Mapping the Bones

  Laughter, Chaim thought, feels good.

  And like the haircuts—it was free.

  * * *

  • • •

  The later evenings became earlier ones now that there were enough people again to work in the factory.

  Madam Zgrodnik had returned to the building as well, but was a pale shadow of herself, with a black band around her arm. Manya had whispered she could see white threaded through the woman’s gold hair.

  Madam Zgrodnik hardly spoke to the girls anymore. In fact, she hardly looked up from her paperwork at all.

  “Mourning has a long leash,” Gittel whispered.

  Finally, Rachael tried going over to Madam Zgrodnik, making a little curtsey like the ones Gittel had found so useful. “We are very sorry for your loss, Madam—” she began.

  Madam Zgrodnik growled. The sound that came out of her throat was half gargle, half roar. “My loss was the fault of you Jews and your dirty disease,” she said, her whole body shaking. “His name was Dominik. Dominik! Not just some baby toy lost behind a sink or a table somewhere. Dominik—it means ‘belonging to the Lord.’ And praise to God I will see him in heaven soon enough.”

  “Sorry . . .” Rachael said again, starting to back away.

  With a minimum of effort, Madam Zgrodnik backhanded her, striking across her nose with her heavy gold wedding ring. It was not a particularly solid blow, but the ring must have broken or chipped the bone. Blood poured from Rachael’s nose, and she fell heavily to the floor.

  There was total silence in the workroom. No one knew where to look. Even Madam Szawlowski seemed stunned.

  Whey-faced, Manya stood up from the table where she’d been marking things on paper. She came over and helped Rachael stand, possibly to take her into the toilet room to wash her face, possibly to lead her to the barracks. But just as the two girls turned away, Madam Zgrodnik gave an almost inhuman cry. She picked up a heavy measuring tool from the table where she and Madam Grenzke had been working and threw it at them. The tool slammed into the back of Manya’s neck.

  There was a cracking sound throughout the room, and Manya collapsed, falling against Rachael. Both girls hit the floor at the same time, though Rachael was still able to move.

  “Jew, Jew, Jew!” Madam Zgrodnik screamed. “Baby killers!” Then broke off her rant with a series of hiccups and coughs. She had to be taken into the entry room by Madam Szawlowski, who tried, without success, to calm her.

  Closest to the door with a sack he was carrying, Chaim could hear the two Madams talking, one in hushed tones, one in between sobs. He could not make out what they were saying.

  A guard was sent into the factory room to pick up Manya from the floor. He grabbed her and slung her—like one of the saltpeter sacks—over his shoulder, and disappeared through the door.

  Rachael sank again to the floor, weeping silently until Gittel knelt down, put her arms around her, and tried to bring comfort where none could be given.

  A moment later, Madam Grenzke knelt too, whispering, “Get up, get up both of you, before Madam comes back in, before—”

  The door was once again opened, and Madam Szawlowski entered the room. She looked at the two girls on the floor, at Madam Grenzke clearly trying to get them moving, at the other children standing in a tableau of horror, and said, “There’s still work to be done. Madam Grenzke and I will do the counting now.”

  She slammed her whip against the leg of the counting table. The sound was almost the sound of the weight against Manya’s neck.

  As if a spell had been broken, everyone began to move again.

  Though they hauled sacks, ground powder, filled canisters, the children worked the rest of that day in stunned silence, without so much as a whisper passing among them. Rachael took over for the missing Manya. No one made the sign for the chimney. No one said the word smoke. If by accident their eyes met, they looked away.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later at dinner, no one even dared mention Manya by name, though Chaim, in his own way, memorialized her, thinking,

  There is an emptiness in the room

  that once had a name, a strand of mist,

  lighter than smoke . . .

  * * *

  • • •

  A full week later, Madam Zgrodnik returned, but she never spoke to the workers again.

  Manya’s death was a warning, a kind of pause in the sentence that was the camp. It was accidental, unjust, senseless, and overlooked by the Nazis. None of the young workers would ever forget it, and yet, less than a week later, everything was back to normal.

  Or, Chaim thought, as normal as a slave-labor camp can ever be.

  It surprised him, though, how easy it had been to settle for that old, hideously abnormal normal.

  Then he realized—the ghetto apartment had seemed normal after a while. Being on the run in the forest with the partisans had achieved a normality, too. Could it be that humans had an infinite capacity to make themselves at home in the direst of situations? Or did one just adjust expectations downward, so as to be able to get through each day?

  He wished that Papa and Mama were there. Or that he was where they were now. It was the sort of question he would have asked them. Suddenly the loss of both Mama and Papa felt like a new knife in his heart.

  Some of the normality was due to the fact that Dr. von Schneir had gone when the last patient had been released from the Krankhaus, his talents no longer needed.

  The orders from Berlin about extra food were now countermanded. Everyone was back on a diet of thin breakfast gruel and thinner evening soup. As there were fewer prisoners because of the typhoid deaths, and with no new prisoners being brought to the camp, plus the fact that the cooks were still making enough food for the larger crew—everyone had a bit more of those old thin meals than before.

  “A bit,” Chaim wisecracked, “not a bite!” It was a saying that made its way twice around the camp, in both Yiddish and Polish. Even the old men came over to the table where he sat eating, to pat him on the back and repeat it—“A bit, not a bite!”—and chuckle quietly.

  Maybe, Chaim thought, signing to Gittel a new silent word they’d created together that meant “peacefulness,” maybe we can live through this. Though the troubling death of Manya still cast a long shadow over that peace. And Sophie’s death, too, of course.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a huge surprise, then, when—three weeks into the new normality—Dr. von Schneir showed up once again, this time in the afternoon, with a truckload of supplies, including a shiny metal surgical table and large microscope, plus a full box of surgical knives.

  He gathered the prisoners and guards around the truck.

  “New orders from Berlin,” von Schneir said, smiling expansively. “I am now assigned permanently to this camp to help with the war effort by making sure our supply lines are not compromised. To that end, I am commanded by Berlin to test ways to bring an end to such scourges as typhoid, cholera . . .”

  Manny whispered in Yiddish under his breath, “And Jews.” It was such a soft two words, only Chaim—who was standing right by him—heard.

  They all listened, some sharply, some in admiration, many in fear, as the doctor described what he’d been sent to do.

  The plan seemed simple, direct, and doable. Not so different from his earlier experiments. Draw blood, test reflexes, take skin patches for testing.

  The workers would be separated into four groups. Two groups of those who had survived typhoid, and two groups of those who seemed to have a natural immunity to it but might well be carriers. In the doctor’s term, those with immunity to the disease were “Typhoid Marys,” evidently after a famous case from the early part of the century, though only he had heard of it.

  “We will subdivide those groups into different barracks tomorrow,” von Schnei
r went on. “Some will have fresh water for drinking and washing; some will not.”

  Chaim wondered how they would be chosen but expected only the doctor would know for certain.

  Von Schneir said that then he would make serums from the blood of those two groups who had had the typhoid and from those two groups who had not—four serums in all—to see where the differences lay. “It is miraculous what one can find under the lens of a microscope.”

  “It’s miraculous what mamzers you can find on the other end,” muttered Manny. This time several others around heard, but luckily no one gave him away.

  “And the rest,” von Schneir said, clearly not noticing the effect from Manny’s response, “is too technical for you to understand.”

  “And too boring,” Meyer whispered, but unfortunately for him, one of the guards heard that and clopped him on the head, hard enough to send him to his knees.

  “The barracks will remain segregated by typhoid/not typhoid, and you must sit in the same groups at meals and not talk to anyone in the workroom with whom you do not share a barracks. If you do otherwise,” he said, the smile now nowhere in sight, “the guards have their orders.”

  With that, von Schneir dismissed them all.

  No one dared ask what those orders were, but everyone had a guess. They all knew that whatever else it involved, it ended in the chimney.

  “Gittel!” Chaim cried out, loud enough to make her look over at him. He signed frantically to her, his fingers shaking with sorrow. He had no idea when they might be allowed to speak again.

  Gittel made a small gesture back: smoke going up to the sky. She was warning him not to make a fuss, that it was too dangerous. He knew she was right, but it didn’t help his heart, and it took a moment more for his fingers to stop trembling.

  Then Chaim and the non-typhoid prisoners were escorted to Barracks 4, where—for the first time—the door was bolted from the outside.

  “Caged in!” cried Lou, one of the older men. “Like animals in the zoo. I blame that mamzer doctor.”

  Ever in the doctor’s corner, Bruno tried to explain the locked door away. “He’s just making sure that . . . um . . . certain elements don’t get out and contaminate—”

  But the three older men were having none of it.

  Lou said, “He’s using us for experiments. And you know what they do to experimental animals when they are done with them, yes?”

  “Put them out to pasture?” Chaim asked hopefully.

  Lou sighed in an exaggerated manner. “Under the pasture, more likely.”

  31

  In fact, the first month of the testing seemed positively easy after all the rumors and scary stories and fearmongering. Even the weather cooperated, in an early spring.

  Before breakfast once a week, each group lined up in their own barracks. Temperatures were taken, blood drawn. One by one they opened their mouths, and a guard would scrape the upper palate with a small wooden spatula. The resultant bits were scraped off onto a glass slide and marked with the prisoner’s name, and then the spatulas were quickly blanched in boiling water.

  What Dr. von Schneir found with all that testing was never explained to the prisoners or guards, for that matter. But it was common knowledge that packages had gone back and forth to the nearest teaching hospital.

  Evidently Berlin was happy with the results, for von Schneir traveled to Berlin several times for consultations.

  “And in the middle of a war!” Bruno crowed.

  * * *

  • • •

  Once, after a weekly testing had been completed, a half-used pencil, its point broken off, was found under a bed in Barracks 4.

  The prisoners had long discussions about what to do with it, talks that lasted on and off for two days. Then a vote was taken, and it was decided that the piece of pencil would be shared among all those in Barracks 4, but not with anyone in a different barracks.

  More important, the pencil itself was to be kept a secret.

  “Not even sisters told,” Lou cautioned. “Or cousins.”

  “Noncontamination” was the excuse. Plus, there was the fear that the pencil would be confiscated if the guards found out, and everyone in Barracks 4 would be punished.

  Lou was to sharpen the pencil, because in the kitchen he was the only one allowed near the knives, and that only during the time he was actually slicing vegetables and paring potatoes. But he still managed to use his knife to good effect the very next morning, when the guards had gone to eat.

  Then everyone wanted a turn using the pencil, but suddenly they realized that none of them had any paper.

  “We’re like the stupid people of Chelm,” Lou complained, a reference to the old tales about a town full of senseless people. “Not Chelmites,” uttered one man. Others joined in his protest, and Lou had to apologize. But the hurt remained. Elation over the pencil turned into irritation, anger, name-calling, disgust. The pencil was put aside.

  Yet Bruno—of all people—was the one who saved the day.

  * * *

  • • •

  Bruno had been sent on an errand to translate for Madam Szawlowski one of the times the doctor had been off to Berlin.

  According to Bruno, he’d been taken to the little room where the radio transmitter was kept. The guard who escorted him was new to the camp, and seeing how small the room was, stepped outside for a smoke.

  When the radioman turned to his desk in order to send Madam Szawlowski’s translated message on to Berlin, Bruno noticed half a dozen small slips of paper on the floor.

  Obviously old messages.

  He bent down, pocketed one unseen, and gave the rest to the radioman. The man thanked him, praising him for being so neat. Had him scour the rest of the floor for more of the slips of paper, all of which Bruno handed over with great ostentation.

  “I bowed,” Bruno told them, demonstrating it at the same time. “He made a face and said, ‘Stop groveling, and stand up like a man.’ So I did.”

  That was it—a moment seized, a prize pocketed, a radio operator fooled.

  As he told his story, Bruno looked very pleased with himself. And then he related that, when the guard returned—the sharp pong of the French cigarette clinging to his clothes—he slapped Bruno hard on the head.

  “Ow! What was that for?” Bruno had asked, immediately realizing he shouldn’t have.

  The guard cuffed him again for asking, and this time Bruno’s ears rang. “For being Jewish and for being above yourself,” the guard told him in halting Polish. “We don’t like that here.”

  Bruno imitated the guard’s poor Polish. And everyone laughed.

  But remembering that smug expression on Bruno’s face as he told the story, Chaim was not surprised the guard had hit him.

  If I’d been the guard . . . he mused. And then was horrified at what he’d just thought. I’m turning into a monster.

  “The walk back to the barracks was scary,” Bruno said. “Every minute, I expected to be searched. I tried to talk to the guard about cigarettes, joked, made small talk, but he was silent as . . . as . . .” He turned and stared at Chaim, who refused to look back.

  “Finally, we got to the barracks. I walked in, and the door was bolted behind me . . .

  Well, everybody knew that scene. Bruno had ceremoniously handed over the small paper to Lou, who’d been suitably impressed.

  Small paper? Chaim thought. It was minuscule. No larger than a postal card. But without a doubt, it was paper.

  Lou grinned broadly, which didn’t improve his looks, as the cavern of his mouth gaped and the three teeth still there could be seen clinging precariously to grayish gums.

  “Bubbeleh,” he said to Bruno, “you’d make a first-class master thief, a gonif.”

  “Can I write something on the paper?” Bruno asked. “First?”

  They all agreed
he could. Even Chaim was persuaded.

  So Bruno placed the paper against the wall, bit his lip, thought hard, then wrote, “Fuck the Nasties.”

  Marek and Meyer hooted but were roundly shushed.

  Chaim shook his head, thinking it a waste of paper. And quite dangerous if found. Dangerous for all of them.

  Then Bruno tried to write another line, but he pressed too hard, the point on the pencil broke, and the whole piece of wood split down the middle.

  Bruno began to stutter, worse than Chaim ever did. Tears ran down his face. He cried like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, not because of the deed but because he’d been caught.

  Chaim was disgusted, but Lou patted Bruno on the head. “Never mind, bubbeleh, there’s nothing more to be written after that. You said it all. You said it for all of us. The Nasties! That’s brilliant! We’ll call them that from this day on.”

  Chaim didn’t tell them that Bruno had stolen the word from his family, just as he’d stolen those sucking candies from the shelf in their apartment. What good would telling do? It was only a word. He had many words, which he kept close. So no one would ever know where the Nasties really came from. Not from the word miser, Chaim. Not from the monster he was becoming.

  And not from the word thief, either. Confession was not his strong suit. That Chaim knew all too well. A poem began in his head:

  The longer we are allowed to live,

  the more monstrous we become,

  aping our captors, bowing to their ideas.

  Soon we shall swing from trees . . .

  It was an ugly start to an ugly poem, made even uglier by his feelings of worthlessness. But it spoke its own dark, dangerous truth. He couldn’t hate it entirely.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that evening, Chaim approached Lou quietly and said, “I write poems.” He knew in his heart that was a leap. Mostly he wrote lines.