German, Am I a prisoner? She stared at me as if I had just somersaulted twice through the air. She said, Of course not, no. I told her that I was ready to go. She said it was not that simple and why hadn't I talked earlier, it would have been much easier. Why do you say that I am not a prisoner? I asked again. There are certain rules we must adhere to for the good of everybody, she said. Is this not the free West? Pardon me? she said. Is this not the democratic West? What an interesting thing to say, she said. Tel me why I am being held prisoner. There are no prisoners here, she replied.
I told her that I wanted to be released immediately, that it was my right, and she sprang back indignantly that she would do her very best, and she could promise me that at the very least I would be al owed out of the hospital if I helped them with information. Be thankful, she said, for what you have.
They always ask you to be thankful, chonorroeja, after they have locked you up. Perhaps they also ask you to kiss them when they throw away the key.
My name is Marienka, I told her.
The chair scraped as she pul ed it up closer.
Marienka, she said, that's a beautiful name.
Is it? I asked.
She blushed.
Doctor Marcus took down my strange story on her white notepad. My German was not good enough, nor did I want to speak in Slovak, so I spoke to her in Magyar. The translator was a pious young man from Budapest who wore a giant crucifix at his neck. I did not cal myself Zoli for fear of two things, their laughter at my name and the chance that the word would take wing and they might find out exactly who I was.
The story was simple. I had been born in the Hungarian lands. I was abandoned by my husband and I wanted to join my children who were living in France. They had left in ‘56, but I could not go since I was arrested and beaten. I got out of jail and went back to my settlement which was near the border. My people had never cared about borders. Once it had been one giant country and we stil treated it that way. The Party card was something I had found on the ground near a dump by the border. I saw Doctor Marcus pale with doubt, so I circled back and told her that I'd inserted a picture of myself into the card and that one of my family was an accomplished forger. Doctor Marcus shrugged. She said: Al right, go on, go on.
For a little gaiety, I said I'd taken a bus from the city of Gyor but the bus broke down and I bartered for a bicycle. It was my first time riding such a machine. I wobbled down the road and farmers laughed at me. I slept in abandoned farmhouses, ate nettle soup, and made a borscht from sour cherries. I threw away the bicycle when I got a flat tire. Doctor Marcus began smiling then, and as the story went on she became triumphant and scribbled everything down as fast as she could. I began to like this person I was creating, and so I said that I had stolen a second bicycle, except this one had a giant basket on the front and, of course, I had borrowed some chickens, tied them down in the basket, feathers flying, and had lived on them until I made my break for freedom.
You can make them swal ow any lie with enough sugar and tears. They wil lick the tears and sugar and make of them a paste cal ed sympathy.
Try it, chonorroeja, and you might feel yourself dissolve.
I cannot explain why so many of them have hated us so much over so many years, and even if I could, it would make it too easy for them. They cut our tongues and make us speechless and then they try to get an answer from us. They do not wish to think for themselves and they dislike those who do. They are comfortable only with the whip above their heads, yet so many of us have spent our lives armed with little more dangerous than song. I am fil ed with the memory of those who have lived and died. We have our own fools and evils, chonorroeja, but we are pul ed together by the hatred of those who surround us. Show me a single patch of land we did not leave, or would not leave, a single place we have not turned from. And while I have cursed so many of my own, our sleight of hand, our twin tongues, my own vain stupidities, even the worst of us has never been amongst the worst of them. They make enemies of us so that they do not have to look at themselves. They take freedom from one and give it to another. They turn justice into revenge and stil cal it by its old name. They expect us to see the future or at least to rob its pockets. They shave our heads and say: You are thieves, you are liars, you are filthy, why can't you just be like us?
This is the truth of how I felt then, daughter, and so I said to myself that I would be like them only for as long as it took to get out of the camp and move on elsewhere.
I was transferred from the hospital into the camp, given blue status, on a day of sunlight. Doctor Marcus reeled off a long list of rules. I would be permitted to go to the nearby town two days a week, but I would not be al owed to beg or tel fortunes or any of the other things they expected us to do, they were against local rules. I could leave at eight in the morning and had to be home by curfew. They would give me a ration book and I could deposit it in the camp bank. No drinking alcohol, she said, or relations with men, and beyond the camp wal s I was not al owed to fraternize with the guards.
Before I left the hospital the nurses pretended they'd found another louse in my hair just so they could shave it off. They pul ed the razor hard across my scalp.
My other clothes had been burned, but what could I do, mourn for them?
I was taken to the storeroom. I found a long scarf to put over my scalp and I was given new sandals to parade around in, brown with a shiny brass buckle. I chose some Portuguese dresses in splendid yel ows and reds, but when I put them on I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked so much like my old self that I turned around and chose a long gray dress donated by the people of the United States. I was given my useless money and Party card and even my onyx-handled knife. I burned the card right away. I opened the envelope to see Conka's coin sitting there. I kissed it and thanked my dear lost friend for not spitting at me, and yet for giving her children the dignity to do so.
Doctor Marcus escorted me to a special room at the far end of the wooden barracks. Only the very youngest children were about and they trailed behind me, laughing, pul ing at my sleeve. Some of them were kicking a bal made from a pig's bladder and their high voices split the air. The women looked out from the kitchens. Most were Hungarians. I felt a tenderness for them since I knew they had been here since they walked across the border in ‘56, four years before. Someone had written on the wal in Magyar:
When we turned the final corner towards the last barracks, near the wire fence, I stopped cold. A woman, dark, long-skirted, sat on the steps nursing a young baby. She put her hand to her mouth in surprise, handed her baby to another child, and came to touch my head.
Lamb of heaven, she said, they shaved off al your hair.
