From somewhere, Tosca found bubbles and Méret sank to her neck in foaming hot water in a bathroom on the first floor. Eyes closed, skin tingling. A warmth beyond dreams but not beyond desire seeping into her flesh.
Tosca came in and sat on the lavatory seat, took a packet of Lucky Strikes from her breast pocket.
“You want a cigarette? I thought you might like a cigarette.”
Méret just stared back.
Tosca took out a Zippo lighter and flicked a spark off the wheel.
“I don’t smoke,” she went on. “Most people do. Gregor does. I got him to hand ’em over, so if you . . .”
“I gave up. I gave up when they sent me here.”
“They didn’t have cigarettes?”
“Oh, yes, they had cigarettes.”
“Then why deny yourself?”
Méret sank beneath the bubbles, surfaced, and wiped the soap from her face. Tosca still sat on the banks of Jordan.
“When you were a child, in whatever country you were a child, did your mother have a drawer, or perhaps a box or a biscuit tin? Whatever it was, it would be near her sewing or perhaps in the kitchen, in the woman’s domain . . . and in this drawer, box, or tin she would save things that your father thought were useless and that he derided as eccentricity or folly or penny-pinching. She would save buttons that had come off shirts long since torn up for dusters, the elastic band with which the postman bundled the mail, the string that came off brown-paper parcels, the brown paper itself, an odd shoelace, a zipper from a skirt that no longer fitted, the stub end of a piece of sealing wax even though no one used sealing wax anymore, a blunt pair of scissors, a broken watch that someday someone might tease into ticking once more. To your father it was junk, to you a treasure trove to be tipped out, fondled, and tipped back. Was this not so? Of course it was. And your father was wrong and you were right. In Auschwitz, the contents of your mother’s biscuit tin were riches, because in Auschwitz everything became a commodity. There was nothing that could not be traded. You could sell butter with green mould on it. You could sell a piece of wurst as hard as bullets. You could sell sex. When could you not sell sex? But a cigarette cost more. You could use cigarettes like money. An egg? Put a price on an egg. Imagine how many fucks would buy you a cigarette. Imagine how many cigarettes would buy you an egg. I gave up. It was one less commodity to have to think about. It was one less craving, and in the absence of desire, one more freedom.”
Tosca said nothing to this, but then Méret never thought she would. She just put the whole pack on the side of the bath, flicked the lighter one last time to see it worked, and set it down next to the cigarettes.
Wrapped in a billowing white towel, she wiped at the film of steam across the mirror. She had not looked in a mirror since February the year before. She had caught sight of her own reflection in windows but had always turned away. She knew her hair was white but she’d never seen the full extent of it. She tilted her head this way and that. Her eyebrows were still black, and her eyes had that deathly sparkle that seemed to enhance the half-starved, but her skin was pale and papery. She turned away once more. Perhaps she could learn to live a life without a reflection, like a modern-day Nosferatu. There were bathroom scales on the floor but what would be the point?
Tosca had set out clean clothes for her—a new Russian infantry uniform, without insignia and only slightly too big—and before she dressed a doctor gave her a once-over in the main bedroom. A vaguely floral-patterned room—a large dressing-table with its triptych of mirrors and a scalloped valance—and a lingering odour of whatever Frau Commandant sprayed herself with to deter the grease and stench of death. A haven of clichéd femininity at the arsehole of the world.
“There will be no long-term effects,” the doctor said when he was done. “You will keep your teeth. The loose ones will probably firm up in a matter of weeks, and the brittleness and ridges in your fingernails will pass in about a year if you eat well. There’s nothing I can do about your hair. As far as I can tell your internal organs are fine. Again, if you eat well you may resume menstruation shortly. When was your last period?”
“August.”
“Then I doubt that you are barren.”
She’d never thought about this possibility. Now she did, it did not bother her.
In the kitchen, Tosca served an omelette with brown bread toast and butter. Méret had no idea whether this was lunch or breakfast.
“Where did you get them?”
“Out back. The commandant’s wife seems to have kept chickens as a hobby. When your comrades looted the house they took the chickens but forgot to look for eggs.”
“How many?”
“Three apiece.”
“Good Lord. A three-egg omelette. I don’t know whether I shall weep or choke.”
“Do you think that’s likely? Eat slow.”
She was eating slowly. She had eaten slowly for the best part of a year. She wished she could describe the sensation on her tongue to Tosca but she couldn’t. Egg was taste and texture, a plethora of taste and texture to someone who had grown used to all tastes being tainted by decay and most textures reduced to a greasy swill. Her internal organs were fine—she’d just been told that—her taste buds, too. The damage was to her vocabulary.
Tosca said, “I wish I could have got you some real coffee. But our rations don’t run to that, and if the Krauts had any then the guys who tossed this place got to it first.”
“They are welcome,” Méret replied.
“Yeah, ain’t they.”