Affinity Konar - Mischling

On this day, we were practicing in the field with Baby lolling in the grass, an uninterested audience. We had music too, of a sort. In the distance, you could hear the sound of paving stones being laid, one next to another — the stones sang out, their clinks carrying over the city and up into the drifts of the crab apple trees. Here and there, a starling asserted itself, warbling, its cry so forceful that its hasty body trembled. It was to this music of stone and bird and Zayde’s laughter that the dog undertook his choreography.

I told my dog that he had to practice. Someday, I said, someone might discover his talents and put him in a movie. That could be our future — didn’t he agree? My dog did not agree. He disliked practicing just as much as Pearl had; he had no interest in proving himself worthy of the art. But he danced for me all the same, and I applauded him after the full revolution of a turn.

When I stopped clapping, though — I still heard applause. Someone was clapping behind our backs. I blushed. Because dog-dancing is nothing to be proud of; it is a sport for the solitary, a sad sort of whirl.

But when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw myself. Or I saw a girl, a strong girl, a girl who was no longer lonely. The girl was happier than I’d imagined I could ever be again. She was clapping and smiling and the dog gamboled toward her and shimmied at her feet, abandoning any idea of a show. Still, the girl kept clapping. She clapped even as there were two crutches propped beneath her arms.

Have you ever seen the best part of yourself stationed at a measurable distance? A distance you’d never thought possible after so much parting? If so, I’m sure you’re aware of the joys of this condition. My heart thrilled with reunion, and my tongue ran dumb with happiness. My spleen informed my lungs that they’d lost the big bet— I told you so! my spleen said — and my thoughts, my rosy thoughts, they kept thinking toward a future I’d believed long lost.

She put her crutches down and we sat back to back, spine to spine, in the manner of our old game.

I’ll admit — I peeked at what she drew.

I peeked not to cheat, but oh — just because she was my sister. I had to see her. I am sure you understand.

And we drew poppies. We drew them as tight buds that might never see a bloom, we drew them for Mama and Zayde, and then we added a river for Papa. We drew a train, a piano, a horse. We drew the children Stasha would have, and the children I never could. We drew boats that carried us far away from Poland, and planes that brought us back. We did not draw a needle, no; we did not draw a crutch, much less the man who had undone us. But we drew skies that would protect us our whole lives through, and trees that would shelter two girls who might never be whole, and only when we finished drawing did my sister even try to speak.

“Let’s try again,” Stasha said.

I didn’t need to finish her sentence. I knew what she meant — we had to learn to love the world once more.

I am grateful to the following:

Jim Rutman, for your gallant investment in my writing and the years of brilliant insights that illuminated the path for this book. It wouldn’t be real without you.

Lee Boudreaux, editor-heroine beyond compare — I remain in awe of your commitment to every dream, sorrow, and longing contained within.

Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, Judy Clain, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, Carina Guiterman, Tracy Roe, Kapo Ng, Sean Ford, Carrie Neill, Nicole Dewey, and the teams at Little, Brown and Company and Lee Boudreaux Books that I’ve been so fortunate to work with. Szilvia Molnar, Danielle Bukowski, Brian Egan, and the fantastic people at Sterling Lord Literistic. All of the amazing foreign publishers, for welcoming this novel.

The David Berg Foundation, for their gracious support, and my teachers and peers at Columbia.

Pranav Behari and Adam Kaplan, for always being my heartfelt and invaluable writing-family.

Stephen O’Connor, Lydia Millet, Joyce Polansky, Karen Russell, George Sanchez, Rudy Browne — that I have enjoyed your influence and friendship is a wonder.

The Konars, Cruzes, Kims, and Sos. Grandmama and Grandpapa — słońce i księżyc. Jonathan and Coco (for always taking the funny and the future).

My parents, whose optimism and attention to beauty have been my preservation. (Special thanks to Dad for giving me a field when I needed it most.)

Philip Kim — for the genius, animals, comfort, and jokes. How anyone writes without you is beyond my understanding.

And here, words can only fail. But I must try to thank Eva Mozes Ker and Miriam Mozes Zeiger for the inspiration of their sisterhood and their girlish spirits. And I must try, again, to thank Zvi Spiegel, Gisella Pearl, Alex Dekel, and the innumerable, unnamed witnesses whose stories have compelled these pages. This book lives only in the presence of your memories.

Mischling ’s initial inspiration can be found in the remarkable Children of the Flames by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel. Tremendous debts are also owed to the following: Sara Nomberg-Przytyk’s Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land; Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen; Eva Mozes Kor and Mary Wright’s Echoes from Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele’s Twins; Arnost Lustig’s Children of the Holocaust; Elie Wiesel’s Night; Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife; George Eisen’s Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games Among the Shadows; Isaac Kowalski’s Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance 1939–1945; Rich Cohen’s The Avengers; Mary Lowenthal Felstiner’s To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era; Dr. Gisella Perl’s I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz; Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces; Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; Primo Levi’s The Truce, If This Is a Man, The Periodic Table, and The Drowned and the Saved; and the works of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis.

Affinity Konar was raised in California. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program.