Jinx took Kipper’s hand and started toward the board.
“Mrs. Elizabeth Stockwell Merchant and Mrs. Prudence Vanderbilt Aldrich Bowles.”
Mrs. Custer tossed the remaining tallies in the fire as Betty and Pru pushed their way through the crowd. Mrs. Vanderbilt handed the check to Betty, who seemed nonplussed by the whole thing.
“And what charity are you girls playing for tonight?” Mrs. Vanderbilt asked.
“One close to my heart,” Betty said, hand to her chest. “Caroline Ferriday’s French Families Fund.”
The crowd clapped and the applause, polite at first, swelled as Mrs. Vanderbilt wiped a tear. Betty’s smile made me glad our splinter had worked its way out.
The crowd surrounded Betty and Pru, and I made my way to the door, eager to breathe the night air. On the way, I passed Jinx and Kipper.
“Sorry for your loss,” I said.
“Math never was your strong suit,” Jinx said. “Don’t think I won’t get the word out about this.”
“Thank you, Jinx,” I said. “I hope you do.”
I made it outside and tried to shake off the nipping of my conscience. So I’d been dishonest. It was in the service of a friend. I tried to focus on all the good Roger and I would do with five thousand dollars.
I walked home with a lighter step, for that night had knocked something loose in me, something long overdue to be knocked. At long last, I saw that group for what they were, with a few exceptions—a queer assortment of layabouts and late risers, most overdrawn at the bank or at least cutting into principal, only interested in who’s going in the drawer at the Maidstone Club or their wedge on the fifteenth hole at Pebble Beach or dressing down the staff about a bit of shell in the lobster while shoveling canapés in. Jinx had done me a favor, freed me of any lingering allegiances to New York Society, snipped my fear of being on their bad side.
I was free of spending my life pleasing them, free to go it alone.
1942–1943
When Gebhardt cracked open my cast and I saw my leg, it no longer looked like a human limb. It was swollen fat as a log, covered in dark blue and greenish-black patches. Black sutures strained to hold the flesh together along the incision from anklebone to knee.
I don’t remember screaming, but later the girls back in the ward said they thought I was being operated on again, this time with no anesthesia, and others heard my screams in the courtyard at Appell. Dr. Gebhardt rolled a towel and forced it into my mouth as one of the nurses gave me a shot of something that put me to sleep.
I woke up back in the ward, my leg wrapped tight in gauze, the incision feeling like a thousand knives cutting it. Zuzanna slipped out of bed to look at it. She pried a corner of the gauze back.
“Is it bad?” I asked.
“It isn’t good, Kasia. I think they’ve removed bone. And maybe muscle.”
It didn’t make sense. Why would muscle just be taken out of a person? “What is all this for?”
“It might be some sort of experiment,” Zuzanna said. “They give you tablets, but some of the others received nothing.”
“I’m so hot,” I said.
“Hang on, Kasia. Matka will help us soon.”
—
I WAS OPERATED ON three more times, and each time the suffering began anew. Each time the fevers were higher, and it was harder to recover, as if the doctors were seeing how far they could go before I’d die. By the last operation, I’d given up all hope of dancing again and just hoped for walking. I lay on my back all day all mixed up, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, dreaming of Matka and Pietrik and Nadia, thinking I was back at home.
I grew angrier as I lay there completely in their control. Though it was hard to track time, I knew it was the late winter of 1942 and I tried to stay positive and think of seeing Matka again.
As we lay there, Regina drilled us on English verbs and told us funny stories about Freddie and his habit of climbing out of his crib. Janina taught us all French, for she’d learned many phrases working at the hair salon in Lublin. She taught us phrases such as “This dryer is too hot,” Ce séchoir est trop chaud, and “May I have a cold overnight permanent wave, please, with medium curl and extra end papers?” After Janina’s tutoring, I had a working knowledge of French, with a heavy emphasis on things like asking for help with dandruff.
“I can’t just lie around like this any longer,” I said.
“Sure,” Janina said. “Let’s go out and ride bicycles.”
“I’m serious. I have a plan.”
“Oh no,” Zuzanna said.
“I think we should write secret letters home to our families.”
Regina propped herself up on her elbows. “Like in Satan from the Seventh Grade? I loved that book.” What schoolchild had not read Kornel Makuszynski’s adventure story about the boy detective?
“Yes, exactly,” I said. “We did it in Girl Guides.”
Zuzanna looked up from the bread bead she was rolling for her homemade string of rosary beads. Why was she not eating that bread? Prayer had long since proved ineffective. Even my favorite saint Agnes had forsaken me.
“That’s a good way to get us all killed, Kasia,” she said.
“The boy in that book used lemon juice,” Regina said. “He coded his letters so the first letter of every sentence spelled out a message.”
I sat up as best I could. “Our own urine would work just as well. It’s acidic. We could code in letters written in urine…”
“It’s ingenious,” Regina said.
“It’s insanity,” Zuzanna said. “Put it out of your head.”
—
ZUZANNA WAS RELEASED BEFORE I was, and I missed her terribly. We heard new girls arriving in the room next door.
Then one morning Janina made a comment while old Nurse Marschall was in the room, walking about taking vitals, a towel to her nose to stem the stench. It was a harmless comment about how tired we were of being there. Nurse Marschall walked out of the room in her prickly way, and a moment later Dr. Oberheuser came back with her.
“Well, if you don’t want to be here, then get out,” Dr. Oberheuser said. “Right now. Stand up and get back to your block.”
At first we thought she was joking, since none of us were fully healed. We realized she was serious when Marschall poked and prodded us out of bed.
“But we haven’t been issued shoes—” I began.
“Out,” Dr. Oberheuser said, one arm outstretched toward the door. “Hop if you cannot walk.”
I tried to stand but fell. My plaster was gone by then, but I couldn’t put weight on the leg without the worst pain.
“Get up and be off with you, quickly,” Dr. Oberheuser said.
I froze there on the floor. Dr. Oberheuser curled her strong fingers around my upper arm and pulled. She dragged me out through the Revier front entrance as one pulls carpets out on cleaning day.
Dr. Oberheuser tossed a wooden crutch out after me and left me there in the cold, the sharp slag that covered Beauty Road like glass jabbing my skin. I looked to see if Matka was anywhere around and tried to sit up.
It was strange to be outside again, like being on the moon. It was cold and overcast, everything gray, and no birds flew in the sky. Pieces of ash floated in the air, like black snowflakes in a grimy snow globe, and there was a new stench. A cleaning detail was sweeping the windowpanes of the blocks, for black soot had drifted there the way snow does. In the distance, just behind the bunker, outside the camp walls, twin crimson tongues shot into the sky from new chimneys. You could hear the roar of that fire from almost anyplace in the camp, a giant belching furnace from the mouth of hell.
How good it was to soon see Zuzanna hurrying toward me, a look of deepest concern on her face! I leaned on her as she helped me stand and take a step. Zuzanna, already in our new home for a few weeks, led me toward the block. I was eager to see Matka again.
I hadn’t taken more than one step in months, and even with the crutch the walk was too much, especially barefoot across jagged pieces of slag. I stopped.
“I can’t make it. Leave me. Please.”