Affinity Konar - Mischling

Because I was never an expert in bones, but I knew, seeing the scatter and the threads of red ribbon that led to a boiling pot propped on a primitive lattice of bricks, that we would not be riding into Warsaw on horseback, that Horse, this dear animal that had lent us his service had met with the same ineloquent brutality we knew so well.

The depths of the salt mine repeated my horror to the center of the earth.

Some people, they have heard so many gasps, screams, cries that they are deaf to them, no matter how much a salt mine enlarges their volume or reach. This seemed to be the case with these Wehrmacht soldiers. The six of them were too busy squatting here and there, picking at their plates, drinking. They had no fear or interest in bears and jackals. Only one turned to acknowledge us, the one manning the stew pot. He had a shuffled, disorganized bearing and metallic eyes that stood in his face like medals rewarded for terrible deeds.

“He wasn’t yours to take,” I whispered. I was certain that Horse had alerted his captors to this fact. After all, it is known that all animals speak while in the throes of de-creation. Horse must have shrieked that he belonged to us, that the three of us were on a sacred mission for the restoration of our souls, the taking of another’s, and the avenging of Pearl.

I stumbled forward in rage. Feliks tried to pull me back.

The soldier tending the pot was dazed on horse meat and drunk on whiskey. He staggered forward and drew his pistol and then took another step. He tilted his head to regard us. He couldn’t understand why we didn’t run; he appeared to find our behavior novel, and he treated us like we were curiosities sent to interrupt his boredom and doom. I knew why I didn’t run. I had nothing to fear. But Feliks — why was he so rooted to the floor? He stood as if he had no choice but to stand by me. Both of us, we’d dropped our sacks, and we should have been lifting them in our arms and running, we should have been bolting up those stairs. The soldier stepped forward to inspect their contents.

We had a hatchet, three knives, two pistols, one poison pill meant for Mengele. We had a crust of bread, a bit of sausage, a bouquet of rags to bind our wounds. We had Pearl’s piano key in a bag full of stones. I couldn’t imagine they would be interested in any of this. He looked at the weapons in amusement. I worried not for myself but for Feliks. Run! I mouthed. He did not.

“You two are well armed,” the man observed. “Have you come to kill me?”

“Another,” I declared. “A real Nazi. You are all turning on each other now, yes? We can give you information about his whereabouts. You can make a deal with the Russians, with the Americans. Can’t you? And maybe, in exchange, you will let us go and give us back our weapons? This person — he would be a fine capture for you. He’s better than Himmler. Bigger than Goebbels. Greater than Hitler himself—”

“Josef Mengele,” Feliks interrupted, breathless. “She is talking about Josef Mengele.”

Not a single reverberation attached itself to his voice. Even echoes, it seemed, were not on our side that day, though they lent themselves freely to the soldier, who was inspecting our weapons, turning them over with metallic clinks that repeated themselves through the salty halls.

“We can tell you where he is — just let us go,” I pleaded. “Anyone who captures him — they will be heroes. He is a prize — after what he has done, the whole world will want him.”

But the soldier was unimpressed with this little speech. He was more interested in pointing one of our pistols at us. We watched the eye of the pistol waver in its focus. He shifted it back and forth. First Feliks. Then me. As if the pistol alone could decide. And then it chose Feliks — he leveled the muzzle at my friend.

My friend, with all his many vulnerabilities and braveries, the one who was now the root of my many dreams, the one who could tame a winter and lessen hundreds of miles and make sorrow eat from the palm of his hand. My brother. My twin. I knew I’d need Feliks all my life. I wanted to watch him grow and be a boy for all time, even as he shifted into an adult. I wanted to see the hair drift from his head as my own turned gray, I wanted to get him a new set of teeth so he could chew someday, and if he still couldn’t chew, then I guess I’d continue to chew for him. When I looked at Feliks, my vision was only good.

I stepped in front of Feliks in hopes of absorbing this bullet. A bullet couldn’t hurt me. But Feliks didn’t know this. He pushed me aside. The soldier nodded the barrel of our pistol at us.

“The two of you — strip.”

So it was that we shed the skins of Bear and Jackal, the outer layers that had protected us from night and winter and any misgivings about the nature of our true strengths. The bravado on loan from these predators — now it was gone. What an ache it was to watch the plush warmth of our borrowed skins fall into enemy hands! My dress followed, and then my two sweaters. I stood, feebly covering myself once again, and my body, it remembered everything for me, it took on Pearl’s duty of the past, and it pointed out the march of needle pricks down my arms. I looked up at the ceiling of the salt mine because I could not look at myself or at Feliks. I knew that he was likely overcome by gooseflesh, that perhaps he’d wet himself in fear, and I heard him sniffle. When Feliks slipped off his pants, the soldier laughed at his tail and teased its tip with the butt of his rifle.

I wondered if this soldier knew Taube, if he had heard of the guard’s merciful act and was determined to correct the situation. Because he did not show any sign of sparing us. Taube, he had done so in a moment of insanity and confusion; he had taken his boot from my back. But this soldier was not confused as to what to do with us.

“Who said you could keep your shoes?” he barked at me. “Socks too,” he added.

My poison pill was in my left sock. I thought of what the avengers would have done, and so as I bent to unroll the woolen sock, I extracted that ampule and slipped it into my mouth. I carried it neatly in the pocket between jaw and cheek.

And as we stood so bare, in the distance, I could see pieces of Horse’s pelt, scattered like a torn blanket. How had I let Horse carry me for so long without noticing that he was piano-white, like the piano in Pearl’s film? My good eye reported this fact, and curiously, for the first time since Mengele’s drop entered my vision, my bad eye agreed. Its traditional veil of blackness had lifted. Both eyes were able to see the same white. There was no variation in it, no shades of gray, not a single suggestion of ambiguity. All was too clear.

This is what I saw: The soldier was touching all that I had left of my sister. Pearl’s key. He’d taken it up from the sack, regarded it without interest, and then allowed it to slip from his fingers.

I could not let that piano key fall; I could not let it meet this dust. Pearl was dead, and that was my fault. But this — if I could not catch a key, I thought, I deserved all I’d been dealt. So I made a naked dash to catch it and threw myself at the soldier’s feet, and it was such a glory having it in my hands, I wept with happiness even as he gave me a kick in the ribs. And then another. And another. I felt the little poison pill stammer between my teeth, the ampule’s walls threatening to cave at the point of my canine. In my hand, there was my sister’s life, and in my mouth, there was Mengele’s death.

Even in that moment, I knew which one meant more.

I heard a shot ring out, and I presumed myself wounded. But it was not me; it would never be me who was truly at risk. I watched Feliks stumble back, watched him forget to hide his nakedness through the pain. I saw him clutch his shoulder, clapping tight a brimming wound.