Mischling (20 page)

Even as she attempted brightness for my sake, her tone indicated that this was not a particularly large or impressive hope, but a hope that was a bit tattered and that introduced a new set of unknowns and troubles into our lives.

Three of the cloud-people rose from their beds and clambered over to the window for a look. They were told to lie down, to rest—I could see that the staff was worried; it seemed not entirely certain that the planes overhead were friendly. The cloud-people themselves demonstrated a division in this line of thought. It would soon be over, all over, some said. It will never be over, others said. I did not know whom to believe but looked to Dr. Miri's face for guidance. Her eyes were lit, active with optimism, but her mouth remained set in a grim line.

For three days we waited, with fingers in our ears, with eyes wide open, with our shoes at the ready in case we had to run. We waited while the bombs whistled a pretty tune, waited without knowing where they might fall. We waited while the snow mixed with smoke and the camp went gray with wondering.

I waited knowing that if freedom truly came, another wait would begin for me. I lay in my bunk and began another letter to my sister; I scratched it into the wall that stretched beside me, but I was able to execute only the salutation.
Dear Pearl,
I wrote, believing that someday, if only for a moment, she might leave the site of her capture—be it death, be it Mengele—and see this greeting and know that we were people, still, in spite of what we'd been told.

Auschwitz, its work was done, said the grim faces of the guards as they pursued the shambling of it. The place that had once welcomed their every evil impulse now threatened to be their undoing. We were accustomed to that burning-chicken-feather smell, that red sky, the ash always hunting us down, but this—now the flames leaped with tongues whose vocabularies were devoted to the destruction of Auschwitz. The SS set fire to the little white farmhouse where they'd gassed us; they had pyres of documents, they destroyed all they had built, but they were not systematic about this destruction the way they had been with ours. No, this was a blazing assault on the kingdom over which they had ruled, and the random nature of its dismantling placed us at still greater risk. The prisoners walked with bowed heads—meeting a guard's eye could only encourage his ruthlessness. While these guards had once answered to superiors, they now answered only to their desperations. There were rumors of what they might do, and no two rumors were alike—it was said that they would relocate us to another prison camp, that they would send the whole of Auschwitz up in flames to destroy evidence of their crimes, and that this was the beginning of surrender.

The last seemed most unlikely to me. I couldn't imagine that one would embark on surrender by enacting these particular violences, this tossing of children in the air to make them more challenging targets, this cornering of women to cut their throats, this mowing down of men with vehicles. Watching this chaos from the window of the infirmary, I wondered if a bullet or a scream could better pierce the sky.

On January 20, 1945, the movements of the SS festered into flights. We saw them load themselves onto the same trucks they had piled our loved ones on, and they fled. They scampered into cars and hurtled through fences, leaving twisted wire in their wake. Those who didn't flee were roaming about, extracting whatever power they could find. Along the rows of us, Miri was issuing strict instructions: “Stay inside,” she said, “wait, wait, the Soviets are not yet here, but they are coming, and only then, perhaps not even then, will it be safe to venture out.”

Being deathless, I slipped past her form. There was no keeping me within those walls. Not when I could see Bruna waving to me from the window, her arms full of supplies, her charcoaled hair thrown back, and her face drawn in anticipation of a good-bye. After I bolted down the steps she was there, around the corner, waiting with Feliks. She clapped a fur coat on my back.

“Jackal,” she said, stroking the fur in benediction. I had never played a jackal in the Classification of Living Things, but it suited me. The coat shone with the determination of a clever animal whose reputation had been much maligned but who chose to endure.

Feliks was wearing a bear's pelt. It was luxurious, full of gloss and menace. In these additions to our own hides, we ran past the menace of uniforms, the goods that Bruna had given us bouncing in our sacks. We ran past the block where the orchestra had played, and the flames, they were eating all the instruments, they were gnashing with all the violent flicker entrusted to their kind. We heard the skins of drums burst, heard the oboes whimper as their reeds died. Thunder rose from the remains of the piano. But Pearl's piano key—it stayed by my side.

“Isn't it lovely?” Bruna asked, taking in the clumsy flight of the SS.

We agreed that it was and stated our delight in viewing such a show. We swore that we would stand by Bruna and help her contribute to these destructions. She did not care for this plan; she pushed us bodily away from her.

“You must go back to the barracks without me!” she insisted. “I have promises to take care of here.”

Later, we would learn that Bruna's promises were to Dr. Miri. The two had developed an evacuation plan for the weakest in the infirmary if an event such as this came to pass, and the SS began to pick off the ill as they lay in their beds. Bruna had better things to do than deal with us. Of course, she would never have put it that way—our Bruna dealt only in benevolent insults.

“Go away, you babies, and hide in your bunks,” she hissed. “There, you worms have a chance. Your chances here—
pfft
—in this place you will live only by playing dead.”

“We will do that, then,” I argued, pulling on the lapels of my jackal fur coat. Already, I felt it sharpening my instincts. But Bruna did not share my faith.

“I doubt your ability to play dead well enough. You are too animated, Stasha. No, it is better for you to go to the barracks and wait. Wait for me to fetch you. If you don't go back and save yourselves”—Bruna paused—“I'll do awful things to you.”

“Like what?” Feliks challenged. “Your worst is the best in all the world. I wouldn't have anything but the worst. All the other girls—”

She slapped him across the cheek with a resounding crack. He looked like he would swoon from the pleasure of the proximity, but her words ended that swiftly.

“I'll kill you, Feliks. You dumb bear. I may not kill you now. Or even tonight. Hopefully, it won't be necessary at all. But if one of these Nazis tries to kill you, you can be sure that I will beat them to it. I won't have my loved ones die at their hands. Only mine.”

We saw the reason in this. We also saw the pistol in the waistband of her skirt. It seemed that Bruna and her fellow rebels had been prepared for this upheaval, even if they had not known, during their weeks of plunder and planning, the secretive missions undertaken in Nazi headquarters for supplies and the endless meetings, the breadth of destruction our freedom might bring.

“So,” Feliks concluded, a forced brightness in his voice, “we will go. Back to the barracks. But only for now. We are leaving here together, yes?”

Bruna lifted her eyes to the flickering sky, as if she expected the flames to deliver her words for her, words she hesitated to give.

“Don't ever wait for me,” she instructed us.

All of this meant nothing to Feliks. He cared nothing about the future if it didn't have a reunion with Bruna.

“We won't wait now. But perhaps—in case we are separated in this—we should establish a meeting place first?” he suggested. “That is what friends do. You are our friend, yes, Bruna? Only a friend would offer to kill you before others can.”

I watched Bruna's face struggle to maintain its usual stony veneer. She was touched. It seemed likely that the term
friend
had never been uttered so nakedly alongside her name before.

“Of course,” she said. “But it may be some time. Who knows what waits for us? There could be months of running ahead, years of hiding.”

Feliks would not be deterred.

“Stasha and I will wait for you,” he said. “Just name the place.”

I watched the depth of his determination occur to her, saw it light up one pink eye and then the next. I'd always expected Bruna's tears to be as blush as her eyes but there they were, as clear and atremble as any I'd ever witnessed. She didn't seem to care that I saw them and even accepted the sleeve of my sweater for use as a handkerchief.

“I always wanted to go to a real museum,” she said between dabs. “To be a lady for a day and see the art.”

“A real museum, then.” Feliks gulped. “In front of a statue, we'll meet. And tea afterward, maybe a nice café. I'll buy your ticket.”

“That would be sweet,” she said, and she gave him a kiss. “You are very sweet, Feliks.”

I've never been sure what motivated Bruna to accept this invitation, to bestow this kiss. Perhaps she saw true possibility in it. Perhaps she was just humoring Feliks. Maybe she was sensing—as anyone with eyes and ears would sense—that a protracted conversation in the middle of gunfire and grand-scale selection was unwise for any who might want to leave that place alive. But I think she cared for him, truly.

“It's a promise,” she swore to us, and then she shook my hand and smiled. I could feel the residue of her tears in that handshake.

Whatever else one could've said of our beloved criminal, we all knew that Bruna's word was true. Theft was not her genuine talent. A promise—that was her real gift. She could not help but dream of fulfillment and creation, even as she dedicated her present to havoc. She meant well, our Bruna. But of course, she did her best to mask her virtue. And so her kindness and generosity were cons, double-dealers; they skulked about, disguised as flaws—and then, suddenly, when you weren't looking, her tricks trespassed and broke inside you so that they could steal from you, bit by bit, until you hosted an emptiness in which your real goodness could thrive. In this way, she saved you. Bruna, she was our organizing angel.

Only when she let go of my hand was I struck by the stupidity of our pact. How many museums were there? Were we speaking of Poland or Europe or the world entire? It was a foolish plan.

In realizing this mistake, I looked at Bruna's face, half turned, that goodness on it still apparent, and before I had even a slip of a minute to ask for clarification about our future plans, Taube leaped up behind her and grasped her by the neck. He gave it the famed twist we'd seen him issue so many times before, but now it was visiting our own. As the bones cracked, a rare color rose in her cheeks. Her pale face filled with blood. After Taube finished breaking Bruna's neck, he snapped his fingers in our direction.

We were on our knees then, having watched her flutter to the ground like a scarf. The newly black hair she'd made for herself bannered with a flag's defiance. Taube caught up some of the coal-colored tangles and rubbed them between his fingers to reveal the whiteness she'd so desperately tried to conceal.

“She really thought she could be someone else, did she?” he asked no one.

Fearing Feliks might answer, I tried to clap a hand over his mouth, but he was too busy collapsing into the snow to speak. We looked at Bruna together. Her woolen skirt had upended itself, and the jumble of her white legs was exposed.

As Feliks moved to straighten Bruna's skirt, Taube interfered, placing a foot on the body to indicate that it had been thoroughly conquered. He stooped to draw the pistol from her waistband, balanced it in the palm of his hand, then redirected the muzzle at us.

“You two. You find this something to stare at? On your feet now.”

Feliks offered me his shoulder, but his shoulder wasn't enough, and his bones were sharp enough to cut me besides. Still I clung to him. My shuffle drew attention to our furs.

“The coats. Where did you get them?” Feliks's mouth was still drawn into a silent scream. I turned his face away from Bruna, and I told Taube that the coats were a gift from the doctor.

“Tell me”—he laughed—“were you such a good liar before? Or do you have Auschwitz to thank for that?”

I told him I was sure I didn't know the answer, but it seemed a fair question.

“What is with this obsession with fairness? No matter,” he said with a sudden cheer. “Keep your lousy coats. Who knows how cold it will be where you're going.” He put Bruna's pistol at our backs.

There it was—we had lost the chance of escape that our dead beloved had entreated us to take.

Snow fell as flames rose. Both were outpaced by Taube. He was herding us, every last one—children and women and injured all. The usual efficiency had fallen away; it was all pell-mell stomping and dragging, people grasping onto other people, people stumbling, people trying to lift other people up.

Choiceless, we joined the swarm, that ever-enlarging multitude dotted with faces, scarves, bandages. We lost ourselves in it, and the loss was so thorough that the image of dying Bruna that had burned itself into the backs of my eyelids began to fade. It would reappear to me over the years—I would wake and see it in mourning—but in that moment I had to walk.

Feliks, though, I believe he walked with this vision of Bruna. Even as he supported me, he trembled and shook, and he spoke to me as if he were trapped in a dream.

“How many of us are there?” I asked him.

“Not enough” was all he would say.

Later, history would say that more than seven thousand people stayed behind at Auschwitz, emaciated and immobile while the rest of us were turned out in droves, dense marches of death and near-death. We in this particular death march numbered twenty thousand. Among us marchers, the hesitant were shot; the lame were shot too. Our numbers quickly dwindled. The soldiers entertained themselves with a trick of shooting one body so that it fell into another body, and that body toppled another in turn, and so and so pitifully on, bone-crack, hiss of bullet, snap on snap—our people fell, and the SS strode upon them, shooting whoever dared to stir.