What the Night Sings: Part I

They'd buy her little trinkets with the winnings from their after-school fights—flowers, chocolates—and kiss and flatter her to keep her from fussing too much.

Her voice got raspy and she used her little, growing cough as an excuse not to finish her thought.

The soldiers burst into the barracks, and I keep singing.

I don't feel the soldier's arms under me or the roughness of his uniform lapel on my cheek.

Several fall under the feet of frenzied crowds.

I see why: I am contagion.

And he will handle hundreds of us today, carry us to the tent, touch our skin and clothes, breathe our miasma.

He looks like a marionette, with glass eyes and a smile painted over his skin-wrapped skull.

I am staring at him, and his face morphs into abstract shapes, and I think, This is reality; everything is made of shapes; no one is human; language is shapes.

"Rausch," I say, the first word since I lost my voice on the day of liberation.

I never learned any prayers, so I wander away into the fields, beyond the gates and watchtowers, as far from the barracks and bodies as my atrophied muscles will carry me.

I am midway across a vast meadow, tall grass cutting my legs, before I realize I have nowhere to go.

Barbed wire edges this barren, infinite wilderness, just a line of stitching along a gray tea towel.

As though we could have fathomed the intricacies of the Nazi web: the reinvention of language, the animalization of human souls.

As though we could have fathomed the intricacies of the Nazi web: the reinvention of language, the animalization of human souls.

But long before, it had been codified into law, digested in the guts of children along with their biscuits and milk: we weren't humans, but infectious vermin.

They bring them on a little excursion through the corpse-woods, past the stinking mass graves, into the storage rooms where luggage molders unclaimed and shorn hair piles up in a corner, destined to be stuffed into mattresses and woven into cloth for SS uniforms.

The soldiers won't relent.

His mouth foams; he shakes her with all his own shock and indignation.

Some fool noticed this lunatic quality and gave her the task of "boosting morale" among us.

She takes her post at the door to the dining hall and greets each person with a saccharine "Good morning, good morning! How are we doing? It's a beautiful day to be alive! A little warm, a little cold, a little wet, a little dry—depends how you look at it, depends on your perspective! Make it a great day!"

I suppose there must be a way to be friendly and kind, to laugh heartily without making people want to throw you from a bridge.

I emerge back into the present to the shrieking of a woman chastising someone over the waste.

"Well, God gave you a gift to share with the world," he says, a bit sanctimoniously, which I think he realizes.

Everyone is overtaken by an intense desire to impose order.

Each piece of clothing is folded neatly, with reverence, especially the children's clothes, which have the most items and the fewest takers.

Maria used to call it her "market look," just understated enough to make her resemble a homemaker...but with panache.

She knew how to exude glamour even when buying groceries, and I am ready to be pretty again, myself.

Instead, my reflection is almost comical, with my sunken cheeks and bulging eyes, framed by this yellow-and-white halo. My teeth—God—huge, protruding from my jaw.

Maria doted on me.

I just assumed the war would end and, in a seamless path, I'd go to conservatory and become a famous diva, like her.

I just assumed the war would end and, in a seamless path, I'd go to conservatory and become a famous diva, like her.

I just assumed the war would end and, in a seamless path, I'd go to conservatory and become a famous diva, like her.

How utterly ludicrous those words seem now, perched like a cheap toy on the lip of a grave.

The flames just kiss the birches nearby and char the undersides of their limbs; ever after, the scars will curl under to protect the fissures left by the fire.

"I have a little affinity for butterflies." I shrug.

"Ah! So did my sister. They were always landing on her. Sometimes, if one was on her, I could get close enough to look at its eyes. They're like gems, you know, cut with facets."

Oh, the naïveté of those little-girl theories.

"Maybe it thought you were a flower," he says.
What a strange thing to say.
"Maybe," I answer with a jaded laugh. "A wilted, anemic flower."

"Maybe it thought you were a flower," he says.
What a strange thing to say.
"Maybe," I answer with a jaded laugh. "A wilted, anemic flower."