Affinity Konar - Mischling

“I can whistle,” I assured Uncle. “I swear. I whistled just a few hours ago.” But he didn’t acknowledge this — he just turned his back to consult with one of the attendants and paid me no mind.

I watched Pearl blanch with fright, and I followed suit. I was sure that my failure had doomed us both. In our defense, I considered listing our many other talents to the doctor, but I decided that it would not do to boast about Pearl’s dancing and Pearl’s poetry recitations and Pearl’s piano skills. I chose another method to prove my worth instead.

“‘Blue Danube,’” I announced to the room in an overly loud voice.

That did the trick. Uncle turned, curious.

“What did you say?”

“What you were whistling when you came in. That waltz. It is ‘Blue Danube.’”

Uncle’s face creased with pleasure. He picked up the tail end of one of my braids and pulled it, his manner not unlike a schoolboy’s.

“You know music?”

I squirmed on the bench, discomforted by the singularity of his gaze. It was as if I were his only patient.

“Pearl is a dancer,” I told him.

“And you”—this was accompanied by a finger-point—“a pianist?”

“I want to be a doctor someday.”

“Like me?” He smiled.

“Like our papa,” I said. It was the first time I’d used the word since Papa disappeared — those four letters, those two syllables, that sound that started hard and then went so soft, like a footstep that begins on a stair and ends in the sand. I’d tried to assign that word new meanings to erase the old one, to make a father into a ditch, a time, a false door in a library that one could hide behind and never be detected. After saying the word, I sank into myself, but Uncle was too delighted to notice, and I believe that when I said our papa, he managed to hear you, and only you, Uncle, because he beamed at me with a familial pride.

“A doctor! I’m impressed,” he declared to the staff. “This is a bright girl.” Nurse Elma looked doubtful at this proclamation, but she gave an expression of agreement before returning to the cleaning of the instruments.

Uncle stalked to the sink to wash his hands. Catching sight of himself in the reflective surface of a steel cabinet, he mugged a little, and then, upon noticing an errant lock, he fell to combing his hair with an obsessive attention, as if aligning the strands might bring his whole world into pleasing symmetry. After perfection was achieved, he sheathed his comb, resumed his whistle, and bobbed his head in the direction of an orderly, who set a chair before us for him to sit in. He wiped the seat of his chair with his handkerchief, rubbing disdainfully at a small stain on the wood, and then positioned himself stiffly before us. His posture resembled that of a person who finds himself at a family reunion after years of estrangement, eager to learn about the lives of others but preoccupied with hiding his own identity. As if it were our responsibility to put him at ease, I offered him a smile. I’m sure that it was not a pretty smile, but he saw my attempts to win him over in it, and I believe he saw my weakness too.

He clapped a hand over each of our knees, obscuring the cattle-car bruises that covered them.

“I have been thinking of organizing a concert here. Would you girls like that?”

We nodded together.

“It’s done, then! I will have them play each of your favorite songs. Or maybe, to save them some trouble, I will have them play the same song twice!”

He laughed at his own joke. I laughed too, to cover my fear, and Pearl caught on and gave a giggle. Already, we’d learned how to coordinate our hearts in this place for protection’s sake. But my heart must’ve been a beat behind, as usual, because the very next second, I was blurting something out in a move that was foolish, inevitable, and typical of me.

“I heard that you keep the families of twins safe,” I said in a rush, my head bowed. As soon as I made this mistake, Pearl kicked the leg of my chair to prompt my usual apology.

“Don’t be sorry,” Uncle soothed, and he swept the back of his hand softly across my cheek. I wondered how many times he’d said that to people like us before, because the phrase appeared to feel odd on his tongue. The corner of his mouth twitched a little, and he chewed on the edge of his mustache. It was a strange tic for a man of his composure, a bit bovine and low, but later, I came to recognize that it usually surfaced when he was taking care in choosing his words. After some thought, the mustache was released from his mouth’s grip, and he addressed us gravely.

“I do take care of the families. Is there anything you’d like me to do for yours?”

We told him that our zayde might look like an old man, but he was very young in his outlook, with a mind always prowling about in search of new things to poke at and study. In the cattle car, he’d made us promise two things: That someday we would learn to swim, and that, when we survived, we’d get a massive bottle of the finest wine and toast him. During this toast, we were to call for the obliteration of the murderers and wish on them a million mansions filled with thousands of rooms, and in every room, a hundred beds, and beneath every bed, a poisonous snake to bite their infernal ankles, and at every bedside, a doctor with an antidote, so that they might be cured and live to be bitten again and endure the same suffering over and over till the snakes got bored of the Nazi flavor, which would be never, because everyone knows that you can’t bore a snake with the taste of evil.

At the conclusion of this outburst, Pearl glared and shifted in her seat uncomfortably, but Uncle appeared unbothered. In fact, he acted as if he hadn’t heard it at all. He simply resumed chewing on his mustache and continued the inquiry.

“Does your grandfather like to swim?”

Oh yes, we said. Zayde swims and flips and dives like a fish.

“That is settled, then. We do have a swimming pool here, you know. I will arrange for an escort for him and inform his block supervisor.”

I pointed out that Zayde would require swimming trunks.

“Of course! How could I forget? I’m sure it’s unlikely that he brought a pair with him. We can’t have that elderly bum-bum frightening off the other bathers, can we?”

I didn’t find the thought of my naked zayde funny, but he did, so I joined him again in laughing, much to Pearl’s alarm. I could only hope that she saw the strategy in my laughter, because when it finally subsided I made another request.

“There is someone else,” I said. “Our mother.”

“Yes?”

“She is our mother” was all I could say at first, because thinking of her emptied me.

“And?”

“She draws and paints. Animals and plants, mostly. She makes a history of the living things and the things that don’t live anymore. It keeps her happy.”

This was a polite way of putting it. I’m not sure that it kept her happy so much as it lessened her tears. I thought of the poppy on the wall of the cattle car, how the flimsiness of the petals supported her. But it didn’t seem to be the time to hash out such particulars with Uncle. Already, a glaze of boredom was threatening to wash over his face, and I knew I wouldn’t have much more time to barter with him.

“Brushes, then,” he decided. “And an easel. Obviously, some paint.”

We thanked him, we said that Mama and Zayde would be so grateful. It was more than enough, we said. Or, not more than enough, but—

“I know what you are trying to say.” His voice was solemn. “It is good that you think of others, but your family should be entitled to advantages for bringing you into the world. Because you are special, you twins.”