Free Mischling by Affinity Konar Page A

It didn’t seem impossible that one such test might be how well one could whistle. These Nazis had such stupidly vicious ideas of what constituted a person—I knew well enough to never underestimate their whims.
    “I can whistle,” I assured Uncle. “I swear. I whistled just a few hours ago.” But he didn’t acknowledge this—he just turned his back to consult with one of the attendants and paid me no mind.
    I watched Pearl blanch with fright, and I followed suit. I was sure that my failure had doomed us both. In our defense, I considered listing our many other talents to the doctor, but I decided that it would not do to boast about Pearl’s dancing and Pearl’s poetry recitations and Pearl’s piano skills. I chose another method to prove my worth instead.
    “‘Blue Danube,’” I announced to the room in an overly loud voice.
    That did the trick. Uncle turned, curious.
    “What did you say?”
    “What you were whistling when you came in. That waltz. It is ‘Blue Danube.’”
    Uncle’s face creased with pleasure. He picked up the tail end of one of my braids and pulled it, his manner not unlike a schoolboy’s.
    “You know music?”
    I squirmed on the bench, discomforted by the singularity of his gaze. It was as if I were his only patient.
    “Pearl is a dancer,” I told him.
    “And you”—this was accompanied by a finger-point—“a pianist?”
    “I want to be a doctor someday.”
    “Like me?” He smiled.
    “Like our papa,” I said. It was the first time I’d used the word since Papa disappeared—those four letters, those two syllables, that sound that started hard and then went so soft, like a footstep that begins on a stair and ends in the sand. I’d tried to assign that word new meanings to erase the old one, to make a father into a ditch, a time, a false door in a library that one could hide behind and never be detected. After saying the word, I sank into myself, but Uncle was too delighted to notice, and I believe that when I said our papa, he managed to hear you, and only you, Uncle, because he beamed at me with a familial pride.
    “A doctor! I’m impressed,” he declared to the staff. “This is a bright girl.” Nurse Elma looked doubtful at this proclamation, but she gave an expression of agreement before returning to the cleaning of the instruments.
    Uncle stalked to the sink to wash his hands. Catching sight of himself in the reflective surface of a steel cabinet, he mugged a little, and then, upon noticing an errant lock, he fell to combing his hair with an obsessive attention, as if aligning the strands might bring his whole world into pleasing symmetry. After perfection was achieved, he sheathed his comb, resumed his whistle, and bobbed his head in the direction of an orderly, who set a chair before us for him to sit in. He wiped the seat of his chair with his handkerchief, rubbing disdainfully at a small stain on the wood, and then positioned himself stiffly before us. His posture resembled that of a person who finds himself at a family reunion after years of estrangement, eager to learn about the lives of others but preoccupied with hiding his own identity. As if it were our responsibility to put him at ease, I offered him a smile. I’m sure that it was not a pretty smile, but he saw my attempts to win him over in it, and I believe he saw my weakness too.
    He clapped a hand over each of our knees, obscuring the cattle-car bruises that covered them.
    “I have been thinking of organizing a concert here. Would you girls like that?”
    We nodded together.
    “It’s done, then! I will have them play each of your favorite songs. Or maybe, to save them some trouble, I will have them play the same song twice!”
    He laughed at his own joke. I laughed too, to cover my fear, and Pearl caught on and gave a giggle. Already, we’d learned how to coordinate our hearts in this place for protection’s sake. But my heart must’ve been a beat behind, as usual, because the very next