reports, the Nazis have left standing in the center of the camp. Sentimental fellows, these SS.
Also industrious, or at least the men in their custody are: the rumor is that the prisoners have been forced to build a five-kilometer road from the Weimar train station to the camp. Anna encounters it about a third of the way along. Naturally, rather than walking on the pavement, she threads through the dense undergrowth, keeping the road to her right as a guide. The inmates must have had a hellish time clear-cutting these trees; the hoary stands of spruce and fir, hundreds of feet tall, are so densely packed that they permit only Pfennig-sized blotches of light to fall on the forest floor, reminding Anna of the Grimm woodcuts in Hansel und Gretel that so terrified her as a child.
But oddly, she is not afraid now. Her senses are keener than they have been since Max’s disappearance, and Anna notices the clumps of crocuses, the coo of mourning doves, as though she were still storing these details to bring to him in the room behind the stairs. This is ludicrous, of course; it isn’t as though she is going to have tea with the man in the Buchenwald mess! But the inconsonant joy Max inspires in Anna is as strong as it ever was, and to catch sight of him, even from a distance, is all she wants. Perhaps she will be able to exchange a message with him somehow—
So thinking, Anna doesn’t see the stone quarry until it yaws before her. She shrinks back among the trees, her heart thudding, a taste of iron in her mouth. Unlike what she has heard of the camp proper, the quarry isn’t encircled with barbed wire, but the guards standing at regular intervals denote a sentry line. The sight turns Anna’s muscles to gelatin. Mathilde has assured her that the quarry will be deserted at this hour, the prisoners having been marched back to Buchenwald for evening roll call. The baker has either forgotten about daylight saving time or underestimated the SS zeal for production.
When she has recovered herself, Anna steals around the circumference of the quarry until she spies the enormous pine Mathilde has described. The bread will go in its hollow trunk; beneath the flat stone at its base, Anna might find one of the information-bearing condoms. She will obviously have to wait, however, until the quarry is empty. Anna debates retreating to a safer distance. It is the more intelligent course of action, the wisest being to abandon the venture altogether. But Anna fears that if she does, she will never be brave enough to try again, and she can’t stomach the thought of returning with her full sack of rolls to the bakery and Mathilde’s derision. Besides, Max is here. So Anna conceals herself behind the tree, and waits, and watches.
The prisoners, laboring in tandem against a sunset striated the gentle lemon and orange of sherbet, are a black organism from which smaller organisms detach to carry rocks to one side. The Kapos who oversee them are likewise indistinguishable. But the SS who supervise the Kapos stand closer to Anna, and she has read enough of the prisoners’ messages to discern that the taller one is the infamous Unterscharführer Hinkelmann. The shorter fellow, nondescript as a bank clerk, is Unterscharführer Blank. Or is it the other way around? In any case, they both look bored, and also quite drunk, passing a bottle of cognac back and forth between them.
Yet apparently the precious liquor isn’t enough to keep them occupied, for the taller officer, Hinkelmann or Blank, levels his truncheon at a prisoner who makes the mistake of staggering too close to him with a boulder.
You, he says. Come here.
When the prisoner, trying to remain invisible, trundles onward, Blank or Hinkelmann lunges unsteadily at him, knocking the man’s cap off with the club.
Pay attention when I talk to you, he says.
The prisoner, dazed, releases the boulder.
Yes, Herr Unterscharführer, he says. Blood trickles in a thick rivulet from his ear.
Hinkelmann or Blank fishes the cap from the mud with his truncheon, not without some difficulty, and slings it through the air. It sails past the guards.
Get your cap, he orders.
But Herr Unterscharführer, begging your pardon, that’s beyond the sentry line.
Blank or Hinkelmann fetches the man such a blow to the head that he falls to his knees.
I said, get your cap. Are you fucking deaf ?
The prisoner blinks up at the Unterscharführer through