THE FALLEN MASK
"Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury." - E.H. CHAPIN (1814 - 1880) Beneath the bleached sky the broken towers of Auschwitz rose like outstretched arms into oblivion, broken black limbs in the snowfall. Within the soft fallen mask, two shadows of men sought shelter, hugging the sanctuary of iron girders that pointed swordlike into the blank abyss. They were a pair of black templates engulfed in a white mist, a shield through which no pain, nor time could ever touch them. The older one, whose name was Gunter Ritter, spoke in a voice that resounded like a funereal wail from every wall and broken girder. `Sometimes I would hear them long after I'd woken up. Often if I was making coffee, or reading. Or writing." "Writing?" The younger, whose only name was Izzie, looked up from the floor. Ritter was walking around and gazing with the air of one at an art gallery, but Izzie looked relaxed. Even comfortable. "Letters?" "No." Ritter almost smiled. Almost. "I haven't written to anyone in over twenty years. I meant my diary." "In the morning?" Snow gathered in a fine dust on Izzie's black eyebrows. But he was used to it. "It's when I could find the most interesting things to say. About the night before." "About the dreams." Ritter didn't look as though he was in a gallery anymore. He stared at his feet, then at Izzie. "I used to think that I was punishing myself. That they would.. .go away when I got older, more resistant. But they got worse. T saw every face. ..every single face that I ever saw back then. I heard every voice. It was as though I was tied down to a chair and everyone walked by me, and I couldn't do anything. I could only sit and watch." Ritter shivered, though Izzie thought not from the cold. "Sometimes they touched me.. .poked me as if I was on display." "Did they every hurt you? Physically?" "Never." Ritter began to kick snow away from a bench, like an excavation of some ancient monument. "That was the problem. Why wouldn't they hurt me? They should have. They had every right." He knelt over, kicking out snow from the cracks in the wood." A few months ago I woke up one morning, I forget which day, and I smelt burning. The smell of,meat, like bacon frying only stronger... darker. I thought it was someone in the flat downstairs cooking breakfast. But it was the same the next day. And the next. And the next." Ritter tried to sit on his newly unearthed prize, but he stood again almost immediately. "At first I thought it was them. The smell of their burning flesh. Like an apparition, to follow me to the grave." Izzie rose to join his friend away from the buildings. "I don't know what an apparition is." "A spectre. A ghost." "But it wasn' t." "No." Ritter stared right into Izzie's eyes and Izzie noticed for the first time how, against the snow, Ritte;'s eyes looked so dark. Like the hollow sockets of a skull. "Don't you see?" Ritter was almost pleased with himself. "It's my flesh that's burning. Not as a premonition. This is it.. .my living Hell. I am condemned." "You have condemned yourself." Izzie placed a gloved hand on Ritter's shoulder but Ritter removed it immediately as though it burned. "No. Your God condemned me. For all I did to you and your people." Ritter tried to move away, but every direction held the same, a white mist and those awful towers that seemed never to end in their flight toward heaven. Ritter wondered what was at the top, if only he could climb them to find out. Then realisation hit him like a wave rushing the black sand beach of his mind. He shouted at Izzie who had wandered quite a way behind. "The barracks! For the workers!"
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