Sophie's Choice - William Styron [186]
“Anyway, that afternoon when Höss was looking down from the window I spoke to him. I knew that I had to play my last card, reveal to him what au jour le jour I had buried even from myself—in my fear of dying of grief of it—do anything, beg, shout, scream for mercy, hoping only that I can somehow touch this man enough so that he would just show a bit of mercy—if not for me, then the only thing I had left on earth to live for. So I put my voice under control and said, ‘Herr Kommandant, I know I can’t ask much for myself and you must act according to the rules. But I beg of you to do one thing for me before you send me back. I have a young son in Camp D, where all the other boys are prisoners. His name is Jan Zawistowski, age ten. I have learned his number, I will give it to you. He was with me when I arrived but I have not seen him since six months. I yearn to see him. I am afraid for his health, with winter coming. I beg of you to consider some way in which he might be released. His health is frail and he is so very young.’ Höss didn’t reply to me, just looked straight at me without blinking. I had begun to break down a little and I felt myself going out of control. I reached out and touched his shirt, then clutched at it and said, ‘Please, if you have been impressed only the slightest bit by my presence, by my being, I beg of you to do this for me. Not to release me, just to release my little boy. There is a certain way you could do this, which I will tell you about... Please do this for me. Please. Please!’
“I knew then that I was once more only a worm in his life, a piece of Polish Dreck. He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away from his shirt and said, ‘That’s enough!’ I’ll never forget the frenzy in his voice when he said, ‘Ich kann es unmöglich tun!’ Which means ‘It’s out of the question for me to do that.’ He said, ‘It would be unlawful for me to release any prisoner without proper authority.’ Suddenly I realized I have touched some terrible nerve in him by even mentioning what I done. He said, ‘It’s outrageous, your suggestion! What do you take me for, some Dümmling you hope to be able to manipulate? Only because I expressed a special feeling for you? You think you could get me to contravene proper authority because I expressed some little affection?’ Then he said, ‘I find this disgusting!’
“Would it make sense to you, Stingo, if I said that I couldn’t help myself and I threw myself against him, threw my arms around his waist and begged him again, saying ‘Please’ over and over? But I could tell from the way his muscles become stiff and this trembling that ran through him that he was finished with me. Even so I couldn’t stop. I said, ‘Then at least let me see my little boy, let me visit him, let me see him just once, please do that one thing for me. Can’t you understand this? You have children of your own. Just allow me to see him, to hold him once in my arms before I go back into the camp.’ And when I said this, Stingo, I couldn’t help myself and I fell on my knees in front of him. I fell on my knees in front of him and pressed my face against his boots.”
Sophie halted, gazing again for long moments into that past which seemed now so totally, so irresistibly to have captured her; she took several sips of whiskey and swallowed once or twice abstractedly in a daze of recollection. And I realized that, as if seeking whatever semblance of present reality I was able to offer, she had taken hold of my hand in a numbing grip. “There have been so much talk about people in a place like Auschwitz and the way they acted there. In Sweden when I was in this refugee center, often a group of us who was there—at Auschwitz or at Birkenau, where I later was sent—would talk about