Annexed (23 page)

It is that or the wire. There is no in-between. No other way.

Seleckcja.

We are showered. Shaved. Disinfected. We are prepared for another week. But today is different; today the bell goes. That means we must go to our huts. Everything stops. Around the square, conversations end, the bartering over spoons and shoes and bread falters. There is silence. Dealers put away their wares. And now even those last few who hadn't somehow sensed it would happen know it now.

It is time. We will be chosen. We will be selected.

We stop what we are doing and go into the huts.

I am given a card. I stare at it in my hand. It has my name on it. Peter van Pels. It has my age and the date I was born. It reminds me of something I had forgotten. It reminds me of who I am.

I put it away. The low numbers have not looked at theirs. They have not been caught out by the sight of themselves written down—by the memory of who they are.

They hold it tight, check quickly, just once, that it is right, and look away.

"Strip!"

I'm used to the sight of our naked bodies now. I'm not ashamed anymore. I fold the clothes up on my bunk, and put my clogs on top.

"They'll be waiting for you when you get back," says the low number who sleeps beneath me. And he's right. Nobody takes the chance to steal anything. The extra bread anyone has is shared, not bartered. None of us knows who will be coming back.

We wait in the huts. Some sleep. Some pray. Most of us stare, lost into the distance. Our minds slip from underneath us, try to spare us the horror. I'm not scared now. Now that it's finally here, I am calm.

Yes, that's right. That's right. No feeling can last forever, how else could we endure? Even fear can only last so long before it is beaten into submission.

We were quiet.

It comes suddenly, even though we're waiting for it. The noise and shouting and screaming of the Blockaltesters breaks us out of our calm, out of whatever world we've made inside ourselves to contain this horror. It drives us up off the bunks and naked, out into the freezing air ... out into another room where we are crammed in tight, pressed together ... waiting ... us high numbers are not sure what we are waiting for. Slowly the pressure begins to ease. I remember Mr. Frank's words. I watch. I am nearly at the door now. I choose a low number to watch. He is old but that doesn't matter. I watch him. I watch him as he gets closer to the door. I watch him lift his body up on his hips and throw his bony chest out. I watch him run as fast as he can with his knees up high and his arms pumping.

And then it is my turn.

In front of me there is a yard, at the end of it there is another door. Beside the door there are guards and an SS man. I face them. I hold my head up. I lift my knees. I throw my chest out. I run as fast as I can. I hope that they will choose me to live. I give the SS man my card.

It's over.

We go back to the hut. We dress. Everybody crowds around the old, the weak, the ill, and the lame.

All kindness and calm is gone.

"Left or right? Left or right?" they say. "Which way did your card go?"

"Left!" they say, and again. "Left." "Left." "Left."

"Did you look?" asks Papi, quietly. "Did you see which way your card went?" Because it's obvious now that all the cards that went left are the selected.

I shake my head. I didn't know. I didn't know that's what you had to do. I'm ashamed. I didn't look closely enough, follow carefully enough.

"Did you?" I ask. Papi shakes his head, and then he smiles.

"No!" he says.

And then the soup arrives.

"Look," says Papi. "They've given me double. Here, Petel, you must have it."

Why? Why have they given him more? I look around. He's not the only one. All the Musselmänner: the weak, the old, the useless. They've all got double, all the men whose cards were on the left. I look at Papi.

He has been selected.

"No!" I say. "You have it." But he won't.

"Please, Peter, or Mutti will kill me. Imagine!"

But I shake my head. I can't. Even though I am so hungry.

No, I was not hungry. Hungry is a word that you can understand. This hunger is not in my stomach, it is in my skin—my bones. If you cut my legs off they would walk toward a bowl of soup without me.

I want my father's soup, but I can't eat it.

I lie in my bunk at night, awake. I feel the knees in my back and the filthy breath we all have in my face. Voices scream and shout in the dark. They curse and groan and wail and whisper with hurt and longing and fear and all the feelings that lie dead during the day, while we fight for survival. They rise up out of the mouths of the sleeping.

I can't sleep. I lie awake and listen.

My eyes are still wide open when dawn comes.

"
Wystawach,
" shouts the Blockaltester.

But I am already awake.

***

The next day everything is the same. Roll call. Work detail. We wake. We work. It is lager-cold. We are lager-hungry. Only one thing is different—Papi gets another extra ration of soup.

"They're fattening me up for something!" he jokes. We glance at each other and away. I touch his arm. His fingertips brush my face. He knows. We both know.

"Please," he says quietly, "eat it, it will keep you going."

That is what Mutti always said to us in winter, when she gave us porridge. The words burn us. Touch us in that private place called the past that we must not remember, must keep dead or frozen if we are to survive. We look at each other. He smiles.

"Petel," he says, "please." Slowly he hands me the bowl. I raise it to my mouth. It is barely warm, but it burns me so that I can hardly swallow.

"That's right," he says, "get it down you." And he watches each mouthful, not knowing that his own mouth moves with mine until every last morsel has gone. And then he puts his hand on my shoulder.

"Well done," he says. And he pats my shoulder. "Well done."

I lean against him, and for a moment I feel his body warm against mine and know that he is here. And then I stand up straight.

"We must all do difficult things to survive," he says. And he smiles again. He holds my face in the palms of his hands and stares at it. It is only for a second.

"Be brave. Survive," he says, and then he lets go of me. He eats nothing more. He gives me all his bread and soup.

They take them early, while they are working. We have said goodbye. We are lucky. Mr. Frank did not have that. Later that afternoon we see a cart full of their empty clothes come back and know that it is done. Mr. Frank puts his hand on my shoulder. We don't say anything. There is nothing that can be said.

But I am different afterward.

Now do you understand the meaning of the word?

Seleckcja.

After that I was no longer Peter. I was Stegi Stersi, B-9286. Häftling. Untermensch.
A
creature of the lager.
A
creature who would do anything to keep alight the morsel of life that his father fed with soup.

Be brave. Survive.

That is what I have done.

For him.

Whatever it costs.

I killed kindness. I stole. If we needed more bread I got it. There was no other way. A nail loose in the floorboards, an empty sack, a spoon: I stood near the latrines and sold whatever we found.

I learned Greek:
klepsiklepsi.
Here there's no need for grammar. I learned enough—enough to buy and sell and barter.

And survive.

I did it like this.

From the first sight of the old man I gave him a week. He had Musselman written all over him. A week to go before he was dead, and then
they
got all the gold in his mouth. What a waste. I had to be quick, and I had to be lucky. He was in the bunk below. But we'd all seen that flash in his mouth. We were all onto him. I sat with him.

"There are ways to learn. To survive," I said. He tried to nod.

"My wife," he whispered.

"Afterward. You can't think about her now."

He had that look. The one we all had when we arrived. Of pain and confusion. The look that all of us hate, that none of us want to remember, the look that makes us cruel and harsh.

"My wife!" He shakes his head. "Where's my wife?" The boy in the bunk across laughs. "You're not at home now!" he spits out. It's what we all say to the high numbers. Why are they so stupid?

"Forget about your wife," I say. "I can get you bread."

"Bread?" he asks again. I want to hit him, he's so slow. My God, he thinks he will be
given
things.

"I'll help you," I say. "Give me that gold in your mouth and I'll get you a spoon, a bowl, bread. You need these things to survive."

Did I say they never gave us bowls or spoons? We had to pay for them with bread, or soup or whatever we could find, and yet to barter was illegal.

He stares at me, shaking his head. I'd like to rip the gold right out of his mouth.

"You'll die without extra food!" I say, but he shakes his head. "My wife!" he says again.

"Fine!" I say. "You'll see!"

He's put on work detail. Two days later he offers me his tooth. I do a deal with a civilian and get twenty rations of bread. Twenty! Spread out over a whole month. I share it with him and Mr. Frank. But even that can't keep the Musselmän alive. He's dead within a week.

That's how I survived.

I sell anything I can. And if the Blockaltester is eager, I sell to him too. And then we get soup from the bottom of the pot, sometimes with vegetables.

Once I got a tiny piece of sausage. Do you know what I did? I put it in my mouth. And kept it there. It made the soup taste. And at night I chewed it. And swallowed it. A piece of meat. That was a good day.

Now do you get it? This is what I did. This is how I lasted. For some of us survival was luck. No, for all of us it was luck. But for most of us it was because we learned to cheat and lie and steal and stand by—and watch while others were beaten and died.

In this way they etched their hatred upon us.

But still we dreamed.

Of telling someone, anyone—you—that it is happening.

But even our dreams failed us.

I dream of Anne. We are not in the attic, we're in the branches of the chestnut tree—outside. I can feel the branches beneath me, and the breeze in my face. The air runs like the sound of water through the leaves. The sun shines.

I am happy.

Anne stares at me with her bright brown eyes, her head bent like a bird. Happiness drifts up in me like leaves.

I am telling her everything. Everything. The words fall out of me.

I tell her how I can't sleep: of the hunger, of the fear, of how they beat us and starve us—of how even the work they make us do is not real. That sometimes we spend days moving wood from one end of a site to the other, and tomorrow, back again. I tell her of the chambers that gas us, and the ovens that burn us. The selections ... and Anne listens and nods, and in her hands is her diary. I watch her hand writing, writing it all down as I speak.

I feel my words go in through her eyes and down onto the page, and a great weight leaves my body. I am full of joy.

I am a leaf, a bird, a balloon—a thing that can fly and float away.

I am grateful.

"Anne!" I whisper her name, reach out to touch her, to be sure that she is real. She moves away.

Anne looks up at me, but her eyes are blank as she smiles and begins to climb down the tree.

"Anne!" I shout, but she doesn't answer. Her diary lies on the branch beside me. I reach for it. I open it. I stare at it. I flick through the pages, backwards, forward, hope fading inside me, because no matter how I search ... the pages are empty...

I open my eyes. The noise is all around me, the noise of men chewing on their dreams.

On emptiness.

By day we were made animals. But in our dreams we couldn't stop hoping that someone, somewhere, might hear us.

Are you there?

Are you listening?

We know we might not last.

That our story might be stolen.

And so we fight to survive.

I robbed, I stole.

I lied.

I did all I could. Became what I must.

To be brave and survive.

Can you hear me?

Because I must tell.

All of it.

I did everything.

I did anything...

I deserted Otto Frank.

I left him in Auschwitz.

I betrayed the man who tried to save me.

It was winter then.

Winter in Auschwitz.

The Allies are coming. Sometimes the planes fly overhead. The bones of the camp are finally breaking. Who will escape through the cracks?

I am scared.

They are gathering us together. They are going to march us somewhere. Away from the planes and the Allies, away from freedom.

"What shall I do?"

"Stay!" says Mr. Frank. "The Allies are nearly here. Hide, Peter. This is our chance!"

But what if they find me? What if they shoot the ill and useless before they leave? Or gas them? That's what they've always done. That's what they will do again—won't they?

"Stay!" says Mr. Frank, but he is so thin that he will never make it on a march. To stay is his only chance. I stare at him.

"I'm scared," I say.

"I know," he says. "Stay, Peter! Hide. Liberation is coming!" He is old now, his cheeks stick to his bones. We stare at each other. He
has
to stay—and they will kill him. That's what I think. They will kill all of the ones who cannot work, they always have. If he stays he will be killed. If I stay I will be killed with him.

I must decide.

In the end it is quick. I am rounded up with the others. We do not get the chance to say goodbye.

I am walking. I put one foot in front of the other. The air is freezing. We are outside the gates. The sky is gray. The earth is hard and cold against my feet. It is winter. I watch my feet moving. I do not look up. I put one foot in front of the other. Right foot, left foot.