The Vengeance of Rome
- Автор: Муркок Майкл
- Серия: Between The Wars #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Vengeance of Rome». Краткое содержание книги:
I do not have my own cell, but I do have the violet armband. This means that I do not suffer what some suffer, but many of my fellow prisoners are suspicious of me. They think I might betray them, I know. The truly privileged live in the Ehrenbunker. They are German politicians, businessmen, aristocrats and high-ranking clergymen. You would not be happy in their part of the camp, my anti-Virgil explains to me. Alles in Ordnung, he reassures me. After a while I become a Lagerschreiber, because my German is not so bad. I report directly to the Rapportführer, who is distant but not especially cruel. What I see others suffering makes me thankful, even though I have no business being in this camp. When I came in the new Zugang I was taken to the Gestapo in the Politische Abteilung, the political department. Their offices were near the main gate (Arbeit macht Frei in wrought iron). I was not tortured much, but the screams of the others encouraged me to good behaviour, as one of the Gestapo men, who appeared to be a friend of Kolya’s, joked. I explained that I was a personal friend of Göring’s and they remarked on how many friends he had in Dachau. You should form a club, they said. But, of course, there can only be two of you in the club at any one time. Three or more and you will be severely whipped. I became used to their mysterious laughter. Now I know to fear it.
1935. Halfway through my alloted span. I pray for——. I search for ——. How can I communicate with ——? Is —— still with us? Or has —— become senile, still clinging to —— power, refusing —— son his true birthright. The Old Testament is a record of vengeance and cruelty, of unearned authority and unchecked ferocity. Here is the singular God, the only God, the reduced God of Zion. He is not the God I worship. I worship the Trinity. God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Ghost. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. I worship the Trinity. Here, too, there is no complexity. There is only one truth, one answer.
My sinister anti-Virgil instructs me in this singularity, guides me from a dark forest through an inferno into purgatory. Abandoned in my exile, like Dante, punished though I commit no crime, I am alone, longing for my sweet little Beatrice who has been taken from me not once but three times.
For some reason I am put into the émigré hut. There are five huts for ‘politicals’, two for ‘anti-socials’ and one, isolated by barbed wire, which is for a Strafkompanie, those enduring punishment, usually permanent. Invalids, such as there are, are in the Revier, the hospital hut. There are five guard towers, each with a machine gun. The cookhouse is outside our compound, together with the Revier and, of course, the SS quarters. Our food is brought in every day in large containers, handled by privileged prisoners like myself. We assemble regularly in the Appellplatz, for roll-calls and punishment parades. Fifty thousand of us can be in the Appellplatz at one time. From this leads the Lagerstrasse, about three hundred metres long, which is lined by poplars planted by the prisoners. On either side of this wide road are the blocks, the huts, and between these runs a Blockstrasse, about ten metres wide. There are thirty-four blocks, either lettered B to C and D to E or given odd numbers from 1 to 29, if on the right, 2 to 30, if on the left. All are of wood, originally painted white, standing on cement slabs about ninety metres long and ten metres wide. Then there are the quarantine blocks to which all new arrivals are brought, to be assigned a hut or a work party, or possibly sent on to a subsidiary camp, perhaps to be transported elsewhere. Special treatment is reserved for men in these separate blocks. Every ordinary Wohnblock has two sections, of more or less equal size, each with its own entrance. Each part consists of two dormitories, which we call Schlafräume, and two day rooms, which we call Tagesräume. There is also a latrine and a washroom. We call each dormitory and day room a Stube. Each Stube contains room for fifty-two prisoners but this will change as more and more are brought in. When I arrived we each had a little cupboard for our personal effects, and even had a stool each in the Tagesräum, where we could sit at the table and read or write, if we wished. We had a big stove in the centre of this room and even racks for our shoes. We look back on those days with a kind of nostalgia. Now even some day rooms have bunks in them and new inmates are not given cupboards or stools. These inmates are taken to the north end of the camp to the disinfection buildings, near the angora-rabbit farm which is one of the SS businesses, intended to make us self-funding. Mostly red triangles, the politicals, work there.
Sometimes visitors are brought to the camp. Himmler himself often attends. The huts, both residential and service, have pictures on their walls. They remind us of what we are missing. They are predominantly landscapes and scenes of Bavarian life or framed homilies such as ‘Self-conquest is the finest victory’. Some prisoners are cynical about such slogans, but I take them seriously, as I must do if I am ever to be freed. I will not become a Mussulman. I have seen the camp museum. Here, too, visitors are brought. It is an elaborate affair. There are plaster models supposed to represent all types of prisoners. There are also photos. The models and photos show typical communists, Social Democrats, various German statesmen, now in disgrace. They are ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs, especially of former dignitaries who are shown first in their public uniforms, when they were in authority, and then in their striped convict clothes. In the criminal section you see all types, many with hideous tattoos or scars. But of course the largest space is given over to the Jews. Photographs and dioramas show them stealing from their own kind, as well as their German neighbours, bargaining with decent Bavarian housewives, giving false measure and so on. Often visitors are shown live prisoners, especially those of a grotesque physical disposition. Himmler is anxious to convince foreigners or churchmen that the camp isolates only the worst elements of society. The atmosphere of the camp, they are told, is firm but fair. Many of the prisoners are grateful for the improved food and shelter they receive as inmates of Dachau. If a prisoner dies, he is decently cremated and his ashes returned in an urn to his family. This privilege, of course, is reserved for German nationals, even though many are black-marketeers or communists.
There are about ninety guards. I must never be frech. However disciplined I am some of them will still spit at me and refer to me as a Drecksjude, even though I wear my violet armband. They are mistaken. No Jew is given such an armband. Brillenschlange, they say, in reference to my mutilated manhood, I suppose, or sometimes Brillenträger. I am no snake. My eyesight is as good as anyone’s. Yet I must not contradict anyone. Ja, ja, Herr Lagerälteste Kapp, I say. Ja, ja, Herr Rottenführer Rogler. I must know every rank, as many names as possible. I must take off my cap and stand at respectful attention when addressed. Any lapse can be punished. Most of the prisoners never see our Oberführer Deubel, the camp Commandant, except from a distance. Occasionally, during a special visit from outside, I stand at attention, watching him smiling and joking with his guests. We know which SS men are fair, which are crooks, which are sadists. Oberscharführer Franz Hoffmann, for instance, is a crook. He makes private profits from his job. He is by no means the only one.