Read Online A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sebastian Faulks
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marries the man she wants, Mr Rochester; there was also someone called St John Rivers. The Poles with their taste for woodland spirits, angels and magical transformations were hardly going to be uplifted by that. So it would be
Great Expectations
, and he would do it serially, as Dickens had published it. He was pretty sure he had the plot by heart, until the end at least, when some of the revelations that ought to have been unforgettable had proved the opposite. Had he dreamt it, or did Estella actually turn out to be the daughter of Magwitch? He went over the story again and again in his mind, dividing it up into chunks that might take an hour to tell.
Somehow he fell asleep.
The next day at roll call, a senior guard told Geoffrey to step forward and asked why, if he was in Special Unit uniform, he was not on a special detail. Geoffrey replied that he was a French interpreter, on special duties only when required. The guard pointed him towards the administrative building and told him to go at once.
‘
Nein
,’ said Geoffrey. ‘
Ich bin Dolmetscher französisch. Interprète français
.’
There was the sound of a safety catch coming off a revolver. The process of trial and justice had reached its usual rapid conclusion and Geoffrey did as he was told.
For a day he helped sort belongings taken from those who had arrived by train from the west. There were baskets for currency or jewellery and great piles of clothes that were sent on to clothe German citizens at home. Some of the men’s woollen items were destined, he was told, for infantry at the Eastern Front, and he wondered what the men would think if they knew they were wearing Jewish socks. Better that, perhaps, than the Jewish blood that was transported to Stalingrad for transfusions, taken by syringe from prisoners kept in cages for the purpose, so the superior soldiers of the Reich survived on the borrowed vigour of the Underpeople. Many of the other workers were women who had volunteered for a task that was at least indoors, away from the freezing ground and the Alsatian dogs. Glances were exchanged between some of the women and the SS guards; they were looks that made Geoffrey think there was a black market in sex, as in so much else inside the camp. What might go through the mind of a man who made love to a woman he viewed as less than human, of a lower species, Geoffrey wondered. Did it alter his opinion of himself, did it make him in his own eyes a bestialist?
The work lasted only a couple of days until a senior guard, noticing his still robust physical condition, sent him to join the Special Unit in the crematorium. A row of eight furnaces at knee height had to be kept roaring day and night with logs cut from the pine forests. Men shuttled to and from the doors where the trucks from the sawmill delivered the wood, unloading them on to wheeled wagons that were then pushed up to the ovens.
The corpses came in on trucks with chutes at the back that could be tipped on to slides that joined the mouth of the oven. Some of the stokers were given metal poles and detailed to prod the corpses down into the fire in groups of six or eight at a time, urged on by the screaming SS officers. Then the slide would be switched to the next oven. Geoffrey imagined the life of a crematorium worker at home, in Winchester or Andover; it might not be so very different, though of course there would be no more than a dozen corpses a day.
There were too many bodies. The lorries were backed up outside and he could sometimes smell their exhaust over the stench of the ovens. The delays drove the SS men to fury. Two guards took hold of a slow prisoner, held his hands behind his back and thrust his head into the oven. After a few seconds, they pulled him out again, demented and screaming, his head on fire. Geoffrey wondered if they did these things in order to keep their nerve up. It was as though the guards dare not risk lapsing back into the kind of life they must once have known.
Great Expectations
, and he would do it serially, as Dickens had published it. He was pretty sure he had the plot by heart, until the end at least, when some of the revelations that ought to have been unforgettable had proved the opposite. Had he dreamt it, or did Estella actually turn out to be the daughter of Magwitch? He went over the story again and again in his mind, dividing it up into chunks that might take an hour to tell.
Somehow he fell asleep.
The next day at roll call, a senior guard told Geoffrey to step forward and asked why, if he was in Special Unit uniform, he was not on a special detail. Geoffrey replied that he was a French interpreter, on special duties only when required. The guard pointed him towards the administrative building and told him to go at once.
‘
Nein
,’ said Geoffrey. ‘
Ich bin Dolmetscher französisch. Interprète français
.’
There was the sound of a safety catch coming off a revolver. The process of trial and justice had reached its usual rapid conclusion and Geoffrey did as he was told.
For a day he helped sort belongings taken from those who had arrived by train from the west. There were baskets for currency or jewellery and great piles of clothes that were sent on to clothe German citizens at home. Some of the men’s woollen items were destined, he was told, for infantry at the Eastern Front, and he wondered what the men would think if they knew they were wearing Jewish socks. Better that, perhaps, than the Jewish blood that was transported to Stalingrad for transfusions, taken by syringe from prisoners kept in cages for the purpose, so the superior soldiers of the Reich survived on the borrowed vigour of the Underpeople. Many of the other workers were women who had volunteered for a task that was at least indoors, away from the freezing ground and the Alsatian dogs. Glances were exchanged between some of the women and the SS guards; they were looks that made Geoffrey think there was a black market in sex, as in so much else inside the camp. What might go through the mind of a man who made love to a woman he viewed as less than human, of a lower species, Geoffrey wondered. Did it alter his opinion of himself, did it make him in his own eyes a bestialist?
The work lasted only a couple of days until a senior guard, noticing his still robust physical condition, sent him to join the Special Unit in the crematorium. A row of eight furnaces at knee height had to be kept roaring day and night with logs cut from the pine forests. Men shuttled to and from the doors where the trucks from the sawmill delivered the wood, unloading them on to wheeled wagons that were then pushed up to the ovens.
The corpses came in on trucks with chutes at the back that could be tipped on to slides that joined the mouth of the oven. Some of the stokers were given metal poles and detailed to prod the corpses down into the fire in groups of six or eight at a time, urged on by the screaming SS officers. Then the slide would be switched to the next oven. Geoffrey imagined the life of a crematorium worker at home, in Winchester or Andover; it might not be so very different, though of course there would be no more than a dozen corpses a day.
There were too many bodies. The lorries were backed up outside and he could sometimes smell their exhaust over the stench of the ovens. The delays drove the SS men to fury. Two guards took hold of a slow prisoner, held his hands behind his back and thrust his head into the oven. After a few seconds, they pulled him out again, demented and screaming, his head on fire. Geoffrey wondered if they did these things in order to keep their nerve up. It was as though the guards dare not risk lapsing back into the kind of life they must once have known.
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