Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

17: I Recognise My Friends

"I recognise my friends by the shame I experience at the idea that they will read what I write... Whoever shames me is my friend." - Georges Bataille, cited by Milo Sweedler in The Dismembered Community: Bataille, Blanchot, Leiris, and the Remains of Laure

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"You're allowed to be brave." I don't think Gene had any idea what kind of gift he was giving me when he said those words. I've thought of them every single day since. They haunt me, because they get me through. They make me keep going. I'm allowed to be brave. I don't feel brave, but I think sometimes I am, like when they drag me back to the interrogation room to do the carbolic. I have to be brave then. I don't know what else I could be and still get through it.

The loose-lipped guards who aren't supposed to talk in front of me but do it anyway have let it slip that there will be a doctor coming to check on the prisoners to decide who will be moved to the KZs - at the advice of the hauptsturmführer, that is. I'm nearing the end of my confession. If I've finished by then and refuse to tell them anything else I know I'll be on that list.

I think I'll try to knock myself unconscious when the doctor comes. Surely he won't be able to properly analyse me if I'm unconscious. I don't know how I'm going to pull that off but I spend every spare moment that I'm not writing trying to work it out.

Who would have thought that it is so hard to just make yourself die?

The hauptsturmführer hasn't read my recent writing yet because I think one of the other prisoners is spilling their guts, which fills me with dread, but I suppose, in a way, that's what I'm doing too. He knows by now that I simply cannot help but to waste his time, so reading my writing is a little bit lower on his list of priorities. Good, because I'm gonna get it when he does read them. I can't remember how many pages I've filled purely with conversations, and that's a stunt I pull so often to bide my time, and the hauptsturmführer absolutely hates it. Unless Tom's in them, of course. My one saving grace. The hauptsturmführer bloody loves Tom.

I wonder what he'd say if he ever found out how frequently he appears in my confessions to the bloody Gestapo. I feel so rotten even thinking about it. I owe him many, many apologies, but perhaps the most for that. And the others, of course. And the yanks. None of them deserve it. But I have nothing else to write. They're all such a crucial part of my story that I can't just leave them out - I would have far too many gaps to fill.

Makes sense, actually, because now that I'm here and I'm without them I am full of nothing but gaps. A million different gaps that will never again be filled.

God, when did my internal monologue become so morbid? When my life did, I suppose. And I'm just so bloody good at being morbid these days. I have stumbled upon a new talent.

I wonder whether, if they saw me in the street, any of the boys or the Americans would even recognise me now. I think if I looked in a mirror I wouldn't even recognise myself. I'm still wearing the same clothes I was caught in, but I think they'll give me new ones when the doctor comes, to keep up appearances.

Now I'm back to thinking about how to knock myself unconscious with my incredibly limited resources. Or maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll knock myself dead. But luck isn't something I seem to have a lot of these days, so I'll have to settle for unconsciousness. What to do, what to do, what to do.