B008GRP3XS EBOK Page 6

  Neuheufel was listening patiently.

  "And the funny little biceps, and the dark hair on her forearms. She was very embarrassed about those hairy arms and when it got warmer she would shave them. Then the hair would grow back even thicker," Rud was responding to his own thoughts.

  "I began to visit that shop," he continued after a moment of silence, "and then the affair followed its natural course. When I first chatted her up I was sure of the result. Several times I caught her eyes and the eyes can tell you almost anything. That searching look in her blue-green eyes. Water has that colour sometimes."

  Neuheufel slurped mightily from a three-pint metal tankard. Then he spat out a tea-leaf.

  "See no reason for Greater Punishment," he stated with an innocent face, if Neuheufel's face could ever assume that kind of expression.

  "It's because ..." Rud stammered, blushing, "it's because later we did the usual."

  "The usual?" Neuheufel was mercilessly curious.

  "Well, you know ... We even lived together. Then I had to leave; I began to study," Rud stammered out.

  Neuheufel watched Rud's face closely, while his own slowly crumpled into the familiar smile.

  "And she was pregnant. She even followed me. To the place where I was studying. But by then I was interested in someone else," Rud was tortuously squeezing out of himself one sentence, then another.

  "Did she give birth?"

  "I don't think so. That is, I'm sure she didn't." Rud was sweating with the effort. The confession was bringing him no relief.

  "I'll check your file, Milankiewicz. We'll see what we can do about this." Neuheufel's tone of voice was official. "What was her name?"

  "Dianna. Dianna Felden. Strange spelling of the name."

  Neuheufel nodded and turned to the window. He didn't want Rud to see him laugh.

  On Rud's ward arrived Tony, the old epileptic of shiny bald head covered with red freckles and trembling hands with cauliflowery growths, whom Rud had met in the hospital.

  As Rud's convalescence progressed, the time spent on rehabilitation exercises was cut shorter and shorter. He hated those obligatory tortures. First he had to soak his hands, feet or his entire body in a hot solution of salt and then rough, well-muscled, female masseurs would break his stiff joints to make them usable again. He could not stand their cynical comments. Apparently, he was making a surprisingly good recovery, though to him it seemed rather different. The scars had paled and the pink, paper-like skin had grown thicker, whiter and less irritable.

  Because Rud had now a little more time, Neuheufel offered him some work. It earned him additional rations for cigarettes and better food. Rud did not smoke but with cigarettes he could buy almost anything, they were a common barter.

  His job was at the railway depot, unloading new residents who arrived from the other side. The old steam engine, wheezing with the effort, pushed several cattle wagons down the track. The greasy face of the engine-driver, wearing a military hat with the red pentagram, would look out from the cockpit; transports from the other side were dealt with by the functionaries working below.

  The task of Rud's brigade was to unload the transport. The leader wore a hat with the blue pentagram and a black police truncheon, but he was never forced to use it, for everybody worked with a will. In fact there was more willing than work. For some time now, the transports had been rare and relatively small. Before, there were periods when the track was crowded with wagons, the brigades worked day and night and still could not keep up with the unloading. There had been many young men on the transport then and the last time when the volume of transports had peaked, there were also the old. The leaders' truncheons had been used then, though the day rates were higher and they paid overtime for night shifts.

  Small, dark-skinned Jose remembered those days. He was smoking a strong roll-up. His registration number was very low, almost half Rud's. Jose was a rebel or a guerrilla fighter. He didn't remember exactly, or didn't want to say.

  "They used to come in herds, in stripy pyjamas," he said, reminiscing. "Once, one of them, skinny as a coat-hanger, with sunken, burning eyes, stops in front of me, fixes those flaming peepers on me and he says: `There was a ramp there and here is a ramp.' He sniffs the air and he sighs: `Eli, Eli, and the smoke stinks just the same. Isn't it ironic, brother?' I didn't understand that. And then he walked away, stooped, his shoulder-blades sticking out. I can't forget him. I've never seen him again, though I wanted to talk to the bloke." Jose twitched his flat, coal-black little moustaches, sucked in the rest of the smoke and stamped out the fag-end.

  When the seals on the wagons were broken, they saw rows of vats with hermetically sealed lids. Each vat had two little handles. When they were carrying them from the wagons, putting them two at a time on electric trolleys, they could hear water sloshing inside. The work was hard, the vats heavy and the day was exceptionally hot. Rud dripped with sweat. He worked with Jose who, though not very tall, was a strong man. It was much harder for the old men, who puffed and groaned, but the temptation of earning an extra ration of cigarettes was strong enough and the leader had no need to wave his truncheon.

  Leader Eckhardt was a tall man with the muscles of a body-builder and the face of an actor in westerns. He used to stroll slowly among the workers, sometimes helping the men when the vat carried by their weak hands was tipping dangerously.

  This transport puzzled Rud. He expected people and all that came were big buckets of water. At night, when the tired muscles tingled pleasantly, he fell asleep seeing rows of grey, numbered vats.

  The following day was his day off. Neuheufel sat at the desk, preparing another report. Rud was copying for him long columns of figures, drinking coffee with chicory sweetened with saccharine. Neuheufel had real coffee with real sugar. Rud asked him about the mysterious vats.

  "It's the Un-born," Neuheufel winced. "They always transport them that way. People pour buckets of them down the loos so we get them in buckets too. Hands, legs, heads, all separate, you understand? Those surgical scoops cut them into bits. Then the girls from the Medical have to put them back together, sew them up. Shitty job. Those little arms, delicate tissue ..."

  "The doctors sew them up?"

  "Of course not, there's too much of it. Their nurses do it. If she scraped out one she has to stitch one back, if two - she's doing two."

  "Each her own kid?"

  "I don't know. I don't think so ... for practical reasons. It doesn't matter. What matters is that they mustn't mix up the hands of different kids. That would be a mess," he chuckled coarsely.

  Neuheufel's white, fat belly covered with thin wisps of hair spilled out from his unbuttoned uniform shirt, bouncing to the rhythm of his giggle. Rud poured his coffee down the sink. He wanted to throw up.

  Despite his first, unpleasant impression, Rud had grown to like his job of unloading the transports. He only asked Neuheufel not to send him to work on the transport with the hermetically closed vats. He was still afraid of them. But when there were other transports the work was pleasant. He liked to watch as the old, frightened faces brightened up on seeing the sun and the blue sky. He would escort those people - meek, humbly stooped, clutching their favourite things - explaining to them they should give up all they had brought with them, as here they wouldn't be able to hang on to anything from the other side. Some of them were persuaded, some not, and he had to take their things away from them by force. Sometimes it caused an unnecessary fracas.

  Later, the newly arrived were put in front of the committee that decided who was to be sent for Greater Punishment. Jose claimed that the committee decided nothing, but only administered and sorted out the transports. Except for the complete grannies, Rud felt uncomfortably bashful with the women. Every time, it seemed to him he read in their eyes contempt that he was not a real man, because he had to piss through -a special-pipe.-

  Then Fiala joined their team; a young boy, fresh from Greater Punishment. Rud could not bear looking at his face. It was exception
ally badly and clumsily reconstructed. The ears were uneven, one sewn up higher than the other, the nose was too short with huge nostrils, like a monkey's; the skin on his jaw was rough and tubercular. He had many tissue bridges on his neck, an uncountable number of pink weals scarring his face, patches of bald skin on his skull, and horrific skeletal fingers covered with shiny, elastic pink film. Fiala told them that during the interrogation they had enjoyed sprinkling him with petrol and setting him on fire. They had practically burnt all his skin. Apparently it was Neuheufel's idea. Rud found it hard to believe. Fiala could carry nothing in his damaged hands and only escorted the newly arrived, persuading them to relinquish things brought from the other side. Thus the job of wrenching away their possessions had fallen to Rud and he was not pleased with such a helper. Fiala, to the contrary, unexpectedly chose Rud as his confidant.

  "The worst was the Medical Committee," he once told Rud as they sat on the slope by the track, waiting for the engine to pull away the empty wagons. "I wanted the earth to swallow me up," he said blushing with embarrassment, the scars on his face swelling into thick, bloody strings. "They were splitting their sides for half an hour that I had nothing left ... Shit, how could I have anything left when they'd burnt everything to a cinder - nose, ears, eyelids ... I'm surprised they didn't blind me."

  Rud nodded and spat out his chewed gum. Recently, Neuheufel had been giving him nicotine chewing gum; first to get him used to nicotine, then to make him interested in cigarettes. Neuheufel wanted to make Rud take up smoking so that he would be more interested in the overtime, which was paid in cigarettes.

  "It's a normal adaptation procedure. The laughter," he was telling Fiala, "is to make you stronger. Or so they say. Don't worry about it. Have they at least fixed you a piss-pipe?" "They have."

  "Does it hurt when you're taking a piss? If it does report it to the Medical. They'll have to adjust it." Rud lighted a cigarette for Fiala.

  "The pipe works all right, except that it drips. All the time. Drop after drop."

  "Report it. Let them fix it. No point messing about with them."

  For a while they sat in silence. Rud was chewing a new portion of gum, though he didn't like the taste. He remembered how he used to be embarrassed about his little pipe until he learned that the majority were in a similar predicament. Fiala was smoking. At the other ramp a new transport was being unloaded.

  "Handsome's carrying a suitcase for a girl again," sneered Fiala with envy. "Landed a plum job, that bloke."

  "They say he didn't go through Greater Punishment," said Rud, "so he has no problems."

  They were talking about Leader Eckhardt who was busy with the new transport.

  Neuheufel began to use Rud for help more and more often. Rud had come to the conclusion that he must have been to a school of terribly low standard. Rud had to do his maths homework, mostly simple combinations of the four basic rules of arithmetic. One day he rebelled and said he would rather work unloading the transports.

  Neuheufel gave him a resounding, swinging slap on the face. The old men sleeping on the bunks raised their heads.

  "You bloody, disgusting, ungrateful bastard!" shouted Neuheufel reproachfully. "So I sacrifice myself for you, get you out of the Punishment three ... five sessions before the end, even though your behaviour wasn't up to scratch and you weren't at all willing to co-operate! I've been risking my career to make your life easier and now this shit ... Tfu!" Neuheufel spat on the freshly scrubbed floorboards from the bottom of his "good" heart.

  His whole face was burning and the slapped cheek swelled like a pillow; or so it felt. That slap immediately brought back the memory of the tortures during Greater Punishment. It reawakened his dormant fear of Neuheufel. Rud stooped and fawned, feeling crushed inside. He felt that everybody was watching him - the ungrateful sod - with disapproval.

  "Won't even say he's sorry," said Neuheufel in a hurt tone of voice. It seemed to Rud that Neuheufel's eyes moistened. Now he felt sorry.

  "Sorry," he mumbled. He lowered his eyes and started writing. He was counting very carefully, for Neuheufel's homework was marked very strictly and one mistake disqualified the whole solution. He did not notice as onto the Interrogator's face crept an unpleasant smile of satisfaction. Only the eyes took no part in the smile.

  Neuheufel must have had some exams, for he stopped coming around for a few days. Instead, Holzbucher became a frequent visitor. He kicked up a great fuss after finding a book under Tony's pillow. It was a torn, greasy, coverless book printed on yellow paper, a silly, nonsensical detective story; Rud had already read it. Holzbucher shouted that Tony was damaging his eyes through reading but he did not beat the old man, did not slap him even once. He satisfied himself merely with a ceremonious burning of the book. He put it in Tony's soup bowl and set fire to it with a lighter. The old man stared at the creeping flames as if hypnotised. When the fire spread it added light to his faded eyes.

  Because Rud did not have to do Neuheufel's sums now, he worked more at the transports. He had amassed a little fortune in cigarettes and bartered it with the sentry Mykolov for a pair of real boots made of artificial leather. The boots were high, brown and shiny but impractical, as his feet sweated in them and later stank terribly. Because of the boots, others in his brigade started calling him Dandy. The rest of his fortune was stolen; he had wanted to buy himself a pair of army trousers. Still, undeterred, he carried on working.

  It was a wonderful, sunny day. Fluffy clouds sailed across the sky, pushed by a cool breeze. The transport consisted almost entirely of the Un-born. Rud worked at the only wagon that contained no vats. An ordinary transport: old men, some cancers, puffing cardiacs.

  Quite unexpectedly, out of that grey, indistinct mass, there emerged a figure whose presence seemed to be a complete mistake: a young girl carrying a canvas bag on long straps. Rud was charmed when the wind streamed her unusual, ashblonde hair. She had a white complexion, and her ears, a light creamy colour whereas most people's are pink, looked as if the layer of fat under her skin was showing through, giving it that exquisite yellow tone. The girl was not exceptionally beautiful. She had a square, prominent jaw and dull blue-green eyes, similar to the fish-eyes of the Un-born. Her beauty was saved by the fact that, despite such a pale, almost white complexion, she had dark eyebrows and eyelashes. She was much shorter then Rud and quite broad in the hips, though her legs were straight and shapely.

  She was the first attractive woman Rud had seen for ages. Besides, the wind playing with her long, thick, brushed back hair, set her determined face in a striking frame. There was also a distance in her eyes, a manifest conviction of her own uniqueness and beauty, which only amplified Rud's impression that he had just beheld complete perfection. Their eyes met for a while and they looked at each other in eloquent silence. When he recalled that meeting later, he realised she might have thought he was a guard making a selection; after all he wore high, military boots.

  When he finally came to his senses and stretched out his hand to help her carry the bag, forgetting he was supposed to take it away from her, a strong hand grasped his shoulder. Somebody grabbed him and pushed him aside.

  You, Dandy, fuck off," he heard the resounding voice of Leader Eckhardt. "You've no business here. Piss off to your grandads. Now! Or they'll stray."

  Eckhardt's voice vibrated in the air. Rud cringed with shame. His face swelled and burned, worse than when he had caught that slap from Neuheufel. He wanted to disappear, run away, run anywhere. He walked away towards the new arrivals without looking back.

  That day Rud was rough. He yanked the bags away from several people. He hit one particularly stubborn old man and trampled his photos.

  When doing Neuheufel's homework again, he asked him about Eckhardt. He was writing a long essay, or an extended report, comparing long rows of statistics. It was about the proportions of different age groups among the new arrivals over the last few years. A difficult job; there seemed to be no overall pattern. Besides, he had to be sensit
ive to the slightest manifestation of thought hatching in Neuheufel's lethargic brain and immediately praise it as if it were a revelation. Otherwise Neuheufel was offended. Anyway, despite Rud's best intentions, Neuheufel still thought him a lying and ungrateful sod. He was particularly piqued when Rud was pointing out his mistakes. He repaid him then with crude and nasty gibes, which Rud had to swallow in silence. On the other hand, he had to correct at least the more obvious mistakes, as he did not want Neuheufel's work to be rejected or marked too low. He knew - did he not - that he owed Neuheufel the shortening of Greater Punishment.

  This time Neuheufel had no need to be spiteful. The work was progressing slowly. Rud, hard as he tried, was unable to spot any historically determined trends in a mass of random figures. He could not guess the wishes of Neuheufel's teachers, whom he did not know. His unruly thoughts were running away from the statistics. Neuheufel loudly slurped tea from a glass with a teaspoon stuck in it, which he was holding back with his finger to prevent it from poking his eye out. Rud asked him about Eckhardt.

  "There's a lucky bastard," he said. "A big, handsome, sun-tanned fellow, got through the Punishment undamaged, not a single scar on him ... No girl can resist him."

  Neuheufel giggled.

  "It's not quite so ... He pisses squatting. He's only got a little hole," he said. "Precisely because they'd fixed him with such a handsome mug there was no skin left to repair anything else."

  Rud was astonished. He had not expected such an answer.

  "So what's he doing with all those girls he chats up?" he asked at last.

  "Maybe he practises lesbian love," Neuheufel burst out with laughter, and his trembling massive belly bumped the table and spilt the coffee.