Four Scraps of Bread Read Free Page A

difficult.
    Through its
    gray, stained, moth-eaten face
    I see circles of plain sky,
    often black.
    Sometimes full of stars,
    if I want to push my luck.
    And with the wings of my broken dreams,
    I hold the blanket tight.
    Then I think of nothing.

H OW ?
    I was too young, and I did not understand why we were condemned to death.
    What were we guilty of?
    I did not understand how people changed so much: some became executioners, others became victims.
    How was that possible?
    How could we have been forgotten by humanity? How could it be that no one took an interest in us, except for our torturers?
    We would scoop up random scraps of newspapers and secretly devour their words, searching for a message for us.
    How was it that we never got anything?
    Thousands of lives were stolen before my very eyes, and I plodded on, unable to see any other way out.
    Against an unhearing and unspeaking heaven, our tears became gray clouds, heavy with anger and fear.
    How was that possible?
    There were also those who had a look of hope. Those looks helped me to keep going.
    Today I live, think, and with difficulty I write, because the more I think, the less easy it is for me to answer all these questions.

T HE C ALL
    The goal of our overzealous guards was to make us disappear, albeit cleanly. Hence they dedicated themselves to showering us, depersonalizing us, shaving us, and disinfecting us, on average once a month.
    They also wanted to know exactly what they were doing and therefore counted us often. This they did with imagination and care. It all depended on their mood. A sudden yearning for precision, and there we were, outside, in rows of five, at any moment of the day or night.
    Four of them took turns counting us, and they checked each other’s work. They took as long as necessary to make their numbers tally. Neither sun, nor rain, nor ice put them off. They were pernickety in fulfilling their duty and performed it with an iron discipline. If they thought they were missing someone, to make things easier, they could just erase hundreds of numbers. The unfortunate absentee was often found already dead. We stood there waiting.
    Amid the bustle of dogs, whips, and guards, we waited, tired of being so important. It was with powerless rage that we observed the addition and subtraction of thousands of these muddled numbers.
    We often found ourselves being awakened in the middle of the night with yells accompanied by cracksof the whip. The whips had big personalities. They made themselves heard both vigorously and rigorously. Their handlers stamped their image on them. There was no point in trying to understand these outbursts. It was simply a pressing need to express their strength, their virility, and their importance.
    That morning, once more, the warmthless sun rose. We exchanged a look of hope with those of our sisters who were still standing. A pale sky, a round cloud, a drop of water caught on the tip of our tongue, and we were still alive.

T HE G OOD G UARD
    Kindness often visited me. On this occasion its face was repulsive, full of smallpox scars. Its dark eyes shot terrifying flames, and its voice was thunderous and rough. Deep down, I could not stand this huge, crude, crushingly powerful body.
    We were nailing rails into place and unloading wagons full of ties. We had arrived at our destination after several days of travel. We were surrounded by guards, themselves workers, and all of us were closely supervised by the black uniforms which bore the sign of the death head.
    For several days I had had trouble following the others, and I looked with envy at the feet of those who still had shoes. Mine had been stolen. They had been very valuable to me; their soles were lined with notes I had taken in secret, on scraps of cement sacks I had salvaged. Thefts were frequent. In exchange I had been left with a pair of boots that were too wide and had gaping holes that sucked the cold in. It was life itself that had been snatched from me. I