Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
CURRENT DAY
Mys?owice, Poland
How does a friend of more than twenty years become a stranger? Everything about Christoph is familiar. He looks remarkably the same as I remember, despite the three excruciating years that have passed.
Me, however, I don’t need a mirror or the reflection in his tear-glossed eyes to know what he sees when looking at me. I fear I look much worse than I feel. No amount of time in a shelter could undo that damage.
“Celina,” he utters my name as if he doesn’t really believe I’m there.
“I received a telegram with your name and post about surviving and following the Soviet column in Poland. The Red Cross confirmed and gave me your most recent location. It took three trains and a freight cart to get here. But I’m here. And I—I can’t believe you’re actually—”
Here.
Alive.
I don’t know what to say. I nearly forgot about pinning the post to the bulletin in the last shelter. I figured it would sit there until it became covered with dust. I might be imagining him standing before me. Not even a tear fills my eyes.
He steps forward, opens his arms and carefully wraps them around my frail body. My chest tightens. The room grows dark.
I can’t breathe. Splintered wood scratches my face, my cheekbone grinding against the surface.
I try to move, but I can’t. The barrack is so dark, not even a flicker of light breaks through the smoggy windows in the middle of the night.
Body odor, sweat, and sickness are all I can smell. Clammy skin against mine.
Again, I try to move, coming to realize something or someone is on top of me. Someone larger, heavier.
“I can’t breathe,” I croak.
The weight bearing over me shifts. “Hmm. What’s—where?”
Someone is on top of me. “Move,” I grunt, pressing my shoulder into flesh.
“Oh my, I—I’m terribly sorry—I didn’t mean—” the weight lifts, allowing me to take a full breath. “I must have rolled over in my sleep. Did I hurt you?”
It should be impossible to roll over in our sleep. There’s only enough space to sleep on our sides. I pull in a ragged breath. “No,” I answer meekly.
“My apologies, again.” She shifts her body back onto her side, the bunk plank bowing beneath us.
She just arrived yesterday. I don’t want anyone to touch me.
I don’t want to feel anyone’s skin against mine or breathe anyone else’s breath.
I want to hear my own thoughts and be alone with my mind, but no one can ever be alone in Auschwitz. That much is clear.
For a moment, Christoph’s embrace feels like the woman who nearly suffocated me. I still don’t want anyone to touch me. I need space, and air to breathe. I reach up between us and grab my throat, wanting to stretch it to take in more air.
Christoph steps back, rests his hands on my shoulders and cranes his head down. “It’s me. It’s Christoph.”
“I know,” I utter. “I know who you are.”
Christoph pulls his hands back and rests them on his mouth, shaking his head. “I was supposed to protect you from this.”
“This isn’t your fault.” Why do the words stick to my tongue? There’s no one to blame but the tyrants of this war. I know this.
“I’ve been looking for you for two years, just after learning you’d been sent away from the convent. No one would tell me why or where you went.” I had always questioned why he hadn’t come back for me sooner, but I came to understand I’m not his responsibility and never was.
He glances down at my stomach as if I would still be carrying my daughter after all this time, and I place a protective hand over the hollow cavity. “Mother Superior found out my past was a lie, and I became a risk to them all.”
He continues to stare at my stomach as he grips his hand around the back of his neck. “Wh—where did you go?”
I shake my head as a tightness constricts my chest. “Mother Superior released me to a couple in need of a nanny. The husband turned out to be a commanding SS officer. Things didn’t end well.” My voice croaks and I drop my stare, unable to keep watching the sympathy reel through his eyes.
He clears his throat—a segue to change the horrific topic. “You’re hungry.” He swallows so hard I hear the struggle.
I’ve been starving. For over a year.
“There are food queues down the corridor,” the man sitting at the desk finally speaks up. With Christoph blocking my view, I only see his hand pointing to the left.
“Come on,” Christoph says, ushering me out.
I move along, out the door and down the corridor where the food lines wait. He’s staring at me while he walks. I doubt it’s intentional, but his disbelief is my discomfort.
“Did you cut your hair?”
“They shaved my head. That also wasn’t my choice.”
The end of the food line curves into the corridor. Waiting is nothing new.
The silence between us steals every unspoken question and answer. However, his discomfort is loud. Unable to stand still, constantly looking over his shoulder. Watching people pass by—people who look more like me than him.
I notice he’s lost some weight, his clothes are dirty, boots covered in mud.
His facial hair is overgrown, and his hair no longer has a style, just a ragged mess.
I’d like to think he found out I was missing through the post I pinned, then took a slew of trains to the area, and sought me out from there, but I don’t think that’s true. Not by the looks of him.
“There are tables inside. I’ll wait in line. You go sit down. I’ll bring the food to you,” he says as the line weaves into a recreation-sized room.
I scuff my socks across the floor until reaching an empty spot at one of the tables.
Time passes in immeasurable beats I can’t track when I allow my mind to drift toward the cracks of sunlight spilling in between heavy linen drapes. Christoph places a tin bowl down in front of me with a scrap of brown paper napkin and a slice of bread.
With a shaky reach and grip, I snatch up the tin cup and bring the rim to my lips, forcing myself to take measured gulps rather than mouthfuls that will make me sick.
As the weight of the cup fights against my forearms, broth dribbles down my chin, but I don’t let it stop me from consuming the warm liquid entirely.
I take the bread and break it into a dozen small pieces, knowing it will feel like a larger portion if I feed it to myself a little at a time.
I chew until my gums become sore, then force the lump down my dry throat.
“This isn’t enough to live on,” Christoph says, not knowing I’ve lived on far less. “There are masses of refugees heading in this direction.”
I assumed as much but didn’t ask to avoid knowing for sure. I clean up the crumbs with the tip of my index finger, making sure I get them all into my mouth.
“There are other shelters,” he says. “If we head toward the Czechoslovakian border, we’ll find more food and aid and can wait there until Germany is safe for you to travel through so we can get back home.” Safe for Jews to travel through, is what he means.
I’m not leaving Poland without Noah.
“No, I must go west. I was planning to leave today or tomorrow,” I tell him. Igor said a week-and-a-half. Today is the eighth day, which leaves me two days to find the larch mills in Gliwice.
“West? The same direction the Soviets are pushing through?” he questions me, a crease of concern appearing between his eyes. “And the woman in the administration office said they would be moving people within the next twenty-four hours. You might not even make it here another day.”
“I have to go west.”
“Celina, I’m not leaving you here, and I’m not letting you follow the warpath.”
“I have Avi and Elias here.” I doubt they’ll want to go with me either, but it’s all I can think to say.
“Are they your friends?”
I shrug. Is that what they are to me now? I suppose.
“They can come with us, but in a safer direction. I need to keep you safe.” It takes everything within me to tell him that’s the only thing he hasn’t done. But it isn’t his fault. I know that.
I shake my head. “I’m following Noah. I’m following him west. That’s where he’s going.”
Christoph was already pale, but now he might as well be translucent. “Noah,” he repeats. “What—what do you—he’s…he’s alive?” he asks, his voice broken.
“Yes.” The word is so matter of fact, simple, as if it’s the only possible answer. I’m not sure where to start explaining the rest.
The lines on Christoph’s forehead deepen and his brows furrow.
“I’ve been trying to find you both—trying so hard.
Looking through ledgers and lists, repeatedly.
I never found any information on either of you…
until I received the memo from your post.” He shakes his head as if trying to clear away a cloud of fog. “Neither of you were on any list—”
“Well, I know he’s alive. Just like I am. The lists aren’t correct, clearly.”
The truth sits heavily on my chest. I saw Noah wearing a German uniform. Even just thinking the words makes my stomach hurt. What will Christoph think? What could anyone think? That Noah collaborated with them? That he chose survival by following the wrong side.
“I spotted him a week ago at a nearby train depot. It was him. I’m positive, but I lost sight of him before I could reach him.
That’s when a truck of Soviets picked us up on the side of the road and brought us here.
Noah must still be on his way to the next location where trains are in service.
” My story is making less and less sense while leaving out the important part about him being held hostage.
Christoph doesn’t look as though he knows whether to believe me, but he says, “If it was him, and he is searching for a working train line, how would we know which location he might be heading? This is madness. If he’s alive, his name will find a way onto a list with a location.”
With the way Noah was dressed, his name will never end up on a list. But of course, he doesn’t know that…
“You think I’m mad.”
“Celina,” Christoph says, my name a dangling question mark.