The Bake & Bagel was closed up tight, dark within except for the lights in the bakery case. Geno went down the service alley and around the back of the building. The basement transom windows were lit up, the light slicing through the last hours before dawn. A beacon to a safe place, a warm cave of flour, water and yeast. Geno used the keys Stav gave him to open the back door.
“Micah?” he called, with an undertone of Dad?
“Down here, corasón,” Micah called back, like a father.
Geno went down the rough wooden steps into the heart of the shop. The belly and soul.
The bread basket, Geno thought.
Big and floury, Micah smiled at him, but said nothing. Geno sat on a flour sack, watching the rotating dance of the mixer’s wire hook. The shifting patterns of looped dough, like taffy, separating and combining. Stretching and condensing.
The Andrews’ Sisters sang Apple Blossom Time.
“What happened after eight months?” Geno asked.
“Schultze left,” Micah said. “He must’ve been transferred. Who knows. But once he was gone, I became Lazar Nadelman’s pipel.”
“The mean prick? The kapo?”
Micah nodded. “But I didn’t take the role willingly.”
“He raped you.”
The old man went on nodding. “Either him or his underlings. I think he got more pleasure handing me out like a little reward.”
Like a present, Geno thought.
“Never in private though,” Micah said, shaking salt from the stainless steel bowl. “Whether him or one of his henchmen, it was always a show. He’d beat my ass bloody in front of the barracks or watch someone else do it. Then he’d have his way. Or make a spectacle of picking whose turn it was. Even saying what could or couldn’t be done to me. That’s what really got him off. Controlling the whole business. Keeping it unpredictable. No one would touch me for a week, then I’d get beaten up and fucked four nights in a row. Afterward, Nadelman would feed me butter and give me an extra blanket. Let me sleep through roll call. Two or three days of peace, relatively speaking. Then he’d haul me into the latrine block and make me blow all his buddies. And that would be all I had to eat until his mood changed again.”
Wincing, Geno looked away, swallowing hard against a remembered taste. “How did you endure it?”
“You tell me.”
For a long moment, the boy and the man looked in one another’s eyes.
“You made it happen to someone else,” Geno said.
“You speak as one who knows, habibi.”
To the rhythmic whine and chug of the mixers and the slower melodies of wartime, Geno told his story. He spared no detail, telling things he hadn’t even told Stef.
Micah listened. His black eyebrows pulled low. A muscle flickered in his jaw as his chin gave a single nod. A grunt of agreement in his chest. A hum of understanding. When Geno was done, Micah snapped off the mixer. He crouched at a low cabinet and brought out a liquor bottle and two shot glasses.
“You know ouzo?” he asked.
“I know what it is. I’ve never had it.”
Micah poured two shots and handed one over. Geno sniffed at it. Clear licorice. Like a winter night in the suburbs.
“Na ziseis,” Micah said. “May you live.”
“L’chaim,” Geno said, and they threw back the shots. The ouzo burned like sweet fire down Geno’s throat and sank fingers into his tired muscles. Micah poured them another then capped the bottle and put it away.
“When did you get moved to Belsen?” Geno asked.
“January of forty-five. The Reds were advancing and the Nazis started blowing up the crematoria and the barracks. Evacuating the camp and force-marching us west. The march killed thousands but in a way, it freed me. All the ranks and hierarchies broke down. I was able to get far away from Nadelman and blend into another section of the walking dead. That’s where I met my wife. She’d been in Mengele’s special compound. Her and her twin sister. He was fascinated with twins. But I don’t have to tell you this.”
“Did her sister make it out?” Geno asked, sipping slower this time.
“No. I didn’t think Lilia was long for the world, either. We got to Belsen and I lost track of her. I was sure she’d never make it. But, as you said, it was unfortunate and not my concern. My only concern was survival.”
“I don’t know how anyone survived. I can’t get my mind wrapped around it.”
“Habibi,” Micah said, “in the camp, we were treated as less than human. Sub-human. When you’re in that situation, you have two means to survive. By enhancing your humanity or suppressing it. Neither is good, nor bad. Neither guarantees survival. You make a choice and take your chance. I chose to suppress humanity. During the time at Auschwitz and then at Belsen, I was Pipel Schönling. I made it my name. Everything happened to him, not Micah.”
“What happened to Nadelman?”
“When the British army came in April, they kept a certain degree of order. But they also turned a blind eye to a certain degree of justice.” Micah kicked back the last of his ouzo. “We beat the shit out of the guards and the kapos.”
“No way,” Geno said, a little bit of relish in the words.
“We threw them out windows. Strung them up on the barbed wire. Pulled their boots on our bare feet to kick them in the face. One day, someone pulled me out into the yard. They had Lazar Nadelman stripped naked and tied to a post. I was handed a knife and told to cut off his cock and we’d eat it for dinner.
“I looked him in the eye while I tested the edge of my knife in front of him. I was drunk on revenge and power. I was hard with it, habibi. I relished it like a lover. I said to him, ‘I’d cut it off if only I could find it, Lazar. It won’t be enough for a meal. Maybe it will suit as garnish.’
“I got right up in this face, beating his balls around with the flat of the blade. ‘Think it bothered me when you fucked me, Lazar?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t even feel it. I shit bigger than your cock.’”
“Then what?” Geno said, barely breathing.
Micah’s gaze went far away. “I wanted to do it,” he said. “My blood was up, my anger was high, I could’ve done it and gotten away with it. I could’ve cut off his cock and carried it around with me as a trophy the rest of my days. But maybe the little bit of food I had in my belly brought my old self back to me. Something in me was wiser and knew it was time to become human again. Become Micah Kalo again.”
“You did nothing to him?”
“Well.” Micah’s eyes came back to the present. “I decided I’d do nothing, but I didn’t let Nadelman know my decision right away. I let him think about it a good long time while he was tied up naked in the yard. And maybe I scratched him a little.”
“A little?”
“After that day, I was known around Belsen as the Mohel. Everyone asked Nadelman how he was recovering from his second bris. The prick never came near me again.” Micah sighed then. “But there’s more to this story, habibi. Because humanity is slower to regain than lose.”
He clapped his hands together and walked through the cloud of flour dust. He turned a white bucket over and sat on it, facing Geno. “I worked translating for the British until Berlin fell in May. Then a group of us, mostly Hungarians and Poles, started making our way east. Two women were in the group and to my shock, Lilia was one of them. She was bones, corasón. All bones and big eyes and rotted teeth. A womb burned out with chemicals. Her precious sister nothing but ashes in Poland. Yet walking along, she spoke of her family’s restaurant in Budapest. Of a little bag of diamonds and gold a Christian family buried in their yard, waiting for the end of the war. She was going home with a little piece of hope. Then we were camping along the side of the road one night, and a group of Red Army soldiers found us. They held all the men at gunpoint and took turns with the women.”
Geno felt his eyebrows pull low. “But they were on your side. The Russians were fighting with the allies by then.”
“Presiado, the Russian men were insane with revenge and bloodlust. They conquered the Germans and felt everything they found in the land was rightfully theirs. Everything. They killed it, burned it, robbed it and raped it and felt no shame.”
Geno remembered the rumpled, white-haired woman who served him matzo brei and felt sick.
“We started east again but Lilia didn’t talk about hope or dreams or diamonds anymore. Just near the Hungarian border, another band of Russian soldiers found us. They took Lilia off the road into the woods. This time, habibi, I didn’t do nothing. I guess my knife spared Nadelman because it had a much bigger job.”
“How many were there?”
“Four. I cut two throats. The third I stabbed in the gut. The last I stabbed up the ass and when he screamed and fell over, I took the shit-coated blade and cut his cock off.”
Geno stared, his mouth open as he took in the most heroic yet psychotic thing he’d ever heard. Thinking, Dude, in all my fucked-up and twisted drawings, I never cut it off.
Micah’s head was shaking. “Thing is, habibi? Revenge isn’t all that sweet. I’m not a terribly religious man. It was another luxury I left behind in Greece. But I know one day, God will want to have a little chat with me about those four men. And I’m not looking forward to it.”
Christ, Geno thought, and I thought being in the principal’s office after cheating on a test was bad. “What do you think he’ll say?”
Micah rested his elbows on his knees and his floury palms opened to the ceiling. “I’m hoping when I’m judged, nineteen forty-two to nineteen forty-six won’t be entered into the record. I wasn’t alive then. I wasn’t human. I wasn’t on the record. I hope it’s the things I’ve done since that count. I’ve tried to live a good life. Give more than I take. I haven’t been perfect at it. When I found out Stavi’s husband was abusing her, I turned back into my wartime self.”
Geno’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“He beat her up and she miscarried my only grandchild. Right upstairs by the ovens. It was a boy and she was going to call him Sam.” Micah got up and walked over to the wall by the mixers, eyebrows furrowed as his fingertips moved in a small circle. “It’s been patched. You can’t see it unless you know what to look for, but I put her husband’s head into the wall here. Then I broke his arm with the dough hook. Like I said, humanity is quickly lost, slower to get back.”
He came back to sit on the overturned bucket again. On the radio, Dinah Shore was singing “What’ll I Do?” Geno reached to touch the numbers on Micah’s forearm and asked, “How many people know about what happened to you?”
“Not many.” A tiny shiver went across Micah’s shoulders and his hands curled into fists. “I used to be more willing to tell. In the years right after the war. But many people thought since I went willingly with Schultze, what happened with Nadelman and his gang wasn’t much different. Wasn’t so bad. Possibly I even deserved it. Or encouraged it.” His hands slowly opened. “After a while, I figured they were right. So I stopped telling.” The last words were swallowed up, his normally melodic voice tight and thin, worn down to dust.
“No,” Geno said. “No, they were wrong. They lied to you.”
The wrath of Caan filled his veins. He couldn’t possibly have lifted Micah up onto his shoulder. Instead he tried to reach inside the old man, find the young boy who lived on spit and chances and pick him up. Hold him tight and tell him the truth.
“I’m telling you. I speak as one who knows. I say what happened with both Schultze and Nadelman was rape. And you didn’t deserve it.”
He crossed his wrists and laid his palms against Micah’s. Their fingers folded down and they sat in silence. Elbows on knees, hands clasped as brothers and war mates.
“I still have so much anger in my heart,” Geno said. “I think given the chance, I’d shoot Anthony Fox in the head and enjoy it.”
“You lived through your own Auschwitz,” Micah said. “Revenge is a luxury you can leave behind, habibi. Don’t lose your humanity. You’re too fine a boy to waste time getting it back.”
The tears dripped out of his Geno’s eyes and nose. Micah reached and brushed them away.
Geno closed his eyes at the human touch.
A survivor’s touch.
A father’s touch.
“You’re too fine a boy,” Micah said, followed by a long flow of Ladino. Geno couldn’t understand all the words, but the tone around the endearments was clear.
Poor boy. You poor sweet boy.
My poor darling, precious boy.
You are strong and kind and humane and you are the only one around here with a lick of…
Realizing common sense and humanity were the same thing, Geno tipped over and fell into Micah’s chest, burying his face in flour and muscle. He didn’t weep. He just went home.
Micah rocked him, a hand stroking Geno’s head. Inked numbers in his dusty skin. Strong arms and a stronger heart.
“Hijo querido,” he said. “You and I know what it’s really about.”