Frameshift (UC), page 2
"Get up!" shouted a familiar voice. A tall, stocky Ukrainian wearing jackboots came closer. He was carrying a rifle with a bayonet attached—the same bayonet Jubas had often seen him honing with a whetstone to scalpel sharpness.
Jubas looked up. Even through his tears, he could make out the man's features: a round face in its thirties, balding head, protruding ears, thin lips.
Shlomo moved over to the Ukrainian, risking everything. He could smell the cheap liquor on the man's breath. "A moment, Ivan—for pity's sake. It's Jubas's sister."
Ivan's wide mouth split in a terrible grin. He leaned in and used the bayonet to slice off Rachel's right nipple. Then, with a flick of his index finger, he sent it flying off the blade into the air. It spun end over end before landing bloody side down in Jubas Meyer's lap.
"Something to remember her by," said Ivan.
He was a monster.
A devil.
Evil incarnate.
His first name was Ivan. His last narhe was unknown, and so the Jews dubbed him Ivan the Terrible. He had arrived at the camp a year before, in July 1942. There were some who said he'd been an educated man before the war; he used fancier words than the other guards did. A few even contended he must have been a doctor, since he sliced human flesh with such precision. But whatever he'd been in civilian life had been set aside.
Jubas Meyer had done the math, calculating how many corpses he and Shlomo had removed from the chambers each day, how many other pairs of Jews were being forced to do the same thing, how many trainloads had arrived to date.
The figures were staggering. Here, in this tiny camp, between ten and twelve thousand people were executed every day; on some days, the tally reached as high as fifteen thousand. So far, over half a million people had been exterminated. And there ^ere rumors of other camps: one at Belzac, another at Sobibor, Perhaps others still.
There could be no doubt: the Nazis intended to kill every single Jew, to wipe them all off the face of the earth.
And here, at Treblinka, eighty kilometers northeast of Warsaw, Ivan the Terrible was the principal agent of that destruction. True, he had a partner named Nikolai who helped him operate the chambers, but it was Ivan who was sadistic beyond belief, raping women before gassing them, slicing their flesh— especially breasts—as they marched naked into the chambers, forcing Jews to copulate with corpses while he laughed a cold, throaty laugh and beat them with a lead pipe.
Ivan reveled in it all, his naturally nasty disposition only worsened by frequent drinking binges. As a Ukrainian, he'd likely started off a prisoner of war himself, but had volunteered for service as a Wachmann, and had demonstrated a remarkable technical facility, leading to him being put in charge of the gas chambers. He was now so trusted that the Germans often let him leave the camp. Jubas had once overheard Ivan bragging to Nikolai about the whore he frequented in the nearby town of Wolga Okralnik. "If you think the Jews scream loudly," Ivan had said, "you should hear my Maria."
A miracle happened.
Ivan and Nikolai pulled back the chamber doors, and—
—God, it was incredible—
—a little blond girl, perhaps twelve years old, barely pubescent, staggered naked out of the chamber, still alive.
Behind her, corpses began falling like dominoes.
But she was alive. The Jewish men and women had been packed in so tightly this time that their very bodies had formed a pocket of air for her, separated from the circulating carbon monoxide.
The girl, her eyes wide in terror, stood under the hot sun, gulping in oxygen. And when she at last had the breath to do so, she screamed, "Ma-me! Ma-me/"
But her mother was among the dead.
Jubas Meyer and Shlomo Malamud set about removing the corpses, batting their arms to dispel the flies, breathing shallowly to avoid the smell. Ivan swaggered over to the girl, a whip in his hand. Jubas shot a reproachful glance at him. The Ukrainian must have seen that. He forgot the girl for a moment and came over to Jubas, lashing him repeatedly. Jubas bit his own tongue until he tasted salty blood; he knew that screams would just prolong the torture.
When Ivan had had his fill, he stepped back, and looked at Jubas, hunched over in pain. "Davayyebatsaf'he shouted.
Even the little girl knew those obscene words. She started to back away, but Ivan moved toward her, grabbing her naked shoulder roughly and pushing her to the ground.
"Davay yebatsa!" shouted Ivan at Jubas. He dragged the girl across the ground to where he'd left his rifle, leaning against the Machinehaus wall. He aimed the weapon^at Jubas. "Davay yebatsa!"
Jubas closed his eyes.
It was horrible news, devastating news.
The pace of the executions was slacking off.
It didn't mean the Germans were changing their minds.
It didn't mean they were giving up their insane plot.
It meant they were running out of Jews to kill.
Soon the camp would be of no further use. When they'd started, the Germans had ordered the dead buried. But recently they'd been using earthmoving equipment to exhume the bodies and cremate them. Human ash whirled constantly through the air now; the acrid smell of burning flesh stung the nostrils. The Nazis wanted no proof to exist of what had happened here.
And they'd also want no witnesses. Soon the corpse bearers themselves would be ordered into the gas chambers.
"We've got to escape," said Jubas Meyer. "We've got to get out of here."
Shlomo looked at his friend. "They'll kill us if we try."
"They'll kill us anyway."
* * *
The revolt was planned in whispers, one man passing word to the next. Monday, August 2, 1943, would be the day. Not everyone would escape; they knew that. But some would… surely some would. They would carry word of what had happened here to the world.
The sun burned down fiercely, as if God Himself were helping the Nazis incinerate bodies. But of course God would not do such a thing-, the heat turned to an advantage as the deputy camp commander took a group of Ukrainian guards for a cooling swim in the river Bug.
The Jews in the lower camp—the part where prisoners were unloaded and prepared—had gathered some makeshift weapons. One had filled large cans with gasoline. Another had stolen some wire cutters. A third had managed to hide an ax among garbage he'd been ordered to remove. Even some guns had been captured.
A few had long ago hidden gold or money in holes in trees, or buried it in secret spots. Just as the bodies had been exhumed, so now were these treasures.
Everything was set to begin at 4:30 in the afternoon. Tensions were high; everyone was on edge. And then, at just before 4:00—
"Boy!" shouted Kuttner, a fat SS man.
The child, perhaps eleven years old, stopped dead in his tracks. He was shaking from head to toe. The SS officer moved closer, a riding crop in his hand. "Boy!" he said again. "What have you got in your pockets?"
Jubas Meyer and Shlomo Malamud were five meters away, carrying an exhumed corpse to the cremation site. They stopped to watch the scene unfold. The pockets on the youngster's filthy and tattered overalls were bulging slightly.
The boy said nothing. His eyes were wide and his lips peeled back in fear, showing decaying teeth. Despite the pounding heat, he was shaking as if it were below zero. The guard stepped up to him and slapped the boy's thigh with the riding crop. The unmistakable jangle of coins was heard. The German narrowed his eyes. "Empty your pockets, Jew."
The boy half turned to face the man. His teeth were chattering. He tried to reach into his pocket, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn't get it into the pocket's mouth. Kuttner whipped the boy's shoulder with his crop, the sound startling birds into flight, their calls counterpointing the child's scream. Kuttner then reached his own fat hand into the pocket and pulled out several German coins. He reached in a second time. The pocket was apparently empty now, but Jubas could see the German fondling the boy's genitals through the fabric. "Where did you get the money?"
The boy shook his head, but pointed past the camouflage of trees and fencing to the upper camp, where the gas chambers and ovens were hidden from view.
The guard grabbed the youngster's shoulder roughly. "Come with me, boy. Stangl will deal with you."
The child wasn't the only one with something concealed on his person. Jubas Meyer had been entrusted withbne of the six stolen pistols. If the boy were taken to commander Fratiz Stangl, he'd doubtless reveal the plans for the revolt, now only thirty minutes from its planned start.
Meyer couldn't allow that to happen. He pulled the gun from the folds of his own overalls, took a bead on the fat German, and—
—it was like ejaculation, the release, the moment, the payback—
—squeezed the trigger, and saw the German's eyes go wide, saw his mouth go round, saw his fat, ugly, hateful form slump to the ground.
The signal for the beginning of the revolt was to have been a grenade detonation, but Meyer's gunshot startled everyone into action. Cries of "Now!" went up across the lower camp. The canisters of gas were set ablaze. There were 850 Jews in trie camp that day; they all ran for the barbed-wire fences. Some brought blankets, throwing them over the cruel knots of metal; others had wire cutters and furiously snipped through the lines. Those with guns shot as many guards as they could. Fire and smoke were everywhere. The guards who had gone swimming quickly returned and mounted horses or clambered aboard armored cars. Three hundred and fifty Jews made it over the fences and into the surrounding forest. Most were rounded up easily and shot dead, the echoes of overlapping gun reports and the cries of birds and wildlife the last sounds they ever heard.
Still, some did make good their escape. They ran out into the woods, and kept running for their lives. Jubas Meyer was among them. Shlomo Malamud got. out, too, and began a lifelong search for his brother Saul. And others Jubas had known or heard of made it to safety as well: Eliahu Rosenberg and Pinhas Epstein; Casimir Landowski and Zalmon Chudzik. And David Solomon, too.
But they, and perhaps forty-five others, were all that survived Treblinka.
Chapter 2
The early 1980s. Ronald Reagan had recently been sworn in as president, and, moments later, Iran had released the American hostages it had been holding prisoner for 444 days. Here in Canada, Pierre Trudeau was in the middle of his comeback term as prime minister, struggling to bring the Canadian constitution home from Great Britain.
Eighteen-year-old Pierre Tardivel stood in front of the strange house in suburban Toronto, the collar of his red McGill University jacket turned up against the cold, dry wind whipping down the salt-stained street. /
Now that he was here, this didn't seem like such a good idea. Maybe he should just turn around, head back to the bus station, back to Montreal. His mother would be delighted if he gave up now, and, well, if what Henry Spade's wife had told Pierre about her husband were true, Pierre wasn't sure that he could face the man. He should just—
No. No, he had come this far. He had to see for himself.
Pierre took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp air, trying to calm the butterflies in his stomach. He walked up the driveway to the front door of the side-split suburban home, pressed the doorbell, and heard the muffled sound of the chimes from within. A few moments later, the door opened, and a handsome, middle-aged woman stood before him.
"Hello, Mrs. Spade. I'm Pierre Tardivel." He was conscious °f how out of place his Quebecois accent must have sounded here-—another reminder that he was intruding.
There was a moment while Mrs. Spade looked Pierre up and down during which Pierre thought he saw a flicker of recognition on her face. Pierre had merely told her on the phone that his parents had been friends of her husband, back when Henry Spade had lived in Montreal in the early sixties. And yet she had to have realized there must be a special reason for Pierre to want to visit. What was it Pierre's mother had said when he'd confronted her with the evidence? "I knew you were Henry's— you're the spitting image of him."
"Hello, Pierre," said Mrs. Spade. The voice was richer than it had sounded over the phone, but there was still a trace of wariness to it. "You can call me Dorothy. Please come in." She stepped aside, and Pierre entered the vestibule. Physically, Dorothy bore a passing resemblance to his mother—dark hair, cool blue-gray eyes, full lips. Perhaps Henry Spade had been attracted to a specific type of woman. Pierre unzipped his jacket, but made no move to take it off.
"Henry is upstairs in his room," said Dorothy. His room. Separate bedrooms? How cold. "It's easier for him to be lying down. Do you mind seeing him up there?"
Pierre shook his head.
"Very well," she said. "Come with me."
They walked into the brightly lit living room. Two full walls were covered with bookcases made of dark wood. A staircase led to the second floor. Along one side of it were tracks for a small motorized chair. The chair itself was positioned at the top. Dorothy led Pierre upstairs and into the first door on the left.
Pierre fought to keep his expression neutral.
Lying on the bed was a man who appeared to be dancing on his back. His arms and legs moved constantly, rotating at shoulder and hip, elbow and knee, wrist and ankle. His head lolled left and right across the pillow. His hair was steel gray and, of course, his eyes were brown.
"Bonjour, " said Pierre, so startled that he'd begun speaking in French. He began again. "Hello. I'm Pierre Tardivel."
The man's voice was weak and slurred. Speaking was clearly an effort. "Hello, P-Pierre," he said. He paused, but whether composing his thoughts or just waiting for his body to yield a little control, Pierre couldn't say. "How is—is your mother?"
Pierre blinked repeatedly. He would not insult the man by crying in front of him. "She's fine."
Henry's head rolled from side to side, but he kept his eyes on Pierre. He wanted more, Pierre knew, than a platitude.
"She's in good health," he said. "She's a loans officer for a large branch of Banque de Montreal."
"She's happy?" asked Henry, with effort.
"She enjoys her work, and money is no problem. There was a lot of insurance when Dad died."
Henry swallowed with what appeared to be considerable difficulty. "I, ah, didn't know that Alain had passed on. Tell her… tell her I'm sorry."
The words seemed sincere. No sarcasm, no double edge. Alain Tardivel had been his rival, but Henry seemed genuinely saddened by his death. Pierre squeezed his jaw tightly shut for a moment, then nodded. "I'll tell her."
"She's a wonderful woman," said Henry.
"I have a picture of her," said Pierre. He pulled out his wallet and flipped to the small portrait of his mother wearing a white silk blouse. He held the wallet where Henry could see it. /
Henry stared at it for a long time, then said, "I guess I changed more than she did."
Pierre forced a weak smile.
"Are… only child?" A few words had gotten lost in the convulsion that had passed over Henry's body like a wave.
"Yes. There—" No, no point in mentioning his younger sister, Marie-Claire, who had died when she was two. "Yes, I'm the °nly one."
"You're a fine-looking young man," said Henry.
Pierre smiled—genuinely this time—and Henry seemed to smile back.
Dorothy, perhaps detecting the undercurrent, or perhaps just bored with conversation about people she didn't know, said,
"Well, I can see you two have things to talk about. I'll go downstairs. Pierre, can I bring you a drink? Coffee?"
"No, thank you," said Pierre.
"Well, then," she said, and left.
Pierre stood beside Henry's bed. Having his own room made perfect sense now. How could it be any other way? No one could sleep next to him, given the constant jerking of his limbs.
The man on the bed lifted his right arm toward Pierre. It moved slowly from side to side, like the bough of a tree swaying in the wind. Pierre reached out and took the hand, holding it firmly. Henry smiled.
"You look… just like I did… when I was your age," said Henry.
A tear did slip down Pierre's cheek. "You know who I am?"
Henry nodded. "I—when your mother got pregnant, I'd thought there was a chance. But she ended our relationship. I'd assumed if I'd… if I'd been right, I'd have heard something before now." His head was moving, but he managed to keep his eyes mostly on Pierre. "I—I wish I'd known."
Pierre squeezed the hand. "Me, too." A pause. "Do you—do you have any other children?"
"Daughters," said Henry. "Two daughters. Adopted. Dorothy—Dorothy couldn't…"
Pierre nodded.
"Best, in a way," said Henry, and here, at last, he let his gaze wander away from Pierre. "Huntington's disease is… is…"
Pierre swallowed. "Hereditary. I know."
Henry's head moved back and forth more rapidly than normal—a deliberate signal all but lost in the muscular noise. "If I'd known I had it, I… never would have allowed myself to father a child. I'm sorry. V-very sorry."
Pierre nodded.
"You might have it, too."
Pierre said nothing.
"There's no test," said Henry. "I'm sorry."
Pierre watched Henry move about on the bed, knees jerking, free arm waving. And yet in the middle of it all was a face not unlike his own, round and broad, with deep brown eyes. He realized then that he didn't know how old Henry was. Forty-five? Perhaps as old as fifty. Certainly no more than that. Henry's right arm started jerking rapidly. Pierre, not sure what to do, let go of his hand.
"It's… it's good to finally meet you," said Pierre; and then, realizing that he would never have another chance, he added a single word: "Dad."
Henry's eyes were wet. "You need anything?" he said. "Money?"
Pierre shook his head. "I'm fine. Really, I am. I just wanted to meet you."
Henry's lower lip was trembling. Pierre couldn't tell at first if it was just part of the chorea or had deeper meaning. But when Henry next spoke, his voice was full of pain. "I—I've forgotten your name," he said.
"Pierre," he said. "Pierre Jacques Tardivel."
