Mischling

by Affinity Konar

  Through my carelessness, I had betrayed my sister, and more. I was the lowest of Auschwitz. I had no right to shield myself from scorn, and yet—

  “It was all Uncle’s idea,” I cried. “I shouldn’t have let him do it, I know!”

  Confusion set Bruna’s eyes at an inquisitive slant. With her free hand, she motioned to the cards scattered across the snow.

  “I don’t know what Mengele has to do with this. All I know is that you peeked at my cards just now. I saw you! Admit it! Or don’t admit it and you’ll find a king in your mouth!”

  She crumpled the monarch in her fist and tried to pry my mouth open. Only when she peeled my lips back and lowered the card into my throat, crown first, did I realize that her anger was about a different game, not the one I’d been playing with Uncle. Strengthened by this epiphany, I spat out the king and with it a splinter of confession, a mere fraction of my misdeed.

  “You are never wrong, Bruna. I am a cheater.”

  “This is true. Don’t you go forgetting it.”

  “I won’t, I promise. You are the real winner here.”

  Bruna regarded the crumpled card in the snow, and the rarest of regrets crossed her face.

  “I’m sorry for shoving the king in your mouth.”

  “It should’ve been the joker.” I laughed, but it was a laugh unfamiliar to me. A desperate one, a bit ragged at the edges. A real beggar of a chortle. “But even a joker is too good for me! You would have to invent a card to suit my kind. The rot. The cheat. The germ. The disease—”

  Bruna cocked her head in contemplation. I couldn’t tell if she was disarmed or pleased by my abasement. That sort of innermost hatred? It wasn’t common in the Zoo. Most of the others, they did not have the luxury of disliking themselves because they were too consumed with survival. This was not among my problems.

  “The germ, maybe,” Bruna concluded. “But the rest? You take things too far, as usual!”

  I can imagine how I hung my head, but I couldn’t feel it. I was numb. I assumed this to be a side effect of deathlessness, nothing more, because after the doctor had meddled with my ear, his toying with me had ceased. He took photographs of me to put next to photographs of Pearl, but this was the extent of his inquiry. Occasionally, I wished that my numbness might overtake me so that I could rally enough to see a new way to preserve Pearl, to finagle a switch at the labs and take her place as the chosen one.

  Though I’d told my friend nothing of this sorrow, my face surely displayed it, because Bruna suddenly pulled me toward her in pity; she held me close and stroked my cheek with her own, as if I were just another swan in need of her rescue.

  “Don’t make me feel sorry for you now, Smidgen. You get me so angry!”

  I apologized.

  “Stop apologizing! You’ll apologize yourself into the cremo.”

  I told Bruna she was right.

  “Stop telling me I’m right! What if I’m not right?” She sank back onto her stump and stamped her boots, restless. I saw her eyes; they were sinking into her face. I saw her hands; the little bones in them were rising to the surface. “Let me tell you—I just don’t know anymore. I am finding myself with nothing to say, nothing to look forward to. Stealing doesn’t have the same satisfaction when it’s stealing crumbs. Beating people doesn’t mean much when they’re already beaten.”

  I wasn’t sure what I could say, so I said only:

  “I miss Patient.”

  Bruna broke from the embrace and returned to her cards with a furious shuffle.

  “I won’t say that I miss him. But I’ll let you say that without spitting in your face. That’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?”

  I agreed that it was. Bruna pocketed her cards and glanced about to see if anyone was lurking. She waited for Ox to lumber past before confiding in a low voice, “Don’t tell anyone that I miss him. People here, they need to see me in a certain way. They need to see my new sweater and know how I got it. You know how I got it, Stasha?”

  “You stole it.”

  “Why, of course! But I’m not sure if it is quite stealing because I stole it for you. Just don’t tell anyone. Not even Pearl.”

  “We don’t have secrets, Pearl and me.” This, of course, was me denying the fact that I was quite sure that Pearl was harboring the most terrible secret of all.

  “Everyone has a secret here,” Bruna scoffed. And then she draped her sweater over my back and gestured for me to join her on her walk. When I refused, she trotted off through the snow, eager to keep her daily appointment of teasing the Lilliputs.

  The sweater was the finest I’d ever seen among prisoners, and it was large too; it hung from me so voluminously that I was sure that it could sleep Pearl and me through the night in an unusual degree of comfort. I should have been happier for this acquisition. It was proof that Bruna loved me. But happiness wouldn’t have me, not then. Movement wouldn’t have me either. And of course, there was that dull whine in my bad ear that made me want to shriek.

  I sat watching the snow fall, watched it erase me. Surely, my captors envied the snow this talent. I was thinking about them more in those days. In earlier times, I’d been able to block them from my mind with my wild, mischling hope, but as Pearl’s pain swelled and begged within me, as it fevered and limped through my every corner, searching for another solution and mocking my inability to save her, I’d found it impossible to continue without dwelling on what our captors had done to us, and in such an organized fashion that they made us turn on each other. I swore I would never turn on anyone but Uncle, and I solidified this vow by kissing Pearl’s piano key.

  One of Uncle’s promises had come to pass—we were to be entertained the way that real living people were entertained. For an evening, we wouldn’t have to amuse ourselves with another round of Tickle the Corpse or hour after hour of knitting a useless blanket out of barbed wire. No, on that late-October evening, shortly before the women’s orchestra was to be dispersed, we were going to be able to listen to the music not from the distant barracks, but in the room of its origin. I knew that I was undeserving of such a pleasure, but I hoped that perhaps I’d be able to listen intently enough that I might later describe the music to Mama and Zayde.

  “Stay still,” Pearl commanded Sophia as the little girl squirmed. My sister had a tin cup full of snow that she dipped her fingers in to wash away the accumulations on the children’s cheeks. A whole row of them lined up at our bunk to be cleaned.

  Pearl had her doubts about this concert.

  “It’s a trick,” she said. “Probably a selection in disguise. If they are presentable”—she nodded toward others in line behind Sophia—“their chances will be better.”

  For the past several hours, my sister had dedicated herself to the hygiene of any small girl who would permit such a fuss. She scrubbed their cheeks and chins, cleared their nails of grime with the edge of a pin. Watching her worry over prettiness, I was reminded of Mama, who loved to embellish us even though she neglected herself.

  I wondered what Mama would have thought of how we looked, of the distinctions that had spread themselves across our faces.

  Pearl had a grayness to her; silver moons had crept beneath her eyes, and when I caught sight of her tongue, I saw that it had grown its own fur. Pearl’s tongue had always been much wiser than mine. I told myself that it had donned this ugly coat as a protective measure, to shield it from saying ugly things, and that my own tongue could benefit from such a precaution. But I could not trick myself into thinking that fur on a tongue was a good thing.

  I hoped that I looked as ill as she did.

  Naturally, Pearl detected these hopes.

  “But it is good that you don’t look ill,” she told me as she dismissed Sophia and put her fingers to work on yet another set of cheeks. Alize, the tiny recipient of her attentions, regarded her dolefully, as if even she doubted that Pearl was strong enough to complete this simple operation.

  I asked Pearl if there was anything I didn’t
know, and I warned her not to lie. I knew she was keeping a much larger suffering hidden from me. My insides told me so.

  “Are you playing doctor again?” She laughed.

  I told her that I’d put such pursuits—or, rather, the ruse of them—to rest after killing Patient.

  “You didn’t kill him,” she argued.

  And then she lapsed into the same narrative we’d lullabied ourselves to at bedtime for weeks, the one about how some live and die, some sacrifice and die, some cheat and die, and some simply escape and are never heard from again, and, yes, they probably died too.

  I was tired of these explanations. Again, I insisted—what was this pain that she was keeping from me?

  “I couldn’t keep anything from you if I wanted to,” she protested, and then she closed my eyes, her fingertips warm on my lids. “Tell me, what am I thinking of right now?”

  My mind was so crowded with anticipation of the concert that it took some doing, but then, with a little focus, I saw constellations of hurt, little sparks of light on a background of numbness. The little lights appeared to glow in a maze that my thoughts couldn’t quite navigate. I turned this corner and that corner and found suffering, but the suffering wasn’t specific enough for me to recognize it. In short, I had no idea what she was thinking.

  “I don’t understand,” I admitted.

  The beginnings of a tear gleamed in her eye. She tossed her head back so that it wouldn’t fall. And then I understood.

  “You’re worried about my ear, aren’t you? You think that I truly am going deaf?”

  She nodded, and then bit her bottom lip as she focused on Alize’s hair. As she tugged her comb through the tangles, I saw cause for alarm. I wasn’t sure how it had escaped my notice before, but I wasn’t going to let another minute go by without addressing it.

  “Give me your arm,” I ordered.

  “I’m working,” she spat, but the child took this moment of distraction to bolt up and make a run for the door. We watched her dash off, saw her form grow smaller and smaller as it gained distance.

  “I hope she doesn’t regret that.” Pearl sighed. “But at the very least, she can run.”

  “Your arm, please.”

  She outstretched it. It was clammy to the touch, bruised here and there. Most notably, it had more needle pricks in it than I’d ever had even when I was a frequent subject in the laboratory. Never had I borne so many marks. Pearl had dozens. Rosy scabs marched up and down the length of her flesh like questing ants. When I inquired about this curious swarm, she withdrew the be-scabbed arm with a start and tried to smile it all away.

  “You know how clumsy Elma is,” she said. “She’s always missing my veins.”

  She waved me away, dropped her chin. Her shoulders too. The whole of her became limp; it was as if her bones were snapping, collapsing her from within. But as soon as another little girl presented herself for prettying, she resumed her normal posture.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said, her voice so bright that it drew my attention to the dullness of her skin. Her complexion wasn’t far from the type I’d seen on children who were here one day and vanished the next. In all her preparations to ensure the safety of the others, she’d failed to fake her own well-being. I’d have to do it for her. I took up a trick I learned from the women who had traveled with us in the cattle car, wise women who knew the value of a rosy face.

  With the point of my bread knife, I dug a little well in my wrist. The well offered me two drops of blood. I only needed one, but I didn’t reject the other. Even drops of blood, I knew, liked to travel in pairs. With this redness, I affixed a false health to the apples of her cheeks.

  I told Pearl that she had to look her best that evening, that there would be many people in show business at the concert who could discover her and set her free and put her in the American movies. Though I had no desire to live in America myself, I would be sure to follow her there, for the sake of her sunny career, and we’d all live together, Pearl and Mama and Zayde and me, in some place with a hummingbird in it, and a garden, a dog, weather that didn’t want to do us any harm. It could be a fine life. Zayde would have the Pacific to swim in, and Mama would have more than just poppies to paint. A new set of seas and flora and exotics, that is what they needed.

  But before I had a chance to tell Pearl any of this, Ox arrived at the door. In a strict line, we marched through our early snow toward an unfamiliar season, one that promised music meant for the living.

  Inside, we arranged ourselves against the brick of the rear wall and watched the members of the orchestra tinker and ready themselves, saw them empty valves and adjust their reeds. They were a group of women with close-cropped hair, each aged beyond age, and their premature antiquity was emphasized by the girlishness of their clothes—uniforms of knife-pleated blue skirts, blouses brimming with scalloped collars. Their throats were sinewy, and every arm that held an instrument was elongated, as if their bodies had decided to compensate in length for what they lacked in volume. While the musicians’ hands moved as if all were well with the world, their faces did not forget where they were, and they didn’t let you forget either. Downcast of eye and drawn of lip, these performers were the grimmest figures in the room. Sadder than the Lilliputs, who were mourning the recent loss of their patriarch in their finest clothes. More melancholy than the women of the Puff, faded women in pastel dresses, their heads stooped like too-heavy blooms atop tired stalks, all of them milling about the tables set up for the enjoyment of the SS, tables piled high with cheese and sardines and pastries and meats. Even the aggrieved expression of the smoked pig, his scream plugged in his mouth by a lacquer-red apple, was outdone by the frantic sadness of the musicians.

  The women had been playing since the early morning. Even though the transports had ceased, they had orders to play while the prisoners worked, accompanying their struggle with bright music that gave the impression of a hardy and cheerful place none of us were familiar with. It wasn’t music that promised the gas or the grave; it didn’t mention the forgetful-bread, the numbers, or the bones. I don’t know what it was supposed to promise us.

  I would’ve asked the Dutch pianist, Anika, her opinion on this matter if I’d had a chance. She had one of those all-knowing faces, eyes that moved in recognition of the unbearable. Many around me were in possession of such eyes, but Anika’s burned a bit brighter at the time, their luminescence a remnant of what she’d attempted at the border of the electric fence days before.

  The others had held her back. They said it didn’t matter whether her little boy was alive anymore or not; she had to endure for him still so that she could tell someone someday what they had done to him. Why can’t I tell the devil? she’d asked. It seemed a good question to me, but then again, I figured if there really was a devil, he already knew. And while I had no fear of the inventions Catholics like Anika believed in, I admired her willingness to face such a monster in demand of answers, simply because her pain was so great that it recognized only suicide as her friend.

  And you’d think—given what the authorities said my father did—that I would have understood suicide long ago, that I would have known its color, its cry, its scent. And it’s true that I’d been born with thoughts of it within me; it was my only difference from Pearl, and my greatest instinct until Uncle thwarted the very possibility of it. But it wasn’t until I saw Anika’s eyes that I truly knew the suffocation of this notion’s friendship, the way it crept and curled within you, the way it said, Look, here is another way, let me save you.

  Years later, the world would learn how common suicide was among these musicians. So few resisted it after they were freed. But I swear, that very day, I had some suspicion of it, the impulse that might follow them. I heard it in every note that the musicians played. The flutist squeaked, the oboist lowed, the drummer snared, and in these sounds there was written something else, a hidden meaning, a doubled message about beauty and its opposite.

  Beside me at the wall, Pearl a
nd Peter were ear-deep in whispers. They stood arm to arm, leg to leg; they managed a discreet clasp of hands. Pearl was wearing the sweater Bruna stole for us, and the strawberries on her dress had faded to dull orbs, like planets too pale to sustain life. Peter had slicked his hair back in an attempt to look like a gentleman. I’d heard he performed a thousand push-ups every day but saw no evidence of this. He appeared weak to me, just another moony boy, and I couldn’t help but worry for him. Peter was attached to Pearl, and no good could come of that, because while he was a messenger boy, she was going places as soon as the war ended, and possibly even before that. Perhaps this very evening, I thought, someone would discover her and whisk her away to the new life she deserved, a life as a star or, at the very least, a life as someone who had a future.

  Catching sight of my stare—I suppose it was unfriendlier than I realized—Peter dropped her hand and smiled at me in an attempt at a familial feeling.

  “The orchestra’s improved since they arrested more Poles,” he said, too loudly, in my direction. And when I didn’t grasp this offered thread of conversation, he flushed a little and mumbled something about having to excuse himself. Pearl tried to persuade him to linger but—

  “There will be other shows,” he said.

  If I had known what was to happen, I would have begged him to stay. Years later, I would wonder if he might have changed what I could not, if he could have spared my sister even a portion of her pain.

  But I was a stupid and possessive person, too attached to know real love, and so I didn’t stop him when he picked his way through the childish crowd or the members of the orchestra or the throng of guards with the women of the Puff splayed over their knees.