by Jane Yolen
* * *
• • •
During the next week, more blood was drawn. After that, unspiced food was restored, a modest amount but still enough to satisfy their poor stomachs. And with that, a semblance of health returned.
“So now we are normal,” Chaim said carefully, after a meager breakfast that looked—and tasted—like cardboard. That set the three of them laughing, on the knife’s edge of hysteria, since there was nothing normal about the situation at all. But it still felt good to be able to laugh at something.
“Every day we are alive . . .” Gittel whispered.
With a start, Chaim remembered the poem, whispered the four lines to the others.
It became a kind of anthem for them, and they mouthed it at one another each night as they were separated and marched up to their rooms.
* * *
• • •
Von Schneir interviewed both Gittel and Gregor on how they were feeling, and took notes of what they said in response to his questions. He gave paper and pen to Chaim without comment.
“But no more pencils,” he said. “You have lost two already. Do you think they grow on trees?”
Which, of course, even in their condition, made the children giddy with laughter for a second time in two days. Because of course the pencils were made of wood! Stashed conveniently in the underside of Chaim’s mattress, both were worn down to the nubs, but he’d been making do.
Von Schneir hadn’t known about the first laughter. He’d been outside giving instructions to the guards before the three children had exploded into giddiness. But at this laughing response to his comment, he lost his temper, slapping Gittel hard, then walking out of the Welcome House in a huff. He didn’t come back for several hours. The mark of von Schneir’s hand on her cheek remained bright red like a tattoo for some time.
The moment the doctor left, Gregor remarked, “He doesn’t like mockery. That may be useful.”
Chaim responded immediately, “Then you mock him next time. Leave Gittel out.” He was surprised at how many words poured out of him. A whole day’s worth.
Gittel interrupted them. “It was worth it just to see his face. I shall remember that all my life.”
Her remark sobered the three of them at once.
For which one of us, Chaim thought, truly believes any of our lives in this place will be long?
* * *
• • •
They’d settled down before von Schneir returned, dozing on and off in their chairs. When he came back in, he slammed the door, which woke them at once.
His anger was still apparent in the rigid way he held himself, the angle of his jutting jaw.
Like the cantor’s bulldog, Mazel, Chaim thought.
“Tomorrow,” the doctor told them, “we begin in earnest. Think about that as you go without dinner or a soft place to sleep tonight, you bad, selfish, ungrateful children.”
He dragged them one by one in their chairs over to the stairs with almost superhuman strength. There he recuffed one arm of each to a rail so they each had one arm down on the chair’s leg and one arm up several stairs. It was extremely awkward and uncomfortable. Then he turned and walked out again, leaving them as they were.
“So much for using mockery,” Gittel said.
However, as it was the first time they could actually count on being on their own and in the same room together for hours, possibly all night, the three were in fact soon jubilant.
Chaim’s chair was at the bottom end of the staircase and so he could see the guards through the window. Gittel’s was next, farther along the wall that bordered the stairs, and Gregor’s arm was six steps up and totally in shadow. The stretch between his arms must have been more and more painful as the evening wore on, but he never complained.
Chaim watched the guards arguing and then leaving, and reported this to the others.
“Gone,” he said. “Maybe a quick dinner.”
“Good,” Gittel told them. “Now we can really talk!”
Chaim looked at her in admiration.
She winked. “Wolf, snake, spider, my dear brother. I do not forget your poems.”
Instead of making escape plans—for none of them dared dream that far—they began recounting their various aches and pains. Mostly legs and bottoms that had fallen asleep, stomach pangs.
Then Gregor all of a sudden remarked that his bowel movements had been watery three days in a row.
“My fingertips are always cold now,” Gittel said, “and sometimes they hurt.”
Chaim said simply, “I have no words.”
“You never have words,” Gregor said.
At least that brought on another bout of laughter without anyone around to slap them.
* * *
• • •
As dusk began to creep in, they talked a little bit about falling asleep in the chairs.
It was Chaim who said the word they were all avoiding. “Escape?”
Gregor shook his head. “And go where?”
That was the answer they’d been avoiding as well.
Always more practical, Gitttel reminded them of the circumstances. “Clearly von Schneir has told the guards that we’re sufficiently cowed and shackled. Chaim—you haven’t seen any sign of them returning, have you?”
He shook his head.
Gregor added, “But why should they come back? They know we’re safely cuffed. And I’m sure the tower guards know we can’t escape the house, yet most likely they’ve been warned to keep a careful eye on the door and windows just in case anyone tries to get out.”
Gittel added quickly, “Or get in.”
There was an odd silence. Then Gittel remarked, almost reluctantly, “Maybe another test?”
“Why bother?” Chaim dared two more words.
“Because he’s mad,” Gregor said. “Raving mad.”
Chaim was glad someone else had said that.
Then Gregor, with a round of swearing in both Polish and Yiddish that was truly impressive, said what he thought of von Schneir, the food, the camp, the guards, the munitions factory, and even some of the other prisoners.
Through his recitation, Gittel sat silent but was twisting about on her chair as if trying to make herself even slightly comfortable.
Chaim had been thinking for some time that the conversations helped them take back what little power they had. He was about to try and frame that in five words when Gittel suddenly waved at them, her left hand free of the handcuff.
“H . . . h . . how . . .” Chaim stammered on only one word. A new low score, he thought.
Gregor finished the sentence for him: “. . . did you do that, and what does it mean for all of us? Can we get out of the cuffs, too?” He pulled mightily, but his hands were too big.
Chaim yanked on his as well. All that happened was that his wrists now hurt. “Not me . . .” he began.
Gittel interrupted. “I’ve gotten so thin, I could feel the cuffs loosen. I’ve been working on it for several nights now and all day today after the doctor left. Alas, the right hand doesn’t want to get loose yet. I’m right-handed, so that hand is probably a tiny bit larger—and it’s not cooperating. But I have hopes. If I can get out of both cuffs, I could get some of those knives. I was going to try that before he cuffed us to the stairs. Now it’s just . . .”
“Impossible?” Gregor asked.
“Just a little harder,” she answered.
“Harder—and possible,” Chaim said.
And suddenly, just like that, they were truly talking about escape.
“Did he leave any keys about?” Gregor asked.
“He wears them all the time,” Gittel said. “And takes them with him at night.”
“He is crazy,” Gittel said.
Gregor shook his head. “Or this really is a test.”
&nb
sp; “But still, even thinking about escape gives us hope,” Gittel reminded them. “The first we’ve had in weeks.”
Chaim leaned toward her. “Months.”
“Hope for what?” Gregor asked, reminding them how little hope they really had. Then he was silent.
His silence made both Chaim and Gittel go dumb as well, and the minutes ticked by, until finally Gittel said, “We have to buy more time to think about this.”
Gregor nodded.
But Chaim had the last word that night, though he said it slowly, one careful word at a time. “We . . . may . . . be . . . out . . . of time.”
Even with the full weight of those words, he didn’t stutter.
Gittel Remembers
Long before we’d been resettled in the ghetto, Chaim and I had had three operations between us. The doctors took out my tonsils and adenoids and Chaim just his tonsils. Because mine was the more complicated operation, I stayed in the hospital longer.
I remember little of what happened. We were only four years old at the time. But what I do remember is being so worried about the cutting doctor—as Papa called him—that I threw up. The doctor postponed my operations for a day until it was determined I wasn’t sick, just scared.
The anesthesia worked its magic the next day, though I didn’t like the glass tube I had to breathe into. According to Mama, I kept turning my head to avoid it. I woke up wondering why my throat hurt and asking in a hoarse whisper, “When is the cutting doctor coming?”
Mama said, “The cutting doctor has already been and gone, and the sewing doctor has done his job as well. Now it’s the turn of the ice cream nurse.”
I liked the sound of the ice cream nurse.
In she came on cue, bringing me as much vanilla ice cream as I could manage, which turned out to be rather less than I’d thought I could.
I never understood those lost hours. But I think I always blessed them.
Then.
Later.
Now.
34
Von Schneir returned to the Welcome House two days later. In all that time, no one had come to check up on them or feed them, or uncuff them so they could go to the bathroom. Whether that was by order or accident, they never found out.
With her free left hand, Gittel had been able to remove her soiled underpants, but she couldn’t help either of the boys.
By the morning of the second day, the place smelled like a sewer.
When von Schneir came in, he took one look at the three of them, turned, and left.
Gittel began to weep silently, but in the middle of her crying, von Schneir returned with Madam Grenzke. She had a bucket of warm water, a washcloth, and some yellow soap. Plus a change of clothes for each of them.
“Clean them up,” von Schneir said roughly, “and burn their filthy clothing in that damned oven out back. Let me know when the room is sterile again. I have to operate here!” He handed her the keys to the handcuffs, spun about, and was out through the door before any of them could react.
It was not the embarrassment, the physical discomfort, the pain, or the shame that remained in the room after von Schneir left, but the word operate, so unexplained and threatening.
Madam Grenzke uncuffed them and cleaned Gittel up first, with a practiced but gentle hand. As she worked, Gittel told her about the bathroom upstairs.
“It has a tub,” she said. “He’s let us use it before.”
“I will get some warm water for it,” Madam Grenzke said. She opened the door and told the guards what she needed, adding, “Schnell!”
The guard was back in minutes with tepid water, handing it through the door.
“Go,” Madam Grenzke said, “fast as you can. I will clean the rest. Leave it to me. I was a nurse in two different Warsaw hospitals before my marriage to Grenzke. I can handle this. I’ve seen worse.”
It was the most she’d spoken to any of them since they first met her. Her voice was soothing yet stern. She told them more about herself in six short sentences than in the months they’d been at the camp.
Gittel limped to the stairs, the two days in the chair having taken a toll on her muscles. She held the new clothes in front of her not out of prudishness as much as convenience.
Chaim watched as Madam helped Gregor get reasonably clean. “You go up and wait in the hall, take the next bath. Quickly. I don’t know what the doctor has planned, but I will try to help where I can.”
Gregor answered her with a weak smile, as if he no longer knew whom to trust. Or how.
Madam Grenzke kept talking to him, one hand under his arm, the arm that had been the highest on the stairs. Her voice was both soft and steely, a nurse’s tone. “We miss your strength in the factory. I promise you things will be different if I can will it. Prayers if I cannot. Pardon the evil that has been done to you, if it is in you to do so.”
The words cascaded over Gregor, who seemed uninterested in them, only in the bathwater she offered. But those words, Chaim thought, were somehow like the powerful Yom Kippur prayer at the New Year asking forgiveness, promising change. It had been the one holiday service Papa took them to. As if a cantor were singing the Kol Nidre in his head, Chaim felt like forgiving Madam Grenzke everything.
“Now go,” she said, pointing to the stairs.
Gregor also limped to the first step but seemed to recover a bit more quickly than Gittel had once he was on the second. After that, he fairly ran up the stairs, left hand on the banister for balance, right hand clutching the new clothes.
“Now you, boy.” Madam Grenzke said, coming to Chaim’s side.
“Chaim,” he whispered hoarsely. “My name is Chaim.”
She bent close to open his handcuffs, but also to whisper, “Madam Szawlowski doesn’t like us learning your names. Says it makes you Jews seem too human. But I worked with some lovely Jewish doctors at the hospitals, and . . .”
She didn’t finish her sentence, and Chaim was glad, because if she’d gone on, he would have broken down, sobbing.
She cleaned up his legs and feet with quick, sure strokes. Made him turn around to work on his back and bottom, let him use the cloth on his privates himself, then sent him up the stairs holding his clean clothes, too. He passed Gittel as she was coming down and whispered, “She’s asked forgiveness—”
“She’s still one of them,” Gittel hissed. “Don’t trust her. Never trust her. Not any of them.”
He nodded. Of course she was right. But . . .
At the top of the stairs, he knocked on the closed bathroom door to let Gregor know he was there, said his name. Kept the rest of the words to himself.
When the door opened and Gregor came out, looking tired but clean, Chaim went in to use the water, which was now cool. Ignoring the dark ring Gittel and Gregor had left around the tub, he washed himself all over with the yellow soap, even his hair. Then he sank below the water until he couldn’t hold his breath a second more. When he got out, his teeth were chattering, but he didn’t care.
* * *
• • •
By the time a clean Chaim was back downstairs, his stomach was growling fiercely.
Gittel and Gregor were once again sitting in the front room, their hands cuffed to the back legs of their chairs. The guards were in the room with them, and Madam Grenzke was finishing up cleaning the floor, a small lock of her dark hair curling loose from its careful French plait.
The chairs and floor were now sparkling clean. Chaim wondered how she’d managed it all in such a short time but didn’t ask.
She held up the last pair of handcuffs in front of him, though reluctantly—or so it seemed. He was, of course, reluctant, too, but the guards wordlessly hefted their rifles. There was no mistaking their threat. So he sat down on the one empty chair and held out his hands. Gittel’s reminder echoed in his head: Don’t trust her.
As Madam Grenzke
tightened the cuffs around his wrist, he could still hear her voice begging forgiveness of Gregor. The music of the Kol Nidre played again in his head, the wail of it drowning out anything else.
Only then did he remember the word: operate.
Seeing his distress, Madam Grenzke said softly, “I am going out to get you all some food. The girl says—”
“Gittel. We’re twins,” he said firmly, determined to make her a witness to whatever was about to happen.
“I will not say her name,” she told him. “I cannot. Madam Szawlowski will not allow it. But I will remember.”
He could see in her eyes that she was telling the truth. That was enough.
“Your twin says you have had no food in two days. I will go to the kitchen and bring back something. You’re not supposed to have any food before getting anesthesia for an operation, though, so it will be just a very little.”
“Operation for what?” He felt as if he were giving away his words like a spendthrift. But what did that matter now?
“I don’t know. Surely one of you—all of you—must be ill.”
He shook his head.
“Well, you certainly looked ill—the filth, the—
Gittel snapped, “We’d been left without food or water for—”
More gently, Chaim said, “Two days.”
Madam Grenzke looked around, then spoke as if to herself. “But, if not ill, why operate? Why waste precious supplies? Do you know how hard it is to get anesthesia? Even the soldiers wounded in the fighting have no . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked over at the surgical table and let out a gasp of surprise.
Chaim looked too. Scalpels, bandages, towels all there. It took him a moment before he realized what had made her gasp. The operating table had nothing resembling an anesthesia bottle. Nothing that had glass tubes, or an ether mask, the items he remembered most from the time he’d had his tonsils removed. But that was long ago. He’d been three or four. Maybe things had changed.