Chapter 6

Before the guide had even begun to answer this question Elizabeta decided to ignore all the people she had to push aside, it just wasn't important anymore, she had to reach Roderich and Feliciano. Roderich looked as if he would fall to the floor at any moment.

Feliciano had also noticed what was about to happen, Roderich had never stopped trembling after leaving the gas chambers, but he had stopped the hyperventilating, now he begun with that again.

Mrs. King had also seen that something was about to happen, but the first thing she noticed was that Elizabeta suddenly began elbowing her way through the crowd.

Elizabeta didn't bother to explain anything to anyone, as soon as she arrived at Roderich, she simply started to drag him out of there, out in the fresh air. Feliciano, who had followed them sought out a place where they didn't have to see Ivan and Ludwig who was still debating with Gilbert and the other idiot.

It was when Elizabeta and Feliciano sat down on either side around the sobbing Roderich they discovered that the teacher had followed them.

"Is he allright?" the teacher asked. Elizabeta thought feverishly, to get an apology that sounded reasonable, but at the same time not too similar to the truth. But this time Feliciano actually thought faster.

"I think it was a little hard for him in there. Some of his relatives sat here. "Both Elizabeta and the teacher looked at Feliciano. The teacher with a sympathetic expression in her eyes, Elizabeta with ill-concealed admiration. She had never thought of Feliciano as a person who could come up with such a perfect lie. And Roderich hadn't either.

But Feliciano had not stopped to present his white lie. When he had got Mrs. King's attention, he continued.

"Must Roderich still write that 10,000-word essay if we take him to the bus now, even though there is more stuff we would be looking at?" Mrs. King shook her head.

"No, and it not Ludwig and Ivan either. The only one I will ask that of is Gilbert. You would only see this to understand, and he is the only one who has shown no signs of doing so. "

Mrs. King went back to the others to keep track of the class, and to ask the bus driver to lock up the bus for those who did not manage to see more. Elizabeta and Feliciano could manage to follow Roderich to the bus without the teachers help.

"Shall we go then?" Elizabeta asked other two, trying to sound encouraging. Then she took Roderich's one hand and helped him up. He was still trembling but he was certainly not alone anymore.

Feliciano suggested a shortcut between the barracks, which would save them several minutes, the fact was that they could even see the bus from the place they stood at the time. Elizabeta thought it was a good idea so she and Feliciano began to go this way with Roderich between them.

But suddenly Roderich just stopped and refused to continue. Elizabeta looked at him in surprise.

"What is it?"

"I don't want to go this way" he replied quietly. Feliciano looked at him in surprise.

"Why not?" Roderich couldn't answer that question so Elizabeta put her arm around his shoulders and calmly started to comfort him.

"Okay, that's okay, we take a different route" To Roderich's great relief it seemed like Feliciano just accepted this without asking more questions. Roderich had no desire to talk about why he didn't want to go the shorter way, at least not right now. The truth was that if he had done it last time he was here, he had received a bullet in his head and that was enough, apparently to make him too scared to try even now when he knew it was safe.

The problem was just that Auschwitz was full of such places, which Roderich soon realized. He would not make it back to the bus unless he went on one of those roads. When that fact had taken place in him, he became so frustrated that he began to cry.

"How are you?" Feliciano asked, as the first of the two friends to discover it.

"I can't get out!" Roderich sobbed to answer Feliciano's question. Elizabeta looked at Feliciano one second, as if she was trying to get a response to what they should do now, but he looked as bewildered as she felt. Then Elizabeta decided it was time to improvise.

"Roderich, close your eyes!" Elizabeta watched as Roderich closed his eyes. Several large tears rolled down his cheeks when his eyelids pushed them away. Then she took his glasses and stuffed them into her own pocket before she gave him a big hug.

"It's only me Roderich, there's no harm!" When Roderich heard Elizabeta's voice that close, he at last began to cry for real. His sobs were so violent that it felt like he was trembling more than twice as much as before. Then Elizabeta took one step, then another and before Roderich had got a chance to ask where they were going she had begun to sing a hungarian bullaby that he recognized as something comforting from the past... the same song that she had sung for him that night when he had woke up in her capital after being a prisoner in Bergen-Belsen. The song that he since then had recognized as a sign that everything was all right again.

The bus driver had already unlocked the bus when the three arrived at the improvised bus stop and not only that - Emil, Lukas and Raivis had gotten there before them. Roderich still hadn't opened his eyes, and he hadn't realized where they were coming, actually he had barely noticed that they were going somewhere.

"Roderich, you can look now!" Roderich heard Elizabeta's calm voice and saw through his tears how she reached out his glasses. He brought a trembling hand to his eyes and wiped the tears away with his sleeve before he put the glasses back. It was first then he saw that they had walked all the way back to the bus.

The sight of the bus made Roderich gasp, and then he turned and looked towards the place they must have come from. He knew that Elizabeta and Feliciano had tricked him to walk one of those terrible paths, he was fully convinced that they could not have come here otherwise. Elizabeta put her arm around him again.

"There are no SS soldiers left here anymore Roderich, you can leave this place any time you want!" Roderich just stared at them both, could not think of anything sensible to say. After a full minute he saw only one thing to do. He hugged them both, at the same time. He had even stopped shaking.

When Roderich finally looked up from the embrace, the tree walked inside the bus and sat down at the same places as they had been sitting before, except that Feliciano took Kiku's place to sit so close to the other two as possible. Then Elizabeta came to consider that lie Feliciano had pulled to Mrs. King, it had been almost perfect.

"Feliciano, where have you learned to lie that good that you did out there?" Elizabeta looked at him curiously as she asked, and Roderich too. He had heard Feliciano change the truth into something that was basically the same thing, instead of Roderich himself had been sitting at Auschwitz, he had had relatives who did, which could actually lead to the same reaction, it was brilliant. Then Feliciano gave them both the sunniest smile they'd ever seen.

"It's not the first time I've made up truths without making them sound improbable," he explained. "I did it all the time when I lived with the two of you to avoid getting yelled at by Austria constantly" Then Feliciano looked at Roderich's for a minute after the recognition he started laughing. "Don't take it so hard Roderich, if you hadn't forced me to take five white lies every day as a kid, I had never been able to come up with one today!"

"I wasn't going to yell at you!" Roderich hurried to say, but he knew that he was still blushing. He didn't get time to say more before Feliciano had begun to speak again.

"Ah, here comes the others!" Only a few seconds later their classmates started to get inside the bus, everyone sat in the same places as before, although Gilbert.

When Gilbert entered the bus Roderich decided to look out the window, even though the only thing he saw out there was that awful "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign.

While Mrs. King checked off on a list that everyone was back Gilbert stood up in front of Roderich and Elizabeta in the aisle.

"Roderich!" Roderich reluctantly looked up at Gilbert and he immediately saw what the subject that he wanted to speak with him about was. Gilbert held out his denial book towards him. "I want you to have it!" Roderich looked as if he had received a slap in the face.

"What makes you think I even want to touch it!" He cried indignantly. Then Gilbert threw the book at him.

"I don't know, so you can tear it or burn it or whatever, if it help you get over it all".

Everyone in the bus had followed the incident, neither Gilbert nor Roderich had even tried to be silent so it would have been hard to miss. Even Mrs. King had come off the counting when she heard it. And it was an incredible sight. Gilbert had nevertheless denied the Holocaust, but now he seemed to... hopefully have changed.

The truth was that even Gilbert had got enough when a real denier appeared. The only reason he bought the book had been to study the arguments so he could mess with Roderich, but the visit to Auschwitz hadn't proved to be a good opportunity for doing that. Even Gilbert had understood that - more and more during the day. He had, after all, also been there at the time, it was what separated him from the other provocateur, he had seen it.

Gilbert looked out the window while the bus engine started, and he came to think of the cattle trucks that had brought the prisoners here. The second repudiator had raised it as an argument that it could not have happened, they could not possibly fit so many, he reasoned. But Gilbert had seen it with his own eyes as it happened. Even when the cars were full, they could squeeze in more people. What hell it had been for those who were already in there and who did not understand why, Gilbert could not even imagine. When the bus started moving Gilbert turned and looked toward Roderich.

Roderich had been one of those who had seen more and more people being forced into the cars, he had lived on the trolley in what had felt like an eternity. Sometimes he had fallen asleep to the desperate screams that never stopped. After a while, he had felt the smell of corpses. On one of the occasions when they loaded on more prisoners he had been pushed inwards with such force that he had lost his glasses, and he had never found them again, he had been forced to take several steps backward so it had been impossible to bend down to pick them up.

Several years later he had understood that this incident was the only reason he had not been sent directly to the gas chambers and he had tried several times to feel grateful for it, but it was impossible, it was too full of other memories that he would probably never forget.

Roderich put the book that Gilbert had given him inside his backpack and sighed. Then he looked up at the sign above the entrance again. It was the first time he'd been able to see it when he went out through it. When he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, he had been forced into a truck, without windows, along with so many others that they couldn't sit down during the entire trip. He zipped the backpack, right now he just didn't want to see the book, but when he recovered he actually thought about reading it. He wanted to know what arguments the other side had. Then he would be prepared the next time he met those arguments.

Roderich woke up from his thoughts as Elizabeta put a blanket over him, he looked to the side and saw that she was under the same blanket. That was the first time this day when he felt he could relax. The two put their arms around each other under the blanket to get closer, about five minutes later they had both fallen asleep.

The end - Thanks for reading