Elisa Albert - How This Night Is Different - Stories

Darcey is holding on to Rabbi Amy’s hand, hanging on by a thread. And sure enough, the minute they set foot into the first barracks/museum, she’s sobbing.

“Did she not see the sign?” Heather whispers.

In the barracks are photos and basic information about when, how many, who, and so forth. Stuff Shayna knows in her sleep.

Everyone is paired up instantly. Jessica is clutching Ari, Jamie is holding on to Robbie, and Rose-Ling has laid claim to Aaron Weiner, who Heather claims is totally loaded. Jonah, looking smug and magnanimous, has adopted Zoe, and leads her around by the shoulders, there there -ing now and again.

The next barracks talk about arrival and registration, about examinations, about turning right or turning left, about life in the camps. This is more stuff Shayna knows all about, could recite from memory, and mostly she’s distracted by what she’ll write in the journal. She tries to let something penetrate, but really all she feels is nervous about facing the journal later with nothing whatsoever to say.

There is a promising twist in her stomach when she gets to the photo of the Auschwitz Orchestra. It surprises her; it’s actually one she’s never seen before. The thought of endeavoring to make music here. It’s so sudden and — Yes! Woohoo! — intense that she almost reaches for Heather, but doesn’t, just in time. When the feeling passes she’s sort of glad not to have succumbed to the dominant impulse, the compulsory crying and hand-holding.

Upstairs is a room full of gray hair. This is what goes through Shayna’s head: a roomful of hair, a roomful of hair. She waits patiently for the image to sink in and for some profundity to follow it, but none does. Max had written about wanting to throw up in this room. Jamie buries her head in Robbie’s shoulder, Rose-Ling holds her hands over her face, and Jessica leans into Ari with all her weight. There are only the sounds of sniffling and sighing and breathing (which all Living must, after all), in-tandem footsteps. Sonja explains that all the hair is gray because it had been shaved after people were gassed, and the gas changed the color. Shayna catches sight of a long gray braid, winding its way through piles and piles of yet more hair. It is the second thing to catch her by surprise today. It’s like a punch in the gut, and she holds on to the wall, dizzy. This, though unpleasant, is also exhilarating, as it’s an actual, organic, vomitous experience, all her own. Never before has she heard or read accounts of a long gray braid, shaved off a dead girl’s head after she’d been gassed. What color had it been? Was it there for Shayna to see and for Shayna alone?

In another room are piles of prosthetics and crutches and things. It smells like burning plastic, just as Max had promised it would. The roomful of shoes also smells, though Shayna takes issue, now that she herself is here, with Max’s assessment of the smell as armpit. The smell is simply dank, fungal feet, any idiot could tell that much.

When they’re done with the barracks, everyone is puffy faced and quiet. The hand-holding escalates to indiscriminate hugging. Everyone embraces and switches partners so that every possible permutation of couple has embraced.

“They’re like swingers in suburbia,” Heather says. No one tries to hug Heather, and because of her proximity to Heather, no one tries to hug Shayna either. And, needless to say, Heather and Shayna do not hug.

Most of them are wearing their We Are the Living! windbreakers over their We Are the Living! sweatshirts (or stretch flare tracksuits), and the sight of them, a small swarm of Living, all in blue, is truly obnoxious. It’s as if they’re gloating. Isn’t it enough that they’re here, at Auschwitz, alive, sixty years later, without having to proclaim their aLiveness so repeatedly? We Are the Living, and all of you who perished here (suckas!) are NOT! Take that, you hapless victims! Eat it! Look at us, alive, you vanished people. If you’d found a way to emigrate when you’d had the chance then maybe you’d have something to show for your sorry asses, some grandchildren wearing two-hundred-dollar velour tracksuits and with excellent sexual prospects for this very evening!

Jonah approaches Shayna and holds her for what feels like too long, so she’s not sure what to do with her arms. When he’s done he holds his face really close to hers and asks how she’s doing.

“Okay,” she says. He looks at her some more, like he’s going to ask the judges if they can accept that answer, and then pulls her back into him for more hugging.

“You’re okay?” he asks when round two is over.

“Yeah.” But with every move she makes she gets a head rush, and when she closes her eyes she sees Max’s words, wondering How many people died exactly where I stood today? And it’s not until Jonah has embraced a squirming Heather and they’ve moved on to death row, between barracks ten and eleven, to light memorial candles and sing, haltingly, the Israeli national anthem, that it occurs to Shayna to say, “Um, no.” To tap Jonah on the shoulder and fall into his waiting arms and tell him that she is not at all okay, tell him about the gray braid and the Auschwitz Orchestra and all her preordained feelings and having to follow Max here, having to have all the stupid feelings that had been felt before and that had been felt better.

They have lunch before the death march. Rolls and butter and Kit-Kats, which they eat in relative quiet on the bus. The impetus to offer some of her date-nut bar to Jessica is gone, and Shayna sinks into her seat and chews, chews, chews until it’s all gone. With her bottled water she swallows the third of Jamie’s Zoloft, closes her eyes, and waits for it to kick in.

“Help me find some good rocks,” Heather says as they walk. She scans the ground, bending down every few minutes to pick up a handful of gravel or a small stone, which she then mostly throws back down, unsatisfied. “I’m gonna make me a death march mosaic when I get home.” When she finds stones she likes she deposits them in a little plastic baggie. So everyone but Shayna has a trauma-assimilation game plan, it appears; a way to feel what they feel, felt, will feel.

They are a blue river of Living, winding their way along the tracks from Auschwitz to Birkenau, on a most horrifically well-worn path. Shayna digs her right thumbnail into her left palm, grinding it mercilessly. Feel! Feel! Horror! When that doesn’t work she goes to work yanking out some hair at the base of her neck. Jessica and Jamie and Rose-Ling and Ari and Robbie and Jon have linked arms and walk as a unit, and watching them, Shayna is filled with a burst of unparalleled hatred, the third thing to catch her by surprise today.

The walk takes only a half hour. They’re greeted at Birkenau by more barracks, and the destroyed crematoria at the far end of the camp. Sonja tells them that the United States knew where all the crematoria were, and could have bombed them any time it wanted to. Shayna knows this, of course, knows all about it, but Jamie is incredulous.

“So why didn’t it? I mean we?” No one has an answer, obviously, and now it’s Jamie’s turn to burst into tears.

“Because fuck the Jews,” Heather says. Sonja nods slightly.

“Kind of.”

Sonja talks for a while about her experiences with a detachment that Shayna wholly appreciates but can’t fully understand. How is it possible that someone could live through such things, then stand around calmly telling people about them? How is it possible for Sonja to be standing on this spot and still be breathing? Was this the secret knowledge to be gleaned? Was this what Max had understood and then alluded, in his journal, to understanding for the first time? Was this living with a capital L ?