Affinity Konar - Mischling

“Do you feel any pain?” he asked as he hammered. “What about this? What about now?”

Yes, I said. No, I said. And then, No and no. Because I wanted to compromise his experiments. I wanted to make them as meaningless as I was.

Mengele didn’t suspect a thing. He shone a light into my eyes, and I was grateful for the momentary blindness, because his face was so close to mine, and the smell of him was in my nose. It was scrambled eggs and cruelty, and my stomach rumbled against my will. He spoke over the rumbles, as if hoping to disguise the proof that he, too, was in possession of a body that answered to the normal demands of digestion.

“How has your day been, Pearl?” He asked this merrily, as if he could have been any of the people we passed by on our way home from school — the postman, the butcher, the florist, the neighbor — his inquiry innocent and casual.

“It hurts.”

“Your day hurts? What a funny thing to say! And here I thought Stasha was the only comedienne.”

On the other side of the room, Nurse Elma snorted.

“Pain has its reasons,” Mengele said.

And then he gave me a piece of candy and commanded me to enjoy it. I carried it, fully wrapped, beneath my tongue for safekeeping. This was something of an effort because my tongue felt like dust and my head was swimming and my mouth was full of aches. Still, I managed to preserve this sweetness all through the ride back to the Zoo. Once in the yard, I spat the wrapped candy into the dust and watched the Herschorn triplets fight over its possession.

I didn’t know whose side to be on anymore.

Stasha’s injury made spying on her easier. She wore a mound of gauze over her now-bad ear, and she was in such a sleepy haze that I was able to read her blue book under her very nose as we both lay in our bunk.

October 20, 1944

Doctor keeps vials in a box. They are marked War Materials, Urgent. I know that there are vials with my name on them, with Pearl’s name on them. He is careful not to mix them up. He is careful in most things concerning organization, but I am beginning to wonder about his skills as a physician.

And then she woke and caught me reading; she huffed a little, but she was too weak to care much about my intrusion. Nonchalant, she simply adjusted the white petals of the bandage at her ear.

“You know that you can’t do anything about Mengele,” I whispered.

“Zayde wouldn’t agree with you. He thinks I can do anything I decide to. Ask Zayde, he will tell you.”

“How will I do that?” I asked. For once, I made no attempt to conceal my scorn about her illusions, all the strange beliefs she clung to so desperately that they’d begun to course and flex through her like medicine.

“I’ve been writing Mama and Zayde letters,” she said. “I can add that part in.”

She grabbed her book from me and rummaged around in her pocket for a pencil.

“Why are we pretending, Stasha?”

“Pretending?” She lowered her voice. “You mean, about Patient? Of course I’m pretending that he’s fine. Any doctor knows that you don’t tell sick people that they’re sick. That only worsens their condition. They give up hope. Their bones start to fold in on themselves and before you know it, their lungs—”

“I mean pretending about Mama. About Zayde.”

“Why wouldn’t they be well? We’re doing everything Uncle has asked of us.”

And then she launched into her usual absurdities, saying that whenever a needle plunged into us, Mama was the recipient of extra bread. Whenever a sample of tissue was taken, Zayde was allowed to swim in the swimming pool with the guards. She insisted that she’d been more than able to manage these negotiations with Uncle. Now that she’d sacrificed her ear, there was no way that he could choose not to take care of the two of them.

I decided to say nothing about the piano I’d seen cross the yard — such proof of our loss, and all they’d take. This was not merely a charitable approach — it was also that I could not believe it still myself.

“Why not a visit, then?” I challenged. “Wouldn’t that be the ultimate privilege? To see them?”

“I haven’t asked for a visit.”

“You don’t ask for a visit because you know they are dead.”

“It’s not true,” she said, her face so still. “I know it’s not true. I have evidence. They are away from us but they are alive.”

“What evidence?”

She sat up in our bunk and turned to me so that we were face to face. Suddenly gentle, she reached out her hand and closed my eyes.

“See that?”

“No.”

“Try harder. I’m thinking about it.”

She smoothed my eyelids with her fingertips till a soft blackness coated my vision. And then it bloomed.

“You see it now, don’t you?”

I did see it. It was just as Mama had drawn it. But—

“No,” I said. “I don’t see anything at all.”

“I know you’re lying, Pearl. You see it. You see it as much as I do.”

I continued to deny this.

“It’s a poppy,” she murmured. “You remember. The drawing Mama was working on? She was starting to draw a field full of poppies when everything changed, back in Lodz. And when they put us in the cattle car, she started drawing again, on the wall. She only got as far as one. Whenever I am too sad, I always see that poppy. I know that if Mama was dead, I would see many more. But I don’t have to explain this to you — you know what I am talking about, Pearl.”

I wasn’t about to admit this, though it was true.

“I don’t mind seeing it, because it reminds me of Mama. But I don’t like the feeling of it much. Sometimes, when things are too unbearable, the poppy threatens to multiply itself. If you were gone, Pearl — I’d see a whole field full. I hope I never have cause to see a whole field of poppies like that.”

What she looked like at that moment I never knew, because she dove beneath the thin scrap of our blanket, concealing her whole head from view. I heard her grunt with discomfort as she shifted about and busied herself with untying my shoes. Ever since we were little she always liked to take my shoes away, just to make sure that I couldn’t leave. I felt the shoes slip from my feet. I was glad that Stasha couldn’t see in the darkness provided by the blanket. I didn’t want her to realize that her shoes were in better condition — like new, in fact, because she hardly went anywhere besides the hospital and the yard — than mine, which were threadbare at the soles, worn from my trips to organize potatoes.

From beneath the blanket, she posed a question, the same question she’d ask day after day in an interrogation that would soon become so routine that I found myself answering it even as I slept.

“Have you practiced dancing today?” she inquired.

I wasn’t about to tell her the truth, which was that I’d started to practice but as soon as I was in first position, a drop of blood leaped from my throat and into the air, as if it were trying to alert me to the damaged performance of my insides. In all its redness, the little drop made this clear: Mengele’s plans to unfurl me had begun, and if I were to outlive the harm he’d wrought, it would take a miracle doubled and doubled again, multiplied to some impossible degree.

“What reason could I have not to dance?” I said.

After Uncle hurt my ear, everything I heard carried an echo. This was good when someone said something pleasant. It was terrible when someone barked a nasty order.

I think I don’t have to say which occurred more frequently, considering that Ox was charged with my care. That woman would never be pleased.