The Cage

Helen and the Doctor tell Riva that she is to be transported to a hospital, dress her in a coat, and transfer her to a woman in a Nazi uniform. “It feels so strange” to Riva “to walk on the pebbled road without the other prisoners,” and with the guard behind her, her “feet drag” (167). The beauty of the surroundings feels “very strange, unreal,” and she sits down “in the middle of the road” (167). Riva tells the guard that she cannot continue, and the two women stare at one another until the guard “reaches out to help” Riva stand up (167).

Without the same anger in her voice, the guard asks Riva about herself. As she tells the guard parts of her story, Riva thinks that “she is human,” that “under that brown Nazi uniform beats the heart of another human being” (168). When they arrive at the train station, Riva is surrounded by “men and women in their bright winter coats,” and she finds the space “peaceful” (168). Despite her previous kindness, the guard stares sternly at Riva on the train, forcing Riva to stand in the corner while she sits down.

When they reach Glatz, a little girl stares at Riva, but her mother looks horrified and pulls her away. Passersby continue to stare as Riva walks in the gutter, not the sidewalk, to the hospital. Though the officer argues with the chief doctor that Riva must be treated for blood poisoning, he repeats that the doctors at the hospital “do not treat Jews” (170). They continue to march around the town to different hospitals, seeking a doctor for Riva, who grows exhausted and simply wants “to sleep, sleep, sleep” (171).

Eventually, Riva’s guard finds a hospital, and Riva follows her to a bench in the waiting room. She is prepared for the worst and sits “at the edge of the bench, ready to jump at any moment” (172). Riva catches her guard looking at her sadly, and notices that most of the people around her are “men in military uniforms,” many of whom “are without arms or legs” (173).

A siren goes off in the hospital, and Riva moves, with the guards and the others, to the bomb shelter. No one appears alarmed, and many settle in with books or knitting that they bring in case of alarm. It feels “strange hiding with the Germans” as planes that Riva “welcomes” fly overhead (173). At the factory, Riva and the other Jewish workers stay outside during air raids, but “here, if a bomb should hit, we will all die together” (173).

Eventually, the doctor sees Riva, and she is awoken by the guard once the treatment is over. They exit into the street, “dark now,” and Riva is weak, walking “like a drunk” (175). “People stare” as they proceed down the street, a “woman in a Nazi uniform holding up a half-dead Jew” (175). On the train, Riva sits on the floor and “[floats] between dream and reality,” imagining both her mother and angry crowds. When the train arrives at the station, the guard, Lotta, wakes her and returns her to the camp, on a wagon, in the darkness, with “the girls” who have come to return her “back to the cage” (176).

After several days, Riva must return to Glatz to see the doctor again. The camp doctor will go with her, for this second visit, to help Riva walk, because Lotta reported that Riva “staggered all the way home” the previous time (177). As they walk, “the cold air feels refreshing” to Riva’s “hot face,” and the guard waits patiently for the pair to arrive at the train station. Riva feels “as if in a dream,” and she only barely describes her journey, which she sees “with feverish eyes” (178). She does remember that the doctor “walks proudly, holding her head high” (178).

When Riva apologizes to the doctor that she must walk in the gutter, with a star on her coat, the doctor reminds her that they are “special,” “better,” because they “can still feel” (178). Together, they come to the Glatz doctor, who is grateful that the camp doctor came with Riva and Lotta. The Glatz doctor affirms that Riva “is a brave girl, sitting so still,” and then she speaks German as she removes the dressing (179). Riva’s infection has spread up her hand, and they will need to amputate her arm if the spreading does not stop.

Riva faints when she hears this information. No one knew that she would understand German, and so they spoke freely.They apologize for sharing this information. Once Riva comes to, and once they are on the train together, Riva asks the camp doctor not to amputate her arm, because she “will die either way” (180). The camp doctor promises that she will not allow anyone to amputate the arm.

Thankfully, when Riva returns to the hospital again, the infection has stopped spreading. Riva will not need an amputation. Her finger is still stiff, but the camp doctor tells her that she “will take […] from this hell a reminder that someone cared” whether she lived or died (180). Riva complains that she cannot write another poem with her right (writing) hand bandaged, so the camp doctor pulls out a pencil and a piece of paper and encourages her to try writing with her left hand.

The doctor “spends every free moment” encouraging Riva to practice her writing, and “slowly words take shape” (182). Riva can hear the whistle, the whip, and the shouts outside, but she is “lucky,” in the sick room, to have space to write. As girls come to the sick room for treatment, Riva hears their tired voices, and she notices how the camp doctor encourages everyone. Riva calls the doctor “the goddess of the sick,” writes a poem about her, and gives it to the doctor (183). But the doctor cannot understand Yiddish, and so she asks Riva to read the poem aloud to her.

The doctor is not beaming, upon hearing the poem: “a dark shadow covers her face” as she explains that she is “no goddess” but “very, very human” (184). The doctor shares her guilt about her husband, also a medical student, who is not Jewish and was conscripted to be an army doctor. “His family is alive,” while hers “was murdered in Auschwitz,” and though she still loves him, she “will never go back to him,” for “the barbed wire will always be between” them (184). Riva apologizes for surfacing these memories, but the doctor squeezes her hand and leaves the room before she can finish the apology.