Margit is the only person she can talk to about Mengele.
“It’s that damn doctor’s fault.…” She can’t even think of a nickname for him; her mind goes blank when she thinks about him. “He’s threatened me.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Mengele.”
Margit’s hand covers her mouth in horror, as if Dita has referred to the devil himself. And in fact, she has.
“He told me he’ll never take his eye off me, and if he catches me doing anything odd, he’ll slit me open like a calf in the slaughterhouse.”
“That’s terrible. Oh my God! You’ll have to be careful!”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You must be very careful.”
“I am already.”
“They were telling a terrible story in our row of bunks yesterday!”
“What?”
“I overheard one of my mother’s friends telling her that Mengele worships the devil and goes into the forest at night with black candles.”
“What nonsense!”
“I swear that’s what they were saying. The Kapo had told them. She said the Nazi chiefs approve of that sort of thing. They don’t have any religion.”
“They say lots of things—”
“Pagans do that sort of thing. Worship Satan.”
“Well, God protects us—more or less.”
“Don’t talk like that! It’s not right! Of course God protects us.”
“Well, I don’t feel very protected in here.”
“He also teaches us that we have to look after ourselves.”
“I’m already doing that.”
“That man is the devil. They say he cuts open the stomachs of pregnant women with a scalpel and no anesthetic, and then he cuts open the fetuses as well. He injects healthy people with typhoid bacteria so he can see how the illness develops. He exposed a group of Polish nuns to X-rays until the radiation burned them. They say he makes boys have sex with their twin sisters so he can find out if they’ll produce twins. How revolting! He’s performed skin grafts, and the patients have died of gangrene.…”
They fall silent as they imagine Mengele’s laboratory of horrors.
“You’ve got to be careful, Dita.”
“I’ve already told you that I am!”
“Even more careful.”
“We’re in Auschwitz. What do you want me to do? Take out life insurance?”
“You’ve got to treat Mengele’s threat more seriously! You’ve got to pray, Dita.”
“Margit…”
“What?”
“You sound like my mother.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know.”
The two of them stop talking until Dita decides to speak again.
“My mother mustn’t find out, Margit. Please! She’d be worried, she wouldn’t sleep, and her concern would end up making me fret.”
“And your father?”
“He’s not well, though he says he feels fine. I don’t want to worry him, either.”
“I won’t say a word.”
“I know.”
“But I think you ought to tell your mother—”
“Margit!”
“Okay, okay. It’s your decision.”
Dita smiles. Margit is the big sister she never had.
She walks back to her hut accompanied by the crunching sound of her shoes on the frozen mud. She’s also accompanied by the rare sensation of a pair of eyes staring at her back. When she looks behind her, though, all she can see are the reddish bursts from the ovens, which, seen from afar, have an unreal or nightmarish quality to them. She reaches the hut safe and sound, kisses her mother, and then curls up around the oversized feet of her veteran bunkmate. She thinks that maybe the woman moves her legs away a little to give her a bit more room, but when Dita says good night to her, she doesn’t even answer. Dita knows she’ll have a hard time going to sleep, but she closes her eyes and squeezes her eyelids tight just to be contrary. She’s so stubborn that, in the end, she does fall asleep.
*
The first thing Dita does after roll call is go to Fredy Hirsch’s cubicle. She knocks three times, slowly and distinctly, so that Hirsch will know it’s the librarian. He opens the door and then closes it again as soon as she has slipped inside. Then he opens the secret trapdoor just long enough to remove the two books that have been requested for that day’s work: the geometry book and A Short History of the World.
Hirsch had happily agreed to her suggestion for hiding the books, but four is the limit: It’s all that Dita’s secret pockets can hold at a time. The thin canvas pockets are tied to each other at the waist so they won’t move around.
Dita has to undo the top few buttons of her smock to put the books inside the pockets. Fredy watches, and she hesitates briefly. A respectable young girl shouldn’t be by herself in a man’s room, and she certainly shouldn’t be unbuttoning her dress in front of him. If her mother found out, it would be a disaster. But there’s no time to lose. When she unbuttons the smock, one of her small breasts is exposed. Fredy realizes this and immediately looks away in the direction of the door. Dita blushes, but she also feels proud; she’s no longer a little girl.
She leaves the Block?ltester’s cubicle with her hands empty; the two little volumes are perfectly concealed under her clothes. Anyone who saw her going in and coming out would have no idea she was taking something away. She takes advantage of the flurry of activity after the roll call to make her way to the back of the hut. She hides behind a pile of wood and takes the books out of the hidden pockets. The others have no idea where they’ve come from. The children look at her with the same smiling admiration they have for a magician and his tricks.
It’s Avi Fischer who’s asked for the math book for his group of children, the oldest in the school. Dita sees herself as just an ordinary girl whom nobody notices. That’s why, when she started as the librarian, she assumed she’d hand the book over to the teacher, and no one would pay any attention to her. She’d melt into the crowd like a shadow. But she was wrong.
When she reaches a group, instinct and curiosity make even the most unruly children suddenly stop what they’re doing and watch her. The teacher takes the book by the cover and opens it, reverent.
Many of the children hated books when they were going to regular school. Books were synonymous with boring classes and homework, which prevented them from going outside to play. But here a book is like a magnet; the children are drawn to it.
Dita’s attention is caught by Gabriel, a mischievous redhead covered in freckles. He’s always making animal noises during class, or pulling a girl’s hair, or plotting some prank. But even he looks at the book, totally absorbed.
When Dita hands over her second book, other teachers signal that they, too, would like a book. She crosses paths with Seppl Lichtenstern, a deputy director, and comments on the new interest.
“I don’t know what’s happened. Suddenly, I’m being flooded with requests for books.”
“They’ve realized the library service works.”
Dita smiles, a little overwhelmed by the compliment and the responsibility. Everyone expects so much of her now.
“Seppl, I have a suggestion. Has Fredy told you about my invention for hiding books under my clothing?”