Affinity Konar - Mischling

Words passed between the mother and the white-coated man. They seemed like agreeable words, though the man did most of the talking. We wished we could hear the conversation, but it was enough, I suppose, to see what happened next: the mother passed her hands over the dark clouds of the triplets’ hair, and then she turned her back, leaving the boys with the white-coated man.

He was a doctor, she said as she walked away, a falter in her step. They would be safe, she assured them, and she did not look back.

Our mother, hearing this, gave a little squeak and a gasp before reaching over to tug at the guard’s arm. Her boldness was a shock. We were used to a trembling mother, one who always shook while making requests of the butcher and hid from the cleaning woman. Always, it was as if pudding ran through her veins, making her constantly aquiver and defeatable, especially since Papa’s disappearance. In the cattle car, she’d steadied herself only by drawing a poppy on the wooden wall. Pistil, petal, stamen — she drew with a strange focus, and when she stopped drawing, she went to pieces. But on the ramp she discovered a new solidity — she stood stronger than the starved and weary should ever stand. Was the music responsible for this alteration? Mama always loved music, and this place was teeming with bright notes; they found us in the cattle car and drew us out with a distrustful cheer. Over time, we’d learn the depths of this trick and know to beware of the celebratory tune, as it held only suffering at its core. The orchestra had been entrusted with the deception of all that entered. They were compelled, these musicians, to use their talents to ensnare the unwitting, to convince them that where they had arrived was a place not entirely without an appreciation for the humane and the beautiful. Music — it uplifted the arriving crowds, it flowed beside them as they walked through the gates. Was this why Mama was able to be bold? I would never know. But I admired her courage as she spoke.

“It is good here — to be a double?” she asked the guard.

He gave her a nod and turned to the doctor, who was squatting in the dust so that he could address the boys at eye level. The group appeared to be having the warmest of chats.

“Zwillinge!” the guard called to him. “Twins!”

The doctor left the triplets to a female attendant and strode over to us, his shiny boots disrupting the dust. He was courtly with our mother, taking her hand as he addressed her.

“You have special children?” His eyes were friendly, from what we could see.

Mama shifted from foot to foot, suddenly diminished. She tried to withdraw her hand from his grasp but he held it tight, and then he began to stroke her palm with his gloved fingertips, as if it were some wounded, but easily soothed, thing.

“Only twins, not triplets,” she apologized. “I hope they are enough.”

The doctor’s laugh was loud and showy and it echoed within the caverns of Zayde’s coat. We were relieved when it subsided so that we could listen to Mama rattling off our gifts.

“They speak some German. Their father taught them. They’ll turn thirteen in December. Healthy readers, the both of them. Pearl loves music — she is quick, practical, studies dance. Stasha, my Stasha”—here Mama paused, as if unsure how to categorize me, and then declared—“she has an imagination.”

The doctor received this information with interest, and requested that we join him on the ramp.

We hesitated. It was better within the suffocations of the coat. Outside, there was a gray, flame-licked wind that alerted us to our grief, and a scorched scent that underpinned it; there were guns casting shadows and dogs barking and drooling and growling as only dogs bred for cruelty can. But before we had a chance to withdraw farther, the doctor pulled aside the curtains of the coat. In the sunlight, we blinked. One of us snarled. It might have been Pearl. It was probably me.

How could it be, the doctor marveled, that these perfect features could be wasted on such dour expressions? He drew us out, made us turn for him, and had us stand back to back so he could appreciate the exactitudes of us.

“Smile!” he instructed.

Why did we obey this particular order? For our mother’s sake, I suppose. For her, we grinned, even as she clung to Zayde’s arm, her face lit with panic, two drops of sweat tripping down her forehead. Ever since we’d entered the cattle car, I’d avoided looking at our mother. I looked at the poppy she drew instead; I focused on the fragile bloom of its face. But something about her false expression made me acknowledge what Mama had become: a pretty but sleepless semi-widow, faded in her personhood. Once the primmest of women, she was undone; dust streaked her cheek, her lace collar lay limp. Dull gems of blood secured themselves to the corners of her lips where she’d gnawed on them in worry.

“They are mischlinge? ” he asked. “That yellow hair!”

Mama pulled at her dark curls, as if ashamed of their beauty, and shook her head.

“My husband — he was fair” was all she could say. It was the only answer she had when asked about the coloring that made certain onlookers insist that our blood was mixed. As we’d grown, that word mischling —we heard it more and more, and its use in our presence had inspired Zayde to give us the Classification of Living Things. Never mind this Nuremberg abomination, he’d say. He’d tell us to ignore this talk of mixed breeds, crossed genetics, of quarter-Jews and kindred, these absurd, hateful tests that tried to divide our people down to the last blood drop and marriage and place of worship. When you hear that word, he’d say, dwell on the variation of all living things. Sustain yourself, in awe of this.

I knew then, standing before the white-coated doctor, that this advice would be difficult to take in the days to come, that we were in a place that did not answer to Zayde’s games.

“Genes, they are funny things, yes?” the doctor was saying.

Mama, she didn’t even try to engage him in this line of conversation.

“If they go with you”—and here she would not look at us—“when will we see them again?”

“On your Sabbath,” the doctor promised. And then he turned to us and exclaimed over our details — he loved that we spoke German, he said, he loved that we were fair. He didn’t love that our eyes were brown, but this, he remarked to the guard, could prove useful — he leaned in still closer to inspect us, extending a gloved hand to stroke my sister’s hair.

“So you’re Pearl?” His hand dipped through her curls too easily, as if it had done so for years.

“She’s not Pearl,” I said. I stepped forward to obscure my sister, but Mama pulled me away and told the doctor that, indeed, he had named the right girl.

“So they like to play tricks?” He laughed. “Tell me your secret — how do you know who is who?”

“Pearl doesn’t fidget” was all Mama would say. I was grateful that she didn’t elaborate on our identifiable differences. Pearl wore a blue pin in her hair. I wore red. Pearl spoke evenly. My speech was rushed, broken in spots, riddled with pause. Pearl’s skin was as pale as a dumpling. I had summer flesh, as spotty as a horse. Pearl was all girl. I wanted to be all Pearl, but try as I might, I could only be myself.

The doctor stooped to me so that we could be face to face.

“Why would you lie?” he asked me. Again, there was his laugh, tinged with the familial.

If I was honest, I would have said that Pearl was — to my mind — the weaker of the two of us, and I thought I could protect her if I became her. Instead, I gave him a half-truth.

“I forget which one I am sometimes,” I said lamely.