Mischling

by Affinity Konar

  “Do ghosts bruise?” she inquired, pinch after pinch.

  “I’m not sure, Bruna,” Patient said, puffing out his chest. “I know only that your bruises are too embarrassed to be seen with you. I miss your white hair, though—you should wear it the old way. Charcoal merely dulls your beauty.”

  Apparently, Patient had learned suaveness and cruelty within the confines of the infirmary. Bruna was flattered and impressed.

  “That’ll do, flea,” she said, and gave him the respect of a bow.

  The others laughed, and then fell on him with questions. What was it like to be the first to return? Had he eaten anything interesting? Had he seen any of the others—to be specific, had he seen any of the others who went by the name Pearl Zamorski?

  The last question was mine.

  It was a great honor to be the first, he said. He hadn’t met any pastries in there, but at the worst point in his illness he’d had the good fortune to hallucinate the smell of brisket. Pearl? She had been nowhere near, but all people tended to look the same in the infirmary, even though—

  I slipped away, with the excuse that I had a letter to write.

  He caught up with me quickly, his legs moving faster than they’d ever been capable of before, and the curious strength of this stride made me wonder if I was walking with the real Patient at all. Perhaps Uncle had sent an impostor back. Indeed, he introduced himself by a new name.

  “You may no longer refer to me as Patient,” he said. “Call me Feliks.”

  “Oh? Is that your name?”

  “No. It was my brother’s name. But I think I should have it for him now.”

  This made sense to me. Other things didn’t. I asked this Feliks why he was alive.

  “That’s a cruel thing to say.”

  By all rights, I argued, he shouldn’t have been. He was twinless, after all.

  “So are you—and you still live. You look like the dead, though.”

  I made no attempt to dispute this.

  “I bet you’ll want to know what saved me, since you are curious about medicine and all,” he said.

  Then, as if to test my interests, he revealed the unique method of his survival. Jumping ahead of me as I walked, he shimmed down the loose waist of his pants and turned his back to me. A stump of a tail rode the space directly above his buttocks. The wriggle of this deformity—I could imagine Uncle’s fascination.

  “That’s a fine trick.”

  “You can touch it.” He reached for my hand.

  “I don’t want to touch it.” My hand recoiled.

  “If you touch it, it might bring you luck too.”

  Luck being unreliable in the Zoo, I continued to decline. He shrugged and lifted up his pants, thankfully concealing the little stub.

  “It’s always been with me. My brother was the same. The ambulance is never coming for me. I’m too valuable.”

  “Will you tell me more about the infirmary, Patient—I mean, Feliks? What was it like? I need to know.”

  He was only too happy to talk. He told me about row after row of beds, the thin soups, the crow that he could never see but whose caw woke him every morning. I listened and didn’t question. Already, a map was spreading itself across my mind.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Stasha.” He shook his head. “She’s not there.”

  “Only Pearl knows what I’m thinking,” I said.

  But it was true that as I turned from him I had a fantasy in my mind, and in this fantasy people had disguised my sister, given her a new name. They’d probably slipped her something that made her forget about herself, because they knew that the separation from me was a great risk to her health. When it was safe, though, they would give her an antidote.

  We would find each other still. This Feliks had proven it—a return was possible.

  December 8, 1944

  Dear Pearl,

  It is our birthday. But I am less certain of how old we are. We cannot be thirteen, not here. But maybe I am confused. I know you kept the time for us. I am not good at it. I am not good at any of our duties these days. Least of all the funny and the future. I am just glad that we did not give ourselves the task of finding the beautiful. There is nothing beautiful here, Pearl. I know only the ugly.

  But here is one thing: The Russians have sent us a gift. The planes increased in number today. Can you see them?

  The morning after our birthday, I woke to find a thread of smoke drifting around my barrel. I checked my sleeves, my shoes. Nothing appeared to be on fire. I pulled up my blouse, poked my belly button—I was sure that whatever Uncle Doctor had put in me was now scorching me from within.

  Vermin! said the smoke.

  I agreed with its assessment.

  Out with you! said the smoke. It sounded strangely like Nurse Elma. But I obeyed, and bolted up, coughing. As soon as I exited, ash fell before my eyes. Nurse Elma loomed above, a cigarette wagging between her lips.

  “You are needed!” she declared. “In the laboratory!”

  I liked you better when you were smoke, I said.

  “What is that you say? Speak up!”

  “What can I do for you today, Nurse Elma?”

  “Portrait time!” she declared.

  I’d sat and stood and contorted for so many pictures already, all of them naked, all of them in the cold capture of the camera’s eye, but every time, I’d done so with my sister. I’d never imagined that I’d be photographed without her; I wondered if I would even be able to stand for the photographer. But when Nurse Elma ushered me into a room in the laboratory, I saw neither the usual equipment nor any other subjects.

  There was only a woman behind an easel, her face obscured by a canvas. Past its edge I could spy the crescent of an ear, a stretch of near-barren scalp tufted with gray. She wore the uniform of a prisoner and a gray shawl; her feet were shod with shoes of different heights. Though thin, the ankles above these mismatched shoes struck me as pretty in the way that I thought of things from my past as pretty: charm bracelets and potted violets in the window box, fires I built in the fireplace, Mama’s Sabbath tablecloth.

  Nurse Elma instructed the woman to begin and seated herself in the rear of the room to flip through her usual material, a magazine filled with actresses. I thought I saw Pearl’s face on the cover, thought I saw her winking at me. I miss you, Stasha, the mouth on the cover said. Things just aren’t the same. But I am better here. I was just about to ask Pearl whether the place she referred to was the afterlife or California, but then the mouth opened wide and the cover girl began to sing. That’s when I realized it wasn’t Pearl at all, but a cinema star, because Pearl’s singing voice was far superior to that. Do you know where Pearl is? I asked the cinema star, deep in my head, where no one, not even Nurse Elma, could hear. I suppose I asked it too quietly, because the cinema star didn’t appear to hear it at all, she just kept singing, and then Nurse Elma, seeing that I was staring at the cover girl, mistook my gaze for one of enjoyment rather than investigation and folded the magazine in half with a resentful flourish.

  I could hear the artist pause at her easel while taking in this action, and then the movements of the brush resumed. I listened as it described my features. It seemed to mean well, but it moved slowly, as if it were having a difficult time deciding what to do with my face. I wanted to apologize to the artist for being so broken and ugly. I wanted to give her something redemptive to focus on.

  Because beauty redeems the world, that’s what Papa always said. He’d said it at a time when I couldn’t imagine why the world might require redemption at all, a time when I wasn’t even certain what redemption was. I was sure that Pearl felt the same way as Papa about beauty’s redemptive powers, and for the first time, I found myself wanting to know if they were together at last, in the same place. Fortunately, Nurse Elma saved me from reaching the conclusion of this grim thought when she rose from her chair and stalked across the room to smack me on the head with her magazine.

  “Don’t look like that, St
asha.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you are about to cry. It changes the features too much.”

  “Should I smile?”

  She raised her magazine again, ready to issue another crack, but then thought better of it—I saw her glance up, fearful that Uncle might have entered the room unseen, as he so often did.

  “Do you look like yourself when you smile?” She smirked.

  I look like my past self, I wanted to say, but I remained silent. Nurse Elma gave me an instructive slap on the cheek. I wondered if it would leave a mark. If it did, I was sure that the artist would not be permitted to render it.

  “Of course you don’t smile!” Elma crowed. “Smiles change faces too. What the doctor wants here is accuracy. Stare straight ahead, eyes open, mouth still. So simple, any infant could do it!”

  She then returned to her chair, and contented herself with her magazine. I felt sorry for the cover girl—it wasn’t her fault that she was a picture in a magazine that was forced to participate in Nurse Elma’s abuse.

  As instructed, I kept my gaze straight ahead. I focused on the brick-edged window that sat above the artist, hoping that a singing or cooing bird might light on the sill and provide the artist with something to listen to as she worked. Since Pearl’s disappearance, I’d noticed that animal life had become increasingly rare in Auschwitz. There was little hope of any arriving just because I wanted it to, and when no bird appeared, I put one there with my mind. In its beak, I made it carry a sprig of olive branch. But the bird kept dropping it. Even my own imagination, it seemed, had abandoned me.

  I was stirred from this fantasy by Nurse Elma. She rose with her magazine and, with a barking order for me to behave, banged out the door.

  With her exit, the sound of the brush increased. I saw the artist peer around the edge of the canvas, exposing a single eye. The eye was sunken and dark, afflicted, but illness hadn’t starved it of warmth.

  “I’d like to see you smile,” the artist said in a voice that matched the friendliness of the eye. There was something familiar in that voice, but I told myself that it was just the rasp it carried—that starved, battered edge that all prisoners eventually acquired. Still, there was something different about the artist’s speech—even the coughing that ended her sentence had a rare charm.

  “But Elma—”

  “What does Elma know of art? She’s just a monkey, a sham, a silly lady. Come now, give me a smile.”

  I gave my best attempt.

  “Wider now, show your teeth. Do I need to tell you a joke? How can I make you laugh?”

  I told the artist that as hard as I tried to smile, I hadn’t been able to in recent days. Jokes only hurt.

  “A story, then,” she said. “I’ll tell you a story about two girls. Would you like that?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, then,” the artist said. “I’m not so good at telling stories. But I’ll try. There were two girls in Lodz. Twins. Exactly alike in every way. When the midwife left after the birth, their parents couldn’t tell them apart. So their father put their first initials on their feet. The next day, when he bathed them, the letters washed away. The father was distraught. How could he know which girl was which? He tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter. After all, the girls had only had their names for a day. How attached to them could they be? He put fresh letters on the bottoms of their feet and didn’t say a word to his wife. Later that evening, he confessed his error. The wife only laughed. She whistled in front of the babies. The one that stirs at the whistle, she said, should be marked S. She whistled, but neither of the babies stirred. Then the father joined her, and the zayde and the bubbe too. They all whistled together and when the whistling didn’t work, they clanged pots and pans over the cradle; they got out Zayde’s clarinet and played even though no one could play well. They woke the whole neighborhood in their efforts to find out the babies’ names. Still, neither baby responded. Already, both were living in their own world. It was as if they were content watching everyone scramble to tell them apart.”

  “That wasn’t a funny story,” I said. Or at least I think that’s what I said; I might have said something else, because I was so overwhelmed by the artist’s voice and her story. “And you should have told me years ago, Mama. Because all this time I have believed that I’m Stasha, but now I might be Pearl?”

  The artist laughed the laugh I knew so well, and then she became Mama, my mama, though a Mama far removed from even the Mama of the cattle car.

  “Is this your way of saying that you still won’t smile?” she said. Or I think that’s what she said. I’m not sure because her mouth was buried on the top of my head, since she’d risen from her seat to embrace me. Then, realizing the danger of this, she crept back.

  We enjoyed the rapture of seeing and hearing and loving each other for the briefest of moments, and then—

  “Where is your sister?” she whispered.

  I told her I didn’t know. I told her about “Come Make Me Happy.” I told her about Pearl’s footprints and the field of poppies.

  Mama dropped her brush. The tip of it was loaded with white; it streaked an ivory swath of erasure across the floor.

  “That can’t be,” she said. “I’ve only painted pairs of portraits. In every case, intact pairs only.” And just as her voice began to climb in its despair, she rose and walked toward me and she embraced me with all the remnants of her strength, and she cried with what was left of her tears. “I am so happy to see you, Stasha. I could not be happier.”

  I buried my face in the star at her breast. There was so much I wanted to know. Why hadn’t I seen her at the fence like so many of the other twins’ mothers? I could see that Uncle was fulfilling his promise about the paint—though in a roundabout, very strange way—but was she getting enough bread? Was Zayde enjoying his swims at the pool?

  As each question was asked, she gave me a kiss on the forehead, but at the last, she crumpled, and she begged me not to look at her—just for a moment, she said, don’t look, she said, let’s not do this this way, let’s do it another way, when we’re in a different world than this, a world that knows not to let such things happen. Don’t look, she said.

  I wish I hadn’t disobeyed her.

  Because when I saw her face, I saw Zayde. And he wasn’t resting in his barracks; he wasn’t throwing dice or talking politics or trading recipes or toasting the memory of a starling. He wasn’t even dying in a swimming pool. There was no real hold, no center, nothing distinctive about what I saw. What had been done to him was the same that had been done to so many, and it continued still.

  Seeing my horror, all Mama could do was say my name. She said it until she couldn’t say it anymore, and then she started to say Pearl’s. She said it over and over, as if in an incantation.

  “Don’t let them hear you,” I whispered.

  And then the last bleat of her missing daughter’s name shifted into a cough, and we heard steps approaching the door, and Mama jumped a step back from me, tripping over her ill-fitting shoes. We were lucky that she had been quick to move, as Nurse Elma soon sidled through the doorway with her awful face. She was not pleased to see my mother away from her easel and so close to me.

  “I had to get a closer look,” she explained to Nurse Elma before scurrying back to her chair. “My eyes aren’t what they should be. I couldn’t get her mouth right.”

  “A fine thing—an artist with bad eyes!” Elma scoffed. “Do you think you can get it right now?”

  Mother’s voice dropped.

  “I swear,” she vowed. “I will make everything right.”

  If Nurse Elma had been at all attentive, her curiosity would’ve been aroused by the little catch in my mother’s voice, by the way that she looked at me as she returned to her work. She even managed to sneak a nod and a grin to me while Elma stalked about in search of things to criticize. She paced the brief length of the room, and then stopped.

  “Why is there paint on this floor? So
clumsy and wasteful.” She made a big show of her patent shoes as she toed the offending splotch of white.

  “Clean it,” Elma ordered Mama. “You have made this mess.”

  She flung a rag at my mother, who obediently stooped to the floor to pick it up but lapsed into another coughing fit. I took the rag before she could grasp it and moved it over the white paint until the rag was consumed.

  The artist—because that was how I had to think of my mother while she was being kicked by Elma—apologized, and swore to be more careful. She greatly appreciated the opportunity to paint rather than work at the factory or in Canada or at the Puff.

  Nurse Elma surveyed the canvas.

  “I believe this will be adequate for our purposes.”

  “I am not finished,” Mama said.

  But Nurse Elma’s face said different.

  “Mama,” I whispered. “Don’t be frightened when you see Pearl. Because you will see her—she will come back. And we are still the same, all of us—”

  “You may leave, Stasha,” Nurse Elma said. She collared me in her usual style and led me out the door, so annoyed by my emotion and the tears of the artist that she failed to notice that I slipped the rag, an object blessed by my mother’s touch, into the waistband of my skirt.

  I slept that night with that rag pressed to my cheek. Some might think that strange, but I did it because my mother had just told me her belief. She believed us to be the last remaining members of our family. She hadn’t told me in words but in the way that she’d painted my face. She’d painted it untrue, with hardly a real resemblance at all—this was a nice gesture toward subterfuge that I appreciated, but there was also an unmistakable element of mourning in it, the specific pierce of a mother’s lamentation.

  December 18, 1944

  Dear Pearl,

  Mama is alive. Are you too?

  It was true, Mama was with us still. She painted our face, and, for a second or so, she and I had been restored to our real selves; we sat in our seats as if they were the chairs in our old house, and we looked at each other in a way that concealed our pain.