The Kindly Ones

I returned to Zhitomir. An intense agitation reigned at the Kommandostab: Bohr was under arrest and Lübbe in hospital. Bohr had attacked him in the middle of the mess, in front of the other officers, with a chair first and then with a knife. It had taken at least six people to control him; Strehlke, the Verwaltungsführer, had had his hand slashed, not very deeply but painfully. “He went mad,” he said to me, showing me the stitches.—“But what happened?”—“It’s because of his little Jew. The one who played the piano.” Yakov had had an accident while repairing a car with Bauer: the jack, badly set, had let go, and his hand had been crushed. Sperath had examined it and declared it had to be amputated. “Then he’s no good for anything,” Blobel decided, and he had given the order to liquidate him. “Vogt took care of it,” said Strehlke, who was telling me the story. “Bohr didn’t say anything. But at dinner, Lübbe began taunting him. You know how he is. ‘No more piano,’ he said out loud. That’s when Bohr attacked him. If you want my opinion,” he added, “Lübbe got what he deserved. But it’s too bad for Bohr: a good officer, and he’s ruined his career for a little Jew. It’s not as if there were a lack of Jews, over here.”—“What’s going to happen to Bohr?”—“That’ll depend on the Standartenführer’s report. At worst, he could go to prison. Otherwise, he’ll be stripped of his rank and sent to the Waffen-SS to redeem himself.” I left him and went up to my room to lock myself in, exhausted with disgust. I understood Bohr completely; he had been wrong, of course, but I understood him. Lübbe had no right to make fun of him, that was shameful. I too had grown attached to little Yakov; I had discreetly written to a friend in Berlin, for him to send me some Rameau and Couperin scores; I wanted Yakov to study them to discover Le Rappel des Oiseaux, Les Trois Mains, Les Barricades Mystérieuses, and all those other wonders. Now these scores were of no use to anyone: I don’t play the piano. That night I had a strange dream. I was getting up and heading toward the door, but a woman was barring the way. She had white hair and wore glasses: “No,” she said to me. “You can’t go out. Sit down and write.” I turned to my desk: a man was sitting in my chair, hammering away at my typewriter. “Excuse me,” I ventured. The noise of the keys clacking was deafening, he didn’t hear me. Timidly, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and shook his head: “No,” he said, waving toward the door. I went into my library, but someone was there too, calmly tearing the pages out of my books and tossing the gutted bindings into a corner. Well then, I said to myself, in that case I’ll go to sleep. But a young woman was lying in my bed, naked beneath the sheet. When she saw me, she dragged me down to her, covering my face with kisses, wrapping her legs around mine, trying to unfasten my belt. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I managed to fight her off; the effort left me panting. I thought of throwing myself out the window; it was jammed, painted shut. The toilet, fortunately, was empty, and I hastily locked myself in.