I haven’t had a real birthday celebration this decade, and it’s almost half over.
We put the candles in frosted rolls, back at King of Railroads, in my dream. And sang “Happy Birthday” in Danish, even though I don’t know Danish.
* * *
Kikina, Pajik, Extraburt, Shpulka, and me. We’re the only Nesharim still here. But except for Kikina, I don’t see any of them most days. Our old room doesn’t exist, and it’s been too cold to play outside.
Everyone else is gone. Gorila, Pavel, Robin, Majoshek, Felix, Pudlina, Grizzly, Eli, Jila, Erich, Jindrich, Koko, Leo, Kalisek, Kuzma. And Franta. All gone. Franta last September, and all the rest by the end of October.
And a bunch of others, too, whose names I already forgot.
The one with the bushy eyebrows. What was his name?
* * *
Something is bouncing around in the wagon. A roll we missed. Or maybe Tommy schlojsed it. I’m hungry, because I’m always hungry, but I’m too tired to chew.
* * *
Mazr? Was that his name? Pretty sure it was something with an M. Definitely had bushy eyebrows. And used to cough a lot.
* * *
Something’s buzzing way overhead, but I don’t care. I only care if I hear a siren. Every few days there’s an air raid. Every few days there’s a new rumor. The Soviets are in Poland. The Americans are in Germany. Any day now, any day now, any day now.
But right now it feels like I’ll be doing this forever. In twenty years I’ll still be pushing this wagon. And even though I’ll be thirty-four years old, I’ll still look like I’m ten, because something about this place keeps me from growing. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the same pants I wore the day I arrived, which would be falling down past my butt right now if it weren’t for this belt.
* * *
Or was it Mautner? Martin? He definitely coughed a lot, whoever he was.
* * *
“No, don’t . . . ,” Tommy mumbles. His left shoulder bounces up and down. “Stop, it’s . . . just don’t . . .”
Or maybe it’s twitching. He’s definitely talking in his sleep. Like he did two days ago. I think I heard once that you shouldn’t wake someone when they’re talking in their sleep. But it doesn’t matter, because here’s the bakery. He’ll wake up once we get there, because he always does whenever the wagon comes to a stop.
* * *
Mazr. I think it was Mazr. I’ll ask Kikina when his wagon gets here. He has a better memory than me anyway.
Kikina, hey, do you remember the kid with the bushy eyebrows and the cough? That’s what I’ll ask him. He was pretty good at chess, do you remember?
Mazr. Mazr?
Well, wherever he went and whatever his name is, I hope his boots are warmer than mine.
April 20, 1945
“DO YOU HEAR THAT?” I ask Tommy and Kikina.
“It’s a train, isn’t it?” he says.
We’re in the bakery, not too far from where the tracks enter Terezin, almost done loading up our wagon for another delivery. Rudi, the boy Kikina usually delivers with, is sick, so the three of us are working together today. I look around to make sure none of our Danish bosses is looking. They must be on a break somewhere, so I run out, Tommy and Kikina following me.
Yup, it’s definitely a train, which isn’t the most unusual thing, since there’s been a slow trickle coming in all this year. But almost all of those trains have been pretty short, usually with fewer than one hundred people on them. Jews who married non-Jews, or those people’s children, or something like that. That’s who’s still being brought here. On short trains filled with just a few dozen Jews or half Jews who were for some reason protected until the Nazis decided they weren’t going to be protected anymore.
But this doesn’t look like one of those trains, because this one is at least a dozen cars long.
As we get closer, I realize that all the cars are open. Like the kind you’d use for lumber or coal. But there are people in them anyway. Bald people.
We run alongside the train while it slows down. Because it’s moving, I’m having trouble figuring out what it is I’m seeing. Everyone is definitely bald, which is weird enough by itself, but there’s something else about them. Something that’s making me wish those Danish bakers had caught us when we decided to run off.
Tommy and Kikina are seeing it too. Because neither one is moving anymore. The train is still crawling ahead, but the two of them are standing motionless, their mouths hanging open, their eyes slowly following all those heads. Meanwhile, other people are running up to the train, which finally creaks to a stop. I notice a woman I’ve seen before, I think she works in the Dresden Barracks kitchen. Yes, it’s her, the nicest woman in all of Terezin. Somehow she’s always smiling and telling everyone to have a nice day, almost like she doesn’t realize where we are.
But right now she’s not smiling. She’s got her hand up to her mouth. Then the other one follows and her eyes close. A few seconds later they open, and then, just like that, she faints.
Tommy’s holding my sleeve.
“C’mon,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, but my feet won’t move.
And where did Kikina go?
We’re maybe only twenty feet from one of the cars, but my body won’t let me move any closer. A couple of passengers have gotten off on their own, and I’m trying not to see them. They’re two men—at least I think they’re men—but they don’t really look like people. Both of them are wearing uniforms, white with blue stripes, though they’re so filthy I’m not so sure about the white part. And one of them is only wearing pants. I get a good look at his chest, but it doesn’t look like a real chest. There just isn’t enough of it, at least not for the size of the bald head attached to it. He’s walking toward us, and I keep expecting him to snap in half every time he takes a step. He’s a skeleton wrapped in skin.
I’m trying to turn away, but he sees me looking at him. Plus he’s only about ten feet from us now. His cheekbones push much too far out of his face, and one of his eyes is swollen shut. I can hear him breathing, or maybe that’s moaning.
Three feet away from me he stops. His mouth opens, showing me a half dozen rotting teeth. That’s it. The rest is just blackness and gums. For a few seconds he stands there, like a person, or a skeleton, getting ready to say something. I feel my mouth opening like his, but I have no idea what to say. Finally I hear a sound come out of his.
“Water.” I can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement. “Water.”
Tommy and I race back toward the bakery, no one saying a word. As soon as we get inside, I look around for a cup or mug or a bottle, but I can’t find anything.
“How about this?” Tommy asks. He’s holding the kind of pot Mother used to make soup in.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. We’re filling it up at the sink when one of the main bakers, Mr. Haber, walks in.
“What is this?” he asks, already angry.
But we don’t stop. Once we’re done, we turn off the water and start running out. “There’s a train,” I say. “Just arrived . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s really . . . go look.”
We run back to the train, each of us with a hand on the heavy pot. The water sloshes around, and some of it spills over the rim, so we have to slow down to a quick walk, which unfortunately gives me much too clear a view of the whole train and everything around it. There are people everywhere, people from Terezin and people from the train. People on stretchers and people lying in the grass. And even though we’re half the length of a soccer field away, I can tell that the man who asked for water isn’t that different from the rest of them. They’re skeletons, every last one of them.
“Where did he go?” Tommy asks me.
“How should I know?”
We’re standing where I think we were standing before, but the man with the swollen eye is nowhere to be found. I don’t think I see the other one either. But then three smaller people, a little bigger than me, notice the pot
and hurry to us. One slips and falls silently to the ground. The others don’t seem to notice, in fact they don’t even seem to notice me and Tommy, just the pot. They grab it from us and it almost tips over, but luckily Tommy and I are strong enough to take it back from them.
“Hold on,” I say. “We’ll pour it.”
And just like that, like they’ve done this before or something, they kneel down. One of them has no pants at all, he’s naked down there, and his thighs sort of look like an old rubber band. He opens his mouth and closes his eyes. While Tommy and I raise the pot and slowly tip it over, I notice a couple of small, oval bugs clinging to the edge of the man’s eyelid.
We do this a bunch of times, running from the train to the bakery and back again, delivering water. It’s a stupid system, since a bunch of the water always winds up on the ground, but at least it gives us an excuse to escape every few minutes. I keep telling myself, whenever we get to the bakery, that since I already know what they look like, it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised each time we return. But it doesn’t help, because I am. Especially by their skin, which is the worst part.
They’re all covered with sores, with bugs, with bright red cuts, with infections spitting out pus.
And there’s something about their bald heads and their weird eyes, because I can barely tell who’s a man and who’s a woman, or who’s a teenager and who’s an adult.
So it’s good to run off every few minutes, and I bet Tommy feels the same, even though neither of us has really said much since this all started.
Also the smell is starting to get stuck in my nose. It took me a while to figure out what it reminded me of. Then, all of a sudden, I remembered. The summer our refrigerator broke. These people, they stink like rotting meat.
* * *
Around the tenth time we come back with water, I notice that some of the people getting taken off in stretchers are winding up in a pile at the far end of the train. The kind of pile you would never put a living person in.
We empty the pot and are about to go back to the bakery, when I think I hear someone behind me say my name. So I turn around. Some small person, another skeleton, looking right at me.
“Misha.” Almost like a question.
“Uh-huh,” I say, trying not to stare at the red spots all over this person’s scalp.
“Misha.” And a bony hand reaches up to the scalp, so I try looking at the elbow instead, but it’s much too pointy.
“Yeah,” I say, and force myself to look at this person’s eyes. I still can’t figure out if it’s a boy or a girl, but I’m pretty sure it’s not an adult. The eyes are moving in weird ways, like the person doesn’t know how to focus anymore.
“Inka,” the person says weakly. “I’m Inka.” For some reason I turn to Tommy, like maybe he can help. “I’m Inka.”
I look at the grass for a moment and say the name to myself. Inka. A tremor rushes down the side of my body. I look at her. I think she’s trying to smile, but only half her face seems like it’s working.
Just then Kikina walks up to us, a smaller pot in his hand. “Hey,” he says to me. I groan something. “I don’t think we should keep bringing them water. These people, they need food.” But I don’t answer him. I’m staring at Inka, trying to find Inka. “How much bread is in the bakery, Misha? Wait, what if they can’t chew? What do you think?” I can’t find her. “C’mon, Misha, what should we do?”
“It’s Inka,” I finally tell him, my voice cracking. “Remember?” She presses her lips together, and some blood escapes from a long crack in the top one. “Inka. With the beautiful red hair. Beautiful Inka. Remember?”
* * *
Mr. Hertz is waiting for us back in the bakery. “What you doing?” he says to us angrily in the weird Danish-Czech-German he speaks. “Take bag. Go down, in Hamburg Barracks, in keller. Down, in basement. Potatoes. Bring many potatoes.”
“Potatoes?” Tommy asks.
“Now. Yes. Go!”
It takes us a while, but eventually we find a dank storage room filled with giant bins of potatoes. Some are rotten, but most seem okay. So we each put about forty in the burlap sacks we brought with us and rush back to the bakery.
When we get there, we find another five people already at work. One of them is Mr. Wolff, the head baker. The rest I don’t know.
“Knives, go,” Wolff says to the three of us. “To peel, now.”
We start peeling. Then Wolff gives me a flat metal thing with holes in it. “You, you.” And he takes a potato and runs it back and forth over the metal thing. Thin strips of potato come out from the bottom.
“You want me to grate them?” I say.
“Yes, yes. Grate, you,” he says. “And then—” He points to a huge pot of water sitting on top of a gas flame. “Into there. Yes?”
For the next hour, we peel, grate, boil, and mash the potatoes. When we run out of potatoes, we grab the sacks, go back to the Hamburg Barracks, and get more. After we finish mashing the potatoes, and adding a little flour, Wolff or Hertz takes a metal tray, scoops out a bunch of the mash, and makes a flat layer of the stuff across the whole tray. Then he sticks it in the oven.
“Baking potatoes?” Kikina asks. “Why not just give them bread?”
“Too hard,” Mr. Hertz says, pointing at his mouth. “They no, uh, no tander.”
“No teeth?”
“Right, no teeth.” He shakes his head and mumbles to himself, “No teeth.”
* * *
The first few batches are done. The three of us place the trays on our wagons and cover those with sacks, and head out.
“Wait,” Mr. Hertz says. He hands Kikina a long knife. “Cut so same size. Same size. Same. Careful. Very careful.”
We push the wagon out into the ghetto, realizing we don’t know where we’re going. Then Tommy says, “Over there.”
On the grass that leads up to the bashta, we see a bunch of them, around thirty or so. We roll the wagon over to them. I try not to look at one of them, because his whole body is twitching like it’s ten degrees below zero.
“Now what?” Tommy whispers.
“We have potatoes. Potatoes,” I announce. A few of them don’t seem to hear, but most spring to attention, and about half actually stand up and hurry toward us. They’re all talking, many of them in languages I don’t understand. Pushing one another, they crowd around the wagon, almost knocking the whole thing to the ground.
“Get back!” Kikina shouts, and actually raises the knife. A few fall back, while one very tall man actually raises his fist, which shakes so badly I reach up to make it stop. “Sit,” Kikina says. “Everyone gets.” But almost no one sits. Kikina starts cutting. “Misha,” he whispers, “tell me if they’re not the same size. I don’t want them to attack each other, or us, for getting smaller pieces.”
So Kikina cuts while Tommy and I hand out the pieces. Most people don’t move once they get their piece. They just stand or sit right where they get it, chewing quickly or very, very slowly. A number of them make a weird sound, something between a moan and a groan.
Once everyone has a piece, we push the wagon off toward another group gathered in the grass about two hundred feet away. But then I notice Tommy isn’t with us. I turn back and see him with the first group. He’s on the ground next to what I think is a woman. She’s lying on her side, her bald head half buried in the grass. Tommy’s holding her piece, breaking it into smaller portions, and gently placing one of them into her mouth every ten seconds or so.
* * *
On our next delivery I see Marietta off in the distance, running from group to group. As she gets closer to us, I can tell she’s upset. Her face is red and her arms are moving about frantically. I leave Tommy and Kikina and race over to her.
“Marietta?”
She notices me but turns away.
“Marietta.” And I know it’s a stupid question right at this moment, but I ask it anyway. “What’s wrong?”
“Gustav,” she says. “No one . . .
no one knows anything about him. Except this one man, and he said . . . he said he probably . . .” But she doesn’t say anything more, just covers her face with her hands, and crumbles to the ground crying.
April 22, 1945
“OW!” KIKINA SHOUTS, BUT I can barely hear him over the rain, which sounds like it’s attacking the ground.
“What?” I ask loudly, and then something hits me, too. “Ow! What is that?”
“It’s hailing!” Tommy screams. “C’mon, hurry up!”
We push the wagon quickly toward the Dresden courtyard and hide under the entranceway. For a short while these barracks were my home, but not anymore. Because Dresden is one of the quarantine buildings now, packed with the people who arrived two days ago. Plus a ton more who arrived, on foot, earlier today. I heard they walked all the way from Poland. From the other camps there. From Birkenau, and from places I had never heard about before, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. I guess the Soviets finally reached those camps, so the Germans closed them down and sent the prisoners back in our direction.
Most of them were wearing these horrible wooden shoes, and when I saw one of them remove his . . . well, when I saw his feet, I made up some excuse that I had to go back to the bakery. When I got there, I spent a few minutes in this little storage space, where no one could see me.
The hail bounces off the pavement, and the noise echoes ferociously off the cement all around us. We stand there, not talking, because we wouldn’t hear one another anyway. A little gust blows past, and I get a nice whiff of the potatoes. We’ve been making deliveries for around forty-eight hours, but most people still grab their piece like they’ve never ever seen food before. Every time we return to the bakery, there are more volunteers helping out, peeling potatoes, grating potatoes, delivering potatoes. But we still can’t keep up. Not even close.
A few minutes later the rain dies down a little, so we each grab a tray, and hurry inside.
“Thank you,” a woman with pale green eyes says to me in Czech as I hand her the last piece in my tray.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
Somewhere There Is Still a Sun Page 20