Free PSALM 44 by Aleksandar Hemon and John K. Cox Page B

Deutschland, Deutschland ü ber alles ; only the healthy ones received consideration, pretty young girls who knew how to laugh and who were worthy of Aryan passion and the sperm of an Ü bermensch : Deutschland, Deutschland ü ber alles! And that voice sliced like a knife through her exhaustion and her dream-state, speaking at who knows what volume and at an unknown distance from her, just strong enough for her to pick it up, like a whisper, just enough for it tear painfully into her consciousness, to cause her to raise her eyelids; but her own name sounded to her as distant and as alien as if it were coming from some other world. She stared with a vacant, absent look at the white stain of the coat and then her eyes suddenly grew clear as she simultaneously felt and understood that she ’ d been slapped; then the white stain moved from her iris and a face was projected before her: brown, smoothly brushed hair and two large buckteeth. The woman with the protruding teeth shouted again and drew so near to Marija that she could feel the next slap about to come, but then she heard, from somewhere off to the side:
    “ Stop! Damit genug ! We have to be cautious ” : the voice rose to a falsetto. “ I think . . . Verstehen Sie ? . . . Verstehen Sie ? ”
    “ Ja, ja, ich verstehe . . . Aber ich denke es ist doch nicht. Zu klein. Das Becken wie eines Kindes . . . Aber, insofern, Herr Kollege, denkt sie ist anziehend gen ü glich . . . ”
    “ Du, Abschaum ! ” said the man with the yellow star. “ Common trash . . . Permit me, Dr. Berta . . . ” Behind her, he humbly moved his stethoscope to a spot under her shoulder blades. She was unable to see his face. She only heard his voice. It was the woman with buckteeth, the one they called Dr. Berta, who was asking the questions for her chart. Marija answered with that automatic strength that kicks into action during an onslaught of fear of death or tiredness.
    “ Mutan gemi š t — mongrel, ” said the voice behind her as she rattled off her answers mechanically, thereby laying bare her origins and conjuring up stray ghosts. “ Definitely a mongrel. ”
    Then the voice that broke into a falsetto asked: “ Would Frau Judengemischte — that ’ s what you said your name was, if I ’ m not mistaken — would Frau Judengemischte answer one more question for us? Let ’ s make this . . . essentially off the record, okay? ”
    Her eyes fixed, as if seeking refuge, on the woman with the protruding teeth, and then they scrolled over the shiny skull of Dr. Nietzsche, finally coming helplessly to rest on the grubby, shadowy square of the nearby window. She clenched her teeth in a desperate effort to transfer her thoughts through the window, outside to that invisible wire bisecting the horizon, but she lacked the power to carry this out. She could hardly think anything at all.
    “ Don ’ t just stand there. Answer. ” Then loudly, cynically: “ FRAU JUDENGEMISCHTE ! HA HA HA. JUDENGEMISCHTE ! ” — and the first part of the sentence was spoken in Polish, whispered, intimate.
    Doctor Nietzsche was very taken with her. He grinned.
    “ Frau Judengmischte ! Have you ever had occasion to mix some Aryan substance into your mongrel self? I don ’ t mean in terms of your genealogy. Directly. A little pure Aryan fluid. Or any other kind, for that matter? ”
    The stethoscope on her heart transmitted to Jakob ’ s ear nothing but the waves flooding across the deck and the incantatory beginning of that ancient prayer recognized all over the world both on the sea and dry land: SOS! SOS! SOS! SOS! SOS! SOS!
    “ No, ” she said, speaking in time with the slide of the stethoscope in Jakob ’ s hands from left to right, left to right, across her ribs: “ No. ”
    “ With your permission, ” Jakob said at that point, laying aside the stethoscope, “ in my opinion the Frau here is not suitable for such uses. Ordinary trash. A waste of time. Go away! Be gone! ”
    That had been her first