Reverflash

I remember everything. That’s my cross to bear. A preordained punishment for my sins. Whether they are sins of my past or future I do not know. For me it is just pain caused by an eidetic memory.

It’s true, I remember it all. I can flip through the pages of a book I read at the age of eight. You can ask me what the fifth word of the second paragraph of page sixty-seven might be and I can turn there in my memory, snap a photograph and count. ‘Winter’ or ‘death’ or ‘pain’, I might tell you. Though you’d have no way to check my honesty. Unless you have that exact copy of the book I read all those years ago.

But I don’t just remember every moment of the thirty-two years I’ve lived in this life, I remember all of my last life too. That past life was in my current life’s future. A profound fact that may be lost on most people. If there were anyone who’d believe me.

I am used to it all by now, mostly. It only bothers me during times like these, on my days off, when I should be enjoying the present moment. Instead I’m being swept up in some future that is my past. A past life which I’ve already lived and died. If I had only one wish it would be that God would leave me alone to live in the present moment.

But no. Instead of being able to sit on this half frozen rock by the ashen river, watching its chemical bubbles float downstream to the ocean, I am drowning in a current of emotion. A reverflash set off by smell. It’s always the smell that does it. Sudden, intense feelings swept up on an aroma, and all at once I’m driven out of the moment into some future one that is part of my past.

Instead of being in the present, sitting on this chilly rock in winter, breathing air and condensing it into a cold gas, I am on my grandfather's farm in warm Alabama. In my vivid memory he is in his fifties, but in this life he is but a teenage boy. His past life farm borders a creek that also smells of death, like the one I sit by in the present. That Alabama creek has a sulfur spring as its source, smelling like flatulence from a half mile north of the farm. That past life creek then flows through the muck and decay of a swamp, like the area between the camps in this present life. It is that smell of fecal rot which rips me out of the present into my future past, or past future, whatever it is.

Above it all rises the scent of cherry flavored amaretto. It’s a smell I know all too well, like that of bitter almonds. A new smell in my present life, forced upon us by limited supplies. But a common smell in my past life in the future. My grandfather, the one from that future past life, purchased his land from a pig farmer who grew almonds to supplement their feed. The trees were left to nature, tall and overgrown by the time my grandfather came into possession of the property. The almonds were unable to be picked without an arborist tending to the trees, so they were allowed to fall wherever they chose. Some we would retrieve, most were never found. If wild boars or feral hogs did not eat them, the smell of their rotting would rise from the mushy bottomlands and mingle with the smell of nearby cow patties with the golden topped mushrooms.

I never liked cherries because of them. I’ve never drank amaretto either, in that future past life or in this present life either. A punishment perhaps, not being able to enjoy the sweetness of a cherry or washing away my troubles with friends and their amaretto sours. But nothing is as bad as being swept away into such evocative recollections.

Because I remember everything, I already know the smell that will come next. The noxious nose burning fumes of ammonia. Like manure from the chicken houses across the creek in that future past life. Like the chemical that past future grandmother used to clean her floors. The same chemical is used here in the present to clean the bathhouses. Tomorrow I will gather the next batch. They will breathe the pesticide and return to dust.

No, God would not allow me peace even for one day. I search my memory banks but cannot find anything I might have done, in that past future life or in the present one, to deserve this hell.

~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~

Night falls but I am unable to sleep. Deep in thought, I lie in my bunk. I wish that my present life were closer in time to my past life. Since it is in the future and I remember it all, more things would be to my advantage. I could gamble, knowing the outcome, I could amaze people with my foreknowledge of events, trivial or not. Instead I have been born into an obscure family from an unknown place in this profound time. I guess it wouldn’t be a punishment if it were any other way.

Early in this present life I tried to show off. When I was not yet five I told everyone that we would lose the war. That Jewish bankers would sue for peace and betray the German people. A fact that would lead to a worse war in the near future for my present life. My parents made it clear, through belts and switches and threats of having me sent away to an asylum, that I was not to ever talk that way again. So my past life, from the future, became suppressed, only coming out in bright colored evocations that I cannot ignore. Long before the Reichstag was set on fire I had learned my lesson. There was no point in telling people that the Nazi’s started it, that Jews and Communists were being scapegoated. People will learn the truth on their own or not at all.

At University I studied Philosophy and discovered Nietzsche for the second time in as many lives. This time I fell in love with his way of thinking. I used to revel in arguing the nature of time, but even in this nihilistic moment no one wants to listen to facts. Certainty I can prove with knowledge of the future, through my own past life. All of time exists like a snake constantly swallowing its tail. God can view each moment as if it were pages in a book. But all of this means that there is no free will, that your life is not your own. Adults like hearing this about as much as children like being told there is no Santa Claus.

Only a fool can believe that the past exists but the future does not until we create it. Like a block of cheese that always grows in the present moment, making more past-cheese through the actions of man. Man likes to make himself into gods. Those who don’t think this way still need fairy tales to get through life. Me, on the other hand, I have learned to accept my fate. To accept my punishment.

I never questioned joining the party, everyone else was doing it. I never questioned any assignment given me, any task demanded of me. Why should I? I know that free will does not exist. I remember that fact, from the future. But I never expected to meet my past life grandfather here. Though I spent so much of that future with him, in my past life, though he taught me so many things, though he brought me so much joy, there was so much more that he failed to tell me. He spoke of only three things about his time in the camps. One was that he had been held in more than one. Two was that he fell in love with a beautiful Czech dancer that did not love him. Three was that a Christian saved his life. He converted to that man’s faith and raised my father to be a Christian out of thanks. So I was never a Jew religiously, only a half blood genetically, even in that past life in the future.

~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~

I have loyally served Commandant Hoppe since he took command of Stutthof two Septembers ago. Today my assignment will test that loyalty. The ninth name of the ten on my list is that of my grandfather. My past life in the future grandfather. The one who settles in Alabama and farms along a creek. He cannot die, or else that past life me will not live in the future. I want to live, both in this life where I know that not even free will exists and in that past life of the future, where I experienced so much joy and freedom. What can I do?

My future grandfather from my past life will have just turned fifteen in this present life. He protected me from certain things, namely that the Commandant has a taste for youth, particularly young boys fourteen and under. No doubt this has been what has kept him alive this long. His father, my past life great-grandfather, was given a phenol injection upon arrival. His mother, my past life great-grandmother, was showered with Zyklon-B, before we ran out of the odorless variety. I did not recognize their names, they were far too common and even my eidetic memory could not recognize faces I’d never seen. I almost certainly scattered their ashes into the river.

Why would my past life grandfather willingly buy land with so much to remind him of this place? “Never forget,” he would say, “we must never forget, or it will happen again.” But how could a child decades removed into the future remember a past that was not his? Not experienced by him? Now in my present life it is my duty to do that very thing which should not be forgotten. But my grandfather must live, so that I may live that past life in the future. I have already lived it, so will I die today?

My partner and I footslog though the mud to the brickworks. The first five of the doomed that day were all women. Not beyond the age of child bearing, but having outlasted their ability to work, no longer being worth their rations in sheer economic terms. Skeletons that are barely able to lift the weight of the blue and gray striped uniforms that hang threadbare from their shoulders as if dangling from a metal clothes hanger. Linen straps from dead comrades' uniforms used to hold their pants up on hips that once held babies.

The next on the list was an Aryan man, a prisoner number tattooed on his forehead and a green triangle peeling off his uniform just over his heart. A forger and a draft dodger, a man who thought his will was greater than that of the Reich. A man who presumed his will to be greater than that of God’s. A man who would not, perhaps could not, learn that free will does not exist.

He was followed by two men who stayed close to one another. The seat is worn entirely out of their uniforms, exposing bloody and bruised rear ends. The pink triangle on their chest told their crimes, for which they tried to cover their shame by pulling their pill box hats over their faces. Now strung to the same rope, the string of death, they no longer tried to hide their love for one another.

The next name was my past life grandfather’s. If it had not been for his eyes, eyes that never change, I would not have recognized him. He was not yet a skeleton, like so many others, but his muscles were sinewy and his stomach was pregnant with malnourishment. His yellow Star of David looked almost new, though he was covered head to toe in a fine red dust, the dust of the bricks he slaved all day to make. Bricks for infrastructure for the Reich both he and I served. Neither of us by choice, even though I willingly joined the SS and he was unwillingly imprisoned by them. I knew that neither of us had free will. I watched as my partner grabbed him and began tying him to the string of death. I felt as if I was looking at my future memories disappearing, evaporating into the air like the gas that would kill them.

The final name on the list was a healthy young man, not much older than my grandfather. He wore a purple triangle with a P at its center, also dusted red. Beside him was a boy that looked almost like his twin, just smaller, probably younger. “Take me too,” the younger boy cried out, “Let my brother and I enter paradise together.”

My partner declared that we only take the names on the list, besides, no paradise was waiting for them. To which the younger man spit into the face of my partner, who calmly took out his handkerchief and cleaned his face. He raised his rifle above his head and began to beat the boy senseless with its butt, the SS bolts on his sleeve thundering down. “I’ll kill you for that swine!”

“I fear no man but God,” the boy tried to shield the blows with his frail arms, the entire string of death winced at the cracking noise of the impacts. I held the rope as they all tugged, sure the next blows would fall on them. The boy is quickly knocked unconscious, his arm broken.

“That should teach him,” my partner said with pride, having defeated the defenseless boy. He spit at the boy's swollen eyes and unzipped his trousers, relieving himself from head to toe, giving the white stripes a yellow tint.

“What have you done?” I said, feigning urgency and concern for my partner. “You have damaged a healthy worker, you will be punished for this if we don’t act quickly.”

I unbutton the latch on my leather holster and remove my knife. I went to my grandfather and cut the yellow star from his chest and shoved it in the unconscious boy's mouth. I then cut the purple triangle from his chest and handed it to my grandfather. “This was ripped when you were carrying bricks, request a repair.” I cut the string of death and set my grandfather free, and I set my past self free. I set the future free.

“Carry your brother so you can die together,” my partner commanded. The older Christian dissident picked up his kin. I tied them to the line. In that way, my grandfather's name went to the furnace but he did not. My grandfather and my future self were saved. He would emigrate to America after the war and buy land on a creek in Alabama, full of smells that will not allow my past self to forget.