by Jane Yolen
“Hush,” the woman near Hannah remarked again, “the children.”
“We could break down the doors and run away,” Hannah said.
“Run away? Where, little Chaya? To Lublin?” Gitl asked.
“To America,” Hannah said.
“To be with Avrom Morowitz? This is my home.”
“This boxcar?” Hannah whispered.
“Do not be impudent.”
“To Israel then.”
Gitl laughed, a strange, hollow sound. “And where is Israel,” she asked, “except in our prayers?”
“Hush,” the woman begged.
The stories continued.
“Did you hear about Mostochowa?” a man asked.
“You mean the place where they were all forced out of their houses to stand naked in the snow?” Yitzchak said.
“Rumors,” the rabbi cautioned.
“They were beaten,” a woman said.
“Yes, Masha is right, beaten unmercifully. And the blood on the snow, my Uncle Moishe who was there said, was like rose petals falling. Rose petals, he said,” the man concluded.
“No more stories!” Fayge shouted. “Nothing more will happen to us. Nothing. We are uncomfortable and crowded. We are hungry. But it will pass. We are going to be resettled. That is all. And then I will be married. With a canopy.”
“I heard . . .”
“Hush! Hush!” The woman near Hannah spoke in tired spurts of sound. “The children can stand no more. My child is senseless with all this talk.”
A voice close to her said quietly, “Let me take the child, mother. I will hold her for a while.” There was a small movement as everyone tried to adjust. “Oh, my God, the child is not senseless. The child is dead. Boruch dayan emes. Blessed be the righteous judge . . .”
Hannah wept.
11
THE BOXCARS TRAVELED FOR FOUR DAYS AND NIGHTS; the only difference that Hannah could tell was in the heat. Under the midday sun, it was like standing in an oven, an oven that smelled of human sweat and urine and feces. But at night, when it was cold, they were all grateful for the close quarters.
The train made only two stops the entire time. At Troniat, a small station that one of the men recognized, the doors were suddenly thrown open and they tumbled out into the darkness onto a gravel path.
That was when they discovered that three old women had died and a fourth was near death and could not climb out of the car. All four of the bodies were slung out by the soldiers onto a siding. The dead baby was torn from its mother’s arms and cast behind a horse’s watering trough. The child’s mother began to wail, but her husband slapped his hand across her mouth, whispering, “Hush, hush, hush.”
A bucket of filthy trough water was passed around, and everyone grabbed for it eagerly. Hannah managed a mouthful before it was taken from her. There was hay in that mouthful, but she didn’t care. She’d never tasted anything so sweet.
A feeble pounding came from the other boxcar.
“For God’s sake,” Shmuel cried out, “open the doors for them.” But the soldiers ignored him, hurrying the bucket along.
At the second stop, they heard the grateful cries of their neighbors as they were led from the other boxcar. But pound as they might on the slats, their own door remained shut.
“Monsters!” Gitl said, her voice a croak. “Monsters!”
It was the last thing any of them said on the moving train.
On the fourth day, the train slowed, the noise of its wheels a terrifying shriek. Hannah felt hope, like a small bubble, rise from her empty stomach. Her mouth was so dry, she could feel her tongue as big as a sausage between her teeth. Letting out a deep, sighing breath, she heard echoes of that sigh all around her.
The train jerked to a stop and the silence was like a prayer. Into that silence, the raw scraping of the doors being pulled open was as loud as thunder. Air, fresh air, rushed in. Hannah tried to suck in as much as she could.
“ ’Raus, ’raus, schneller!” came the harsh command. “Out, out, faster!”
They scrambled out of the boxcar to stand, blinking in the early morning light. Hannah’s knees trembled from the effort of moving, and her head felt light from all the fresh air. When she looked around, she could see how weakened everyone was. Only Gitl, her dark green dress crumpled, the white collar torn, held her head high. She had an arm under Fayge’s, steadying her. Fayge’s white wedding dress was badly stained, front and back, and she was as pale as paper. Yitzchak, carrying both his daughter and his son in his arms, was still gulping at the air. The children did not move. And Shmuel—Hannah could not find him. Then she saw he was still standing in the door of the boxcar.
“There are more dead here,” he called.
“Leave them!” a soldier said, slamming his rifle butt into Shmuel’s shins. “Get down.”
Shmuel got down painfully, and hobbled over to Gitl’s side. He put his hand on Hannah’s hair tenderly, but it felt as heavy as a weight.
“There are five old women from Viosk, and old Shimshon the tailor in there,” he whispered. Then under his breath he muttered, “And a child.”
“Boruch dayan emes . . . ,” Gitl said.
“Down there!” a soldier shouted, gesturing with his rifle. Part of the moon still hung in the sky, a pale halo over his blond head.
Hannah followed the line of his pointing gun. Below them, down a gravel embankment, was a stark line of low barracks. She tried to count them; they seemed to go on and on. A barbed wire fence surrounded them. To the side of the barracks was a small, pretty house where early spring flowers were opening. A wrought-iron gate stood in front of the buildings, and over the gate was a sign proclaiming in large black letters: ARBEIT MACHT FREI.
Several of the villagers whispered the words, but the rabbi, his hand up to his eyes, strained to read them.
“What does it say, Faygeleh?” he asked, clinging to his daughter’s hand, suddenly an old man. “My eyes . . .”
But Fayge was beyond answering. It was Hannah who told him, her voice bitter. “Work makes you free,” she said.
The rabbi nodded. “See, my children,” he said hoarsely, “we are in God’s hands. We are not afraid of work.”
Behind him, the badchan whispered, “This is the Devil’s work, not God’s.”
“Down there,” the blond soldier called out again. “Schnell!”
They were forced by the soldiers to scramble down the high gravel embankment, and the slippery stones slid away underfoot. Hannah went down on her bad knee and cried out once. Behind her, Fayge tried to sidestep so as not to bump into her, stumbled, fell, and began to roll faster and faster downhill until she hit the bottom with a horrible thudding sound. Her white skirts were rucked up over her thighs. Shmuel ran after her, knelt by her side, and cradled her in his arms. Smoothing her skirts down, he whispered, “My bride, my bride.” Fayge didn’t move.
“Get up! Get up! Men to the left, women to the right!” All the soldiers were shouting now. One pushed Shmuel to his feet. The children were torn from Yitzchak’s arms and shoved toward the women’s group. Little Reuven began to whimper, but the girl, Tzipporah, was silent.
It was Gitl who pulled Fayge up. Fayge looked dazed. Tears ran down her dirty cheeks, leaving gray runnels. Hurrying over, Hannah offered to help.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“What can any of us do?” Fayge murmured.
“See, I was right,” Hannah whispered to Gitl. “Why didn’t you believe me? I was right all along. We should have run.”
“Run,” Fayge said, catching the last word, and repeated it in a soft, uninflected voice. “Run.”
Gitl shook her head. “There is nowhere to run, Fayge. We are where we are. Hush.” Then she turned her head and stared at the soldiers. “Monsters,” she said, loud enough for them to hear.
“You are zugangi, newcomers, the lowest of the low,” the tall, dark-haired woman said to them as they huddled in the stark barracks room. She was in a blue dress wit
h green piping and the short sleeves displayed a long number tattooed on her arm.
“But, that number . . . then you are a prisoner, too,” Hannah blurted out. She’d been thinking that they would have to wear striped pajamas like the prisoners in the old photographs, yet she’d seen no one dressed like that in the camp yet. Maybe that meant her memories were false ones. Maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as she feared.
“I am a prisoner—yes,” the woman said. “But I am not a Jew. See . . .” She held up her arm so that the blue number was plain.
Whatever it was they were supposed to read there baffled the women and they murmured together.
“Quiet. You do not speak unless spoken to. I am a prisoner, but you are zugangi, newcomers. And one of the first lessons you have to learn is not to call attention to yourselves. You, girl, who spoke out, you will give me those blue ribbons in your hair.”
“No!” said Hannah, surprised at the vehemence in her response. “They aren’t mine to give. You can’t have them.”
The woman came over to her and slapped her hard on both cheeks. “You never say no here. Not if you want to live. I will have those ribbons. They go with my dress.”
Hand on her burning right cheek, Hannah drew in a deep breath, willing herself not to cry.
Gitl poked Hannah in the side and whispered, “Give them to her. What do two little ribbons matter?” Swiftly she began to unbraid Hannah’s left braid. Reluctantly, Hannah undid the right.
“Good,” the woman said, stuffing the ribbons into a pocket in her dress. “And now you will all go in there.” She pointed down a narrow hall. “Schnell. It is a most important word that you should learn. Whether I say it or the Germans say it, it is to be obeyed. Schnell!”
They hurried through the hall and found themselves in a kind of amphitheater. Hannah noticed Shifre and Yente standing together, holding hands. Esther was next to a tall, scowling woman, probably her mother.
The woman in the blue dress was speaking again. “Quiet! Quiet!” she shouted, putting up her hands. “Now, since you are all filthy from your trip, you must take a shower. You will undress here. Help the children. It must be done quickly. Quickly.”
“What, here?” Gitl asked. “In front of each other?”
The woman looked disgusted. “You have not learned the first lesson yet. You will not last here.”
Gitl stared at her. “I will last,” she said, her voice low.
“Now, all of you, undress. Schnell! Pretend you are in one of your ritual baths. Oh yes, I am not a Jew, but even I have heard of it. What do you call it?”
“Mikvah,” murmured Esther’s mother.
“Yes, mikvah,” the woman said. “Then this is your mikvah in preparation for your new life in the camp.” She smiled and left.
Some of the women sat on the wooden benches and began slowly to take off their shoes and stockings. But Hannah stood in the center of the room, staring around.
“Don’t you understand?” she cried. “There are no showers. There are only the gas ovens. They will burn us all up.”
Two benches away, Esther was crying softly as she took off her right shoe. “There are no ovens, Chaya. Do not try to frighten us. We are frightened enough.”
Hannah started to answer but Gitl pulled her down to the bench. “She is right, child. What is here is bad enough. Let us live moment by moment. There is no harm in dreaming about a shower. God knows we could all use one.”
Hannah was furious. They had to listen. She would have to make them. What use was her special foreknowledge if no one would listen? Maybe they thought her strange or sick or even crazy, but she was none of that. She was from the future, somehow. She could summon up those memories by trying really hard. She knew she could help them all if only they would let her. Then she looked up. The women and the other girls were shyly, painfully, slowly taking off their clothes. Hannah thought they looked so vulnerable, so helpless. Yet they had a kind of innocence about them and a kind of hope. All they were looking forward to was the shower. Biting her lower lip, she thought what her knowledge of the ovens, of the brutal guards, of names like Auschwitz and Dachau could really do for them here, naked and weaponless, except to take away that moment by moment of hope. Maybe Gitl was right. We are where we are. She would not add more to their misery. She bent over and untied her shoes.
They waited nearly twenty minutes in the cold room and the silence was frightening. Beside Hannah, Gitl began to sing a quiet song about dreaming. “Dreaming is better, dreaming is brighter,” she sang. Esther, Yente, and Shifre joined in.
Hannah looked around the room, then leaned over and whispered to Esther. “Where is Rachel?”
Esther kept on singing, but tears ran down her cheeks.
“Dreaming is brighter.”
“Where is she?” Hannah insisted, though her question seemed to lack authority, with both of them sitting naked, goosebumps scattered over their arms and thighs.
Esther stopped singing all at once and looked down at her bare legs. At last she spoke. “Rachel always had trouble breathing in the spring.”
Hannah remembered the peculiar breathy hesitations Rachel had made when she spoke.
“Did she have . . . trouble breathing . . . in the boxcar?” Hannah asked. She began to shake even before Esther’s answer, though she wasn’t sure why. “Is she . . . is she . . . dead?”
“Dreams are better,” Esther sang, her voice breaking on a high note.
Hannah opened her mouth and found herself sucking in air in great gulps. She couldn’t stop. After about seven big breaths, she said, to no one in particular, “I should have told her she was my best friend. I should have said yes. I . . .”
Suddenly the doors were flung open and two soldiers marched in, their boots loud on the wooden floor.
“Achtung!” one shouted, a young man with a wandering left eye.
The girls screamed, turning their backs, and the younger women tried to cover themselves with their hands. Fayge bent over at the waist and her long black hair was like a blanket over her. The older women didn’t move.
“Into the showers,” the soldier with the bad eye called. “And then you visit the barber.”
Hannah stood slowly, thinking: I will be brave. I am the only one who knows about the ovens, but I will be brave. I will not take away their hope, which is all they have. I will not tell them that the Nazis often lied and said people were going to take showers when they took them to be killed. Her legs were weak. She felt she could not make one foot go in front of the other. She was glad that Gitl’s hand was at her elbow the entire time.
The showers were ice cold, but Hannah was so relieved it was water—and not the gas she’d expected—that she stood under the sprinklers a long time. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth, drinking in the cold drops until her belly was full.
Suddenly the showers were turned off.
“Schnell, schnell!” the soldiers shouted, ushering them back, without towels, into the cold room.
Head down, hands over her breasts, Hannah walked through the line of soldiers, remembering how childish she’d thought the blue dress and longing for it.
Their clothes were gone. With nothing to dry themselves and no clothes to put on, they waited, shivering, in the bare room. The children began to make small, whimpering sounds and Hannah had to stop herself from joining in.
Just then the door from the outside opened and a soldier escorted a short, dark man into the room.
“Here is the barber,” the soldier said. “You will make a line for him and he will do his job. There will be no noise. Remember—no hair, no lice.”
Lice? Hannah thought. We have no lice.
The barber was clearly a prisoner. His own head was shaved, and with the bones so prominent on his face, he looked to be all forehead and nose. He cut their hair without any discernible skill, often pulling great clumps out with the blunt scissors. Shifre’s two pale braids came off whole, landing with a soft thud-thud on the floor. She tou
ched one with a bare foot, as if the plait were some sort of unknown animal. Fayge’s curls, tight from the shower, scattered across the floor like patterns in a rug. Little Tzipporah screamed in terror at her turn until a woman held her tightly.
When the man came to Hannah, she bit her lip so as not to cry and kept her eyes closed the entire time. She concentrated on what was to happen next—after the showers and the hair-cutting, remembering from the lessons in Holocaust history in school. But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself. I cannot remember. She’d been shorn of memory as brutally as she’d been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason. Opening her eyes, she stared at the floor. Clots of wet hair lay all about: dark hair, light hair, short hair, long hair, and two pale braids. Gone, all gone, she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mourning.
She looked up and couldn’t recognize anyone in the room. Without their hair, all the women looked the same.
“Gitl,” she cried out, speaking the one name she recalled. “Gitl, where are you?” Her voice cracked and, without meaning to, she began to sob almost soundlessly.
Someone’s arms went around her and the touch of skin on skin made her shiver. Everything felt strange, alien, as if she were on another planet, as if she were on the moon.
“Gitl?” she whispered to the stranger with the shaved head who was holding her.
“Yes, child,” Gitl answered. “But promise me you will cry no more before these monsters. We will never cry again.”
“Never,” Hannah agreed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and feeling stronger because of the promise. “Never.”
12