Free Augustino and the Choir of Destruction by Marie-Claire Blais Page A

reliving family scenes in which he sat by his mother’s and sister’s sides and felt a kind father stroke his hair, no denying that hand, a kind, always affable father, blameless except for an affair with his secretary, something the son only learned about much later, and with chagrin, the sons and daughters of cursed, reprobate men would always have to hide, flee the partisans of hate, and why were they hated, they wondered, fleeing from interrogation, little children locked in with these men’s wives in hotel rooms with no way out, internment camps, the pretty estates given to their father by the good Führer in times past, where were their dolls, their croquet set, they no longer knew where they could live or hide, these little ones and their mothers suddenly stripped of everything, taken in by nuns in homes for the sick, these little ones and their mothers, bereft, had not understood that, if these hotel rooms were empty and the beds deserted, it was because the whole place had been purged of its infirm, all injected or gassed, and the stoic nuns welcomed the offspring and wives of those who had committed these crimes, saying God will not forgive them, God will not forgive them, and they, so little, had understood nothing the nuns said to them, because they were the sons and daughters of those who would never be pardoned by Man or by God, and they gave the sons and daughters of these officials chocolate and sweets out of pity, knowing well that these small ones must be rendered blameless, if they had known, if they had seen their fathers enter here to get rid of all the defenceless infirm and sick, the ones their fathers called rubbish, garbage, if the sons and daughters of these fathers had seen what they had, the injections and the excruciating agony, they would not have wanted to live a second longer, no, faced with all those cries, these sons and daughters would not have wanted to live and carry the seed of evil, these sons and daughters of the same age as those who were gassed, four or five years old some of them, understood nothing of what the nuns were saying to them, where were the dolls, the croquet set and the pretty German estate given to their father by the good Führer, you must never say your name, your father’s name, because you too will never be pardoned for anything, innocent as Hitler’s dog and with that same animal candour, betrayed, they listened wide-eyed in fright, still you will grow up like all the others and be courageous, the nuns said as they washed them and cared for them, just like the infirm and feeble in spirit, tomorrow, bringers of justice await you in their hundreds, and what will you say to them, we will pray for you, little angels, and already judged by the justice-bringers in their hundreds, they listened in tears, where was Daddy, would their kind daddy come, these sons and daughters had no idea that at the same time, their fathers, conceivers of carnage and irredeemable, definitive solutions, would be signing agreements this January on the shores of Lake Wannsee, it was too bad that this time, indeed, the problem could not be solved, the conceivers said as they signed, ordinary bureaucrats following protocol, they had no choice but to eliminate human beings, signed it was now in the building on the edge of Lake Wannsee, one of the bureaucrats had picked a few scavengers to pick up belongings after it was all over, death was a factory, an industry from which fabulous gifts flowed: hair and jewels, an operation their fathers were be proud of, the kind fathers of little ones called Gudrun, Sylke, and Lina, safe in their infirmaries, would these nice daddies be home for the holidays, their mothers barely survived out wandering the streets disguised as peasants, and destitute, paperless, in an exodus like a soldier’s flight, pushing carts filled with vegetables and rabbits, in this month of January, in this locale near Lake Wannsee, the fathers of Klaus,