I caught Peter staring at me with pity. Staring — that might be one of his faults, I thought.
“She is better than she should be,” Miri told him. “Hardly remembers still.”
“She must remember,” he said in hushed disbelief.
“Put yourself in a cage,” Miri tried to whisper, but I heard it all. “And then put the cage in a dark room. Once in a while, have a hand come through the top of the cage. Sometimes, the hand will give you food. Mere crumbs. Other times, the hand might shine a light or ring a bell or douse you with water—”
Miri could not bring herself to fully color the details of this scenario. I watched her grip on the handles tighten. Peter asked what the purpose of such an experiment might be.
Miri gave one explanation: Mengele wanted to know what might happen when identical twins, the ones most bonded to each other, experienced separation.
It was true, in its simplicity. But I could’ve given Peter another explanation: I was put in that cage because I loved too much. I had a great bond with Someone, a connection much envied by this man. He was cold and empty and he could not form attachments, not with his family or wife or children. All that coursed through him was ambition, and this empty man, like so many empty men — he was determined to make history. One day, he decided that the best way to do so was by discovering how two girls who loved each other too much might react to being parted. He tore us accordingly. I went to my cage, and she — I did not know. All I knew was that before he installed me in my cage, he hobbled me at my ankles, like an animal you want to keep but don’t care to chase.
But just by my thinking of this story, the man’s face began to follow me. I could not say a word. To rid me of that face, I asked after Someone’s. If I could see hers, I thought, his would leave me.
“Were we identical?” I wondered aloud.
“The same,” Miri confessed.
“Where is she now?” I asked. I knew of the death marches. I’d heard about the tumult when the Soviets entered, the many lives that had been snuffed out. And there was the unspeakable — Mengele. My Someone was extraordinary — surely he had known this; perhaps he’d taken her? There were so many terrible things that could have happened that it seemed foolish to hope that a good one might arise, but still, I thought Miri might present me with one.
Miri did not speak to any of these possibilities. But in her eyes, there surfaced a sadness, a bright and mournful quiver that said I was the sole survivor of my family. And then, as if she were desperate to change the subject, she enlisted Peter to join her in the task of telling me about things that were in the world we were returning to.
Miri listed places. Parks, she’d say. Open spaces where you could have a picnic, which was a meal taken outside. Museums, which were places with pictures and statues. Synagogues, places where you could assemble and study and pray. Peter focused on objects. Telescopes that showed you stars. Clocks that showed you time. Boats, which were vessels much like my wheelbarrow, but vessels that moved over water. Instruments, he said, and then added, as if this was supposed to have some meaning to me, pianos.
This was the second mention of this object. It did not have meaning to me. But he could repeat it all he wanted — I loved hearing Peter and Miri overexplain the world to me.
I could have corrected their overexplanations if I wanted to. But I did not, for good reasons.
For one, explaining the world gave them pleasure. For two, it made me whole.
I noticed, though, that neither attempted to explain a train station to me when we slunk onto an emptied platform that evening, Twins’ Father having decided that his little troop could go on no more. The other children slept, cocooned in rags, side by side, but I remained in my wheelbarrow, like an overgrown baby in a filthy cradle. Miri lay on the ground beside me, her hand raised to clutch the lip of the wheelbarrow even as she slept. The snores of my fellow children rose and fell, and I tried to pick out Peter’s snores from the rest, but another sound took priority.
The nightmares of Twins’ Father drifted past my ear as he defended himself in his sleep — who would be so foolish, he said, to create twins where there were none! Hearing his protest, I wondered if it was safe to dream, if there was any way to avoid this white-coated man as I slept. To make myself feel better, I renamed him. I called him No One.
“Good-bye, No One,” I whispered. But the ache in my hobbled feet claimed that he would be with me always, even if I ever managed to take a step.
Day Two
Though morning came, it did not bring a train with it. Yet again, the sun had let us down. On foot and by wheelbarrow, we continued. And on this day, we began to sing a little, but haltingly, and with much argument as to which song we might sing.
None of Twins’ Father’s songs were appropriate, as he was a military man. Miri’s songs were too serious and romantic and sorrowful. The only song we could agree on was “Raisins and Almonds,” because all welcomed the thought of food. The lullaby sank us into our memories as we trod forward, and I felt as if I were not in the wheelbarrow at all but in Mama’s lap. We sang:
Under Baby’s cradle in the night
Stands a goat so soft and snowy white
The goat will go to the market
To bring you wonderful treats
He’ll bring you raisins and almonds
Sleep, my little one, sleep.
On the third rendition of this song, we were swarmed by a dozen women, all of whom had been sitting against trees at the edge of a forest.
“Are you the last of Auschwitz?” a woman asked. “We are waiting for our children.” Her face fell. “Should we wait? Is there reason to wait any longer?”
“There are others still,” Twins’ Father said, his voice hesitant.
The woman nodded at this information, receiving it with a guarded excitement.
“Children among them?”
“There are bound to be some at the camp yet — the Red Army has control. With me, there is thirty-five.”
The woman was awed by this meager number; her face — I would never forget the wince of hope in it.
“Do you have a Hiram among yours? Little Russian boy.”
“I do!” Twins’ Father turned and addressed the crowd. “Hiram! To the front!”
A snippet of boy was pushed to the fore by the rest of the children. And then another small Hiram followed. The woman scanned both Hirams and then sank to her knees.
“Not mine,” she whispered. “Not mine.”
Everyone was too still for too long a time. It was as if all in our caravan were felled by the woman’s grief and silence, and we were able to stir only when she rose and shook the dust from her skirts. She turned to resume her post at the tree trunk.
“Children, they draw other children, you know,” Twins’ Father said to her. “They see their own kind passing by, and they feel safe. You should join us. Maybe they will see us and find you.”
“I leave a sign wherever I go,” the woman said. She pointed to the tree trunk she’d been leaning upon. I assumed that she’d carved her child’s name on it — I could not read it because the effects were indecipherable. Her knife must have been dull, her hand too shaky. “But it’s not enough. Who is to say that they will even try to read it?”
I wanted to reassure her that children in captivity tend to read all they can. I wanted to tell her that as I traveled in my wheelbarrow, I was desperate to see any words on the horizon, words that could blot out the words of the gate I’d left behind two days before. I wished that the carved names could compete with the gate’s power. I wished that they stood as upright and clear. Because the only fault with the woman’s carved message was that it was tired and faint; every letter announced resignation.