But he needn’t have worried. Madam Szawlowski, who rarely stayed in the factory room, was sitting alongside Madam Grenzke and stood up when the children came in through the door. She clapped her hands for attention and silence.
The children waited, wondering what axe was about to fall.
“You will have noticed,” Madam Szawlowski said, “that we are missing a member of our company.”
With a bitter pang, Chaim thought, We are missing far more than one member. But of course Madam would not be worrying about missing prisoners. Jews don’t count!
Madam Szawlowski continued as if everyone was as eager as she to discuss the missing woman’s condition. It legitimized the gossip if she could say these things in public.
“Because of the typhoid,” she continued, “we thought it best that Madam Zgrodnik stay away from the factory—for her baby’s safety and for her own. But we were too late in that decision. Even with the kind help of the good doctor von Schneir”—she nodded at the door as if he were outside listening for his name—“Madam Zgrodnik has lost the child and is even now herself in quarantine.”
Chaim was shocked to the core. The Polish ladies had plenty of good food and drank clean water. He knew that they must have had frequent baths. Slept on soft beds. Yet suddenly they, too, had been touched by this red flower of death.
What chance does Gittel have, then? Or Sophie? Or the rest?
He could feel tears bubbling just below the surface. He had to get out of this building, had to see his sister, had to warn her to fight. Had to act as Papa would . . .
But even as his thoughts babbled at him, he knew enough to recognize a dream when he was enveloped in it. As desperate as he felt, there would be no getting out to see Gittel until after the camp’s work was done. And by then she would probably be sleeping.
* * *
• • •
The few of them left in the munitions factory had to double and triple up on jobs. At one point even the guards had to help haul various bags of chemicals to the grinder so that Chaim, Bruno, and a jittery boy named Dov could be released to the bullets table, because their fingers were still small and skinny enough to tamp the gunpowder down.
Madam Grenzke came over to offer quiet encouragement; her often quicksilver smile had been replaced with two furrows between her eyebrows. Probably, Chaim guessed, worry about Madam Zgrodnik.
The only times Madam Szawlowski came in from the other room to check on them was when each new box of bullets was ready for capping.
Then she huffed through her nose like a horse, and said—albeit reluctantly, “Good enough.” As she turned to go back to her room, she added each time, “Not nearly as fast as the girls.”
But by evening, when the boys had the hang of it, Madam Szawlowski dropped that final complaint, settling instead for a simple sigh. Still, she kept her little whip always to hand, just in case. Seeing it there didn’t help to relieve Dov’s jitters. Or Bruno’s.
* * *
• • •
The next day, after a brisk walk to the dining hall through some early snowflakes, they found that the breakfast rations were better than anything they’d had so far.
Chaim insinuated himself between Bruno and the doctor. He’d been rehearsing his five words since waking. He feared it wouln’t be enough.
“Sir, may I see Gittel?” He kept his voice low.
Von Schneir turned to him in surprise. “Five words?” He smiled. It still didn’t reach his eyes.
Chaim bit his lower lip and nodded. He had another five in case the response wasn’t what he’d hoped.
“Your twin sister?”
Chaim gave another nod.
“Will you double your time at the factory after?”
Chaim forgot the other sentence he planned in his joy of getting his wish granted. But five different words fell out of his mouth like stones: “If Bruno can go, too.” Then he closed his mouth in great fear that the doctor would simply yank his tongue out for daring to bargain.
Bruno startled at this. His eyes scrunched, as if he were trying to find out why Chaim should make such an offer.
Sitting back a bit, then leaning forward, elbows on the table, the doctor looked at his fingernails, which were clean and shiny. At last he said, “An hour at the hospital and an extra hour at the end of the day for the Madams. I will square it with them.”
Chaim wondered why it had been so easy. Maybe he was misjudging the man. But then he realized that the doctor’s motives didn’t matter as long as Chaim could see his sister. And Bruno’s.
For some reason Bruno was silent throughout this exchange, but Chaim was certain he would hear about it after.
* * *
• • •
They followed the doctor back to Barracks 3 through a swirl of snow.
The doctor had already sent a message to Madam Szawlowski through one of the guards informing her that he would need both Chaim and Bruno for an hour, but that the boys would both work later to make up their missing time.
Bruno hissed at Chaim, “I don’t want to have to stay longer. Why did you insist I come with you here?” His face was an angry red, but the blush was not where it would have been if he’d been sick.
“To see Sophie,” Chaim said starkly.
“She’s sick. I don’t want to catch anything,” Bruno said.
Chaim turned away from him and caught up with the soldier. At this moment, I’d rather walk shoulder to shoulder with a Nazi than Bruno.
When they arrived at Barracks 3, there was a boil of children and two adults at the door. Some were weeping; all were distressed.
The doctor shushed them and pointed to one, a man named Lazer. “You, tell me what is going on.”
“Two dead children in the night, sir,” said Lazer, tears pooling in his washed-out blue eyes. “And several more under siege.”
As if, Chaim thought, this is a war. And then he realized that, in a very real sense, it was. He looked around and suddenly realized Gittel wasn’t in the group at the door. He glanced over at her bed, and she wasn’t there either.
He was sure his heart skipped a beat. He was certain he’d stopped breathing.
The doctor waded into the crowd, which parted before him like the Red Sea. Chaim trotted along in his wake. He wanted to call out Gittel’s name, even though he’d already expended more than a full day’s conversation, but his larynx seemed to have closed down, and he couldn’t get a sound out of it.
“Where are they?” the doctor said as they walked to the far side of the barracks.
“There!” Lazer said, pointing to one bed on the right-hand wall where a small girl lay curled in a fetal position. “And there.” In the next bed, another dead child, this one a boy, half out of the bed as if he’d been trying to escape the death that was coming for him.
Lazer pointed across to another bed, this one on the left wall. “That one.”
Gittel was sitting on the floor, head against the bed, as if thrown down there.
For a moment, Chaim couldn’t move. He couldn’t cry out, and he couldn’t take a step forward. “Take me,” he whispered, though no one could hear him speak. Not even Death.
But then Gittel turned her head as if she already knew he was there. Her right hand drooped at the wrist, the fingers trembling so much it looked as if she were palsied. She signed sorrow! Sorrow. Her other hand was holding on to the child in the bed.
Bruno suddenly ran forward, his scream pitched so high, he could have called dogs home. “Sophie,” he cried.
He pushed Gittel aside and looked down at his sister.
Gittel stood up carefully, like an old woman.
It took the doctor three steps to get to her. “You need to be back in your bed,” he said curtly, before moving Bruno aside. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, took Sophie’s limp wrist in his hand and felt fo
r her pulse.
“Faint,” he said. “Still alive, but barely.” He turned to Lazer. “Get me my kit and some water.”
Lazer ran to do his bidding.
Meanwhile the other children buzzed around Gittel. “Did she die?”
Gittel looked only at Chaim. “Dying. The doctor will not save her. She told me she could see her Mutti beckoning. And her father, too. She asked you to take care—”
“I already said yes!” Chaim whispered.
“Then go,” she said. “I need to rest.”
Just as Chaim got back to Sophie’s bedside, Lazer was there with everything the doctor had ordered. Von Schneir was shaking his head. “Too late,” he said matter-of-factly. “Too late. If this had been a real hospital . . .”
The wail Bruno sent up was loud and dramatic. He was about to fling himself on Sophie’s body when the doctor pulled him back.
“Leave her, boy, lest you contract the fever yourself.”
But Bruno’s scream had brought the children to Sophie’s bedside. Gittel had turned and run back as well. She put her arms around Bruno, who forgot his worries about catching typhoid and let her hold him. But Chaim noticed Bruno’s eyes were not wet with tears, though Gittel was weeping enough for two.
He’s doing just fine, Chaim thought uncharitably. He’s now mourner-in-chief, and everything’s about him. Not poor Sophie.
Chaim thought of Sophie’s soft wit, her kindness, her ability to read in two—even three—languages. Her modesty. And how in the end she cared more about her brother than herself. Tears blurring his own eyes, he thought, I’ll write her a poem. It was the only way he could do something for her—too late, of course, but it was all he had.
Sophie in Typhus
She wore her modest typhoid like a gown.
It graced around her, kept her warm
even as she grew cold. She will never be old,
never grow into cynicism, stale in her beliefs.
It is a relief to know she will not suffer more.
I think of death not as a smokestack
but an opening door.
He wondered if it needed a second verse. Perhaps about her brother, her family, where she came from, who she was.
For now it was only as long as he could think. He started to commit it carefully to memory. Tomorrow he might try to tell it to Bruno, the beginning act of his promise to his departed friend.
30
Two weeks went by; a thin skim of snow lay on the ground. The guards complained about it. But the children said nothing, enjoying the fact that the weather discomforted the guards more than them.
Gittel was allowed to return to work, a surprise and relief to the crew of mostly boys, who had been worn out making the monthly quota.
The extra food had helped, of course, as did the guards’ participation. But most of Gittel’s return was due—as even Chaim had to admit—to the doctor’s drugs and his constant supervision of Barracks 3.
Chaim waited until lunch, when the Madams were gone and the guard stayed outside the room. Then he took Gittel aside, into the toilet room, where the others let them have their short reunion.
“Don’t use up your words, my darling brother,” Gittel said. “I see the relief in your eyes.”
He grinned at her and signed joy with both hands, thumbs and forefingers clapping against one another, and then turning around as if dancing the hora. Only, as usual when he tried to dance, his feet tangled and he stumbled a bit and her laughter rang around the room.
“Someday we will remember this, and tell our children, and my little ones will imitate their silent old Uncle Chaim and . . .”
He put a finger across her lips. “Don’t make promises,” he said.
She finished for him, “That we may not be able to keep.” She smiled. “But yes, we can be happy now.” She held out her hands, and he took them in his.
For the small moment, they were both content.
But then she said, “The doctor is a miracle worker.”
Chaim recited his poem about von Schneir quietly, as a warning.
. . . in the belly of the wolf,
a narrow parting of the grass,
spider’s larder silently shutting,
after death has done
Its deed.
“I don’t understand why you feel that way,” she said. “He cured me. Why talk about him as if he were a wolf, snake, spider?”
He didn’t have the words to explain it to her any more than that. At least not then.
* * *
• • •
That evening, in their bunk, Chaim steeled himself to say what had to be said. He told Gittel about the Sophie poem, recited it to her.
Wiping a hand across her watering eyes, she said, “It needs a second verse.”
He nodded.
“She shouldn’t be defined just by her death. But that’s not why you’re telling me this.” She reached over and held his hand.
“She said take care of . . .”
“Bruno. Yes. She asked that of me, too.”
She looked around, spied Bruno on the other side of the barracks, talking to a knot of boys. “He’s difficult to take care of,” she said quietly. “All he wants is your total confidence and admiration. Thinks he’s owed it instead of trying to find ways to earn it. Though that doesn’t absolve you of your promise.” She bit her lower lip. “Or me of mine.”
Then she turned onto her side carefully, as if her bones hurt.
Chaim squeezed her hand. She was so thin from her battle with typhoid, he was still worried about her. But he knew she was tough, too.
“What would Papa say?” she asked.
“What would Mama?” he countered.
“Do good. Take care of family. Don’t fail your friends.”
He made a small sound of agreement, but all the while he was thinking how neither one of them had brought up the troubling poem about Dr. von Schneir again. Possibly because Gittel needed a guardian and an angel in this place, and because Chaim didn’t want to destroy her dreams.
* * *
• • •
Three days after Gittel’s return, the last of the other typhoid victims came back to work as well, including—to everyone’s relief—Manya.
There was no one left in the Krankhaus. The doctor declared it had to be aired out for a month before it was safe to move back in. Everyone was to stay in Barracks 4, the old men as well as the children.
But, of course, some of the typhoid patients never returned, including the two smallest boys—Shmuel and Aron, plus three of the old men whose names Chaim had never learned.
And Sophie.
Having played his mourner-in-chief role for a few days, and finding it profitless, Bruno was now back at being the translator for the guards.
The children who hadn’t been sick and hadn’t worked at the Krankhaus had seen little of battle with typhoid—being all day long at the factory—but they had still noticed the last curls of smoke in the morning on their way to work. It was not something one asked about.
“Most went quietly in their sleep,” Manya told them. “Then four of the older men came, stripped the corpses, wrapped them in sacking, said some quick prayers, and took them away.” She sighed. “It could have been so many more. We were lucky.”
“The doctor made us lucky,” Gittel said.
“Von Schneir healed most of us.” Bruno’s hero worship now seemed endless, even with his sister dead.
“We had God,” Rachael cautioned.
“But the doctor’s a von!” Bruno said.
Chaim rolled his eyes.
In this argument there would be no winners.
* * *
• • •
Among the first who’d recovered, even before Gittel, had been Manny the barber. So he’d bee
n strong enough to be one of those who carried the dead to the ovens.
“A sacred duty,” he called it. “A mitzvah.”
“We may have nothing left,” he told Chaim and Gittel at breakfast several days later, “but we have ourselves. So that is what we can give. It honors the One. We’re told in midrash, in biblical commentary, ‘The reward of a mitzvah is the mitzvah itself.’”
He laughed. “I was never religious before. But being here has changed me. Now my religion is to help others where I can, when I can, if I can.”
It seemed to Chaim a good summation of his own feelings, so he spent his day’s first words without care. “That’s why you’re our friend.”
Manny reached out his big hand and put it on Chaim’s head, a kind of blessing.
And now, Manny explained, he was once again at his old job. Since there’d been no new children brought to the camp, and he’d no one to delouse, “I fill my time giving the guards fresh haircuts and the doctor a special trim of that ridiculous mustache and beard.”
Typhoid had broken down the rigorous boundaries between the older men and the children. Even the guards—who’d lost three of their own men to the disease—were uninterested in enforcing those rules anymore.
“That haircut you gave the doctor is better than anything found in Berlin these days, I warrant,” said Hans, or at least that was how Bruno translated it. They were sitting at the table’s end. Hans was trying to learn more Polish but making a hash of it. Rumor had it that his eye was on tiny Madam Grenzke, whose husband had died in the early days of the war, which was how she came to be working at Sobanek.
“Better and cheaper, too,” Manny answered, smiling.
“Not hard to give the cheapest haircut in town when they’re free,” Gittel quipped.
“Even the haircuts are freer than I am,” Manny said in a quiet voice, but Hans heard and smiled.
“Well, at least you have your health,” Bruno told them. It was the punch line of a joke they all knew.
It was the first time that Chaim had ever heard Bruno make a real joke. Still, they all laughed much more than it was worth. Even Hans laughed.