Still, I told Feliks that I wanted to stay. I was earnest, but he laughed. I could’ve told him that I’d lived in situations just as trying. The floating world, opposite Pearl. Inside the folds of Zayde’s coat. The vinegary confines of my barrel. And did I even need to mention the Zoo? But I chose to keep this logic to myself — I knew he’d mock me, and now we had company besides.
Mirko’s sister Paulina was sitting opposite us with her two children, a boy and a girl, sleepy-faced charmers only as big as crumbs. Paulina was braiding the girl’s hair, and I watched her fingers weave back and forth. Seeing me study this, she gave me a smile, and I was about to apologize for staring, to explain the longing it aroused in me, for touch, for family, but I was saved from having to do so when Mirko and his mother entered through the little thatch, each with a tin cup of snow, which one person passed to the next, lapping up any moisture that one could. Then Mirko took a roll of meat from his pocket.
“From the Soviets,” Mirko explained to me and Feliks, opening his bread knife and sectioning the meat into pieces. “We charmed them after they entered. Sang to them a little. And they permitted us a ride in one of their tanks, took us all the way past Stare Stawy and into this field. It seemed as good a place as any to hide and plan. Mother, she was quite ill with exhaustion, but she has improved after a week’s rest. If the trains are willing, we are going to go to Prague. We will be going back to the theater. Do you two have interest in joining us?”
I couldn’t answer because my mouth was too full of food. I had tried to refuse it, but the matriarch would not allow this. She hopped over with a square of meat and insisted it between my lips, and then, as if I were a baby prone to spitting out foodstuffs, she held my mouth shut until I swallowed. When she’d decided I’d had enough, she cleaned my face with the corner of her shawl and tried to pinch the life back into my cheeks.
“Mother always wanted a giant pet,” noted Paulina. And they all began to laugh, as if they knew they had to laugh again someday and it might as well be that moment. The laughter, though, it fell short; it was too soon, and they turned their attentions instead to drinking the melted snow from their tin cups, and gave Feliks seconds and thirds of wurst.
When their bellies were full, Mirko and Feliks began to discuss the problem of return. Our friend had many plans. He spoke of the parts he wanted to play upon his reestablishment in Prague, of the theater they planned to make their temporary home. He was so hopeful, I never should have interrupted, but I had to say the words that had been with me since I woke. They flowed from me in a burst.
“You never saw Pearl, that’s what you tell me. I believe you. But I also believe that since you are Mirko, you are being an actor, you are twisting words, you are not being truthful.”
Mirko lowered his head so that I could take in only the sea of his curls.
“I believe you never saw Pearl, the real Pearl, because she was already dead; she was just a body, she was emptied of who she was.”
Mirko nodded, and then ducked his face into his scarf. I didn’t expect a confession. But then he decided to give me one.
“I thought I heard her once,” he murmured. “But it was just a hallucination.”
“Where?”
“In the laboratory. A laboratory you are unfamiliar with.” He motioned to Paulina to put her hands over her little girl’s ears. She did so promptly, but the look on her face said she wished she did not have to hear this tale herself. Mirko covered the ears of the little boy, whose eyes darted curiously about as soon as his hearing left him. Only then did my friend continue.
“I was in a cage,” Mirko said. “Is that what you want me to admit? That I was in a cage?”
I told him I did not want to hear such a thing. This softened him.
“I will say I was in a cage. But instead of the word cage, we will use the word haystack. This is more of my word-twisting, I know. Still, is this agreeable to you?”
I indicated that it was.
“So you see, I was in a haystack. I’d been in the haystack for three, maybe four days. The haystack itself was so small that I could not even turn around. I didn’t eat, but water was given to me. This was at the end. Before they had a chance to initiate a single death march. The haystack was making me go mad. There were five other haystacks in this dark room, a room with two sources of light — the crack beneath the door, and a tiny window set so high in the wall that it looked out only onto the sky. Pigeons gathered on the sill. And rats scampered across the floor. These animals were noisier than the inhabitants of the other haystacks. I assumed them to be dead or so dazed from the injections that they could barely speak. I knew that I was the latter, because sometimes, lights flashed around me, and a great hand would unlock the padlock and pet my head and rattle things a bit. You know who that hand belonged to. Every day, another injection. The injections made me ill with a fever, and he marveled at the fact that I still lived. Of course, I wished myself dead, if only to get away from him. As time passed, I saw his hand grow shakier as he gave the injections. He seemed not to be his precise self. He even took no notice of the incompetency of my padlock, which was weak and rusted. Or perhaps he did notice, but he underestimated my ability to break free. Whatever the case, I assumed he was no longer in possession of his full powers — the end seemed near, and his cruelty toward me rapidly increased, as if he was determined to expel every last torture that occurred to him while he was still able. One day, another small body was lowered into my haystack. I felt the face on the body. It was dead. A child, maybe four — equal to my size. I had no choice but to sit beside it. I swear, there was no other option. It seems that Mengele was aware of Jewish prohibitions about contact with the dead. He told me that he’d take the dead body out of the haystack if I recited for him. I recited all day long, and into the night, though I had little voice left in me, and I knew that there was no hope. During my recitation on one occasion, a voice interrupted me with a cry and a plea. Mengele silenced that voice with a kick to its haystack, and I never heard from it again.”
“Was it a child’s voice?”
“It was a small voice.”
“Was it a girl’s voice?”
“It was a sweet voice.”
I did not need to imagine it. I could hear it.
“My haystack was felled when the SS brutes came tramping through. This was during their sackings and evacuations and attempts at retrievals; the planes were above, and they were searching through the room, they were overturning it all, every last haystack, making us go, pell-mell. After their departure, I stood on top of the dead body in my haystack — apologizing all the while — and I fiddled with the padlock. This destructive romp of the SS had weakened it further — the rusty shank all but fell apart! I hissed out in the dark; I ran my hands across the bars of the other haystacks. Not a peep, not even from the one I thought held you. If one had lived there before — she no longer did.”
“But you thought the voice was hers?”
“I thought it was yours at the time.”
“Then it was Pearl.”
“It was cold, I was starving more than the usual starvation, and Mengele, he was poking me, and when it wasn’t pitch-black, he was flashing lights in my eyes. It is all difficult to recall.”
“Maybe if I say what the voice was saying,” I said, “it will confirm things for you. Do you think you can remember it, if I say what the voice was saying?”
“Perhaps.” But Mirko did not seem to want to approach memory at all. I had to encourage him. I put on my sweetest manners.