Page 20 of The Nanny Outside the Gates

FOURTEEN

GAVRIEL

The fog is dense, like layers of smoke weaving between the group of us waiting to use the latrine.

Half of us look like ghosts, but not the man vomiting on the other side of me.

I clench my eyes shut and inhale through my mouth, protecting my stomach from convulsing.

But the air is so hot and stale, the sour and sulfuric acidity of bile doesn’t budge.

It sticks, like my clothes to my skin, the dirt and sweat an adhesive.

The wait is going on for too long this morning, and we’ll risk losing our privilege of using the latrine altogether if it takes too much longer.

The quaking gong will let us know. A ray of light bleeds over the horizon, slicing through the fog, illuminating my right arm and the puddle of vomit within sight.

I’ve never wished away sunlight until right this very moment.

The walls of the latrine rattle, followed by a succession of thuds. A guard storms between the group, pushing us out of his way to get inside. He almost stepped in the puddle. What a shame.

Shouting, cursing, more thuds, and a gunshot.

Then another gunshot. This action plays on repeat daily. Why bother shouting if you’re just going to kill them? Save your breath .

I keep my focus sealed on the sparse patch of grass beneath my feet, not acknowledging what’s happening on the other side of the wall. If I look like I care, I’ll be noticed. If I’m noticed, God only knows what comes next.

Adam nudges his shoulder into mine. “You know I saw that girl—the nanny—in the attic with you yesterday. Even all the way down in the yard, I could see the way you were looking at her,” he says causally, as if we aren’t in the vicinity of where two people were just shot by a guard, and as if me being caught talking to Halina would be acceptable if a kapo or any of the Sch?fers were to have seen us.

I need to be more careful.

She needs to be more careful.

All we were doing is talking, but it doesn’t matter. I shake my head. “Not now.”

I would think the line would have started moving again, but no such luck.

The gong is going to ring at any moment and all I can think about is the thought of losing control of my bladder.

The ache weighing on the lower half of my body is a type of pain I never could have imagined before being sent here.

I never thought I would be in a situation where someone dictated when I use the toilet, never mind telling me—us—we’re allowed to go twice in a day.

“El malei rachamim…” the man behind chants a soft prayer in Hebrew for the dead, his words rising and falling like lapping waters. “Shehalach l’olamo…” A quiet sob interrupts the prayer, the man gasping for breaths between each release. “…b’shalom al mishkavo…”

The sound of his broken voice chokes me, making me wonder what his story is—who he’s trying so desperately to stay alive for, like I am for my family.

The line finally moves, and I step to the side to let the older gentleman go first. I place my hand on his back as he passes, just a small gesture so he knows he’s not alone.

Somehow, I managed to make it through the latrine before the gong screamed its command—our notice to line up at the labor barracks.

The six of us who work in the SS houses reconnect on the walk toward the front gates.

In silence, we pass rows of wooden barracks and bodies lying astray.

The crunch of our feet over the wet dirt grows louder every day as each of our sets of legs become heavier, despite our weight loss from starving.

We pass a line of newcomers, and today, I can’t bear to look at them.

The guilt of not warning them of what’s ahead becomes a burden that never subsides.

“So…” Adam says as we near the labor barracks.

“So, what?”

“Do you think the nanny is the long-awaited love of your life?” Adam presses.

“Her name is Halina and quit talking about her.”

“That’s a nice name,” he says, as if checking another box.

“She’s not the love of my life. I met her two weeks ago. There’s no such thing. Trust me, I’d know.”

Adam drops his hand on my shoulder. “You said you didn’t have a girl or wife back home,” he follows. “So how would you know?”

“I don’t have a girl or a wife back home. I don’t even have a home. There was someone once back when I had a home.”

“What happened?” Adam asks, as if he’s already regretting the question.

“We had been planning for a future together until her father joined the Polish Gestapo. She didn’t even give me a reason why she could never see or speak to me again.

She disappeared. I found out about her father after the fact and figured out the rest on my own.

I thought I knew her. I thought I loved her. I was just a fool.”

“We all get fooled, brother. I think most of us learn after the first time. Unless you’re like me…then it takes three or four. But maybe the next woman I meet won’t crush my soul. There’s still hope for us.”

Adam and his optimism…I didn’t think I’d become reliant on it, but it’s growing on me.

“Gavriel, all I know is, she’s a beautiful woman, and some might say a bit feisty with the way she snuck food up to us last week,” he says with a heartwarming sigh. “So, if you aren’t interested in her, I could use a distraction—maybe one that won’t break me.”

Adam’s talking as if he can march right up to the attic and sweep Halina off her feet and carry her away into the sunset. We’re prisoners. We’re not even supposed to be speaking to her. But really, I’d fight him for her.

“Neither of us need a distraction. That’s how we’d end up dead by nightfall, isn’t it?”

The loneliness is dark here. It eats at all of us, gnawing like a parasite until it takes over our every waking thought.

This life we’re living isn’t a theatrical production with a predictable ending.

It’s real, and there is death. Hope is like a buried treasure that nobody here has the strength to dig up, and anything good just dangles in front of us like a trap.

“We only feel like we’re dying today, brother. But it’s so we can survive another day.”

“We will.” I don’t say what’s running through my mind. It’s not fair of me to keep reminding him that it seems as if death is chasing us.

I still remember the night Adam pulled me up from the ground after a kapo nearly broke my nose for taking fifteen seconds too long at the toilets.

It was my third night in Auschwitz and the man left me bleeding in the snow between the latrine and our block.

I couldn’t see straight. Everything was a blur, but Adam was there.

I heard his voice, telling me I’d won the boxing championship.

He draped his coat over mine and helped me to my feet.

It took me a minute to understand his joke.

I must have looked like I had been in a boxing ring. I doubt I looked like I won, though.

I never asked him why he helped me that night, and he never told me it was so I could survive another day. We just became immediate friends. Brothers in a way.

The only easy part about being in Auschwitz is knowing that I was the only one of my family sent here.

I tell myself that the rest of them have been sent somewhere less brutal, making their chances of survival much greater.

Maybe it’s just a lie I knowingly tell myself.

A year ago, I remember telling my younger brothers, Jozek and Natan, that no one would take us down.

I wouldn’t let them. I would outsmart any one of those German soldiers.

I believed those words. I made them believe those words too.

Now, I hope they forget about that conversation, because I was wrong.

If it was just two of us in a room, me and a German soldier… only one of us would have a rifle.

Adam and I step into a growing row of others, rain trickling overhead, the hint of sunlight breaking through the clouds gone.

“A moment of happiness isn’t a crime. You’re still allowed to feel what you want to feel,” Adam utters, keeping his voice down as the kapos pace in front of us like bloodhounds.

I’m drenched by the time I make my way up to the attic of the Sch?fers’ house.

My boots are coated in heavy mud and the rain is plunking against the tarp like falling marbles.

I turn into the alcove, a hidden space I’ve built into the framed beams, and grab the gas lamp used on low-lit days like today.

Before I can move again, frantic steps draw my attention to the open doorway, wondering who is rushing up here.

Halina bursts by the expansion and into her room, not pausing before she reaches to her side, yanking the zipper of her dress down.

The black fabric slips to ground exposing her porcelain skin and a figure that steals my breath.

I can’t…I can’t look away.

Where is my head? I spin around, my rapid breaths suffocating me. I shouldn’t have been watching. I should have made a sound, so she knew I was there. She should have closed the door…

“Halina, I’m sure you can find something under the bed in the attic. Surely the last nanny left something behind, or perhaps the one before that,” Halina mutters, mimicking Frau Sch?fer in a curt tone. “That woman doesn’t have a shred of compassion left in her veins.”

I nudge a wooden plank among the pile of others, just to make my presence known.

She gasps and spins around, grabs the dress from the floor, and clutches it against her chest. “Oh my—you could have said something,” she breathes, her cheeks crimson. “I didn’t know you were—never mind. Of course you’re up here.”

I peer toward the open door where she stands half-hidden, her shoulders bare, ribbons of golden hair, loose from her braid, fluttering over her silky skin—beautiful.

“You could have closed the—never mind…Is everything all right?”

She eyes me narrowly. “What do you think?” Her response is raw, but by the look of it, justified.