Read Online The Thief of Auschwitz by Jon Clinch - Free Book Online Page B

Drexler in Polish, carrying the ledger with him to the chair. “I don’t have all day.” He takes his seat with the book in his lap, and reaches up to loosen his collar. Jacob approaches from the front and bows his head a little bit and Drexler looks right through him, so he goes about his business. He locates and unfolds the white linen drape, and as he sweeps it around Drexler’s shoulders he takes note of the word inked onto the front of the ledger. Totenbuch.
    The Registry of Death. His head spins. They must keep such records, after all. It’s the German way: everything in its place, everything properly noted. Even murder. But to happen upon it is like happening upon Satan himself in some dark mountain pass, Satan with his endless scroll of the damned. And this Drexler is the devil who maintains it.
    “Schnell,” he says, settling beneath that death-white sheet with the book in his lap. And then he speaks in Polish again, assuming that Jacob could not possibly understand even the simplest of commands in more than one language, “Just a little off the sides, and trim the nape while you’re at it.” He points with his finger.
    Concentration is impossible. Jacob tries the scissors and brings the comb toward Drexler’s hair. His hands shake. He withdraws, breathing irregularly, and Drexler turns his head in question. Without thinking, and strictly against orders, Jacob speaks: “Straight ahead, please,” he says, in German. The words are a combination of reflex and self-defense, and Drexler’s response is reflexive as well. He straightens his neck and looks forward, the conventions of the barber’s chair and his military background combining to produce automatic obedience, even to one so low.
    The establishment of a familiar rhythm soothes Jacob. His hands steady a bit. He tries the scissors again and puts the comb to Drexler’s head and finds himself all at once back in his element. Click click. Snip snip. He works briskly and automatically and he tries not to look at the outline of the ledger in Drexler’s lap. He wonders how long before his own name will be inscribed there, or Max’s name. He wonders if Eidel’s is there already, and he is certain that Lydia’s must be.
    “Watch the ear,” says Drexler.
    He watches. Barbering a man in an ordinary straight-backed chair is different from using the old mechanical chair he had in Zakopane, his father’s overstuffed leather chair with its pedals and its levers and its million fine adjustments. As many haircuts as he’s given in one ghetto after another, on benches and straightbacked chairs and milking stools, he has never quite accustomed himself to the difference. These last few months of digging ditches haven’t refined his skills either. But he perseveres. He empties his mind and he straightens his back and he keeps on.
    “That’s better,” says Drexler.
    Jacob dares to breathe. He thinks perhaps he’ll get this assignment after all. Every Friday he’ll come here for a few hours, and on the other days of the week he’ll be sent to a soft job like Schuler’s in Canada, and as a further benefit he’ll acquire the right to move around the camp with more freedom than any ordinary prisoner. He’ll go from assignment to assignment by himself, at least on Fridays. On that day he’ll even be able to go outside the fence, since the commandant’s villa is known to be on a street just beyond the entrance. He wonders where such freedom will lead him. What he might discover and what he might learn. It’s possible that he could even get word of Eidel, regardless of whether or not she’s being transferred to the new women’s camp.
    How happy that would make him. How happy it would make Max.
    He sinks into this reverie and lets his hands operate according to their own will, and they work a kind of small magic on Drexler’s appearance. When Jacob holds up the mirror, the Nazi smiles. It’s a smile directed only at himself, but it’s a smile