The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail Read Free Book Online Page A

the main gate joined by other groups of weary women and a dozen armed guards. I thought I heard a violin amid the clatter of wooden shoes, and then the clash of symbols and the beat of a drum, but when I looked around there was nothing but mud, and the further we marched the fainter the noise grew. We walked for an hour along dirt roads and through fields until we reached a quarry. The guards formed a sentry around a huge pit and ordered prisoners with whips to stand at the lip of the hole.
    “
Los! Schnell
! Into the pit!” The guards raised their guns and fired into the air. I scratched my knee scrambling down the rock face but I didn’t cry – a prisoner with a whip was watching me, a smile on her lips. I wondered what they’d done to her to make her change sides.
    “They’ve dug our graves,” the woman next to me cried out. “We’re all going to die!”
    “Nonsense,” said Mother quickly. “We’re here to work.”
    Erika was paired with Mother and I helped a Polish girl with blistered ears.
    “I’ve carted rocks for two years and I’m still stronger than you,” she complained when, for the second time, I dropped a load of rocks. “You won’t last a week.”
    You think I want to be here?
I wanted to yell.
    Just beyond the quarry there was a forest of fir trees. Less than five minutes by foot, but it might as well have been ten miles. There was no escaping the quarry. There were a dozen guards with guns, and dogs circling the pit. If we tried to run, the block leader had warned, we’d be hunted down, and when we were found, ten of our bunkmates would be shot for our crime.
    We stopped for lunch when the sun was overhead. The cabbage soup was gritty but I licked the bowl clean. We dragged ourselves back to camp at nightfall. My scalp was burned, my feet were blistered and my arms felt like lead. When we neared the main gate I noticed the group quicken its pace. And then I heard music – the muffled beat of a drum and the clanging of cymbals, and that violin that had sung in my head. The sounds grew louder and more insistent as we approached the gate.
    “A band!” Mother was wide-eyed as we marched past the watchtower. Just inside the main gate stood a welcoming committee – a band of prisoners in white collars and blue skirts with violins tucked under their chins. They had sheet music and accordions, drums and cymbals. They were belting out a march. The prisoners forced their tired legs up and down in time to the hypnotic 4/4 beat. I missed my piano more than my bed, but this wasn’t music. This was grotesque.

    The months passed, and with them, the summer. I learned to block out the music and a lot else besides. I learned to keep very quiet and still when all I wanted to do was cry and scream and run. I learned that to care was weak, and brutality a virtue in this upside down world. I learned to hold a hand under my chin while eating bread so I didn’t waste the crumbs and to sleep holding my shoes and my cup so they wouldn’t be stolen. I learned to hang back in the food line because vegetables settled at the bottom of the pot. I learned that the fat get fed and the hungry stay hungry. I learned that political prisoners wore red triangles, homosexuals wore pink, and murderers boasted green – and the green triangles were the women you didn’t cross.
    I got used to the smell of the latrines and the hard beds and the endless rollcalls, but the gnawing hunger never eased. When the block leader was out of earshot, Erika and I would play games to trick our stomachs into thinking they were full. We’d plan sumptuous dinner parties and describe every dish in intricate detail, clutching our bellies and complaining because we were too full.
    The days were difficult but the nights were worse. In Debrecen I’d dreamed of performing in Paris. In Birkenau I dreamed of Papa. I knew my father would be okay. He’d been the finest watchmaker in Debrecen – and our block leader said there was work for those