Elie Wiesel by Night (pdf)

Author:Night (pdf) [Night]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-07T03:25:08.968000+00:00

"What are you going to do, sir?"

"I shall remove your gold crown, that's all," he said, clearly indifferent.

I thought of pretending to be sick:

"Couldn't you wait a few days, sir? I don't feel well, I have a f e v e r … "

He wrinkled his brow, thought for a moment, and took my pulse.

"All right, son. Come back to see me when you feel better.

But don't wait for me to call you!"

I went back to see him a week later. With the same excuse: I still was not feeling better. He did not seem surprised, and I don't know whether he believed me. Yet he most likely was pleased that I had come back on my own, as I had promised. He granted me a further delay.

A few days after my visit, the dentist's office was shut down.

He had been thrown into prison and was about to be hanged. It appeared that he had been dealing in the prisoners' gold teeth for his own benefit. I felt no pity for him. In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him: my gold crown was safe. It could be useful to me one day, to buy something, some bread or even time to live. At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup—those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.

IN THE WAREHOUSE, I often worked next to a young French-woman. We did not speak: she did not know German and I did not understand French.

I thought she looked Jewish, though she passed for "Aryan."

She was a forced labor inmate.

52

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