‘This family is no longer here,’ Cibi tells her supervisor one morning, while handing him a small, unopened box.
‘Doesn’t look like there can be much in there. Open it.’
She lifts the lid to find a tiny box of chocolates and two tins of sardines. Her supervisor takes the chocolates, but hands her the sardines without a word.
Cibi gives one tin to her co-worker and takes the other to a dark corner of the mail room. She cannot risk being caught trying to smuggle the tin back into the camp, so she must eat it now. Peeling back the lid, Cibi gulps down the tiny, salty fish and pours the oil into mouth. With her finger she wipes the inside of the tin clean. Almost immediately, her gorge rises as she remembers the day she arrived at Auschwitz, more than two years ago, and she thinks of the man she and Livi saw: thin, shaven-headed, dressed in baggy, striped prison clothes; he had clambered into their cattle wagon and picked up an empty tin, and, just as she had done, he wiped a skeletal finger around its oily insides, before sticking it into his mouth.
Cibi feels faint. There is no difference now between her and that man, apart from the clothes she stands in. It is while she is lost in this dark memory that the door to the mail room opens and an SS guard enters. His lips are moving, but Cibi has missed his first sentence entirely. She stares at him stupidly.
‘I said, come with me!’ he barks. Letting the sardine tin drop, Cibi follows him outside to where a truck is waiting. ‘Get in!’
Cibi runs to the passenger side and climbs into the truck, fully present now. She is in an SS truck with an SS guard. There is only way this is going to end. She thinks of Livi, who may never find out what has happened to her. She thinks of Magda, of her mother and Grandfather.
The SS guard glances at her, noticing the trembling fingers that cover her mouth. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he tells her. There is a matter-of-factness in his voice. Cibi releases the breath she has been holding, and tentatively meets his eyes. ‘I need you to pick up some parcels at the front gate and take them back to the post room where they should have been delivered in the first place. When I find out who was too lazy to walk them round I will have them shot.’
Cibi is still trying to steady her breathing. It is cold outside, but she needs the fresh air. ‘Do you mind if I wind the window down?’ she asks, and the soldier gives a curt nod.
Cibi leans into the wind, gasps in the cold air and feels calmer.
A large open truck is driving towards them. As it sails past she is blasted by the voices of men roaring in song. She turns in her seat to catch sight of naked male prisoners in the back. They stand tall and chant the song she herself has sung so many times at synagogue.
Her heart may have slowed down, but the shock Cibi received when the SS guard ordered her into the truck has weakened her grip on herself. An icy fear flushes through her now, and she clutches her chest as she feels she is starting to fall apart. What little hope she has of surviving this place flies out of the open window, chasing the men destined for imminent death.
How soon before the SS come for her, strip her naked and drive her to the gas chamber?
*
Livi can’t understand why Cibi is avoiding her. These days, her sister stays later and later at the post office, often sneaking back into the block once the lights have gone out. As they lie in bed at night, she seldom responds to Livi’s whispered questions. Livi resolves to talk to Cibi on Sunday, their day off, but when Sunday rolls around, Cibi mutters she has work to do at the post office, and slips away.
Livi wanders around the camp, stopping now and then to talk to the other girls, but she doesn’t hang around for very long. She’s worried about Cibi. Maybe, she wonders, Cibi has witnessed one or two unsettling episodes herself, and been struck mute by them. But Cibi is her rock, Livi reasons, she can’t just disappear.
Livi heads for the gates which divide the two women’s camps. They’re open today, as they are every Sunday, allowing family and friends to reunite for short periods.
Livi’s blood runs cold when senior SS officer Mandel appears on her magnificent black horse, and rides over when she sees Livi. Mandel is universally feared: cold-eyed and vicious, she wears her long red hair in a high ponytail, even though she’s too old for such a girlish hairstyle. Never one to use her words when a baton will do, Mandel is famous for lashing out during rollcall. She is known as ‘The Beast’。 It is rumoured that if you look her directly in the eye, she will have you shot or sent to the gas chamber. No one is in a hurry to find out if it’s true.