The Red Magician

by Lisa Goldstein

  “It’s all right,” a woman on Kicsi’s right said. She felt someone hold her hand. “You had a nightmare. You’ll be all right now.”

  “Will you for God’s sake stop that noise?” someone said loudly. Kicsi opened her eyes. A woman was climbing down from one of the upper beds. Her hair might have been brown once, though it was cut so short it was hard to tell, but it had begun to turn to gray. She did not look older than thirty-five.

  The woman knelt down so that her eyes were level with Kicsi’s. “What on earth is going on here, Rachel?”

  “She had a nightmare,” said Rachel. Then to Kicsi she said again, “It’s all right now.”

  “My—my mother,” said Kicsi. “And my sisters, and the man I was going to marry. They’re dead now. All of them.”

  “The hell with them,” said the gray-haired woman, not unkindly. “They’re better off dead. We all would be.” Rachel started to speak; she turned to her in anger. “And stop saying it’s all right—it isn’t all right and you know it. This young woman here has better sense than you.” Someone wailed, a long keening note that stopped abruptly. “Now look what you’ve done. Once they get started they just don’t stop.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” said Kicsi. “I never realized before about—about—I never had a dream here until tonight, I think.”

  “You just realized that they’re dead,” said the gray-haired woman.

  Kicsi nodded.

  “And now you’re trying to join them.”

  “What?”

  “Well, look at you. Look at your hair—it’s hard to keep it that dirty when it’s cut so short, but you seem to manage. And look at your shoes. Winter is almost over and you haven’t even tried to bind the holes. You’ll freeze to death, if you don’t die of stupidity first. You could at least wash yourself. You could pay some attention to what goes on around here. Someday you’ll wake up to find you’ve sleepwalked right into the ovens. God, people make me sick sometimes. We should all die. It would be for the best.”

  “But what—how do I wash? They don’t give us any—”

  “Fool!” said the gray-haired woman, but Rachel said softly, “Some of us use the coffee they give us to wash in.” She smiled. “You can’t use it for drinking.”

  “Look around you, for God’s sake,” said the gray-haired woman. “We’re all experts in survival. Even Rachel here.”

  “Why do you care?” said Kicsi suddenly, fiercely. Someone in the barracks began to cry. “If you hate people so much why don’t you just kill yourself? Make it easier for them?”

  “Why?” The gray-haired woman grinned triumphantly. “To spite them, that’s why. Every day I stay alive is a victory. I don’t worry about tomorrow.”

  “I try to stay alive because—well, so I can tell someone,” said Rachel. “To be a witness.”

  “Fool!” the other woman said again. “Who will you tell? You’ll never get out of here. And even if you do, no one would believe you. Hell, I wouldn’t believe it myself if anyone told me.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” said Rachel. “The Germans are losing the war. We’re going to be liberated.”

  The other woman laughed. “Liberated! We’ll liberate ourselves, that’s what. No one else will help us.”

  “Don’t you hear the guns getting closer at night? And the planes, flying overhead? Why do you think they’ve got the furnaces going day and night now? They want to get rid of us before the British get here, so there won’t be anyone left to tell our story.”

  “The furnaces?” The other woman yawned, stretched. “They want to kill us faster, that’s all. I’ve got to get back to sleep—they give us little enough time as it is.”

  “Please,” said Kicsi. “Could you tell me—”

  “No,” said the gray-haired woman. “I don’t help anyone. It’s the only way to stay alive.” She climbed back up to her bed.

  “Don’t be angry with her,” said Rachel. “They shot her children in front of her eyes. Two boys—they couldn’t have been more than three years old.” Then, in a whisper: “She doesn’t know that I know. Don’t tell her.”

  Kicsi nodded. “I wanted to ask her—how—how long have I been here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rachel. “You were here when I got here, and I’ve been here about six months. We both thought you wouldn’t last long.”

  “Six months …” said Kicsi wonderingly. “I hardly remember anything.”

  Suddenly she felt very tired. She rolled over and went to sleep.

  The two women were gone when Kicsi woke the next day, but she remembered what they had told her. She watched as the prisoners were given what they called coffee, and when the guards looked away she rubbed some on her arms and legs. Stripes of dirt came away. Someone watching her in the barracks silently gave her some rags to bind her shoes. She borrowed a comb from another woman, and the woman told her that she could use it once a week. Her hair covered her ears now, and it was almost to her eyes. When had it grown out? She remembered when they had shaved it, but little else. That was one of her last memories. And she remembered something else, too—the silky way her hair had felt before it was cut. She spent almost half an hour getting the snarls out, and she was nearly late for work. Suddenly it had become very important to stay alive.

  The days passed into one another. Kicsi’s hair grew out long and straight. She remembered Magda’s curly black hair and how she had always envied her, but now she thought that there could be no hair in the world as fine as hers. She was the envy of the other prisoners; she had almost the longest hair in the barracks.

  Once, when it was her turn to use the comb, the gray-haired woman said to her, “Look at that. You’d think your hair was the most important thing in the world.”

  “It is,” said Kicsi, realizing it at that minute. She ran the comb carefully through her hair (she had broken one of the teeth last week) and smiled at the gray-haired woman. The woman gave her a smile back, though she frowned so quickly afterward that Kicsi was not sure that she had seen it.

  Spring came, and people blessed the warmth, but there were no trees to mark the change in seasons. It was a year since Passover, but no one celebrated.

  A day came when the prisoners were given no food or water. Another day passed like the first, and on the third day they were given only water. Kicsi survived by eating in the kitchen when the guards looked away. “You have to get us some food,” said the gray-haired woman when Kicsi returned to the barracks that night.

  “I know,” said Kicsi. She looked to where Rachel slept on her cot, her face drawn and pale. “I’ll try.”

  The next day, as she left the kitchen, she took with her a potato. That will do for me, she thought, and maybe for Rachel, but what about the gray-haired woman, and the woman who gives me her comb? She reached for a carrot, but her fingers trembled with hunger, and she dropped it.

  “You there,” said someone. “What have you got in your hand?” Hastily she tried to put the potato back. “Do you know what the penalty for stealing food is?” She nodded. She knew. They were going to shave her head.

  “Come outside,” the guard said, motioning with his rifle. She felt sick. Why had she taken the potato? She knew what the punishment was.

  It was over quickly. The guard turned her over to the man who shaved the new arrivals. She watched numbly as the locks fell to the floor. With each new cut she felt she lost a part of herself. When it was over she could not bring herself to touch her head. She wanted only to fall back into the darkness, the safe, close darkness.

  When they were through with her she returned to the barracks. Night had fallen; searchlights and smoke tarnished the sky. It was dimmer indoors, but she saw, through the afterimages of light, that the prisoners were having a sort of celebration. Food had come that evening, while Kicsi had been away.

  “Kicsi,” said the gray-haired woman. “What happened? We saved you some bread. What did they do—”

  “We were so worried.”

  “My hai
r,” Kicsi said, putting her hand up to her face. “They shaved it. I tried to steal some food.”

  “Kicsi,” said Rachel. Kicsi noticed that she was looking better since the food had come. “You poor child. Thank you.” She got up carefully and held Kicsi, touching her gently, caressing her where they had shaved her hair. Kicsi relaxed a little. The darkness had been put off for another day.

  One night soon after, she woke with a fever. She threw her cover off but could not get comfortable. By morning she was shivering. She could not seem to see clearly, and people’s voices sounded too high and too fast. Her body felt stiff and awkward as she dressed for work. At work she had to stop several times before she could force herself to go on.

  That night, coming back from the kitchens, she thought she saw a man standing out beyond the barbed wire. He wavered like a mirage, fracturing with the landscape, coming closer and closer to the wire. The barbed wire shook like a plucked harp string, and he was inside.

  Kicsi blinked, and he was gone.

  The next day she could not get up. Two people argued above her like the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death. “Typhus,” said one of them. She opened her eyes and saw the gray-haired woman.

  “She has to go to work,” said Rachel, on her other side. “They can’t find her here. You know what they’ll do to her if she can’t work.”

  “I know,” said the other woman. “Come on, now. Get up. You have to get up.”

  “I can’t.…”

  “Yes you can. Do you want to die?”

  “Just go to work,” said Rachel. “Other people will cover for you.”

  “No one will cover for her—they’re all too busy staying alive themselves. Get into work, will you? I can’t stay here and watch you forever.”

  Kicsi got up slowly. It was important to stay alive, to go to work and to stay clean and alert, but she could not remember why. Something that sounded like gunfire shook in her ears. The two women helped her dress. She walked slowly, concentrating on the movement of her legs. Somehow she made it to the kitchens.

  “No work today,” said the guard. “We’re transporting people. Come on, everyone stay in line—”

  “We’ll be liberated soon,” said a woman next to Kicsi. “That’s why they’re so nervous.” She heard the guns again, in the distance.

  “No talking!” said the guard. “Get in line. All right—I want you and you, and you over there. Everyone else stay here. Come on!”

  The prisoners who were not chosen stood around awkwardly. “There aren’t any guards here,” someone said. “I wonder where they are. We could just—”

  Kicsi did not hear. She had to lie down or she would die. No one was watching her. She went into the kitchen and stretched out on the floor. The world swam in front of her.

  “The British!” someone shouted. “The British army is here!”

  And someone else shouted, “We’re alive!”

  She did not hear. She was buried deep within her dreams.

  7

  The tall red-haired man came into the camp in the late afternoon, stepping carefully over the bodies lying by the side of the road. A woman came up to meet him. As she drew nearer, he saw that she was a nurse.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” she said.

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing,” he said. His English was strangely accented, but not unpleasant. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “Can you?” said the nurse. “You’re the answer to my prayers. Come with me.”

  She led him past a temporary shelter toward what had been the barracks. “Now what we’ve done here—Do you know anything about medicine?”

  “A little.”

  “Good. What we’ve done is to divide the sick into three groups. The first group is well enough to be up and about—if they want anything they’ll ask you for it. We’ve had a bit of a language problem, but we’ve found that a lot of them speak German or have learned enough to get by in the camps. Can you speak German?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said the nurse, looking at him this time with frank curiosity. “Then in what used to be the barracks we have the second group. These are the ones that will need medical attention—changing bandages, feeding, and so forth. Our worst problems seem to be typhus and malnutrition. And in the third group are those you saw by the road. We feel they’re beyond help, and anyway we don’t have enough medicine to see to everyone. It’s a bad deal all round, but at least this way we’re able to save some lives.”

  She led him back past the road toward the shelter. “Here’s where we keep our supplies. Any medicine you check out has to be authorized by me or another of the head nurses. Right now that’s not a problem as we don’t have any. We’re expecting a shipment sometime tomorrow.”

  The tall man stumbled and looked down. He had tripped against a young woman’s arm. She moaned and turned over, and as she did so her hand fell open. Etched upon her palm, like a warning in some unknown calligraphy, was a six-pointed star.

  “Oh, my God,” said the man. He knelt by her and felt her forehead. Then he said to the nurse, “Have you got any aspirin?”

  She looked at him in amazement. “You’re joking. This woman is in group three—she’s not expected to survive the night.”

  The man did not answer her. He held his hand to the young woman’s cheek and whispered words in her ear. He sat back. “Kicsi,” he said. “Kicsi, look up.”

  Kicsi opened her eyes. “I know you,” she said in Hungarian. Her voice was so soft she could barely be heard. She shivered with fever. “But I can’t know you, can I? You’re the stranger.”

  “What did she say?” said the nurse.

  “She said that she recognizes me.”

  “Are you a relative, then?”

  “No, a—a friend. Her family gave me help and comfort when I needed it most. Come on—we have to carry her to the barracks. Can you give me a hand?”

  “As I said before, she isn’t expected—” The nurse stopped, staring at the blood-red star on the young woman’s palm. “Oh, my God,” she said. Since she had come to the camp she had seen nightmares. She had seen a man crawl out of a mass grave, had seen a group of rabbis perform a burial service over a pile of soap that had been made with human fat. She had seen a woman refuse food and starve herself to death in penance for the death of her daughter. Yet now this woman’s star seemed to her to be the greatest horror of all, seemed to sum up everything that had gone before—something beyond understanding and yet unquestionably real. “Did they—did they do that to her?”

  “No.” The tall man bent over and picked up the young woman. Her bones were light as sticks. “I’m taking her to the barracks. She will survive. I swear it.”

  “Who are you?” said the nurse. She followed him, hurrying to catch up with him. “What are you?”

  “She called me Vörös,” said the man. “Redhead.“ He went into the dimly lit barracks and set Kicsi on a cot next to another woman. A few of the people on the other cots looked at them without curiosity. “How far is the nearest town?” he asked.

  “The nearest—what on earth for?” said the nurse.

  “To get some medicine. Aspirin at least. How far?”

  “A few miles down the road.”

  “Thank you,” said Vörös. “I’ll be back after nightfall.” He left the barracks, walking quickly. Within a few minutes he was lost among the afternoon shadows. The nurse shrugged and went back to her work.

  The town was farther than the nurse had said, but Vörös made good time. He managed to hitch a ride on an army truck for the last few miles. They let him off near the center of the town.

  Vörös stood for a while, eyes narrowed, studying the houses in the twilight. Then he made his choice. He walked up the steps to a well-kept white house and knocked on the door.

  He heard the sound of someone walking up to the door, but the door did not open. “Who is it?” a woman said.

  “I work at the camp a few miles do
wn the road,” Vörös said. “We need some medicine badly. Do you have anything? Aspirin, anything at all?”

  The woman opened the door a crack. Vörös smiled and held out his hands to show that they were empty. “The camp?” she said.

  “Yes. A lot of people have died, and we want to—we’re trying to help—”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “I said I didn’t know,” the woman repeated. She opened the door wider. Her hair was gray and black and she wore glasses. Her dress was as tidy as her house. “Those soldiers, they say that we should have done something. Something to help those people. Well, how could we? We only just found out about it. We didn’t know what was happening.”

  “I don’t care,” said Vörös. His face was white against his red hair and beard. “I just want some medicine, that’s all.”

  “And even if we did know, what could we have done? Jump in front of a train? Is that what you would have done, eh? Who are you, anyway? You’re not one of those British.”

  “I want,” Vörös said slowly, “some medicine. Anything. Please.”

  The woman looked at him closely. Then she seemed to make up her mind. “Just a minute.” She turned and closed the door behind her.

  A few minutes later the door opened again. “Here,” she said, giving Vörös some aspirin. She hesitated for a while, and then said suddenly, “Good luck to you, traveler.”

  “Thank you,” said Vörös. “The same to you.” He went down the steps and headed toward the camp.

  The sun had set by the time he got there. The nurse was gone, probably resting. He hurried to the barracks, to Kicsi. She was asleep. Her breath was shallow and her condition had not changed. Sweat pooled around her eyes, and her forehead was hot as flame. He opened her mouth and tried to make her swallow the aspirin. Then he gave some aspirin to the people who were awake and put the rest in his pocket. He breathed deeply, went outside, and sat down propped against a wall of the shelter. After a while he drew his coat around him and went to sleep.