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By Root 12452 0

the province of a poker-faced clerk Scharführer on the floor below who clumped upstairs at regular intervals to hammer out Höss’s messages to the various SS chief engineers and proconsuls. Now she reflected on the Himmler letter with mild belated wonder. Wouldn’t the mere fact that he had made her privy to such a sensitive matter indicate... what? Certainly, at least, that he had allowed her, for whatever reason, a confidentiality that few prisoners—even prisoners of her undoubted privileged status—could ever dream of, and her assurance of reaching through to him before the day was over grew stronger and stronger. She felt she might not even have to avail herself of the pamphlet (like father, like daughter) tucked away in one of her boots ever since the day she left Warsaw.

He ignored what she feared might be a distraction—her eyes, raw with weeping—as he stormed through the door. She heard “The Beer Barrel Polka” pounding rhythmically below. He was holding a letter, apparently delivered to his aide downstairs. The Commandant’s face was flushed with anger, a wormlike vein pulsed just below his cropped pate. “They know it’s compulsory that they write in German, these blasted people. But they constantly break the rules! Damn them to hell these Polish half-wits!” He handed her the letter. “What does it say?”

“ ‘Honored Commandant... ’ ” she began. In rapid translation Sophie told him that the message (characteristically sycophantic) was from a local subcontractor, a supplier of gravel to the German operators of the camp concrete factory, who said that he would be unable to transport the required amount of gravel in the required time, begging the Commandant’s indulgence, due to the extremely soggy condition of the ground around his quarry that had not only caused several cave-ins but also hampered and slowed down the operation of his equipment. Therefore, if the honored Commandant would have the forbearance (Sophie continued to read), the schedule of delivery would necessarily be altered in the following manner—But Höss broke in suddenly, fiercely impatient, lighting a cigarette from another in his fingers, coughing his croupy cough as he blurted out a hoarse “Enough!” The letter had plainly unstrung the Commandant. He pursed his lips in a caricature of a mouth drawn and puckered with tension, muttered “Verwünscht!”—then quickly ordered Sophie to make a translation of the letter for SS Hauptsturmführer Weitzmann, head of the camp building section, with this typed comment attached: “Builder Weitzmann: Build a fire under this piddler and get him moving.”

And at that exact instant—as he said the last words—Sophie saw the fearful headache attack Höss with prodigious speed, like a stroke of lightning that had found a conduit through the gravel merchant’s letter down to that crypt or labyrinth where migraine sets its fiery toxins loose beneath the cranium. The sweat poured forth, he pushed his hand to the side of his brow in a helpless fluttering little ballet of white-knuckled fingers, and his lips curled outward to reveal a phalanx of teeth grinding together in a fugue of pain. Sophie had observed this a few days before, a much milder attack; now it was his migraine again and a full-scale siege. In his pain Höss gave a thin whistle. “My pills,” he said, “for God’s sake, where are my pills!” Sophie went swiftly to the chair next to Höss’s cot upon which he kept the bottle of ergotamine he used to alleviate these attacks. She poured out a glass of water from a carafe and handed it and two tablets of ergotamine to the Commandant, who, gulping the medicine down, rolled his eyes at her with a queer half-wild gaze as if he were trying to express with those eyes alone the dimensions of his anguish. Then with a groan and with his hand clapped to his brow he sank down on the cot and lay sprawled out gazing at the white ceiling.

“Shall I call the doctor?” Sophie said. “The last time I remember he said to you—”

“Just be quiet,” he retorted. “I can’t bear anything now.” The voice was edged with a cowed, whimpering tone, rather like that