章節 36: I like the Flowers
The Kräutergarten (herb garden) was, in an eerie way, worse than the rest of the KZ. Alistair followed Officer Hart through the greenhouses. They spectated the work of the prisoners. Inside the buildings or the greenhouses the work was bearable, the people were put under traumatic stress caused by the SS men, but they're physical conditions were better than some of those the men inside the camp faced, and much better than the ones of the men on the fields. Nevertheless, the air smelt of hormones and sweat mixed with dirt and the tangy smell of bitter plants. The smell was what Alistair had pictured a factory farm to have; espeicially as the animals were lined up to be slaughtered. Officer Hart took him on a tour through the biggest of the greenhouses. "We sell the herbs we prepare here," he explained with a smile, "it makes a bit of profit. Enough to buy cigarettes once in a while." His smile had never left his face, even as he spoke. It was a sad smile, somehow. He flicked the lid to the cigarette box open and took one out. He stuck it between his teeth.
"Are you aloud to smoke in here?" Alistair asked quickly. The German turned to look at him and flicked his eyebrows up.
"Truely devoted to our cause, this one." He said with a chuckle. "Or just afraid to end up in here yourself." The smile that followed his words put Alistair off. It was almost as if the SS-Officer knew that Alistair had been sent here by Hitler himself, to 'tour' the place, to get an idea of what happened to traitors. To people that didn't share information that they knew.
"Hey! Don't smoke in here!" One of the other SS-Officers had caught a whiff of Hart's smoke and shouted at him to leave. Officer Hart waved his hand in a cheery way and turned to one of the exits.
"We're not welcome here." He said with another one of his off-putting smiles. His teeth were straight and bright. He lead the distraught Alistair out of the Greenhouse. "Care for a cigarette?" He asked, offering one to the American.
"Sure, why not." Alistair accepted one, clamped it between his teeth and lowered his face to the flame that burned off Officer Hart's match. He drew in the smoke, filling his lungs with the cancerous air. "Thank you." He said with a curt nod.
"The only way we can survive in here is by slowly killing ourselves." The officer joked. But his eyes told the American President that he wasn't really kidding. "I was told I needed to show you the flieds as well, so 'oh fields my fields', here we go!" His cheer returned and he lead the confused Alistair around the greenhouse.
Even from afar Alistair could tell why some referred to the fields as a plantation. The men worked like oxen. The Nazis behind them, brandishing whips they were not afraid to crack over the backs of their slaves chatted with each other or shouted at the workers. "I have thanked God every morning that I'm an officer and not one of them." Officer Hart said after watching the scene with Alistair. "And if I were you, I'd do whatever I could to avoid getting in here. This is not the time for chivlary and nobleness." He'd started to head off in the direction of the 'plantation' but then he stood around, hands on his hips, his officers hat cocked to the side a little bit. "Or maybe times like these need exactly that." Then he kept walking, striding towards the edge of the fields. Alistair followed on sore feet.
Why exactly the men were working the fields in January was something he didn't care to ask, he didn't wish to know the answer, he was sure it would run along the lines of discipline, for Nazis, covered-up slavery.
When he had caught up with the officer the German was already talking to some of the SS men who overlooked the field work. They were laughing together, and though they protested as Hart tramped his cigarette butt out in the soil they still smiled with him. He had a captive energy, one that could pull everyone to him. Later, upon thinking about the officer again, he decided that the man was either crazy - a brutal nazi who smiled for the fun of the KZ, or, which seemed more likely to Alistair, he was a man who did everything in his power to secretly help the prisoners and who openly entertained his fellow comerades. But no matter how pleasant he was to be around, his wings were not broad and long enough to take Alistair and his friendly gents under his arms, to keep them from seeing the horros that Dachau displayed. Or perhaps he didn't even want to shield them from anybody.
"Are you ready to join us for a round, Mr. Bowmore?" He said 'mister' in english, which made the other men chuckle. He must have told them that his companion was American earlier.
"Yes." Alistair said. And so he did.
As he drove up and down the lines of men, victims to the hot sun and cold soil, slaves to the Nazi regime and to the leather whips the gloved men held, he was unable to think of anything. His eyes were too focused on presenting what they saw to his brain, which his mind refused to accept and kept sending back, asking if they hadn't, for once, misseen. His headache grew by the second.
The nausea came later, they drove by a little group of men. When the machine stopped next to them the men hurried away, picking up their instruments and continued to farm. Officer Hart jumped off the truck and down into the soil. He stood over the saggy bag of bones that made up the prisoner the others had been huddling around. He kicked him in the side. There was no reaction whatsoever. "Dead as a doornail." He proclaimed. Turning to his comerades; "a jew of course. Unable to work anywhere where they can't get their greedy fingers on money. Get someone to clear it off, we don't want the soil to get polluted." He flicked his cigarette butt onto the man, and to visualize his death, not even a flame or spark occured. All breaths had been taken from the poor man. Officer Hart hopped back into the truck. "Onwards!"
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