“APEL!” FRANTA SHOUTS, WALKING BACK and forth between all our beds. “Apel in ten minutes!”
Jiri crawls over me and gets out. I know I need to get up, but I’m so tired. I’m still not sleeping so great here. Was up half the night again listening to everyone’s groaning. And a few were crying this time too. Not to mention the bedbugs or the fleas or whatever those were that were biting me all night.
“Nine minutes!” Franta shouts.
Plus it’s so freezing, I can almost see my breath. My blanket might be thin, but it’s warmer than nothing.
A couple of minutes later I get up fast and pull on my pants and shoes, since the floor might as well be covered in ice.
The bathroom is packed, and I get in line for a sink, even though the lines for the toilets are shorter. But Franta barely approved me last night, and I’m not taking any chances this time.
He calls out the minute again, but there’s too much noise for me to hear the number. I reach the sink and get to work on my nails with the cold water. The dirt is pretty much impossible to remove from under them. It would be much easier if we actually had some soap.
“Misha,” someone annoyed behind me says. Gorila, I think. “Hurry up already.” I splash my face and rub my ears a few times. Hopefully that will be enough.
* * *
“Hands out, palms up,” Franta says. And we do as he says, all of us lined up shoulder to shoulder in front of our beds. It sort of feels like we’re in the army and Franta’s our commander. He walks slowly down the aisle, arms crossed over his chest, peering down at our hands. Sometimes he stops and turns a boy’s hands over, sometimes he just keeps going.
I’m sure he’ll stop at me.
“Much better today,” he tells Pavel, who is standing only two boys away.
Franta gets to me. And I was right. He stops. Takes both my hands, turns them over. Bends down to inspect my nails. I got most of the dirt, but not all. Even though I tried.
“Yes,” I answer, trying to sound confident.
“I am glad you are working in the gardens. It’s good to have a job, and even better to have one outside. The work will keep you strong. Your mother must be a very capable woman to have arranged this for you so quickly after your arrival. But the garden is dirty work, and we cannot have dirt in this room. We simply cannot. There may be tiny creatures living in that dirt, and we already have too many creatures living in Room Seven. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes,” I answer, and nod my head quickly.
“Mendel has developed an excellent technique for the nails, which he can show you. After you clean the bathrooms.”
A few boys giggle. Franta pats me on the shoulder. I stare angrily at the stupid brown lines under my nails and tell myself I better not cry. Far down the line I hear the giggling continue, and then someone says what sounds like “Kid’s a total slob.”
Franta, still standing right in front of me, freezes. “Who said that?” he asks, not turning in the direction of the voice. No one answers. “Who called Misha a slob?” Again, no answer. Franta doesn’t move an inch. He doesn’t say a word. And even though he must be angry, he doesn’t look it. More like sad, actually.
Ten seconds pass. At least. The giggling dies down, but still no one says a word. Total silence. Franta definitely looks sad at this point.
“Misha,” he says calmly, still not moving, “is not a slob. He’s a boy who joined the Nesharim eleven days ago. Twelve days ago he was living in Prague. Prague, not Terezin. With his mother and his sister. Now his mother and sister are over in the Dresden Barracks, and he’s a prisoner here like the rest of us. He works in the garden and his hands get dirty. Mendel will teach him how to get the dirt out from under his nails. Misha is trying his best. He is not a slob.”
Franta looks at me briefly, though there’s no expression on his face. No one else talks.
“Do you know what will happen if there is an outbreak of typhus in this room?” He lifts his head back up and pauses for a bit. “When we are underfed and packed together like this? Most every last one of us will get sick. Fever, rashes, and terrible, terrible, terrible headaches. Some of us will get better. But some will not. Some will die. And do you know what the Germans will do if a truly serious outbreak attacks our room? They will isolate us, because even they are afraid of typhus. A big sign on our door—or perhaps even the entire building: Achtung—Infektionsgefahr. And then they will wait. Two weeks, three weeks, perhaps even a month. Until every last one of us has either recovered or died. The more who die, the better for them. If the final score is typhus forty, Nesharim nothing, they won’t care one bit. No, just the opposite. They will celebrate.”
Franta looks down the line, toward the direction of the giggling, which seems like it happened an hour ago.
“So the Nazis want us to make fun of each other. They want us to call each other ‘slob’ and ‘lazy’ and ‘weak’ and ‘stupid.’ And things much, much worse than that. Oh, what they’d pay to hear one of you call another a dirty Jew. Because instead of supporting one another, instead of loving each other like brothers—and you are all brothers now—they want us to mock each other. This will make us hate ourselves. This will make us weak. And the weaker we are the easier their work becomes. The weaker we are, the harder it will be to fight the typhus when it comes.”
Franta looks down to the floor and his eyebrows come together, almost like he’s trying to remember something. Then he clears his throat, rubs his face, and inhales deeply. Half the boys are still holding their hands out.
“The Nazis do not believe we are humans. They believe we are something less. They believe we are animals. Why else would they crowd us together like cattle? But they are wrong!” Franta crosses his arms while that last word echoes back and forth. “We will let nothing separate us from our humanity. Not their insults, not their edicts, not their camps. Our duty here is to survive, and survive as human beings. Not as animals. This is our duty to ourselves, and to our parents. We must be ready for life when this ends, because it will. It must. When Misha returns to Prague”—he points at me—“and Pavel to Ostrava, and I to Brno, we all must return as human beings, as people still capable of respecting and loving others.”
Franta smiles and begins walking down the line, his hands behind his back. He sort of sways from side to side.
“So, no, Misha is not a slob. He is a young man doing his very best here. And after breakfast”—he points at a couple of boys down near the end of the line—“Hanus and Kurt, you two gigglers will show Misha that the Nesharim excel in all areas. Including the cleaning of toilets. Now, all of you, off to breakfast.”