that defied any improvements my imagination sought to impose on her. Nothing about her was vague or negotiable. Some might call this a strong personality. I wanted to call it that, just to be human and generous. But it was obvious that what she really possessed was emptiness so vast that it managed to approximate power.
Maybe, I thought, if we flattered her, she would be nice.
“Tell her she’s pretty,” I whispered to Pearl.
“You tell her, if you think she’s so pretty.”
It was as if Nurse Elma detected our psychic efforts to like her, because she then crossed to the other side of the room and busied herself with the polishing of a pair of silver scissors, their legs gleamy in the light falling from the blocky window above. Though small, this window let in too much light for girls who had just been stripped. We crossed our legs tight, covered the buds on our chests with our hands; we clutched at these signs of growth as if hoping to make them feel so unwelcome that they might voluntarily up and disappear.
“They’re more frightened of you than you are of them,” I whispered to my sister, because there seemed nothing left to do but joke. Pearl giggled, so I giggled too. Naturally, our giggles soured Elma. She threw her scissors down on the surgeon’s table with a clatter.
“Do you see any of the other children laughing?”
We didn’t. In fact, we hadn’t seen the other children at all, because the strangeness of this place had so dimmed our perception. But with Elma’s direction, we saw that we were not alone.
There were five other children in the room.
Lino and Artur Ammerling were ten-year-olds from Galicia. Like us, they were new arrivals and had been subjected to some scorn by the Old Numbers. Hedvah—a girl who slept three bunks over from us and held the honor of being the most respected girl in the Zoo, due to her long tenure and ability to assert herself with Ox—had started a rumor that the Ammerlings weren’t twins at all, but were merely passing in order to receive the benefits afforded to those of our station. Twins’ Father had been known to pull such tricks, she’d said, changing the paperwork so that young boys could enjoy the salvation of twin status. Hedvah cited their different hair colors—Lino was a redhead, Artur a brunet—as evidence that they were impostors. But they had to be twins. I could tell by the way that they sat in their chairs. They showed the same shock, the same trembles, as the nurses counted and measured their every feature. Not a single gesture toward identicality was overlooked—their eyelashes were counted, their eyebrow hairs, the flecks in their eyes, the dimples at their knees and cheeks. They were added and subtracted and compared, two human equations who could only squirm in their seats.
And there were Margit and Lenci Klein, from Hungary. Six years of age. Whenever Pearl and I were immeasurably sad we looked for them, because they reminded us of how we’d been as younger girls—hands entwined, full of secrets and the occasional elbow-jab of annoyance. They were always combing each other’s hair with their fingers till their strands shone and making whistles out of blades of grass. Their mother had left them with instructions to always wear purple hair ribbons to make it easier for her to spy them in a crowd, so they fastened them atop their heads every day, first thing, propping them up so that they stood like velvet ears on their heads. We watched as the nurses diagrammed their pale, goose-bumped forms with red ink, circling a piece here, a bit there, until their bodies were rivered with scarlet.
The fifth subject stood alone, his thumb hooked in his mouth. He could have been thirteen or thirty-five or sixty, he was so whittled, so beyond age. His nurse was leafing through files with an air of boredom, as if there were nothing left to be done with him. Before her on a table were two folders, two sets of photographs, two sets of diagrams, two
Maybe, I thought, if we flattered her, she would be nice.
“Tell her she’s pretty,” I whispered to Pearl.
“You tell her, if you think she’s so pretty.”
It was as if Nurse Elma detected our psychic efforts to like her, because she then crossed to the other side of the room and busied herself with the polishing of a pair of silver scissors, their legs gleamy in the light falling from the blocky window above. Though small, this window let in too much light for girls who had just been stripped. We crossed our legs tight, covered the buds on our chests with our hands; we clutched at these signs of growth as if hoping to make them feel so unwelcome that they might voluntarily up and disappear.
“They’re more frightened of you than you are of them,” I whispered to my sister, because there seemed nothing left to do but joke. Pearl giggled, so I giggled too. Naturally, our giggles soured Elma. She threw her scissors down on the surgeon’s table with a clatter.
“Do you see any of the other children laughing?”
We didn’t. In fact, we hadn’t seen the other children at all, because the strangeness of this place had so dimmed our perception. But with Elma’s direction, we saw that we were not alone.
There were five other children in the room.
Lino and Artur Ammerling were ten-year-olds from Galicia. Like us, they were new arrivals and had been subjected to some scorn by the Old Numbers. Hedvah—a girl who slept three bunks over from us and held the honor of being the most respected girl in the Zoo, due to her long tenure and ability to assert herself with Ox—had started a rumor that the Ammerlings weren’t twins at all, but were merely passing in order to receive the benefits afforded to those of our station. Twins’ Father had been known to pull such tricks, she’d said, changing the paperwork so that young boys could enjoy the salvation of twin status. Hedvah cited their different hair colors—Lino was a redhead, Artur a brunet—as evidence that they were impostors. But they had to be twins. I could tell by the way that they sat in their chairs. They showed the same shock, the same trembles, as the nurses counted and measured their every feature. Not a single gesture toward identicality was overlooked—their eyelashes were counted, their eyebrow hairs, the flecks in their eyes, the dimples at their knees and cheeks. They were added and subtracted and compared, two human equations who could only squirm in their seats.
And there were Margit and Lenci Klein, from Hungary. Six years of age. Whenever Pearl and I were immeasurably sad we looked for them, because they reminded us of how we’d been as younger girls—hands entwined, full of secrets and the occasional elbow-jab of annoyance. They were always combing each other’s hair with their fingers till their strands shone and making whistles out of blades of grass. Their mother had left them with instructions to always wear purple hair ribbons to make it easier for her to spy them in a crowd, so they fastened them atop their heads every day, first thing, propping them up so that they stood like velvet ears on their heads. We watched as the nurses diagrammed their pale, goose-bumped forms with red ink, circling a piece here, a bit there, until their bodies were rivered with scarlet.
The fifth subject stood alone, his thumb hooked in his mouth. He could have been thirteen or thirty-five or sixty, he was so whittled, so beyond age. His nurse was leafing through files with an air of boredom, as if there were nothing left to be done with him. Before her on a table were two folders, two sets of photographs, two sets of diagrams, two
Similar Books
