The Lifeguard — Katharina Hacker

I noticed the smell coming from the slowly emptying pool. Putrid water now and the putrefaction of all the years; all the years since the baths were built. Do you understand, the old lifeguard said to me, all still here, nothing washes off that easily? The People's Baths, he laughed. Do you know what happened here? Look how innocently the water lies here. Some innocence, he laughed. In the side passage there wasn't room to shoot people. There are still some bathers you can ask if they never heard anything when they passed by the baths when they were closed during the last year or two of the war...don't you notice the smell? Nothing washes off that easily, we all stink of it. Be thankful that chlorine's available again.