Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [30]
The next evening I brought him his ring, tucked into my trouser cuff. So, it turned out, did everyone else. When I showed him the diamond he shook his head. “Oh, what a dirty shame,” he said. He held the stone up to a light: “Here the poor kid risked his life for a zircon!” Everybody, a minute inspection revealed, had brought back either a zircon, a garnet, or a paste diamond. In addition, Louis pointed out, any slight value these might have was destroyed because of a glutted market. I let my plunder go for four cigarettes; others got a bit of cheese, a few hundred grams of bread, or twenty potatoes. Some hung on to their gems. Louis chatted with them from time to time about the dangers of being caught with loot. “Poor devil over at the British Compound got it today,” he would say. “They caught him with a pearl necklace sewed into his shirt. It only took ’em two hours to try him and shoot him.” Sooner or later everyone made a deal with Louis.
Shortly after the last of us had been cleaned out, the S.S. came through our quarters on a surprise inspection. Louis’ bed was the only one undisturbed. “He never leaves the compound and is a perfect prisoner,” a guard was quick to explain to the inspectors. My mattress was slashed open and the straw scattered over the floor when I came home that evening.
However, Louis’ luck was not air-tight, for in the last weeks of fighting, our guards were sent to stem the Russian tide, and a company of lame old men was moved in to watch over us. The new sergeant had no need for an orderly, and Louis sank into the anonymity of our group. The most humiliating aspect of his new situation was the prospect of being sent out on a labor detail with the common people. He was bitter about it, and demanded an interview with the new sergeant. He got the interview and was gone for about an hour.
When he got back I asked him, “Well, how much does Hitler want for Berchtesgaden?”
Louis was carrying a parcel wrapped in toweling. He opened it to reveal two pairs of scissors, some clippers, and a razor. “I’m the camp barber,” he announced. “By order of the camp commandant, I am to make you gentlemen presentable.”
“What if I don’t want you to cut my hair?” I asked.
“Then you get your rations cut in half. That’s by order of the commandant, too.”
“Do you mind telling us how you got this appointment?” I asked.
“Not at all, not at all,” said Louis. “I just told him I was ashamed to be associated with a bunch of sloppy men who look like gangsters, and that he ought to be ashamed to have such a terrible bunch in his prison. We two, the commandant and I, are going to do something about it.” He set a stool in the middle of the floor and motioned me toward it. “You’re first, kid,” he said. “The commandant noticed those long locks of yours, and told me to be sure and get ’em.”
I sat down on the stool and he whisked a towel around my neck. There was no mirror in which I could watch him cut, but his operations felt professional enough. I remarked on his unsuspected skill as a barber.
“Nothing, really,” he said. “Sometimes I surprise myself.” He finished with the clippers. “That will be two cigarettes, or the equivalent,” he said. I paid him in saccharine tablets. No one but Louis had any