Phyllis Green Ilka and Ivan
24
We are squeezed in here like packaged cigars. I only hope Ilka is not taken. Still it feels like a burden is lifted to know little Herman will be cared for by good friends, Betty and John. They have already taken him to England and changed his name to Johnny. I wish my Ilka could have accompanied them but even if she had forged papers, her looks would not pass. She is dark and sad looking. Her desperate eyes with the blueness underneath, her mournful sighs, her tears like afternoon rain, would all be suspect. She cannot laugh playfully like Betty. But of course, Betty would not be mistaken for one of us so laugh she can. The man next to me has let loose his bowels with a squoosh. It is powerful and sickening, but I say nothing. It could also happen to me so who am I to judge. I cover my nose with my left hand. We must bear this conveyance like the canned and smelly sardines that we are and hope for the best. Perhaps the rumors are not true. I am considered healthy. They must have low standards as I feel weak and fevered. The food is scarce and moldy. How can I work? But they tattoo me and send me to bury hundreds of my fellow men lying in deep ditches like pieces of garbage. The smell. I puke. Everyone pukes. We shovel earth onto them. They are heaped together like dead rats. Once they were my neighbors, your neighbors, friends who drank and cursed. They told jokes and guffawed. They pissed in the woods. Maybe they spit in your face. They were not perfect. They were human. But now, they are massed together to rot because someone thinks it is the right thing to do. At night, when it is that I can sleep, I dream that I am tossing dirt on Ilka. I see her face in the dead masses in the hole. I wake up in sweat and terror. Where are you, my evening star?