“Yes, yes, I understand. You’ll get the stove. I assume you’d prefer one on which you can cook your own food as well?” He made a sign to one of his aides.
The young man took out a small black notebook and began scribbling in it under Alma’s astonished gaze. She could hardly believe her good fortune.
The new Kommandant was looking at her benevolently with those big deer eyes, his generosity seemingly knowing no bounds.
Alma remembered Drexler and her recent useless tramps comment and was suddenly overcome with a desire to stick it to the warden with yet another privilege granted by the camp Kommandant himself.
“Herr Kommandant, perhaps now that the winter is approaching, it would be sensible to conduct a roll call inside the quarters instead of outside?” Alma probed, offering him a tentative smile. “We’re a small block and surely the wardens would prefer it as well…”
Mandl looked at the new administration questioningly.
Alma nearly fell over with astonishment when Kommandant Liebehenschel only nodded amicably again.
“Perfectly sensible. And, if you please, I would rather you not address me as Herr Kommandant.” He grimaced slightly as though the title itself tasted foul on his tongue. “Herr Obersturmbannführer will do just fine.”
“As you wish, Herr Obersturmbannführer.” Alma inclined her head, putting as much deference in the gesture as humanly possible.
“Anything else?”
Alma almost laughed with mad, hysterical joy. Surely, she was dreaming!
Behind Mandl’s shoulder, Sofia was shaking her head at Alma, signing to her wildly to stop trying her luck.
Alma only grinned at her, an insane, vicious grin of someone who had been to the other side and back, looked the devil in the eye and wasn’t afraid of anything any longer. “You have a Jewish pianist in your main camp who’s not allowed to play in the orchestra. Would it be too much trouble to transfer him here, to Birkenau men’s orchestra so he could play the piano there? And if he could come here and tutor my girls, that would help us tremendously.”
Sofia stared at her, positively mortified.
But the new Kommandant merely asked for the pianist’s number.
“I don’t know his number,” Alma confessed. “I only know his name. It’s Miklós Steinberg and he was very famous in Hungary.”
Instinctively, her palm passed over the pocket where she carried his letter with her at all times. For some reason, it felt insanely good just to say his name out loud.
As soon as the delegation had left the Music Block, Sofia swung round toward the beaming Alma. “Have you completely gone off your head?! Höss would have shot you for that!”
“Höss is gone.” Alma shrugged, perfectly unimpressed, and picked up her baton. “I hope they court-martial him and shoot him like he deserves.”
The very next day, a new, shiny piano was brought into the Musical Block. The day after, a big iron stove made its way into the corner, along with a full sack of coal—“From Herr Kommandant, with best wishes,” the special Kommando men tipped their striped caps theatrically and left, exchanging jests among themselves.
And, on Wednesday, Miklós Steinberg appeared in the door. He stood there indecisively, crushing his cap in his long, beautiful fingers, like a saint with the halo of the sun against his head and, all at once, the barrack itself appeared to be lighter.
Chapter 17
“That F you just played was supposed to be an F-sharp.” With an abrupt rap of the baton, Alma stopped the rehearsal.
“I’m sorry, Frau Alma. It’s difficult to concentrate when…” Violette-from-Paris didn’t finish, motioning with her bow toward the grand piano instead, at which Miklós was tutoring his new charge, Flora.
At once, the pianist lifted his gaze from the keys. “If we’re bothering you—”
“You’re not bothering anyone in the slightest, Herr Steinberg.” Alma fixed Violette with a glare instead. “Are you able to concentrate with the new arrivals screaming in the background as the SS tear their families apart at the ramp? Are you able to concentrate when the outside gangs are marching back in through the gates, carrying their dead with them from the fields? Are you able to concentrate playing against the screams and moans of the dying in the sickbay? Well then, the piano, playing a different tune from your own instrument should be the least of your trouble. From the beginning!”
In the course of the past couple of months, Alma’s orchestra had significantly swelled in its number. Making use of Dr. Mengele and Obersturmführer Hössler’s permission, Alma was pulling them out of selections and quarantine blocks at every chance she had. But now there were forty of them, not counting the ones whom she turned into Block staff, like copyists and runners, and out of those forty only twenty were professionals. The SS, who began to drop in in the middle of the day more and more often and request certain songs, appeared to be more than pleased with the new, improved orchestra. Mandl reported the Music Block’s progress with visible pride to everyone who agreed to listen and even ordered the sewing detail to fashion a new uniform for their concerts. Now, Alma’s girls performed in pristine white blouses, dark blue skirts and with their heads covered by beautiful lavender kerchiefs. Their Lagerführerin even commandeered black silk stockings for her mascots, much to her female underlings’ astonishment and displeasure. Prior to that, only SS wardens were allowed such luxury.
But the more the SS were giving, the heavier the pressure was growing. Alma felt it on her leaden shoulders—an invisible, yet oddly physical burden to create an orchestra of the Vienna Philharmonic type out of the pitiful Birkenau motley lot. The SS didn’t have the habit of being charitable without a reason. For each new privilege, they expected a more complicated piece. For each new extra ration or item, they expected a veritable concert given in their honor. If it was just Alma, on whom it all depended, she would have never complained. From her early childhood, she had been trained to play, play without stopping and on the level of a virtuoso; she had been disciplined into this lifestyle and it came naturally to her. Even now, she stayed up late in her room long after lights-out—another personal privilege given to Frau Alma, to leave the light burning on her desk after the curfew—and worked on the scores for the following day.
There were forty girls and, for most of them, life had only begun. They didn’t understand much of it; they cried at night and scratched at her door shyly and announced, out of the blue, that they missed their mothers, and cried even harder when she held them and stroked their hair and assured them that everything was going to be all right and the day when they would be liberated would certainly come and, as soon as it did, she would take them all on the Victory Tour all over Europe.
There were forty girls, who tired quickly from playing for ten and twelve hours a day and couldn’t bend their fingers properly the next morning. There were girls who were constantly hungry even though their rations were much better than those of the regular inmates. There were girls who regarded her with silent reproach whenever she would demand perfection from them and who refused to understand that their conductor only tormented them for their own good; that, in case something happened to her, they would be able to fend for themselves and remain alive until the liberation.
All that made Alma’s work much more difficult.
“You’re very strict with them,” Miklós remarked to her, pulling his short jacket on top of his sweater with two holes in it rimmed with brownish-red, right over the heart. He didn’t appear to mind the bloodstains and the fact that the goods had come off some poor bastard’s corpse; having a sweater in the first place was too much of a blessing to question its quality.
His first tutoring shift was over. It was time for him to return to his new orchestra and their evening duties—greeting the returning outside gangs by a cheery march. Alma suspected that in view of the impossibility of bringing the piano to the gates, Miklós was on the permanent music stands carrying duty with Laks’ orchestra.
“I have to be. They have to play
excellently, so that the SS can’t send them to the gas,” Alma explained, a bit more defensively than she had intended.
Miklós grinned, fixing his striped cap on top of his shaved head. “I never said it was a bad thing.”
“Yes, well…” She cleared her throat slightly, suddenly tongue-tied and not quite knowing what to say. “I’ll walk you out.”
“You don’t have to. It’s freezing out there—”
“No, it’s all right.”
Outside, the snow was falling. Searchlights swept lazily over the still-empty compound, piercing the gathering darkness and obliterating misshapen shadows with their yellow-eyed glares. The air was wet and misty, and their breath was coming out in translucent vaporous clouds. At once, Miklós pulled his jacket off and threw it on Alma’s shoulders. She looked at him, somewhat embarrassed, and felt her cheeks grow warm.
“I heard you playing in Vienna,” he suddenly announced.
“In the Philharmonic?”
“Twice in the Philharmonic. You played chamber music with your father. And other times at the Prater.”
“With my Waltzing Girls?” Alma felt a smile blossom on her face at the memory. She loved her first orchestra dearly. Much like the Birkenau one, she had conjured it up out of thin air and turned it into an overnight success. No longer in the shadow of her father’s name, she had unfurled her wings and become a force of her own, the name people repeated with awe and admiration. Her marriage had gone to the devil, but Alma had discovered that she was almost grateful that it did. While they were married, it was always Váša’s career that mattered; Alma’s was scarcely ever discussed, and condescendingly at that. But with the Waltzing Girls, this was no longer the case—now, it was Alma’s face that looked on from every wall and magazine, looking proud of her success, and rightfully so. And if certain men couldn’t take the competition, it was their loss, as far as Alma was concerned. She had wanted a partner, not a mere husband. A partner who would share both the spotlight with her and all the hardships as well. She hadn’t met him, but she had still nursed a hope that he existed.
“The very same. I didn’t miss one concert whenever I visited. Sometimes you were on tour, though. On those days, I couldn’t see you.”
There was a pause. Alma discovered that she was afraid that he was about to say something corny: All those girls around you on stage, but I only saw your face. You were so impossibly beautiful… That’s what her lover Heinrich used to say. That’s what her ex-husband Váša had been attracted to—a beautiful face and a famous last name. Sometimes, her brother used to joke that Váša married their father and not Alma. Alma had laughed out of politeness but deep inside, she always suspected that Alfred was right.
She started when Miklós spoke again, something quite different from what she had expected: “When I first heard you play, it touched something deep within me. Ten violinists can play the same piece, but it’s the manner in which they play it that counts, if you know what I’m trying to say?” He cringed slightly at his own words, as though embarrassed that he couldn’t express himself more eloquently, and rubbed his neck, hiding his eyes from her, chuckling bashfully. “You must take me for veritable mutton just now. I hope I’m not offending you with all these revelations; I assure you, it was never my intention…”
“No, no; please, continue,” she urged him. Tell me everything you heard in my music.
“Yes, well… You were very restrained with your instrument, almost austere. And yet, there was such passion hidden deep underneath that austerity, I couldn’t quite take it in, how it was even possible to play like that. I was sitting there at my table, looking round and thinking to myself, ‘They’re not hearing it, these people around me, all they hear is simple music,’ but I heard what you were trying to conceal from all that crowd; I felt it, it gave me literal chills on my skin, that force, that raw talent you were carefully hiding behind the meticulous technique.” He rubbed his arm as if the chills were still there, his eyes flashing about with excitement. “I’m not sure if you understand—”
“I understand,” Alma rushed to assure him, feeling a smile growing on her face. She understood him better than he thought. She had the same chills all over her skin when she heard him play.
“After I heard your violin that day, I was wondering what it would be like to know you as a person, as a fellow musician. I was hoping that I could meet you one day just so we could sit down and talk about music and life and art for hours. I guess I ought to thank the SS for making my dreams come true.”
The jest broke the gravity of the moment and Alma was almost relieved that it did. It was difficult standing next to him when he was saying all of those things and not allow herself to be affected by them. A talent. A person. A fellow musician. Nothing about her beautiful face or her beautiful dress, and thank God for that! How infinitely disappointing it would have been, if he had turned out to be just as superficial as the others. Alma released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding the whole time.
“You could have approached me after the concert,” she said.
“I considered it,” Miklós admitted. “But then I thought that if my guess about you was correct—you see, you look like a woman who never suffered from the lack of men’s attentions and who would, in fact, be insulted by such a crude approach—you would have most likely told me to get lost with my compliments and that would be the end of it.”
Alma had to laugh, even if something caught in her chest at those words. “That’s what I would have said. Most likely.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“See? My deductions were correct then,” he announced, unsuccessfully trying to conceal another grin.
“Disappointed?”
“I would have been disappointed if you said no just now.”
Alma was looking at him. He had eyes the color of steel, and yet, to Alma they appeared to be the warmest eyes she’d ever seen.
“I have never been to Hungary,” she said, changing the subject. The previous one was growing much too personal and she didn’t want it. Not in this place, at any rate. “And never heard you play before. And now I regret it. I feel I have missed out on so much.”
“I suppose it’s good fortune then that we’re both here and can play for each other every day.”
In the distance, the dog was barking. Against the indigo of the sky, the orange fires of the crematorium raged. In the glare provided by them, Alma held her hand, palm up. Some of the flakes melted instantly. Some didn’t. Alma wiped them on the jacket, remembered that it wasn’t hers and looked at Miklós in sudden profound misery.
He only smiled sadly and shook his head. Don’t apologize. I understand everything.
“You should be going. It’s getting rather cold and you mustn’t be late for your marching out. We have to head out too.” She handed him his jacket. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
She gave a small shrug. “For you, a renowned pianist, training my charges must feel like a university professor teaching kindergartners the alphabet.”
“You’re joking. You made my transfer possible; you arranged for me to become a member of an actual orchestra. Now, I can do what I love doing most—play the piano all day, and you say I ought to be mad at you?”
“Are they treating you well there?”
“Yes. Like a king.”
“I’m serious.”
“Me too. They put me in the Family Camp on my request.”
“They did? That’s wonderful news!”
“It is. I met so many former acquaintances there—musicians, journalists, directors—you name it. We have the best cultural evenings in the entire camp. The SS should be jealous of us.”
“I might know some people there, too. Could you, perhaps, ask around for me? Do you know anyone by the name Röders there? They’re my Dutch friends. Also, James H. Simon could be there as well.”
“I will ask this very evening. I’ll
turn the entire barrack on its head, but I shall find them for you, if they’re there.”
“Just tell them that Alma Rosé is here. Some people I didn’t mention may know…”
“You have ties to former Czechoslovakia?”
“My first husband was Czech.” Alma looked away.
There was a pause, during which Miklós was trying to search her face. “I’m sorry… Did he die?”
Alma looked at him at last and smiled. There wasn’t much joy in that smile. “No. I died for him. You see, I was Jewish, and he had a very promising career.”
Miklós didn’t say anything, but the expression on his face did.
“Just like Heinrich after him,” Alma continued to enumerate. For some reason, it was so easy to talk about it all with this man she had just met. “Just like Leonard, my Dutch fiancé after that… But it also didn’t go further than that. He had a career and I was still very much a Jew. A homosexual man married me in the hope of saving me from deportation. Funny, isn’t it? The Nazis call them perverts and put them in camps, but those so-called ‘perverts’ turn out to be much better people than those ‘upstanding’ Aryans.”
“Perhaps, you should start seeing Jewish men.”
His nonchalant announcement threw her off guard. Looking at him in amazement, Alma broke into mirthless laugher in spite of herself. “Where? Here?”
“Here is just the place. All of the European Jewish elite has gathered here, haven’t you noticed?” Standing against the crematorium chimneys, he gestured widely around himself. “But be quick about it before they gas us all.”
All at once, Alma couldn’t get her breath. A sudden fear had seized her; the irrational, wild fear that one day he would walk inside that crematorium and the world would lose him and his glorious talent forever.
“It’s all right to laugh about death.” As though sensing her mood, he dropped his mock-cheerful act. “We, like no one else, have deserved this right.”
He took her hand in his and kissed it as though they were parting ways after some gala or other, bowed to her sharply and elegantly, and walked off in the direction of the columns of fire.
The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel Page 18