by Andrew Gross
“So who’s Fisher?” Blum leaned to Shetman and asked.
The man shrugged. “Died last night. So fucking many, always takes them a day or two to catch up with the paperwork. It’ll be caught, though, you can be sure. They’ll trace it back to the block. So it won’t give you much time.”
Blum followed the colonel and commandant as they made their way onto the next block. They were on to him. Somehow. He was sure. He just didn’t know how. Maybe one of the local partisans had turned him in. Maybe Josef himself. That would mean their escape plan was compromised as well. There’d be no way out.
No, he decided, Josef would not turn on him. He’d seen the man’s resolve.
Still, the colonel was here for some reason …
“Let me know if you need anything else,” the short man said. “Sometimes I can get things done in here.”
“Thanks. I will.” Blum leaned over and shook his hand.
Ten hours more. The block count had taken three.
Ten more hours to keep himself concealed in the vast numbers of the camp and stay out of the Abwehr colonel’s way. And he and Mendl would be out of here.
FORTY-NINE
After roll call, everyone wandered back to their blocks for the morning meal and to break into their work details. Blum made his way through the crowd toward where he saw Block Thirty-Six had been assembled. He spotted Mendl amid the throng, slowly heading back toward his barrack. He was with a young man, who looked around sixteen and who Blum presumed was the nephew he spoke about yesterday.
“Are you still ready for later on, Professor?” Blum said, approaching.
Mendl turned, surprise written all over his face, but clearly elated to see Blum. “I’m so glad you’re all right.” He put his arms around Blum. “We all heard about Twenty. I was sure you were lost. How did you make it out?”
“I was lucky,” Blum said. “I found a guard whose greed was greater than his sense of duty.”
“Who?”
“Oberscharführer Fuerst.”
“The right choice. Bribing the executioner on the way to the gallows…” Mendl grinned. “I commend you.”
“These past three hours in that roll call haven’t exactly been a walk in the park for me either,” Blum replied.
“Yes, something is definitely up. Typical Germans. Count, count, count. Anyway, we’re both relieved to see you are okay.”
“This is the boy you were speaking of?”
“Yes. Leo.” The professor put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Leo, this is the man I was telling you about. So now you know I’m not crazy. And you already have a sense of just how resourceful he is.”
“I’m Blum.” Blum put out his hand to the lad. He looked barely old enough to shave. “The professor explained the conditions of coming along?”
“You won’t need to worry about me,” the boy replied.
“I think you’ll find that Leo here is quite resourceful as well in a very useful place. Up here…” Mendl tapped his forehead. “But I fear something is going on. We haven’t had a full roll call like this in weeks. Then today of all days. You noticed the fancy intelligence officer…?”
“I noticed. I noticed as he stared straight into my eyes. I thought I was going to shit. But after tonight, that won’t be our problem. We’re still a go. Nineteen thirty hours.”
“The lineup for the overnight work detail is at the gate over by the clock tower,” Mendl said, “near where we met yesterday. There’s one for the IG Farben factory. Another for the railway tracks into Birkenau, which are almost complete. People always drop out due to sickness or even death. And there are always people looking to fill in for the extra meal. That’s where a little money can get us to the front of the line.”
“How much do we need?” Blum asked.
Leo shrugged. “I’m pretty sure twenty reichsmarks per head should do the trick. Four or five pounds sterling would do even more.”
“I told you, a very agile mind,” the professor said. “And quite famous in here. Already the camp chess champion. I told you he won’t slow us down.”
“Ah, the chess boy,” Blum remarked. “Yes, I’ve heard of you…”
“And here in camp for only two days. See, Leo, your fame precedes you. And in another day, if all goes right, you’ll be a legend in here!”
“Whatever happens,” Blum lowered his voice and turned his back to a passing group of prisoners, “we wait for the partisans to attack and then you stay by me,” he instructed the boy. “My task is to bring the professor out at all costs. And that’s what I intend to do. If you’re not by me, or if you’re wounded and can’t make it, we can’t help you.”
“I understand.” Leo nodded.
“And that goes for you as well,” Blum said to the professor. “If he goes down, you leave him behind.” Blum looked him in the eyes. “You understand that, don’t you, Professor? This is a condition upon going.”
“I admit, that won’t be easy,” Mendl said.
“Well, hopefully you won’t have to make the choice.”
“You must, Alfred. It’s the only way I’ll go along myself,” Leo urged him.
“Then it works for both of us.” Mendl nodded reluctantly.
“I agree,” said Leo.
Blum said, “I need your oaths on that. Both of you.”
“You have it.” They both nodded again.
Music started up from somewhere. The orchestra. It was set up on the other side of the yard behind a row of wire near the infirmary. Their playing was the signal to get ready for the morning work parties. Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. The Overture.
“Curtain’s rising.” Mendl looked over at them with sarcasm. “Anyway, I think it’s best we go. Do you still have your sanitation job today?’
Blum shrugged. “I suppose it’s the best cover I have.”
“So we meet near the clock tower? Nineteen thirty hours. Before the night work details?”
Blum nodded. “I’ll have the money. And may God watch over us. This time tomorrow, you’ll be in England, Professor.”
“England…,” the old man smiled wistfully, “or the hereafter.”
“England, preferably,” Leo said.
“This time, I agree with him,” said Blum. “So stay out of sight today. And I’ll see you both there. Nineteen thirty hours.”
Blum waved discreetly and melded into the crowd. Lines had formed in front of the blocks for meals, then to split up into work details. Blum figured, even if his job had already been reassigned, whoever the unfortunate party was who had inherited it would gladly split up the blocks and share. He needed to just stay low and out of sight until it was time to go.
The orchestra changed music. A piece he recognized: Beethoven. The famous Leonore Overture from his opera Fidelio; it had always been one of Leisa’s favorites.
For the first time, Blum turned and focused on the musicians. There were seven: a trombone, a French horn, a cello, a piccolo, a flute, a bass drum, and a clarinet. He knew the story behind the piece. In the last act, Florestan, the hero, should have died as witness to Pizarro’s misdeeds. Yet he lived on, just as the music secretly encouraged all here to live on, not to despair and lose hope but to persevere with strengthened wills.
“Hail to the day, the hour of justice has come…” The words came back to Blum. “So help, help the poor ones…”
It was Beethoven, hero to the Germans, but whoever had chosen it, it was like a slap in the face to the forces who were in charge.
Blum went closer. The orchestra was set up on a platform near the infirmary on the other side of the wire. No guards around. He fixed on the musician playing the clarinet. A woman. With her shaved head and withered frame, she played as a ghost might play, with a kind of haunting detachment, her head bowed. Yet she seemed to stand apart from all the other performers in her skill.
It was as if there was still some fleeting spark of hope in her that found its way into the music. Even in this darkest of places.
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The notes drew him closer, both rousing and familiar, fondly remembering what it was like to hear such beautiful playing. No one stopped him. Most everyone else was in the midst of their meal. Until he stood only a few yards away. Staring up at her. The flow of her fingers on the keys. The precision with which she played. And the feel … Such haunting beauty, and …
Suddenly everything in him came to a stop.
The woman lifted her head, pale, shaven, as if in a trance, and fixed on him.
Her instrument fell to the floor.
Slowly she stood up, her jaw slack. Life breathed back into her face. Their gazes meeting.
“Doleczki,” Blum whispered, staring at the face he had pictured in his mind a thousand times.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Nathan,” she uttered back.
He could not move. His heart stood still. Joy, unbelievable joy flooded every space in him where for these past three years only emptiness had been.
He was staring at his sister.
FIFTY
At first, Blum was too filled with shock and disbelief to even speak, terrified that everything in this moment would shatter and it wouldn’t be real. A dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. She was standing there. Not ten yards away. She had called out his name. All feeling that had been shut off in him these past three years, that had left him thirsting with grief and guilt, now rose like a basin overflowing with cooling water.
Releasing him.
“Leisa!”
They both ran to the wire and locked fingers—grasping, touching, disbelieving, letting the amazement wash over them like a blanket of inexpressible joy.
“Nathan?” she said, eyes wide. “Am I dreaming?”
“No. You’re not,” he said. He squeezed her fingers, touched her face through the gap in the wire. “No more than I!”
It was only as he put his hands on her and squeezed that he could truly admit to himself that it was real.
“Leisa, you’re alive!” He stared at her with eyes stretched wider than they had ever been in his life, drinking in the incredible sight. She wore a tattered, waistless rag with holes in it. Her head was shaved. She had sores on her face. Yet he had never seen such a beautiful sight. Tears flooded his eyes. “I was told you were dead. That you had all been killed.” He grasped onto her hand and squeezed, the tears of joy overflowing now.
“Nathan, what are you doing here? You got away. We were told you were in America. That you were safe! How can you possibly be here?”
“Leisa, I—” He wanted to tell her. I came back. I’m on a mission. I have a way out. Tonight. But he couldn’t, of course. Not here. There were still guards around them. He glanced toward the infirmary. People were going in and out, both prisoners and orderlies. Anyone might overhear. Suddenly it flashed through him that if his sister was here, against all reason, then maybe there was still a chance that somehow they all had made it. That what he’d heard was untrue. “Leisa, is there a chance that Mother and Father are…”
“No, Nathan.” She shook her head. “They are dead. They were rounded up as part of a retaliation against a German officer who was killed and put against a wall and executed. Right on the street outside our house.”
“Yes, that is what I heard. But I heard also you!”
“I only got away because I happened to be giving a lesson to Mr. Opensky’s daughter when it took place. When I got back, people wouldn’t even let me go to our house to see. I was taken in for a month, friend to friend, until finally the entire ghetto was evacuated and I was sent here.”
He held back more tears, his fingers still locked with hers, this time for them. His parents were gentle, civilized people. They loved music, the ballet. They had not an ounce of hate in them, even for their oppressors. So what he’d heard was true. To be left there in the street like homeless dogs. Even worse than criminals.
“I’m sorry, Nathan. There was no way for me to get word out to you.”
“Leisa, I thought you were dead.” Blum’s eyes shone. “My world has been a nightmare for two years since the news.”
“And I thought you were safe, Nathan. In America. And yet you are here!” She looked at him again, this time with something verging on anger in her voice. Reproving. “You got out. It was everything Papa wanted for you. How can you possibly be here, Nathan? How?”
“Quick, come over here…” They moved farther away from the orchestra, which continued to play. “Come close now. Leisa, I can’t tell you,” he said under his breath and with haste, “but you must believe me, I will only be here until tonight. You are in the women’s camp? Is there a way through the wire between them?”
“No, that is impossible.” She shook her head. “But what do you mean, ‘only until tonight’? Look at you, you’re a prisoner. You are trapped here like any of us. What are you talking about, Nathan?”
He glanced around to make certain no one was eavesdropping on them. The staging area had pretty much emptied. Everyone was back at their blocks now. The guards were at their posts as well. They wouldn’t have much time. A woman passed nearby, carrying a stack of sheets to the infirmary. “Listen, can you be here later? Just before dark?”
“Here?”
“In the Main Camp. Near the clock tower.”
“No. Once we finish, there’s no access between the camps. If I’m found there, they would shoot me like anyone else. And anyway, come here for what? What are you doing here, Nathan?” Her eyes shook with incomprehension. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“You’re in the orchestra. You must have freedoms. What about to the infirmary then?”
“We have our own infirmary back at the camp.”
“Then you must come now.”
“Now…?” She looked both frightened and perplexed.
“There must be a way through the wire. I will hide you. Leisa, I am only here until tonight. It’s our only chance.”
“What are you saying, Nathan? I don’t understand.”
“Leisa!” someone whispered sharply. Another woman in the orchestra gestured worriedly at something beyond them.
Blum looked around. A guard was heading their way.
“Leisa, what block are you in? In the women’s camp,” he said quickly.
“Thirteen. But why?”
He tightened on her fingers through the wire and put his lips close to her face. “Leisa, I can get you out of here! I know it sounds crazy, but you have to trust me. That’s why I’m here. I have a way. But it is only for tonight. That’s why if you can somehow make it in here, whatever you had to do, I could—”
“Ssshhh, Nathan!” Her eyes looked beyond him and tremored with alarm.
The guard came up and jolted Blum between his shoulder blades with the stock of his rifle. With a shout, Blum fell to his knees. “No fraternizing, lovebirds. Get wherever you have to go,” he barked at Blum. “And you,” he said to Leisa, “back to the music. Or next time it won’t be this end of the gun for you to be concerned about, do you understand?”
“Yes.” Blum nodded, one hand still locked on his sister’s.
“We’re done, sir,” Leisa said, trembling. “Please, don’t shoot. Nathan, we have to go.”
“Leisa…” His heart fell like it had plunged into the sea, weighted down with sadness. We still haven’t arranged …
The guard kicked him in the ribs and Blum fell over. “Did you not hear me? Go!” He cocked the rifle and pointed it at Blum. “Go now! Or do you want me to shoot both of you here? Now?”
“No. No!” Leisa begged the guard. “We’re going. Nathan, go! Listen to him.” Tears of grief and helplessness welled in her eyes too.
Blum put his hand out, feeling her fingers slip away from him, possibly for a last time. He couldn’t just let her go. Not after three years. After miraculously finding her again. And now with the means to get her out. But there was no way he could do anything with the guard hovering over him. Except look at her as she helplessly backed away from the wire.
“Now, go!” the German shouted, jabbing at him with the gun. “Go!”
“Nathan, please…” Leisa looked at him a last time, begging him. “I have to go back now. I love you. Be safe.”
“I will contact you,” he said, as he staggered away, knowing the guard couldn’t understand. “Wait for my word. Tonight.”
The guard pulled back the action of his weapon. “I said enough! This is the last warning!”
Leisa nodded back at him, her eyes flooded and hopeful. She hurried over and rejoined her colleagues on the stand. But Blum knew it was a promise she would never keep.
The woman carrying bedsheets hurried away.
Leisa stepped back up on the stand. The flute player who sat next to her handed her her instrument. She picked up the piece in midpassage and resumed playing. Blum turned once more as he went back across the yard, the guard still behind him, knowing each look he caught of her could well be his last. That he had found her, agonizingly, but only for a few fleeting seconds. And only to lose her once more.
“Lovesick, huh, Jew?” The guard smirked at Blum, nudging him toward the blocks. “Makes me cry.”
“Yes,” he said, holding back his torment. He couldn’t just leave her. He wouldn’t, no matter what the mission.
Not again.
He turned and caught sight of her a final time, as the orchestra switched to some happier show tune, and saw the sadness pool in her eyes.
You wouldn’t leave your flesh and blood, would you? Mendl had asked of him.
No. He’d already done that once. Never again.
The mission was still everything. Getting Mendl back. The oath he’d made to Strauss. To Roosevelt.
But for Blum, who from across the yard returned Leisa’s last, longing look with a nod of promise in his own gaze, the mission had just changed.
PART FOUR
FIFTY-ONE
The iron door to Block Eleven opened and the large man hesitantly stepped in, his cap in his hand. He took an anxious look around, a row of dark cells lining the barrack walls, hearing people huddled inside them, in total darkness, a few desperate moans. Some iron contraptions that looked like chains or harnesses hung from hooks on the walls.