CHAPTER 7My Liberator, My Assailant
When I permitted myself to imagine a moment like this—the end of
my imprisonment, the end of the war—I imagined a joy blooming in
my chest. I imagined yelling in my fullest voice, “I AM FREE! I AM
FREE!” But now I have no voice. We are a silent river, a current of the
freed that Ęows from the Gunskirchen graveyard toward the nearest
town. I ride on a makeshi cart. e wheels squeak. I can barely stay
conscious. ere is no joy or relief in this freedom. It’s a slow walk out
of a forest. It’s a dazed face. It’s being barely alive and returning to
sleep. It’s the danger of gorging on sustenance. e danger of the
wrong kind of sustenance. Freedom is sores and lice and typhus and
carved-out bellies and listless eyes.
I am aware of Magda walking beside me. Of pain throughout my
body as the cart jolts. For more than a year I have not had the luxury
of thinking about what hurts or doesn’t hurt. I have been able to think
only about how to keep up with the others, how to stay one step
ahead, to get a little food here, to walk fast enough, to never stop, to
stay alive, to not be le behind. Now that the danger is gone, the pain
within and the suffering around me turn awareness into hallucination.
A silent movie. A march of skeletons. Most of us are too physically
ruined to walk. We lie on carts, we lean on sticks. Our uniforms are
ĕlthy and worn, so ragged and tattered that they hardly cover our
skin. Our skin hardly covers our bones. We are an anatomy lesson.
Elbows, knees, ankles, cheeks, knuckles, ribs jut out like questions.