Spark of Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

said to Lohmann?”
    Berger looked at him. “No,” he said.
    “No?”
    “No. I don’t believe it.”
    “But—” 509 leaned against the nearest partition. “Then why did you say it?”
    “I said it for Lohmann’s sake. But I don’t believe it. Nobody will be avenged, nobody—nobody—nobody.”
    “And the town? After all, the town’s burning!”
    “The town is burning. Many towns have burned already. That means nothing, nothing—”
    “It does! It must—”
    “Nothing, nothing,” Berger whispered passionately with the despair of one who has had a fantastic hope and has immediately buried it again. The pale skull swayed to and fro and water ran outof the red eye sockets. “A small town is burning. What’s that got to do with us? Nothing! Nothing will change. Nothing!”
    “They’ll shoot a few,” said Ahasver from the floor.
    “Shut up!” shouted the former voice from the dark. “Can’t you for once keep your goddamned traps shut!”
    509 crouched in his place near the wall. Above his head was one of the barrack’s few windows. It was narrow and high up and at this hour had some sun. Then the light reached the third row of bunk boards; from there on the room lay in permanent darkness.
    The barrack had been built only a year ago. 509 had helped to put it up; at that time he had still belonged to the labor camp. It was an old wooden barrack from a defunct concentration camp in Poland. One day four of them had arrived in parts at the town railroad station, had been carried on trucks to the camp where they had been put up. They had stunk of bedbugs, fear, dirt and death. Out of them the Small camp had grown. The next transport of disabled, dying prisoners from the East had been crammed into it and left to themselves. It took a few days before they could be shoveled out. Then more cripples, sick, broken-down and disabled men had been jammed into it and it had become a permanent institution.
    The sun cast a distorted square of light on the wall to the right of the window. On it faded inscriptions and names became visible. They were inscriptions and names of former inmates of the barrack in Poland and Eastern Germany. They were scribbled on the wood in pencil or had been scratched in with wire ends and nails.
    509 knew several of them. He knew that just now the corner of the square was lifting out of the dark a name that was framed by deep lines—Chaim Wolf, 1941. Chaim Wolf had probably writtenit when he knew that he had to die, and had drawn the lines around it so that no member of his family could be added to it. He had wanted to make it final so that he alone was it and would remain it. Chaim Wolf, 1941, the lines drawn tight and hard around it, so that no other name could be added to it any more; a last adjuration to fate from a father who hoped that his sons might be saved. But underneath, below the lines, close, as though they wanted to cling to it, stood two other names: Ruben Wolf and Moische Wolf. The first one upright, awkward, the writing of a schoolboy; the second slanting and smooth, resigned and without strength. Next to them another hand had written: A LL GASSED .
    Diagonally underneath, above a knothole on the wall, was scratched with a nail: Jos. Meyer, and beside it: Lt.d.R. EK 1 & 2. It meant: Joseph Meyer, Lieutenant of the Reserve, owner of the Iron Cross, First and Second Class. Meyer had apparently not been able to forget this. It must have poisoned even his last days. He had been at the front in the first World War; he had been made an officer and received the distinctions; because he was a Jew he had to accomplish twice as much as anyone else. Later, again because he was a Jew, he had been imprisoned and exterminated like vermin. He had undoubtedly been convinced that the injustice done to him had been greater than that done to others because of his contributions in the war. He had been mistaken. He had only died harder. The injustice did not lie in the letters which he had