Kapo by Aleksander Tisma

Author:Aleksander Tisma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

THE COMBS MOVED UP AND DOWN AND THE GRAY COAT bent stiffly over the heavy rump as her legs plowed forward in broad shoes with soft low heels. It was evident that movement didn’t come easily to her, that she walked grudgingly, as if she had had her fill of walking, as if she was fed up, to the crest of her bowed back and the top of her head pinioned by combs, with the unvarying motion of her legs—ever since marching in the Kommando to shouts and threats and curses, guns swinging from the brawny shoulders of the green-clad guards just as the empty shopping bag now swung from her hand.

Was she reminded? Was her back stung by the malevolent eyes, the bullets impatient to whistle into flesh? Were her ears rent by the curses and insults, the snarls of the guard dogs? Was her body revisited by the stumbling weakness that resisted the order to march to the designated field, construction site, or pond, where there would be bending and lifting and carrying and stacking, with hunger, thirst, sun on the head or ice in the bones, until impossibly distant evening? Was all this being relived in her now, as she walked, using the same muscles she used then, to walk?

Or was it like this only today, because of him? Had she smelled him, had she tossed sleepless in her bed at dawn, sensing his approach on the train from Banja Luka like a cloud of stinking sulfur hanging over the blackness of her bedroom? Was that why she hesitated to go out, making him wait in the doorway across the street, then went out anyway, convinced he wouldn’t leave?

Had she looked neither left nor right because she knew he was there and didn’t want to see him, determined to keep her back to the fatal bullet so it would finish her off unseen? Because he watched her like a bullet, following at a distance, a bullet ready to fly from its barrel if she took flight. He had dogged prisoners like this countless times, his suspicious eyes fixed on their backs. Yes, he would rush after her, grab her shoulder, and force her to turn around and listen to him. But he knew, even as his blood seethed, that he wouldn’t dare, nor would it do any good, because they were equals now, both victims, both alive. Because he had not let her die of hunger and cold like the rest, because he had wanted to possess this equality with her alone.

Except now he did not know how to behave, with her, as an equal. He had been a Kapo, and that was still in the depths of him, perverted depths trained to evil, and he had made it his law. Was there another law? Of humanity? Decency? He walked behind her, and any outside observer would have thought it accidental that they were going in the same direction, the man’s gaze on the woman’s back. The

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