Aufnahmeschreiber Grussman spends his days recording casualties in the camp Death Books, his precise calligraphic script:
Korperschwache: Exhausted
Korperschwache: Exhausted…
Some days he inventories possessions: gold teeth, hair [by the kilo], wedding rings, clothing.
Berga’s inmates hate him for his regular soup, separate room, abiding hope for continuing life.
Occasionally, he smuggles anonymous notes to older children in the camp. A birthday greeting or a playful drawing from Aesop’s fables.
When prisoner Schiff loses her starving husband of eighteen years to typhus, Grussman gifts her three inscribed lines from Euripides: Come back. Even as a shadow. Even as a dream.
Gary Thomson writes micros and short fiction from his Canadian home on Lake Ontario. In his rec moments he riffs Beatles and blues on his Hohner harmonica, and reads medieval themed whodunits. His work appears in outlets hither and yon.
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