Orphan Monster Spy

by Matt Killeen

  Sarah inhaled loudly through her mouth, and Rahn ripped a handful of hair from the roots.

  “Rahn . . .” A warning. Who?

  Sarah gasped silently, opening her mouth to go on, but nothing came out. The words became dim. The flag was growing dark.

  “Rahn . . .”

  Rahn dragged a long blonde tress clear of her head, ripping it noisily free.

  “Rahn! Enough,” the Ice Queen commanded.

  Rahn swore and relaxed her arm around Sarah’s throat. Sarah crumpled and was given a shove forward. She managed to stop herself in front of Von Scharnhorst’s armchair.

  The Ice Queen watched Sarah’s shoulders rising and falling. She nodded once, her eyes and lips narrowing.

  “Nothing wrong with your brain, then,” Von Scharnhorst said, lighting a cigarette. She exhaled noisily, and the cloud of cigarette smoke billowed round Sarah’s face. “How old are you, Haller?”

  “Thirteen,” she rasped. Liar, liar, liar.

  “Bit small for thirteen, aren’t you?” She sounded disappointed.

  “I suppose.”

  “Like I said, you’ve got some catching up to do. However, you interest me. I’ve not had a clean slate, a tabula rasa, to work with before. I wonder what we can make of you. Next time, we’ll see what your body is capable of, eh?”

  Rahn pushed Sarah toward the door as giggles broke out from the shadows behind her. She looked back and for the first time spotted Elsa, her expression one of amused fascination in the firelight. Her eyes followed Sarah’s exit. Whom was she standing with? Who were her special friends? What did—

  Rahn slapped her in the face with a crack. Stumbling into the wall, Sarah found herself cowering and holding her hands over her face. Make yourself small and minimize the damage.

  “Rahn! No more,” the Ice Queen ordered.

  Rahn stood over Sarah and wiped some spittle from the corner of her mouth. “You’ll fail, you dumb little girl. Then I’ll break you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The dormitory was trying to look busy, but everyone was evidently waiting for Sarah to return. As she pushed the door open, Liebrich was blocking the way from the door to her bed.

  “You still have some hair. Excellent.” The sarcasm was thick in her voice. Sarah just kept walking until they were face-to-face. When she looked up, Liebrich started abruptly, eyes wide, mouth open. Sarah took another step, pushing home this advantage.

  “You stay away from me, Liebrich,” Sarah croaked, barely audible. “You understand?”

  Liebrich nodded, composure gone.

  Sarah pushed past her and sat on her bed, facing the wall. She was tired, too tired to undress.

  “Haller?” inquired a little voice.

  “Hello, Mouse,” whispered Sarah.

  “Oh, you’ve lost hardly any hair, that’s good, when we’ve brushed it and cleaned, you know, the blood away a bit, we’ll braid it and—” The Mouse stopped as Sarah raised her head.

  “What?”

  “Your eyes, Haller, oh, your eyes . . .” gasped the Mouse.

  “Do you have a mirror, Mouse?”

  The small figure darted away and returned a few seconds later clutching an old tortoiseshell compact. Sarah opened the lid.

  The whites of her eyes were no longer white. They were a deep, dark red.

  How did that BDM song go? The blood hears the call.

  The whole room was staring at her, wonder, sympathy, and fear on their faces.

  TWELVE

  THEY PUT HER in the infirmary, supposedly to check that she was all right, but mostly because she was unnerving the other students. The teachers and staff had clearly decided to ignore whatever it was that had happened. Maybe it was easier than trying to deal with it, to admit that something unpleasant had occurred. Maybe they knew and didn’t care. It didn’t seem to matter.

  Even to Sarah, who hadn’t gone to school, priorities seemed askew here. The discipline was violent, but the education seemed unimportant. The older girls seemed to be left to run things as they pleased. The Captain had once said that the whole Third Reich was like this, with no real structure or organization, just fear and jealousy and control and incompetence. If that was true, maybe there was a way to defeat it. Yet the school functioned, endured.

  But this bed was warm and the sheets were clean, so Sarah slept. For the most part, the dogs stayed away.

  A compact, middle-aged nurse brought her meals, or rather dropped a tray in front of her with a tutting noise. She took Sarah’s temperature with a thermometer thrust so vehemently that it made her tongue hurt, but the nurse said nothing. In fact the woman didn’t even look her in the face, except once. The glance beneath the severe fringe was filled with such abhorrence that Sarah couldn’t meet her gaze. There was no clue what she had done to warrant so pitiless a response.

  She had two other visitors.

  The Mouse came and talked. The food. The lessons. The running. Dogs and kittens. Don’t visit me. Don’t talk to me, howled Sarah silently. Do not identify yourself with me. Leave. Me. Alone.

  But instead Sarah sat and nodded, whispered and shrugged . . . She could see light in the Mouse’s eyes like a chink of sunshine through a shuttered window. She had trouble remembering a time when she had been the cause of brightness in another human being. Had she ever been? While it was strange and claustrophobic after all this time alone, it was warming, too, like cocoa on an icy day. Sarah wanted more of it.

  As the Mouse wound a braid across Sarah’s head, she wittered away. “You know what everyone is saying? That Haller was sent to the Ice Queen but you passed every test but Rahn hurt you anyway, so you made your eyes bleed on purpose, and she got scared and stopped! Imagine! What a tale. But I think they want to believe it.”

  “Sent to the Ice Queen?” Sarah felt like she was part of a longer story that she hadn’t been told yet. “You talk like this has happened before.”

  “Oh yes, I mean, there’s usually a girl picked to . . . be tested.”

  “What happens to them?” Sarah felt a growing unease. “What happened to the last one?”

  The light went out in the Mouse’s face, and she looked down. “Some of them join Von Scharnhorst as a Youth Leader. They get all the best food and they pretty much stop going to classes. There was Kohlmeyer and—”

  “What happened to the last test subject?” Sarah interrupted, touching her arm. It was cold.

  “She . . . They’re not . . . considered . . . strong enough. Sometimes there’s an accident . . . Sometimes . . .” the Mouse trailed off.

  Nothing was going to plan.

  What plan? Keeping your head down? Staying quiet? Hiding in the shadows?

  No, this is how you finish, by going through the program. You know where the edge is. You know what it is, therefore it cannot hurt you.

  Finish the move. Follow through. Don’t stop.

  The second visitor left a sheet of Beethoven piano music on her lap as she slept.

  Sarah did not sleep in the sanatorium again.

  The window was ajar, just as it had been earlier. From inside came the smell of blood. Sarah crouched underneath it and glanced down the street. Clear.

  She reached up and grasped the windowsill. It was wet with blood. Fighting the feeling of disgust, she gripped the wood firmly and pulled herself up. When her eyes were level with the opening, she stopped, holding herself a few centimeters from the floor. There was no one in the room, but the room was not empty. Perfect.

  She elbowed the window open. The hinges squeaked and Sarah froze. Nothing. A shout, a cart, a motorcar, just distant noises of the city. She heaved herself up, swinging her legs between her arms, as she had a thousand times on the bars, careful not to touch the frame. She hopped down onto the floor, which was slick, and slid into the table. She only just kept her balance and
had to stop again to listen. No sound, no movement in the doorway.

  She looked down at the table and felt her stomach turn. Oh, grow up, dumme Schlampe. Her hands, tugging the sack from her coat, were already dripping red. She ignored the saliva gathering in her throat and began shoveling the greasy white, brown, and red entrails into the makeshift bag.

  “I can’t let you take that, Rapunzel.”

  Sarah stopped for a second and then continued to quickly drag the meat toward her. “We’re hungry. I’m hungry.”

  “You can’t take it.”

  Sarah stopped and stared at the butcher. She pushed a strand of hair out of her face and left a bloody trail across her cheek. Her chin started to quiver. Damn it.

  “We. Have. No. Food. No money. We are starving.” Blood splashed across her grubby socks and worn-out shoes.

  “Well, you could take it, but I won’t let you eat it.” The butcher folded his arms, the blade resting on the vast chest and shoulder.

  “What?” stammered Sarah, confusion overcoming her hunger.

  “It’s tref. Sciatic nerve, veins, sinews, unporged hindquarters—I can’t let you eat it.”

  “It’s not kosher?” Sarah laughed in disbelief. “Really? You think I give a damn that it’s unclean?”

  The butcher looked at the floor and sighed. “No. But I do.”

  “So you just throw it away?” Sarah slammed the sack onto the table.

  “Well, we used to sell it to the goyim. We’re not allowed to do that anymore. I haven’t the skill to porge the hindquarters properly, so . . .”

  “So you throw it away,” Sarah said ruefully. “While people are going hungry.”

  “It’s not the end of the world, Rapunzel. Not yet, anyway.” He gently lifted the dripping sack from the table. “Come. Come and eat with me.”

  He sat Sarah on a stool among the hanging carcasses in the next room and reappeared a minute later with sausages.

  Sarah attacked the kishke like a wolf.

  The sausage was thick, fatty, and still juicy even cold. Her sense of defeat evaporated as her teeth closed around it, tearing at the sweet, rubbery casing and letting the contents pop into her mouth. For a moment she forgot about her life, instead delighting in the dribble of grease that trickled onto her chin.

  The butcher watched Sarah attacking the food. “Does your mother not feed you?”

  Sarah swiveled her eyes toward him. Mutti. Waiting. Crying. Sleeping.

  “Your mother feeds you too much,” she snarled, and went on eating. Her ingratitude stung her like a nettle. Between mouthfuls, she tried again. “She’s not well. But they won’t let her work anyway. There’s no money.”

  “Your father?”

  “Pure Aryan stock, so as long as no one knows he’s a race-defiler, he’ll be fine. Wherever he is. What about you?”

  “Everyone needs the shohet because someone has to cut the meat properly. While there’s food for anyone, there’s food for me.” He paused, then shrugged. “I’m lucky.”

  “How is anyone paying you?”

  “What they can.” He reached out and offered the remains of his kishke to her. Sarah tried not to snatch it out of his hands, but she was holding it before the thought had fully formed. She hummed her thanks as she attacked it.

  Sarah thought of nothing but food these days. At first her stomach seemed to close up, as if she didn’t need to eat. Then, slowly, the life had seemed to drain out of her. Her limbs felt heavy and useless. She felt tired, an all-embracing fatigue that never went away. She got cross easily and found it hard to think, every idea lost to the buzzing of emptiness in the back of her head. It was easy to imagine her fragile body being drawn into the void inside, like bathwater through the drain. Every morsel she found only seemed to make her hungrier, as though these repayments were only making the bank aware of how much she owed them. She dreamed of cakes, stews, soup, and fruit, but the reality was so disappointing it was too much to bear. This sausage—so fatty, so beautiful—was a reminder of its own absence. Joy and misery cooked in the same pot, tasting of both and neither.

  “Hey, slow down, Rapunzel. You’ll make yourself sick.” The butcher smiled as he stood up and walked out of the room.

  Sarah reveled in the sensation of the oily meat sliding into her stomach. She rested her back against the wall. There weren’t very many carcasses hanging up given the size of room. How many men were supposed to be working here? With a pang, Sarah realized that the butcher’s apparent wealth was wafer-thin. The boycotts, the Jewish laws putting them out of work . . . How much meat could he sell to people who increasingly owned nothing?

  Through the other doorway, Sarah spotted her sack by the window where she’d come in. It was clearly still full, the bottom now soaked in gore.

  She looked at the window. She looked at the sack. She looked at the other door.

  She hit the cobbles hard, the weight of the sack nearly pulling her over, but she accelerated and stayed on her feet. She tore down the road like the devil himself was on her trail.

  She tired easily, and once she was around the corner, she slowed to a lope. The sack was certainly heavy—how much had she loaded into it? She began to walk and slid the sack off her shoulder, feeling the gritty dampness through her dress. She stopped and opened it.

  Inside was a perfect side of beef, already kashered in salt the traditional way.

  She wasn’t sad, but the tears came anyway and washed the blood from her face.

  THIRTEEN

  SARAH HAD SPENT years skulking. Hiding. Creeping. When that failed, she had run—faster, longer, and, if necessary, smarter than her pursuers. Now suddenly she was famous. Watched. Whispered about behind small hands. Glances of jealousy, admiration, and pity shot from one side of the school to the other. To Liebrich, she was competition. To the Mouse, she was a god. To the Ice Queen, she was a new test subject. For everyone else? Sarah couldn’t make sense of it. After the isolation of the last few years, the attention was overpowering. The school seemed very small and overwhelmingly full of girls. The corridors and classrooms, the halls and dorm rooms—wherever she went to be alone, someone was watching, with the Mouse trailing after her at a reverent distance. It was smothering, like a wet blanket.

  She avoided the music rooms.

  Only outdoors did she feel free. In this school, exercise was considered almost as important as propaganda. Every afternoon, they were chased into the grounds, whatever the weather, to march and dance, perform and stretch, in symmetrical rows. It was a gymnastic version of the flag ceremonies, chants, and songs. As a tiny cog in this National Socialist machine, Sarah regained a certain anonymity. Dumb Monster with a hoop. Dumb Monster touching her toes. Dumb Monster smiles, moving gracefully. Hardy, pious, cheerful, free. When the possibility of standing out presented itself, Sarah intended to fail. She tried to spring clumsily, tumble awkwardly, and jump inelegantly.

  But the more she exercised, the more she stretched out her withered muscles, the more food she ate, the stronger she became. She found herself finishing, succeeding, winning. Excelling became a habit, and leaving the daughters of the master race in her wake was a deep-lying thrill that gave her power. She watched the weaker girls and found her first instinct was to sneer, snicker, and scoff. It was easier not to fight it.

  The cross-country run was a chance to both shake off her audience and belittle them. It was just too tempting. Sarah easily outran the others as the trail wound into the forest. The soil was hard underfoot, the path beaten clean of rocks and branches. The trees whipped by, and each breath felt sharp in her chest, each exhalation billowing past her in the wind. She was running too fast, but Sarah felt calm. For a few moments she was in total control of everything. She counted the seconds, one, two . . . holding even time in the palm of her hand. Three, four . . . five.

  She slowed, feeling the sting of the ground through her feet, th
e scratching in her chest and throat, the stitch developing in her side. She bathed in the sudden discomfort that she had held at arm’s length until she was ready. Already her muscles seemed to be recovering, readying themselves for the next challenge.

  She rounded the bend.

  Von Scharnhorst, Elsa, and three Final Year girls were blocking the path.

  Sarah slid to a stop and saw Rahn coming out of the woods behind her. There was no strength left in her thighs to escape, even if she could get past them. Dumme Schlampe.

  “Good afternoon, Haller. I’m glad to see you back on your feet.” The Ice Queen smiled and beckoned to Sarah. “Come, walk with me.”

  Sarah glanced back at Rahn, ten meters away, playing with some fallen leaves with her foot. The Ice Queen beckoned again, an expression of wide-eyed encouragement lighting up her face, like she was calling a dog. Just as a hound will follow its owner, however bad-tempered they may be, Sarah followed.

  “Come on, that’s right . . .”

  Sarah glanced at Elsa. These moments were still her best chance to impress the professor’s daughter, but the sensation that she was a moth dancing around a lit candle was unshakable.

  Elsa watched her the way a small child watches an ice cream scoop begin its work. Sarah had to look away. The other girls feigned indifference as Sarah passed.

  For a few moments the Ice Queen locked step with Sarah. “Your injuries were regrettable. I really should learn to use Rahn with more care.” Eyes front. “You see, she doesn’t think things through, and I suspect she enjoys her work a little too much.”

  “And you don’t?” Shut up.

  “No,” she replied, with a hint of admonishment. “This is all for the Fatherland. The end result is everything. The means are of no interest to me whatsoever. Even the Führer saw fit to make an alliance with the Bolsheviks in the east because it served his purposes.”

  Sarah swung around. “What’s the point of this? Aren’t we supposed to be just mothers and Hausfrauen?”