“WHERE DID MOTHER GO?” I ask Marietta, who ignores me as she opens her small bag and rearranges something inside it. After that she looks around the giant, noisy assembly room, like she’s waiting for someone else. “C’mon,” I try again, “where is she?”
“How should I know?” she snaps back.
“Fine,” I say quietly, and lower my eyes, even though I hardly want to see that stupid piece of paper tied around my neck with a string, the number 1385 the only thing printed on it. Marietta’s says 1386.
That’s out of fifteen hundred. And we’re a part of it, because we’ve finally run out of luck. I guess Father’s reputation only saved us for so long.
“Well . . . she better, I don’t know, she better hurry,” I say. “Because . . . because what if they start loading us and she’s not here? Then what happens?”
“What? Are you worried she’ll miss the train? If it was that easy not to go, don’t you think that’s what everyone would do?” Marietta says. “She’s on the list, Misha, just like us. We’re all going. All of us.”
She’s right. We are. Our day finally came, like I knew it would. And so now we’re in the Hamburg Barracks, in the Schleuse, where everyone reports and then waits and waits and waits. I saw Pavel with his mother before, but now I can’t find him. We’ve been here for a while, because when we arrived, the windows at the other end of the room were these kind of bright squares. But now the squares are pale gray.
Marietta’s fussing with her bag again. I have no idea why. I thought she might be happy about winding up on a transport. Because of Gustav. But for some reason she’s not, not at all. “Hey,” I tell her, “do you want me to take something for you, because I have—”
“Can’t you just leave me alone, Misha?” she says, her cheeks growing red. “Just for once?”
“Sorry,” I say. “I was just . . . I was . . .” And then I’m trying to concentrate on the big black button on my bag. Just on that. Shiny metal. Four holes.
I’m trying to block out Marietta’s voice echoing in my head. I’m trying not to think about the crowd everywhere and how they’re going to start loading us into those cars soon. I’m trying not to think about Mother and why she’s not here and how it almost doesn’t matter where she is and whether she comes back, because one way or another we’re all going to be on the next train, which will leave soon. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Not this time.
Suddenly the only thing I can think about is Father, because for a second I was idiotic enough to think that he would figure something out. Some dumb part of me decided to forget he’s gone, hoping he’d know what to do. I actually pictured him in a suit and tie just walking in here and clearing the whole thing up. With his smile and calm confidence.
But it’s been almost three years since he cleared anything up.
Just concentrate on the button. Shiny metal. Four holes. Black thread.
And then Marietta’s hand is on mine. Her cold, soft hand. “Sorry, Misha,” she whispers into my hair, her breath warm. “I’m sorry. She’ll be back soon. I know she will.”
Shiny metal. Four holes. Black thread. A crooked scratch along the edge.
* * *
An hour later, with the gray windows growing dimmer, I see her. Walking swiftly between the clumps of people and heading straight for us. The number 1384 still tied around her neck. But her eyes don’t look quite like her eyes anymore. They’re open so wide, it looks like they might fall right out of her head. But I can’t tell if she’s happy or sad or what.
“Come, let’s go,” she says when she reaches us.
“Go where?” Marietta asks.
But she just says, “Come, let’s go, hurry,” picks up her bag, and starts walking. So we stand up with our bags and follow her, even though she stops every few steps and touches the end of her left sleeve with her right hand. We wind around the other fatherless families gathered around their bags, until I realize where we’re going. Toward those guards at the wooden table in the far corner. Where we first checked in a bunch of hours ago.
At the table two guards are smoking cigarettes and talking casually to each other, as if they weren’t in a room with fifteen hundred prisoners waiting for a transport to who knows where. Three German shepherds are sleeping in a spot on the floor behind them. “Excuse me,” Mother says to the guards, quietly but firmly. “Excuse me,” she says again a few seconds later.
One of them looks up, his face extremely thin, with a long thin scar over his right eye. He says nothing.
Mother inserts two fingers into the long sleeve of her dress and pulls out what looks like a tube. Then I see that it’s actually a rolled-up piece of paper. Looks like a scroll or something. She unrolls it flat on the table and turns it around, pushing it toward the guard. It’s just a quarter sheet of paper, with something typed on it. I think I see a signature on it as well. When he goes to grab it, she pulls it back, for just a moment.
“We’ve been removed,” she says. “From the transport—”
“I can read,” he says.
“What?” Marietta asks excitedly. Mother shushes her.
The guard elbows the other man, who drops his cigarette, crushes it under one of his shiny boots, and peers over the first guard’s shoulder at the paper.
“Go up those stairs”—the second guard points to a door at the far end of the assembly area—“and wait in one of the rooms there. We’ll let you know when you can go.”
“But,” Mother says, taking the paper back, “I’m sorry . . . but . . . it says we’re excused from the transport.” The first guard tilts his head a bit and flares his nostrils. One of the dogs growls, but doesn’t move. Another one opens its eyes. “I’m sorry . . . it’s just . . .”
“Upstairs,” the first guard says. “Now.”
Halfway up the stairs I hear a loud screeching. I run to the top and look out a narrow, barred window. Even though not much light is coming through this window, I can easily make out the train. The three of us squeeze together and watch it slowly rumble past. I try counting the cars but lose track at fourteen.
Mother opens the first door, which is right next to the stairway. A room, around half the size of our old room back in L417. Filled with maybe thirty people, including Pavel and his mother.
“Pavel!” I say.
“Hey, Misha.” He waves. And I’m about to go over to him when Mother tugs my arm.
“There’s nowhere to sit here. Come,” she says.
Marietta walks a bit down the narrow hallway and opens the second door. Pretty much like the first room. Same size, same number of people. I think I see someone I recognize when Mother says, “Misha, go check the third door.”
I take a dozen steps, my footsteps echoing off the hard wooden floor and bare walls, until I reach the door, where I stand still for a moment. Somehow it’s totally silent here. I turn the knob and look inside. Two young women and a boy maybe half my age. That’s it.
“Pretty much empty,” I say back to Mother and Marietta. They head over and we go inside, sitting on the floor near one of the far corners. I can’t tell if this is the right place to be or not, and I almost ask Mother, until I get a good look at her face. Her eyes are still opened wide like before, but the rest of her face, it almost looks like glass, like if the slightest thing goes wrong, the whole thing might shatter.
* * *
“So I asked Mr. Spier,” Mother says after we get settled, still clutching the piece of paper, “to please—”
“Mr. Spier?” I ask.
“The head of my department,” she says. I try to take the paper from her, but she pulls it away quickly.
“What did he do?” Marietta asks as the door opens. Mother swings her head toward the door, like someone just shot a gun off over there. But all that happens is two women around Mother’s age and a girl come inside.
“Mr. Spier,” Marietta says. “What did he do?”
“Well,” Mother says, squeezing her eyes shut and taking a deep breath, “he went away for a while. And . . . and I simply sat there. Worrying about the two of you.” She almost laughs. “I worried that the train would come while I was gone . . . and that when I returned . . .”
“See?” I say to Marietta, who just shakes her head.
“Until he came back. With an SS officer. I had seen him before, a young man with baby blond hair. Very young. He would come to the workshop from time to time to speak with Mr. Spier. Never with anyone else. But today he came straight over to me, Mr. Spier right behind him. ‘Herr Richter,’ Mr. Spier said. ‘Do you recall your enthusiasm for the teddy bears we’ve been making?’ Richter didn’t say anything. He just crossed his arms. ‘You doubled your order two weeks ago. For Christmas, you said. Do you recall that? For these teddy bears.’ And from a table nearby Mr. Spier grabbed one of the bears I had made.”
“What do they look like?” I ask.
“Misha,” Marietta whines, “what does that matter?”
“It’s a small, light brown bear,” Mother says. “Furry, of course. Nice round tummy. Black plastic eyes, black nose, little black mouth, almost smiling. Or at least I like to think so. And I sew, for each one, a little flannel shirt with a button near the neck.”
Our heads are jerked over to the sound of the door opening. But it’s only a woman and a small boy, maybe four years old.
“Mr. Spier handed the bear to Richter,” Mother says. “The one I finished yesterday morning, just before they announced the transport. It may have been my best yet.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Mother shakes her head and looks down at her lap. “Hard to say. But sometimes . . . sometimes the bears—it never happens with anything else I make—but sometimes . . . with the bears, I can almost feel them coming to life. Or no, not exactly that, but I can tell how a little girl or a boy will love them, someday. Marietta, do you remember the doll you had, when you were little?”
“Alexandra,” Marietta says softly, and actually smiles.
“How much you loved her,” Mother says.
“I’d sit and brush her hair for hours.”
“That is what I think about sometimes when I’m making a bear. When I used to make them. That someday a child will talk to it, will share its pillow with the bear each night. Will love it.”
“A child with a Nazi for a father,” Marietta says. Mother nods her head slightly and rubs her eyes.
There’s a noise from below. Maybe dogs barking. Maybe yelling. It comes through the floor and straight into my body, making me stand up, almost like an electric jolt. I walk over to the wall with two small windows, but when I get up on my tiptoes and look out, there’s nothing to see. The windows must be facing the wrong direction, because there’s nothing more than an empty street below. It’s still light out, but I can tell it won’t be for long.
“Misha,” Mother calls out to me. I go back and sit down.
“So what did Richter do with the bear?” Marietta asks.
“Held it. Squeezed it. Turned it upside down. Inspected it the way only an SS officer would. Like he was looking at a radio or a rifle.” Mother uncrosses and recrosses her legs. “Then he nodded his head and looked me up and down, so I lowered my head, of course. But I heard Mr. Spier say, ‘This woman, she made that teddy bear. She makes all of them. And she’s been placed on the next transport.’ ”
“I thought you make fake flowers, too,” I say.
“They call them ‘artificial flowers,’ Misha,” Mother says. “And I do make them. Or rather, I used to. Because lately, only teddy bears, all day long.”
“So what then?” Marietta asks.
“Yes, well, Richter finally spoke. ‘Only her?’ he asked Mr. Spier. So Mr. Spier told him, ‘Occasionally someone else will help her, but it’s mostly just her. And she is the best. By far.’ ”
“Really?” I ask. “Are you?”
“I’m not bad,” Mother says, and even smiles for a split second. “But Richter, he merely stood there, still holding the teddy bear.”
“A Nazi with a teddy bear,” Marietta says, shaking her head.
“So then Mr. Spier said, ‘If she goes on the transport, we will not be able to complete your order, at least not with the kind of bears you were planning on giving to your daughters.’ ”
“Then what?” Marietta asks. But Mother doesn’t say anything, because suddenly there are noises from below again. Only louder this time. Screaming and shouting and dogs barking. Plus something else that’s hard to figure out. Whatever it all is, it’s making the floor vibrate. Probably the sound of fifteen hundred sad and frightened people standing up and heading toward the train. Mother grabs my hand and I let her, squeezing back hard myself. I close my eyes and wait for the floor to stop moving.
“Then what?” Marietta asks again a few minutes later.
“Yes. Well, Richter stood there for a moment or two in silence.” Mother swallows and her chest expands. “I tried to do nothing, because I was certain anything I would do or say would be liable to anger him. I sat with my head lowered, sneaking glances up at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Eventually he said, to Mr. Spier, not to me, he said, ‘Okay.’ ”
“Okay?” I say. “Okay what?”
“Exactly,” Mother says just as the sound of dogs barking comes loudly through the floor, like they’re directly below us. One of the other kids in our room, a boy I think, starts crying.
“So what happened?” Marietta whispers for some reason.
“Then Mr. Spier said to him, ‘But she has two children. If they go, she’ll go with them.’ Richter handed the bear back to Mr. Spier and crossed his arms, and then I saw him looking at me, so I quickly looked down again. Then, finally, he said, ‘Okay, those two as well, but no one else.’ And before I could say a word, Mr. Spier led him away into his tiny office.”
Mother looks down at her right knee for a while, like she forgot she was in the middle of telling us a story.
“So,” I finally say, “so what happened after they came out of his office?”
Mother doesn’t answer right away. “Richter,” she says slowly, “he left the workshop. Immediately. He never even looked at me again. Instead, Mr. Spier came over and handed this to me.” Mother raises the paper a bit. She finally lets me take it from her. One end of the tiny scroll is wrinkled and dented from how tightly she’s been holding it.
Though there’s barely any light in here at this point, I hold the incredibly thin paper up close to my eyes until I can make out the letters. All it says is:
1384 Cc 977 Gruenbaum Margarete
1385 Cc 978 " Michael
1386 Cc 979 " Marietta
are excused from the Transport Eq
12.10.1944 Transport Department
And some signature, Richter’s probably.
“So then why are we up here?” Marietta asks. “Why didn’t they just let us go? It says we’re excused. Mother, it says we’re excused. What are we doing here?”
But Mother just shakes her head.
* * *
I can’t sit still anymore, so I get up and walk around the room, even though there’s nothing to see or do anywhere. After a minute or so I walk over to the door and put my ear against it. Nothing. At least at first. But then I hear some clicking, maybe from the stairs, yes it must be from the stairs, because I can hear it getting louder and closer. Then a door opens somewhere down the hall, and a deep voice shouts something.
“What’s he saying?” Mother asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. He shouts something again, followed by dogs barking, and now the boy in our room starts crying.
“Shh!” Marietta says to the woman holding him. “You have to shut him up.” The woman puts her hand over the boy’s mouth and rocks him like he’s a much younger kid. For a second he’s quiet, and I push my ear against the door trying to figure out what’s being screamed.
“Fifty!” the voice says, much louder and much clearer this time. “Fifty more!”
Mother’s hand goes up to her mouth. Suddenly all kinds of horrible noises from down the hall begin pouring into our room. Voices, screaming, and dogs barking viciously. I hurry back to Mother and grab her arm, waiting for the dogs to stop. The boy starts in with his crying again. Mother puts her arm around me and grabs Marietta’s hand with her other hand. She squeezes me much too tightly.
“All of you!” the voice screams, with the dogs barking a split second after he finishes screaming.
“No!” a woman shouts, completely terrified. “No, no, no! Please!” Again and again she shouts this, though after a while it’s more a cry than a bunch of words.
I break free of Mother’s grip and run back to the door. “Misha!” she shouts at me in a kind of whisper. But I can’t help it. I grab hold of the doorknob and press my ear against the door.
“You!” the same voice orders. “Now!”
Then more vicious barking and crying and begging. And walking. People from that first room must be walking down the stairs. Someone keeps screaming and begging “No, no, no,” over and over and over, the dogs answering with their terrifying barks. And then a name, I think, maybe “Gerta,” echoing loudly.
Five seconds later the door slams, and then it’s completely quiet again, like none of that just happened.
My left hand hurts, and it takes me a few seconds to convince myself to let go of the doorknob. Even then, I can’t get the rest of my body to move, so I just stand there, trying not to think at all.
Then, just as I realize I never heard the clicks going down the stairs, I hear them, growing closer. A bunch of clicks. That man’s boots and maybe the nails of those dogs, too. I swear I can feel all that clicking as it runs along the floor and up through this door. It’s like they’re walking along the edge of my ear. Then another door opens.
“Twenty-one! Get up! Move!”
And now I want to get away from the door, but something won’t let me, even though I can feel my body shaking.
“Not him, not him!” a woman shouts, begging.
A dog’s bark explodes and someone shrieks, bitten probably. The hall fills with children crying and a woman screaming. Their voices are so powerful and so terrified, I feel like I’m hearing them through my skin, like they’re cutting straight into me.
A man yells, “Let go of him now!” And then loud footsteps and a deep, hard thud, like a body hitting the wall between our rooms. For a second the screaming stops, only to start up again even louder. Layers and layers of screaming, all of it making my entire body tremble.
“Over there, all of you!” a man shouts above the screaming and the barks of the dogs cutting through the air.
All of you. Does that mean he’s taking everyone from that room? And if it does, then our room is next, because he’s definitely just down the hall. He’s definitely in the room right by ours. And so if he needs any more, our room is next! He’ll click down the hall and swing our door open, the dogs growling and snapping at us. He’ll say “thirteen” and that will mean all of us. And we’ll beg like those other people begged, but it won’t matter, because they don’t care about begging, they don’t care about anything, because if they’re fine stuffing one hundred people into a boxcar with no seats and no windows, why would they care at all about people begging?
Because people who stuff other people into train cars, they don’t care about any of the things you’re supposed to care about. The only things they care about are their teddy bears and their numbers, and so if they need all of us, they take all of us. They’ll take every last one of us. And if that’s all they care about, then who knows what the slanting postcard really meant. Maybe it is really, really bad wherever the transport goes. Maybe it’s the worst place ever, and so maybe there’s a reason why that’s the last postcard Aunt Louise sent. And maybe we’re about to find out why.
The shrieking and barking and fighting continue pouring in from the next room, but somehow I pull myself away from the door and rush over to Mother. I bury my head into her stomach. She holds me tight, but it doesn’t really help, because I can feel how every muscle in her body is tensed, waiting for the clicks and the barks and a number that is much too large for our practically empty room to be screamed from the doorway. I feel Marietta hug me from behind, trying to reach out for Mother, too. Marietta is crying, making a horrible sound that causes the eight-year-old Marietta to appear in my head.
I don’t want Louise to be right. I don’t want slanting down to mean what Mother said it means. I don’t want the door to open and the dogs to put me on that train. I don’t want to sit on bare floors waiting for something horrible to happen. I don’t want to be here anymore, to be a helpless prisoner who can only hope for there to be no more numbers. I push my head farther into Mother’s stomach, asking it to make all this go away, asking it to make the last five years go away, begging for that train to pull away without us on it, begging for all trains everywhere to disappear forever.
And then, suddenly, silence. Just the screaming and barking and crying still echoing in my head.
I pull my head away from Mother to make sure. And then I hear it, again. The clicking, only this time it’s definitely going away from us, that man and those dogs, clicking down the stairs, until it’s completely quiet. I’ve never heard such silence before in my whole entire life.
We sit tightly together, the three of us, in complete darkness. I have no idea how much time is passing. Sometimes it feels like hours, but then I notice Marietta’s breath, and I realize that maybe it’s only been a few minutes. If I bend my head just right, I can hear something coming through the windows. Nothing specific, just some kind of dull rumble, which gets louder and then quieter again. Sometimes a very loud shout breaks through, but the actual words get lost.
Is the clicking going to return? And if it does, will it reach our door this time? What if the clicking opens our door and screams “Six,” then what happens then? Will we have to fight to see who goes and who stays? Because there’s nowhere to hide here at all, we’re just in the middle of the floor. And what if it’s one of the guards from before, the one who told Mother he can read? What if he was insulted and remembers that? Will he get to our room and choose us? Will he come looking for us? Will he grab the paper from Mother and tear it up into pieces, the dogs showing their teeth and snapping at us until he drags us all away?
Or will he take just Mother or Marietta.
Or just me?
My ears stretch out toward the door, like giant antennae, trying to detect those boots clicking up the stairs, while my brain tries to guess what number he’ll shout when he opens our door next. I might be praying, even though I don’t think I ever understood what praying is. But I’m asking, begging for something.
Please, don’t let them come and take us.
Please, anything but that clicking.
Please, just silence.
But then I hear something. Only it’s not clicking or barking or horrified people screaming. Instead, it’s the sound of something squeaking and screeching. Metal grinding against metal. It lasts for maybe a minute or two, and then it’s gone. And then absolute silence. Nothing but the sound of our exhausted breathing filling the room.
The train, it’s gone.
* * *
“Come,” Mother says some time later.
I may have been sleeping, facedown on the floor. I think I hear her standing up, but I’m not certain. The room is pitch-black. I get up and hear Marietta doing the same. We walk toward the door, and it takes a while, but eventually I find the knob and turn it. There’s a very dim glow in the hallway, coming from the stairwell I think, so we walk toward it, followed by the others who were waiting with us. When we get to the next room, we stop, and Mother opens the door.
“Hello?” Mother whispers. “Hello?”
“Yes?” someone says, barely louder than a whisper.
“The train, it departed,” Mother says. “It’s gone.”
Slowly about ten people come out from the room, everyone clutching someone else. Even in the dim light I can barely stand to see the looks on their faces. They look like ghosts, or people who spent the last few hours with ghosts.
We walk down the hallway, not even bothering to check the first room. When we get to the stairwell, we pause briefly and then go down carefully. For a few seconds we pause at the door separating us from the main assembly room. Mother turns the knob and opens the door just a bit, so little I can’t even see. Then she opens it wide.
The massive assembly room, lit dimly by a single bulb someone has left on, is completely deserted.
Mother reaches up to her neck, rips off the number, and tears it to pieces. She holds the small scraps in her hand for a moment, and then, I swear, she stuffs them into her mouth and begins chewing. We all do the same. The paper tastes a little bit sweet. And then, spitting out bits of damp paper as we go, we walk back to the Dresden Barracks.
We sigh. We managed to survive another day, thanks to Mother’s persistence. And thanks to a stroke of good luck—by the time we arrived on the second floor of the assembly area, there was no space left in the first two rooms next to the stairway.
For some reason, even though it’s late, I’m sure no one will bother to stop us, maybe because our path crosses right by Mother’s workshop, where she’ll go tomorrow morning to continue making more adorable teddy bears for the sons and daughters of the SS.