He made her stay, even after the man was in the cage.
“Here, hold this,” he spat. He shoved the clipboard at her.
“Yes, sir.”
He approached the cage and she looked away, dropping her eyes to the file in her hands. Anything else to look at.
Max Morgenthau, 37, Male. Brown eyes and brown hair and just under six feet of Judenscheisse.
She closed the file.
Ros circled herself, trying to ignore the sounds coming from Mengele and the cage and find something else in the dank room to look at.
“Wolff.”
Ros turned, keeping her eyes trained on Josef. She knew better than to look down at the cage.
“Tell him to break the glass.”
She hesitated, and then nodded. Swallowing, she spoke. “Rozbić szyby.”
Mengele kicked the cage, and Max yelled.
“Again! Say it again!”
“Rozbić szyby.”
“Come on! Break the glass!”
There was another kick and then the sound of the generator starting up again, and Ros dropped her eyes to the wine glass on the ground. It was full of water, and apparently what Mengele wanted Max to break. As to how he would do it from inside the cage, Ros was befuddled.
“Break the glass! Rozbić szyby!” Mengele shouted, copying Ros’s sounds.
“Nie mogę! Proszę przestań!” Max yelled, his voice a loud whimper.
“Shut up!” There was the crackle of electricity, and Max cried out. “Focus!”
“Fokus,” Ros repeated, her voice almost a plead.
“Rozbić szyby!” There was the sound of a great crash, and then Max screamed, and the glass shattered.
Ros’s eyes darted to the cage—but Max was still inside, and her stomach turned at the sight of him. He looked exactly like what the posters said he was—a monster. She found the glass again.
It was in pieces, scattered across the floor and covered in the water from inside.
He hadn’t touched it.
Mengele yelled, his voice lapsing into an odd series of deep hiccups Ros realized was probably laughter. “He’s done it! Give me that,” he crossed the room and pulled the clipboard back, starting to scrawl something.
Max shattered the glass, just by looking at it.
What was he?
Confusion clouded Ros’ mind, and she stepped back. “Am I finished?”
“Yes, yes,” he waved her away, grinning madly.
--
She had just finished talking when it happened. Beside her elbow her glass started to tremble, and Ros drew her hands back. For a second the two of them stared at it, eyes wide, and then Klaus lurched forward and the glass shattered.
Ros jumped, her eyes filling with horror as the sound echoed in her head. For a second, a silent heartbeat, the water hung in the air, like it didn’t know that the glass had broken underneath it.
And then the water dropped onto her, and she sprang from her seat with an exclamation.
Her eyes found his, and she couldn’t believe it. “What did you do?”
His mouth swung like a saloon door, and she knew exactly what he was doing. Trying to find an excuse.
No, she insisted, but it was clear in front of her.
“What are you working on, Klaus?”
“Atoms.”
“How was work today, Klaus?”
“Fine, what would you like to do?”
“Hope your day was better than mine,”
“We’re doing something with gases…”
No, not Klaus.
“Break the glass! Rozbić szyby!”
No.
Yes.
He was doing it. In his lab, he was researching for Mengele’s experiments, for his human trials. He was developing whatever weapons they would use against the Jews and as far as she was concerned, he might as well have been Mengele. He was shoving people into cages and torturing them and apparently, taking whatever he was creating to allow people to shatter things just by looking at them, and he was a monster.
She took a step back, and then another, as he continued to fail to find an excuse.
His empty mouth told her everything.
She took another step and his eyes were wild on her face. “Ros—“
“How did you do that?” she pleaded, begging him to give her some other explanation. No. Please, no.
“I can’t—I don’t—“
She shook her head, her heart dropping into her gut like the water dropped onto her lap.
She turned and left.
