face, but I turned my head. His hand came up to touch my cheek, but I said, “Don’t. You can’t anymore. He knows.”
After that night, Konrad closely monitored me. When we were together, he was harsher. He didn’t beat me every night, but I almost always left the dayroom with some new bruise or mark of possession.
Although I’d thought fortune had abandoned me, I was mistaken. Two weeks after getting caught with the food in my pockets, life changed again. After morning roll call, as I walked toward the other prisoners in the orchestra, I heard, “You there! You there, queer!”
At first I was too scared to answer. It was not often when I was addressed directly by a member of the SS. They weren’t technically allowed into the camp, but I was close enough to the entrance that passing them was not unorthodox.
The hard barrel of his machine gun digging into the small of my back forced the words from my mouth. “Yes, sir.”
My legs wobbled as I walked to the gate. I hadn’t been outside the walls of the camp since being removed from the quarry detail, so being led through the gate was terrifying. A few SS guards shouted at me, but there was nothing physical. The steps up seemed like the last steps of a condemned prisoner. As a member of the orchestra, I had to accompany prisoners sentenced to death on their way to the hanging post. Most seemed as though peace lay beyond, but some collapsed as the fear overtook them. I feared that was what I was about to do.
The brick building was buzzing with little SS bees, threading and weaving themselves through the hallways and corridors. Every so often, there were prisoners working over books. I did not know what would become of me, so I focused my thoughts on seeing Peter again. I couldn’t leave him behind. I couldn’t bear to think of what would happen if I could no longer help him.
The guard led me to an office. A tall man with medals on his uniform crossed the room. I gripped my hat tightly as he neared me. “You are the pianist?”
He was silent for a moment. I kept my eyes down, watching his polished boots walk back and forth in front of me. “You smell. Take him to the bath and launder his clothes.”
An hour after I was taken to the shower, I was back in the office, wearing plain pants and a tunic while mine were cleaned. “Sit there,” the man said after the guard left. He pointed to a piano in the corner.
“I am the commandant of the camp, and I wish for entertainment. Each day when you arrive, you will take extra care to clean yourself. You will play for me until I am tired of it, then you will return to the camp. I will not send for you after today. You are expected to be here after roll call. If you are not, you will be found and shot. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Play.”
I turned around, unpracticed fingers
depressing the keys. Anxious to perform well and fearful of what would happen if I did not, I began to play a Nazi propaganda march I’d learned in school.
“No. I’ve heard that too many times. You are to play songs of beauty. Do you know any Hindemith?”
Unsure of how to respond, I stayed silent. The commandant stomped his foot behind me, obviously wanting an answer.
“He… he’s banned, sir.”
“You are wrong. He chose to leave, so most choose not to play his works, but there is nothing degenerate about it. Now play.”
I’d only heard one record of Hindemith in Peter’s apartment, but I’d been distracted by Peter’s hands and mouth as it played.
But this man behind me frightened me, so I