The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

broke.
    â€œLife,” Hannah repeated.
    He nodded, then shook his head, the one following the other like a single movement. “You are Chaya no longer, child. Now you are J197241. Remember it.”
    â€œI can’t remember anything,” Hannah said, puzzled.
    â€œThis you must remember, for if you forget it,
life
is gone indeed.” The tattooing pen burned her flesh, leaving a trail of blue numbers in her arm above the wrist. J197241. She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t. It was something more she just remembered: her promise to Gitl.
    When the man finished the number, he reached out and touched the collar of her dress, smoothing it down gently. “Live,” he whispered. “For my Chaya. For all our Chayas. Live. And remember.”
    There was a loud clearing of a throat and Hannah looked up into the guard’s unsmiling face. “Next!” he said.
    Little Tzipporah was next, and Hannah held the child on her lap, covering her eyes with ice-cold hands and crooning a song into her ears. It was a wedding song, the only song she could come up with, something about a madness forced upon them. The words didn’t matter,only the melody, only the soothing rhythm. The child, Tzipporah, J197242, lay silent in her arms.

    The barracks they were assigned had a long brick oven along one end and deep trenches on the sides in which sleeping shelves were placed, like triple bunk beds, at impossibly narrow intervals. Privies were outside.
    Hannah helped Tzipporah onto one of the low shelves. There were neither blankets nor pillows, but the child did not complain. She curled into a fetal position and lay still, her thumb back in her mouth.
    â€œI will see if there is any food,” Hannah whispered to her. “And socks. And shoes. I will see if there are blankets. Or pillows. You sleep.” When she stood up, she saw Gitl helping Fayge onto another shelf, about halfway down the building. She knew it was Fayge because, even with her hair shorn, her face the color of an old book, and wearing a shapeless brown print dress, Fayge had an unearthly beauty. But her eyes were strangely blank; she moved where Gitl pushed her.
    Gitl looked up and stared at Hannah. Putting her hands on her hips, barely covering the garish flowers on the red print dress, she smiled mockingly. “So?”
    â€œSo!” Hannah whispered back. In that dark, cold place it seemed a kind of affirmation. At that very moment, her stomach rumbled, horribly loud in the silence of the barracks room. That, too, had the sound of life.
    Gitl’s head went back and she roared with laughter.
    â€œHow can you laugh?” Hannah asked, shocked.
    â€œHow can you not?” Gitl said. “Without laughter,there is no hope. Without hope, there is no life. Without life . . .”
    â€œWithout life . . .” Hannah’s voice trailed off, remembering the old tattooer.
    â€œWithout
food
there is no life,” Gitl said. “We will go and see if any of these monsters believes in food.”
    The moment they tried to set a foot outside, a guard blocked their way. With their Yiddish, they were just able to understand his German.
    â€œYou will not leave,” he said, his baby face stern.
    â€œWe have children in here who have not eaten for days,” Gitl answered.
    â€œThey will get used to it,” the soldier said as if the words were rote in his mouth. “They will get used to it.”
    â€œJust like the farmer who trained his horse to eat less and less,” said Gitl. “And just when he had gotten it to the point of learning to eat nothing at all, the ingrate up and died. I suppose you have heard that story?”
    â€œI hear nothing important from Jews,” the soldier said. “But I have something important to tell them. See that?” He pointed to a brick chimney towering over a flat-roofed building where a thin line of smoke curled lazily into the air.