In Paradise: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

medicine.” Block 11, called “the Death Block,” housed the quest for efficient methods of mass “roach” extermination. In its basement are cramped torture cells: the Darkness Cell, the Standing Cell. In the Hunger Cell, a fresh candle is offered by two Catholic novices in black street habit, faces half-lit in the chiaroscuro of the dungeon darkness.
    “What’s that, some kind of a damned altar?” The loud, sudden voice is just outside the thronged cell door.
    Eyes closed, palms together, calm, the candle lighter raises her fingertips to her chin and her younger companion, frightened, does the same. “For Saint Maximilian, sir,” the candle lighter answers softly without turning, “who offer his own life—”
    “‘—to save a fellow prisoner, a family man,’ correct? The Myth of Auschwitz!”
    The brutal voice in this cramped space scrapes Olin’s nerves.
“Hey!”
he shouts as if silencing a dog, hating his own rude intrusion. The novices stare from one shouter to the other. “Earwig,” Anders whispers.
    The man’s eyes squint, his nostrils flare. He meets Olin’s glare for a long moment before turning to ape the consternation of a Polish priest who stands nearby, pale hands half-raised in protest. When the priest won’t engage him, he turns on the novices again. “You holy Romans don’t belong here, girls.” The junior nun looks stunned, on the point of tears; the candle lighter stills her with firm fingers on her forearm. The priest says nothing. He is a husky man with a blue jaw that will always need a shave, but his eyes look broken and his mouth uncertain, and his skin is glazed by perspiration even in the cold. (When he thanks Olin later for speaking up to defend the novices, Olin says brusquely, “All I said was
Hey
.” What he wanted to say was,
Where in hell were you?
)
    Ben Lama says mildly, “
Everyone
belongs here. These sisters are very welcome.” Having noticed Olin’s agitation, he signals to him to let the whole thing pass. “Take nothing personally, Dr. Olin,” he advises sotto voce. “Not this week.”

    T HE PROTOTYPE GAS CHAMBER and crematorium at Auschwitz I is located in a bunker mound camouflaged by a knoll of scraggy pines; the guide points out what he claims are the faint claw marks made by human finger bones on the concrete ceiling. On the wall of a brick building opposite the mound, a wire mesh enclosing seed and suet is visited by quick blue tits. Who is it, Olin wonders, who sets out winter food for little birds in such a place?
    Watching the bird feeder, Olin grows aware that he is being watched by the older novice, the one chastised for offering that candle; intercepted, her gaze holds for a moment, flicks away.
    The cul-de-sac between Blocks 10 and 11 is blocked at the far end by the Black Wall: the heavy wood used in its construction, says the guide, nodding gravely out of deep respect for his inside knowledge, had to be replaced with concrete after the wood was shot to splinters. In the first years, thirty to forty thousand people, mostly Poles, were executed here; he points out gutters along the base of the side walls that channeled all that inferior Slav blood down rusty drains.
    At the Black Wall, candles and incense are offered to the martyred as voices rise in Kaddish, the Prayer for the Dead, in which the Lord and all his works are glorified.
    (“Death camps included?” The hoarse whisper is ignored.)
    May the Great Name be exalted
and

sanctified

in

the

world

that

He

created

according

to

His

will

and

may

His

kingdom

reign

in

your

lifetime

and

in

your

days

and

in

the

lifetime

of

the

house of Israel. And say, Yes, Amen.
    The sacred text is read aloud in the original Aramaic and in Hebrew, then murmured in the half dozen languages of this convocation. A young man named Rainer, Ben Lama’s retreat assistant from Berlin, recites forcefully in his native tongue, unaware how his harsh Teutonic intonations might grate upon the