Sophie's Choice - William Styron [146]
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.” Through Sophie’s mind ran this adaptation of Höss’s prose even as she typed the words, articulating a concept which, a mere six months before, when she first arrived, would have been so monstrous as to have surpassed belief but now registered in her consciousness as a fleeting commonplace in this new universe she inhabited, no more to be remarked upon than (as in the other world she had once known) the fact that one went to the baker’s to buy one’s bread.
She finished the letter without a mistake, appending an exclamation point to the salute to the Führer with such vigorous precision that it brought forth from the machine a faintly echoing tintinnabulation. Höss looked up from his manual, gestured for the letter and for a fountain pen, which she swiftly handed him. Sophie stood waiting while Höss scribbled an intimate postscript on a slip which she had paper-clipped to the bottom of the original, he muttering aloud in cadence to his written words, as was his habit, “Dear old Heini: Personal regrets at not being able to meet you tomorrow at Posen, where this letter is being routed air courier. Good luck with your speech to the SS ‘Old Boys.’ Rudi.” He gave the letter back to her, saying, “This must go out soon, but do the letter to the priest first.”
She returned to the table, straining with the effort as she lowered the leaden German contraption to the floor, replacing it with the Polish model. Manufactured in Czechoslovakia, it was much less heavy than the German typewriter, and of a more recent vintage; it was