Mengele stares at her intently, and Dita realizes that his eyes are half closed, and he has the expression of someone who’s trying to recall something he’s on the verge of remembering. She recalls what the seamstress said to her: You’re a bad liar. Right then she is absolutely convinced that Dr. Mengele hasn’t believed her, and she feels her body suddenly grow cold, as if it’s already on that chilly marble slab on which he’ll slit her open.
Mengele gives a brief nod. It’s true, he was trying to remember something—it had slipped his mind—but now he’s got it. He almost smiles, reaching for his belt, his hand just a few centimeters from his gun. Dita tries not to shake. At this very moment Dita asks for something very small, a tiny concession—she begs that she won’t shake in her last moment, or wet herself. A last shred of dignity. That’s all.
Mengele continues to nod, then starts to whistle. And Dita realizes that he’s not exactly looking at her; his gaze is passing through her. She is so insignificant to him that he hasn’t even noticed her. He turns on his heel and marches off whistling contentedly.
Bach occasionally eludes him.
Dita watches his tall, black, horrible figure move away. And then it comes to her: He doesn’t remember me at all. He has no idea who I am. He was never pursuing me.…
He never waited for her at the door of the hut, or took note of her in his little book; the way he looked at her was no different from the way he looked at everyone else. It was all just the routine, macabre joke of someone who told the children to call him Uncle Pepi, who smiled as he stroked their hair and then plunged an injection of hydrochloric acid into them to study its deadly impact.
Dita gives a sigh of relief, unburdened. Although she’s still in danger, of course. That’s Auschwitz.…
It would be wise to go quickly to her hut; Mengele might return. But she’s curious to find out why the Polish carpenter boy was calling her so urgently.
Would it simply be some promise of love? Dita’s not interested in romance, especially not with some Pole she can’t understand, whose ears look like bowls. She doesn’t want anyone to tell her what to do.
But despite all this, she stands obstinately rooted to the spot.
The Polish boy saw Mengele coming and stayed hidden in the empty hut. When he sees that Mengele has gone, he reappears on the other side of the fence. Dita doesn’t see anything in his hands and feels tricked. The boy looks to one side and the other and then takes a few hurried steps to the fence. He’s still smiling. Dita doesn’t find his ears so big anymore; his smile wipes out everything else.
Her heart stops beating when the young carpenter puts his closed fist through a gap in the barbed wire fence. When he opens his fist, something white drops out and rolls to Dita’s feet. At first sight, it looks to her like a huge pearl. It is a pearl: a boiled egg. She hasn’t eaten an egg in two years. She can hardly even remember what they taste like. She takes it in both hands as if it were delicate, and looks up at the boy who has pulled his hand back through the thousands of volts that snake through the wires.
They can’t understand each other; he speaks only Polish. But the way in which Dita leans over, the way her eyes sparkle with happiness, he understands better than any speech. He lowers his head in a ceremonial bow as if they had met at a reception in a palace.
Dita thanks him in all the languages she knows. He winks at her and slowly enunciates “jajko.” She blows him a kiss with one hand before starting to run back to her hut. Still smiling, the Pole pretends to jump and catch the kiss in the air.
As she runs back with her white treasure to find her mother and have a feast, she thinks this language lesson will accompany her for the rest of her life; in Polish, an egg is a jajko. Words are important.
This will become especially clear the next day. During morning roll call, the prisoners are informed that after the evening’s roll call, each adult will be given a postcard so they can write to their loved ones. The camp Kapo, a German with the triangle of a regular convict on his jacket, goes up and down the rows repeating that no defeatist or defamatory messages about the Third Reich are allowed; in such cases, the postcards will be destroyed and their authors severely punished. And he stresses the word severely with an ill will that foreshadows the punishment.
The block Kapos are given even more concrete instructions: Words like hunger, death, execution are forbidden. Also out are any words that cast doubt on the great truth: They are privileged to work for the glorious Führer and his Reich. During the meal break, Lichtenstern explains that the camp Kapo has insisted that each block chief order their respective huts to write cheerful messages. The director of Block 31, his face ever skinnier on his diet of cigarettes and turnip soup, tells them to write whatever they please.
All sorts of comments are heard throughout the day. Some people are surprised by this humanitarian gesture on the part of the Nazis, allowing them to contact their families and ask them to send food packages. But the veterans quickly explain to them that the Nazis are, first and foremost, pragmatic. It suits them to have packages sent to the camp; they’ll help themselves to the best items. And Jews outside the camps will receive comforting messages from family members, generating doubt about what’s happening in Auschwitz.
There is reason for concern: The members of the September transport were given postcards to write just before they were sent to the gas chambers. The December transport is now about to complete its six-month stay in the camp.
But postcards are also distributed to the recent May arrivals. A contagious uncertainty is added to the habitual hunger and fear in Block 31. No one can focus on the afternoon games and songs.
The postcards are finally handed out—to adults only—after the evening roll call. Many of the inhabitants of other huts have gone to line up in front of Arkadiusz, the black marketeer, who has delivered the packets of postcards and discreetly made it known that he has several pencils for loan in return for a piece of bread. Others have gone to find Lichtenstern, who has a few pencils for the school and has reluctantly allowed them to be used.
Dita sits down outside the door of her hut with her mother and watches people nervously pacing, holding their postcards. Her mother wants Dita to write to her aunt; it’s been almost two years with no news. Dita wonders what will have happened to her cousins, what will have happened in the world out there.
By her estimation, there’s room for thirty words. If the gas chamber awaits them after they’ve written their postcards, then those thirty words will be the last ones she’ll leave behind, her only legacy. And she can’t even put down what she really feels, because if the letter is gloomy, they won’t send it and they’ll punish her mother. Are the Germans really going to read more than four thousand postcards? she thinks to herself.