Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
CURRENT DAY
Gliwice, Poland
The canal by our flat glistens in blue and green, a breeze carries along the sweet smell of tulips, and the sun warms my skin, a comforting tingle following a momentary chill.
Then the canal drains, water disappears into the cracks of the earth, the roads crumble and smoke ambushes us from each side.
A hand around my wrist pulls aimlessly through the smoke.
I can’t take in a breath without choking on the air.
The smoke thins and the crematorium door opens wide with a piercing metal squeal.
I kick and scream, pushing myself away from the human oven.
“I’m still alive!” Hands clamp around my arms and lift me up.
“No! Don’t put me in there!” I spin around, a forceful jerk, facing the SS uniform—facing Noah.
The freckles on his nose sparkle in the flickering fire.
“Noah? What—what are you doing here? Why are you dressed like—”
“If you scream, it will only make this worse.”
“What? What could be worse?”
I reach for him, feeling a burn against my fingers when I touch the uniform. He pushes me backward, one step at a time. I shake my head, pleading with him to stop, grasping his sleeves. “It’s me. Don’t you know me? I’m your wife. It’s me, Celina.”
“I know who you are. And who I can no longer be,” Noah says.
He thrusts his hands against my shoulders, again, and again until the flames begin to lick my back, burning me slowly. Then he shoves me so hard, my lungs go flat.
A rattling blast startles me into a gasp and my eyes open.
My face, cheek-down on the cold floor, staring at particles of dust dancing along the splintered wood.
I push myself up, my back hitting a wall, and scan the space, waiting for recognition to hit me.
The infirmary floor next to Avi’s cot. That’s where I am.
I was asleep.
The crematorium…and Noah, a nightmare.
I stand up, knees weak, back sore, neck pinched, and I look out the window, finding the same scene. The German prisoners lined up in groups.
They all look like the same person from up here—filthy gray uniforms with insignias of death.
Still, I scan each row, wondering if I can find Noah in the crowd from up here.
It’s hard to see details, but I can tell some of them are growing weaker by the day, either by illness or beatings.
They always stay in their rows, but some are standing and others are curled into a lifeless ball.
The lifeless-looking ones are those who would have been killed on the spot at Auschwitz.
If we weren’t standing and able to work, we were worthless to keep. But the rows and roll calls were our foundation—where each day started and ended. The SS punished the innocent in this way, but being stuck in rows like this isn’t a suitable punishment for those who have tortured, and murdered.
Were these men all guards or officers at Auschwitz, or have some come from another labor camp?
I wonder if the other locations were as horrific as Auschwitz, or worse.
With as much as they tried to destroy before fleeing, there isn’t enough proof to tell a full story unless someone like me speaks out, recalls the memories I wish I could burn with those buildings.
I’m not sure any of us will ever want to retell what we’ve seen.
Avi stirs in the bed. Her cheeks are paler than they were yesterday and a sheen of sweat glows across her face. The fever should be gone with the penicillin treatments. I press the back of my hand to her head, finding a mild warmth. I don’t know what she needs to turn a corner into recovery.
“How are you feeling?” I ask as her eyes flutter open.
“Hunger,” she tries to say, though her voice fails her.
Elias sits up against the wall in the corner and rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Is she all right?”
I turn to look at him, shaking my head just enough to answer without worrying Avi. “Is there any broth or bread left from what they gave us yesterday?”
Elias pushes himself up and trudges across the small room, staring down at the tin bowls and stacked plates by the door.
He lifts a bowl and swirls whatever is inside around. “Not much.” He brings Avi the bowl and helps her hold it to her lips to take in the last of what’s there.
Boots stomp and squeak up and down the metal stairwell and through the corridor. The sun has been melting some of the snow, leaving grimy puddles to charge through outside.
Only one person has stopped by the infirmary room since Christoph left yesterday. A medic who brought us the broth and bread and administered a dose of penicillin to Avi. No words were exchanged.
I return to the window, searching again for the one who stands out. I stare so long, I watch the guards switch places. I watch as they throw them scraps of bread, just enough to keep them alive until they decide what to do with them.
“You think he found a working train?” Elias asks me.
“He found one coming here.” I don’t know where exactly he came from since he seemed to disappear from Amsterdam after leaving me at the convent.
“Do you think he’ll truly make it back before the week’s up?”
With all the hours we’ve spent walking, I haven’t asked him any of the burning questions that kept me awake for so many nights after we parted ways. He was supposed to come back for me. Write to me. Keep me informed. But when he left, he was as gone as Noah.
I’m not sure whether to be honest with Elias or lie to him for the sake of holding on to a slice of hope.
“He said he would be,” I respond, knowing it’s neither the truth nor a lie. Not on my part.
The footsteps in the corridor stop for a moment. “Any communication?” a Soviet soldier asks from outside the infirmary door.
“Nyet. Our supplies are low. If they don’t send a drop, we’ll move sooner.”
“Shut up. They’re listening.”
They’re speaking Yiddish rather than Russian. For what purpose? They must want us to hear them.
Elias presses his hand through his short hair and closes his eyes. “They’re toying with us,” he whispers.
We could only be so lucky if they are.
* * *
After three days of being kept inside, my oversized shirt, wool socks, and coat are finally dry—a sensation I haven’t felt since we were in the town hall shelter. Whether sweat, rain, or snow, these frocks don’t let air in or out.
Elias has been sitting on the side of Avi’s bed, bouncing his knee half the day.
I’ve been standing at the window, watching.
Watching prisoner torment. Watching the Soviets drag prisoners away minutes before rifles pop.
Watching the soldiers beat the German prisoners.
All the while, I can’t spot any one of them who looks different from the rest.
This is what the German guards and officers did to us in Auschwitz. They watched us from the towers, spectators of thrashings and murders, as if a sport.
Is that what I’m doing now? Spectating?
The German guards and officers deserve every bit of the torture.
But the one man who isn’t a German soldier…
is being tortured all over again, for doing nothing more than trying to survive.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself Noah was doing, and why he was in that uniform.
I don’t want to think of any other potential reasons.
I hear the whips crack more than I can see the effect.
Noah’s face, writhing in pain, is all I picture each time I hear the sound now. He’s down there, if they didn’t shoot him over the last three days, and I’m standing up here, watching the rest happen.
“I don’t like the look on your face,” Avi mumbles, her voice clearer this afternoon than it was this morning or yesterday.
“I don’t have a look on my face,” I argue.
“Yes, you do,” Elias sides with her.
“The prisoners were fed again. We weren’t,” I say, pushing away from the window.
I grab the doorknob, testing it, knowing it won’t give, but hoping someone forgot to secure it at last.
It doesn’t move.
I slap my hands flat against the door a few times and shout through the crack of the threshold. “Hello?”
“What are you doing?” Elias snaps in a whisper.
“She needs food with her medication. If she vomits, we’re taking a step back.”
No response. I drop my forehead against the door then thud it repeatedly.
The stomp and squelch of wet boots sound against the metal stairs, and I take a step away from the door, hoping one of them is coming up here to answer my call.
The door unlocks and opens. A different soldier, one I haven’t seen yet, stands in the doorway. “Were you shouting?” he asks.
“Yes, my friend is being treated with penicillin and needs food to coat her stomach.”
He leans to the side to look around me, at Avi, as if he needs more proof than a woman lying sick in a bed, then turns away and crosses the corridor to a wall-mounted field telephone. He lifts the handset from the hook, keeping his back to me.
“Post Two. Infirmary,” he says into the receiver.
He clenches his fist then loosens it, three times.
“The patient on penicillin. No ration delivered.”
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and rolls his shoulders back.
“Da.”
Another pause.
“Understood.”
He replaces the receiver on the hook and turns around.
“A guard is at the bottom of the stairs. Go.”
I look back at Elias and Avi, their eyes wide with concern.
I walk out into the corridor and make my way to the metal staircase and hold the railing as tightly as I can, ensuring my knees don’t choose to give out.
Another Soviet guard waits for me at the bottom step and steps to the side, pointing for me to move ahead.
He walks beside me, not saying a word, then stops as we reach a side door to the building.
He unlocks the door with his key and pushes it outwards, propping it open with the toe of his boot.
The wind, cold and dry, slaps me in the face, but it’s a welcome change to being trapped inside for days. The prisoner field is footsteps away from this building, a metal fence the only separation between all those murderers and me.
I steal a glimpse at the prisoners’ rows, the ones that have been stagnant most of the day.
One catches my eye, the fence a blur between us.
He lowers his head but continues to look over to me from under his brows.
Noah. You are here. My breath chokes through me and my lips part.
I’m afraid to blink, thinking he might disappear…
A guard shoves an enamel cup into my chest, the broth sloshing so hard it might spill out of the sides.
A dark roll of bread is dropped in my other hand.
The door closes in my face even though I’m still staring through that fence.
No, no, no. I need to get to him. Why are they treating us like prisoners here too? Haven’t we been through enough?
“Go. Now,” the guard says.
“I—”
“Go!”
I blink away the sunlight, readjust my eyes to the dim-lit corridor and turn back for the stairs.
The infirmary door closes and locks behind me as I continue to carefully watch my step, so I don’t spill any broth. I hand the chipped enamel cup to Avi and place the bread down beside her. “I can’t believe they gave you food,” Elias says.
“Did they hurt you?” Avi asks between sips.
“No.”
“Why are you pale? Something must have happened.”
All I can wonder is how many more blasts I’ll hear before a bullet goes through Noah’s head—if that’s why I can’t spot him amid the rows.