Two Rings (20 page)

Someone thought maybe he was deaf; maybe he wasn't answering us because he couldn't hear our questions. So she threw a shoe down hard against the floor to make a big noise and see if he would react. He did—he startled at the sound, but still he didn't say anything. He looked more resolute than scared, content to be indoors with a group of women hovering about him, but determined not to speak. Perhaps, we thought, he was obeying a lesson his mother taught him; perhaps his mother had told him never to talk to people he didn't know.

In all the months he was with us, we never found out anything about this boy—his name, his age, where he came from, or how he wound up walking alone on the streets. He never said a word to any of us. But we took him in and cared for him, as best we could, during the time we had left in Radom. We fed him from our bits of bread and broth, and we gave him a name that he eventually responded to. He hid himself at night in the
barracks that served as a kind of clinic. In Yiddish, the word for “hospital” is
spitual
, so we called him Shulem Szpitalnik, the peaceable boy who hid in a hospital. The name was more than a way to call out to him; it was a way to hold him in our hearts.

I so admired this boy. He never complained and he never cried. And he was smart, too: He seemed always to know without being told when it was safe for him to be seen and when he needed to disappear. During the appels, for example, he knew that he mustn't be spotted when we were being counted in the evenings after work. When the appel was disbanded, he'd suddenly reappear in the barracks and come to us for a sip of soup. We were hungry all the time, with not enough food for ourselves, but we gave to him, anyway, because he was young and he was helpless, and offering him bits of our food, offering him what small protection we could, must have in some small way made us feel human.

He walked with us on the march to Tomaszów—one hundred kilometers, and he didn't give up. And he rode with us on the train to Auschwitz. All alone and with no one he would speak to.

What a remarkable child he was. I so wanted him to survive.

 

 

 

And now the selection. We're being sorted out. To the left, to the right. To the camp, to the gas. Shulem Szpitalnik is shoved over to a woman he doesn't know, and she now takes him hesitantly by the hand. And they go together, the two of them, hand in hand, to their death.

Chaos. Frenzy. Fear.

We are told to undress. Undress? In the open? With everyone around? For what? Why should we have to undress? We have been counted before; we have been lined up before, but never without clothes, never naked.

We have things. Not much, but little things, little things we have brought with us, for memory's sake, or for the sake of safety. We want to be able to hide these things.

Szlamek Horowitz's mother approaches me. She tells me that she is wearing under her dress a small belt made of cloth into which she has sewn little pockets. In the pockets, she has hidden away several diamonds. Perhaps she will be able to buy some bread with these stones; perhaps she will be able to buy her life. She asks me, Will I hide this belt for her? Will I hide her little diamonds? If I do, if I agree, she says, we will be partners: She will split the diamonds with me, and both of us will be able to buy some bread. Perhaps both of us will be able to buy our lives. I want to say yes; really, I do. But I can't. I'm afraid. I know I can't keep anything from the Germans; they will find out, surely, and instead of saving my life, the diamonds will be the end of it. I will be beaten; I will be killed. I cannot, I am sorry, I am too afraid.

And where can we hide anything, anyway? We are being told to undress, to strip naked.

I, too, have things to hide—my picture, my rings. But where will I hide them if I have to give up my underwear?

I hear a man calling out a woman's name.

“Jadzia, Jadzia, come here!”

The man is from Radom, already interned in Auschwitz, and he has come to meet this transport of Radomers to see if he can
find anyone from his family—his mother or a sister, perhaps, maybe his wife. He doesn't find anyone from his family, but he knows this woman, Jadzia, and he tells her he has something to give her. He has a pocket watch; he was hoping to give it to someone in his family, but now he doesn't think he'll ever find any of them. So he wants to give the watch to Jadzia; perhaps it will help her. It's a gold watch in a case that opens up from either side. I'm sure it's worth a lot of money. Jadzia takes the watch and returns to our group. Surrounded by women, she lifts the bottom of her dress and reaches underneath. She pushes the watch up into her vagina. High up. All the way in.

“They will not search me there,” she says. “The watch will be safe in there.”

 

 

 

Jadzia was right, as it turned out. When we were inspected later on, they checked between our fingers, between our toes, in our mouths. But not in our vaginas. We were spared this, I assume, not because of the degradation of an inspection there—the degradations were so many that day in Auschwitz—but because of the time it would take to inspect so many women in that particular way. There were many hundreds of women in the Tomaszów transport, and for the German commanders and their inmate officers, there was much to be done with us, and there was no time for lengthy inspections.

Jadzia was able to keep her pocket watch, but later, when we were in the barracks, she was unable to get it out. Lying on the bunk—the
prycza
, it was called, rough wooden slats laid side to side, eight women crammed together on each prycza at night—she reached in, trying to get a firm hold. Then she
pulled, gently at first, I suspect, but maybe then not so gently. It wouldn't come out; it was stuck. She dug into her insides, she yanked at the fob, but nothing worked. Maybe she had swollen up; maybe the watch had gotten lodged on a bit of pelvic bone. Whatever it was, it wouldn't come out. And it was terrible, she suffered so. Days and days, fishing around inside herself. She asked her best friend to try, and she did; others, too—other women from the barracks went between her legs, mucking around inside her for that watch. Nothing helped; no one could get it out. She got an infection, night after night screaming in pain. I don't know how she got through the days. She cried out to us, just to kill her. She didn't want to go to the
revier
, the so-called infirmary; she knew that no one came out from there. She preferred to die in the barracks, with her friends about her.

“Just kill me,” she said. “I don't care anymore. I cannot take this pain.”

Perhaps this is odd: I don't remember how Jadzia finally got the pocket watch out of herself—whether she managed to remove it herself or whether someone else did. What I remember is her torture, the price she paid for trying to give herself a little protection.

Jadzia survived the war; I don't know what happened to the watch.

 

 

 

Mima also has a place for hiding things—her ankle boots, which for some reason she is allowed to keep. In the heel of one, she has sealed up her little gold ring. But she has a picture, too, of her children—of Chava, who has already been killed, and of Moishele, whom she has just seen taken away
with Feter. More than anything, Mima wants to keep this picture, the faces of her children in black and white. So she takes off one of her shoes and gently tugs at the inner lining, carefully lifting the thin strip of leather from the undersole.

 

Mima and Feter's children, Chava and Moishele, in the photograph that Mima hid in her ankle boot

I see what she is doing. I have a picture, too; I, too, want to keep this picture.

“Mima, will you take my picture? Will you keep it for me?”

“Of course, Maniusia, of course.”

So she takes my treasured picture, sliding it with hers under the bottom lining of her shoe. And both pictures—one of two young children, the other of two young newlyweds—stay there, hidden in Mima's shoe, slightly creased, all through the rest of the war.

I have Mima's picture of Chava and Moishele, framed, hanging on my wall; until now, I have kept my own picture to myself.

 

 

 

But then the rings. What of my wedding rings? I want these, too; I want these especially. I have kept these rings hoping Heniek and I might one day be able to wear them again, hoping we might one day again be husband and wife. I know, I suppose, that Heniek is dead, that I will never see him again. But still I hope. How can I give up my hope if I cannot give up my longing? I want the rings so I can hold on to hope, so I can hold on to him, my husband, my Heniek.

What am I to do? I cannot put the rings in the heel of Mima's shoe—that space was sealed when the shoes were made. So where can I hide them?

There is a woman among us, also named Jadzia, but a different woman from the first. Her name is Jadzia Fetman, and she's from Warsaw, not Radom. She and her sister Carolla came to the Radom factory several months ago, and I've known her already for some time. She's strong and fearless,
even gruff in her manner, but she's kind, too; I know that. I tell her about the rings. I tell her that I want to keep them, but I have no place to hide them. I realize I have to get rid of them; I tell Jadzia that I'm going to throw them down, in the dirt. I won't have them, but at least the Germans won't have them, either.

And then, again, a kindness from nowhere, an unrequited goodness, an act of purity in a sullied place.

“Mania. I will take the rings. I will hide them for you.”

And she does. Jadzia takes my rings, and she reaches under her grimy striped dress, and she puts my wedding rings up into her vagina. And she keeps them there throughout that terrible day, my thin gold wedding rings, my treasures, hidden in the warmth of her insides.

 

 

 

I don't remember when Jadzia gave the rings back to me. Nor do I remember how I managed to keep them with me during my months in Auschwitz. My memories of Auschwitz—of the entire war, really—come only in pieces. Stray anecdotes, interrupted narratives, bits of conversation. I remember that I had these rings and didn't know how I could keep them, and I remember the wondrous kindness of Jadzia to do something dangerous and indecent to help me. I know at some point I got the rings back. I have them still.

 

 

 

We stand naked, hundreds of Radom women in the middle of an enormous compound. The place is teeming with naked women. What is happening to us, to be naked in so public a
place? To be so completely exposed. The Germans are all about, with their dogs and their rubber batons, swiping at us at random. The camp guards—Jews even—are no better than their captors.

When I was at Beis Yaakov, the Jewish grammar school for girls—it seems a lifetime ago; it seems some other world (for it is, it is)—I was taught how to be modest. My teacher was a beautiful and pious woman, and when she prayed in the corner of the room, her face turned to the wall, her body gently pitching forward and back in time with the rhythms of her soft chanting, she seemed so focused, so fervent in her quiet devotion, I was sure that she was speaking directly to God. My family, too, of course, but this woman most especially taught me modesty—that I should be covered, dresses below my knees, sleeves below my elbows, and this seemed right to me—though, of course, I never would have questioned it, anyway. It seemed right to me for a girl to be covered in this way. It was a sign of humility and decency to be modest in one's dress.

In Auschwitz, I am utterly exposed. I don't know where to put my hands—there is too much of me for my meager hands to cover. My breasts, my bottom; the front of me, the back. Where to cast my eyes? I don't want to look at anybody; I don't want anybody to look at me. I want to evaporate; I want to dissolve into the air.