Mischling (10 page)

“What is the matter, girl?” She sashayed over to where I sat and poked the dimple we had in our chins. “I'm impressed that you have the strength to shiver.”

I told her it was nothing even as the sensation continued. I knew they were pouring boiling water onto Stasha's left eardrum; they were drowning her hearing forever—I knew this even though she did not scream.

Seeking escape from our thoughts, I looked through the window and saw guards pushing a piano through the yard. I was quite sure it was our piano, the one we'd lost when we found ourselves crowded into the ghetto. We'd grown up together, that piano and Stasha and me. We'd learned to crawl beneath it. It could have been anyone's piano, but I was quite sure that it was ours, and almost as soon as it appeared within the window, the guards pushed it out beyond the frame of my vision, and there was only a crash, a thud, a ruffle of keys, and a slew of curses.

I wondered where they were taking it. If I would ever see it again.

My vision of the old piano was then replaced with Mengele himself. He entered with his usual whistle. Mid-trill, he stopped and pointed to me, like a music teacher does when he's looking for an answer.

“Beethoven's Ninth?” I ventured.

“Ah, no, you are quite wrong.” It was a triumphant statement.

I apologized for my mistake. I would have said that my hearing felt a bit compromised at the moment, but I decided it was best not to let him in on this mystery.

“Can I have a second chance?”

I'm sure he heard these exact words too often. He began to laugh, and Elma gave him a look of mock reproach.

“Don't be so cruel to the girl!” And then to me, she said, “You are right, of course. Sometimes our doctor here, he just likes to have a little fun.”

“To put you at ease,” he said, nodding.

“I believe it had the opposite effect,” Nurse Elma said. “Look at those pupils!”

“It works with Stasha,” Mengele said. “That girl just loves jokes, doesn't she? You—you are a bit more reserved, yes?”

He removed his gloves and put on a fresh pair. He slid them on with the zeal of a boy suiting up for some sport, and then he held his hands up before him, in search of flaws. Finding none, he clapped a hand on my shoulder.

“Your sister has to rest a bit,” he said. “Perhaps we should do something else to pass the time?”

He always worded things that way, as if he were merely making a jovial suggestion.

He and Nurse Elma consulted with each other for some minutes before arriving at a plan. I did my best to appear uninterested, but pieces of their conversation made their way to me. I heard talk of which was the stronger one, who was the leader, the superior subject, and then they returned to where I sat, so cold on my bench.

“Something new this time,” he said finally, and with a smile. “Or new to you, at least. Your sister is already familiar.”

He looked for a vein. He didn't have to look far. I cursed my veins for making themselves so available.

I don't know what was in that needle. A germ, a virus, a poison. But I could be certain as I shuddered and a warmth shivered through me, hand in hand with a chill and a shake, that it would eventually overtake me. A stronger person might have been able to fight what that needle held, but I was not as strong as I'd been before we'd exited the cattle car.

Satisfied, Mengele stood back and surveyed me. He cocked his head like a nasty parrot that once swore at me in a pet store. I hoped he would remain at that distance, but he drew up a chair and stroked my forehead so as to observe the fever that was quickly setting in, and then he took a little hammer and applied it to my joints. My legs and arms jumped at the urging of his hammer, and his face was a strange mix of amusement and intent. He scampered about me as I sat on the bench, the long, white sleeves of his coat falling over my nakedness.

“Do you feel any pain?” he asked as he hammered. “What about this? What about now?”

Yes, I said. No, I said. And then, No and no. Because I wanted to compromise his experiments. I wanted to make them as meaningless as I was.

Mengele didn't suspect a thing. He shone a light into my eyes, and I was grateful for the momentary blindness, because his face was so close to mine, and the smell of him was in my nose. It was scrambled eggs and cruelty, and my stomach rumbled against my will. He spoke over the rumbles, as if hoping to disguise the proof that he, too, was in possession of a body that answered to the normal demands of digestion.

“How has your day been, Pearl?” He asked this merrily, as if he could have been any of the people we passed by on our way home from school—the postman, the butcher, the florist, the neighbor—his inquiry innocent and casual.

“It hurts.”

“Your day hurts? What a funny thing to say! And here I thought Stasha was the only comedienne.”

On the other side of the room, Nurse Elma snorted.

“Pain has its reasons,” Mengele said.

And then he gave me a piece of candy and commanded me to enjoy it. I carried it, fully wrapped, beneath my tongue for safekeeping. This was something of an effort because my tongue felt like dust and my head was swimming and my mouth was full of aches. Still, I managed to preserve this sweetness all through the ride back to the Zoo. Once in the yard, I spat the wrapped candy into the dust and watched the Herschorn triplets fight over its possession.

I didn't know whose side to be on anymore.

Stasha's injury made spying on her easier. She wore a mound of gauze over her now-bad ear, and she was in such a sleepy haze that I was able to read her blue book under her very nose as we both lay in our bunk.

And then she woke and caught me reading; she huffed a little, but she was too weak to care much about my intrusion. Nonchalant, she simply adjusted the white petals of the bandage at her ear.

“You know that you can't do anything about Mengele,” I whispered.

“Zayde wouldn't agree with you. He thinks I can do anything I decide to. Ask Zayde, he will tell you.”

“How will I do that?” I asked. For once, I made no attempt to conceal my scorn about her illusions, all the strange beliefs she clung to so desperately that they'd begun to course and flex through her like medicine.

“I've been writing Mama and Zayde letters,” she said. “I can add that part in.”

She grabbed her book from me and rummaged around in her pocket for a pencil.

“Why are we pretending, Stasha?”

“Pretending?” She lowered her voice. “You mean, about Patient? Of course I'm pretending that he's fine. Any doctor knows that you don't tell sick people that they're sick. That only worsens their condition. They give up hope. Their bones start to fold in on themselves and before you know it, their lungs—”

“I mean pretending about Mama. About Zayde.”

“Why wouldn't they be well? We're doing everything Uncle has asked of us.”

And then she launched into her usual absurdities, saying that whenever a needle plunged into us, Mama was the recipient of extra bread. Whenever a sample of tissue was taken, Zayde was allowed to swim in the swimming pool with the guards. She insisted that she'd been more than able to manage these negotiations with Uncle. Now that she'd sacrificed her ear, there was no way that he could choose not to take care of the two of them.

I decided to say nothing about the piano I'd seen cross the yard—such proof of our loss, and all they'd take. This was not merely a charitable approach—it was also that I could not believe it still myself.

“Why not a visit, then?” I challenged. “Wouldn't that be the ultimate privilege? To see them?”

“I haven't asked for a visit.”

“You don't ask for a visit because you know they are dead.”

“It's not true,” she said, her face so still. “I know it's not true. I have evidence. They are away from us but they are alive.”

“What evidence?”

She sat up in our bunk and turned to me so that we were face to face. Suddenly gentle, she reached out her hand and closed my eyes.

“See that?”

“No.”

“Try harder. I'm thinking about it.”

She smoothed my eyelids with her fingertips till a soft blackness coated my vision. And then it bloomed.

“You see it now, don't you?”

I did see it. It was just as Mama had drawn it. But—

“No,” I said. “I don't see anything at all.”

“I know you're lying, Pearl. You see it. You see it as much as I do.”

I continued to deny this.

“It's a poppy,” she murmured. “You remember. The drawing Mama was working on? She was starting to draw a field full of poppies when everything changed, back in Lodz. And when they put us in the cattle car, she started drawing again, on the wall. She only got as far as one. Whenever I am too sad, I always see that poppy. I know that if Mama was dead, I would see many more. But I don't have to explain this to you—you know what I am talking about, Pearl.”

I wasn't about to admit this, though it was true.

“I don't mind seeing it, because it reminds me of Mama. But I don't like the feeling of it much. Sometimes, when things are too unbearable, the poppy threatens to multiply itself. If you were gone, Pearl—I'd see a whole field full. I hope I never have cause to see a whole field of poppies like that.”

What she looked like at that moment I never knew, because she dove beneath the thin scrap of our blanket, concealing her whole head from view. I heard her grunt with discomfort as she shifted about and busied herself with untying my shoes. Ever since we were little she always liked to take my shoes away, just to make sure that I couldn't leave. I felt the shoes slip from my feet. I was glad that Stasha couldn't see in the darkness provided by the blanket. I didn't want her to realize that her shoes were in better condition—like new, in fact, because she hardly went anywhere besides the hospital and the yard—than mine, which were threadbare at the soles, worn from my trips to organize potatoes.

From beneath the blanket, she posed a question, the same question she'd ask day after day in an interrogation that would soon become so routine that I found myself answering it even as I slept.

“Have you practiced dancing today?” she inquired.

I wasn't about to tell her the truth, which was that I'd started to practice but as soon as I was in first position, a drop of blood leaped from my throat and into the air, as if it were trying to alert me to the damaged performance of my insides. In all its redness, the little drop made this clear: Mengele's plans to unfurl me had begun, and if I were to outlive the harm he'd wrought, it would take a miracle doubled and doubled again, multiplied to some impossible degree.

“What reason could I have not to dance?” I said.

After Uncle hurt my ear, everything I heard carried an echo. This was good when someone said something pleasant. It was terrible when someone barked a nasty order.

I think I don't have to say which occurred more frequently, considering that Ox was charged with my care. That woman would never be pleased.

A second side effect: A constant peal of absence. A certain soreness, a raw pang.

A third side effect of this damage was more welcome. The puncture he'd left in my ear granted an easier passage for dreams to sift into my brain. I had all manner of dreams in the days after my hearing on that side went black. They were so beautiful that I almost forgave Uncle for the perversions he'd wrought on my eardrum. Because I could not turn down the opportunity, even in fantasy, to confront him with all the wrongs he'd done.

“Did you have the dream too?” I asked Pearl one morning after a particularly satisfying episode of revenge. I'll admit it: I was testing her; I wanted to see how aligned we were that day.

“Of course I did,” she said. And she stretched out on the rough slats of our bunk and yawned a little, just to distract me from her unconvincing tone.

“What was in it?” I challenged.

Knowing that her face would give away the deception, she turned her back to me and stared at the bricks.

“Family,” she said. “What else?”

I felt so guilty that I hadn't dreamed of family at all—not a glimmer of Papa or Mama, not even a figment of Zayde—that I went along with this lie she presented.

“A good one, yes. But I wouldn't mind if it changed a little from time to time,” I said. “That part where Zayde turned the cabbage into a butterfly was pleasant enough, but the part where Papa reappeared every time Mother wept was terrible.”

“It was dreary, really,” Pearl said. “I'm not sure why we can't dream better.”

“And I suppose these defects were all my fault? You were born first, after all,” I said. “You always take the lead in such things. Even at the laboratory, they think you are the leader.”

“That only proves how stupid they are,” Pearl said. “Anyone with eyes can see that you are in charge of us.”

I swung my legs around to the edge of the bunk. It could have been a good day if we were anywhere else. The sun was out and for once, the birds were determined to get their chirps in alongside the howls of the guard dogs.

“Out of bed!” Ox roared. She walked along the wooden railings, banging each with a spoon and reaching up to tweak a girl's earlobe whenever it pleased her.

I put my hands over both ears.

“Hear no evil, eh?” Ox said.

I nodded. My hands remained in their position.

“You'll see no evil too. Not today. A soccer match out at the field. Won't that be nice?”

I put my hands down, cautiously, and replied that yes, I was excited to watch the match.

My sister also cheered to this news. She'd been slow in recent days, but for once, she leaped onto the ladder and dressed in a hurry. But Ox caught her by the collar and pulled her aside.

“No match for you, Pearl,” Ox said.

That's when we saw the flash of the ambulance as it rumbled past the door.

I began to wish, as I saw Nurse Elma collect Pearl, as I watched them disappear into the mouth of that trickster ambulance and roll off, that he'd blunted the abilities of my eyes as well, just so I could no longer witness the continued torture of my sister. But I was not to be spared the burden of sight, not yet.

We assembled in the yard, with Ox at the fore. She appeared to be a great fan of the sport, and she tried to raise our spirits, talking to each child about different plays and which guard was the best on the field. Dr. Miri and Twins' Father were less enthusiastic about the event. They walked among us, keeping a dutiful count.

Patient loped over to me in his knock-kneed way. His eyes were more shifty than usual.

“I have a present for you,” he said. His arms were tucked behind his back.

“All I want is for you to be well, Patient.”

He coughed in reply.

“And you're not well at all.”

“It is one of those things,” Patient said brightly, “where it gets worse before it gets even worse and then it never really gets better but who has the time to care because you're too busy fighting for a tin cup full of nettles.”

This had become a popular saying at the time. I didn't care for it much. I turned away to avoid continuing the course of this conversation. I felt a whack at the rear of my skirt. And then a tap at my shoulder. Laughing, Patient held up an ear horn.

“It's for you,” he said. “From Canada. They kept it because it is ivory, I think.”

This antiquated ear horn must have belonged to a wealthy woman. It had that precious finish, and a horse's head for a handle. This horse was a defiant animal; its mouth quested, and its mane ribboned back, as if confronted by some terrible wind. I worried what Uncle might say about it if he happened to see me crossing the yard.

“Try it and see,” he begged. “Put it to your bad ear and I'll say something.”

I didn't try it. I stroked the horse's mane skeptically.

“You better like it,” he said. “I traded for that with Peter. He stole it from the warehouse for me. It is easier to get things from Peter if you are a girl, because then you can pay with a fumble. I had to pay with a cigarette.”

“I'd rather the cigarette,” I scoffed.

“Cigarettes can't make you hear,” he said, his voice ever reasonable. “I might say something valuable someday in your left ear, something you don't want to miss.”

He had a good point. More and more, I was enjoying our conversations. I could speak to him about things I couldn't with Pearl. Things about ending Uncle. As in where to end him and how to end him, and the kind of implement that might end him the fastest.

At the match, we children spread out on the left side of the field and tried not to look at the right side, which was occupied by female wardens and some of the guards' families, all of them visiting for the weekend, every last one beaming and lolling on bright blankets with potato salads and rolls and sausages. The mothers were chasing their cherub-babies around the grass and reading picture books to their girl children and snapping photos with their cameras at all the curiosities of Auschwitz. I saw a camera pointed in my direction, and gave a deliberate blink. Patient mimicked the gesture. We were becoming, I noted happily, more and more alike every day.

After we opened our eyes, the game began.

We watched the ball fly back and forth between the guards in their trim athletic gear and the prisoners in their shabby stripes. Patient was particularly excited; I had to remind him several times not to cheer too loudly, if only for the safety of his insides. An unmodulated cheer, I warned, was sure to rupture the fragilities within him.

“And don't expect us to win either,” I said.

“But we will win,” he said to my good ear, thoroughly enraptured. “And when we win, the trains will move back on their tracks, through the forests, through the mountains. If we win, the ghetto will have never been, and there will never have been a knock on the door.”

He paused for my approval, but only for a second. He was enjoying his fancies, all the powers of his imagination. We were alike in that way too.

“If they win,” he continued, “my brother will be my brother instead of a dead boy. He'll never have suffered. He'll never have wondered where I was while he lay dying.”

I wanted to tell him I didn't know if such a miracle could occur. I was privy to some of the secrets of this place and knew it to be strange, but a resurrection? That seemed impossible. But then I realized that I could not say that such goodness was unlikely because I had never thought the cruelty of Auschwitz was possible either.

But I kept these thoughts to myself, and if Patient was interested in what preoccupied my mind, he covered it quite cleverly by focusing on the match.

We watched the prisoners slouch across the field. But their slouch was determined in the first round and valiant in the second. Some were whittled sleepwalkers, while others were enlivened by the possibility of victory, summoning strength that was sure to dissipate. The ball didn't care how feeble the kicks were, how sleepy the plays. It flew between the prisoner and the head guard as if trying to negotiate some impossible treaty. In the third round, a guard laughingly booted the ball off the field and replaced it with a sourdough boule, kicking it off from the starting point with a spray of crumbs. Even the crows perched in the trees knew better than to scavenge these crumbs; they turned their sooty heads toward the sun and ignored it. I saw that they were wise and followed their example, and Patient followed mine.

We looked to the sky instead of the match and we watched the clouds be clouds in their own way. Together, we read the shapes, in the style of children more innocent than ourselves.

“A clock,” I said, pointing to a cloud.

“A Nazi!” Patient said.

I pointed to another cloud.

“A rabbit,” I said.

“A Nazi,” said Patient.

This pattern continued. Where I saw a bride, a ghost, a tooth, a spoon, Patient saw only Nazis. Sometimes his Nazis were sleeping or picking their teeth, but mostly they were dying Nazis. The dying Nazis died of an array of diseases, of run-ins with wild animals, run-ins with Patient's grandmother, and run-ins with the point of a bread knife held by Patient himself.

I tried to see what he saw, tried to follow his gaze from where he lay, his cheeks streaked with dirt. He coughed, but politely turned his face to direct this nasty exhalation into the ground.

“Explain to me how that looks like a Nazi,” I said. I pointed to the latest puff, which he'd declared to be a Nazi dying of a poisoned arrow.

In answer, the boy took his bread knife from his pocket and dwelled on the blade. All of us in the Zoo were given these knives to cut our rations with; most were dull and leaned weakly from their hilts. But Patient's bread knife had a danger to its edge, a sharpness that he had cultivated from the backs of rocks.

“Someday I'm going to kill a Nazi,” he whispered. And then he bolted upright.

“I want to kill one too,” I whispered back. “But a very specific one. You know who.”

Patient fell to stabbing the soil around him.

“They are all the same,” he said. “I'll take any I can.”

As he spoke, I felt a sudden pain. It was an interloper, one unknown to me. It tried to present itself as warmth, but really, what it carried was a sting so strong it was a wonder that I did not faint. Above me, the clouds rollicked without a care. Stupid clouds. I was beginning to tire of them. Not only were they unsympathetic to our plight, but not a single one was talented enough to attempt an imitation of my sister. As I felt this pain, I thought of Pearl in the laboratory. But I couldn't think of Pearl in the laboratory, not like that.

She was stronger than me, I thought, she would endure.

I forced myself to take a brighter view of things.

“Someday,” I told my friend, “killing won't be necessary at all. Because the war, it will end.”

“The world?” Patient furrowed his brow.

“No, the war,” I said. “The war will end.”

Patient shrugged. I wasn't sure if he shrugged at the sentiment or if he was reacting to the fact that the guards had scored another goal.

“World, war. These are also the same,” he said.

It was then, in a fit of anger roused by the guards' victory, that he stood and thrust his bread knife at the Nazi-clouds, and his beleaguered body must not have been able to support even this small gesture, because he stumbled back, fell with a thud, and struck his head on a stone. His body shuddered and seized. Ox did nothing; I did less. I was afraid. I called for Twins' Father, for Dr. Miri. Patient continued to shake; his eyes flashed. The prisoner-goalie let out a cry and dashed over; he tried to cradle Patient, and he tried to fit a stick in the boy's seizing mouth so as to save his tongue. Seeing this rescue, one of the guards drew his pistol. Shots were fired. Two in the air, and one toward the flesh. Gut shot, the prisoner-goalie fell beside the twitching boy.

Uncle pushed his way through the crowd with a stretcher. He shouted furiously at all he passed, and he stepped over the body of the fallen goalie to retrieve Patient.

A premonition ran through my head as the boy was carted off on a stretcher: This was the last I would ever see of my friend. I looked down at my arms, which trembled around Patient's gift. I didn't need the ear horn to hear the shouts of Uncle as he screamed into Patient's still face in some hopeless attempt at revival.

And in the midst of these screams and cries, I felt the pain of my sister that I'd tried to dismiss because she was stronger, because she would want it that way, because I couldn't live with any other. Pearl's pain, it insisted within me; it ran and coiled and it said:
Do what you like with your share, but I will not be ignored, reconfigured, or endured.

Hearing this, I dropped the ear horn.

It fell some feet away from where the wounded prisoner-goalie lay on the field, clutching his belly with one hand. How can it be possible that we remain so curious to the end, so intent on knowing and experiencing even as we are dying? Because, you see, when the prisoner-goalie spied that precious object, so strange and foreign on that soccer field, he dragged himself forward in his dying haze—it was as if he wanted to see if that ivory ear horn held something final for him, a message, a sound, a cry. But the guard, spying this interest, took him down with a shot to the back just as he grasped hold of it. Only then did the wounded man lie still. Red clouds bloomed between the bars of his uniform—I watched them seep and travel across the horizon of his shoulders.