Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(103)

Livi’s eyes are full of tears. ‘I’m glad you weren’t there, Magda, I really am. Do you know that’s what kept me and Cibi going? Believing that you were back in Vranov, taking care of Mother and Grandfather.’

This doesn’t make Magda feel any better. ‘What hurts the most,’ she says, heaving herself up into a sitting position, ‘is remembering our last days in Vranov. Night after night we’d sit down for dinner – we never had much, but certainly more than you – and we’d sit down, say a prayer for you both, and eat. I took the food for granted, took Mumma and even Grandfather for granted sometimes. They were always telling me to hide, to stay out of the way, to be a ghost. And I used to lose my temper, screaming at them to let me come and find you.’ Magda wipes a tear away.

‘I’m sorry, Magda,’ says Livi.

‘My safety meant as much to them as it did to you, but I didn’t want to be safe – I wanted to be with you and Cibi. And then I got my wish, which wasn’t your wish or Mumma’s, but it was mine. And then no one was happy, least of all me.’ Magda is crying now, fat tears falling onto the bump of her stomach.

Livi gets onto the bed, and the sisters lie down in each other’s arms.

‘Magda. Do you think we didn’t know how painful it must have been for you wondering what had happened to us? It must have driven you crazy. If I had been you, I know I would have done something stupid.’

‘Like giving yourself up to Visik?’ Magda smiles through her tears.

‘That guy, I hope he’s dead,’ says Livi, bitterly. ‘But yes, I wouldn’t have cared what Mumma or anyone said, and I would probably have got myself killed.’

‘Well, I guess I should be glad I was the one who got left behind then.’

‘But then you arrived fat and strong, Magda,’ teases Livi, and then she’s serious again – ‘and thank God. For how else would we have survived the marches if you weren’t?’

*

Magda and Livi receive word from Cibi that she is pregnant again, and Yitzchak asks a friend to drive him and the sisters to the farm. Soon there will be three Meller children, Livi thinks. These new babies will be born against the backdrop of the national ambition to make this country into a prosperous and cultured Jewish homeland, in which they will play a part.

‘Hurry up and marry, Livi,’ Cibi tells her. ‘We want to fill our houses with babies.’

‘I’m not marrying someone just to give your children another cousin,’ Livi says, indignant.

‘I’m not suggesting that’s the only reason, kitten,’ says Cibi. ‘But you love Ziggy, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know!’ snaps Livi.

Cibi looks at Magda. ‘Is she OK?’

‘I’m right here, Cibi, you can ask me yourself.’

‘Oh my God, what’s wrong with you?’ Magda says. ‘Is it Ziggy? Is something wrong?’

Suddenly, Livi is crying. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobs. ‘I’m not unhappy, just .?.?. just confused.’ Livi sits on the sofa, a sister either side of her, each with a hand on her back.

Cibi is back on familiar territory now: she knows how to comfort Livi; hasn’t she done it before, and in worse places than her own house in the promised land?

‘Confused?’ says Magda. ‘Will you tell us what’s happened?’

‘Nothing has happened,’ says Livi. ‘But it is about Ziggy. More than once now, whenever we talk about the camps, he says he shouldn’t even be complaining when we suffered so much.’

‘It’s not a competition,’ says Cibi, frowning.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Livi, listen to me,’ says Cibi, suddenly serious. ‘From what you’ve told us about Ziggy’s story, it’s obvious he was on his own – he didn’t have his brothers around to help make sense of what was going on.’

‘That’s right,’ says Magda. ‘You two had each other and then I joined you; one way or another, we went through it together.’

‘Maybe he feels guilty,’ says Cibi.

‘Guilty?’ wonders Livi.

‘Well, if he feels his experience wasn’t as bad as ours, then maybe somewhere, deep down, he believes it should have been – God knows there are some terrible stories out there. He probably thinks he got away with something he shouldn’t have.’

*

That night, long after her sisters have left and while Mischka is putting Karol to bed, Cibi gets into bed herself and closes her eyes. The exchange with her sisters about Ziggy’s possible guilt has triggered a powerful memory in Cibi, one that she wishes wouldn’t visit her so often.

However hard she tries to put their faces out of her mind, they come unbidden to her.

Warm in her bed now, Cibi thinks back to that night in Birkenau when – shivering in their bunk, the night she and Livi had decided to kill themselves before the cold took them, the night they were saved by a girl they didn’t know and who they never met again – the girl had pulled the blankets off a couple in another bunk to give to them.

The next morning the girls had been dead, their bodies curled around one another in a bid to eke out the warmth that never came.

Maybe the girls had already been dead when their blankets were snatched away, but Cibi will never know. Cibi didn’t steal those blankets, but she accepted them.