Summary

It is October 1944, and Russian planes are flying over Auschwitz. Pearl describes Stasha's increasingly withdrawn behavior, sitting on the infirmary steps waiting for news of Patient. Pearl, believing herself gravely ill as a result of Mengele's experiments, feels she must prepare Stasha for her inevitable death. She goes to meet Peter, Mengele's “Aryan”-looking teenage messenger, and asks him to get her something (96). He has a reputation for being able to find anything in camp. She finds him handsome and thinks about touching the scar on his ear, the remnant of a run-in with a guard. Pearl recalls the story of a pair of lovers, Rozamund and Luca, who had been shot and killed while trying to escape. Despite this, she kisses Peter and tells him she loves him, and they dance to the sound of the orchestra rehearsing in the distance. He does...