More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

^{JACK DANN} Camps

AS STEPHEN LIES IN BED, he can think only of pain.

He imagines it as sharp and blue. After receiving an injection of Demerol, he enters pain’s cold regions as an explorer, an objective visitor. It is a country of ice and glass, monochromatic plains and valleys filled with wash-blue shards of ice, crystal pyramids and pinnacles, squares, oblongs, and all manner of polyhedrons—block upon block of painted blue pain.

Although it is midafternoon, Stephen pretends it is dark. His eyes are tightly closed, but the daylight pouring into the room from two large windows intrudes as a dull red field extending infinitely behind his eyelids.

“Josie,” he asks through cottonmouth, “aren’t I due for another shot?” Josie is crisp and fresh and large in her starched white uniform. Her peaked nurse’s cap is pinned to her mouse-brown hair.

“I’ve just given you an injection; it will take effect soon.” Josie strokes his hand, and he dreams of ice.

“Bring me some ice,” he whispers.

“If I bring you a bowl of ice, you’ll only spill it again.”

“Bring me some ice….” By touching the ice cubes, by turning them in his hand like a gambler favoring his dice, he can transport himself into the beautiful blue country. Later, the ice will melt; and he will spill the bowl. The shock of cold and pain will awaken him.

Stephen believes that he is dying, and he has resolved to die properly. Each visit to the cold country brings him closer to death; and death, he has learned, is only a slow walk through ice fields. He has come to appreciate the complete lack of warmth and the beautifully etched face of his magical country.

But he is connected to the bright, flat world of the hospital by plastic tubes—one breathes cold oxygen into his left nostril, another passes into his right nostril and down his throat to his stomach; one feeds him intravenously, another draws his urine.

“Here’s your ice,” Josie says. “But mind you, don’t spill it.” She places the small bowl on his traytable and wheels the table close to him. She has a musky odor of perspiration and perfume; Stephen is reminded of old women and college girls.

“Sleep now, sweet boy.”

Without opening his eyes, Stephen reaches out and places his hand on the ice.

“Come, now, Stephen, wake up. Dr. Volk is here to see you.”

Stephen feels the cool touch of Josie’s hand, and he opens his eyes to see the doctor standing beside him. The doctor has a gaunt, long face and thinning brown hair; he is dressed in a wrinkled green suit.

“Now we’ll check the dressing, Stephen,” he says as he tears away a gauze bandage on Stephen’s abdomen.

Stephen feels the pain, but he is removed from it. His only wish is to return to the blue dreamlands. He watches the doctor peel off the neat crosshatching of gauze. A terrible stink fills the room.

Josie stands well away from the bed.

“Now we’ll check your drains.” The doctor pulls a long drainage tube out of Stephen’s abdomen, irrigates and disinfects the wound, inserts a new drain, and repeats the process by pulling out another tube just below the rib cage.

Stephen imagines that he is swimming out of the room. He tries to cross the hazy border into cooler regions, but it is difficult to concentrate. He has only a half hour at most before the Demerol will wear off. Already, the pain is coming closer, and he will not be due for another injection until the night nurse comes on duty. But the night nurse will not give him an injection without an argument. She will tell him to fight the pain.

But he cannot fight without a shot.

“Tomorrow we’ll take that oxygen tube out of your nose,” the doctor says, but his voice seems far away and Stephen wonders what he is talking about.

He reaches for the bowl of ice, but cannot find it.

“Josie, you’ve taken my ice.”

“I took the ice away when the doctor came. Why don’t you try to watch a bit of television with me; Soupy Sales is on.”

“Just bring me some ice,” Stephen says. “I want to rest a bit.” He can feel the sharp edges of pain breaking through the gauzy wraps of Demerol.

“I love you, Josie,” he says sleepily as she places a fresh bowl of ice on his tray.

As Stephen wanders through his ice-blue dreamworld, he sees a rectangle of blinding white light. It looks like a doorway into an adjoining world of brightness. He has glimpsed it before, on previous Demerol highs. A coal-dark doorway stands beside the bright one.

He walks toward the portals, passes through white-blue conefields.

Time is growing short. The drug cannot stretch it much longer. Stephen knows that he has to choose either the bright doorway or the dark, one or the other. He does not even consider turning around, for he has dreamed that the ice and glass and cold blue gemstones have melted behind him.

It makes no difference to Stephen which doorway he chooses. On impulse he steps into blazing, searing whiteness.

Suddenly he is in a cramped world of people and sound.

The boxcar’s doors were flung open. Stephen was being pushed out of the cramped boxcar, which stank of sweat, feces, and urine. Several people had died in the car and added their stink of death to the already fetid air.

“Carla, stay close to me,” shouted a man beside Stephen. He had been separated from his wife by a young woman who pushed between them as she tried to return to the dark safety of the boxcar.

SS men in black, dirty uniforms were everywhere. They kicked and pommeled everyone within reach. Alsatian guard dogs snapped and barked. Stephen was bitten by one of the snarling dogs. A woman beside him was being kicked by soldiers. And they were all being methodically herded past a high barbed-wire fence. Beside the fence was a wall.

Stephen looked around for an escape route, but he was surrounded by other prisoners, who were pressing against him. Soldiers were shooting indiscriminately into the crowd, shooting women and children alike.

The man who had shouted to his wife was shot.

“Sholom, help me, help me,” screamed a scrawny young woman whose skin was as yellow and pimpled as chicken flesh.

And Stephen understood that he was Sholom. He was a Jew in this burning, stinking world, and this woman, somehow, meant something to him. He felt the yellow star sewn on the breast of his filthy jacket. He grimaced uncontrollably. The strangest thoughts were passing through his mind, remembrances of another childhood: morning prayers with his father and rich uncle, large breakfasts on Saturdays, the sounds of his mother and father quietly making love in the next room, yortseit candles burning in the living room, his brother reciting the “four questions” at the Passover table.

He touched the star again and remembered the Nazis’ facetious euphemism for it: Pour le Sémite.

He wanted to strike out, to kill the Nazis, to fight and die. But he found himself marching with the others, as if he had no will of his own. He felt that he was cut in half. He had two selves now; one watched the other. One self wanted to fight. The other was numbed; it cared only for itself. It was determined to survive.

Stephen looked around for the woman who had called out to him. She was nowhere to be seen.

Behind him were railroad tracks, electrified wire, and the conical tower and main gate of the camp. Ahead was a pitted road littered with corpses and their belongings. Rifles were being fired, and a heavy, sickly-sweet odor was everywhere. Stephen gagged, others vomited. It was the overwhelming stench of death, of rotting and burning flesh. Black clouds hung above the camp, and flames spurted from the tall chimneys of ugly buildings, as if from infernal machines.

Stephen walked onward: he was numb, unable to fight or even talk. Everything that happened around him was impossible, the stuff of dreams.

The prisoners were ordered to halt, and the soldiers began to separate those who would be burned from those who would be worked to death. Old men and women and young children were pulled out of the crowd. Some were beaten and killed immediately, while the others looked on in disbelief. Stephen looked on, as if it was of no concern to him. Everything was unreal, dreamlike. He did not belong here.

The new prisoners looked like Musselmanner, the walking dead. Those who became ill, or were beaten or starved before they could “wake up” to the reality of the camps, became Musselmanner. Musselmanner could not think or feel. They shuffled around, already dead in spirit, until a guard or disease or cold or starvation killed them.

“Keep marching,” shouted a guard as Stephen stopped before an emaciated old man crawling on the ground. “You’ll look like him soon enough.”

Suddenly, as if waking from one dream and finding himself in another, Stephen remembered that the chicken-skinned girl was his wife. He remembered their life together, their children and crowded flat. He remembered the birthmark on her leg, her scent, her hungry lovemaking. He had once fought another boy over her.

His glands opened up with fear and shame; he had ignored her screams for help.

He stopped and turned, faced the other group. “Fruma,” he shouted, then started to run.

A guard struck him in the chest with the butt of his rifle, and Stephen fell into darkness.

He spills the ice water again and awakens with a scream.

“It’s my fault,” Josie says as she peels back the sheets. “I should have taken the bowl away from you. But you fight me.”

Stephen lives with the pain again. He imagines that a tiny fire is burning in his abdomen, slowly consuming him. He stares at the television high on the wall and watches Soupy Sales.

As Josie changes the plastic sac containing his intravenous saline solution, an orderly pushes a cart into the room and asks Stephen if he wants a print for his wall.

“Would you like me to choose something for you?” Josie asks.

Stephen shakes his head and asks the orderly to show him all the prints. Most of them are familiar still lifes and pastorals, but one catches his attention. It is a painting of a wheat field. Although the sky looks ominously dark, the wheat is brightly rendered in great, broad strokes. A path cuts through the field and crows fly overhead.

“That one,” Stephen says. “Put that one up.”

After the orderly hangs the print and leaves, Josie asks Stephen why he chose that particular painting.

“I like Van Gogh,” he says dreamily as he tries to detect a rhythm in the surges of abdominal pain. But he is not nauseated, just gaseous.

“Any particular reason why you like Van Gogh?” asks Josie. “He’s my favorite artist too.”

“I didn’t say he was my favorite,” Stephen says, and Josie pouts, an expression that does not fit her prematurely lined face. Stephen closes his eyes, glimpses the cold country, and says, “I like the painting because it’s so bright that it’s almost frightening. And the road going through the field”—he opens his eyes—“doesn’t go anywhere. It just ends in the field. And the crows are flying around like vultures.”

“Most people see it as just a pretty picture,” Josie says.

“What’s it called?”

“Wheat Field with Blackbirds.”

“Sensible. My stomach hurts, Josie. Help me turn over on my side.” Josie helps him onto his left side, plumps up his pillows, and inserts a short tube into his rectum to relieve the gas. “I also like the painting with the large stars that all look out of focus,” Stephen says. “What’s it called?”

“Starry Night.”

“That’s scary too,” Stephen says. Josie takes his blood pressure, makes a notation on his chart, then sits down beside him and holds his hand. “I remember something,” he says. “Something just—” He jumps as he remembers, and pain shoots through his distended stomach. Josie shushes him, checks the intravenous needle, and asks him what he remembers.

But the memory of the dream recedes as the pain grows sharper. “I hurt all the fucking time, Josie,” he says, changing position. Josie removes the rectal tube before he is on his back.

“Don’t use such language, I don’t like to hear it. I know you have a lot of pain,” she says, her voice softening.

“Time for a shot.”

“No, honey, not for some time. You’ll just have to bear it.”

Stephen remembers his dream again. He is afraid of it. His breath is short and his heart feels as if it is beating in his throat, but he recounts the entire dream to Josie.

He does not notice that her face has lost its color.

“It is only a dream, Stephen. Probably something you studied in history.”

“But it was so real, not like a dream at all.”

“That’s enough!” Josie says.

“I’m sorry I upset you. Don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, fighting the pain, squeezing Josie’s hand tightly. “Didn’t you tell me that you were in the Second World War?”

Josie is composed once again. “Yes, I did, but I’m surprised you remembered. You were very sick. I was a nurse overseas, spent most of the war in England. But I was one of the first women to go into any of the concentration camps.”

Stephen drifts with the pain; he appears to be asleep.

“You must have studied very hard,” Josie whispers to him. Her hand is shaking just a bit.

It is twelve o’clock and his room is death-quiet. The sharp shadows seem to be the hardest objects in the room. The fluorescents burn steadily in the hall outside.

Stephen looks out into the hallway, but he can see only the far white wall. He waits for his night nurse to appear: it is time for his injection. A young nurse passes by his doorway. Stephen imagines that she is a cardboard ship sailing through the corridors.

He presses his buzzer, which is attached by a clip to his pillow. The night nurse will take her time, he tells himself. He remembers arguing with her. Angrily, he presses the buzzer again.

Across the hall, a man begins to scream, and there is a shuffle of nurses into his room. The screaming turns into begging and whining. Although Stephen has never seen the man in the opposite room, he has come to hate him. Like Stephen, he has something wrong with his stomach; but he cannot suffer well. He can only beg and cry, try to make deals with the nurses, doctors, God, and angels. Stephen cannot muster any pity for this man.

The night nurse finally comes into the room, says, “You have to try to get along without this,” and gives him an injection of Demerol.

“Why does the man across the hall scream so?” Stephen asks, but the nurse is already edging out of the room.

“Because he’s in pain.”

“So am I,” Stephen says in a loud voice. “But I can keep it to myself.”

“Then, stop buzzing me constantly for an injection. That man across the hall has had half of his stomach removed. He’s got something to scream about.”

So have I, Stephen thinks; but the nurse disappears before he can tell her. He tries to imagine what the man across the hall looks like. He thinks of him as being bald and small, an ancient baby. Stephen tries to feel sorry for the man, but his incessant whining disgusts him.

The drug takes effect; the screams recede as he hurtles through the dark corridors of a dream. The cold country is dark, for Stephen cannot persuade his night nurse to bring him some ice. Once again, he sees two entrances. As the world melts behind him, he steps into the coalblack doorway.

In the darkness he hears an alarm, a bone-jarring clangor.

He could smell the combined stink of men pressed closely together. They were all lying upon two badly constructed wooden shelves. The floor was dirt; the smell of urine never left the barrack.

“Wake up,” said a man Stephen knew as Viktor. “If the guard finds you in bed, you’ll be beaten again.”

Stephen moaned, still wrapped in dreams. “Wake up, wake up,” he mumbled to himself. He would have a few more minutes before the guard arrived with the dogs. At the very thought of dogs, Stephen felt revulsion. He had once been bitten in the face by a large dog.

He opened his eyes, yet he was still half asleep, exhausted. You are in a death camp, he said to himself. You must wake up. You must fight by waking up. Or you will die in your sleep. Shaking uncontrollably, he said, “Do you want to end up in the oven, perhaps you will be lucky today and live.”

As he lowered his legs to the floor, he felt the sores open on the soles of his feet. He wondered who would die today and shrugged. It was his third week in the camp. Impossibly, against all odds, he had survived. Most of those he had known in the train had either died or become Musselmanner. If it were not for Viktor, he, too, would have become a Musselmann. He had a breakdown and wanted to die. He babbled in English. But Viktor talked him out of death, shared his portion of food with him, and taught him the new rules of life.

“Like everyone else who survives, I count myself first, second, and third—then I try to do what I can for someone else,” Viktor had said.

“I will survive,” Stephen repeated to himself as the guards opened the door, stepped into the room, and began to shout. Their dogs growled and snapped, but heeled beside them. The guards looked sleepy; one did not wear a cap, and his red hair was tousled.

Perhaps he spent the night with one of the whores, Stephen thought. Perhaps today would not be so bad….

And so begins the morning ritual: Josie enters Stephen’s room at a quarter to eight, fusses with the chart attached to the footboard of his bed, pads about aimlessly, and finally goes to the bathroom. She returns, her stiff uniform making swishing sounds. Stephen can feel her standing over the bed and staring at him. But he does not open his eyes. He waits a beat.

She turns away, then drops the bedpan. Yesterday it was the metal ashtray; day before that, she bumped into the bedstand.

“Good morning, darling, it’s a beautiful day,” she says, then walks across the room to the windows. She parts the faded orange drapes and opens the blinds. “How do you feel today?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Josie takes his pulse and asks, “Did Mr. Gregory stop in to say hello last night?”

“Yes,” Stephen says. “He’s teaching me how to play gin rummy. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s very sick.”

“I can see that; has he got cancer?”

“I don’t know,” says Josie as she tidies up his night table.

“You’re lying again,” Stephen says, but she ignores him. After a time, he says, “His girlfriend was in to see me last night, I bet his wife will be in today.”

“Shut your mouth about that,” Josie says. “Let’s get you out of that bed, so I can change the sheets.”

Stephen sits in the chair all morning. He is getting well but is still very weak. Just before lunchtime, the orderly wheels his cart into the room and asks Stephen if he would like to replace the print hanging on the wall.

“I’ve seen them all,” Stephen says. “I’ll keep the one I have.” Stephen does not grow tired of the Van Gogh painting; sometimes, the crows seem to have changed position.

“Maybe you’ll like this one,” the orderly says as he pulls out a cardboard print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It is a study of a village nestled in the hills, dressed in shadows. But everything seems to be boiling and writhing as in a fever dream. A cypress tree in the foreground looks like a black flame, and the vertiginous sky is filled with great, blurry stars. It is a drunkard’s dream. The orderly smiles.

“So you did have it,” Stephen says.

“No, I traded some other pictures for it. They had a copy in the West Wing.”

Stephen watches him hang it, thanks him, and waits for him to leave. Then he gets up and examines the painting carefully. He touches the raised facsimile brushstrokes, and turns toward Josie, feeling an odd sensation in his groin. He looks at her, as if seeing her for the first time. She has an overly full mouth, which curves downward at the corners when she smiles. She is not a pretty woman—too fat, he thinks.

“Dance with me,” he says, as he waves his arms and takes a step forward, conscious of the pain in his stomach.

“You’re too sick to be dancing just yet,” but she laughs at him and bends her knees in a mock plié.

She has small breasts for such a large woman, Stephen thinks. Feeling suddenly dizzy, he takes a step toward the bed. He feels himself slip to the floor, feels Josie’s hair brushing against his face, dreams that he’s all wet from her tongue, feels her arms around him, squeezing, then feels the weight of her body pressing down on him, crushing him….

He wakes up in bed, catheterized. He has an intravenous needle in his left wrist, and it is difficult to swallow, for he has a tube down his throat.

He groans, tries to move.

“Quiet, Stephen,” Josie says, stroking his hand.

“What happened?” he mumbles. He can only remember being dizzy.

“You’ve had a slight setback, so just rest. The doctor had to collapse your lung; you must lie very still.”

“Josie, I love you,” he whispers, but he is too far away to be heard. He wonders how many hours or days have passed. He looks toward the window. It is dark, and there is no one in the room.

He presses the buzzer attached to his pillow and remembers a dream….

“You must fight,” Viktor said.

It was dark, all the other men were asleep, and the barrack was filled with snoring and snorting. Stephen wished they could all die, choke on their own breath. It would be an act of mercy.

“Why fight?” Stephen asked, and he pointed toward the greasy window, beyond which were the ovens that smoked day and night. He made a fluttering gesture with his hand—smoke rising.

“You must fight, you must live; living is everything. It is the only thing that makes sense here.”

“We’re all going to die, anyway,” Stephen whispered. “Just like your sister… and my wife.”

“No, Sholom, we’re going to live. The others may die, but we’re going to live. You must believe that.”

Stephen understood that Viktor was desperately trying to convince himself to live. He felt sorry for Viktor; there could be no sensible rationale for living in a place like this. Everything must die here.

Stephen grinned, tasted blood from the corner of his mouth, and said, “So we’ll live through the night, maybe.”

And maybe tomorrow, he thought. He would play the game of survival a little longer.

He wondered if Viktor would be alive tomorrow. He smiled and thought, If Viktor dies, then I will have to take his place and convince others to live. For an instant, he hoped Viktor would die so that he could take his place.

The alarm sounded. It was three o’clock in the morning, time to begin the day.

This morning, Stephen was on his feet before the guards could unlock the door.

“Wake up,” Josie says, gently tapping his arm. “Come on now, wake up.”

Stephen hears her voice as an echo. He imagines that he has been flung into a long tunnel; he hears air whistling in his ears but cannot see anything.

“Whassimatter?” he asks. His mouth feels as if it is stuffed with cotton; his lips are dry and cracked. He is suddenly angry at Josie and the plastic tubes that hold him in his bed as if he were a latter-day Gulliver. He wants to pull out the tubes, smash the bags filled with saline, tear away his bandages.

“You were speaking German,” Josie says. “Did you know that?”

“Can I have some ice?”

“No,” Josie says impatiently. “You spilled again, you’re all wet.”

“…for my mouth, dry….”

“Do you remember speaking German, honey, I have to know.”

“Don’t remember, bring ice, I’ll try to think about it.”

As Josie leaves to get him some ice, he tries to remember his dream.

“Here now, just suck on the ice.” She gives him a little hill of crushed ice on the end of a spoon.

“Why did you wake me up, Josie?” The layers of dream are beginning to slough off. As the Demerol works out of his system, he has to concentrate on fighting the burning ache in his stomach.

“You were speaking German. Where did you learn to speak like that?”

Stephen tries to remember what he said. He cannot speak any German, only a bit of classroom French. He looks down at his legs (he has thrown off the sheet) and notices, for the first time, that his legs are as thin as his arms. “My God, Josie, how could I have lost so much weight?”

“You lost about forty pounds, but don’t worry, you’ll gain it all back. You’re on the road to recovery now. Please, try to remember your dream.”

“I can’t, Josie! I just can’t seem to get ahold of it.”

“Try.”

“Why is it so important to you?”

“You weren’t speaking college German, darling, you were speaking slang. You spoke in a patois that I haven’t heard since the forties.”

Stephen feels a chill slowly creep up his spine. “What did I say?”

Josie waits a beat, then says, “You talked about dying.”

“Josie?”

“Yes,” she says, pulling at her fingernail.

“When is the pain going to stop?”

“It will be over soon.” She gives him another spoonful of ice. “You kept repeating the name Viktor in your sleep. Can you remember anything about him?”

Viktor, Viktor, deep-set blue eyes, balding head and broken nose, called himself a Galitzianer. Saved my life. “I remember,” Stephen says. “His name is Viktor Shmone. He is in all my dreams now.”

Josie exhales sharply.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Stephen asks anxiously.

“I once knew a man from one of the camps.” She speaks very slowly and precisely. “His name was Viktor Shmone. I took care of him. He was one of the few people left alive in the camp after the Germans fled.” She reaches for her purse, which she keeps on Stephen’s night table, and fumbles an old, torn photograph out of a plastic slipcase.

As Stephen examines the photograph, he begins to sob. A thinner and much younger Josie is standing beside Viktor and two other emaciated-looking men. “Then, I’m not dreaming,” he says, “and I’m going to die. That’s what it means.” He begins to shake, just as he did in his dream, and, without thinking, he makes the gesture of rising smoke to Josie. He begins to laugh.

“Stop that,” Josie says, raising her hand to slap him. Then she embraces him and says, “Don’t cry, darling, it’s only a dream. Somehow, you’re dreaming the past.”

“Why?” Stephen asks, still shaking.

“Maybe you’re dreaming because of me, because we’re so close. In some ways, I think you know me better than anyone else, better than any man, no doubt. You might be dreaming for a reason; maybe I can help you.”

“I’m afraid, Josie.”

She comforts him and says, “Now tell me everything you can remember about the dreams.”

He is exhausted. As he recounts his dreams to her, he sees the bright doorway again. He feels himself being sucked into it. “Josie,” he says, “I must stay awake, don’t want to sleep, dream….”

Josie’s face is pulled tight as a mask; she is crying.

Stephen reaches out to her, slips into the bright doorway, into another dream.

It was a cold, cloudless morning. Hundreds of prisoners were working in the quarries; each work gang came from a different barrack. Most of the gangs were made up of Musselmanner, the faceless majority of the camp. They moved like automatons, lifting and carrying the great stones to the numbered carts, which would have to be pushed down the tracks.

Stephen was drenched with sweat. He had a fever and was afraid that he had contracted typhus. An epidemic had broken out in the camp last week. Every morning, several doctors arrived with the guards. Those who were too sick to stand up were taken away to be gassed or experimented upon in the hospital.

Although Stephen could barely stand, he forced himself to keep moving. He tried to focus all his attention on what he was doing. He made a ritual of bending over, choosing a stone of a certain size, lifting it, carrying it to the nearest cart, and then taking the same number of steps back to his dig.

A Musselmann fell to the ground, but Stephen made no effort to help him. When he could help someone in a little way, he would, but he would not stick his neck out for a Musselmann. Yet something niggled at Stephen. He remembered a photograph in which Viktor and this Musselmann were standing with a man and a woman he did not recognize. But Stephen could not remember where he had ever seen such a photograph.

“Hey, you,” shouted a guard. “Take the one on the ground to the cart.”

Stephen nodded to the guard and began to drag the Musselmann away.

“Who’s the new patient down the hall?” Stephen asks as he eats a bit of cereal from the breakfast tray Josie has placed before him. He is feeling much better now; his fever is down and the tubes, catheter, and intravenous needle have been removed. He can even walk around a bit.

“How did you find out about that?” Josie asks.

“You were talking to Mr. Gregory’s nurse. Do you think I’m dead already? I can still hear.”

Josie laughs and takes a sip of Stephen’s tea. “You’re far from dead! In fact, today is a red-letter day, you’re going to take your first shower. What do you think about that?”

“I’m not well enough yet,” he says, worried that he will have to leave the hospital before he is ready.

“Well, Dr. Volk thinks differently, and his word is law.”

“Tell me about the new patient.”

“They brought in a man last night who drank two quarts of motor oil; he’s on the dialysis machine.”

“Will he make it?”

“No, I don’t think so; there’s too much poison in his system.”

We should all die, Stephen thinks. It would be an act of mercy. He glimpses the camp.

“Stephen!”

He jumps, then awakens.

“You’ve had a good night’s sleep, you don’t need to nap. Let’s get you into that shower and have it done with.” Josie pushes the traytable away from the bed. “Come on, I have your bathrobe right here.”

Stephen puts on his bathrobe, and they walk down the hall to the showers. There are three empty shower stalls, a bench, and a whirlpool bath. As Stephen takes off his bathrobe, Josie adjusts the water pressure and temperature in the corner stall.

“What’s the matter?” Stephen asks after stepping into the shower. Josie stands in front of the shower stall and holds his towel, but she will not look at him. “Come on,” he says, “you’ve seen me naked before.”

“That was different.”

“How?” He touches a hard, ugly scab that has formed over one of the wounds on his abdomen.

“When you were very sick, I washed you in bed as if you were a baby. Now it’s different.” She looks down at the wet tile floor as if she is lost in thought.

“Well, I think it’s silly,” he says. “Come on, it’s hard to talk to someone who’s looking the other way. I could break my neck in here and you’d be staring down at the fucking floor.”

“I’ve asked you not to use that word,” she says in a very low voice.

“Do my eyes still look yellowish?”

She looks directly at his face and says, “No, they look fine.”

Stephen suddenly feels faint, then nauseated; he has been standing too long. As he leans against the cold shower wall, he remembers his last dream. He is back in the quarry. He can smell the perspiration of the men around him, feel the sun baking him, draining his strength. It is so bright….

He finds himself sitting on the bench and staring at the light on the opposite wall. I’ve got typhus, he thinks, then realizes that he is in the hospital. Josie is beside him.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I shouldn’t have let you stand so long; it was my fault.”

“I remembered another dream.” He begins to shake, and Josie puts her arms around him.

“It’s all right now; tell Josie about your dream.”

She’s an old, fat woman, Stephen thinks. As he describes the dream, his shaking subsides.

“Do you know the man’s name?” Josie asks. “The one the guard ordered you to drag away.”

“No,” Stephen says. “He was a Musselmann, yet I thought there was something familiar about him. In my dream I remembered the photograph you showed me. He was in it.”

“What will happen to him?”

“The guards will give him to the doctors for experimentation. If they don’t want him, he’ll be gassed ”

“You must not let that happen,” Josie says, holding him tightly.

“Why?” asks Stephen, afraid that he will fall into the dreams again.

“If he was one of the men you saw in the photograph, you must not let him die. Your dreams must fit the past.”

“I’m afraid.”

“It will be all right, baby,” Josie says, clinging to him. She is shaking and breathing heavily.

Stephen feels himself getting an erection. He calms her, presses his face against hers, and touches her breasts. She tells him to stop but does not push him away.

“I love you,” he says as he slips his hand under her starched skirt. He feels awkward and foolish and warm.

“This is wrong,” she whispers.

As Stephen kisses her and feels her thick tongue in his mouth, he begins to dream….

Stephen stopped to rest for a few seconds. The Musselmann was dead weight. I cannot go on, Stephen thought, but he bent down, grabbed the Musselmann by his coat, and dragged him toward the cart. He glimpsed the cart, which was filled with the sick and dead and exhausted; it looked no different than a cartload of corpses marked for a mass grave.

A long, gray cloud covered the sun, then passed, drawing shadows across gutted hills.

On impulse, Stephen dragged the Musselmann into a gully behind several chalky rocks. Why am I doing this? he asked himself. If I’m caught, I’ll be ash in the ovens too. He remembered what Viktor had told him: “You must think of yourself all the time or you’ll be no help to anyone else.”

The Musselmann groaned, then raised his arm. His face was gray with dust and his eyes were glazed.

“You must lie still,” Stephen whispered. “Do not make a sound. I’ve hidden you from the guards, but if they hear you, we’ll all be punished. One sound from you and you’re dead. You must fight to live; you’re in a death camp; you must fight so you can tell of this later.”

“I have no family, they’re all—”

Stephen clapped his hand over the man’s mouth and whispered, “Fight, don’t talk. Wake up; you cannot survive the death camp by sleeping.”

The man nodded, and Stephen climbed out of the gully. He helped two men carry a large stone to a nearby cart.

“What are you doing?” shouted a guard.

“I left my place to help these men with this stone; now I’ll go back where I was.”

“What the hell are you trying to do?” Viktor asked.

Stephen felt as if he was burning up with fever. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, but everything was still blurry.

“You’re sick, too. You’ll be lucky if you last the day.”

“I’ll last,” Stephen said, “but I want you to help me get him back to the camp.”

“I won’t risk it, not for a Musselmann. He’s already dead; leave him.”

“Like you left me?”

Before the guards could take notice, they began to work. Although Viktor was older than Stephen, he was stronger. He worked hard every day and never caught the diseases that daily reduced the barrack’s numbers. Stephen had a touch of death, as Viktor called it, and was often sick.

They worked until dusk, when the sun’s oblique rays caught the dust from the quarries and turned it into veils and scrims. Even the guards sensed that this was a quiet time, for they would congregate together and talk in hushed voices.

“Come, now, help me,” Stephen whispered to Viktor.

“I’ve been doing that all day,” Viktor said. “I’ll have enough trouble getting you back to the camp, much less carry this Musselmann.”

“We can’t leave him.”

“Why are you so preoccupied with this Musselmann? Even if we can get him back to the camp, his chances are nothing. I know—I’ve seen enough—I know who has a chance to survive.”

“You’re wrong this time,” Stephen said. He was dizzy and it was difficult to stand. The odds are I won’t last the night, and Viktor knows it, he told himself. “I had a dream that if this man dies, I’ll die too. I just feel it.”

“Here we learn to trust our dreams,” Viktor said. “They make as much sense as this….” He made the gesture of rising smoke and gazed toward the ovens, which were spewing fire and black ash.

The western portion of the sky was yellow, but over the ovens it was red and purple and dark blue. Although it horrified Stephen to consider it, there was a macabre beauty here. If he survived, he would never forget these sense impressions, which were stronger than anything he had ever experienced before. Being so close to death, he was, perhaps for the first time, really living. In the camp, one did not even consider suicide. One grasped for every moment, sucked at life like an infant, lived as if there were no future.

The guards shouted at the prisoners to form a column; it was time to march back to the barracks.

While the others milled about, Stephen and Viktor lifted the Musselmann out of the gully. Everyone nearby tried to distract the guards. When the march began, Stephen and Viktor held the Musselmann between them, for he could barely stand.

“Come on, dead one, carry your weight,” Viktor said. “Are you so dead that you cannot hear me? Are you as dead as the rest of your family?” The Musselmann groaned and dragged his legs. Viktor kicked him. “You’ll walk or we’ll leave you here for the guards to find.”

“Let him be,” Stephen said.

“Are you dead or do you have a name?” Viktor continued.

“Berek,” croaked the Musselmann. “I am not dead.”

“Then, we have a fine bunk for you,” Viktor said. “You can smell the stink of the sick for another night before the guards make a selection.” Viktor made the gesture of smoke rising.

Stephen stared at the barracks ahead. They seemed to waver as the heat rose from the ground. He counted every step. He would drop soon; he could not go on, could not carry the Musselmann.

He began to mumble in English.

“So you’re speaking American again,” Viktor said.

Stephen shook himself awake, placed one foot before the other.

“Dreaming of an American lover?”

“I don’t know English and I have no American lover.”

“Then, who is this Josie you keep talking about in your sleep…?”

“Why were you screaming?” Josie asks as she washes his face with a cold washcloth.

“I don’t remember screaming,” Stephen says. He discovers a fever blister on his lip. Expecting to find an intravenous needle in his wrist, he raises his arm.

“You don’t need an I.V.,” Josie says. “You just have a bit of a fever. Dr. Volk has prescribed some new medication for it.”

“What time is it?” Stephen stares at the whorls in the ceiling.

“Almost 3 P.M. I’ll be going off soon.”

“Then I’ve slept most of the day away,” Stephen says, feeling something crawling inside him. He worries that his dreams still have a hold on him. “Am I having another relapse?”

“You’ll do fine,” Josie says.

“I should be fine now; I don’t want to dream anymore.”

“Did you dream again, do you remember anything?”

“I dreamed that I saved the Musselmann,” Stephen says.

“What was his name?” asks Josie.

“Berek, I think. Is that the man you knew?”

Josie nods and Stephen smiles at her. “Maybe that’s the end of the dreams,” he says; but she does not respond. He asks to see the photograph again.

“Not just now,” Josie says.

“But I have to see it. I want to see if I can recognize myself….”

Stephen dreamed he was dead, but it was only the fever. Viktor sat beside him on the floor and watched the others. The sick were moaning and crying; they slept on the cramped platform, as if proximity to one another could ensure a few more hours of life. Wan moonlight seemed to fill the barrack.

Stephen awakened, feverish. “I’m burning up,” he whispered to Viktor.

“Well,” Viktor said, “you’ve got your Musselmann. If he lives, you live. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“I don’t remember; I just knew that I couldn’t let him die.”

“You’d better go back to sleep; you’ll need your strength. Or we may have to carry you, tomorrow.”

Stephen tried to sleep, but the fever was making lights and spots before his eyes. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of a dark country filled with gemstones and great quarries of ice and glass.

“What?” Stephen asked, as he sat up suddenly, awakened from dampblack dreams. He looked around and saw that everyone was watching Berek, who was sitting under the window at the far end of the room.

Berek was singing the Kol Nidre very softly. It was the Yom Kippur prayer, sung on the most holy of days. He repeated the prayer three times, and then once again in a louder voice. The others responded, intoned the prayer as a recitative. Viktor was crying quietly, and Stephen imagined that the holy spirit animated Berek. Surely, he told himself, that face and those pale, unseeing eyes were those of a dead man. He remembered the story of the golem, shuddered, found himself singing and pulsing with fever.

When the prayer was over, Berek fell back into his fever trance. The others became silent, then slept. But there was something new in the barrack with them tonight, a palpable exultation. Stephen looked around at the sleepers and thought, We’re surviving, more dead than alive, but surviving….

“You were right about that Musselmann,” Viktor whispered. “It’s good that we saved him.”

“Perhaps we should sit with him,” Stephen said. “He’s alone.” But Viktor was already asleep; and Stephen was suddenly afraid that if he sat beside Berek, he would be consumed by his holy fire.

As Stephen fell through sleep and dreams, his face burned with fever.

Again he wakes up screaming.

“Josie,” he says, “I can remember the dream, but there’s something else, something I can’t see, something terrible….”

“Not to worry,” Josie says, “it’s the fever.” But she looks worried, and Stephen is sure that she knows something he does not.

“Tell me what happened to Viktor and Berek,” Stephen says. He presses his hands together to stop them from shaking.

“They lived, just as you are going to live and have a good life.”

Stephen calms down and tells her his dream.

“So you see,” she says, “you’re even dreaming about surviving.”

“I’m burning up.”

“Dr. Volk says you’re doing very well.” Josie sits beside him, and he watches the fever patterns shift behind his closed eyelids.

“Tell me what happens next, Josie.”

“You’re going to get well.”

“There’s something else….”

“Shush, now, there’s nothing else.” She pauses, then says, “Mr. Gregory is supposed to visit you tonight. He’s getting around a bit, he’s been back and forth all day in his wheelchair. He tells me that you two have made some sort of a deal about dividing up all the nurses.”

Stephen smiles, opens his eyes, and says, “It was Gregory’s idea. Tell me what’s wrong with him.”

“All right, he has cancer, but he doesn’t know it and you must keep it a secret. They cut the nerve in his leg because the pain was so bad. He’s quite comfortable now, but remember, you can’t repeat what I’ve told you.”

“Is he going to live?” Stephen asks. “He’s told me about all the new projects he’s planning, so I guess he’s expecting to get out of here.”

“He’s not going to live very long, and the doctor didn’t want to break his spirit.”

“I think he should be told.”

“That’s not your decision to make, nor mine.”

“Am I going to die, Josie?”

“No!” she says, touching his arm to reassure him.

“How do I know that’s the truth?”

“Because I say so, and I couldn’t look you straight in the eye and tell you if it wasn’t true. I should have known it would be a mistake to tell you about Mr. Gregory.”

“You did right,” Stephen says. “I won’t mention it again. Now that I know, I feel better.” He feels drowsy again.

“Do you think you’re up to seeing him tonight?”

Stephen nods, although he is bone tired. As he falls asleep, the fever patterns begin to dissolve, leaving a bright field. With a start, he opens his eyes: he has touched the edge of another dream.

“What happened to the man across the hall, the one who was always screaming?”

“He’s left the ward,” Josie says. “Mr. Gregory had better hurry if he wants to play cards with you before dinner. They’re going to bring the trays up soon.”

“You mean he died, don’t you.”

“Yes, if you must know, he died. But you’re going to live.”

There is a crashing noise in the hallway. Someone shouts, and Josie runs to the door.

Stephen tries to stay awake, but he is being pulled back into the cold country.

“Mr. Gregory fell trying to get into his wheelchair by himself,” Josie says. “He should have waited for his nurse, but she was out of the room and he wanted to visit you.”

But Stephen does not hear a word she says.

There were rumors that the camp was going to be liberated. It was late, but no one was asleep. The shadows in the barrack seemed larger tonight.

“It’s better for us if the Allies don’t come,” Viktor said to Stephen.

“Why do you say that?”

“Haven’t you noticed that the ovens are going day and night? The Nazis are in a hurry.”

“I’m going to try to sleep,” Stephen said.

“Look around you; even the Musselmanner are agitated,” Viktor said. “Animals become nervous before the slaughter. I’ve worked with animals. People are not so different.”

“Shut up and let me sleep,” Stephen said, and he dreamed that he could hear the crackling of distant gunfire.

“Attention,” shouted the guards as they stepped into the barrack. There were more guards than usual, and each one had two Alsatian dogs. “Come on, form a line. Hurry.”

“They’re going to kill us,” Viktor said; “then they’ll evacuate the camp and save themselves.”

The guards marched the prisoners toward the northern section of the camp. Although it was still dark, it was hot and humid, without a trace of the usual morning chill. The ovens belched fire and turned the sky aglow. Everyone was quiet, for there was nothing to be done. The guards were nervous and would cut down anyone who uttered a sound, as an example for the rest.

The booming of big guns could be heard in the distance.

If I’m going to die, Stephen thought, I might as well go now, and take a Nazi with me. Suddenly, all of his buried fear, aggression, and revulsion surfaced; his face became hot and his heart felt as if it were pumping in his throat. But Stephen argued with himself. There was always a chance. He had once heard of some women who were waiting in line for the ovens; for no apparent reason, the guards sent them back to their barracks. Anything could happen. There was always a chance. But to attack a guard would mean certain death.

The guns became louder. Stephen could not be sure, but he thought the noise was coming from the west. The thought passed through his mind that everyone would be better off dead. That would stop all the guns and screaming voices, the clenched fists and wildly beating hearts. The Nazis should kill everyone, and then themselves, as a favor to humanity.

The guards stopped the prisoners in an open field surrounded on three sides by forestland. Sunrise was moments away; purple-black clouds drifted across the sky touched by gray in the east. It promised to be a hot, gritty day.

Half-step Walter, a Judenrat sympathizer who worked for the guards, handed out shovel heads to everyone.

“He’s worse than the Nazis,” Viktor said to Stephen.

“The Judenrat thinks he will live,” said Berek, “but he will die like a Jew with the rest of us.”

“Now, when it’s too late, the Musselmann regains consciousness,” Viktor said.

“Hurry,” shouted the guards, “or you’ll die now. As long as you dig, you’ll live.”

Stephen hunkered down on his knees and began to dig with the shovel head.

“Do you think we might escape?” Berek whined.

“Shut up and dig,” Stephen said. “There is no escape, just stay alive as long as you can. Stop whining, are you becoming a Musselmann again?” Stephen noticed that other prisoners were gathering up twigs and branches. So the Nazis plan to cover us up, he thought.

“That’s enough,” shouted a guard. “Put your shovels down in front of you and stand in a line.”

The prisoners stood shoulder to shoulder along the edge of the mass grave. Stephen stood between Viktor and Berek. Someone screamed and ran and was shot immediately.

I don’t want to see trees or guards or my friends, Stephen thought as he stared into the sun. I only want to see the sun, let it burn out my eyes, fill up my head with light. He was shaking uncontrollably, quaking with fear.

Guns were booming in the background.

Maybe the guards won’t kill us, Stephen thought, even as he heard the crackcrack of their rifles. Men were screaming and begging for life. Stephen turned his head, only to see someone’s face blown away.

Screaming, tasting vomit in his mouth, Stephen fell backward, pulling Viktor and Berek into the grave with him.

Darkness, Stephen thought. His eyes were open, yet it was dark. I must be dead, this must be death….

He could barely move. Corpses can’t move, he thought. Something brushed against his face, he stuck out his tongue, felt something spongy. It tasted bitter. Lifting first one arm and then the other, Stephen moved some branches away. Above, he could see a few dim stars; the clouds were lit like lanterns by a quarter moon.

He touched the body beside him; it moved. That must be Viktor, he thought. “Viktor, are you alive, say something if you’re alive.” Stephen whispered, as if in fear of disturbing the dead.

Viktor groaned and said, “Yes, I’m alive, and so is Berek.”

“And the others?”

“All dead. Can’t you smell the stink? You, at least, were unconscious all day.”

“They can’t all be dead,” Stephen said; then he began to cry.

“Shut up,” Viktor said, touching Stephen’s face to comfort him. “We’re alive, that’s something. They could have fired a volley into the pit.”

“I thought I was dead,” Berek said. He was a shadow among shadows.

“Why are we still here?” Stephen asked.

“We stayed in here because it is safe,” Viktor said.

“But they’re all dead,” Stephen whispered, amazed that there could be speech and reason inside a grave.

“Do you think it’s safe to leave now?” Berek asked Viktor.

“Perhaps. I think the killing has stopped. By now the Americans or English or whoever they are have taken over the camp. I heard gunfire and screaming; I think it’s best to wait a while longer.”

“Here?” asked Stephen. “Among the dead?”

“It’s best to be safe.”

It was late afternoon when they climbed out of the grave. The air was thick with flies. Stephen could see bodies sprawled in awkward positions beneath the covering of twigs and branches. “How can I live when all the others are dead?” he asked himself aloud.

“You live, that’s all,” answered Viktor.

They kept close to the forest and worked their way back toward the camp.

“Look there,” Viktor said, motioning Stephen and Berek to take cover. Stephen could see trucks moving toward the camp compound.

“Americans,” whispered Berek.

“No need to whisper now,” Stephen said. “We’re safe.”

“Guards could be hiding anywhere,” Viktor said. “I haven’t slept in the grave to be shot now.”

They walked into the camp through a large break in the barbed-wire fence, which had been bit by an artillery shell. When they reached the compound, they found nurses, doctors, and army personnel bustling about.

“You speak English,” Viktor said to Stephen as they walked past several quonsets. “Maybe you can speak for us.”

“I told you, I can’t speak English.”

“But I’ve heard you!”

“Wait,” shouted an American army nurse. “You fellows are going the wrong way.” She was stocky and spoke perfect German. ”You must check in at the hospital; it’s back that way.”

“No,” said Berek, shaking his head. “I won’t go in there.”

“There’s no need to be afraid now,” she said. “You’re free. Come along, I’ll take you to the hospital.”

Something familiar about her, Stephen thought. He felt dizzy and everything turned gray.

“Josie,” he murmured as he fell to the ground.

“What is it?” Josie asks. “Everything is all right, Josie is here.”

“Josie,” Stephen mumbles.

“You’re all right.”

“How can I live when they’re all dead?” he asks.

“It was a dream,” she says as she wipes the sweat from his forehead. “You see, your fever has broken, you’re getting well.”

“Did you know about the grave?”

“It’s all over now, forget the dream.”

“Did you know?”

“Yes,” Josie says. “Viktor told me how he survived the grave, but that was so long ago, before you were even born. Dr. Volk tells me you’ll be going home soon.”

“I don’t want to leave, I want to stay with you.”

“Stop that talk, you’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Soon you’ll forget all about this, and you’ll forget me, too.”

“Josie,” Stephen asks, “let me see that old photograph again. Just one last time.”

“Remember, this is the last time,” she says as she hands him the faded photograph.

He recognizes Viktor and Berek, but the young man standing between them is not Stephen. “That’s not me,” he says, certain that he will never return to the camp.

Yet the shots still echo in his mind.