“I appreciate that, Miss Ferriday, and I’m sorry I offended you.”
I left Snyder and Goodrich that day with renewed optimism and enough cash in my pocket to post both my comfort packages and a case of donated Ovaltine. I comforted myself with the idea that sometimes one must make a deal with the devil in order to help those in need. I’d done business with an anti-Semite, but it was in the service of the beleaguered.
Thanks to Mr. Snyder, fifty parentless French children would know they’d not been forgotten.
1941–1942
Binz sent me to the bunker for two weeks for my insubordination toward Irma Grese. The punishment block lived up to its reputation: Solitary confinement in a cold, dark cell furnished only with one wooden stool. Armies of cockroaches. I spent my time mourning Mrs. Mikelsky and plotting revenge scenarios against the Germans, the blackness growing in my chest. They would pay for what they did to Mrs. Mikelsky. I played out scenes in my head there in the dark cell. Me leading a mass escape. Me murdering Binz with a stool leg. Me writing coded letters to Papa, naming names. I would have to be patient, but that day would come.
The following spring, Matka visited us one Sunday, a gift from heaven since she’d been moved to the elite barracks and we rarely saw her. She surprised us at our bunk before bedtime, as Luiza, Zuzanna, Janina, and I gathered to play a silly game. We called it What I’d Bring Down Beauty Road. Beauty Road had taken on another meaning by then. In the event of an execution, this was the road one was forced to walk down to the shooting wall. If a girl was lucky, she had time to have her camp family fix her hair and arrange her clothes so she’d look beautiful taking that final walk.
In this game, each of us competed to come up with the funniest thing we’d bring if marched to our death at the shooting wall. Strange as it may sound now, we took comfort in many such morbid games then, such as Pink Smoke, Blue Smoke, where we would predict the color of a girl’s smoke at the furnaces in town. Tired and terribly hungry as we all were, after twelve hours of work, it helped to laugh at it all.
Matka climbed into my bunk and kissed me on the forehead. She wore the electric yellow armband of those privileged prisoners who could roam the camp. I ran my finger across the raised, red script embroidered on the cloth band and felt a queer chill run through me.
I shook off my bad feelings. How good it was to see her! My eye caught the little length of blue string she’d tied around her ring finger. To remind her she was still married to Papa?
“I can only stay a little while,” she said, out of breath from running all the way from Block One. The doors were locked at nine each night, no exceptions. Even with her yellow armband, if Matka was caught outside her block for the night she would face the bunker or worse. Plus, there were new rules to eliminate friendships, especially among the Poles: No visiting through block windows. No assisting one another at Appell. No speaking to one another without permission.
Matka hugged each of us in turn, and I breathed the sweet scent of her in. From under her skirt, she produced a bundle, wrapped in clean white linen, and opened it to reveal a whole loaf of white bread. The top of it was browned golden and flecked with bits of salt. The yeasty smell of that bread! We each touched it in turn.
“Another loaf?” asked Zuzanna. “Where are you getting it?”
Matka smiled. “Don’t eat this all at once, or you’ll be sick.”
Zuzanna slid the loaf under our pillow. Such a gift!
Luiza huddled closer to Matka. “I think I found my greatest talent.”
“Well?” Matka said. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
Luiza produced a ball of baby-blue yarn from her pocket.
I took it from her hand. “How did you get that?”
She snatched it back. “I traded a cigarette I found in the platz for it. My supervisor says she’s never seen a person knit so fast. I finished two pairs of socks just today. I am no longer assigned to grading rabbit fur. I am only to knit from now on, at the Strickerei.”
The Strickerei was the camp knitting shop, a queer place reserved for the fastest, best knitters. A peek inside revealed women sitting in rows knitting insanely fast, like a film going too quickly through the reel.
I touched her arm. “You know those socks go to the front to warm the feet of German soldiers.”
Luiza pulled away. “I don’t care. When we get out of here, I’m opening a knitting shop with every color yarn and will just knit all day.”
“How wonderful,” Matka said, drawing Luiza near. “That’s bound to be any time now. Surely Papa and others…”
Her gaze flicked to me. Others? Lennart?
“…are working on our release.”
“We were about to play What I’d Bring,” Janina said. It was still strange to see Janina without her flame-red hair. After they’d shaved her bald on our first day at camp, her hair had grown in fine and brown, like the down of a baby sparrow. Many others were allowed to keep their hair, but Binz had made a point of having Janina’s head shaved, since she put up such a fuss about it.
“Matka doesn’t want to play that,” Zuzanna said, her face serious.
“It’s a silly game, but will you play with us?” Janina asked.
“Of course,” Matka said. “If we hurry.” She would do anything to make us happy.
Janina pulled us all closer. “You have to say what you’d bring down Beauty Road.”
Matka tipped her head to one side. “You mean—”
“If it’s your last walk. For example, I’d bring the prettiest pair of the highest high heels. In black calf—no, suede—to walk tall in. Oh, and hair like Rita Hayworth—”
“That’s two things,” Luiza said.
“And a pair of falsies.”
“Janina—” Zuzanna began.
“What? I want to have a chest for once in my life. If I’m going to die, I want to look good doing it.”
Zuzanna leaned in. “I’d bring a box of the best Polish chocolates, every type—vanilla creams, caramels, hazelnut—”
“Stop it,” Janina said. She hated it when anyone talked about food and covered her ears when girls recited their favorite meals and recipes over and over.
Luiza sat up straighter. “I’d bring my knitting. Once Binz saw how beautiful it was, she’d spare me.”
Matka grinned, taking it all in. It was good to see her smile.
It was my turn. I heard a Stubova call to someone from the washroom. She was close by, so I kept my voice low.
“I’d bring a mattress with a giant goose-down comforter and sleep on the way. Binz’s guards would carry me, with Binz herself fanning me with a giant pink ostrich feather.”
Janina stifled a snort-laugh.
“What would you bring?” Zuzanna whispered, still laughing, to Matka.
Matka thought for a long moment looking down at her hands, so long we thought maybe she wouldn’t play after all. When she finally did speak, it was with a queer look on her face.
“I would bring a bouquet of flowers—roses and lilacs.”
“Oh, I do love lilacs,” Luiza said.
“I’d walk with my head high and on the way hand this bouquet to the guards and tell them not to blame themselves for what they did.”
Did Matka not understand the lighthearted aim of the game?
“When we got to the wall, I’d refuse the blindfold and shout, ‘Long live Poland!’ before…”
Matka looked down at her hands.
“I would miss you all very much,” she said with the barest smile.
This serious answer made Zuzanna lose her happy face in an instant. The rest of us lost any laughter we’d had as well, and all became quiet. The thought of this happening was too horrible to dwell on.
We all must have looked about to brim over with tears, so Matka changed the subject.
“The Revier is running much better now—”
“How is the woman doctor?” I said. So many questions and so little time.