Gita and Dana keep clear of any fights. Gita has enough issues dealing with petty jealousies over her job in the administration building, her friendship with the seemingly protected Cilka, and, of course, visits from her boyfriend, the Tätowierer.
Lale is largely immune to the camp disputes. Working with Leon and only a handful of other prisoners alongside the SS, he is removed from the plight of the thousands of starving men who must work and fight and live and die together. Living among the Romany also gives him a sense of security and belonging. He realizes he has settled into a pattern of life that is comfortable relative to the conditions of the majority. He works when he has to, spends whatever time he can steal with Gita, plays with the Romany children, and talks to their parents—mostly the younger men, but also the older women. He loves how they care for everyone, not only their biological family. He doesn’t connect so well with the older men, who mostly sit around not engaging with the children, the young adults, or even the older women. When he looks at them, he often thinks about his own father.
* * *
LATE ONE NIGHT LALE IS WOKEN BY YELLING SS, BARKING dogs, and screaming women and children. He opens his door and looks out to see the men, women, and children in his block being forced from the building. He watches until the last woman, clutching an infant, is shoved brutally out into the night. He follows them all outside and stands, stunned, as all around him the other Romany blocks are also emptied. Thousands of people are being herded onto nearby trucks. The compound is lit up, and dozens of SS and their dogs corral the mob, shooting at anyone who doesn’t respond immediately to the instruction, “Get on the truck!”
Lale stops a passing officer he recognizes. “Where are you taking them?” he asks.
“You want to join them, Tätowierer?” the man responds, walking on.
Lale sinks into the shadows, scanning the crowd. He sees Nadya and runs to her. “Nadya,” he pleads. “Don’t go.”
She forces a brave smile. “I don’t have a choice, Lale. I go where my people go. Goodbye, my friend, it’s been . . .” An officer pushes her along before she can finish.
Lale stands paralyzed, watching until the last person has been loaded onto the trucks. The trucks drive off, and slowly he walks back into the eerily silent block. He goes back to bed. Sleep will not come.
* * *
IN THE MORNING LALE, DISTRAUGHT, JOINS LEON, AND THEY work furiously as new transports arrive.
Mengele is scanning the silent rows, making his way slowly toward the tattooists’ station. Leon’s hands tremble at his approach. Lale tries to give him a reassuring look. But the bastard who has mutilated him is only a few feet away. Mengele stops and watches them work. Occasionally he peers closely at a tattoo, increasing Lale’s and Leon’s agitation. His deathly smirk never leaves his face. He attempts eye contact with Lale, who never raises his eyes above the level of the arm he is working on.
“Tätowierer, Tätowierer,” Mengele says, leaning over the table, “maybe today I will take you.” He tilts his head, seeming to enjoy Lale’s discomfort. Then, having had his fun, he ambles away.
Something light lands on Lale’s head and he looks up. Ash is belching from the nearby crematorium. He starts to tremble and drops his tattoo stick. Leon tries to steady him.
“Lale, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Lale’s scream is choked by a sob. “You bastards, you fucking bastards!”
Leon grips Lale’s arm, trying to get him to control himself as Mengele looks their way and starts to walk back over. Lale is seeing red. He is out of control. Nadya. He tries desperately to rein himself in as Mengele arrives. He feels as though he might vomit.
Mengele’s breath is in his face. “Is everything all right here?”
“Yes, Herr Doktor, everything is fine,” Leon answers shakily.
Leon bends down and picks up Lale’s stick.
“Just a broken stick. We’ll fix it and be right back to work,” Leon continues.
“You don’t look well, Tätowierer. Would you like me to take a look at you?” Mengele asks.
“I’m fine, just a broken stick,” Lale coughs. He keeps his head down, turns away, and tries to get back to work.
“Tätowierer!” Mengele barks.
Lale turns back toward Mengele, jaw clenched, head still low. Mengele has unholstered his pistol. He holds it limply at his side.
“I could have you shot for turning away from me.” He raises the weapon, pointing it at Lale’s forehead. “Look at me. I could shoot you right now. What do you say to that?”
Lale raises his head but moves his gaze to the doctor’s forehead, refusing to look into his eyes. “Yes, Herr Doktor. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, Herr Doktor,” he mutters.
“Get back to work. You’re holding things up,” Mengele barks, and again walks off. Lale looks at Leon and points to the ash now falling all around them.
“They emptied the Gypsy camp last night.”
Leon hands Lale his tattoo stick before going back to work himself, in silence. Lale looks up, searching for the sun to shine down on him. But it is concealed by ash and smoke.
That evening he returns to his block, which is now occupied by people that he and Leon marked earlier. He shuts himself away in his room. He doesn’t want to make friends. Not tonight. Not ever. He wants only silence in his block.
23
FOR WEEKS, LALE AND GITA’S TIME TOGETHER IS SPENT mostly in silence as she tries in vain to console him. He has told her what happened, and while she understands his distress, she doesn’t share it to the same degree. It isn’t her fault she never got to know Lale’s “other family.” She had delighted in hearing his stories of the children and their attempts to play, with no toys, kicking balls made out of snow or debris, seeing who could jump the highest to touch the timber slats on their building, mostly just playing tag. She tries to get him to talk about his biological family, but Lale has become stubborn and is refusing to say anything more until she shares information about her own life. Gita doesn’t know how to break the spell of Lale’s grief. They have both withstood, for more than two and a half years, the worst of humanity. But this is the first time she’s seen Lale sink to this depth of depression. “What about the thousands of our people?” she yells at him one day. “What about what you have seen at Auschwitz, with Mengele? Do you know how many people have been through these two camps? Do you?” Lale does not reply. “I see the cards with the names and ages—babies, grandparents—I see their names and their numbers. I can’t even count that high.”
Lale doesn’t need Gita to remind him of the number of people who have passed through the camps. He has marked their skin himself. He looks at her; she is studying the ground. He realizes that while to him they were just numbers, to Gita they were names. Her job means that she knows more about these people than he does. She knows their names and ages, and he realizes that this knowledge will forever haunt her.
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he says. “Any death is one too many. I’ll try not to be so gloomy.”
“I want you to be yourself with me, but it’s been going on for too long, Lale, and one day is a long time for us.”
“Smart, and beautiful. I’ll never forget them, you know?”
“I couldn’t love you if you did. They were your family, I know that. I know it’s a strange thing for me to say, but you will honor them by staying alive, surviving this place and telling the world what happened here.”
Lale leans over to kiss her, his heart weighted by love and sorrow.
A massive explosion rings out, shaking the ground beneath them. From their spot behind the administration block they jump to their feet and run to the front of the building. A second explosion makes them look toward the nearby crematorium, where smoke is rising and pandemonium is breaking out. The prison workers are running from the building, most of them toward the fence that surrounds the camp. Gunfire erupts from the top of the crematorium. Lale looks up and sees Sonderkommando up there, s
hooting wildly. The SS fire heavy machine guns in retaliation. Within minutes, they have put an end to the shooting.
“What’s happening?” Gita says.
“I don’t know. We need to get indoors.”
Bullets strike the ground around them as the SS take aim at anyone in their sights. Lale pulls Gita up hard against a building. Another loud explosion.
“That’s Crematorium 4—someone’s blowing it up. We have to get out of here.”
Prisoners run from the administration building and are gunned down.
“I have to get you back to your block. It’s the only place you’ll be safe.”
An announcement over the loudspeakers: “All prisoners return to your blocks. You will not be fired upon if you go now.”
“Go, quickly.”
“I’m frightened, take me with you,” she cries.
“You’ll be safer in your own block tonight. They’re bound to do a roll call. My darling, you can’t get caught outside your block.”
She hesitates.
“Go now. Stay in your block tonight, and go to work as normal tomorrow. You must not give them any reason to look for you. You must wake up tomorrow.”
She takes a deep breath and turns to run.
In parting, Lale says, “I’ll find you tomorrow. I love you.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, LALE BREAKS HIS RULE AND JOINS THE MEN, mostly Hungarians, in his block to find out what he can about the afternoon’s events. It appears that some of the female prisoners working in an ammunition factory nearby have been smuggling tiny amounts of gunpowder back to Birkenau, pushed up into their fingernails. They have been getting it to the Sonderkommando, who have been making crude grenades out of sardine tins. They have also been stockpiling weapons, including small arms, knives, and axes.
The men in Lale’s block also tell him of rumors about a general uprising, which they wanted to join but didn’t believe it was meant to happen on this day. They have heard that the Russians are advancing, and the uprising was planned to coincide with their arrival, to assist them in liberating the camp. Lale admonishes himself for not having made friends with his block companions sooner. Not having this knowledge nearly got Gita killed. He questions the men extensively on what they know about the Russians and when they are likely to arrive. The replies are vague, but are enough to provoke slight optimism.
It has been months since the American plane flew overhead. The transports have kept coming. Lale has seen no lessening of the dedication of the Nazi machine to the extermination of Jews and other groups. Still, these latest arrivals have a more recent connection with the outside world. Perhaps liberation is coming. He is determined to tell Gita what he has learned and ask her to be vigilant in the office, to glean any information she can.
At last, a glimmer of hope.
24
AUTUMN IS BITTERLY COLD. MANY DON’T SURVIVE. LALE and Gita hold on to their glimmer of hope. Gita lets her blockmates know of the rumors about the Russians and encourages them to believe that they can outlive Auschwitz. As 1945 begins, temperatures plummet further. Gita cannot stop morale from ebbing away. Warm coats from the Canada cannot keep out the chill and fear of another year captive in the forgotten world of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The transports slow. This has a perverse effect on those prisoners who work for the SS, particularly the Sonderkommando. Having less work to do puts them in danger of execution. As for Lale, he has built up some reserves, but his supply of new currency is much diminished. And the locals, including Victor and Yuri, are no longer coming in to work. Construction has halted. Lale has heard promising news that two of the crematoria damaged in the explosions by the resistance fighters are not going to be repaired. For the first time in Lale’s memory, more people are leaving Birkenau than are entering. Gita and her coworkers take turns processing those being shipped out, supposedly to other concentration camps.
Snow is thick on the ground on a late January day when Lale is told that Leon has “gone.” He asks Baretski, as they walk together, if he knows where to. Baretski offers no answer, and warns Lale that he, too, might find himself on a transport out of Birkenau. But Lale can still make his way mostly unobserved, not required to report at roll call each morning and evening. He hopes this will keep him at the camp, but he doesn’t have the same confidence that Gita will remain. Baretski laughs his insidious laugh. The news of Leon’s probable death taps into reserves of pain Lale did not know he still had.
“You see your world reflected in a mirror, but I have another mirror,” Lale says.
Baretski stops. He looks at Lale, and Lale holds his stare.
“I look into mine,” says Lale, “and I see a world that will bring yours down.”
Baretski smiles. “And do you think you will live to see that happen?”
“Yes, I do.”
Baretski places his hand on his holstered pistol. “I could shatter your mirror right now.”
“You won’t do that.”
“You’ve been out in the cold too long, Tätowierer. Go and get warm and come to your senses.” Baretski walks away.
Lale watches him leave. He knows that if they were ever to meet on a dark night on equal terms, it would be he who would walk away. Lale would have no qualms about taking this man’s life. He would have the last word.
* * *
ONE MORNING IN LATE JANUARY, GITA STUMBLES THROUGH the snow toward Lale, running toward his block, somewhere he’s told her never to come near.
“There’s something happening,” she cries.
“What do you mean?”
“The SS, they’re acting strange. They seem to be panicking.”
“Where’s Dana?” Lale asks with concern.
“I don’t know.”
“Find her, go to your block, and stay there until I come.”
“I want to stay with you.”
Lale pulls her off him, holding her at arm’s length.
“Hurry, Gita, find Dana and go to your block. I’ll come and find you when I can. I need to find out what’s going on. There haven’t been any new arrivals for weeks now. This could be the beginning of the end.”
She turns and moves reluctantly away from Lale.
He reaches the administration building and cautiously enters the office, so familiar to him from years of obtaining supplies and instructions. Inside, it’s chaos. SS are yelling at frightened workers, who cower at their desks as the SS pull books, cards, and paperwork from them. An SS worker hurries past Lale, her hands full of papers and entry books. He bumps into her, and she spills what she is carrying.
“I’m sorry. Here, let me help you.”
They both bend down to gather up the papers.
“Are you all right?” he says as gently as possible.
“I think you may be out of a job, Tätowierer.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
She leans into Lale, whispering now.
“We’re emptying the camp, starting tomorrow.”
Lale’s heart leaps. “What can you tell me? Please.”
“The Russians, they’re nearly here.”
* * *
LALE RUNS FROM THE BUILDING TO THE WOMEN’S CAMP. THE door to Block 29 is shut. No one is standing guard outside. Entering, Lale finds the women huddled together at the back. Even Cilka is here. They gather around him, frightened and full of questions.
“All I can tell you is that the SS appear to be destroying records,” Lale says. “One of them told me the Russians are nearby.” He withholds the news that the camp is going to be emptying out the next day because he doesn’t want to cause further alarm by admitting that he doesn’t know where to.
“What do you think the SS are going to do with us?” Dana asks.
“I don’t know. Let’s hope they will run off and let the Russians liberate the camp. I’ll try to find out more. I’ll come back and tell you what I learn. Don’t leave the block. There are bound to be some trigger-happy guards out there.”
He takes Dana by both h
ands. “Dana, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but while I have the chance I want to tell you how much I will always be grateful to you for being Gita’s friend. I know you have kept her going many times when she has wanted to give up.”
They embrace. Lale kisses her on the forehead and then hands her over to Gita. He turns to Cilka and Ivana and wraps them both in a bear hug.
To Cilka, he says, “You are the bravest person I have ever met. You must not carry any guilt for what has happened here. You are an innocent—remember that.”
In between sobs she replies, “I did what I had to do to survive. If I hadn’t, someone else would have suffered at the hands of that pig.”
“I owe my life to you, Cilka, and I will never forget that.”
He turns to Gita.
“Don’t say anything,” she says. “Don’t you dare say a word.”
“Gita—”
“No. You don’t get to say anything to me other than you’ll see me tomorrow. That’s all I want to hear from you.”