Free In the King's Arms by Sonia Taitz Page A

swarming didn’t stop. I began to faint. You know, you notice things out of all proportion when you lose consciousness. I saw a trail of grey flannel. I took notice and I thought: this coat is the one for me. After all the swirling and the grabbing stops, there will be a grey coat for Gretta.
    “All of a sudden, a big hand slapped my face so violently that my nose sprayed with blood. I could not see the face behind the hand; the blood flew into my nose, my eyes, my mouth. I felt a tooth go down my throat and began to choke.
    “Then I saw the Nazi’s face. It remained right in front of mine, hovering as I tried to catch my breath. As though . . . unsure of something. He looked like a shy boy who wanted to ask me to dance. He seemed young—not five years older than I was. It was so peculiar, staring into his face as he stared into mine. I remember his
sharp nose, and little dark whiskers. I remember thinking—he has black hair like a Jew.
    “I felt him put his hand on my shoulder. The other hand he tightened into a fist, as though he would punch me. But I saw he kept it down, by his side. We were staring into each other’s eyes, and he suddenly spoke:
    “’But why did you grab?’
    “His voice was angry, but confused, too, and his face was lost, uncomfortable. He seemed bewildered. Why did we grab? He didn’t really know this kind of person who would act so passionately. Why didn’t we behave like machines? Why didn’t everything go as planned? Why did so many women die of cold, and now they had to give us coats? I thought of how we seemed to this junior Nazi with his simple orders. We must have been a horrifying surprise. Mere beatings could not fix all this disorder, these surprises, these grabbings.
    “I looked at the boy. He was trembling with concentration. He stared at me so hard, as though to fix his lesson in my brain. But I hadn’t grabbed. What should I have said? I was afraid the hand would hit me again if I opened my mouth. But I finally said, ‘Please forgive me.’ He acted as though he could not hear my voice. His stare did not alter. Then I saw him widen his eyes. He was looking at my naked head, staring as though he’d never seen a girl with her hair shaved off before.
    “Lily, if you could only see how pretty I was before; well, I was young and vain. I felt as though I had been given the mirror I had been missing. I saw my ugliness in his eyes. It was more humiliating than any slap. Suddenly I raised up my voice. I was also crazy, like the others, I suppose, and said, ‘You don’t even see that I am not the right person. I grabbed nothing! You have bloodied my face for nothing! You have made a cruel mistake!’

    “For this kind of outburst a Nazi would kill a Jew as though he were a fly.
    “I could tell that he believed me. In relief, I began to sob, covering my face with my hands. But just as I did so, I felt him move one step away from me. I looked up and saw him raise his pistol. He had a terrifying expression on his face.
    “You know, Lily, I suddenly stopped caring. I closed my eyes and thought, it’s all the same to me, just as it is to you. I am one of the ones who grabbed. I am one of the others with the naked heads. I had hair and I haven’t. I grabbed and I didn’t. I’m alive and I’m dead. I’m young and I’m old. Yes and no and yes and no and yes and no and yes and no. I felt like laughing at him. Live or die? A silly riddle!
    “I opened my eyes to look straight at him. He looked at me. Then he raised the gun to his own head, hesitated. I kept looking. But he didn’t shoot himself. He began to cry, without a noise, like this.”
    Gretta opened her mouth wide, as though gasping for air. Her eyes went wild for a moment, trapped with the memory. Lily saw the Nazi in her eyes.
    “I thought about grabbing the gun from him and killing him. It was just a thought, of course. He wasn’t such a good murderer, and neither was I.”
    “And then?”
    “What ‘then’?”