The Last Checkmate

by Gabriella Saab

  My strategy for our game forgotten, I made another rash play. This time he placed me in checkmate.

  I hardly noticed the loss. I had a new mission: Recruit my fellow resistance members to help me locate someone who had seen my family following our separation. Someone who had been in Block 11 that day in May of 1941.

  “Maria, if you knew the things Hania was saying to her own brother.”

  I escaped from Fritzsch’s scrutiny and returned to the present, where Izaak shook his head in admonition.

  “And you’re as innocent as a sacrificial lamb, aren’t you, Izaak Rubinstein?” she answered.

  “Are you related to a man named Akiba Rubinstein?” I asked, catching on the familiar surname. “The chess grand master?”

  “Your friend Irena, is she related to the author Henryk Sienkiewicz?” Izaak replied.

  “When I asked, I believe her exact words were ‘No, you idiot.’”

  “I see. Now remind me of your question?”

  “Are you related to Akiba Rubinstein, the chess grand master?”

  “No, you idiot.”

  I darted out of Hania’s reach and bent to scoop up more snow, but, before I could, Izaak cursed in Czech. As I straightened, he brushed snow off his arm while Hania smoothed her uniform with wet hands, composed and controlled amid my giggles and Izaak’s wry smile. Hania didn’t acknowledge us, maintaining her air of innocence until she slipped on a patch of ice and yelped.

  Izaak steadied her. “You’re going to fall and break a bone, schlemiel.” He jumped aside when she attempted to smack his head in playful admonition.

  “Toi, toi, toi,” she replied, making the spitting sound three times.

  He scoffed. “Don’t bother warding off the evil eye. It has already caught up to us.” He indicated our surroundings to emphasize his point, and Hania narrowed her eyes and responded in French.

  “Tu me fais chier.”

  Izaak waved an accusatory hand toward her and looked at me. “Now she’s trying to annoy us because we can’t understand her.”

  She flashed a smug smile. “Je réussis, n’est-ce pas?”

  “How did you learn so many languages?” I asked.

  “Our mother’s family immigrated from Czechoslovakia to Warsaw when she was a girl, and our father was from Kraków. Growing up, my siblings and I spoke Czech, Polish, and Yiddish; we studied German in school, and Judyta and I studied French together. She and I were always better at languages than Izaak.”

  He laughed. “True, but neither of us were as good as Judyta. She spoke English, too.”

  Hania nodded in agreement. A wistful silence fell, remaining until Izaak complained about the cold and hurried away in search of warmth. He was right; it was too cold, but I didn’t care. It was nice being able to walk without a particular destination in mind rather than rushing to the roll-call square or labor assignments. My feet crunched against the snow while Hania and I took a right at the next intersection, continuing our leisurely stroll past Blocks 6 and 7.

  “You’ll never guess what I got today,” Hania said.

  “Seven boxes of German chocolates and three bottles of the finest champagne after striking a bargain with Kommandant Höss himself.”

  “Oh, of course. Kommandant Höss always breaks his sacred rules, so he would be the one to barter with a prisoner, wouldn’t he? And a female Jew at that.” When I laughed, she smirked before continuing. “Since I don’t have chocolates or champagne, now my earnings are going to sound much less impressive, so thank you for that. I got a comb, three toothbrushes, cigarettes, matches, and aspirins.”

  “That’s almost as good as champagne and chocolate.” The taste of chocolate lingered in my mouth, melted against the heat of my tongue. The tantalizing craving was unbearable. It was my own fault for teasing. “Last week, I translated a few men’s letters into German, so I collected bread, lye soap, and a sausage,” I said as we made another right, passing between Blocks 18 and 19. “And Mateusz sent us bread from the bakery.”

  Thoughts of my discreet exchanges with Mateusz always made me wish I could write to Irena. Official camp letters were permitted not as a kindness, but simply as a Nazi ploy to reassure family and friends who received them from deported loved ones—or sometimes from loved ones who were already dead, though those at home were unaware. To maintain the scheme, each letter was censored, so if I wrote, I couldn’t tell her the truth of my situation or share fond memories of our resistance work. Besides, it would have been foolish to put her name before those in the censorship office. What if they investigated everyone and discovered her resistance involvement? The risk of exposing her was too great.

  “Time to warm up, shikse,” Hania said as she took another right toward Block 14.

  “That means ‘a Gentile girl or woman,’ but isn’t it an insult? Consider me offended.”

  “No need to teach me my own language.” Hania gave me a light shove while I giggled through chattering teeth. “We’ve been out here long enough, and I have to meet—” She stopped, but I grabbed her arm to make her face me.

  “Protz?” I shouldn’t have bothered asking. I knew the answer.

  “Don’t give me that look, Maria. I won’t tolerate people who kvetsh about repaying favors, myself included. And while we’re on the topic of favors, do you need more medication?”

  I shook my head. I’d had a fever for the past few days, but I refused to visit Janina in the camp hospital or miss work. Going to the hospital was one step closer to the crematorium. Hania had gathered medicine and additional helpings of soup, so my fever had broken this morning.

  “You have a right to kvetsh about letting that paskudnik touch you,” I muttered.

  “When did you become a Yiddish dictionary?” Hania asked with a chuckle. “A deal with a paskudnik is still a deal.”

  “Not a fair one for you.”

  The words must have come across harsher than I’d intended, because her amusement transformed into a sudden glare. “I’d tell Kommandant Höss to drop dead if that’s what Protz wanted, so long as he gives me what I ask for in return. We have an agreement, which is more than you can say about your paskudnik—or has Fritzsch started showering you with presents every time you win a chess game?”

  Fritzsch was all it took to rob me of words. Hania must have regretted mentioning him, considering her scowl disappeared, but I crossed my arms against a gust of wind and took a few steps down the empty street. The snow had stopped, replaced by silence, as hazy as the gray sky above.

  In a place where death was nearly unavoidable, we combatted it however we could. Survival was the endgame strategy, but each prisoner played differently, and fairness was irrelevant. Death had no regard for fairness.

  Hania sighed and intertwined her arm with mine. “Je suis désolé, shikse,” she murmured, which wasn’t fair, either. She knew French was my favorite of her languages. “No need to worry about me, though. All things considered, the price I pay is insignificant. Besides, Protz won’t touch me unless I’m clean enough to meet his standards, so every meeting includes a proper shower and thoroughly washed uniform.”

  Although cleanliness was almost more enticing than food, even that wasn’t worth the cost. I took her hand and made one final attempt. “Please don’t go, Hania. Let’s keep walking.”

  She scoffed. “How do you expect that to be received? ‘Forgive me, Herr Scharführer, I didn’t pay you back because I was on a walk.’” She imitated Protz’s smirk and lowered her pitch to mimic his. “‘No need to repay me, 15177, the pleasure is mine. Here’s a dozen loaves of challah I baked with my own hands, five bars of lavender soap, and the warmest wool coat money can buy. Only the best for my untermensch.’”

  I tried not to reward her with my laughter, but her impression was too accurate, so I didn’t succeed. The humor vanished from her eyes, and the usual guarded look took its place.

  “By the way, last night I hovered around the roll-call square so Fritzsch would see me and challenge me to a chess
game. Kommandant Höss showed up, like you said he would, and he found us right as Fritzsch was celebrating his win,” I said while she pulled me close once more, providing a slight buffer against the frigid wind.

  “That makes the third time he’s caught you two with that chess set, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Not a complete protocol violation, considering Fritzsch insists your chess games boost morale and Höss has permitted the arrangement, but everyone knows he feels Fritzsch has been abusing it. What more will it take to get him transferred? Maybe we should increase our efforts.”

  “If he’s caught breaking the rules every time Höss visits the camp, Fritzsch will get suspicious. We have to space it out like we’ve been doing.”

  “And if you run out of ideas before Höss takes action? There are only so many new ways you can suggest to play chess.”

  “The next time Fritzsch tells me he’s getting bored, I’m going to tell him I’ll play blindfolded.” I tucked my numb fingers into my sleeves. As long as chess held his interest in me, we could coax him into protocol violations. Höss was bound to do something soon.

  “This is a risky game you’re playing,” Hania said, and she tightened her hold when a gust of wind tore across us. “Now you’re going inside, understood? We can’t have you catching pneumonia.” The toi I expected didn’t come. Maybe she agreed with Izaak more than she’d have liked us to believe.

  “Always looking out for me, Bubbe Ofenchajm.”

  “If the real Bubbe Ofenchajm heard your attempted pronunciation, she would say it was all fercockt.”

  “I take it that’s not a good thing?” I asked with a sheepish smile.

  Hania patted my cheek as she guided me down the snowy street. “It’s whatever you want it to be, little shikse. If you want it to be a good thing, it’s a good thing.”

  Somehow I didn’t believe her, but I appreciated the sentiment.

  * * *

  The next day, when the workday ended, I hurried from Block 11 on the way to Block 14. Hania was eager to share her latest bounty from exchanging favors, so we’d planned to meet in my block.

  As I passed Block 16, Hania came down the main street, as I’d expected because she spent most of her time in the administrative offices outside the main gate. I hurried to catch her, but two prisoners appeared, shoving her off the street until all three stood in front of Block 15.

  I darted down the alley between Blocks 15 and 16 and moved closer, searching my frantic mind for a plan to stop whatever they were about to do. As their conversation reached me, I paused. Pressing into the icy brick wall, I cupped my hands around my mouth and breathed against my fingers to warm them, taking small breaths so clouds wouldn’t form and betray my presence.

  “You’re demanding payment from him?” one man asked, a German Jew.

  “That’s my business, not yours, yenta,” Hania replied. At her use of the female term, the man bristled.

  “Last month, when you gave me your soap, you said you’d ask me to return the favor when you needed something, so I agreed to the deal. When you came for repayment, you demanded three bread rations and left me no choice but to comply. Three bread rations for a tiny piece of soap? You swindled me, but I won’t let you do the same to my friend.”

  The accusation made me press harder into the wall. He was mistaken, I was certain of it. I waited, anticipating the clarification that Hania would surely give. Instead she flashed a smug smile.

  “You call it swindling, I call it a fair deal.”

  “When you offered to translate my letter, I thought you were helping me out of kindness,” the second man said, his German heavy with a Czech accent. “How was I to know you’d want repayment?”

  “Were you stupid enough to think I’d do something for nothing?” Hania asked with a laugh so harsh it sent a sudden chill through me. “The minute you accept something from someone, you’re indebted to that person. If you didn’t know that, now you do, and you can thank me for teaching you a valuable lesson.”

  The Jewish man pinned her against the building, and, as I took a breath to scream so I could distract him, I caught sight of the look on Hania’s face. A hint of a smile danced around her lips, as if daring him to do more. The look stole the air from my lungs and kept me rooted to my hiding place while the man tightened his grip on her shoulders.

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he said. “Well, I’ve been watching you, and I know how you keep your SS men close.” He waited, perhaps expecting her to blanch during his dramatic pause, but instead she raised her eyebrows.

  “Jealous?”

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead with the likes of you, and from now on, no one else will, either. You’re nothing but a devious nafka.” Given the way he snapped the Yiddish word that I hadn’t learned, I could guess what he’d called her. “The commanding officers will be delighted to hear a Jew is contaminating their guards,” he went on. “How does that sound for repayment?”

  Both men stood tall, but their confidence withered beneath Hania’s unrelenting stare.

  “I have far more power than you realize, and I have eyes and ears all over this camp,” she said. “If you don’t keep your mouths shut, my SS connections will hunt you down and ensure your silence. They won’t be hard to convince, because I know exactly how to persuade them.” She flashed a suggestive, dangerous smile before continuing in Czech and Yiddish, perhaps relaying additional threats.

  She finished in Yiddish, and whatever she said must have been a particularly heavy threat or weighty insult because the Jewish man raised an arm, but the Czech man grabbed it before he struck.

  Hania didn’t flinch. Only nodded toward his clenched fist. “Go on, if you’d like to be reassigned to the road crew.”

  The Jewish man didn’t move, but he seemed to reconsider. Hania leaned forward as far as his grip allowed and focused a murderous glare on him.

  “Take your hands off me.”

  He obeyed, even though he looked as if he wanted to close his hands around her throat.

  The two men turned their backs on her and strolled past my hiding place. Once they’d made it a safe distance, they paused, and the Jew sent a withering glower over his shoulder.

  “A khalerye, nafka.”

  “A khalerye, yenta.”

  As Hania watched the men go, I stared at her, frozen in my hiding place, but it wasn’t the frigid temperatures that prevented me from moving. At last I forced myself into motion and sprinted down the alley. I took a left behind the block and came up another alley between Blocks 13 and 14, slipping on ice and filthy snow as I went, then paused long enough to peer around the corner. Hania hadn’t moved, and she was holding a lit cigarette. Once inside Block 14, I rushed to my bunk and threw myself upon it. I steadied my breathing and pretended to study the various scrapes and bruises on my arms. A few minutes later, Hania arrived and smiled at me.

  “Sorry I’m late. I had to take care of some things. Nothing important.” She waved a hand, brushing the matter aside as if the scene I’d witnessed had been a trivial inconvenience. “Let me show you what I brought, starting with cigarettes. I know you hate them, but most people covet them, so take some for trading purposes.”

  While Hania went through her goods and we set up a chess game, I did my best to seem engaged, but I couldn’t shake the recollection of that small, arrogant smile she’d given the men. It was as though I had reached the endgame and ignored my father’s counsel: When few pieces remain on the board, the king’s activation is necessary. I had trusted her for no reason other than she had been kind, a woman, a friend; I had continued sheltering my king. A beginner’s mistake, one I should have known better than to make. In Auschwitz, trusting too freely could be the difference between life and death.

  After running my numb finger along the dirty floor to redefine the grid lines, I moved one of my knights and closed my hand into a fist to fight the sudden tremor that overtook it. Maybe I could blame the trembling on the cold.

  “Are you sure yo
ur fever is gone, shikse? You shouldn’t have done that.” Hania flashed a teasing grin since my move had left me vulnerable to check.

  “What do you want?”

  When the query left my lips, she paused in the middle of reaching for the knight. Her hand hovered over the board for a moment, then she scooped up the pebble, set it on the ground beside her, and placed me in check.

  “Right now? To win this chess game.” Despite the jest, I detected a tightness in her voice, and a slight crease formed along her brow when she looked at me.

  “I saw you, Hania. With those men.” I let the words sink in before sitting up straighter. “Tell me what you want from me.”

  Her expression didn’t change. Silence stretched between us, but the loud voice in my head demanded to know why I’d provoked her. The pounding of my heartbeat drummed against my ears while she took a moment to light a cigarette, exhaled a steady stream of smoke, and cleared her throat.

  “When my husband and I handed our two sons over to the resistance, all we knew was that they’d be disguised as Catholics. I don’t know their fake names, where they were sent, nothing. After the war, I’ll need someone who worked for the resistance in Warsaw to get me in touch with the woman who took them.” She watched a few ashes fall to the frigid floor, then raised her dark eyes to mine. “You’re going to help me locate my sons when we get home.”

  “How long have you been planning this?” I had a feeling I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from her. I wanted her to be honest with me for once.

  “Since I found out you were a resistance member from Warsaw.”

  “Right after I was flogged. You’ve had this in mind for the entirety of our friendship. And if I don’t cooperate, you’ll blackmail me like you did those men.”