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electrical current had sizzled through her body. On and on it went. And then very clearly she heard the sound at last of Good Matron whistling the tune, and she came out from the pile of pig shit.
    “What’s this?” Lilo asked as she peered into what looked like a bucket of bloody guts that Good Matron had brought.
    “Pig guts. Slather it between your legs.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t ask questions. Just do it. And here’s a wet towel to wipe off the pig shit.” Lilo started to speak. “Don’t ask questions!” Good Matron hissed.
    “It wasn’t a question,” Lilo said softly. “I . . . I just . . . I know you risked a lot. I don’t want anything to happen to you — that’s all.”
    “Just — just go ahead and do what I said.” Good Matron’s voice was breaking. She turned away.
    When Lilo had finished, Good Matron sighed. “It might work. Just pretend you are bleeding for the next couple of days. Use your mother’s cloths in your panties. She’ll have enough blood for the two of you.”
    When Lilo returned to the barracks, the sight of her mother was so shocking that she felt her own legs start to give way. “Oh, Mama!” She could barely look. Her mother was crumpled up on the lice-ridden cot, too weak to speak. What seemed to Lilo like a puddle of blood pooled beneath her mother. Some of the blood had penetrated the cot and dripped onto the floor.
    Two weeks later, Bluma was still bleeding when Good Matron came to them with news. “You’re being transferred. Stand up and look healthy.”
    “Why? So they can have more fun killing us?” Bluma asked.
    “You’re not going that far east. Not an extermination camp. Maxglan.”
    “Where’s that?” Lilo asked.
    “Austria, near Salzburg.”
    Again the buses came at midnight, but this time it was both men and women being loaded. Lilo caught sight of the boy Django. He gave her a thumbs-up as he spotted her across the yard, then half a minute later fell into a line with Lilo and her mother.
    “Never miss a chance to travel with the ladies,” he said, winking.
    “What a card!” Bluma muttered.
    “Mama, don’t be that way. This is the boy who told me about Papa.”
    And now for the first time since Fernand had left, Bluma’s eyes filled with tears. She turned to Django and embraced him.
    “Thank you! Thank you.” Her words were like gasps, and she seemed to be clinging to Django for dear life. Lilo watched her mother embrace him and felt an overwhelming sense of embarrassment. Of course her mother was grateful to him, but this seemed a bit excessive. There was the sharp blast of a whistle, the sign that they were to begin boarding the buses.
    On the bus, Lilo and Django squashed into one seat so that her mother could have more room to almost lie down in the other seat.
    He was a talker, this Django, and a joker as well. But he had an old man’s face, Lilo thought.
    “So, Sinti girl, you’re not going to make a smelly bear joke, are you? You know, Romas and their dancing bears.”
    “Why would I do that? Are you going to make music jokes?”
    “I don’t know. Isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Sinti think they’re smarter than Roma, Roma think they’re better than Sinti.”
    “Very childish, I think,” Lilo replied primly.
    “No teasing, then?”
    “Why would you want to tease?” Lilo asked, genuinely puzzled. But she began to notice that humor and grim sarcasm were Django’s strategies for surviving. Buchenwald was just another stop for him over the past four years. He knew the game. He had learned the ways. One did not simply get food. One organized it, for indeed it was a major endeavor — figuring out the right guard to approach, one willing to break the rules. One had to be a genius at reading human nature, be able to detect the subtlest glimmer in a guard’s eye that might suggest a trace of empathy, a hint of a moral conscience. And for this trip, Django had organized a hunk of cheese that he shared with Lilo and her