Sophie's Choice - William Styron [139]
A splendid chalk-white Arabian stallion was dashing in a long, mad, rapturous oval in the field below, all muscle and speed, grazing the surrounding paddock fence with a white tail held high that flowed behind him like a plume of smoke. He tossed his noble head with arrogant, insouciant pleasure, as if totally possessed by the fluid grace which sculpted and gave motion to his galloping forelegs and hindquarters and by the furiously healthy power energizing his being. Sophie had seen the stallion before, though never in such full poetic flight. It was a Polish horse, one of the prizes of war, and belonged to Höss. “Harlekin!” she heard him exclaim again, entranced by the sight. “Such a marvel!” The stallion galloped alone; there was not a human soul in sight. A few sheep were grazing. Beyond the field, crowding up against the horizon, were the bedraggled and nondescript scrubby woods, already beginning to turn the leaden hue of the Galician autumn. Several forlorn farmhouses dotted the rim of the forest. Bleak and drab as it was, Sophie preferred this view to the one from the other side of the room, which gave onto a busy, overpopulated prospect of the railroad ramp where the selections took place and the grimy dun brick barracks beyond, a scene crowned by the arched metalwork sign which from here read in the obverse: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Sophie felt a shiver pass through her as, simultaneously, her neck was brushed by a vagrant draft and Höss lightly touched the edge of her shoulder with his fingertips. He had never touched her before; she shivered again, though she felt the touch was impersonal. “Just look at Harlekin,” he breathed in a whisper. The majestic animal sped like the wind around the confining rim of the fence, leaving in his wake a small whirling cyclone of ocherous dust. “The greatest horses in the world, these Polish Arabians,” Höss said. “Harlekin—a triumphl” The horse passed out of view.
Abruptly, then, he returned to his dictation, motioning to Sophie to take her seat. “Where was I?” he said. She read back the last paragraph. “Ah, now,” he resumed, “finish with this: ‘But until further information is received, it is hoped that the decision of this command to employ the greater part of the able-bodied Greek Jews in the Special Detachment at Birkenau is approved. Placing those so debilitated in proximity to the Special Action seems warranted by the circumstances. End paragraph. Heil Hitler!’ Sign as usual and type that at once.”
As she quickly obeyed his order, moving behind the typewriter and rolling an original sheet and five copy sheets into the machine, she kept her head bent toward her work, aware now that across from her, he had immediately taken up an official handbook and had begun reading. Her eyes’ periphery glimpsed the book. It was not a green SS manual but, rather, a slate-blue Army quartermaster’s manual with a title that all but engulfed the paper cover: Improved Methods of Measuring and Predicting Septic Tank Percolation Under Unfavorable Conditions of Soil and Climate. How little time Höss ever wasted! she thought. Hardly a second or two had elapsed between his last words and his seizing of the manual, in which he was now totally engrossed. She still felt the phantom impression of his fingers on her shoulder. She lowered her eyes, tapping out the letter, not for a moment fazed by the stark information which she knew lay embalmed beneath Höss’s final circumlocutions: “Special Action,” “Special Detachment.” Few inmates of the camp were unaware of the reality behind these euphemisms or, having access to Höss’s communication, would not be able to make this free translation: “The Greek Jews being such a pathetic lot and ready to die anyway, we hope it is all right that they have been assigned to the death commando unit at the crematoriums, where they will handle the corpses and extract the gold from the teeth and feed bodies to the furnaces until they too, exhausted beyond recall, are ready for the gas.