Affinity Konar - Mischling

“You may no longer refer to me as Patient,” he said. “Call me Feliks.”

“Oh? Is that your name?”

“No. It was my brother’s name. But I think I should have it for him now.”

This made sense to me. Other things didn’t. I asked this Feliks why he was alive.

“That’s a cruel thing to say.”

By all rights, I argued, he shouldn’t have been. He was twinless, after all.

“So are you — and you still live. You look like the dead, though.”

I made no attempt to dispute this.

“I bet you’ll want to know what saved me, since you are curious about medicine and all,” he said.

Then, as if to test my interests, he revealed the unique method of his survival. Jumping ahead of me as I walked, he shimmed down the loose waist of his pants and turned his back to me. A stump of a tail rode the space directly above his buttocks. The wriggle of this deformity — I could imagine Uncle’s fascination.

“That’s a fine trick.”

“You can touch it.” He reached for my hand.

“I don’t want to touch it.” My hand recoiled.

“If you touch it, it might bring you luck too.”

Luck being unreliable in the Zoo, I continued to decline. He shrugged and lifted up his pants, thankfully concealing the little stub.

“It’s always been with me. My brother was the same. The ambulance is never coming for me. I’m too valuable.”

“Will you tell me more about the infirmary, Patient — I mean, Feliks? What was it like? I need to know.”

He was only too happy to talk. He told me about row after row of beds, the thin soups, the crow that he could never see but whose caw woke him every morning. I listened and didn’t question. Already, a map was spreading itself across my mind.

“I know what you’re thinking, Stasha.” He shook his head. “She’s not there.”

“Only Pearl knows what I’m thinking,” I said.

But it was true that as I turned from him I had a fantasy in my mind, and in this fantasy people had disguised my sister, given her a new name. They’d probably slipped her something that made her forget about herself, because they knew that the separation from me was a great risk to her health. When it was safe, though, they would give her an antidote.

We would find each other still. This Feliks had proven it — a return was possible.

December 8, 1944

Dear Pearl,

It is our birthday. But I am less certain of how old we are. We cannot be thirteen, not here. But maybe I am confused. I know you kept the time for us. I am not good at it. I am not good at any of our duties these days. Least of all the funny and the future. I am just glad that we did not give ourselves the task of finding the beautiful. There is nothing beautiful here, Pearl. I know only the ugly.

But here is one thing: The Russians have sent us a gift. The planes increased in number today. Can you see them?

The morning after our birthday, I woke to find a thread of smoke drifting around my barrel. I checked my sleeves, my shoes. Nothing appeared to be on fire. I pulled up my blouse, poked my belly button — I was sure that whatever Uncle Doctor had put in me was now scorching me from within.

Vermin! said the smoke.

I agreed with its assessment.

Out with you! said the smoke. It sounded strangely like Nurse Elma. But I obeyed, and bolted up, coughing. As soon as I exited, ash fell before my eyes. Nurse Elma loomed above, a cigarette wagging between her lips.

“You are needed!” she declared. “In the laboratory!”

I liked you better when you were smoke, I said.

“What is that you say? Speak up!”

“What can I do for you today, Nurse Elma?”

“Portrait time!” she declared.

I’d sat and stood and contorted for so many pictures already, all of them naked, all of them in the cold capture of the camera’s eye, but every time, I’d done so with my sister. I’d never imagined that I’d be photographed without her; I wondered if I would even be able to stand for the photographer. But when Nurse Elma ushered me into a room in the laboratory, I saw neither the usual equipment nor any other subjects.

There was only a woman behind an easel, her face obscured by a canvas. Past its edge I could spy the crescent of an ear, a stretch of near-barren scalp tufted with gray. She wore the uniform of a prisoner and a gray shawl; her feet were shod with shoes of different heights. Though thin, the ankles above these mismatched shoes struck me as pretty in the way that I thought of things from my past as pretty: charm bracelets and potted violets in the window box, fires I built in the fireplace, Mama’s Sabbath tablecloth.

Nurse Elma instructed the woman to begin and seated herself in the rear of the room to flip through her usual material, a magazine filled with actresses. I thought I saw Pearl’s face on the cover, thought I saw her winking at me. I miss you, Stasha, the mouth on the cover said. Things just aren’t the same. But I am better here. I was just about to ask Pearl whether the place she referred to was the afterlife or California, but then the mouth opened wide and the cover girl began to sing. That’s when I realized it wasn’t Pearl at all, but a cinema star, because Pearl’s singing voice was far superior to that. Do you know where Pearl is? I asked the cinema star, deep in my head, where no one, not even Nurse Elma, could hear. I suppose I asked it too quietly, because the cinema star didn’t appear to hear it at all, she just kept singing, and then Nurse Elma, seeing that I was staring at the cover girl, mistook my gaze for one of enjoyment rather than investigation and folded the magazine in half with a resentful flourish.

I could hear the artist pause at her easel while taking in this action, and then the movements of the brush resumed. I listened as it described my features. It seemed to mean well, but it moved slowly, as if it were having a difficult time deciding what to do with my face. I wanted to apologize to the artist for being so broken and ugly. I wanted to give her something redemptive to focus on.

Because beauty redeems the world, that’s what Papa always said. He’d said it at a time when I couldn’t imagine why the world might require redemption at all, a time when I wasn’t even certain what redemption was. I was sure that Pearl felt the same way as Papa about beauty’s redemptive powers, and for the first time, I found myself wanting to know if they were together at last, in the same place. Fortunately, Nurse Elma saved me from reaching the conclusion of this grim thought when she rose from her chair and stalked across the room to smack me on the head with her magazine.

“Don’t look like that, Stasha.”

“Like what?”

“Like you are about to cry. It changes the features too much.”

“Should I smile?”

She raised her magazine again, ready to issue another crack, but then thought better of it — I saw her glance up, fearful that Uncle might have entered the room unseen, as he so often did.

“Do you look like yourself when you smile?” She smirked.

I look like my past self, I wanted to say, but I remained silent. Nurse Elma gave me an instructive slap on the cheek. I wondered if it would leave a mark. If it did, I was sure that the artist would not be permitted to render it.

“Of course you don’t smile!” Elma crowed. “Smiles change faces too. What the doctor wants here is accuracy. Stare straight ahead, eyes open, mouth still. So simple, any infant could do it!”

She then returned to her chair, and contented herself with her magazine. I felt sorry for the cover girl — it wasn’t her fault that she was a picture in a magazine that was forced to participate in Nurse Elma’s abuse.

As instructed, I kept my gaze straight ahead. I focused on the brick-edged window that sat above the artist, hoping that a singing or cooing bird might light on the sill and provide the artist with something to listen to as she worked. Since Pearl’s disappearance, I’d noticed that animal life had become increasingly rare in Auschwitz. There was little hope of any arriving just because I wanted it to, and when no bird appeared, I put one there with my mind. In its beak, I made it carry a sprig of olive branch. But the bird kept dropping it. Even my own imagination, it seemed, had abandoned me.