The Limbo Zone. Postscript

He arrived at the barracks — a doctor, in a white coat, with thin hands, with ledger-like fingers.

The coat was clean. Without a single stain. Without creases. Without traces. As things are clean when they are washed — every evening, with hot water, with soap, with powder, with that particular German pedantry that transforms filth into a void, and the void into order.

He said: “Dance.”

And she danced.

Not because he commanded it. Not because she wanted to. But because it was the only thing she could do — standing on the Appellplatz, in a striped robe, barefoot, on the cold, wet stone — the only thing that was not silence.

She danced and she imagined. Not because imagination saves. But because imagination is the only stitch that holds when all the others are torn. She imagined an opera house. An orchestra. Tchaikovsky. Romeo and Juliet. She imagined — the stage, and the light, and the applause, and that impossible, glassy impossibility of being elsewhere.

And he watched. And he chose. To the right. To the left. Life. To the furnace. To the right. To the left. Every movement — a stitch. A small decision. A small choice. Done neatly.

Like a column of figures.

Like a tailor.

He gave her a piece of bread. She could have eaten it — alone, on the floor, in the darkness, clutched in her palm as one clutches the only thing remaining. But she climbed to the top bunk, to her friends, and she broke it. And she shared it.

And in this — in this small, insignificant, unremarkable gesture — in the fact that she did not eat it alone—was the only thing that stood between her and nothingness.

A hand.

Outstretched.

With a piece of bread, divided into several parts.

And that was all.

∞

← The Limbo Zone. Prologue