This was the second time the waitress had come by.
“He’ll be here soon,” she said, feigning a smile that even the help didn’t believe. Her eyes flicked from the narrow face to the door, and then down to the menu she was twisting in her fingers.
He was usually late, which was often nice, but today was not the day to leave her waiting. The moments she used to collect herself and put her best self forward were now plagued with haunted memories.
“Tell him to get in the cage,” Josef ordered, pointing to the large dog crate without looking up from his papers.
“What?”
He looked up at her, dark eyes sharp. “Tell him to get in the cage. Is there a problem?”
“No.”
Ros’ hand slid into her hair as the waitress left, disrupting her neat bun before moving down to cover her face again.
“No.”
It was an immediate suspension to disobey a superior’s order, but this was not what she had signed up for.
She signed up to save Germany. To keep her parent’s dreams alive. She had joined the linguistics department to save Germany from attacks and to gain the upper hand in the war. She had signed up to sit at a desk and comb through coded messages in other languages and report what they meant.
She had not signed up to work with Josef Mengele and his…patients.
“Wspinać się w klatce.”
The man’s forehead had pulled together, his amber eyes widening. He saw the cage, he understood what she meant. But he still had to ask.
“Co?”
Ros’ gut twisted, the strangest feeling bubbling up and tightening her chest. “Wspinać się w klatce,” she repeated, suddenly unable to look him in the eyes.
A moment passed, the man unmoving.
“Is there a problem?” Josef snapped.
“No,” Ros answered, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Hmm?”
She cleared her throat loudly. “No.” Her eyes on her feet she moved towards the man, taking him by the arm. “Musisz dostać się do klatki teraz.”
“Dlaczego?” he asked, his voice quiet beside her.
She stepped forward and he followed her, asking again. “Dlaczego?” When she didn’t answer he turned to look at her, and tripped over his own foot.
She caught him as he grabbed for support, and he looked at her with the greatest fear she had even seen. “Przepraszam. Przepraszam, przepraszam,” he repeated, stumbling over his words and pulling away from her with a wince.
Her eyebrows pulled together, her mouth opening with reassurances she suddenly realized she could not say.
She could not tell him she wasn’t going to hurt him.
She could not tell him it would be okay.
“Musisz dostać się do klatki teraz.”
Ros sat up abruptly, startled by Klaus’ arrival. Finally.
He sat and ordered his favorite without bothering to look at the options, and Ros felt herself relax a little as he settled in. She ordered a plate of knedlíky and the waitress left.
She shook her head at his apologies, brushing off the delay as she always did. She sent him a smile, ready to ask what they were doing with those gases, when he voiced that even he—the most oblivious man she had yet to meet—didn’t believe her façade.
“You’re looking wan. Something the matter?”
Her mouth opened to reassure him that everything was fine, but the look on his face made her pause.
It had been a few months since she had been assigned to get close to him and assure he didn’t defect, and she hadn’t had to pretend anything in his presence after the second date. He was odd and borderline anti-social, but he wasn’t like anyone else she had ever met. He didn’t care to talk about politics or his workout regimen or what rank he would progress to next, and he didn’t even bore her with talk of his thermo-nucleic whatnots. His humor was different but charming, and he was unfailingly enthusiastic and happy when he was with her. He made it hard for her not to feel the same way when she was with him.
Which made the look of drawn concern pulling his face the deciding factor that she could trust him with her events from the previous day.
“Actually, yes,” she sighed, searching the table for where to start. After a moment, she nodded, and reached across the table to take up his hands.
“Their usual translator took sick yesterday, so they called me in to head to Auschwitz for the day. They asked me to work with Mengele. Which was fine, I’m happy I could help, of course, but…it just shook me up a little, I suppose. I had to instruct the prisoners for him—they didn’t understand German—and there was this man. He was dawdling so I went to help him along into the cage and…” her fingers twisted around his as she looked at him. “He tripped into me, and he apologized. It was the strangest thing. You know, he was on his way to his death and he stopped to apologize to me for tripping, and then he was so scared when he looked at me it was just—I don’t know. Of course, I understand that he needed to be exterminated, I’m not trying to say anything like he shouldn’t be or anything like that I just…I just don’t much like working with Mengele, I suppose.” She tried a smile, but it was nothing more than a twitch at the corners of her lips.
“You had a better day than me, I hope?”
