Affinity Konar - Mischling

“What do we eat?” she asked Clotilde, who passed one of the babies to Dr. Miri to admire. I saw Dr. Miri stiffen at the sight of the child, but Clotilde seemed blissfully unaware of this reaction, too invested in answering Stasha with a tone of educational bitterness.

“Soup that isn’t soup!” she proclaimed with glee.

“I’ve never heard of such a soup before. What’s in a soup like that?”

“Today? Boiled roots. Tomorrow? Boiled roots. After that? Boiled roots and a bit of nothing. Does that sound good to you?”

“There are things that sound better.” Stasha nodded at the babies. “Your twins are lucky not to have to eat soup like that.”

“Pray for better, then,” Clotilde instructed. “And if your prayers aren’t answered, then eat your prayers. Prayer alone can keep a body full.” The babies saw the absurdity of this, and their whimpers assumed the turbulence of ear-piercing bawls.

“We don’t pray,” Stasha told her, raising her voice to be heard above the wails.

We’d stopped praying in the fall of 1939. November 12. Like many who stop praying, it was a familial event, spurred by disappearance. Although, to be most accurate, I should say that prayer experienced a surge for one week, then two, and it wasn’t until the first thaw that it died entirely. By the time the bluebells thrust their heads up in the soil, prayer had become a buried thing.

I wasn’t about to explain this to Clotilde, whose eyebrows were already arching disdainfully at us. She regarded the heads of her babies and covered them with her scarf, as if hoping to protect them from our lack of faith.

“You will reconsider your position when you get hungry enough,” she muttered, and then she and Twins’ Father had a quick conversation in Czech, the meaning of which was unknown to us, but my impression from the blunt ends of their words and their shattered delivery was that each was telling the other to know his or her place. As the fray mounted, a torn and fearful look entered Dr. Miri’s face — not unlike the expression a child has while witnessing her parents fight — and she stepped between the two quarrelers.

“But maybe,” she suggested to us, her voice winsome despite the fact that she had to shout to be heard, “maybe, instead of praying, you will wish. You do wish, don’t you? You can have as many wishes as you want here.”

Her manner was so even, so practiced, that I realized that much of Dr. Miri’s work in the Zoo had to involve easing similar conflicts to a halt. She was successful in this case. Clotilde spat on the floor, signaling her surrender in the argument, and Twins’ Father smiled a little at the fanciful nature of this proposed resolution before returning to our interview.

“Where have you lived?” he asked us. “Any other siblings? Your parents — both Polish Jews, yes? Your birth — natural? Cesarean? Any complications?”

We could hear the travel of his pen as he sorted out all the details we gave him, and then, right as we were nearly finished, a troop of guards flooded past; the dust rose, the dogs barked, and Twins’ Father threw his pen to the ground with a force that made us jump a little. The babies’ wails increased. The man put his head in his hands, and we thought he might be going to sleep forever, that he’d decided to stop living altogether, just like that. We’d heard that such phenomena had a habit of occurring in this place. But after we’d watched the top of his prematurely gray head for a minute, he looked back up at us, thoroughly alive.

“Forgive me,” he said with a weak smile. “I ran out of ink. That’s all. I am always running out of ink. I am always—” For a second, it appeared as if he might sink again, but then he righted himself, just as suddenly as he had before, and smiled at us broadly while waving his hand. “Go, now, for roll call.”

We began to turn away from him, obedient, but then he gestured for us to wait. He made a point of looking directly into our eyes. It was obvious that what he said to us was something he repeated often, to any child who would listen.

“Your first assignment for class is to learn the other children’s names. Recite them to each other. When a new child comes, learn that name too. When a child leaves us, remember the name.”

I swore I would remember. Stasha swore too. And then she asked after his real name.

Twins’ Father stared down at the papers for one minute, maybe two. He seemed lost in the answers he’d so carefully composed, as if all the check marks and little boxes he’d inked in black had blacked him out too, and then, just as we’d resigned ourselves to leaving without an answer, he lifted his eyes to us.

“It was Zvi Singer once,” he said. “But that is not important now.”

We stood for roll call in that early-morning light, our noses twitching in an effort to shake the stench of ash and the unwashed. September’s heat lingered in the air. It bounced off us in waves, haloed us with dust. This roll call was the first time I saw all of Mengele’s subjects gathered together: the multiples, the giants, the Lilliputs, the limbless, the Jews he’d deemed curiously Aryan in appearance. While some regarded us innocently, others held suspicion in their stares, and I had to wonder how long we would be considered zugangi . We did our best to ignore these looks as we sawed through our hard heels of breakfast bread and drank our muddy, fake coffee. Most of my bread I gave to Stasha. But I drank all of my fake coffee, which was very sour, like it had been brewed in an old shoe at the bottom of the river, according to my sister. When Stasha drank her coffee, her throat took offense and she was compelled to spit into the distance. Unfortunately, the Rabinowitzes were contained in that distance — they were all lined up to receive their breakfast — and Stasha’s spittle insulted the eldest son of the family, as it landed squarely on the lapel of his suit coat.

The Rabinowitzes were Lilliputs. There was a whole family of them, complete with a baton-wielding patriarch, and they all still dressed in the velvets and silks of their performance costumes, colorful garments edged with gilt and lace and swinging with tassels. The hair of the women was pompadoured high, and the wavy beards of the men streamed behind them like banners in a parade. They were an ostentatious sight, and though I didn’t share the sentiment, I could see why others resented them. For one, where else could one find an intact family in Auschwitz? And for two, they were among the grandest beneficiaries of Mengele’s attentions. His marvel over the family not only put them in a superior state of mind but blessed them with a spacious room to themselves in the infirmary, and their quarters brimmed with elusive comforts: Tables draped with lace and a window frilled with pink voile curtains. A full tea set painted with a willow-tree pattern. A miniature armchair in plush leather, big enough to seat a lamb. Mengele had even given them a radio, which Mirko, the eldest son, a teenager, was entrusted with. Mirko always sang along with that radio, even when there weren’t words to the music; he’d invent words, just to have something to sing. He was the one Stasha was unfortunate enough to strike with spittle.

“You take care who you spit on, zugang ,” Mirko said to her through gritted teeth.

I tried to wipe the spittle from his coat as I apologized, but he withdrew, as if doubly insulted by my efforts, and addressed the fabric with a swipe of his hat brim. Stasha stared at him all the while, mesmerized, her eyes spreading themselves wider than I’d thought our eyes could go. They grew as if to make more room to inspect the curiosity before her, and her appraisal was obvious, verging on ill-mannered.

“Haven’t seen my kind before, have you?” Mirko challenged.