He sighs gently against my ear. “At least I can dream about you when we aren’t together. Once you’re mine forever, our farm will follow.”
After the gong rattles through the block and everyone scatters to prepare themselves for a day’s worth of work, I slide down the side of the bunk and make my way over toward the window someone cracked last night. “Who mentioned the singer working for the SS?” I ask, keeping my voice low between the scuffles.
“Me,” a woman says, sliding off her bunk with hesitation, pain pinching at her eyes. “I’m Magda.”
“Ella,” I reply, waiting for her to say more.
I’ve seen this woman every day, but haven’t spoken to her. Our paths haven’t crossed until now. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve heard her speak until last night. She must be around Mama’s age, and it pains me to think how much harder this life is affecting her than me. Mama’s back was always hurting, her shoulders would have pinched nerves that would cause her headaches, her knees ached if she was standing too long in the kitchen, and the joints in her fingers swelled just from knitting. She would tell me there’s nothing fun about aging and to stay young for as long as possible.
“Do you mind if I ask you how you know about him?”
“Personally, I don’t know the man. A kapo, Evie, who works in the communication office with me transports messages between the SS buildings. She mentioned something about a new male singer the SS are torturing at their evening meetings and dinners.” We never found his name registered. But it’s his voice. I need to know.
Torturing. The word slices down my spine. “She said that?” I was under the impression that kapos don’t speak poorly of the SS. They’re typically loyal.
“Evie is one of the few good ones.”
“What do you mean?” I’m speaking quickly, knowing we’re running out of seconds before we need to hustle for roll call.
“A few of the kapos will help us if the price is right.”
“Price? Money? You pay her?” It’s like we’re living in two different places right now. I’m very sure no one here has any money.
“Not with money, with food rations,” the woman says, buttoning up her smock.
Without thinking of what else I would need to forfeit, I ask the burning question: “Do you think Evie would help me with something?”
The woman laughs through a breath. “With what?”
The other women are rushing past us in a hurry to make their way to roll call as we should be doing but I’m stuttering on the words stuck in my mouth. “I—I, well I think—I know the singer. We were torn away from each other in Warsaw. I love him and he loves me. I would do anything—truly anything in the world—to get a message to him.”
“Careful about who you express your desperation to here, Ella…” she tells me, her motherly tone grasping a hold of my attention. “What room do you work in?”
I swallow hard before responding, thinking before I speak after the last comment. “The log-room, cataloging incoming prisoners.”
She nods and glances past me toward the door we need to be walking out through. “I’ll tell you what… You find me the name of someone I know is here, find out what block they’re living in, and I’ll do what I can to convince the kapo to deliver a message for you so you can confirm whether the singer is who you think. Save up your rations, though.”
The woman pulls a scrap of paper and a pencil the size of my little finger with jagged lead out of her baggy sock. She scribbles out the name and hands me the paper. “Deal?”
“Yes, yes, of course, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says, her voice flat and unwavering, as if she has little faith that I’ll come through. I don’t have much faith that I will either, seeing as none of us have had much luck finding the names we’ve tried searching for so far.
I hurry to roll call, catching every single puddle on the way. The lines are already formed, and Francine is already making her way between us as I squeeze in between two women in the back row.
“Watch it,” the woman to my right says. “Just because you can’t get here on time, you think you can shove all of us?”
“Shh,” I plead, staring at her with dread. She grits her teeth and grinds her jaw from side to side.
“You’ll get us all in trouble if you show up late again,” she hisses.
“I won’t. I promise. I won’t.”
She curls forward with a deep, wheezing cough that won’t relent. Without Francine in sight yet, I place my hand on the woman’s back and try to calm her so she can catch her breath between coughs.
“Try to inhale through your nose,” I whisper.
She presses her lips together and shakes as she pulls air in through her nose, holding it for a moment before standing back upright. From the corner of her eye, she peers over at me and her chin trembles. She swallows hard and clenches her eyes. Blood and mucous dribble from her nose just as Francine turns down the next row. I nudge her and gesture to wipe her nose. She’d be sent right to the infirmary if Francine sees her like this. People don’t usually come back from there.
