Affinity Konar - Mischling

“Mother always wanted a giant pet,” noted Paulina. And they all began to laugh, as if they knew they had to laugh again someday and it might as well be that moment. The laughter, though, it fell short; it was too soon, and they turned their attentions instead to drinking the melted snow from their tin cups, and gave Feliks seconds and thirds of wurst.

When their bellies were full, Mirko and Feliks began to discuss the problem of return. Our friend had many plans. He spoke of the parts he wanted to play upon his reestablishment in Prague, of the theater they planned to make their temporary home. He was so hopeful, I never should have interrupted, but I had to say the words that had been with me since I woke. They flowed from me in a burst.

“You never saw Pearl, that’s what you tell me. I believe you. But I also believe that since you are Mirko, you are being an actor, you are twisting words, you are not being truthful.”

Mirko lowered his head so that I could take in only the sea of his curls.

“I believe you never saw Pearl, the real Pearl, because she was already dead; she was just a body, she was emptied of who she was.”

Mirko nodded, and then ducked his face into his scarf. I didn’t expect a confession. But then he decided to give me one.

“I thought I heard her once,” he murmured. “But it was just a hallucination.”

“Where?”

“In the laboratory. A laboratory you are unfamiliar with.” He motioned to Paulina to put her hands over her little girl’s ears. She did so promptly, but the look on her face said she wished she did not have to hear this tale herself. Mirko covered the ears of the little boy, whose eyes darted curiously about as soon as his hearing left him. Only then did my friend continue.

“I was in a cage,” Mirko said. “Is that what you want me to admit? That I was in a cage?”

I told him I did not want to hear such a thing. This softened him.

“I will say I was in a cage. But instead of the word cage, we will use the word haystack . This is more of my word-twisting, I know. Still, is this agreeable to you?”

I indicated that it was.

“So you see, I was in a haystack. I’d been in the haystack for three, maybe four days. The haystack itself was so small that I could not even turn around. I didn’t eat, but water was given to me. This was at the end. Before they had a chance to initiate a single death march. The haystack was making me go mad. There were five other haystacks in this dark room, a room with two sources of light — the crack beneath the door, and a tiny window set so high in the wall that it looked out only onto the sky. Pigeons gathered on the sill. And rats scampered across the floor. These animals were noisier than the inhabitants of the other haystacks. I assumed them to be dead or so dazed from the injections that they could barely speak. I knew that I was the latter, because sometimes, lights flashed around me, and a great hand would unlock the padlock and pet my head and rattle things a bit. You know who that hand belonged to. Every day, another injection. The injections made me ill with a fever, and he marveled at the fact that I still lived. Of course, I wished myself dead, if only to get away from him. As time passed, I saw his hand grow shakier as he gave the injections. He seemed not to be his precise self. He even took no notice of the incompetency of my padlock, which was weak and rusted. Or perhaps he did notice, but he underestimated my ability to break free. Whatever the case, I assumed he was no longer in possession of his full powers — the end seemed near, and his cruelty toward me rapidly increased, as if he was determined to expel every last torture that occurred to him while he was still able. One day, another small body was lowered into my haystack. I felt the face on the body. It was dead. A child, maybe four — equal to my size. I had no choice but to sit beside it. I swear, there was no other option. It seems that Mengele was aware of Jewish prohibitions about contact with the dead. He told me that he’d take the dead body out of the haystack if I recited for him. I recited all day long, and into the night, though I had little voice left in me, and I knew that there was no hope. During my recitation on one occasion, a voice interrupted me with a cry and a plea. Mengele silenced that voice with a kick to its haystack, and I never heard from it again.”

“Was it a child’s voice?”

“It was a small voice.”

“Was it a girl’s voice?”

“It was a sweet voice.”

I did not need to imagine it. I could hear it.

“My haystack was felled when the SS brutes came tramping through. This was during their sackings and evacuations and attempts at retrievals; the planes were above, and they were searching through the room, they were overturning it all, every last haystack, making us go, pell-mell. After their departure, I stood on top of the dead body in my haystack — apologizing all the while — and I fiddled with the padlock. This destructive romp of the SS had weakened it further — the rusty shank all but fell apart! I hissed out in the dark; I ran my hands across the bars of the other haystacks. Not a peep, not even from the one I thought held you. If one had lived there before — she no longer did.”

“But you thought the voice was hers?”

“I thought it was yours at the time.”

“Then it was Pearl.”

“It was cold, I was starving more than the usual starvation, and Mengele, he was poking me, and when it wasn’t pitch-black, he was flashing lights in my eyes. It is all difficult to recall.”

“Maybe if I say what the voice was saying,” I said, “it will confirm things for you. Do you think you can remember it, if I say what the voice was saying?”

“Perhaps.” But Mirko did not seem to want to approach memory at all. I had to encourage him. I put on my sweetest manners.

“I know you’ll remember,” I said. “You are better than us all, Mirko. The smartest, the strongest to survive.”

My closest companion did not take well to this praise. He looked at both of us with the wary eye of one who feels quite left out.

“If you flatter him,” Feliks said, “you might change his memory.”

Mirko bolted up, his head striking the hay ceiling and his fists trembling, as if ready for a fight.

“I will always remember this with accuracy. Until I choose to forget it entirely, which I plan to do after we arrive in Prague. As soon as I step over whatever threshold that remains — poof! You will be amazed, all of you, how much I won’t remember!”

He stood, suddenly forgetting about his responsibility to his nephew’s ears. Now his hands curled as if ready for a fight, and the matriarch scolded him softly; she tugged at his pant leg and eased him back to the earth.

“Which is all the reason now for you to tell me,” I argued. “Tell me what the voice said so that I can repeat it and you can confirm and then forget.”

“Might I tell you in writing?” Mirko asked.

“Of course.” It would be better that way, I thought, because then I might carry the words with me. From Bruna’s satchel, I withdrew one of my last bits of paper and the stub of a pencil. With these precious objects in hand, Mirko hesitated. He turned his back to me as he wrote, and the Rabinowitzes gave a show of hushing themselves, as if we were in the velvet cavern of a theater. When he finally handed the slip back to me, I read:

Tell my sister that I

Long ago, I might have thought that such words would be enough to end me. But in that moment, the five of them felt like friends.

Tell my sister that I

Looking at Mirko — it became painful in that moment. His was perhaps one of the last faces my sister had seen. For her, it could have been far worse, I thought. He was handsome and genteel in a way that you only imagine movie heroes being. His bearing within a cage must have given her hope. In him, there was a valiance I knew I would remember. It was too bad that he was no longer Mirko to me but Mirko, the Last and Final Sight.