Affinity Konar - Mischling

A second side effect: A constant peal of absence. A certain soreness, a raw pang.

A third side effect of this damage was more welcome. The puncture he’d left in my ear granted an easier passage for dreams to sift into my brain. I had all manner of dreams in the days after my hearing on that side went black. They were so beautiful that I almost forgave Uncle for the perversions he’d wrought on my eardrum. Because I could not turn down the opportunity, even in fantasy, to confront him with all the wrongs he’d done.

“Did you have the dream too?” I asked Pearl one morning after a particularly satisfying episode of revenge. I’ll admit it: I was testing her; I wanted to see how aligned we were that day.

“Of course I did,” she said. And she stretched out on the rough slats of our bunk and yawned a little, just to distract me from her unconvincing tone.

“What was in it?” I challenged.

Knowing that her face would give away the deception, she turned her back to me and stared at the bricks.

“Family,” she said. “What else?”

I felt so guilty that I hadn’t dreamed of family at all — not a glimmer of Papa or Mama, not even a figment of Zayde — that I went along with this lie she presented.

“A good one, yes. But I wouldn’t mind if it changed a little from time to time,” I said. “That part where Zayde turned the cabbage into a butterfly was pleasant enough, but the part where Papa reappeared every time Mother wept was terrible.”

“It was dreary, really,” Pearl said. “I’m not sure why we can’t dream better.”

“And I suppose these defects were all my fault? You were born first, after all,” I said. “You always take the lead in such things. Even at the laboratory, they think you are the leader.”

“That only proves how stupid they are,” Pearl said. “Anyone with eyes can see that you are in charge of us.”

I swung my legs around to the edge of the bunk. It could have been a good day if we were anywhere else. The sun was out and for once, the birds were determined to get their chirps in alongside the howls of the guard dogs.

“Out of bed!” Ox roared. She walked along the wooden railings, banging each with a spoon and reaching up to tweak a girl’s earlobe whenever it pleased her.

I put my hands over both ears.

“Hear no evil, eh?” Ox said.

I nodded. My hands remained in their position.

“You’ll see no evil too. Not today. A soccer match out at the field. Won’t that be nice?”

I put my hands down, cautiously, and replied that yes, I was excited to watch the match.

My sister also cheered to this news. She’d been slow in recent days, but for once, she leaped onto the ladder and dressed in a hurry. But Ox caught her by the collar and pulled her aside.

“No match for you, Pearl,” Ox said.

That’s when we saw the flash of the ambulance as it rumbled past the door.

I began to wish, as I saw Nurse Elma collect Pearl, as I watched them disappear into the mouth of that trickster ambulance and roll off, that he’d blunted the abilities of my eyes as well, just so I could no longer witness the continued torture of my sister. But I was not to be spared the burden of sight, not yet.

We assembled in the yard, with Ox at the fore. She appeared to be a great fan of the sport, and she tried to raise our spirits, talking to each child about different plays and which guard was the best on the field. Dr. Miri and Twins’ Father were less enthusiastic about the event. They walked among us, keeping a dutiful count.

Patient loped over to me in his knock-kneed way. His eyes were more shifty than usual.

“I have a present for you,” he said. His arms were tucked behind his back.

“All I want is for you to be well, Patient.”

He coughed in reply.

“And you’re not well at all.”

“It is one of those things,” Patient said brightly, “where it gets worse before it gets even worse and then it never really gets better but who has the time to care because you’re too busy fighting for a tin cup full of nettles.”

This had become a popular saying at the time. I didn’t care for it much. I turned away to avoid continuing the course of this conversation. I felt a whack at the rear of my skirt. And then a tap at my shoulder. Laughing, Patient held up an ear horn.

“It’s for you,” he said. “From Canada. They kept it because it is ivory, I think.”

This antiquated ear horn must have belonged to a wealthy woman. It had that precious finish, and a horse’s head for a handle. This horse was a defiant animal; its mouth quested, and its mane ribboned back, as if confronted by some terrible wind. I worried what Uncle might say about it if he happened to see me crossing the yard.

“Try it and see,” he begged. “Put it to your bad ear and I’ll say something.”

I didn’t try it. I stroked the horse’s mane skeptically.

“You better like it,” he said. “I traded for that with Peter. He stole it from the warehouse for me. It is easier to get things from Peter if you are a girl, because then you can pay with a fumble. I had to pay with a cigarette.”

“I’d rather the cigarette,” I scoffed.

“Cigarettes can’t make you hear,” he said, his voice ever reasonable. “I might say something valuable someday in your left ear, something you don’t want to miss.”

He had a good point. More and more, I was enjoying our conversations. I could speak to him about things I couldn’t with Pearl. Things about ending Uncle. As in where to end him and how to end him, and the kind of implement that might end him the fastest.

At the match, we children spread out on the left side of the field and tried not to look at the right side, which was occupied by female wardens and some of the guards’ families, all of them visiting for the weekend, every last one beaming and lolling on bright blankets with potato salads and rolls and sausages. The mothers were chasing their cherub-babies around the grass and reading picture books to their girl children and snapping photos with their cameras at all the curiosities of Auschwitz. I saw a camera pointed in my direction, and gave a deliberate blink. Patient mimicked the gesture. We were becoming, I noted happily, more and more alike every day.

After we opened our eyes, the game began.

We watched the ball fly back and forth between the guards in their trim athletic gear and the prisoners in their shabby stripes. Patient was particularly excited; I had to remind him several times not to cheer too loudly, if only for the safety of his insides. An unmodulated cheer, I warned, was sure to rupture the fragilities within him.

“And don’t expect us to win either,” I said.

“But we will win,” he said to my good ear, thoroughly enraptured. “And when we win, the trains will move back on their tracks, through the forests, through the mountains. If we win, the ghetto will have never been, and there will never have been a knock on the door.”

He paused for my approval, but only for a second. He was enjoying his fancies, all the powers of his imagination. We were alike in that way too.

“If they win,” he continued, “my brother will be my brother instead of a dead boy. He’ll never have suffered. He’ll never have wondered where I was while he lay dying.”

I wanted to tell him I didn’t know if such a miracle could occur. I was privy to some of the secrets of this place and knew it to be strange, but a resurrection? That seemed impossible. But then I realized that I could not say that such goodness was unlikely because I had never thought the cruelty of Auschwitz was possible either.

But I kept these thoughts to myself, and if Patient was interested in what preoccupied my mind, he covered it quite cleverly by focusing on the match.