Mischling by Affinity Konar

Author:Affinity Konar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2016-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

In that eye, there remained a blackness. For many days or weeks, it was just black on black. I tried to see the bright side of this. The bright side was that if I closed my good eye, I was blind, and if I was blind, every human that remained had the potential to be my Pearl. It was only when someone spoke to me that this illusion was ruined.

After my eye went useless, Dr. Miri pulled me from my barrel and installed me in the infirmary. She thought it would scare me into trying to live, and she put me in a private room in the back, with three other children.

“You know it is not a good thing,” she said. “To be in the infirmary. They take people from the infirmary to the trucks.”

I nodded.

“And the trucks—you know where they go—”

I did not make her finish this sentence. I indicated my understanding—I knew that the trucks took people to the gas. Dr. Miri couldn’t know why the threat of this meant nothing to me. But I think she realized that I would go on any vehicle that might lead to my sister, and that was why she worried so and began to hover over me at any available moment.

In the night, I woke and traveled among the bunks of the greater infirmary in search of my sister. This thronged, howling place—it surpassed our Zoo barracks in its ability to pile one human atop another.

Row after row of bodies rested on bunks, in slots so tiny that the effect was of insects resting in a hive. The bodies were covered with white sheets and resembled clouds with heads affixed to them. Most of the heads were turned away from me, or buried in the mattresses, but all the bodies outstretched their hands, knots of bone and bramble, in a plea for food and water.

“I don’t have anything,” I’d cry.

The clouds didn’t believe me, but they weren’t angry either. They were too sick to be angry. They had dysentery and fever and germs that could kill. They had blood loss and family loss, and their hearts were slipping away from the standard heart-seat in the chest, more and more every day. What did these human-clouds have to live for? They merely rolled over and went back to sleeping or coughing or dreaming or whatever human-clouds do best.

As I trudged back to my room, a burst of light sparked against the window.

It was a rebuke, I knew. Wherever they were, Mama and Zayde, they were telling me not to be weak. They were ashamed that I had not fulfilled my purpose, and they emphasized this with a series of rat-a-tat-tats, as forceful and repetitive as gunfire. I didn’t blame them for such extreme measures.

“I hope you understand,” I said in the direction of the window, “that I’m not myself without Pearl anymore.”

The loud noises swelled and increased. My bad eye saw only a blur, but the untouched eye helped me see the smoke that crept toward the building.

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