Mischling (27 page)

We arrived in Krakow and wandered through the city; we went from house to house. Here and there you'd see a sudden flutter of curtains—you could see fingers appear at the edge of the lace, and it was as if every adult had turned into a child in a game of hide-and-seek. Many did not want to look at us at all. Like the girl I saw—she was sitting before a wall papered with flowers and she was reading a book. I wanted to read a book someday. I wanted to read one that would tell me who I had been before my cage.

And on that someday, I wanted Miri beside me as I read. But since she'd spent the ride to Krakow begging for forgiveness beneath her breath, I began to wonder if her sadness might thwart the future I'd envisioned for us.

“It is not as bad as it could be” was Twins' Father's assessment of Krakow. He looked to Miri as if expecting agreement. None came. Her lips remained set with a silent dismay as we walked along the strings of houses and experienced a series of closed doors. Through the streets, we saw women chased by Russian soldiers, saw them taken into alleys, pressed into walls. We did not see them emerge. We saw beggars approach us for food and curse us when we said we had none. Most notably, we saw a man watching us from a bench outside a clock shop. He sat with a little book to write in and the day's newspaper, drinking coffee and listening to a woman whose distraught gestures made her appear as if she was petitioning for help. She was not the only one. There was a line of widows and refugees and townspeople, six or so, all waiting to speak to this figure. But when he saw the tattered assembly of us, he leaped up from his chair and dashed to Twins' Father's side to ask after our origins.

He was young, this man, but his face was old, windburned, and battered, as if he'd lived his whole life outdoors, hunting and hiding. In him, there was the presence of a soldier, but a soldier far different than Twins' Father. In his gaze, there was protective instinct—it was as if we had become his family simply by entering his city. Later, we would learn that he was deeply involved with the Bricha, the underground movement that helped Jews flee to other, safer lands. But at that moment, we knew only that this man named Jakub was determined for us to take shelter in the abandoned house adjacent to his own, a structure with boarded windows whose gray dreariness reminded one of a rotten tooth.

“I know its owners will not return,” he insisted. Twins' Father hesitated at the door, noting the blank space where the mezuzah should have been, the paint there so bright and unfaded, but Jakub said, Don't be foolish, and he flung the door wide so that we had no choice but to enter.

So we had an abandoned house to sleep in and it had all four walls and a roof that leaked. Everywhere we looked, we saw the flight of the former inhabitants. The bookshelves were upended, and a woman's nightgown sat in a pale blue puddle in the sink. A trio of bricks had been pulled from the wall, revealing a secret compartment. A sheet of paper sat at the kitchen table alongside a pen, but only a salutation adorned it.

After we had gratefully surveyed the interior, dinner was announced, and Twins' Father doled out beets from a lone, mammoth jar in the pantry. We passed the beets around, each taking a bite, our hands pinked, our mouths encircled by their pickled blush. Miri alone refused. Outside, snowfall resumed, but for once, this seemed a celebratory frost. As we ate and passed around a single cup of water, the children made note of more absences.

“No Ox,” they toasted. “No rats, no blocks, no gates, no needles!”

It was my turn. After the silence of my cage, I would never truly be comfortable with speech, but in that moment, the words found me. I don't know how they found me, but they were my
zayde
's, and when they occurred to me, they fell as bright and easy as snowfall.

To the return of Someone!
I toasted.

Miri raised her glass to me, but the smile that accompanied this gesture was wan and unconvincing. I wondered if she feared abandonment. Was she worried that when I found Someone, I would have no need of her?

I slept in fits and starts, always waking to the question of Miri's sadness. And whenever I woke, I saw that she hadn't retired at all; she sat in her chair, hands folded, utterly still. Seeing this, I realized that it was not Miri who had to fear abandonment, but myself.

Morning altered our borrowed house and drew my attention to a cage in the corner of the room. Its little wire door was open, hanging listlessly from a single hinge. The emptiness of that cage, the thought of the bird's flight, even if it escaped only to founder—it put a dream of motion in me. I wanted a pair of crutches. To move on my own, uncarried, toward the future I believed possible.

I told Miri about this fantasy as she thrust on her coat and readied to step out into the city. She warned me of the scarcity of crutches but said that she would inquire at the hospital. Already, she was embedded in new duties in Krakow, as was Twins' Father. He held a hushed meeting with Jakub at the kitchen table, one I strained to overhear while the other children ran up and down the stairs and romped in the rooms above.

Sometimes, it is fortunate to be a cripple. By not playing with the others, I learned our fate. Feigning interest in the birdcage, I spied as Twins' Father explained his sorrows.

Twins' Father was concerned about a woman. He said that she had witnessed the unimaginable, she had saved all she could, and now—she could not emerge from this unaltered, fully alive. He knew this because it was true for himself too.

Jakub paused before answering, thoughtful, as if he knew this matter too well. The burden saved you, he finally said, until you had a moment to examine it, to feel, for once, its full weight.

I think Twins' Father agreed. But his voice was too small for me to hear.

Jakub assured Twins' Father that the only thing greater than his devotion was the needs of the children. And then he gave a recommendation, one that put the identities of all in this conversation into sudden relief: The twins, he said hesitantly, should be put into the custody of the Red Cross. Only then could they flourish and the adults recover.

She will never leave them, Twins' Father replied, his voice hollowed by dread. I knew he spoke for himself too. Jakub urged him to reconsider. Thirty-four children, he said, all of them on the edge of one suffering or another. Jakub vowed to look in on us in Krakow and to send word to our guardians. They won't be forgotten, he swore.

But Miri, I thought. She is the forgotten one. Without us, she would not continue. Had no one seen the change in her since we'd lessened from thirty-five to thirty-four?

If this separation were to come to pass, I thought, I would remember Miri. First, I would save myself with a pair of crutches. Then I would save her from her sadness.

I did not tell the others what I'd heard. The children had enough concerns. Already, they had an obligation to experience freedom. This was not as simple as one might think. Fresh from our journey, we still had leagues of hesitations, stores of panic. Even a pleasant laugh floating down from a window was enough to make us startle. But we were determined to make something of our first days in Krakow, so we spent the afternoon riding the trolley, flashing our numbers at the conductor for free rides. The townspeople were charmed by us—never before had they seen so many children who matched. Peter and Sophia and me, we were the lone strays.

Peter carted my wheelbarrow on and off the trolley, onto street corners and into shops, so we could inquire after crutches together. He swore he'd find a pair, and as we searched, I tried to tell him that it was Miri who truly needed help, because we would soon be leaving her. But I could not find the words to say this. Soon enough, I realized I didn't need to.

Because when we arrived at our adopted home, it was to the sight of a dim-eyed Miri seated in a chair, an empty cup cradled between her hands. Twins' Father stood at the hearth and instructed us to gather round; he counted us, consulted his ever-present list, and when he said that it was time to discuss the future, all manners of plans tumbled out. The children spoke of reunions with their families, their schoolmates, their houses.

“You may return,” Twins' Father warned, “but your house may no longer be your house. Your country may not be your country. Your belongings—they may belong to someone else.”

As he spoke, he looked at Miri, as if expecting her to refute what he said. But she merely stared into her cup, as if she might find some other solution to our plight at its bottom.

“The Red Cross is better equipped to take care of you,” Twins' Father said, and he began to speak of the arrangements, but the younger ones drowned him out with protest—they clambered over Miri in her chair, surrounding her with pleas, each tripping over the other in distress. She dipped her face into the sleeve of her coat as if to shut them out.

The older ones began to protest too but thought better of it and exchanged their outcries for a single question: When? they wondered.

The answer: four days.

Twins' Father consulted with each of us in turn. He informed Sophia that he would not leave her without a new coat; he assured the Blaus that they would not be separated. All of his reassurances appeared routine—but then, ever so softly, I heard him tell Peter that their plans for Krnov had been solidified. Peter caught sight of my confusion.

“A friend of my aunt's,” he explained dully. “She says that she will be my mother now. She lives in Krnov. Twins' Father is going to take me there, on his way to Brno.”

I was not the only one to be surprised by this news.

“How did you manage it?” the others asked. “Was it a trick? How did you fool this woman into wanting you?”

I could have told them: It was too easy to like Peter. He gave and fought and searched—who would not want his company? That was what I wanted to say to the other children, who now appeared to regard him as a mystery and—judging by their expressions, which ranged from light scowls to outright disdain—one to be resented. When I asked him why they were so angry, Peter told me that I should be angry too. A family was a rare thing these days, he said.

I knew Peter had given me much. Now that I knew we would be parted, I wanted to give him something too. But words were all I had. So I told him that I had ten memories. Of those, there were six that I really wanted to have. So, really, I had six memories. The first was Dr. Miri's face. The second was Peter pushing my wheelbarrow. The third was the gates, but only the gates in my hindsight as we left. The fourth was Peter throwing a stone at those gates. The fifth was Peter scouring the streets of Krakow for a crutch. The sixth wasn't really memory at all, it was more of a longing for a memory, and it was my Someone.

“You are in three of those,” I pointed out.

He responded to this by increasing our search for a crutch. In our remaining days, we traveled up and down the streets in search of a pair, knocking on doors, asking passersby, inquiring at the hospital. We also checked with Jakub.

“Do you have any crutches?” I asked him on the first day of our search.

“Not crutches, but onions,” he said, handing Peter a pair of yellow globes. One could see that refusing us anything pained him greatly.

That night, at our abandoned house, I put the onions in a soup pot and watched their yellow faces bob and revolve with unending optimism. I took their sunniness as a sign—by dawn, I thought, Jakub would have crutches for me.

And then, the following morning—

“Here for food, are you?” he ventured jovially.

No, we said. We thanked him for the soup. And did he have any crutches?

“I don't,” he said, regretful. “But will you take this?” He folded a blanket into my wheelbarrow. I took its warmth as a sign—by dawn, I thought, I will have crutches.

But on the third day, Jakub hung his head at the sight of our approach. He couldn't bear to say no to me, so I did not ask. Grateful for our lack of inquiry, Jakub placed a pocketknife in my hands.

“That is all that I have to give,” he said sorrowfully. We thanked him and then wheeled away. I studied the pocketknife. Peter saw my disappointment.

“Good for a trade,” he assured me.

Back at the stoop of our abandoned house, I etched images over the frosty windowpane at the entry with my fingertip. I etched the image of one crutch, and then another, and as soon as I'd completed the second, a storm arose, erasing all I'd imagined.

I decided not to take anything as a sign anymore.

It was my responsibility—not fate's—to ensure that I was strong enough to look after Miri, even if I remained within my wheelbarrow for all my days.

When I wasn't with Peter, I was with Miri, who spent her mornings making rounds of the streets of Krakow. I was her attending nurse, or so she told me. Really, she just couldn't bear to leave me alone. Together, we went to the Red Cross and moved among the many cots. She knew that I was perpetually on the lookout for crutches, but she was determined to make me useful too, so I sat and wound bandages under her supervision. This work was good for me. But my guardian benefited even more, because Miri forgot her pain while surrounded by the pain of others. In tending to them, she was renewed. It was women that we looked after, for the most part, because not every soldier entrusted with the welfare of Krakow had been worthy of this task. Women and young women and girls that war had made women of too soon. I looked at them and wondered: Would they have appreciated the protection of my cage?

And every afternoon, when another doctor relieved Miri from her post, she took me to the station. There, we looked for a name. The name of Miri's sister. Or for Miri's name—in case Ibi was looking for her. The station wall was thick with names, but Ibi's was not there; she was not looking for Miri. Name upon name, letter after letter, plea after plea, and not a single one addressed to us. Until one afternoon, the day before the grand parting, Miri seized upon a flutter of paper and said that we owed the writer a visit. Her hand shook as she held this note, and her eyes were so overwhelmed with tears that it seemed a miracle to me that she could read it at all. All I could spy was the flash of an address. I wanted to inquire after the note's full contents, but Miri's demeanor told me enough: this was not a happy discovery but an obligation, and she steered me toward the address with dread.