Page 43 of The Nanny Outside the Gates

THIRTY-FIVE

GAVRIEL

No. Adam. You’re all right. You have to be. We’re in this together, remember?

I can’t move. As if I’m stuck inside a nightmare, one that burns through every limb of my body.

A click…then boom. The sound continues to float around me like a falling leaf, too soft for what it’s caused.

I can’t breathe in or out. I press my fists into my chest as if searching for my lungs. There’s no sound. Not really. Something inside of me tears like paper ripped down the center, jagged and destroyed. Unmendable.

He said we were getting out of here. I should have believed him.

He should have been right.

This isn’t real. It can’t be. We’ve made it so far.

He would have said we were close to the end.

I can’t go through this again. Losing my brothers, now Adam. I can’t?—

A boot to my ribs, sending me flying backward. “Get up!” Oskar shouts. “Get up, or you’re next! There will continue to be a next until we find the person responsible for the stolen items.”

He must think he looks like a hero to Sch?fer.

A Jew holding the Nazis’ prey hostage for the ease of his hunting.

An innocent man who had nothing but hope in everything he did.

Blood gushes out of the back of his head as I clamber to my feet, my knees weak, my hand throbbing, a cold sweat steaming from my skin within the unwavering summer heat.

“You and you, take the body,” Oskar says, pointing at me and Rueben. His words are muffled beneath the unrelenting ringing in my ears, but I understand what he’s said.

Rueben and Benson look the way I must look, empty with shock despite knowing there’s nothing shocking about this moment. I move to Adam’s head and scoop my hands beneath his arms, waiting for Rueben to have a hold of his feet. He hardly weighs enough to be considered a grown man.

Adam’s eyes are still open, holding on to the last second of realization that his life was ending.

Everything inside of me shatters as I remember conversations of what he planned to do with his life.

He spoke as if nothing could happen to him—nothing would happen to him.

It was as if he knew he would walk back out of those gates unscathed, but he was wrong.

Or, he was right, I suppose, but he’ll be brought back in through the gates so his remains can be burnt into disintegration, undoing his existence.

And for what? A threat to whoever is killed among us next?

“I wish we had survived this day together,” I whisper.

I know he didn’t do what they accused him of.

This is what they do when they’re looking for a reason to get rid of someone.

He shouldn’t be dead. I shouldn’t be carrying his lifeless body as the wound on my hand stretches with each step.

Warm blood seeps around the bandage at my thumb and all I can think is that I could be next. But I can’t let that happen.

Rueben’s eyes are filled with tears and his chin trembles as he sucks in his cheeks, likely biting the insides like I am.

“What is wrong with your hand?” Oskar shouts at me.

“Nothing,” I reply. I can prove it’s nothing by continuing to carry my friend back to Auschwitz despite the pain writhing through my hand and arm.

“Doesn’t look like nothing to me. Looks like your thumb has been gnawed off by a dog.” He can’t see my thumb, wrapped in the bloody bandage. I want to call him an idiot for suggesting I was bitten by a dog when I’ve been sawing all day.

“Where’d the bandage come from?” He’s a traitor of the worst kind; a man who helps kill the innocent to keep his own name off a list. I hope he lives a long life—long enough to remember the face of every person who he helped disappear.

“There were a few in the toolkit in the attic,” I say, sounding as if it shouldn’t come as a surprise even though I came up with this answer earlier in case questioned. Regardless, injuries are common in construction. He doesn’t need to know about the iodine or alcohol.

“It’s a nick from the saw. I’m fine.”

Oskar glares at me for a long moment, not with concern, but with judgment as if he’s filing this acknowledgement away for a later time.

“You’ll go to the infirmary when we return.

They’ll decide.” The silence that follows his statement can either be deadly or a mere escape from death. I don’t know which of the two.

The walk is a blur. The gates to Auschwitz are darker than night, and just as we cross the threshold into hell, Oskar yanks me out of the line and throws me to the ground, pain radiating through my arm upon impact.

The impact against my back knocks the wind out of my lungs and flickers of light flash in front of my eyes.

“Get up!” the scream bellows in German, the echo ringing between my ears.

A flash of Adam’s face with a bullet hole in his head is all I can see.

A friend who became as close as a person can get to a brother.

Gone without warning. Someone grabs my collar and drags me, nearly strangling the life out of me.

The backs of my boots catch on every rock and pit in the gravel.

I can’t talk. I can’t ask questions. I don’t know where they’re taking me. I just want air to breathe.

Is someone taking me to the infirmary? Or does this have something to do with Adam?

The decision seemed to be pre-planned. They needed someone to help carry Adam’s body back.

Now they’re going to get rid of me too. I did take food.

I did know Bea was missing, but I didn’t know where she was. I took a weapon too. I know too much.

It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do.

They don’t need a real reason here. They only need fear.

And right now, it’s clear they’re fearful of us becoming traitors like the ones of Treblinka.

I’ll never know why Adam was the spark that set them off, but by the dark entrance I’m being dragged into, I have a feeling I’m their next example.

A metal door opens. Then another. The temperature rises.

The air becomes wet, sticky, and reeks of death.

I can’t see anything around me or make out where I am.

It’s so dark. Finally, I’m back on my feet for less than a second before two hands shove against my ribcage, pushing me into a group of people.

Another metal door slams. This time in my face.

I can’t move. There are too many people around me.

“Don’t even try to sit,” someone grumbles. “You’ll be dead within the hour. Welcome to a new form of hell—the prison inside of the prison.”