Playing for the Commandant (20 page)

“Has anyone got a sponge they can spare?” she called out, and without even looking, I knew it was her. I jumped down from my ladder and grabbed her by the arm.

“Vera! You’re alive!” I wrapped my arms around her.

“Hanna!”

We stood there looking at each other until we both believed it was true: we’d survived. I took her hand and led her outside.

“Did you know?” I asked her, my smile fading.

“Know what?”

“That Mengele sent babies and pregnant women straight from the train to the gas chambers?”

Vera nodded. “Old people, too. My grandmother was one of them. My mother and I were sent to the right and my grandmother to the left.” She took a deep breath. “Two weeks later, they took my mother.”

“At a selection?”

Vera nodded. “All those men and women picked off, one by one.” She shook her head.

“They weren’t all sent to the showers?”
Not my mother, not Anyu.

“No, not all of them.” She spoke quietly. “But the SS could only squeeze so many bodies into the barracks and we kept coming, week after week. They had to make space for the new inmates, the ones who could work.”

“I was thinking about going home to see who . . .” Bile rose in my throat. “I won’t see my mother. That’s what you’re trying to say, aren’t you? That she’s dead.”

“Your mother . . .” Vera’s hand flew to her throat. “I’m so sorry, I forgot.” Vera shook her head. “My mother was weak. I think it was typhus. She was dizzy, and when they asked her to hop up and down . . .” Vera covered her face with her hands. “She could barely walk. If she’d been a little stronger, maybe they would have sent her to the infirmary. Maybe your mother . . .” Vera looked up at me. “I don’t know, Hanna.”

I buried my face in my hands.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Go home.” Vera pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped my nose. “Go back to Debrecen. If your family’s alive, they’ll be waiting for you.”

I shook my head.

“Miracles happen.” She blotted my tears. “The day Mengele pointed you to the right, that was a miracle. Winning the audition, watching the Red Army walk through those gates . . . Maybe there’s a miracle waiting for you in Debrecen. You need to go home and find out.”

“What about Karl?”

“Karl’s in a prisoner-of-war camp, being interrogated.”

“What?” I stumbled backward. “He was captured? But I was with him. We said good-bye. I came back to camp. The SS were still here.” I stared at Vera “He had time to get away.” I counted the days in my head. “He had a week.”

“The commandant got away.” Vera pressed her handkerchief into my palm. “If the Red Army stormed the villa and found Karl there, it was because he wanted to be found.”

I left Auschwitz the day the German troops surrendered Budapest. It was a sunny day in February; the snow had finally begun to thaw, and the sky was blue with possibility. I left with a toothbrush, a spare pair of underwear, and the promise of a new beginning. I had a coat, a pair of secondhand boots, Karl’s scarf, and a train ticket to Debrecen. I kissed Vera good-bye and promised to keep in touch.

I stopped at the gates of Birkenau on the way to the station, looking through the gaps in the barbed-wire fence at a place I didn’t recognize. There were no bodies lying in the snow, no scarves of smoke spiraling from the chimneys. Grass sprouted in the cracks between bricks. Last time I’d stood at the fence, the sky had screamed with fighter planes. Now bees buzzed overhead. Last time, my head had been covered with bristles. Now my hair skimmed my ears. I was wearing a dress without a yellow star on it, and in my bag I had three plums, a loaf of rye bread, and a thermos of water.

The barracks had been flattened, but I didn’t need the windowless walls and corrugated iron roofs to navigate my way through the camp. I could still see the imprint of the shower block where I’d scrubbed myself clean and the burned-out remains of the barrack I’d shared with Erika. I knew the exact spot where the orchestra had plucked their strings, and in which corner of the yard the SS had erected their gallows. I ran to the shower block where they’d stripped us of our clothes and stopped at the step leading into the showers. I bent down, reached under the wooden slats, and pulled out Erika’s film canister. The tin was rusted, but its lid was fixed firm, so the film inside was dry.

I had one more stop before I could board the train. I walked to the commandant’s villa, my heart hammering against my ribs. The cobblestone streets of Oswiecim were deserted. Coils of black smoke filled the air, bricks littered the pavement, and doors hung smoldering on their hinges. I picked my way through the rubble to the commandant’s house. I headed straight for the music room. I don’t know what I was looking for or what I expected to find, but it wasn’t there. The room was a mess. The curtains reeked of urine, and the walls were doused with wine. The piano stool lay on its side, its black leather seat slashed. Beside it, the piano sloped on three legs, its hammers and strings wrenched from its frame. I climbed the stairs to Karl’s room. The last time I was in the house, we’d kissed. I didn’t want the memory distorted by shattered glass and splintered wood, but I had to say good-bye. If I couldn’t say good-bye to Karl in person, then I’d say it to his paintbrush and easel, to his music and the books that he loved.

Karl’s room had been his refuge, the only room in the house without a picture of Hitler, a room filled with art, music, and beauty. I stopped at the door and saw the easel in pieces on the ground, books smeared with paint, a shredded map. I stepped into the room, careful not to tread on the punctured tubes of paint lying on the floor, their blues, reds, and yellows leaking out of them. Above Karl’s bed, the words
Die Nazi
bled on the wall.

I fell onto the bed and buried my face in Karl’s sheets. The smell of him was everywhere, in the blankets and the pillows and the pages of his books. I ran my hands along his bookcase and saw his sketchbook on the top shelf. I pulled it from the shelf and opened it to the last page. The delicate girl with the pale eyes Karl had drawn all those months ago had changed. There was a new strength to her lines, less shading, more depth. She wasn’t cowering in the shadows so much as stepping out of them. I tore the sheet from the book and stuffed it into my pocket.

I sat down at the piano and ran my fingers along the paint-splattered keys. My fingers found a bloodred C-sharp, then an angry purple D. I hadn’t played piano for a month, hadn’t thought about Clara Schumann in weeks, but my fingers found the heartbreaking opening to her Romance in A Minor. I played the love song for my mother, tears streaming down my face. She’d been so thrilled when I’d told her I’d be playing piano with the Birkenau Women’s Orchestra. I remembered her standing in front of the watchtower staring wide-eyed at the thin-armed players.

I bore down on the keys, and Clara’s music filled the room.

“I promised to play Clara for you, Anyu,” I shouted above the chords. “I promised never to give up.”

It felt strange sitting in a train with windows and leather seats and a door I could slide open. I found a window seat and spent the next ten days following the curve of the tracks that would take me home. The train emptied slowly: Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Hungarians, everyone heading home or heading out, scrambling to start a new life, searching for a new home.

As we neared Hungary, I lifted my eyes to the rolling green hills, the wide stretches of farmland, the grassy banks of the Danube. I saw goats and cows, oak and acacia, and for the first time, I dared to believe that I could leave the camp, really leave. I’d stopped looking over my shoulder and shoveling food into my mouth. I’d stopped scratching at imaginary fleas and standing at attention. My hair was long enough to comb and part on the side. I’d put on weight. People called me by my name; they asked if I was hungry. I mattered.

We zigzagged through Eger, Budapest, and Szolnok. At night I dreamed not of Karl or the camps, but of home. I was back in the bedroom I shared with Erika. She was brushing her hair; I was reading a book. I could smell challah baking, and the sweet, spicy mix of paprika and brown onion frying in a pan. It was Friday night, and Mother was shelling peas in the kitchen, waiting for Father to return from synagogue. I heard his key in the lock and his footsteps in the hallway, and I ran to greet him.

I leaped off the train as soon as the stationmaster opened the doors. I was in Debrecen — I was home. Except it didn’t feel like home. The station looked the same, but no one was waiting for me on the platform. The cobblestone streets still tripped me up. There were ducks in the pond and skaters on the ice rink, ice-cream vendors outside the park and boats on the lake. It was as if nothing had changed — but everything had — and I felt like a stranger. I passed traders at their market stalls and children eating doughnuts outside the Piac Street bakery. No one smiled, and no one stopped me.

I hurried toward Hatvan Street, to the safe familiarity of the Jewish quarter, surprised to see it so unchanged. I stopped at the end of our street. I craned my neck and looked for our apartment building. It was still there, just before the bend, its whitewashed walls in need of paint. Flowers spilled from the balconies; washing hung on the rails. I pulled my C-sharp from my pocket and raced up the hill. The front door was open. I ran inside, climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, two at a time, and stopped at the door to our apartment. The mezuzah was missing and the welcome mat had been replaced, but the brass plate still read
Apartment 5B
. Vera had warned me not to get my hopes up, but I could smell fish frying, and when I pressed my ear to the door, I swear I heard a noise.

I swallowed hard and knocked on the door.

“Hello.” A woman swung the door open. She was holding a wooden spoon and wearing an apron embroidered with strawberries. Her cheeks were dusted with flour. She was smiling until she saw me, then her smile slipped away.

“What do you want?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest and stepping in front of the door.

“This is my apartment. . . . I — I’ve been away,” I stammered.

“Yes, and while you were away,
we
moved in.” It wasn’t an apology. “You’re trespassing.” She stepped toward me, forcing me back into the hallway. “And if you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.”

My mouth fell open. Call the police? She was in my home, leaving floury footprints on my hallway runner, switching on my lights and using my oven.

I elbowed her aside and ran down the corridor, past my father’s umbrella stand and my mother’s white orchid. I reached the bedroom I shared with Erika and lunged for the door. I needed to touch something that was Erika’s, something from before.

“That’s my daughter’s room. Don’t you dare.” The woman caught up to me. Her eyes were cold, her mouth hard. She grabbed my arm and dragged me from the door.

“It’s
my
room.” I shook free of her grip. I imagined that behind the door, my room was just as I’d left it, the pictures of Puccini and Verdi still tacked to the wall. The dollhouse Father had built for my seventh birthday under the window, the clothes I’d sewn for my dolls in a shoe box under my bed. I pushed the door open and stepped into the room, horrified to find that the woman was right. It wasn’t my room. There were no concert programs or ticket stubs taped to the mirror and no scuffed school shoes poking out from under the bed. Instead there were porcelain ponies on the windowsill, an unfinished tapestry on the bed, and a large brown bear tucked under the sheets. A photo of a girl I didn’t know sat in a silver frame on top of the bedside table.

“Have a couple been here?” I turned on the woman. “They probably look like me — skinny, with short hair. They’re in their forties. He might have a beard; she has blond hair. . . .” I paused to catch my breath. “And a girl a little older than me? Darker, with brown eyes. She’s feisty. You’d remember her.” I grabbed her blouse. “Her name is Erika. Please, you can have everything —”

“I already do.” The woman pulled away. “Now get out.” She snatched a cushion from the chair in the hallway and flung it at me. I stumbled out the door, clutching the cushion. The stitching had unraveled a little, but I could still make out my mother’s careful letters: a blue
E
for
Erika
, a red
H
for
Hanna,
a heart beside the letter
E,
a black treble clef next to the
H.

I staggered downstairs and into the back garden and stood on the silvered lawn, a knot of anger rising in my belly. The yard was dark. I was alone. There were no guards with guns, no dogs, no one to stop me from screaming. And still I clamped my hand over my mouth. If I started yelling, I might never stop, and if I didn’t stop, if I let the anger leak out of me, what would be left? I hugged the cushion to my chest and pictured my mother bent over her sewing machine, pumping the foot pedal with her stockinged feet, a smile on her lips. If I gave voice to my anger, if I went back upstairs and beat down the door and took what was mine, I’d still be no closer to knowing what had become of my family. I kicked at the frozen ground. It was so unfair. I rammed the ground again. A clod of earth loosened under my boot. I dug the wet ball from the ground and threw it at the back wall, watching as the dirt and ice slid down the brickwork. I bent down and plunged my hands back into the wet soil. My fingernails were filthy with mud just like — I shot up and ran to the back of the apartment building, holding up five fingers. Papa had held up five fingers, then taken five steps to the right the night before the roundup, the night he’d buried our savings in the backyard. I took five steps to the right. How many steps after that? I closed my eyes and tried to recall the words Papa had mouthed, tried to picture him stepping into the garden clutching the battered cookie tin. Three. He’d taken three steps backward into the garden. I took three steps back and bent down to plunge my hands into the earth, but when I looked down at the ground, the soil had already been dug up.