They put her in the sanatorium, supposedly to check that she was all right, but mostly because she was unnerving the other students. The teachers and staff had clearly decided to ignore whatever it was that had happened. Maybe it was easier than trying to deal with it, to admit that something unpleasant had occurred. Maybe they knew and didn’t care. It didn’t seem to matter.
Even to Sarah, who hadn’t gone to school, priorities seemed askew here. The discipline was violent, but the education seemed unimportant. The older girls seemed to be left to run things as they pleased. The Captain had once said that the whole Third Reich was like this, with no real structure or organization, just fear and jealousy and control and incompetence. If that was true, maybe there was a way to defeat it. Yet the school functioned, endured.
But the sanatorium bed was warm and the sheets were clean, so Sarah slept. For the most part, the dogs stayed away.
A compact, middle-aged nurse brought her meals, or rather dropped a tray in front of her with a tutting noise. She took Sarah’s temperature with a thermometer thrust so vehemently that it made her tongue hurt, but the nurse said nothing. In fact the woman didn’t even look her in the face, except once. The glance beneath the severe fringe was filled with such abhorrence that Sarah couldn’t meet her gaze. There was no clue what she had done to warrant so pitiless a response.
She had two other visitors.
The Mouse came and talked. The food. The lessons. The running. Dogs and kittens. Don’t visit me. Don’t talk to me, howled Sarah silently. Do not identify yourself with me. Leave. Me. Alone.
But instead Sarah sat and nodded, whispered and shrugged…and like a chink of sunshine through a shuttered window, Sarah could see light in the Mouse’s eyes. She had trouble remembering a time when she had been a cause of brightness in another human being. Had she ever been? While it was strange and claustrophobic after all this time alone, it was warming too, like cocoa on an icy day. Sarah wanted more of it.
As the Mouse wound a plait across Sarah’s head, she wittered away. “You know what everyone is saying? That Haller was sent to the Ice Queen and you passed every test, but Rahn hurt you anyway, so you made your eyes bleed on purpose, and she got scared and stopped! Imagine! What a tale. But I think they want to believe it.”
“Sent to the Ice Queen?” Sarah felt like she was part of a longer story that she hadn’t been told yet. “You talk like this has happened before.”
“Oh yes, I mean, there’s usually a girl picked to…be tested.”
“What happens to them?” Sarah felt a growing unease. “What happened to the last one?”
The light went out in the Mouse’s face and she looked down. “Some of them join Von Scharnhorst as a Youth Leader. They get all the best food and they pretty much stop going to classes. There was Kohlmeyer and—”
“What happened to the last test subject?” Sarah interrupted, touching her arm. It was cold.
“She… They’re not…considered…strong enough. Sometimes there’s an accident… Sometimes…” The Mouse trailed off.
Nothing was going to plan.
What plan? Keeping your head down? Staying quiet? Hiding in the shadows? No, this is how you finish, by going through the programme. You know where the edge is. You know what it is, therefore it cannot hurt you. Finish the move. Follow through. Don’t stop.
The second visitor left a sheet of Beethoven piano music on her lap as she slept.
Sarah did not sleep in the sanatorium again.
The window was ajar, just as it had been earlier. From inside came the smell of blood. Sarah crouched underneath it and glanced down the street. Clear.
She reached up and grasped the window sill. It was wet with blood. Fighting the feeling of disgust, she gripped the wood firmly and pulled herself up. When her eyes were level with the opening she stopped, holding herself a few centimetres from the floor. There was no one in the room, but the room was not empty. Perfect.
She elbowed the window open. The hinges squeaked and Sarah froze. Nothing. A shout, a cart, a motorcar, just distant noises of the city. She heaved herself up, swinging her legs between her arms, as she had a thousand times on the bars, careful not to touch the frame. She hopped down onto the floor, which was slick, and slid into the table. She only just kept her balance and had to stop again to listen. No sound, no movement in the doorway.
She looked down at the table and felt her stomach turn. Oh, grow up, dumme Schlampe. Her hands, tugging the sack from her coat, were already dripping red. She ignored the saliva gathering in her throat and began shovelling the greasy white, brown and red entrails into the makeshift bag.
“I can’t let you take that, Rapunzel.”
Sarah stopped for a second and then continued to quickly drag the meat towards her. “We’re hungry. I’m hungry.”
“You can’t take it.”
Sarah stopped and stared at the butcher. She pushed a strand of hair out of her face and left a bloody trail across her cheek. Her chin started to quiver. Damn it.
“We. Have. No. Food. No money. We are starving.” Blood splashed across her grubby socks and worn-out shoes.
“Well, you could take it, but I won’t let you eat it.” The butcher folded his arms, the blade resting on the vast chest and shoulder.
“What?” stammered Sarah, confusion overcoming her hunger.
“It’s tref. Sciatic nerve, veins, sinews, unporged hindquarters – I can’t let you eat it.”
“It’s not kosher?” Sarah laughed in disbelief. “Really? You think I give a damn that it’s unclean?”
The butcher looked at the floor and sighed. “No. But I do.”
“So you just throw it away?” Sarah slammed the sack onto the table.
“Well, we used to sell it to the goyim. We’re not allowed to do that any more. I haven’t the skill to porge the hindquarters properly, so…”
“So you throw it away,” Sarah said ruefully. “While people are going hungry.”
“It’s not the end of the world, Rapunzel. Not yet, anyway.” He gently lifted the dripping sack from the table. “Come. Come and eat with me.”
He sat Sarah on a stool among the hanging carcasses in the next room and reappeared a minute later with sausages.
Sarah attacked the kishke like a wolf.
The sausage was thick, fatty and still juicy even cold. Her sense of defeat evaporated as her teeth closed around it, tearing at the sweet, rubbery casing and letting the contents pop into her mouth. For a moment she forgot about her life, instead delighting in the dribble of grease that trickled onto her chin.
The butcher watched Sarah attacking the food. “Does your mother not feed you?”
Sarah swivelled her eyes towards him. Mutti. Waiting. Crying. Sleeping.
“Your mother feeds you too much,” she snarled, and went on eating. Her ingratitude stung her like a nettle. Between mouthfuls, she tried again. “She’s not well. But they won’t let her work anyway. There’s no money.”
“Your father?”
“Pure Aryan stock, so as long as no one knows he’s a race-defiler, he’ll be fine. Wherever he is. What about you?”
“Everyone needs the shochet because someone has to cut the meat properly. While there’s food for anyone, there’s food for me.” He paused, then shrugged. “I’m lucky.”
“How is anyone paying you?”
“What they can.” He reached out and offered the remains of his kishke to her. Sarah tried not to snatch it out of his hands, but she was holding it before the thought had fully formed. She hummed her thanks as she attacked it.
Sarah thought of nothing but food these days. At first her stomach had seemed to close up, as if she didn’t need to eat. Then, slowly, the life had seemed to drain out of her. Her limbs felt heavy and useless. She felt tired, an all-embracing fatigue that never went away. She got cross easily and found it hard to think, every idea lost to the buzzing of emptiness in the back of her head. It was easy to imagine her fragile body being drawn into the void inside, like bathwater through the plughole. Every morsel she found only seemed to make her hungrier, as though these repayments were only making the bank aware of how much she owed them. She dreamed of cakes, stews, soup and fruit, but the reality was so disappointing it was too much to bear. This sausage – so fatty, so beautiful – was a reminder of its own absence. Joy and misery cooked in the same pot, tasting of both and neither.
“Hey, slow down, Rapunzel. You’ll make yourself sick.” The butcher smiled as he stood up and walked out of the room.
Sarah revelled in the sensation of the oily meat sliding into her stomach. She rested her back against the wall. There weren’t very many carcasses hanging up given the size of room. How many men were supposed to be working here? With a pang, Sarah realized that the butcher’s apparent wealth was wafer-thin. The boycotts, the Jewish laws putting them out of work… How much meat could he sell to people who increasingly owned nothing?
Through the other doorway, Sarah spotted her sack by the window where she’d come in. It was clearly still full, the bottom now soaked in gore.
She looked at the window. She looked at the sack. She looked at the other door.
She hit the cobbles hard, the weight of the sack nearly pulling her over, but she accelerated and stayed on her feet. She tore down the road like the devil himself was at her heels.
She tired easily and once she was around the corner, she slowed to a lope. The sack was certainly heavy – how much had she loaded into it? She began to walk and slid the sack off her shoulder, feeling the gritty dampness through her dress. She stopped and opened it.
Inside was a perfect side of beef, already kashered in salt the traditional way.
She wasn’t sad, but the tears came anyway and washed the blood from her face.