Touching the Wire (34 page)

 Lucy wiped away tears.
‘Grandpa, I’m so sorry.’

‘Miriam would have touched
the wire rather than have the children suffer because of what I did, Lucy. I
let her down. I did terrible things. I was too much a coward to do what was
right. Miriam was the one with courage.’

‘Wselfwulf…’

‘You remember, Charlotte?’

‘Yes, the Wolf of Slaughter…
it wasn’t just a story, was it?’

The Wolf of Slaughter… Walt clenched arthritic
fingers. ‘What happened in Medical Block Ten, and Block 32 in the Sauna…
nothing prepared me for that.’ Again the past swallowed the present as he
testified to the horror, the faces before him fading.

Mengele greeted him
cordially, his white coat immaculate, his spectacles enlarging predatory eyes.
He waved the cane he habitually carried. ‘Come, my friend. Observe my methods.’

He nodded, swallowing hard.
‘Herr Doktor.’ Mengele had expanded on his earlier words, words that had forced
his feet here against his will.
If you displease me the entire block will go
to the gas, but not before each one has been raped and had the skin stripped
from every part of their body. Have you ever seen a woman without skin… a living
woman? Fascinating.

The entire block of women
raped and stripped of their skin. He
would
do it, of that he had
absolutely no doubt; the bastard would enjoy hearing them scream. There would
be no lack of volunteers to do his bidding; human skin had a market in Germany,
according to rumours from Buchenwald, for lampshades and handbags.

Mengele motioned him into a
room. ‘I find human genetics absorbing.’ He motioned to a girl of about
sixteen, sitting naked beside a boy of the same age. ‘Take these two… not identical
twins, naturally, but twins nonetheless… They are newly arrived and in good
health. The girl menstruated two weeks ago.’

He nodded. Long-term inmates
ceased to menstruate.

‘You understand how rare is
it to have the opportunity to study the effects of in-breeding in a controlled
environment. The girl has a physical abnormality, as you can see. The boy
almost certainly carries the same gene.’

‘You can’t mean…’

‘Girl, come here.’ He
motioned impatiently and the girl approached, trying to cover her nakedness
with her arms, one of which was abnormally thin, withered almost. ‘Put her on
the table. Fasten her wrists in the loops.’

He hesitated. ‘There are
other ways.’ The image of raped, skinned women reflected in Mengele’s eyes. He
helped the girl onto the table: refusing wouldn’t save her. Wide eyes stared
into his as he fixed the loops around her wrists and pulled them tight.

‘Boy… Come closer.’ Mengele
held one of her legs. ‘Hold her other leg, Hans.’

 He felt bile rising and
swallowed it. He felt her shame. He held her leg beneath the knee, exposing the
soft, secret place.

Mengele had the boy by one
arm: the youngster’s face flushed as he tried to back away. ‘You have had a
woman?’

The boy shook his head.

‘You will fuck your sister.’

‘No… it is wrong. I cannot.’

‘You want her to die?’
Mengele’s voice grew angry, his grip tightened. ‘You will fuck her every day
until she is with child. That way she will live. There is no other way to save
her, or yourself. If you fail in this I shall cut off your balls and make you
eat them. Then I shall throw you both into the brothel to be fucked to death by
the guards and the kapos. Some of them have nasty perversions.’

‘Marika?’

The girl closed her eyes.
‘Do it, Enri.’

The boy looked at his limp
penis, tearfully. Mengele took hold of the flaccid organ and brought the boy to
a state of arousal. ‘Now, boy, prove you are a man.’

The engorged organ shrank
visibly.

Could he save the youngsters
some part of their shame? ‘Wouldn’t artificial insemination be more reliable,
Herr Doktor?’

‘Not necessarily, and it
wouldn’t give such satisfaction. Here, we witness the beginning of life in its
primal state… we are making life as
we
want it.’

‘It’s perversion.’

‘Scientific interest. Experiments
like these will help us to select the genetic material we need to create the
master race.’ He looked at the boy in disappointment and then lashed the prone
girl across the stomach with his cane, making her scream. ‘Enri, your sister
will be beaten if you fail. Now, bring yourself erect again or I shall have
your sister do it with her mouth.’

Enri flushed and began
masturbating. He dashed away tears with the back of a dirty hand. 
‘Forgive me, Marika.’ He climbed onto the table and lowered himself between his
sister’s open legs.

She turned her face to the
wall as he entered her and thrust. He came almost immediately and withdrew,
weeping.

Mengele nodded with
satisfaction. Blood mingled with sperm on her thighs. ‘Both virgins. Excellent…
couldn’t be better. Release her, Hans.’

He released the wrist
straps. The girl and her brother would live, while they were of interest to
Mengele.

‘Such opportunities must be
seized, my friend.’ The doctor’s face animated as he steered him from the room,
leaving the boy and girl sobbing in each other’s arms. He resumed the teacher
role. ‘Now,
identical
twins... How often can one experiment with
ready-made controls to compare results?’

‘They are human beings,
children, not laboratory specimens.’

He waved aside his concern.
‘They’re sub-human. Jews, gypsies, dwarves.’

A tall, uniformed figure in
the next doorway pushed forward a small boy whose striped shirt sported a black
triangle. ‘As you ordered, Herr Docktor. Number 458. Lithuanian Zigeuner. About
six years old. Identical twin.’

No… not Arturas. Beads of
sweat stood out on the child’s forehead. Dark eyes flicked from him to the
taller man. If he showed concern, Mengele would make sure the boy suffered.

‘Ah, the gypsy twin. You
have the records?’

The officer nodded. ‘Weight,
measurements, medical history, photographs.’

‘That will be all.’ Mengele
ignored Arturas and read the records, then smiled and patted the boy’s head.
‘Do you like chocolate?’

Arturas nodded uncertainly,
stifling a cough.

Mengele gave the boy chocolate
and smiled as Arturas stuffed it in his mouth. He gripped the boy’s left wrist,
twisting it to see the number. ‘458. Good.’ His eyes were alight with
excitement. ‘Tuberculosis.’ He consulted the records again. ‘This twin was
infected with the disease two weeks ago.’

‘Has the source of infection
been isolated?’

‘Live tuberculosis bacilli
have been injected directly into his lungs. I chose twenty of our children to
send to
Neuengamme,
for Heissmeyer
to conduct such experiments. A favour… he needs to present original work for
his professorship.’

‘He’s found a vaccine? I
thought that line of research had been disproven.’

Mengele’s smile held
contempt. He indicated the child. ‘I want to conduct my own research to verify
Heissmeyer’s hypothesis that race is a factor in resistance to the disease.
‘The boy displays symptoms of extrapulmonary TB. I wish to discover how the
disease has affected the internal organs: lymphatic, skeletal,
gastrointestinal,
genitourinary
and central nervous
system. Does it impair heart function as well as lung function? Are the
kidneys, brain and liver affected?’

‘You’ll send blood for
analysis?’

Mengele turned away to scrub
his hands and forearms. ‘Use the wrist restraints as before, and the leg
restraints.’

 ‘Is that necessary?’

Mengele spun on one heel,
his eyes icy. ‘You question my instructions?’

He snapped to attention.
‘No, Herr Doktor.’

Mengele nodded his
satisfaction. He picked a scalpel from a dish of instruments.

The boy’s eyes went wide
with fear. ‘Mama, Mama…’

Deep down, he’d know all
along what Mengele planned: he’d been too afraid to admit it. He’d gambled with
the boys’ lives and lost. ‘I’ll administer the anaesthesia.’

‘A waste of resources. Put a
cloth in the boy’s mouth to stifle his screams, Hans. Screaming children give
me a headache.’

‘Josef…. For pity’s sake…’

The scalpel in Mengele’s
hand paused mid-air. ‘The gag?’

He found cloth and gently
inserted it into Arturas’s mouth. He must do something.

‘You notice his eyes are different
colours, of course.’

He swallowed, his mouth dry.
‘Heterochromia iridii… It’s common enough in Roma and Sinti families.’

Mengele nodded. ‘We’ll send
them to
Verschuer
for further study.’

‘Josef, please…’ The bright
line of blood oozing from the boy’s chest and abdomen froze the words in his
throat. He put a hand over his mouth and backed towards the door. A syringe lay
on a side table. The boy’s muffled screams followed him as he grabbed it and a
part-used phial of Phenol, ran from the room and vomited in the passage.

Coward, coward. He couldn’t
save Arturas but there was one thing he could do. Mengele’s voice, hard and
derisive called him back. He went on leaden feet. The boy’s eyes, stricken with
terror, pleaded with him.

Holy Mary, mother of God…

Mengele lifted the boy’s
bowels from the abdominal cavity and spread them across his stomach ignoring
the sobs and screams. ‘Keep still… Sinti scum.’

He positioned his thumb on
the loaded syringe.

Mengele examined the
intestines minutely. ‘This seems normal. Let’s have a look at the kidneys.’

The child whimpered. Wide
eyes stared into his, small fingers clenched around his hand. He brought the
syringe from behind his back. Mengele was intent on his work. He hesitated.
Mengele’s demise wouldn’t save the children: but for Josef’s experiments they’d
be sent straight to the gas. All he could give Arturas was a quicker death. He
injected the child’s arm and slipped the syringe in his pocket.

A practiced hand sliced and
lifted the organs into a metal dish. ‘The trick is to keep the heart beating
until the last. It means the organs are in the freshest possible state. Pass
another dish for the liver.’

He gripped Arturas’s hand
tightly and held out the dish, forcing down bile. Phenol should work quickly…
the dose wasn’t large enough… It was one child, just one child, or a whole
block of women and girls. The child’s liver plopped into the dish, blood
spattered across his chest and onto the floor. Chest separators forced apart
ribs, broken without regard. Merciful God, let this poor child die. His heart,
small like a fist, pumped, beat after beat.

Mengele reached into the
boy’s chest. ‘What a miracle of life. To touch a beating heart… Here, feel it…
There’s nothing like it, except…’

He put a reluctant hand on
the heart, feeling life ebb with the loss of blood. He swallowed. ‘Except?’

Mengele worked with
intricate care when he wanted. He could have been a great surgeon. ‘Except
cutting a beating heart from a living body.’ He held the heart up. ‘To have
absolute power over the beginning and the end of a life makes us gods, don’t
you think?’

The fingers’ grip slackened:
sightless eyes stared at the ceiling. He closed them with his thumb and
forefinger.
Pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.
He
shook his head slowly, not wanting to believe what he’d taken part in. It was
insanity. ‘Nothing can justify what you have done here, today, Josef.’

‘What
we
have done,
my friend.’ Mengele’s tone was almost compassionate. ‘Now, we have number 459…
458’s twin.’

His guts twisted and his
head swam. Peti…

‘We’ll compare his
uninfected organs. Fetch 459 while I label these and remove the lungs, lymph
nodes, brain and eyes.’ Mengele took the pack of chocolate from his coat
pocket. ‘Give him some of this. He’ll be easier to handle.’

The small room was crowded
with the ghosts of children, and echoed to the screaming in his head. They were
all dead: murdered, tortured, or drowned in their own blood for worthless, meaningless
research. The lone figure, dressed only in a striped shirt, recoiled into a
corner of the lower bunk.

He made his voice soft and
his smile gentle like his mother had all those years ago. ‘Peti, it’s me. I’m
not going to hurt you.’ He sat on the edge of the bunk and waited. Wide eyes
drove spikes into his heart.

Only one child? He could
help to make it less painful, less frightening. He felt in his pocket. ‘I
brought you this.’

Large eyes grew rounder.
‘Chocolate?’

‘It’s yours, Peti.’

‘Thank you.’

He ruffled short curls. The
boy sat straighter, his hand pausing an inch from his lips. Z for Zigeuner
preceded the number tattooed on his forearm. ‘I want Mama.’

‘You’re a brave boy, Peti.
Your mother is very proud of you.’ His heart pounded, his palms were sticky
with sweat. He couldn’t do this.

Peti smiled and stuffed
chocolate into his mouth. The jaws stilled, chocolate lips froze. ‘I should
save some for Arturas.’

‘Arturas is with your
mother. He wanted you to have the chocolate. You eat it, Peti.’