But then, as the camera rolled, they clung to each other, so fearful of being parted, comforted only by their sisterhood. They were as bewildered as the rest of us. Confusion was the dominant expression of the photographed children. We were walking down a path, fences rising on either side of it, as if we were free — these gates were not the famed gates the world is so familiar with now, but another opening, unadorned by language — and then we retreated back as if we were not. By the time the movie was declared perfect, we weren’t sure in which direction our true future lay, but the Soviets assured us that we would be in every paper, in every movie house. People would see us; they would know that we lived.
And I noticed something during this constant march, back and forth and cut from and cut to: nearly every child was part of a pair. Each was like the other in looks and manner and voice, and they marched together, step by step, in unison; they moved as if one could not move without the other. It was then that I knew I was not whole.
What I knew was small, but it enlarged itself quickly. We were in a place where we’d been meant to die, but we’d lived. For what, I wasn’t sure — but I was hardly alone in this. No one could tell me, not really, and there were so many sources of information too, all of them chatterboxes. They’d been bossed and corralled so often that they went wild in the infirmary; they spent their time shouting and jumping from bed to bed.
I envied that jumping. It was something I wanted for myself, someday, to leap and jump and run and dance, yet whenever I peeked beneath the bandages on my feet, the possibility of any of these seemed doubtful.
The shouting, though — I had no interest in that. But these freed children loved to shout. To their credit, these were quite organized shouts; they followed a strict pattern and held much meaning.
“No more needles.”
“No more ‘Heil Hitler.’”
“No more measurements.”
And whenever one of these recitations ended, this little chorus would turn to me.
“No more,” I said. “No more.”
They took pity on me and supplied me with items with which to end the sentence. Roll call. Root soup. Injections. X-rays. Elmas. Mengeles.
The last made me shudder. I knew the name belonged to the man who’d lowered me into my cage. Hearing him mentioned made me not want to play this game at all. But I forced myself to participate.
“No more cages,” I said to all of the infirmary.
It was all I could offer, as I could remember only the cage. I was certain of one other fact, and it was very curious: my name. It was scratched into the wall. Dear Pearl, the letters said. I liked to trace the letters in the dark and wonder after who had loved me enough to put them there.
That afternoon, the woman who carried me during the Russians’ movie embarrassed me with her attentions. I wanted to ask her if we were family, because she acted as if she owed me every kindness she could give me. She bathed me and fed me and neglected her other charges in the infirmary to look after my needs. I wanted to point out to her that they suffered too, but I had the feeling that she was not easily influenced by others when it came to matters of suffering.
As she put me to bed in a private room in the rear of the infirmary, a man stepped inside and hesitated in the doorway, fully shadowed.
“Papa?” I cried.
“She knows who you are,” the woman said.
The man was stern — I saw the shadow of his form shift, as if he was considering departure. But then he took off his hat and held it to his chest.
“Tell her I’m not her father,” he said.
“Would it really hurt to say you were?” the woman whispered.
“More than you know,” the man whispered back. He spoke for us both, I could tell. He was as discomforted by the prospect of necessary human connections as I was, it seemed. Though disheartened by this reaction, I began to sympathize with him in time. Over the course of our exodus I’d realized that the paternal figure had been living in a cage too, that he’d been cornered and pinned by the same torturer, though the assaults on his senses were quite different than my isolation.
He left the doorway and came closer, just near enough so I could see his face. It was a face that had once instructed me on the importance of remembering the other children’s names. I felt a deep shame that I had long forgotten every last one, but fortunately, he didn’t ask after them in that moment. Other clarifications were more pressing to him.
“I’m not your father, Pearl,” he said. “Understand that. And this woman, she isn’t your mother. And the rest of your family, your twin—”
The woman leaped up and hushed him. A confused look crossed his face, and then he nodded and left, unhappy with her intervention but not inclined to defy it.
Surrender was everywhere in those days. I suppose that was his.
And as for my own? I’d hoped that I’d left my ability to surrender in that cage, but I couldn’t be sure.
When the woman put me to bed that night, she made their identities clear. The man was Twins’ Father, and she was Miri. I was never to call her Doctor. I understood.
Twins’ Father kept a list. All the children were on it, their names, their ages, their hometowns, even the barracks they’d lived in.
I peered at the list as Miri inspected it on the day that we departed, January 31, 1945.
I knew I was someone named Pearl. This was not new. The wall had told me so.
Apparently, I was thirteen years old. That made sense. If I looked at the other girls who were thirteen or near thirteen, we were of similar scrawniness, height. The fact agreed with me.
My hometown might as well have been a blank. Unknown, it read.
I watched Miri cross out Unknown and write Miri instead. She caught my glance, tapped her pencil.
“Is this agreeable to you?” she asked.
I told her that it was, and she received that as if I’d paid her the highest of compliments.
Twins’ Father regarded this bit of information curiously when she handed it back to him but said not a word. He was too busy to care much, I think, about anyone changing her hometown to a person. He was scampering from child to child, asking after the contents of their packs — bottles of water, bread, sardines, candy from the Soviets — inquiring about the state of their shoes, and distributing fur coats pillaged from Canada.
The children’s forms were made round and fat by these acquisitions. Their bodies were engulfed by supplies and fur, and their faces peered out from beneath their hoods. It was as if they were an army of tiny, directionless bear cubs, and Twins’ Father handled them accordingly.
“Big ones look after small ones and small ones look after the babies, you understand? Keep up. Don’t lag behind. If you lag behind — I can only wish you luck. Be soldiers now.”
I watched multiple noses uplift proudly after this little speech. I wanted to feel so inspired. If only I had my half to walk alongside me, to lean over and joke to me as I lay in my wheelbarrow.
We were thirty-five children, all told, but my Someone was not among them.
“I know I had a twin,” I said to Miri, “I just don’t remember her. I tell myself that she must have been just like me in most ways, and different in other ways. But I don’t know what I’m like either.”