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By Root 12342 0

corrupt practices in concentration camps. He then returned to the agony of the parish father, dictating a letter in German which he ordered Sophie to render into the priest’s language and which now, this following day, she was transcribing on her machine, rather gratified to feel that she was able to turn the dross of Höss’s German prose into finely articulated filaments of golden Polish: Dear Father Chybiński, we are shocked and distressed to hear of the vandalism of your church. Nothing is more grievous to us than the idea of desecration of holy objects and we shall endeavor to take every means at our command to ensure the return of your precious candelabra. While the enlisted men of this garrison have been inculcated with the highest principles of discipline demanded of every SS member—indeed of every German serving in the occupied territories—it is inevitable that lapses will occur, and we can only earnestly hope that you will understand... Sophie’s typewriter went clickety-clack in the stillness of the attic while Höss brooded over his cesspool diagrams and the flies droned and twitched, and the movement of distant boxcars kept up a blurred incessant rumble like summer thunder.

At the instant she was finished (again tacking on the routine Heil Hitler!) her heart once more gave a tumultuous lurch, for he had spoken, and she looked up to see that he was gazing straight into her eyes. Although the clatter of the machine had masked his words, she was almost certain that he had said, “That’s a very pretty kerchief.” With fluttering fingertips her hand rose automatically, though with a final coquettish flourish, to touch the kerchief at the crown of her head. The scarf, of checkered green and made of cheap prison-stitched muslin, concealed her skull and its ludicrous frizzy locks, growing back in unsightly clumps after having been shorn to the roots exactly six months before. It was also a rare privilege, the kerchief; only those prisoners fortunate enough to work at Haus Höss were ever permitted thus to secrete the degrading baldness which to one degree or another every inmate, male and female, presented to this hermetically sealed world behind the electrified fences. The minuscule degree of dignity it conferred upon Sophie was something for which she felt a meager but real gratitude.

“Danke, mein Kommandant!” She heard her voice falter. The idea of conversing with Höss, on any level above or removed from her capacity as a part-time amanuensis, soaked her with apprehension, an almost intestinal nervousness. And her nervousness was heightened by the fact that conversation with Höss was, indeed, something she ravenously desired. Her stomach gurgled in fear—fear not of the Commandant himself but of failure of nerve, fear that she would ultimately lack the craft, the power of improvisation, the subtlety of manner, the histrionic gift, at last the beguiling convincingness by which she so desperately yearned to maneuver him into a vulnerable position and thus perhaps bend him to serve the modest demands of her will. “Danke schön!” she said with clumsy, inexcusable loudness, thinking: You fool, be quiet, he’ll think you’re an awful little ninny! She expressed her gratitude in a softer voice, and with grave calculation fluttered her eyelids and turned her gaze demurely down. “Lotte gave it to me,” she explained. “It was one of two she had been given by Frau Höss and she passed it on to me. It covers my head nicely.” Calm down now, she thought. Don’t talk too much, don’t talk much at all, not yet.

Now he was scanning the letter to the priest, although by his own admission he knew not a word of Polish. Sophie, watching him, heard him say “...diese unerträgliche Sprache” in a bemused tone, twisting his lips to fit some of the obdurately unpronounceable words of this “impossible language,” quickly give up the effort and then rise to his feet. “Good,” he said, “I hope we have soothed this unhappy little padre.” He strode with the letter to the attic door, threw it open, and vanishing momentarily from Sophie’s sight, called down to