Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

He understood, too, that he and József were dying. Flecktyphus, he kept hearing, and dizentéria. One day Tibor had returned from town to find Andras and József with a bowl of beans between them; they’d managed to finish half of what they’d been given. He scolded them both and threw the beans out the boxcar door. Are you mad? For dysentery, nothing could be worse than barely cooked beans. Men died from eating them, but in the quarantine camp there was nothing else to eat. Instead, Tibor fed Andras and József the cooking liquid from the beans, sometimes with bits of bread. Once, bread with a slathering of jam that smelled faintly of petrol. Tibor explained: In his wanderings he’d come across a farmhouse that had been hit by a plane; he’d found a clay pot of preserves in the yard. Where was the clay pot? they asked. Shattered. Tibor had carried the jam in the palm of his hand, twenty kilometers.

As József got better on the food Tibor brought, Andras’s fever deepened. The flux rolled through him and emptied him. The skeleton of reality came apart, connective tissue peeling from the bones.

A constant foul smell that he knew was himself.

Cold.

Tibor weeping.

Tibor telling someone-József?-that Andras was near the end.

Tibor kneeling by his side, reminding him that today was Tamás’s birthday.

A resolution that he would not die that day, not on his son’s birthday.

Rising through his torn insides, a filament of strength.

Then, the next morning, a commotion in the quarantine camp. The sound of a megaphone. An announcement: All who could work were to be taken to Mürzzuschlag, in Austria. Soldiers searched the boxcars and pulled the living into a glare of cold light. A man in Nazi uniform dragged Andras outside and threw him onto the railroad tracks. Where was Tibor? Where was József? Andras lay with his cheek against the freezing rail, the metal burning his cheek, too weak to move, staring at the frost-rimed gravel, at the moving feet of men all around him. From somewhere nearby came the sound of metal on dirt: men shoveling. It seemed to go on for hours. He understood. Finally, the burial of the dead. And here he was, waiting to be buried. He had died, had gone across. He didn’t know when it had happened. He was surprised to find that it could be so simple. There was no alive, no dead; only this nightmare, always, and when the dirt covered him he would still feel cold and pain, would suffocate forever. A moment later he was caught up by the wrists and ankles and flung through the air. A moment of lightness, then falling. An impact he felt in all his joints, in his ravaged intestines. A stench. Beneath him, the bodies of men. Around him, walls of bare earth. A shovelful of earth in his face. The taste of it like something from childhood. He kept pushing and pushing it away from his face, but it came and came. The shoveler, a vigorous black form at the edge of the grave, pumped at a mound of dirt. Then, for no reason Andras could see, he stopped. A moment later he was gone, the task forgotten. And there Andras lay, not alive, not dead.

A night in an open grave, dirt for his blanket.

In the morning, someone dragging him out.

Again, the boxcar. And now.

Now.

Beside him was a bowl of beans. He was ravenous for them. Instead he tilted the bowl to his mouth, sipped the liquid. With that mouthful he felt his bowels loosen, and then, beneath him, heat.

Another day passed and darkened. Another night. Someone-Tibor?-tipped water into his mouth; he choked, swallowed. In the morning he crawled out of the boxcar, trying to escape the smell of himself. Unaccountably his head felt clearer. He paused, kneeling, and thrust his hand into the pocket of his overcoat, where, when there had been bread, he had carried bread. The pocket was sandy with crumbs. He pulled himself to a puddle where the sun had melted the snow. In one hand he held the crumbs. With the other he scooped water from the puddle. He made a cold paste, put his hand to his mouth, ate. It was his first solid food in twenty days, though he did not know it.

Sometime later he woke in the boxcar. József Hász was bending over him, urging him to sit up. “Give it a try,” József said, and lifted him from beneath the shoulders.

Andras sat up. Black ocean waves seemed to close over his head. Then, like a miracle, they receded. Here was the familiar interior of the boxcar. Here was József kneeling beside him, supporting his back with both hands.

“You’re going to have to stand now,” József said.

“Why?”

“Someone’s coming to gather men for a work detail. Anyone who can’t work will be shot.”

He knew he wouldn’t be selected for a work detail. He could scarcely raise his head. And then he remembered again: “Tibor?”

József shook his head. “Just me.”

“Where’s my brother, József? Where’s my brother?”

“They’ve been desperate for workers,” József said. “If a man can stand, they take him.”

“Who?”

“The Germans.”

“They took Tibor?”

“I don’t know, Andráska,” József said, his voice breaking. “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for days.”

Outside the boxcar, a German voice called men to attention.

“We’re going to have to walk now,” József said.

Tears came to Andras’s eyes: To die now, after everything. But József took him from beneath the arms and hoisted him to his feet. Andras fell against him. József swayed and yelped in pain; his shattered leg, freed from its cast, could only have been half knit. But he caught Andras around the back and led him toward the door of the boxcar. Slid it aside. Took Andras down a ramp and out onto the cold bare dirt of the rail yard. Thin blades of pain shot up from Andras’s feet and through his legs. In his side, along the surgical wound, a dull orange burning.

A Nazi officer stood before a row of labor servicemen, inspecting their soiled, ribbon-torn overcoats and trousers, their rag-bound feet. Andras’s and József’s feet were bare.

The officer cleared his throat. “All those who want to work, step forward.”

All the men stepped forward. József pulled Andras, whose legs buckled. Andras fell forward onto his hands and knees on the bare ground. The officer came toward him and knelt; he put a hand to the back of Andras’s neck, and reached into his own overcoat pocket. Andras imagined the barrel of a pistol, a noise, an explosion of light. To his shame, he felt his bladder release.

The officer had drawn out a handkerchief. He mopped Andras’s brow and helped him to his feet.

“I want to work,” Andras said. He had managed the words in German: Ich möchte arbeiten.

“How can you work?” the officer said. “You can’t even walk.”

Andras looked into the man’s face. He appeared almost as hungry, almost as ragged, as the work servicemen themselves; his age was impossible to determine. His cheeks, slack and windburned, showed a growth of colorless stubble. A small oval scar marked his jawline. He rubbed the scar with his thumb as he looked at Andras contemplatively.

“A wagon will be here in a few minutes,” he said at last. “You’ll come with us.”

“Where are we going?” Andras dared to ask. Wohin gehen wir?

“To Austria. To a work camp. There’s a doctor there who can help you.”

Everything seemed to have a terrible second meaning. Austria. A work camp. A doctor who could help him. Andras put a hand on József’s arm to steady himself, pulled himself to his bare feet, and made himself look into the Nazi’s eyes. The Nazi held his gaze, then turned sharply and marched off through the rows of boxcars. Exhausted, Andras leaned against József until the wagon arrived. The Nazi officer quick-stepped alongside the wagon, carrying a pair of boots. He helped Andras and József into the wagon bed, then put the boots into Andras’s lap.