Affinity Konar - Mischling

Though just a girl, I had ideas about violence. Violence had a horizon, a scent, a color. I’d seen it in books and newsreels, but I didn’t truly know it until I saw the effects of it on Zayde, saw him come to our basement home in the ghetto with a red rag over his face, saw Mama go soundless as she bound his nose with the scrap torn from the hem of her nightgown. Pearl held the lamp during this procedure so that Mama could see, but I was shuddering so much that I couldn’t assist her. I should be able to say that I saw violence happen to Mama when a guard came to our door with news about the disappearance, but I kept my eyes closed tight the whole time, sealed them shut while Pearl stared straight ahead, and because my sister saw it all, I felt the images secondhand, felt them burn on the backs of my eyelids — I saw the guard’s boot glow and furrow itself in Mama’s side as she lay on the floor. Pearl was angry that I was not an active witness, and so she forced me to take it all in, and when I begged her to stop subjecting me to such sights, she informed me that I had no say in the matter, because she would never look away, not ever, no matter how much it hurt me, because in looking away, she said, we would lose ourselves so thoroughly that our loss would require another name.

So, I knew violence. Or I knew it well enough to understand that it had happened to the eyes. I knew they’d been torn from bodies that belonged to people who deserved such better sights than what they’d last seen. And even though I was unaware of what the most beautiful sight could be, I wanted to give it to them. I wanted to travel the whole world over, from sea to mountain and back, and bring to them an object, an animal, a view, an instrument, a person — anything that might reassure them that even as violence tore on, beauty remained, and it remembered them still. Realizing the impossibility of this, I gave the eyes the only thing I could: a tear crept down my cheek.

“Why are you crying?” Nurse Elma demanded. She shut the door on the eyes, but not before they saw my tear.

“We’re not crying,” I claimed.

“Your sister’s not crying”—she jerked her snowy head at Pearl and then crouched to face me—“but you are. What did you see in there?”

The truth was that I couldn’t describe what I saw. But I knew that I’d never stop seeing those eyes, that they’d follow me for all the days I’d live, wide open and blinkless, hoping for another fate. I knew that I’d sense their stare the most whenever I heard of someone being born or wed or found. I knew that I’d try to shut my own eyes, just to have some peace, but I never would be able to shut them entirely. True closure, I was sure, would escape all of us.

“I saw nothing,” I protested.

Drops of moisture from the hailstorm beaded Nurse Elma’s face and they dove to the floor, one by one, while she resorted to her standard tactics.

“I know you saw something,” she insisted as she shook me. “I just want to be certain that we saw the same thing. I want to know this, because I do not want the other children to be frightened by any of your wild stories. I am familiar with children like you. Lovers of fiction! There was a girl here once, she told a story about what she saw, a story that was not true, and do you know what happened to her?”

I told Nurse Elma that I did not.

“I can’t recall either, not specifically. How can I be expected to remember? There are so many of you to look after. But know this: What came of her wild stories — it wasn’t good. Do you understand my meaning?”

I nodded. This gesture served a dual purpose. Not only did it secure Elma’s approval, but it allowed a second tear to descend my cheek without her notice.

“Now tell me, then. What did you see in that room?”

Searching for a suitable answer, I thought about rows mounted on the wall — even in their capture, the eyes had fluttered their pretty colors with a flighty animation, and the dust that coated them had the appearance of pollen. Many had likely migrated long distances. All received the treatment of pests. They’d been lured in, trapped, starved, pinched into submission, and then, when life had been sufficiently drained from them, they’d been pinned into place, mounted as curiosities for study.

“Butterflies,” I blurted out. “I saw butterflies. Only butterflies. They weren’t eyes at all. Just butterflies.”

“Butterflies?”

“Yes. Row after row of butterflies. A class of insects. In the moth order Lepidoptera.”

Elma put a finger beneath my chin and lifted my jaw toward the ceiling. I wondered if she would halve me, and just when I figured that she surely would, she released me and assumed the tone of a frustrated and imperious revisionist.

“But they are not butterflies,” she informed me. “They are beetles. The doctor has collected them for years. Understand?”

I said I did understand.

“Say they are beetles, Stasha, I want to hear it. You made an error in describing what you saw. Correct yourself so Pearl understands too.”

“I saw beetles,” I said to Pearl. I did not look at my sister while I spoke.

“You don’t convince me.”

“I saw beetles, nothing more. Not butterflies. Beetles. Order Coleoptera. Two sets of wings.”

Satisfied, she turned and walked on, her stride enlivened by the interrogation, and when we reached the end of the hall, she swung open the door to a room that would alter us forever. It is easy to think that there are many such rooms in one’s life. This room, you might say, that was the room where I fell in love. Or, This was the room where I learned that I was more than my sadness, my pride, my strength.

But in Auschwitz, I found that the room that really changes you is the one that can make you feel nothing at all. It is the room that says, Come sit in me, and you will know no pain; your suffering isn’t real, and your struggles? They’re only slightly more real than you are, but not by much. Save yourself, the room advises, by feeling nothing, and if you must feel something, don’t doom yourself by showing it.

Elma stripped us after we entered this room. Into her arms went the dresses Mama had sewn; Elma regarded the strawberry print with scorn. Even fruit could not avoid offending her.

“So childish,” she observed while stabbing one of the strawberries with a red-lacquered finger. “Do you like being children?”

“Yes,” we said. It would be the last word that we would ever speak in unison. I wish I had known that at the time, but I was too overwhelmed by the task of pleasing Elma, whose powdery face lit up with disbelief.

“How funny. I can’t imagine why.”

“I’ve never wanted to grow up,” I said. This was true. Growing up held too much risk of growing away from Pearl.

Nurse Elma smiled her too-straight smile.

“Then you are in the right place,” she said.

Yes, I should have deduced the truth about what she was implying about our future. But something about Nurse Elma upended me, and I couldn’t think properly in her presence. Elma seated us on chairs, their steel backs so cold that we started to shiver. The room felt icy, then hot. A fog winged across my vision. I knew that fog well. It visited me whenever I saw cruelty. I tried to imagine Elma into a less cruel person as she set aside our things and arranged a tray of measuring instruments, but the woman’s image had a peculiar solidity that defied any improvements my imagination sought to impose on her. Nothing about her was vague or negotiable. Some might call this a strong personality. I wanted to call it that, just to be human and generous. But it was obvious that what she really possessed was emptiness so vast that it managed to approximate power.