The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen Page A

“That’s Jew smoke! Learn to eat when it’s given to you, Jew, or you, too, go up that stack.”
    â€œJew smoke?” Gitl whispered. But the soldier was already closing the door against her protesting hands.
    Hannah bit her lip. The smokestack and the ominous black curl emerging from it, dissipating against the bright blue sky, reminded her of something. Yet she couldn’tquite touch it. It slipped away from her. Something about smoke. About fire. About ovens. “Oven,” she whispered.
    â€œWell,” Gitl said, “at least we know something.”
    Hannah looked up at her, the slip of memory gone. “What?”
    â€œThat we
will
be fed.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œGod only knows. And let us hope that He tells the Germans!”
    They turned back to stare around them, straining into the darkness of the barracks. Hannah saw that almost all the sleeping shelves were filled. The women and children lay as still as corpses.
    â€œLook, not even the thought of food tempts them,” Gitl said.
    Hannah could not keep herself from rubbing her eyes. The thought of sleep, horizontal sleep, suddenly overwhelmed her.
    â€œWhat am I thinking of?” Gitl said, the heel of her palm striking her forehead. “You are only a child. You need sleep as well as food.” She put her hand out to touch Hannah on the head and then, as if thinking better of it, patted her instead on the shoulder. “Go to sleep, Chaya.”
    â€œGo to sleep . . .” Hannah glanced down at her wrist. “Go to sleep, J197241, you mean.”
    â€œYou are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—
life
—to me. You are my brother’s child. You are my blood.”
    Hannah shook her head slowly, but neither she nor Gitl knew what she really meant by it. She rubbed her fingers across the numbers on her sore arm as if memorizing them. Then she let Gitl lead her to an unoccupied shelf, where she rolled herself onto it and, without even minding the rough surface, fell asleep.
    She dreamed of roast beef, sweet wine, and bitter herbs.

13
    HANNAH WOKE TO A STRANGE MECHANICAL BELLOWING . For a moment, she thought it was the clock radio by her bed. She sat up suddenly and hit her head with a loud crack on the shelf above her. Stunned, she looked around.
Clock radio?
The words sat lumpily in her mind. She was not sure what a
clock radio
was. Besides, her head hurt where she’d banged it and her back ached from lying on the hard shelf. Even her leg hurt. She drew her knee up to look. There was caked blood and a big scab along her shin.
    Then she remembered: the trip in the cattle car, the long hungry days, the heat and the cold, the smell, the dead baby, the tattoo, the shorn hair. Cautiously she reached up and felt her head. What hair was left was a stubble. She did not dare look at the number on her arm.
    Swinging her legs carefully over the side of the shelf, she eased herself onto the floor, aware that the bellowinghorn had stopped. Others in the barracks were performing the same slow unfolding. She looked around, her eyes and mind still fuzzed with sleep.
    The door to the barracks was flung open and a guard stuck his head in.
    â€œIf you want food, get in line. Now.
Schnell
. You must eat. Hungry Jews are dead Jews. Dead Jews do not work.”
    â€œFood!” Hannah whispered to herself, and the dream she’d had came back to her: all that Seder food and the familiar faces around the table, faces she could almost—but not quite—name. She imagined the taste of the roast beef and saliva filled her mouth. Standing, she smoothed down the wrinkled skirt of her dress and looked around for Gitl.
    Gitl was bending over one of the lowest shelves. Hannah recognized her by the awful red print dress. Hurrying over, Hannah called out, “Food, Gitl! They’ll give us food. If we hurry. At last!”
    Gitl stood up