Free Night by Elie Wiesel Page B

a civilian might have forgotten there.
    When I reached the back of the building, I heard sounds com- ing from a small adjoining room. I moved closer and had a glimpse of Idek and a young Polish girl, half naked, on a straw mat. Now I understood why Idek refused to leave us in the camp. He moved one hundred prisoners so that he could copulate with this girl! It struck me as terribly funny and I burst out laughing.
    Idek jumped, turned and saw me, while the girl tried to cover her breasts. I wanted to run away, but my feet were nailed to the floor. Idek grabbed me by the throat.
    Hissing at me, he threatened:
    “Just you wait, kid…You will see what it costs to leave your work…You'll pay for this later…And now go back to your place…”
     
     
    A HALF HOUR BEFORE the usual time to stop work, the Kapo assembled the entire Kommando. Roll call. Nobody understood what was going on. A roll call at this hour? Here? Only I knew. The Kapo made a short speech:
    “An ordinary inmate does not have the right to mix into other people's affairs. One of you does not seem to have understood this point. I shall therefore try to make him understand clearly, once and for all.”
    I felt the sweat running down my back.
    “A-7713!”
    I stepped forward. “A crate!” he ordered.
    They brought a crate.
    “Lie down on it! On your belly!”
    I obeyed.
    I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip.
    “One!…Two!…” he was counting.
    He took his time between lashes. Only the first really hurt. I heard him count:
    “Ten…eleven!…”
    His voice was calm and reached me as through a thick wall.
    “Twenty-three…”
    Two more, I thought, half unconscious.
    The Kapo was waiting.
    “Twenty-four…twenty-five!”
    It was over. I had not realized it, but I had fainted. I came to when they doused me with cold water. I was still lying on the crate. In a blur, I could see the wet ground next to me. Then I heard someone yell. It had to be the Kapo. I began to distinguish what he was shouting:
    “Stand up!”
    I must have made some movement to get up, but I felt myself fall back on the crate. How I wanted to get up!
    “Stand up!” He was yelling even more loudly.
    If only I could answer him, if only I could tell him that I could not move. But my mouth would not open.
    At Idek's command, two inmates lifted me and led me to him.
    “Look me in the eye!”
    I looked at him without seeing him. I was thinking of my father. He would be suffering more than I.
    “Listen to me, you son of a swine!” said Idek coldly. “So much for your curiosity. You shall receive five times more if you dare tell anyone what you saw! Understood?”
    I nodded, once, ten times, endlessly. As if my head had decided to say yes for all eternity.
     
     
    ONE SUNDAY, as half of our group, including my father, was at work, the others, including me, took the opportunity to stay and rest.
    At around ten o'clock, the sirens started to go off. Alert. The Blockälteste gathered us inside the blocks, while the SS took refuge in the shelters. As it was relatively easy to escape during an alert—the guards left the watchtowers and the electric current in the barbed wire was cut—the standing order to the SS was to shoot anyone found outside his block.
    In no time, the camp had the look of an abandoned ship. No living soul in the alleys. Next to the kitchen, two cauldrons of hot, steaming soup had been left untended. Two cauldrons of soup! Smack in the middle of the road, two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them! A royal feast going to waste! Supreme temptation! Hundreds of eyes were looking at them, shining with desire. Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. But who would dare?
    Fear was greater than hunger. Suddenly, we saw the door of Block 37 open slightly. A man appeared, crawling snakelike in the direction of the cauldrons.
    Hundreds of eyes were watching his every move. Hundreds of