Mischling

by Affinity Konar

  And they would smile and say that we should go to this place or that place. She was sure to turn up, they said. If she was alive, they said.

  “Of course she is alive,” we’d say, pointing to the photograph. “Look at this face!”

  All we could do after the conclusion of these visits was look at the newspaper. There Pearl was, nesting in Dr. Miri’s arms, with fences rising on either side of them, as if they were trapped in a garden with hedges of wire. If you looked at the picture long enough, you could sense the grip of the doctor’s hands, or feel the prick of the frost. Whenever we returned to Feliks’s house, the newspaper lived in Papa’s dresser drawer, alongside our guns. He kept it there because I looked at it too much, he said. There were rules, he said, and they were imposed for my own health. He was not wrong in this. If I looked at the picture in the morning, I couldn’t bring myself to eat. If I looked at it in the evening, I could not sleep. And so my visits with the pictured Pearl were confined to the afternoon. If I looked at her with both eyes blurred, it was easy to imagine that she looked at me too.

  Tears must have been invented for that reason, I thought.

  On the first day of March, I confessed my stupidity about Mengele and my deathlessness to Papa. It was the weather’s fault—it coaxed me with its beauty. Crocuses began to thrust up their heads in the animal houses. Birds returned. Buildings began to hold themselves high. Baby became round and hardy at the breast of a wet nurse. Humbled by this splendor, I could only hang my head and tell my secrets—I was sure that Papa would be ashamed. But he assured me that I did what I did in order to survive. And then he called Feliks over for a story.

  “It is only because of a curse, or many curses, that I survived,” Papa said. “When they first took me from Lodz, I marched with the other captives, on the roadsides, through fields. Often, we would come upon fellow Jews in disguise. I told myself that they would save us if they could. It didn’t matter to me that they did nothing to support this belief. I took care not to look at them. I feared that if I did, they would crumble and be forced to join us. On a day I was sure I would starve to death, we were led through the field of a priest. Peasants were gathering potatoes, piling them in a wagon. On top of the potato pile sat an old Jewish man. Unlike others in disguise, he had never bothered to clip his earlocks. Seeing us, he suddenly crossed himself, as if horrified by the proximity to our kind—the gesture was unnatural; it was a wonder to me that he had managed to pass for so long without capture. But his next action made me realize I’d been wrong to question his resourcefulness, because he put a hand beneath his bottom, searched about the wagon bed, pulled out a potato, and flung it at me with a curse! Then again. One after another. For every curse, he threw a potato. His curses followed us until we reached the end of the field and came to the road, but we knew what they meant—these were the kind of curses that would keep us alive.”

  I wanted to ask Papa how he could be sure of this, but I didn’t want to admit my uncertainty. So I pinched Feliks. He asked for me. Papa was unnerved by this connection that thrummed between us but he answered all the same.

  “I saw it in his face,” he said. “The curses were merely blessings in disguise. He meant for me to take up those potatoes and live.”

  He pulled on the end of his nose, as he always had in a thoughtful moment, and then he sank his head into his hands so I was forced to study the new seam that wound itself over his face and scalp.

  “I know that Mengele’s curse—there was no good intention in it, not at all. But I just want to say that you were not wrong to take that fool’s curse—with all his lies and manipulations—and twist it so that you could survive by it. Understand?”

  I did. And I lied and told my father that I would take comfort in his cursed-vegetable story. I know that he did. Because when Papa died many years later, eyes shrouded in illness, stretched out on his bed, Feliks and I saw him raise his hands in the air as if trying to catch an object. His fingers lifted with a strange urgency, unnatural to any deathbed, and we watched his sightless eyes dart back and forth, following the holy path of a potato in flight.

  Papa did his best to restore us, but we knew soon enough that he was broken too. He went to Lodz alone, as he was worried about what he might find there. When he returned, he shook his head for days. We sought out the company of other refugees in Warsaw, every last one so hungry for reunion.

  “Have you seen Pearl?” Papa would ask, pushing me forward.

  None had.

  Papa admired the resurrection of Warsaw and said that he would stay to rebuild Feliks’s house with him. But though Papa was a man of skill, his hands weren’t suited to the task of mending rooms and righting walls. They were accustomed to the diagnosis, the wound tinkering, the application of cures. And while Feliks was swell with a hatchet, a knife, a gun, and could spin a lie to live in just as well as I could, mending a house was not among his gifts. Still, both were determined to rebuild, to follow the city’s example.

  I watched the two shamble about the house with merry shouts, wielding mallets and breaking down the remnants of walls. I perched with Baby while they fumbled with paving stones and fiddled with doorknobs and I often fell to wondering if they were pursuing this rebuilding as a flimsy distraction from the unknown whereabouts of Pearl. They would take up their hammers and their nails and soon enough they’d find themselves too startled by the sounds to continue. Rebuilding can sound a lot like war, a lot like capture—all that bang and falling brick, all that smattering of stone.

  As for me, I kept myself occupied by teaching Baby lessons from Twins’ Father, lessons from Zayde, lessons from my anatomy book. The least I could do, I decided, was to give him certain advantages, a distinct smartness, so that if he ever became an experiment too, he would fare better than some. We had to get the words out fast enough, before the words were snatched away. We had to establish the words, make them whole. I spent my days memorizing all that I could find so that in the event that we were recaptured, I’d have words to amuse us with, words to let us abide. Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven, I’d say, in tribute to Mirko, nature was all alike, a shapelessness! And to Baby, in hopes of installing his first word, I’d whisper: Pearl, Pearl, Pearl. It was as if I believed that only the most innocent whisper could bring her back. That if he cried her name, she would be there, dancing. A crown of heather on her head. And good shoes on her feet.

  I couldn’t deny that in Warsaw, things bloomed. Baby cried enough to water a linden, and I did my part too, though I was careful to express my tears only in the vicinity of a wasp’s nest, so that I might blame some assault if anyone happened to see my pain. People saw my pain often, though. Mostly, these people were ones who came to the zoo. The Jewish underground had operated through its buildings, in its many holes and caves. Now, refugees came looking for sons and daughters who had curled up within the burrows meant for badgers until it was safe to transport them to another location. Many of these seekers were mothers, and as they passed through, they paused simply to hold the child, and when they looked into his brown eyes they could not help but offer me advice. They told me to swaddle him tightly, and they showed me how to bathe him so that he looked less like a wild thing.

  Whenever I bathed Baby in his bucket, the boy’s life became too real to me. He was so vulnerable, a dark little duckling with a wee stem of a neck. While I made him clean, I wondered what I might tell him someday about his mother, how she’d made me kill her, how she’d guided my hand with the knife. I tried to invent prettier, more scenic deaths for her. Something with a snowfall. Something without a blade. But in Warsaw, my imagination had left me. I did not know where it went, but I hoped it didn’t occupy anyone else the way it had occupied me. I wanted the death of my imagination more than anything. It had no place in this world after war. Once, I told myself, I was happy to live for another, to continue for her sake. But without her, I was just a madman’s experiment, a failed avenger, a girl who didn’t end when she should have.

>   Papa saw my sadness. He said that we had hope still. He said we had a country so cracked that it was easy for Pearl to slip inside and hide in the most unseen corners. He’d say this on our daily visit to the orphanage when we went to see if she had been shuttled into its care. But no one who looked like me was waiting at the window; no one who sounded like me was singing at the gate.

  “If we don’t find her,” I began on the way home one time. But I didn’t have a chance to finish this sentence. An odd correction was made to my thoughts when a stray dog appeared at my side and then promptly dropped at Papa’s feet. This dog was a mud-covered scrap, ugly and mongrel. The state of his paws made it clear he had traveled a long distance in search of someone. On us, he could smell the same struggle.

  Papa thought that the dog would cheer me. He was not wrong in this. I loved this mongrel’s protective spirit, the way he barked like a pistol and snarled at anyone who raised his voice to me. This dog, I noted to Feliks, he would have been a match for Mengele. Feliks did not disagree.

  “But I’m glad that he will know only this zoo,” he said. “And not the other.”

  Together, we watched the dog dig tunnels through the animals’ cages. This was something that pleased him to no end, and I could only hope that he would never dig up the poison pill Papa buried in the yard while he went about this business. I knew that if I saw that pill at the right moment—I could not resist the finality promised by its whiteness.

  Feliks saw this temptation in me. He, too, assured me that Pearl would return. Maybe, he said, she was just waiting until the animals came back to the zoo. He said that the zookeeper’s wife had plans to visit the grounds, and already, there was talk of the zoo’s revival. Soon, the animals would march, two by two, into their rightful houses. I stalked about their cages in wait, and tried not to dwell on the cages I’d known.

  But on the day I want to speak about, it was not an animal that arrived in Warsaw, but a coffin. I wasn’t there to see it lowered onto the street. I didn’t hear the cry of the mistress of the orphanage as she opened it.

  I was in the fields with Baby and my dog. I was training him to be a stronger dog. He liked to beg, and I could not break him of it. Begging would not do in these vulnerable days. So I gave him a new trick to use instead—I taught him to dance. Whenever that dog danced, I heard Zayde laugh. I had thought I would never hear Zayde laugh again, but there he was, all chuckle and knee-slap. None of it ghostly or remembered, but clear as spring. That was fair motivation to keep up with the practice. Watching this shabby canine waltz—it made me dream again.

  On this day, we were practicing in the field with Baby lolling in the grass, an uninterested audience. We had music too, of a sort. In the distance, you could hear the sound of paving stones being laid, one next to another—the stones sang out, their clinks carrying over the city and up into the drifts of the crab apple trees. Here and there, a starling asserted itself, warbling, its cry so forceful that its hasty body trembled. It was to this music of stone and bird and Zayde’s laughter that the dog undertook his choreography.

  I told my dog that he had to practice. Someday, I said, someone might discover his talents and put him in a movie. That could be our future—didn’t he agree? My dog did not agree. He disliked practicing just as much as Pearl had; he had no interest in proving himself worthy of the art. But he danced for me all the same, and I applauded him after the full revolution of a turn.

  When I stopped clapping, though—I still heard applause. Someone was clapping behind our backs. I blushed. Because dog-dancing is nothing to be proud of; it is a sport for the solitary, a sad sort of whirl.

  But when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw myself. Or I saw a girl, a strong girl, a girl who was no longer lonely. The girl was happier than I’d imagined I could ever be again. She was clapping and smiling and the dog gamboled toward her and shimmied at her feet, abandoning any idea of a show. Still, the girl kept clapping. She clapped even as there were two crutches propped beneath her arms.

  Have you ever seen the best part of yourself stationed at a measurable distance? A distance you’d never thought possible after so much parting? If so, I’m sure you’re aware of the joys of this condition. My heart thrilled with reunion, and my tongue ran dumb with happiness. My spleen informed my lungs that they’d lost the big bet—I told you so! my spleen said—and my thoughts, my rosy thoughts, they kept thinking toward a future I’d believed long lost.

  She put her crutches down and we sat back to back, spine to spine, in the manner of our old game.

  I’ll admit—I peeked at what she drew.

  I peeked not to cheat, but oh—just because she was my sister. I had to see her. I am sure you understand.

  Pearl

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Never the End

  And we drew poppies. We drew them as tight buds that might never see a bloom, we drew them for Mama and Zayde, and then we added a river for Papa. We drew a train, a piano, a horse. We drew the children Stasha would have, and the children I never could. We drew boats that carried us far away from Poland, and planes that brought us back. We did not draw a needle, no; we did not draw a crutch, much less the man who had undone us. But we drew skies that would protect us our whole lives through, and trees that would shelter two girls who might never be whole, and only when we finished drawing did my sister even try to speak.

  “Let’s try again,” Stasha said.

  I didn’t need to finish her sentence. I knew what she meant—we had to learn to love the world once more.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to the following:

  Jim Rutman, for your gallant investment in my writing and the years of brilliant insights that illuminated the path for this book. It wouldn’t be real without you.

  Lee Boudreaux, editor-heroine beyond compare—I remain in awe of your commitment to every dream, sorrow, and longing contained within.

  Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, Judy Clain, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, Carina Guiterman, Tracy Roe, Kapo Ng, Sean Ford, Carrie Neill, Nicole Dewey, and the teams at Little, Brown and Company and Lee Boudreaux Books that I’ve been so fortunate to work with. Szilvia Molnar, Danielle Bukowski, Brian Egan, and the fantastic people at Sterling Lord Literistic. All of the amazing foreign publishers, for welcoming this novel.

  The David Berg Foundation, for their gracious support, and my teachers and peers at Columbia.

  Pranav Behari and Adam Kaplan, for always being my heartfelt and invaluable writing-family.

  Stephen O’Connor, Lydia Millet, Joyce Polansky, Karen Russell, George Sanchez, Rudy Browne—that I have enjoyed your influence and friendship is a wonder.

  The Konars, Cruzes, Kims, and Sos. Grandmama and Grandpapa—słońce i księżyc. Jonathan and Coco (for always taking the funny and the future).

  My parents, whose optimism and attention to beauty have been my preservation. (Special thanks to Dad for giving me a field when I needed it most.)

  Philip Kim—for the genius, animals, comfort, and jokes. How anyone writes without you is beyond my understanding.

  And here, words can only fail. But I must try to thank Eva Mozes Ker and Miriam Mozes Zeiger for the inspiration of their sisterhood and their girlish spirits. And I must try, again, to thank Zvi Spiegel, Gisella Pearl, Alex Dekel, and the innumerable, unnamed witnesses whose stories have compelled these pages. This book lives only in the presence of your memories.

  Author’s Note

  Mischling’s initial inspiration can be found in the remarkable Children of the Flames by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel. Tremendous debts are also owed to the following: Sara Nomberg-Przytyk’s Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land; Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen; Eva Mozes Kor and Mary Wright’s Echoes from Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele’s Twins; Arnost Lustig’s Children of the Holocaust; Elie Wiesel’s Night; Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife; George Eisen’s Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games Among the Shadows; Isaac Kowals
ki’s Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance 1939–1945; Rich Cohen’s The Avengers; Mary Lowenthal Felstiner’s To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era; Dr. Gisella Perl’s I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz; Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces; Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; Primo Levi’s The Truce, If This Is a Man, The Periodic Table, and The Drowned and the Saved; and the works of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis.

  About the Author

  Affinity Konar was raised in California. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program.

  Lee Boudreaux Books

  Unusual stories. Unexpected voices. An immersive sense of place. Lee Boudreaux Books publishes both award-winning authors and writers making their literary debut. A carefully curated mix, these books share an underlying DNA: a mastery of language, commanding narrative momentum, and a knack for leaving us astonished, delighted, disturbed, and powerfully affected, sometimes all at once.

  Lee Boudreaux on Mischling

  One cannot approach Mischling without wondering, as Anthony Doerr so eloquently put it, if one’s soul can survive the journey. But therein lies the magic of Affinity Konar’s dazzling novel. While it is, indeed, among the most shattering novels I’ve ever read, it is also brimming with life and hope. It galvanizes the soul. It demands attention. It rewards that attention in a thousand unforgettable moments. And how did Konar achieve such transcendence? I put it down to her luminous and endlessly surprising language, which, to my mind, make Mischling an absolute miracle of observation and expression. But we can’t overlook Pearl and Stasha, young female characters of such strength, intelligence, imagination, and bravery that I know I will never stop thinking about them.