Finishing my blanket was always a good cover for spying on my sister. Whenever my fingers were busied with this project, Stasha didn’t suspect that I listened to her. On that day, I remember that she opened her examination by inquiring after the white streaks in her subject’s hair.
“Not always like this,” he answered. “My hair turned old overnight. My brother’s too.”
“Overnight?”
“Or over a few nights. I wouldn’t know when exactly. It happened on the way here. It’s not like we had mirrors in our cattle car.”
Stasha inquired about his background. The boy gave this a good deal of thought, screwing up his face in contemplation, before offering his relevant details.
“I’ve won five fights in my life. Three with my fists, and two with my teeth. Don’t ask me how many I’ve lost. If you ask me how many I’ve lost, you’ll just start a fight.”
No, she insisted, his background.
“My father was a rabbi. My mother was a rabbi’s wife. My father, the rabbi, he is alive still, probably. He was always saying that in the dark, all cats are gray. He had a lot of good sayings like that.”
Stasha clarified: It was his medical background that she was interested in. And so they proceeded to discuss what Mengele had taken, punctured, and tinkered with. He spoke of instruments that clinked and saws that whirred, and when he was finished, he told us both to pray that we were never visited by these intrusions to the abdomen.
“You sound like Clotilde,” Stasha said. “We don’t pray. Our zayde, he prayed from time to time, but mostly he prayed to science.”
Patient found the force of her protest amusing. He flexed his right biceps for show, biceps that resembled nothing more than a huddled pile of peas.
“I don’t let prayer put me on my knees,” he said. “But there’s nothing wrong with asking to become a tiger, a lion, a wildcat, especially since I will be thirteen soon. I pray for the murderous stuff within me to overtake the damage that he does, so I can leave here someday and satisfy a Russian woman. And even if she isn’t satisfied—well, she’ll likely give me another go because I will be charming, and charismatic, a real gent. I wasn’t always this way, this determined. But my twin—I have to carry on his legacy. You didn’t know him, Stasha. But you can be sure that he didn’t spend his time mooning after Mengele’s lack of conscience. Even in his death, my double, the one so peaceful in life, so popular, so affectionate—now that he is gone, I believe he dreams about stringing Nazis up and setting their guts free of their bodies. Now, his dreams of vengeance live on in me. You can play nurse all you want, Stasha, but I can only be a killer.”
“I’m not playing nurse—there is something else I am doing.” Stasha pouted. She rested her book on her knee, glanced about to see if anyone might have overheard this confession. “Can you imagine that maybe I have the same interests too?”
“Tell me, what are you trying to do? What is this big thing, this plan that you have? Are you going to escape? You saw what happened to Rozamund and Luca.”
“I didn’t see.”
“Shot!” He threw up his arms, staggered backward, and sank to the ground, mimicking the fall of the martyrs. “Shot for nothing. No good came of it.”
“Well, it is a good thing that my plan is different, isn’t it?” Stasha walked over to where he lay in the dust and took in the configurations of his bones.
“There are only two kinds of plans here,” Patient claimed. “There used to be three plans, but that third plan—the plan to get enough to eat—has become impossible.”
Stasha paused to consider this statement and then scribbled away in her book before declaring the examination finished. She said this in an overly loud voice in the hopes that Mengele might pass through the yard on his way to his tortures and stumble upon this testament to her nascent genius. To Patient, she said nothing of her observations about his health except that he shouldn’t abstain from eating rats, given his condition.
“They’re not kosher,” he sniffed.
“Neither is the bread,” she retorted. I was starting to think that the book was her way of avoiding eye contact; she ducked into it immediately, as if shamed by her own words.
Her charge just looked at her sympathetically. It was then that it became obvious to me: Patient was being her patient just so he could keep her alive.
And Patient needed saving himself.
The problem was this: Patient’s brother was dead and so he wasn’t a twin anymore. The twinless were expendable. When you became twinless, you had days, maybe a week, before you were reunited with your twin in the mortuary for study. These reunions never announced themselves, but we all saw the pattern: We knew Mischa had died, and we saw Augustus disappear soon after. We learned that Herman was no more, and we waved good-bye to Ari, his nose pressed against the window of the ambulance. Disappearances were inevitable, marked with red crosses on the sides of the vehicles that carried our companions away.
As the keeper of time and memory, I saw fit to put notches in the wooden arm of our bunk to record each day that Patient remained with us.
“What are these for?” Stasha had asked, moving her fingertip over the initial four indentations.
“The members of our family,” I’d answered.
And when the notches numbered five?
“For the members of our family including our dead,” I told her.
Satisfied, she ran her fingers over the grooves to indicate her approval. As the notches increased, I came up with new explanations. I said that they were for the things I missed, the favors I owed Bruna, the kindnesses Stasha had shown me.
Fortunately, the forgetful-bread made this deception easy. Every new explanation rang true to her so long as the bromide continued to line her stomach.
When the notches on the bunk recorded more than nine days, I couldn’t imagine why he’d been spared for so long. I figured that Mengele was so busy with so many other bodies, he had momentarily forgotten about the boy. Or maybe he truly did have some respect for Stasha and was allowing her the fun of her own experiment. After all, Mengele was known for breaking the rules to foster his own amusements, and no one appeared to amuse him more than Stasha.
October 14, 1944
The white truck came to carry us off, chuffing up in the dust like some important beast with its false Red Cross insignia blazing over one side. And under the supervision of that false cross, stitched on the uniforms of nurses and doctors, splayed over the walls of the laboratory, Stasha’s blood was taken and given back to me; my blood was taken and given to a bucket; Stasha’s spine was prodded with needles while mine sang out with sympathy; we were photographed and drawn; we heard the cries of others down the hallway, saw the flash of the camera, and when the light got too bright, Mengele took Stasha from me with his usual long-dawning smile and a whistle of equal length. She looked back at me, over her shoulder, as they entered a private room.
The doctor would take special care of Stasha, Nurse Elma said.
Whether hours or minutes passed, I couldn’t be sure. I knew only that when Stasha emerged from that room she held her head at a tilt, like a marionette with a broken string, and she cupped her left ear with one hand as if trying to prevent the entry of a single sound.
But even before I saw Stasha’s injury I knew what made it.
I knew because as I’d waited in my chair I’d felt something pour and bubble down the canal of my ear; I’d felt it course and stream in a way that defied my understanding, and I cried out in recognition of this shared pain, which was very unfortunate indeed, because it attracted Nurse Elma’s attention. She turned from the reflective surface of the medicine cabinet, where she’d been passing the wait stabbing at her gums with a pick and smoothing her curls.
“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 the
y 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.
October 20, 1944
Doctor keeps vials in a box. They are marked War Materials, Urgent. I know that there are vials with my name on them, with Pearl’s name on them. He is careful not to mix them up. He is careful in most things concerning organization, but I am beginning to wonder about his skills as a physician.
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.
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