Day After Night by Anita Diamant

Author:Anita Diamant [Diamant, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical
ISBN: 9780743299848
Google: sHwdHN_SoNoC
Amazon: 0743299841
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2009-09-07T16:00:00+00:00

October 7, Sunday

Zorah had spent a sleepless night listening to the women around her toss and moan. Even the ones who usually slept like babies had twisted their sheets into knots. As dawn began to seep into the barrack, Zorah turned onto her back and for a moment felt as though she were drifting on still water, surprised and pleased by the buoyancy of her cot. Then someone brushed past, and she was back on dry land, with Shayndel crouched in the narrow space beside her, whispering into Esther’s ear.

Zorah waited until everyone was awake, pulling on clothes and shoes, before she got up and sat beside Esther. “What did she want?”

“She says she has to ask me some questions,” said Esther, fighting back frightened tears. “She says I must talk to her honestly and tell her the truth, but I know, I just know that they are going to take Jacob away from me. They will send me back to Poland and put him in an orphanage. Why don’t they just kill me here?”

“Leave it to me.”

Zorah had not meant to say that. She did not want to be involved in Esther’s life. She did not want to be counted on. She wanted to fall asleep in silence and wake up in silence. But Esther had no one else, and there was no taking it back.

“Leave it to me,” were Bracha’s words. Bracha had slept beside Zorah in Auschwitz, on the wooden bench closest to the floor. They held each other as girls around them disappeared. No matter how hopeless the situation, Bracha would say, “Leave it to me,” as though she were telling a three-year-old not to fret about a misplaced doll, as though she had the power to change anything on the night when lice, cold, and hunger had driven Zorah to whisper, “I’ve had enough.”

Only a few years older than Zorah, Bracha had been her protector, her big sister, her mother. She picked her up when she fainted, and taught her the awful skills of survival, like using her own urine to treat the cuts and cracks on her hands. “Do it,” Bracha ordered. “If you don’t they can get infected. Do it.”

For six months, Bracha had helped her fall asleep by running her fingers across Zorah’s itching scalp. One night, Zorah had dreamed that she was a dog, napping on her owner’s lap in a sunny parlor, and she had burst into tears upon waking.

Bracha got sick with dysentery four months before liberation. First she grew feverish, then she couldn’t leave the latrine, then they took her to the infirmary. And then the last person on earth who cared about Zorah Weitz was dead.

Zorah was convinced that Bracha might have lived had she concentrated on her own survival. Her death had sealed Zorah’s belief in the futility of kindness; but her sacrifice also made Zorah feel obliged to stay alive—if only out of spite. She turned her grief and anger into the service of getting out of the concentration camp on her own feet.

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