Tante Hannah
I craved liver. My body was changing so much that I was at times a stranger to myself. Liver had always tasted like rusty metal to me, and the slightest thought of it had caused my stomach to clench. I was so revolted by the way Schalk would bite into it like a predator, and he enjoyed it all the more because he knew it disturbed me.
Yet I found myself growing obsessed with it to the point that I believed I could have eaten it raw, as the men did, still warm from a fresh kill. Who was this person that used to be me? I mentioned it to Moeder, who claimed the urge was my body’s telling me I needed whatever it was that liver best provided.
“Sometimes you must listen to your body,” she said. “And sometimes you must ignore your body.”
This was a riddle I understood only later.
“I remember when you wouldn’t touch it . . . almost cried at the sight of it,” she said. “You were spoiled. Now you’re a woman.”
She had never said such a thing to me. That single comment made me feel the duty to behave like one, to do womanly things, to prepare to do womanly things with the dedication with which Willem thought of hunting and fighting and being a man.
“Would you teach me how to cook?” I blurted to Moeder.
She didn’t hear me or at least did not stop what she was doing.
I asked again.
“Lettie, we have nothing to cook.”
I thought of my favorite meals and could almost smell her springbok pie. She would shred the deep red meat of the leg roasts and bake them in pastry. She put so many things in there, in a certain order, with special spices; it seemed impossibly complex. I remembered its being sweetened with apricot jam. I moved my tongue around when I thought the words apricot jam. I tried to remember the smell, but I was losing that memory, if not the sense itself. I tried to think of the ingredients and had trouble with the names of some of them. There had been no need to speak of vegetables or fruit since we’d come to the camp, and the words for them had faded with disuse. I worked to remember them. Potatoes, beans, onions—oh, praise God—onions. But when I fell asleep, it was to thoughts of liver.
When I rolled over in the night, it felt as if the tent had tightened around us like a hungry stomach. I had to walk. The door flaps of the tents were cinched, since most families were sleeping, but muffled noise seeped from some of the tents. I could interpret the sounds of illnesses and veered away from certain tents. Some sounds were indecipherable. Through the canvas veil, I could not tell whether crying was coming from a mother or a child, from an elderly grandmother or an infant. Was it coughing or sobbing? Was it calm talk or prayers?
The stars were blocked by low clouds, and the light rain angered into a storm as I was about to turn back to the tent. A jagged note, loud and distinct, rang nearby. It was certainly not a birdcall. I turned to its source and traced a path toward a tent that glowed with inner light. A Tommy guard stood by the tent flap and blew his whistle again, one long blast that knifed through the quickening rain. I popped behind the next tent to keep from being seen.
His back to me, he shifted from leg to leg and bent over to protect his match as he lit a cigarette. He waved his hand and gave a soft whistle with just his breath this time. I thought of Janetta’s kiss. A pair of men pulled a two-wheeled cart toward him, each holding one of the wagon tongues, heads down, shuffling together like weary bullocks. They passed the door flap and then turned so that they could back the wagon toward the opening. Light escaped the tent and gilded the cart. A collection of bones in old man’s clothes was stretched still, light reflecting off the hollow face and papery skin. His eyes were deep sockets that held small puddles of rain. His lips were tightened into a ghastly smile.
“Put something over him,” the guard said. They shrugged and pointed at the cart. They had nothing for cover.
The three entered the tent, and a wailing escaped, the lower pitch of a mother, perhaps, and the higher tone of some children in chorus. The men emerged with a small body. I could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl. One of the men had to hold it in both arms while the other tugged at the body of the old man to make room for the new passenger. When they moved him, the rainwater ran from his hollowed eyes like a burst of tears. They aligned the child head to toe with the old man for a better fit. The guard signaled to the men to leave, and he moved off in the other direction. I could see that it was a girl on the cart, younger than I.
The two men repositioned themselves at the front and hefted the cart shafts, pulling it down the muddy row toward the morgue tent. Within a few strides, the girl’s light body slid toward the back edge of the cart bed, her head bobbing off the back.
I ran. . . . “Wait . . . wait . . .” The little body looked ready to fall into the mud. “She’s falling.”
The men stopped and were back toward the girl by the time I got there.
“Aletta?” one said.
This man was stooped. And he was trying to lift the body with just one arm.
Praise God . . . Oom Sarel.
“Aletta?”
I stepped back, startled, having been focused on the falling girl. I didn’t want her body to fall, but I didn’t want to touch her, either. And now this. Answer him? Ignore him? I stared. Rain sluiced off the brim of his hat. He did not look like the devil; he looked pathetic . . . a sad man soaked to the skin.
He waited for a reply, studying me. I stared, blinking the rain from my lashes.
“Lettie? Is that you?”
He knew it was me. We looked into each other’s eyes, each squinting against the rain. But I could not speak. Oom Sarel had reached out, and I shunned him. I did not even open my mouth. Oupa would have stoned him. Moeder might have attacked him. But I ignored him. I was ashamed to be that small.
He gave up, turned, and helped place the child this time near the head of the cart, where she would be less likely to slide off. The old man, mouth fallen open—agape—had made room for his new companion, but now his right arm hung partially off the cart. I watched it to keep from looking at the little girl. And with each step the men took, it caused the man’s arm to bounce, and his limp hand to wave. I could not decide whether it was a farewell or an invitation to follow.
25
July 1901, Concentration Camp
Dear Tante Hannah,
I have to write small and be precise to get it all on the back of this sheet of rules. After we saw you that day, Moeder was very upset. It seemed there was more than a fence between us, as if the ground had opened and spread apart. I think now that our messenger can be a bridge.