If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

"And you, Chana, you are Jakub without your hair."

  " Zugánge, newcomers, here, quickly, quickly!" shouted another guard.

  We filed into another building, where more women, prisoners also, handed out clothes. I was given a large dress that looked like a shirt, mismatched stockings, and two clogs—one too small and one too large for my feet. We began moving through the crowd, trading our goods for shoes and clothing that fit. In the end I found myself with clogs that were still too big but matched, and the same large dress; no one else wanted it except Bubbe, and I refused to let her trade it for her warm knickers and sweater. If she were to survive, I knew she would need to stay warm.

  At the end of this long room were tables. At the first table they took down our names, our ages, and our professions. When the clerk in front of us saw Bubbe and heard that she was in her fifties she nodded and said, "Yes, you are thirty-eight."

  "No, I think you misunderstood," Bubbe began.

  "No one over forty should be here. Do you understand?"

  Bubbe took the woman's hand. "Yes, thank you. You are very kind."

  "I grew up in Lodz," said the clerk. "I moved away when I married. My name is Sora. We are sisters, no? I will look after you and try to get you a good job, but first you will have to survive quarantine. Most do not make it." She squirmed in her seat, glancing sideways at the other clerk. Then she turned to me. "And this is your daughter."

  "No, I am her—I mean, yes, yes, I am her daughter."

  "Yes, and I think twenty is a good age for you."

  "Yes, I am twenty." I nodded.

  "And what do you do? Your profession."

  "Profession? I—nothing. I'm a student, or I was, once, long ago."

  "She plays the violin," Bubbe said.

  "Shh, Bubbe, what does that matter here?"

  "It's wonderful!" The clerk beamed at me.

  "This could help you, they could always use another violinist."

  "They? Who?"

  The woman looked behind us and then leaned forward in her chair, her brown tufts of hair standing straight up on her head. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I wonder, in your travels, if perhaps you have met Dovid and Ruchel Ozick, my mama and tata. You see, I have not heard." Her face, lined and waxy, harsh beneath her tufts of hair, suddenly softened. "I need to know if they are all right."

  Bubbe leaned forward to speak, but the clerk held up her hand.

  "Not now, the Lagerführer is coming to see why the line has stopped; you will have to move along."

  Bubbe squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry, I can't tell you," she said, and then moved on to the next table.

  At this table, two women tattooed numbers on the inside of our left forearms. They were quick and careless with the needle. Each jab into the skin made me jump. Even as I moved away from the table, I could feel the stinging, as though with every poke they had deposited a needle into a pore in my arm.

  In our group all the digits in our numbers were the same except the last two or three. Bubbe's last number was 71 and mine 72. Everything here was orderly.

  With the help of the SS guards and their dogs, we were organized into groups of five and marched along a hard-packed road to the quarantine block. Along the way we passed a low building with two tall brick chimneys rising up toward the sky, and from these came thick clouds of black smoke. I wanted to stop and watch the smoke. I wanted to stop and think a minute, but there was no time." Schneller! Schneller! "they kept barking at us. "Faster!"

  We were led through another set of barbed wire and before us stood row upon row of long, low stone huts. These buildings were grouped and divided by still more barbed wire and electrified fencing, and just in case that wasn't enough, they had tall watchtowers at the far corners of the compound where sentries kept an eye, and a rifle, poised on the movements of the inmates.

  I took Bubbe's hand as we walked past the row of huts. Dead bodies were lying in piles in front of almost every barrack. They all looked alike—faceless, almost skinless piles of bones. How hard had these people fought for their lives? And now, if they could speak, would they say it was worth the fight? I wanted to know. I had to know. If that was to be my fate, to be tossed onto a pile and become a nameless, faceless nobody, why not die quickly and get it over with? Why should I allow myself to be tortured, why suffer, just to come to this? I looked down at the tattoo on my forearm. Who was I kidding? Already I had become nameless, and in this rag they had given me to wear and with my hair all shaved off, I was well on my way to becoming faceless.

  I felt a hand ram me from behind. "Stay in your row!" boomed the voice now above me. The guard had pushed me to the ground. Somehow I had let go of Bubbe's hand and had fallen behind.

  "Get up!"

  I was already trying to get up when the guard slapped me down again. Again she shouted and again she slapped me down as I tried to get up.

  What kind of game was this? I wondered, tears stinging my eyes. She wants me to get up but keeps slamming me down.

  Before she could get at my aching shoulders again, I rolled away from her and in the same movement rolled up onto my feet. I ran along the line searching for Bubbe, but she was hard to find—everyone looked alike and no one looked human. They were marching creatures from some other world.

  At last I saw a head turn, a glance, a pair of familiar eyes blinking at me. Bubbe! I ran up to her and fell in step. We couldn't speak to one another, but she grabbed my wrist and shook it. Pay attention, the shake said. Your life depends on it.

  A whistle blew. "Halt!" commanded the guards all down the line. We stopped and then, like animals, like a herd of cows, we were shoved back behind the barracks. The dogs snapped at our legs, the guards slapped and swatted and kicked. Faster and faster they wanted us to move. What was the rush? Where was the fire? All morning they had hustled me along, spun me this way and that, with no explanation, no reason. It was enough. Who did they think I was? Who did they think they were?

  I didn't know if it was the lack of food, or the lack of sleep, or just the confusion of the past few days, but it was as if my mind just exploded. I couldn't take it anymore. They had killed Tata and expected me to feel nothing, to accept it, to go on. They had worked and starved Zayde to death, and again I was supposed to take it. I was an animal, without feelings, a Jew. Then Anya and Mama, my whole family torn from me in every ugly, evil way Hitler's army could devise, and I was supposed to accept it all. Who could endure such a thing? Who? Who?

  I turned back toward the guard, the one with the gun. Yes, it was time to see how they liked it. Time for them to see how it feels to watch someone you care about get her face blown off. It would be easy to grab the weapon away from her. Easy to pull the trigger and watch her face explode. It didn't matter that it would be the last thing I did. It didn't matter that I was about to commit the worst possible crime, the worst sin. God was already punishing me; now at least I would have given Him a reason. That was what was destroying me the most. There was no reason. Nothing made sense. The whole world had gone crazy. The good were punished, the evil rewarded. Now it was my turn to hand out the punishment.

  I fought my way through the crowd of women being shoved forward. The more I fought, the angrier I got, so by the time I had reached the guard, my whole body was heaving.

  The guard was so busy pushing the women forward and shouting her commands that she didn't see me approaching. Yes, I could grab the gun easily. I took another step forward. She looked up and saw me. I froze and it seemed as if everything around me came to a standstill. Only my mind kept moving, kept seeing. I was seeing myself breathing hard chunks of air, in and out, in and out. I saw myself in my baggy shirtdress that hung down to my ankles, and in my clogs, hard, the bottoms worn on one side. I could see my bald head, my skin stretched over my nose and my cheeks, and I knew that this was all I was. I was not a girl with dreams of someday becoming a great violinist, or of getting married and having children. I was not a girl with a family, or a house, or fancy clothes. I was not some
one who belonged to a shul, or who was known for her brown wavy hair with a strand that always jutted out in the back. I could no longer identify myself by what I owned, or who I knew, or what my dreams were. This—my body, my mind, my soul—was all I was. It is all any of us ever are, and without the camouflage of my dreams and possessions, I realized that everything I did, every thought I had, was all I was. Here in this place, in this skin, my actions and thoughts would be magnified. It was all very simple. If I killed the guard, all of who I was would be a murderer, not a murderer and a violinist who lived in a house and had a nice family—just a murderer. If I showed love, all of me would be a lover. Who then did I want to be?

  Facing the guard, I opened my mouth to speak and her gun came crashing down on my head.

  The next thing I knew I was looking up into the faces of many strangers, all looking alike and yet none of them familiar.

  "She's awake."

  I twisted around and saw that I was lying with my head in Bubbe's lap. Her knickers were stained with blood.

  "Chana, this place we're in, this Auschwitz, we must be careful. You cannot just—"

  "I know, Bubbe. I understand now. It won't happen again." I tried to sit up, but my head was too heavy.

  A woman I had never seen before crouched down beside me and took my hand. The other faces moved away. "To survive here you must be smarter than they are. We cannot act as they do; they will always win. They have the weapons and the dogs and the world on their side. We have only ourselves."

  "And God, praised be He," Bubbe added.

  "God? God? No. God is not on our side. God is nowhere!" I tried to sit up again. This time I succeeded. I looked around and saw that I was in a clay courtyard behind the barracks. There were no trees, grass, or flowers, just groups of women clustered about doing nothing but shivering and talking or sleeping on the hard clay.

  "Chana, do you really feel that is so?" Bubbe asked. "Do you really think God is nowhere?"

  "I don't know. I'm tired of trying to find God. Why doesn't He find me? Why doesn't He save me? You believe everything without questioning. But I have so many questions. There is so much I don't understand."

  "Hardship and suffering should not lessen our love for God. Everything we do, even here, should remain as it has always been, a means of communion with God. Remember, there is nothing, nothing here on this earth that is apart from the Shekhinah, God's presence."

  I wanted to scream. My head was spinning and Bubbe was trying to make sense out of nonsense.

  "How can you say that?" I said to her. "Look at the Nazis. Look at what they are doing to us. Didn't you see those bodies piled up in front of the buildings?"

  Bubbe nodded. "The guards, the SS, have done that, not God. Do not confuse the things people do to one another with what God does and is. It is their sins that make God seem so far away, but if we call upon Him in truth, He is here."

  "Well, have you not called upon Him in truth? Why then are we here? Why would God let us come to this? I am so hungry my own arm is starting to look good. No, God is nowhere."

  The woman who had been listening to us argue spoke up.

  "Do not fill your head with such things. I have been here already four weeks and I have learned that to think is to die."

  "That makes no sense," I said. "You said we must be smarter than they are and now you say not to think at all. Who are you?"

  The woman held out her hand. "My name is Rivke. I am from Poland, also, from Czernica, in the east. You will see for yourself soon enough that what I say is true."

  "What is this place?" I indicated the area around us. "What are we doing here?"

  Rivke laughed. Her laugh was pretty, musical, and all her movements and gestures were graceful. I wondered for an instant if I could make myself move the way she did, but with my head still hurting I was happy just to be sitting up.

  "We are in what the Blockälteste, block senior, calls the 'meadow.' It is pretty, no?" She sang another note of laughter. "We stay here all day. We cannot go inside. Inside it is worse, but there is cover when it rains. I would like to be there when it rains, no matter the smell."

  "But it cannot be any worse than this smell out here. I think maybe someone has stuffed my nose with treyf, unkosher meat."

  Rivke sucked in her breath. "You are not far from the truth. They pretend here, and we, too, pretend. We are not supposed to know, or to talk about it."

  "To know what? To talk about what?"

  "Enough, Chana," Bubbe said. "You ask too many questions. You should try to lie back down. Your head, it still bleeds a little."

  I felt the back of my head. It was sticky. I was sorry about Bubbe's knickers, but I did not want to change the subject.

  "No, I want to know," I said. "I am not a little girl, Bubbe." I saw the glances exchanged between Bubbe and Rivke and then, somehow, I knew. I knew, and I realized I had known all along, but my mind had refused to understand. The smells, the smoke in the chimneys—it was human flesh, human hair and bones burning. I was drenched in it, choking with it, but I knew that in order for me to live, I had to breathe, I had to inhale this residue of someone else's life.

  It seemed that we had been in the camp, in the meadow, for days before we were given our first meal, but Bubbe assured me it had only been hours since they had first shoved us back behind the barracks. Two young women with swollen legs and bare feet carted the meal in a large drum on two wheels to the center of the yard.

  Rivke stood up. "I must go now. I can talk with you later. You will not get your own bowl today; that you will have to organize. Oh, and stay to the back of the line when they serve, because all the real bits of food are at the bottom of the drum." Rivke started to walk away and then turned back around and added, "Also, drink your soup, no matter what. Chana, do not think about it, just drink it."

  I watched her walk away from us, and then Bubbe helped me stand up. My head was throbbing. "Is it all right back there?" I asked Bubbe. "It stings."

  "A good gash you have there, but Rivke said it is dangerous to go to the hospital. People rarely return."

  I followed Bubbe into the line behind Dvora and Lisette and Liselle. "Do you trust this Rivke?" I asked Bubbe. "She says the strangest things, I think. Maybe she has been here too long and her mind is gone."

  "She has been here four weeks, a week more than the average, so she has learned some things about surviving here. Yes, I trust her, and I think we need her. Maybe she needs us as well."

  We had to share our bowl of soup with Dvora and the twins. Every newcomer had to share a bowl with four others. The soup looked like weak tea with disgusting bits of food floating on top. It smelled like old socks and tasted worse.

  "You can have my share," I said to the others. "I do not feel well enough to even look at this."

  Bubbe stamped her foot. "Chana, enough of this! Rivke said do not think, just drink. Now, here, you close your eyes, you hold your nose, but you drink."

  "It is poison, but I will drink it, Bubbe. And then I will be sick."

  After our soup we were left again to stand, sit, or lie on the clay. The wind had begun to blow harder and the clouds to darken. Dvora, Bubbe, and I huddled together trying to keep warm, and the twins, who had found fellow Frenchwomen, left to form their own huddle.

  Rivke returned from her own block and wrapped her arms around us. "We will be a family together, we four," she said. "I can help you organize some things: spoons, bowls, a sweater for Chana, some smaller shoes for Dvora."

  "Organize?" Dvora said. "I don't understand."

  "Yes, here we 'organize' things—trade, bargain, steal, whatever it takes to get what you need to stay alive."

  "I will get by all right with my big shoes." Dvora shuddered. "I do not need to steal things. Stealing is wrong."

  I nodded my agreement. Bubbe remained silent and still.

  Rivke lowered her head. "I will not feel guilty for what I have done here. I trade and bargain where I can, but yes, I steal, too—not from th
e living, but from the dead."

  "That is even worse!" I said.

  "No, you will see. What does a dead person need with a piece of bread or a warm coat? It keeps me alive. I need that bread. I need what they leave behind. Don't make me feel guilty for trying to live. I have hurt no one, and you will see many Jews—prisoners like us—help the Germans. They agree to whip us and beat us so they can have a better place to sleep, or more food, or a kerchief for their head. I have hurt no one."

  Rivke was in tears by now. Dvora and Bubbe wrapped their arms around her and hugged her. I sat down on the ground. My head hurt. I felt overwhelmed by what this woman with the pretty hands and graceful movements was saying. I wanted to think. I just wanted everything to stop happening and people to stop talking so I could think about things.

  Rivke crouched down beside me. "You will not forgive me?"

  I looked away.

  "Today, this morning, I lost my sister. She is dead with typhus, and my friend Genia, she was taken yesterday for Aussenarbeit, outside work. She is in another block now. I need you as my family, and I can help you. It is a fair exchange, but not if you do not want me."

  "I am sorry about your sister. I have lost, too. I am just so confused. I think it is this crack on the head."

  Rivke leaned forward and kissed my forehead. "You can lie on my lap."

  I got up onto my knees and hugged her. She, along with Bubbe and Dvora, was my family now.

  Whistles began blowing on the other side of the block and before I knew what was happening, Rivke had grabbed me and started running. Dvora and Bubbe followed behind, along with many other women. We hid ourselves between two huts. We could hear a woman thrashing a whip and barking out orders. "Sixteen girls for Aussenarbeit. You there, and you." The whip cracked and the women screamed and moaned until sixteen women had been rounded up. When all was silent, we came out from our hiding spot.

  "They will work you to death if you get caught in one of those roundups. We are better off here for now," Rivke explained to us.

  The day dragged on. It started to rain, gently at first, and then in sheets. I was freezing, but even more than that, I was thirsty. I opened my mouth and let the water run in. I laughed out loud as I imagined the guards all running around trying to keep it from raining so we couldn't drink. Bubbe used the rain to get the blood on my head and her knickers cleaned off, thanking God for such a gift. The water was wonderful, but when I had had enough to drink and my head was clean, I wanted it to stop. By late afternoon the ground had turned into a gray mush that sucked at our clogs as we paraded around in circles. I began to hum to myself, keeping time with our pacing, and then Bubbe joined in, and then Dvora and Rivke. We were all humming when I heard the music. I heard violins and a flute and cymbals and a drum, playing real music—or was it? Had the hit on my head caused me to start hearing things? I stopped pacing. "Do you hear that?" I asked. "Do you hear the music?"