With Robbins it was the opposite—he’d become wise to the authorities’ desire to keep him alive, and so bedeviled them by trying to die. For some period of time each afternoon Florence stood peeking through the barred window of Robbins’s cell as Kachak bent over him, whispering menacingly or shouting threats. Each day the man in the chair became even more of a fragile ghost, his reddish hair growing longer as his graying skin hung looser on his bones. Like an old man’s, Florence thought, though he was obviously young. Her only hope now was that he would not die. If he did, she would be sent back to general labor in the women’s camp, sent back to toil and deteriorate and meet, at last, her own end.
In a small upstairs ward of the infirmary, she was allowed to lie prone all day. On the fourth day of her stay she discovered, with some amazement, that her leg was improving. There was real herring in her soup instead of just fish bones. On that and a mere bowl of cereal the body could begin to revive itself, as long as it did not have to be sent to work. Twice inside her loaf of black bread she had found, hidden like a coin, a hard, sour pill of vitamin C. It had been hidden there by the camp doctor (himself a prisoner), the same one who had rescued Robbins by prying open his jaw and working a rubber tube down into his stomach. Florence would not know about these force-feedings until they were over. For four days, she would live in limbo, neither called into interrogations nor sent back to the women’s camp. It was on the fourth and final day of this stretch that the doctor came to alert her that he was certain of bad news. Robbins’s health was worsening; he was slipping in and out of consciousness. His throat and stomach had continued to react to the force-feedings with convulsive spasms, and he had begun spitting up blood. The doctor slipped Florence a vial of amber liquid. She was not, he advised, to trade or sell it for anything back at her camp. She understood this to mean he expected her to be sent back any day. The liquid was a vitamin-filled syrup. Florence was speechless as she held it. The doctor had acted toward her with more kindness than she thought imaginable in a place like this. Surely, she could not ask more.
And yet she had to. The vitamin elixir, as precious as life itself, would not save her. She would have to sell it the very first day and use the money to buy bread. If she held on to it, it would get thieved immediately. One of the criminals would knock her over the head and rob her on the first day she was back.
She looked into the doctor’s pitying eyes. They reflected what he saw: a haggard, reduced “wick,” her face covered in blood clots, her skin bitten by lice. Florence had known this moment would come; she’d planned to throw herself at the doctor’s mercy, offer herself up as an orderly who could clean latrines and mop blood, do anything if it meant she could extend her stay a bit longer. But looking into his eyes she understood that such imploring was useless and completely idiotic. He had no jurisdiction over her. If she wanted to live she had to appeal to a higher force. Not God. The only god who reigned here was the cannibal god of human sacrifice, the black beating heart of the monstrous machine that had started devouring her years ago. Only from such a god, she thought desolately, could she ever seek her salvation. No sooner did she think this than she felt a flash of light showing her a way through the darkness. She gripped the syrup and gazed at the doctor. The idea she had to sell him was, after all, in his favor.
Even as she uttered it, Florence did not really believe she was proposing the things that came out of her mouth. Yet the doctor listened.
—
How had she pulled it off? She had convinced the doctor, and he, in his turn, had convinced the commandant. “So you want to worm the hook yourself, eh?” Kachak said, before the door to Robbins’s cell was opened for her. “Well, why the devil not?” He spoke in a voice of pure satire. The force-feedings had become a burlesque. The smile on Kachak’s face looked, to Florence, slightly deranged. He had been drinking. Maybe he thought he had little to lose.
She sat down beside Robbins’s cot with a tray in her lap. She didn’t look toward the grate in the door, but was distressfully aware of the commandant’s eyes observing her. What she had proposed would have been the highest order of impertinence coming from her mouth; the doctor had presented it as his own idea, telling Kachak, “He won’t take the food from the guards, or any of us. He won’t touch it if we’re even in the room.” She, a fellow countryman, would bring it to him, persuade him to take some bites. Now she turned to Robbins’s back and spoke. “Captain—I’ve brought you a little tea. It’ll make you feel better.”
He lay turned away, facing the wall.
“There’s a nice bowl of fish soup here for you, with barley. Maybe you’d like some bread?” The tray had two slices of actual white bread, something she didn’t believe existed in the zone. “I promise I won’t try to make you talk,” she said. She glanced toward the barred window. “Unless you want to. You can probably say anything you like here—to be honest, I don’t think the commandant understands a word you say.”
She stared at his scrub of reddish stubble. She felt she was talking to a dead body. Or to herself. This was insane.
“You’re from the South.”
No answer.
“Yes, I could hear it in your voice earlier. Georgia? Alabama?”
Nothing.
“I know this isn’t bacon or collards.” She tried to make her voice lilt. “But you’re getting a feast by any measure of ours. I wouldn’t pass it up if I were—”
Before she could finish, he’d lifted his arm and with whiplash speed delivered a swift strike that sent the enamel bowl of soup flying off her tray. It hit the floor with a crash and metallic ping; its contents splashed on the wall. A piece of herring lay on the floor, not far from her foot. She glanced backward at the little barred window. Kachak was not visible, but a guard stood in a posture suggesting readiness to put an end to the whole experiment. Florence raised a palm to indicate there was no need for distress.
She breathed through her mouth to collect herself. “The farthest south I’ve ever been was Washington. I’m from Detroit myself,” she lied. “That was a long time ago, of course. Funny, you always think you’ll come back home.” Gently, she placed her fingers on the back of his shoulder. “You need to eat, Mr. Robbins. Or they’ll come and pry your cheeks open again. I don’t think you want that.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
She seized up. His voice was no more than a coarse whisper.
“You’re right. I don’t know,” she said.