Sophie's Choice - William Styron [269]
Even so, a curious evasiveness seemed to prevent her from closing in directly on the matter of what happened to her little boy, and when I persisted once more—saying “And Jan?”—she let herself fall into a moment’s reverie. “I’m so ashamed about what I done, Stingo—when I swam out into the ocean. Making you risk yourself like that—that was so bad of me, so bad. You must forgive me. But I will be truthful with you when I say that there have been many times since those days in the war when I have thought to kill myself. It seems to come and go in this rhythm. In Sweden right after the war was over and I was in this center for displaced persons I tried to kill myself there. And like in that dream I told you about, the chapel—I had this obsession with le blasphème. Outside the center there was a little church, I do not believe it was Catholic, I think it must have been Lutheran, but it don’t matter—I had this idea that if I killed myself in this church, it would be the greatest sacrilege I could ever commit, le plus grand blasphème, because you see, Stingo, I didn’t care no more; after Auschwitz, I didn’t believe in God or if He existed. I would say to myself: He has turned His back on me. And if He has turned His back on me, then I hate Him so that to show and prove my hatred I would commit the greatest sacrilege I could think of. Which is, I would commit my suicide in His church, on sacred ground. I was feeling so bad, I was so weak and sick still, but after a while I got some of my strength back and one night I decide to do this thing.
“So I come out of the gate of the center with a piece of very sharp glass I found in the hospital where I was kept. It was easy enough to do. The church was quite near. There weren’t any guards or anything at this place and I arrived at the church in the late evening. There was some light in the church and I sat in the back row for a long time, alone with my piece of glass. It was summertime. In Sweden there is always light in the summer night, cool and pale. This place was in the countryside and I could hear the frogs outside and smell the fir and the pines. It was a lovely smell, it remind me of the Dolomites when I was a child. For a while I imagined having this conversation with God. One of the things I imagined that He said was ‘Why are you going to kill yourself, Sophie, here in My holy place?’ And I remember saying out loud, ‘If You don’t know in all Your wisdom, God, then I can’t tell You.’ Then He said, ‘So it’s your secret.’ And I answered, ‘Yes, it’s my secret from You. My last and only secret.’ So then I started to cut my wrist. And do you know something, Stingo? I did cut my wrist a little and it hurt and bled some, but then I stopped. And do you know what make me stop? I’ll swear to you, it was one thing. One thing! It was not the hurt or the fear. I had no fear. It was Rudolf Höss. It was thinking of Höss very suddenly and knowing he was alive in Poland or Germany. I saw his face in front of me just as the piece of glass cut my wrist. And I stopped cutting and—I know it sounds like folie, Stingo—well, I have this understanding which comes in a flash that I cannot die as long as Rudolf Höss is alive. It would be his final triumph.”
There was a long pause, then: “I never saw my little boy again. You see, on that morning Jan was not in Höss’s office when I went in. He was not there. I was so certain that he was there that I thought he might be hiding under the desk—you know, for fun. I looked around but there was no Jan. I thought it must be some joke, I knew he had to be there. I called out for him. Höss had closed the door and was standing there, watching me. I asked him where was my little boy. He said, ‘Last night after you were gone I realized that I couldn’t bring your child here. I apologize for an unfortunate decision. To bring him