Affinity Konar - Mischling

I didn’t know if she would ever have the chance. His presence was diminishing in those days. Here and there, from behind a curtain, I saw glimpses of him. He’d waggle his fingers at me pleasantly, give me a whistle. I had to find a way not to cringe at that whistle. In order to do so, I thought of my insides, all the tributaries of my blood, the inlets of my nerves, and wondered how hope fit into such a body. Because I had it still, that wild hope; it was as steady as a spine, and so pronounced I marveled that the nurses and technicians did not take note of this development within me and mark it on their charts.

There was only one other person besides Peter and the doctor’s staff who reminded me that I was real, alive, a girl, Pearl’s sister.

“Smidgen Two,” Bruna whispered into the peephole. “It is the dead of winter now, don’t you know? Can’t you feel the cold in there? Our whole world — a snowstorm!”

“It doesn’t storm in here.”

“You can’t live in a barrel anymore. You dear, stupid baby bedbug — come out!”

“I have to keep watch for her.”

“Keep watch from a window.”

“I don’t trust the windows here.”

“Keep watch from a door, then.”

“I trust the doors even less.”

There was a pause, and then—

“Maybe you should stop watching, Stasha.” Never had I heard her voice so gentle.

I asked Bruna: “Should I stop watching because you have word from Pearl and you know that she’s well, you know that she’s just biding her time, just waiting until it is safe? Tell me that she’s in a house somewhere. Tell me that she’s hiding in a tree stump. That she’s underneath someone’s bed, and she is not who she used to be, but she is alive. I can take you telling me all of these things. Just so long as—”

“I haven’t heard from Pearl,” Bruna confessed. “My Smidgen One. She was my friend, that girl, my favorite—”

“Of course you haven’t heard from Pearl,” I interrupted with a snarl. “Why should you? It’s not like you were important to her.”

“Know this,” Bruna said. “While you are in your barrel waiting for death, the Russian planes are back, more and more every day.”

“Of course they are,” I said. “They are here to bomb us.”

“My people would never do such a thing.” Bruna was indignant. “Maybe you should think, Smidgen Two, about how to prove yourself worthy of the freedom they are about to bring you. Decide now whether you are a cabbage or a girl. Fool! Barrel-dweller! How I miss you! You lousy coward!”

I turned away from the loving insults streaming through my peephole and retreated to my letters.

December 1, 1944

Dear Pearl,

I confess, none of that last letter was true. There is no carousel. The war is not over. But still, won’t you return?

The next morning, I was surveying the snow from the peephole of my barrel when I saw Peter approach. His walk was hunched and slow and he had a wheelbarrow before him.

“Stasha! Come out, you have to see this!”

I removed the roof of my barrel and peered over the lip of the slats.

Peter’s wheelbarrow held a bundle. The bundle was cocooned in a gray blanket, but the tips of the feet peeped from the frayed edge. A big toe frolicked in the wind.

I scrambled so quickly from my barrel that I overturned it and spilled onto the ground. This exit was as ragged and clumsy as my recent days of grief had been. A grief that, it now seemed, had been wholly unnecessary. I ran a hand above the length of the shroud as I’d seen a magician do once in a show. The bundle didn’t animate readily, but that was just Pearl’s way — she preferred a subtle showmanship.

“How?” I marveled.

“From the infirmary — just released.”

“How long have you known?”

“Two days. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Go on — lift it.”

You would think that after so much loss, I’d be eager for a reunion. But a feeling in me — one of the few feelings that Pearl hadn’t taken with her — was hesitant to remove the blanket. What if Pearl had gone and changed without me? If she was not herself anymore, then who was I supposed to be? And then this hesitation was overcome by my eagerness and I peeled the blanket back.

The mouth that grinned up at me was now emptied of teeth. This was the face of a baby who had never been permitted a sojourn into the teenage but had skipped straight to manliness and then to old-manliness. His flesh was young but ancient; his eyes were new, so far as eyes go, but they’d seen too much. I am not sure how I recognized him at all, because his skin was no longer that be-veined, breathless blue, but a sickly white. Still, there was no mistaking his smile.

It was Patient. My Patient. I knew he would’ve been Pearl for me if he could have. Sensitive to my disappointment, he clasped at my hand, which was rather uncomfortable because my heart was busy falling into the blackest depths of me, a locale unknown even to Uncle, where it shed its skin, rolled in bile, assumed a new shell, and grew thorns. Thus armored, the resourceful organ climbed the ladder of my ribs and returned to its place. And I did what Pearl would’ve wanted me to.

“What a blessing it is,” I said, smiling as a fresh ache partnered with my pulse, “to be family again.”

It was as if Patient had been renewed somehow. Something had done him good in his more than a month away from us — or maybe it was just the light? In any case, it seemed that his cough was intermittent. He clung to my side without any touch, warding off the slightest separation.

In the yard, others gathered to view our returned boy. With wet eyes, everyone joked about where Patient had been off to. Had he been sailing, riding, sunning?

Patient shook his head, solemn. He wanted to joke in return — but he couldn’t.

Twins’ Father clapped the boy on the back and then leaned in for a whisper.

“When you leave next,” he said softly, “it will be because we’ve been liberated and I’ll be taking you and all the other boys home. It’s a promise. And I’ll need help with the little ones, so you’ll be my second in command.”

Patient gave him a little salute, and Twins’ Father left us to pursue his duties, but not without glancing back a few times as he walked, as if he still could not believe such a resurrection had taken place.

Bruna set to work pinching Patient’s arm, her face lit with all the pleasures of tormenting one she’d missed.

“Do ghosts bruise?” she inquired, pinch after pinch.

“I’m not sure, Bruna,” Patient said, puffing out his chest. “I know only that your bruises are too embarrassed to be seen with you. I miss your white hair, though — you should wear it the old way. Charcoal merely dulls your beauty.”

Apparently, Patient had learned suaveness and cruelty within the confines of the infirmary. Bruna was flattered and impressed.

“That’ll do, flea,” she said, and gave him the respect of a bow.

The others laughed, and then fell on him with questions. What was it like to be the first to return? Had he eaten anything interesting? Had he seen any of the others — to be specific, had he seen any of the others who went by the name Pearl Zamorski?

The last question was mine.

It was a great honor to be the first, he said. He hadn’t met any pastries in there, but at the worst point in his illness he’d had the good fortune to hallucinate the smell of brisket. Pearl? She had been nowhere near, but all people tended to look the same in the infirmary, even though—

I slipped away, with the excuse that I had a letter to write.

He caught up with me quickly, his legs moving faster than they’d ever been capable of before, and the curious strength of this stride made me wonder if I was walking with the real Patient at all. Perhaps Uncle had sent an impostor back. Indeed, he introduced himself by a new name.