The Devil's Arithmetic (14 page)

Rivka led them to her own barracks, three buildings away from the place where the
zugangi
were housed. There were names carved on the bunks and magazine advertisements stuck onto nails in the walls, as if the women had tried to personalize the place, but it did not
help. These barracks were as starkly unwelcoming as theirs.

From under her sleeping shelf, Rivka pulled out a pile of shoes. Quickly, she sorted through them until she found three pairs, two of which matched exactly and a third that was at least the same size and style, though one shoe was dark maroon and the other brown. The shoes were badly scuffed and worn through at the toes, but wearable. “I hope these fit, or at least are close enough.”

“Why don't they give us back our own shoes?” Hannah asked.

“Because the good shoes get sent to Germany,” Rivka said. “But one does not ask
why
here.”

“Another rule?” Hannah asked.

“And a good one,” Rivka said. “It is better not to know some things. Knowing the wrong things can make you crazy.”

“No stockings?” Shifre said.

“You are lucky to have real shoes,” Rivka answered. “And not just clogs. When I got here, I had to run around for months on wooden clogs my mother carved for me.”

“Wooden shoes!” Hannah said.

Rivka smiled. “Never mind. I shall keep trying for better shoes for all of us.” She looked down at her own shoes. The right was so badly worn at the heel, her foot showed through. “At least now it is spring and we have time to look. Last month was bad. There was snow and frost. Masha from Krakow, J16689, lost two toes and there were many cases of frostbite. Bad cases, bad enough
to go to the hospital. The Dark Angel goes there first. You are lucky.”

“Lucky!”
Hannah muttered.

“Yes, lucky,” Rivka said, sounding as if she were beginning to lose patience. “We count our luck with a different measure here in the camp.”

Shifre stared silently at the shoes she held in her hand but Hannah shook her head slowly over and over.

“Now tell me your names.”

“Shifre.”

Rivka nodded.

“Chaya,” Hannah whispered, the name sounding strange in her mouth, foreign. Then she bit her lip and, remembering Rivka's explanation, held up her arm. “And also
J
for Jew. And
1
for me, alone. I am very, very much alone. And
9
is for . . . well, in English it is pronounced ‘nine,' which is like the German word for
no.
No, I will not die here. Not now. Not in my sleep like . . . little . . . little children.”

“How do you know English?” Shifre asked. “Did you learn it in your school in Lublin?”

“You went to school?” Rivka asked, a kind of awe in her voice.

“No. Yes. I don't remember,” Hannah said, surprised at the whine in her voice.

Rivka put her hand out, touching Hannah gently on the arm, stroking the number with two fingers, ever so gently. “It happens sometimes. We forget because remembering is so painful. But memory will return, when you are ready for it. Go on, Chaya—J19 . . .”

Hannah nodded. “J—1—9—7.
Seven
is for—for each
and every day of the week I stay alive. One day at a time. Then
2
for Gitl and Shmuel, who are here in this place, too.”

“Her aunt and uncle,” Shifre added. “She is living with them . . . 
was
living with them.”

“And
4
for . . . for . . .” She stopped, closed her eyes, and thought a minute. Four was such a comforting number, a familiar number, a family number. She wasn't sure why. “And
4
is for my family, I think. I almost remember them. If I close my eyes they are there, hovering within sight. But when I open my eyes, they are gone.”

“It happens,” Rivka said.

“Her parents died of cholera. In Lublin. It was a great tragedy, Tante Gitl said,” Shifre volunteered. “But maybe . . .” She looked around the barracks. “Maybe it was a great blessing.”

“No,” Hannah said suddenly. “No. Not them. Not in Lublin. Not those parents. At least not exactly.”

This time it was Shifre who put her hand on Hannah's arm, though she spoke to Rivka. “Do not mind her ramblings. She was terribly sick before she came to live with Gitl and Shmuel. Once the doctors thought she had died, but they brought her back. She was in the hospital for weeks. She says odd things.”

“And
1,
” Hannah continued as if she had never been interrupted, “because I am all alone. Here. In this place. In this . . . this time!” She ended triumphantly, though part of her wondered what she had meant.

“Chaya says she will live,” Rivka said to Shifre. “Wherever else her mind may wander, she has said it.
I hope she means it. And now, Shifre, tell me your number in the same way. It will help us both remember. After that, we will find your other friend.”

“Esther? But you said she was hopeless.”

“Esther! She is not a
musselman
yet. There is still hope for her. But if she does not get her shoes and sweater and a lesson in camp manners, she will not be long for even this world, I tell you.”

But they could not find Esther in the short hour before they were herded back into the barracks. Shifre took the mismatched shoes for her and Hannah the sweater, and then they entered the
zugangi
barracks with the others for the first long night in camp.

Hannah slipped uneasily into sleep, with the sounds of seventy women around her. Some of them were noisy sleepers, punctuating their dreams with snores. One or two cried out sharply in their sleep. And one woman wept throughout the night, low horrible sobs that rose in pitch until someone got up and comforted her. Then she would begin her sobbing again, slowly gathering volume and strength.

Hannah's dreams were filled with the sobs, but in the dreams they were cries of joy. She dreamed she was in a schoolyard where girls in blue dresses and blue pants with brightly colored sweaters hooked arms and laughed, shutting her out from their group. When she woke, she was crying. Her upper arms, which had served as her pillow, were wet. The sweater she had used for a blanket had slipped to the floor. She could not remember the dream.

IN THE MORNING, AFTER ROLL CALL AND BREAKFAST WERE
over, they got their first lesson at the midden.

“Commandant!” a man called across the wire fence from the men's camp.

“Commandant coming!” A woman took up the cry.

“He is coming,” Rivka said urgently to Hannah and Shifre, who were standing near the cauldrons, where they had been helping dish out the watery soup. “Do what I do.”

Rivka put her hands up to her mouth as if shouting, but instead made a penetrating clucking noise by placing her tongue against the roof of her mouth. From all over the camp came the same clicking, as if crazed crickets had invaded the place. The small children, alerted by the sound, came scrambling from everywhere. They raced toward the midden heap behind the barracks. Even the camp guards joined in, alternately clucking and laughing, waving the children on toward the garbage
pile. The largest children carried the littlest ones in their arms. There were about thirty in all.

Hannah watched, amazed at their speed. When they got to the midden, they skinned out of their clothes and dove naked into the dump.

Suddenly Hannah noticed that one of the camp babies was still cradled in a wash tub. Without stopping to ask, she grabbed it up and ran with the child into the middle of the midden. Garbage slipped along her bare legs.

She waded through a mixture of old rags, used bandages, the emptied-out waste of the slop buckets. The midden smell was overwhelming. Though she'd already gotten used to the pervasive camp smell, a cloudy musk that seemed to hang over everything, a mix of sweat and fear and sickness and the ever-present smoke that stained the sky, the smell in the midden was worse. She closed her eyes, and lowered herself into the garbage, the baby clutched in her arms.

When the all-clear clucking finally came, Hannah emerged from the heap with the baby, who was cooing. She scrubbed them both off with a rag until the child's mother, Leye, came running over.

“I will murder that Elihu Krupnik. Where is he? He is supposed to take her in. And look! You left her clothes on. They are filthy.” Leye's face was contorted with anger.

“No thanks?” Rivka asked. “Leye, she saved the baby.”

Leye stared for a moment at Hannah, as if seeing her for the first time. Then, as if making an effort, she smiled. “I will
organize
some water,” she said, leaving
the filthy baby in Hannah's filthy arms.

“That means ‘thank you,'” Rivka said.

Hannah stared after Leye. “I think . . . ,” she said slowly, “I think I prefer the water to the thanks.”

That night, she washed out her dress with the cup of water, hanging it like a curtain from her sleeping shelf. Now she understood why the children had all stripped off their clothes, dropping them like bright rags on the sandy ground. She'd worried that the clothing would be gaudy signals to the commandant, but clearly he already knew—as did the guards—where the children hid. It was all some kind of awful game. But she'd been too scared to stop and too shy to undress out in the open like that, especially while the memory of her naked hours waiting for the shower still brought a blush to her face. Especially as the guards, some in their late teens, had all been laughing nearby.

As she fell asleep, she was sure the smell of the midden had gotten into her pores; that there was not enough water in the camp—in all of Poland—to wash her clean.

The days quickly became routine: roll call, breakfast, work, lunch, work, supper, work. The meals were all watery potato soup and occasionally bread, hard and crusty. Then they had a precious hour before they were locked in their barracks for the night.

The work was the mindless sort. Some of it was meant to keep the camp itself running: cleaning the barracks, the guards' houses, the hospital, the kitchen. Cutting and hauling wood for the stoves. Building more barracks, more privies. But most of the workers were used
in the sorting sheds, stacking the clothing and suitcases and possessions stolen from the prisoners, dividing them into piles to be sent back to Germany.

Still, Hannah was glad of the routine. As long as she knew what to expect, she wasn't frightened. What was more frightening was the unknown: the occasional corpse hanging on the gate without an explanation, the swift kick by the
blokova
for no reason.

She and Shifre were set to work with Rivka in the kitchen hauling water in large buckets from the pump, spooning out the meager meals, washing the giant cauldrons in which the soup cooked, scrubbing the walls and floors. It was hard work, harder than Hannah could ever remember doing. Her hands and knees held no memory of such work. It was endless. And repetitive. But it was not without its rewards. Occasionally they were able to scrape out an extra bit of food for themselves and the little ones while cleaning the pots, burned pieces of potatoes that had stuck to the bottom. Even burned pieces tasted wonderful, better even than beef. She thought she remembered beef.