“Bruno,” he whispered, thinking maybe they could talk. Could worry together about their sisters in the hospital. Maybe a burden shared was a burden halved. He’d once heard Mama say something like that.
Thinking about Mama made him even more unhappy.
But all he heard in response was the small burring sound of Bruno’s snore. He—it seemed—had no interest in waking to talk with Chaim, about Sophie or anything else.
* * *
• • •
They awoke in the early morning to a hammering on the door. For a moment, Chaim thought Death had come to call, and it might be for him.
And if Death takes Gittel, he thought, then Death can have me, too.
Even fully awake, that thought didn’t leave him.
Gittel Remembers
There is no need for a good bed, only a longing. As an adolescent, I was forced to sleep on a too-soft mattress with difficult springs, the cold floor of a cellar, various dewy meadows, forests of pine needles, wooden floors. I have slept on the slats of beds, too, with neither mattress nor covering.
What matters is not where you sleep, but how. With a full belly or empty, with a clear conscience or a filthy one, near a live loved one or by a dead body, with a war battling around you or a modest peace.
What matters is not the bed beneath you but your dreams.
I cannot say the cold forest and the warm bed afforded me different dreams. All dreams are different and all the same. We work out problems, solve the equations of our lives: Enjoy prosperity we may never have, love we may never feel, a gift we may never get. Or simply take a long trip over improbable landscapes. In our dreams, we shape and reshape our lives, tell ourselves palatable lies.
I have done all this and more.
What matters are not the dreams, but what we can learn from them. The strength we can draw from them. The answers we can gather from them.
What matters is finding out what really matters.
My brother, Chaim, taught me that. In his actions and his poems. And his dreams.
He is my hero.
As, it seems, I am his.
28
The hammering was a summons, but none of them dared guess what it was for.
“Before breakfast?” muttered Gregor. “If they’re going to shoot me, let me die with food in my mouth!”
Bruno laughed. “You’ve been here so long, no one is going to shoot you. You are going to die in a feather bed with your arms around your wife.”
It was something one of the guards must have said, because Chaim knew that was not the sort of thing Bruno could have come up with on his own.
“Just growing pangs,” Meyer had dubbed Gregor’s increasing hunger. He’d once said Gregor was the only one who’d actually grown bigger in the camp.
Gregor had replied—and it sounded like a much rehearsed response—“This high up the air has nutrients that you bisl folk, you little people, can’t get.”
They were all equally hungry. But Gregor actually did seem to have grown a couple inches since Chaim had been brought to Sobanek. Everyone else either stayed the same, or—in the case of a few—truly seemed to have shrunk.
The children tumbled out of their hard beds, already dressed in their work clothes—for they’d had to sleep in them. Then they gathered in several unhappy clumps by the door.
Chaim looked around, as did everyone. Gregor made a head count. No one had died in the night or had even fallen ill.
There was a soft intake of breath as the realization hit them all at the same time. Rachael smiled.
Just then they heard the bolt drawn back, and another round of knocks assaulted the door, but no one came in. It was obvious that none of the guards had wanted to enter Barracks 4 in case more cases of typhoid had been found.
The children stayed in their clumps, waiting for one of their number to be brave enough to fling the door open. Marek and Meyer glanced at each other, then away. Gregor suddenly became fascinated with his fingers. Rachael took a step back from the door. Bruno looked at his shoes.
The others seem to fade into the shadows.
Another sharp rap seemed to demand attention.
Finally, Chaim stepped up to the task. Opening the door carefully, he saw Hans with four of his men, restless, uneasy, and with guns at the ready. Not a good combination.
Change, Chaim thought, makes the guards nervous. Nervous guards were never a good thing.
Standing at attention, Gregor reported, “No one died in the night, sir. No one is ill.”
The guards visibly relaxed.
Hans looked over the children and, when he was certain Gregor had been correct, signaled them with his gun, saying, “You vill come mit uns.”
With exaggerated patience, Bruno translated the last two words: “with us.”
Though, Chaim thought, anyone could have figured that out. But he thought it was the where of Hans’s order, not the who with that bothered them all.
They followed the soldiers, of course, a line of shadow children, some possibly on the cusp of typhoid themselves. In the early morning light, several of the girls and two of the boys had cheeks that were decidedly pink. Furthermore, they were all exhausted from the extra-long work hours on the day before. Plus they were also aware that any changes at the camp inevitably brought disaster. To them—if not to the guards.
“What now?” Marek whispered to Meyer, quietly enough not to be heard—or so he thought.
“You”—Hans made the hiss of a snake—“no noise!”
Marek put his finger to his mouth and nodded quickly, his head bobbing like a child’s toy. And in his wake, so did all the others.
* * *
• • •
Chaim was the first to notice where they were going. Back to Barracks 3, though in a roundabout way.
He turned abruptly and shook his head at Gregor, who looked at him, startled.
Chaim held up three fingers, then pointed.
Gregor nodded.
Another minute, and the sign of three ran through the entire group of prisoners. Since the guards marched at the head of the straggling, silent column, they didn’t notice the children’s consternation. Or if they noticed, they didn’t care. But for the prisoners, knowing where and knowing why were very different things.
Their fear went into its highest gear. For all they knew, they were going to be thrown back into that barracks so that they might become infected along with the others.
One of the girls—tiny Eva—looked over to the far wall where the guard towers loomed in the early morning mist. It seemed as if she found more safety there than where they were headed. She moved up close to Chaim and began to tremble.
Chaim grabbed her elbow. She was so thin, it was like a spike in his hand. “No fear,” he whispered. It was all he dared.
She nodded and marched forward again, so his grip loosened.
When they came around to the front of the building, Hans halted the soldiers, who turned to face the trailing prisoners.
The children automatically stopped and waited to be told what to do.
“Bruno,” Hans said, and then sent a lashing of German at Bruno that was clearly meant to be translated.
Bruno nodded, then turned to the other children. He spoke softly, but with that same loftiness he’d adopted before, whenever passing on Hans’s words: “We are to wait here for instructions from Dr. von Schneir himself. He is a great man. A von! Practically royalty. His orders come directly from Berlin, and he will tell us what is happening and what we must do.”
More German from Hans interrupted Bruno’s speech.
“And we must not move from this spot until the doctor arrives.” Then Bruno added quickly, “Or there will be punishments. Lots of them. For everyone.” He stopped, gulped. “Even me.”
Satisfied that his message had been pass
ed on, Hans called out in his loud voice to his soldiers, and they marched away.
“But breakfast . . .” Eva protested.
“And our work?” Marek asked.
Not to be ignored, one of the younger boys, Shmuel, said emphatically, “Madam Szawlowski will not be happy if we’re late. And when she is unhappy—” His arm snapped down as if holding an invisible riding crop.
A shudder ran through the group.
“This is our work now,” Chaim said. And then added in a breathless rush before his traitor throat tightened up, “Or . . . ord . . . orders from Berlin.”
Because he hardly ever spoke, they all listened and agreed, which must have annoyed Bruno, because—as if a ruler had been inserted into his mouth sideways—his lips pulled into a thin line.
Of course Chaim had no more idea about what was to happen next than the others did. Still, he alone was not fooled into relaxing. He remembered how Papa had been so positive about them going into the herring barrels. That it would save their lives. Assuring Chaim and Gittel, Bruno and Sophie of an outcome he could not possibly have known or controlled.
I am Papa now, he thought.
At that very moment, the door of Barracks 3 opened, and out stepped a man who could only have been Dr. von Schneir.
He was small and compact, with the attitude of a wildcat on the prowl. He walked toward them as if ready to pounce. A splendid mustache, carefully oiled to its pointed ends, hid much of his thin face. His beard was short and pointed, like a hand spade, and faultlessly trimmed.
His clothes were well pressed and looked very expensive. Especially in these surroundings, Chaim thought, where even the guards’ uniforms are wrinkled and worn.
Dr. von Schneir opened his arms wide. “Ah, the cavalry has arrived,” he said in perfect Polish.
None of the children seemed to know what he meant, except Chaim, who read a lot—back when there were lots of books in his house.
“The reserves, sir,” he said, surprised at how much he’d been able to say in so little time.
Dr. von Schneir laughed, took a large pocket handkerchief from his vest, blew his nose loudly, and then said, “You will do, children. You will do. Have you eaten?”
They shook their heads, trying not to look pitiful. Looking pitiful in the camp was a guarantee of a beating at the least. Too pitiful, and you could be shot. The rumor was that it had happened before.
Chaim had used up more than his allotted words already, so said nothing, but Gregor stepped forward. “Not a bite, sir, not since last night’s stew, sir. With an actual potato in it, sir. I think as a reward.” He was being daring by saying such a thing, for it could easily be considered a complaint.
“What I feared,” the doctor said. “My brief from Berlin is to save as many lives as I can and make the camp safe from typhoid so the munitions will be ready in time. I think that, in Berlin, munitions trump lives, but they cannot have the one without the other.”
For a moment, Chaim thought his heart stopped. He’d been thinking of typhoid as something like measles or chicken pox—both of which he and Gittel had had as children. A disease to be avoided if possible, endured if necessary, with a slow recovery after.
Dr. von Schneir came closer to them and looked carefully at each one, not exactly examining them as a doctor would in his surgery, but almost as if he were committing their faces to memory.
“Come,” he said at last, “I will walk with you to the kitchen. I, too, have not eaten yet and have been up most of the night. I will make certain that there is enough for us all. And for our patients as well.” He winked at Chaim. “Orders from Berlin.”
Everyone noticed the words us and our in that speech.
He’s the only non-Jew in the camp who doesn’t hold himself apart, Chaim thought. That has to count for something.
In fact, his heart seemed to be saying, it counts for a lot!
The doctor shooed the children like chickens in front of him. All except for Bruno, who tried to engage him in a German conversation until von Schneir said, in Polish, not at all unkindly, “I must keep my Polish up so that I may speak with our sick children.”
Chaim thought his accent bore the mark of some harsher German syllables, and the way he spoke felt a bit schooled. That was something Papa used to say about the generals who had taken over their house before sending them to the ghetto. They speak Polish as if they are still in the schoolroom. He realized he was fighting the man’s charms.
There’s something calculating in Dr. von Schneir’s eyes, as if he’s measuring us all for . . . for . . . Chaim couldn’t think for what.
But if the doctor could get them more food, Chaim knew all of them—himself included—would treat him like the royalty that Bruno said he was. And if the doctor could cure Gittel of typhoid, Chaim swore he would be in the doctor’s debt forever.
* * *
• • •
It took von Schneir no more than ten minutes, his voice lowered to a snake’s hiss, and the words orders from Berlin spoken three more times, plus a telegraph back and forth from the commandant before the kitchen’s hidden food stores were opened at last.
“Do not gorge, my children,” Dr. von Schneir said to them. “It will do your poor shrunken bellies no good. Only a little bit of the strong food at first, by afternoon a bit more. Otherwise what goes down quickly will come up again even quicker.”
Chaim listened to him, and so did many of the others. But Gregor and Bruno and several of the girls did not heed the warning and were soon outside throwing up in the open trenches.
Dr. von Schneir turned, winked, and grinned at Eva and Chaim, who were still sitting at the table eating very, very slowly. “Sometimes a demonstration is worth a thousand words, yes?” He stood and went over to the door, shaking his head at what he saw, and then disappeared outside.
It seemed to Chaim an odd thing to say, and yet he couldn’t find logical fault with it. The doctor—and who should know better than a doctor?—had warned them what would happen if they ate too much and too quickly.
Perhaps, he thought, they didn’t understand the word gorge.
* * *
• • •
When Chaim and the others had finished their slow meal, they slipped bits of apples, slices of fresh-cut brown bread, and pieces of cabbage into their pockets and sleeves just in case they never had such a meal again.
Then they, too, walked outside.
No doctor. No Bruno or Gregor or the half a dozen who’d fled out to the trenches.
“Do you think . . .” Eva said, trembling, as she looked over at the chimney. But not even the thinnest curl of smoke marred the sky.
Chaim touched her shoulder. Shook his head. He made the three-finger sign for Barracks 3, and in an uncomfortable clot of silence, they trudged back.
The knot of children who greeted them outside the building included everyone who’d rushed their food. Their faces were blanched and pinched because they’d gotten no good out of the rich food on offer and indeed felt even worse than before.
Dr. von Schneir waited until the entire troop was reassembled. Then he smiled slowly and said, “And what have we learned today, children?”
“Not to gulp and gorge?” said Bruno.
“Too much of a good thing can be bad?” That was Gregor, and he didn’t sound happy at all.
“Eat slowly,” Eva said, her eyes engaging only with the ground at her feet.
Bruno snapped, “I already said that.”
“You said ‘gulp,’” Meyer corrected him.
“And ‘gorge,’” someone in the middle of the group added.
With that same snake smile, the doctor turned to Chaim. “And what does Mr. Silence say?”
Chaim waited a beat to frame his answer. At last he said, “Listen to the doctor.” He was not certain how he meant it.
Dr. von
Schneir touched his nose and nodded. “Always,” he said softly. But all the children heard the threat beneath the word.
Then von Schneir led them into Barracks 3, where slightly less than half of their fellow prisoners still lay in fevered stupors.
On the far side of the room lay several older men that Chaim recognized vaguely. They worked in the kitchen.
But really, he saw only his sister, who was lying in much the same position in which he’d seen her last.
“Gittel,” he whispered. And when she didn’t move, he said more frantically, “Gittel!”
Slowly, she turned as if every bone ached, then opened her eyes. Smiling weakly, she whispered, “Getting better, big brother. Doctor gave me some pills.” She took a shuddering breath. “Fresh water. Says I must be bathed in clean water. Take it easy for a few days.” She struggled to sit up. “But I must get some more water. So thirsty. They’ll put me up the chimney otherwise.”
He held her hand briefly. “I’ll find water.” He hesitated, framed another sentence. “Berlin says—save everybody.” He hoped he was right. Made the chimney sign. Shook his head. Meaning no chimney now. He knew she’d understand.
“Ah,” Gittel said, “we’re valuable. They need us for work.” She lay down again, trying to get comfortable. At the last, she turned toward Chaim. “Get Sophie water, too. She’s there.” She made a half gesture with her right hand. “Where the bad cases are.”
The bad cases? Chaim couldn’t bear to think about that. Sophie was almost like a sister now. “Water,” he said again.
“There, there, young man.” It was the doctor, his hand on Chaim’s shoulder. “No hand-holding. We don’t want you going down, too. Your sweetheart?”
Bruno, who’d been shadowing von Schneir, giggled. “Brother and sister,” he said. “They’re twins.”
Dr. von Schneir smiled at Bruno, a huge, genuine smile. “Such a font of information.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of candy. “Keep it flowing, Mr. Fountain, and all that I have in my pockets is yours.”