Playing for the Commandant

by Suzy Zail

  “Yes!” Mother clapped her hands. “That would be wonderful! They’ll be much safer with you. You keep them until we return.”

  A cruel smile split the officer’s face, but Mother had already moved on. She was holding up my silver fountain pen and talking to the officers at the next table.

  The next day, we marched through the front gates of the brickyard, a long line of Jews with sacks on our backs. We no longer had pets, iceboxes, bicycles, beds, pianos, or photo albums. We had crumbs in our pockets and, if we were lucky, water. Most of us carried underwear, socks, and a toothbrush. Erika had a camera. I had Clara’s Piano Concerto in A Minor and a black C-sharp.

  My feet ached in my strappy sandals, but we weren’t allowed to stop. Those who begged for water or stopped to catch their breath were forced back into line with the butt of a rifle. I heard a voice cry out and turned back to look. The boy from the blanket had tripped over a rock. He lay on the ground, clutching his ankle, while a guard stood over him, holding a gun. Get up! I wanted to shout. Get up or they’ll shoot. But I didn’t call out. I turned back and kept my eyes trained on the back of my father’s head. You didn’t yell or fight back or step out of line here. You did as you were told. You put one foot in front of the other, and you kept your head down. You marched in time and shut out everything else: your thirst, your aching legs, the screams. I counted my steps in 4/4 time — one-two-three-four, over and over, like a metronome, blocking out everything except the beat. Just as Piri had taught me.

  We arrived at a train station in the early afternoon, but it wasn’t a station that I’d been to before. I stepped into line behind my father and inched forward slowly, past cargo wagons and freight cars. Across the tracks, on another platform, a passenger train was idling. Its compartments were empty, except for the dining cabin, where an SS officer sat drinking tea with his wife and daughter. The young girl wore a cream-colored shirt with a lace collar and a straw hat with a matching ribbon. Her hair was set in waves, and her lips were painted pink. She was reading a book.

  We didn’t cross the tracks to board the train. We stopped at the mouth of a cattle car, an empty slatted box without seats or windows. I faltered, confused, but the swell of the line carried me up and in, after my parents and sister. A hundred bodies piled in after us, on top of us, pressed against the walls of the wagon and crammed into its corners. The cattle car groaned, and when we couldn’t be packed in any tighter, its heavy door was closed and nailed shut.

  Outside, children screamed, dogs barked, and soldiers shouted. Inside, it was dark.

  The train car smelled like a toilet. I held my nose and fought the urge to throw up. Erika and I pushed through the crush of bodies to get to a small grate at the far end. We took turns at the wall, tilting our heads up toward the little air that filtered through the slats.

  A bucket sat in a corner, its lumpy contents spilling onto the floor. When I couldn’t hold on any longer, Father held his coat up and I squatted behind it, but Mother refused to go. “I don’t have any toilet paper,” she fretted. “I’ll just hold on until we reach the next station.”

  But there was no next station. Through the slats of the grate I saw fragments of sky, scraps of green, and flashes of gray — station platforms with strange-sounding names. We’d passed dozens already. The sky had grown dark and then lightened again, and we still hadn’t stopped.

  I opened my backpack.

  “Anyu, I found some toilet paper. Take it; you’re in pain.”

  Father held up his coat again and Mother crouched behind it, clutching the first page of Clara’s Concerto in A Minor. I didn’t need the sheet music to play Clara’s pieces. I knew all her concertos by heart. I just wanted the crotchets and semiquavers for company, a reminder of the life I’d return to once we were free.

  “Remember when we used to sit in the air-raid shelter?” Erika pulled me close. “It was dark and cramped and we’d sit there for hours, and Papa would tell his corny jokes and Anyu would sing. And when the siren finally sounded and we opened the door, remember how good the sun felt on our faces?”

  I closed my eyes and pictured my sister and me lying on the grass, our faces turned up to the summer sun. When Erika brushed against me, her body wasn’t sticky with sweat; it was slick with suntan oil, and the stifling heat in the wagon was another summer’s day, and the clank of the wheels was a song on the radio.

  I fell asleep. When I woke, Michael Wollner was standing next to me.

  “Sorry — did I wake you? It’s hard to see in here, and you were standing against the wall. I thought you were awake. . . .” His breath smelled like sour milk.

  “It’s okay,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I’m awake. What time is it?”

  “I don’t know.” He stood on his toes and peered through the grate. “It’s dark outside.”

  “Dark? That means we’ve been traveling for two days.”

  Michael nodded. “Tonight’s the night we were going to have the dance. . . .” Even in the half-light, I could see his face flush. Michael stared at his feet. I picked at my hem. The dance was to have been held in an unheated hall in the ghetto. There would have been no food and no decorations and yet I’d been excited. Nervous, too, to have a boy’s arms around my waist for the first time, and his mouth at my neck. Now we were breathing down each other’s necks and we were all clammy and a school dance sounded wonderful.

  “Mother sent me over to ask if you could spare some water.” He held out a cup. “We’ve run out, and she can’t take her medicine. I wouldn’t ask, but she’s feeling faint.” I opened our flask and poured a few drops into his cup.

  “I hope she feels better,” I said, tucking the flask back into our bag. Michael returned to his mother.

  The car grew quiet. People were too weak and hungry to fight over floor space. Every time the train lurched to a stop, we were thrown against the walls and battered by damp bodies. Whatever bleak thoughts the adults had they kept to themselves. Occasionally, Mother would hum a tune to herself, but her voice didn’t cheer me. I just wanted to get out. Whatever our destination, it had to be better than being imprisoned in this wooden box.

  Someone lit a candle. In the flickering light I saw a woman lying on the floor. Her face was gray. I’d heard bodies slump to the floor, but I’d imagined they were sleeping, at worst unconscious.

  I pulled at my father’s coat. “Please, Papa, cover her up.” But he couldn’t.

  A young girl of three or four was sitting beside the lifeless body, holding its hand.

  “Wake up, Mama,” the girl said. She dropped her mother’s hand and shook her by the shoulder, tears welling in her eyes. “Wake up, Mama. Wake up!”

  “Here, take this.” I handed the child page two of Clara Schumann’s Concerto. “You can color it in. These notes are black.” I pointed to the crotchets. “The other notes need coloring.” I rummaged through Erika’s bag and found a tube of red lipstick. “You can use this.” The girl’s eyes widened. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and took the lipstick.

  “Mama’s asleep.” She put a finger to her lips. “It will be a surprise.”

  It must have been midnight on the third night when the train’s wheels finally ground to a halt. A young boy who’d had his nose pressed to the grate announced we were in Poland, in a place called Auschwitz-Birkenau. The doors were flung open, and we were ordered to step onto the platform. I had longed for the sun, but after three days in the dark, the bright lights stung my eyes. It was cold, too, but the rush of clean air was a relief. Someone shouted at us to leave our bags in the train car. I pulled the C-sharp from my backpack, tucked it into the elastic of my underpants, and stepped off the train behind Erika. Father helped Mother to her feet and lifted her off the train, steadying her between us. We slipped our arms through hers and stepped into the crush of people spilling onto the platform.

  Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was an odd-sounding name for a town. And an odd-looking station, too, manned by SS guards and stooped porters in filthy blue and
white rags. There were no street lamps at Birkenau, only floodlights. No wooden seats, just barbed wire and men with whips and a strange hovering smog. Something huge and heavy and black moved through me.

  A searchlight swept the platform, and I saw Michael Wollner jump from the train. He took his mother’s hand and helped her down. Her face shone with sweat; his was grimy. A soldier brushed past them, dragging a dead body after him.

  We were ordered to form two lines. Men were sent to the right, women, children, and the elderly to the left. My mother stepped to the left in confused obedience, but Father pulled her back, tears spilling onto his stubbled cheeks. He kissed her on the mouth. Then he turned to me.

  “Be brave, darling Hanna, and be careful.” He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me on the forehead. His lips were cracked; his stubble stung.

  “You said we had to stick together, Papa. You said we’d be okay as long as we —”

  “Men to the right!” an SS officer shouted, putting his gun back into its holster. Behind him a woman was slumped over her husband, cradling his bloodied face in her arms.

  His lashes heavy with tears, Father turned to Erika. “Look after each other,” he whispered, “and get home safe. And when you do, tell everyone what you saw and what they did to us.”

  And then he was gone, another pair of marching feet swallowed up by the night.

  I took my mother’s hand and stepped into line behind Erika.

  “Your nails!” Mother scolded, looking at my hands with horror. “You can’t sit at the piano with hands like that. I want your nails cut tonight.”

  I wanted to slap her. I wanted to scream, They’ve taken Father! Open your eyes! but it was too late; Mother had already gone. She wasn’t sad and she wasn’t scared. She was back in Debrecen and her daughters were making mischief and her husband was at work.

  One of us had made it home already.

  Erika watched the ghosts in striped uniforms unload luggage from the trains.

  “You did the right thing leaving the camera on the train,” I whispered in her ear. “Photos of this would only get us in trouble.”

  Erika didn’t answer.

  “You did leave the camera on the train?” My heart dipped.

  “Yes. I promised Papa I’d get rid of it if things got dangerous, and I did. But this —” Erika looked down, unfurling her right hand to reveal a metal film canister, “— this, we didn’t talk about.”

  “You with the blond hair. How old are you?” A man with a shaved skull and a weeping eye stepped into the line beside me. He wore the same striped rags as the porters, and a yellow star was stitched over his left breast.

  “Fifteen.”

  “You’re sixteen.” He looked me in the eye and spoke slowly. “Remember. Sixteen.” And then he was gone.

  Mother, Erika, and I neared the front of the line. A tall man in a long black leather coat was directing the women and children in front of us to his right or left. He had dark stony eyes and perfectly parted hair. In his gloved hand he held a stick, which he wielded like a baton. He reminded me of the conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra.

  Erika turned to me. “That officer just sent that woman with the limp to the left — that little boy, too. If you’re an adult and you’re fit, he points you to the right,” she whispered, taking a step forward. “If you’re a kid or you’re sick, he sends you to the left, to those factories over there.” She pointed to a cluster of low brick buildings.

  “So, the left is factory work,” I whispered, “and the right . . . hard labor?”

  In front of us, the young girl from the cattle car stood before the podium, the tube of red lipstick clutched tightly in her hand. The conductor glanced at her, raised his baton, and pointed to the left.

  “Anyu and I will be sent to work outdoors. We won’t have a choice,” Erika said quickly. “You do. Say you’re fifteen.”

  I looked to my left, at the row of squat buildings, the last of which belched smoke from a giant chimney. The sky had grown light and I was dizzy with hunger. I thought of mother’s stove top and the fried eggs she’d cooked for me the morning we’d left the ghetto, and how I’d left them on my plate, untouched. Maybe I’d be put to work in the factory; maybe soon I’d be fed.

  We stepped up to the podium. The conductor beckoned Mother and Erika forward.

  “I’ll find you,” Erika whispered, pulling her hand from mine. The conductor glanced at them and waved his wand to the right. Mother didn’t turn around to say good-bye.

  It was my turn. I blotted the sweat from my face with my sleeve and stepped forward. The conductor took one of my braids in his gloved hand and smiled.

  “Goldenes haar.” He looked into my eyes. His voice was smooth, a honeyed baritone. “Bist du Judin?” I nodded. Yes, I was a Jew.

  “Wie alt bist du?”

  I opened my mouth. The conductor wanted to know how old I was.

  I was directed to join the women on the other side of the podium. Erika frowned when she saw me. “You said you were sixteen?”

  I nodded. “I couldn’t leave you to look after Mother alone,” I said. But I was lying. Erika didn’t need me. I needed her. I needed my big sister to keep looking out for me. Father couldn’t, Mother wouldn’t, and I didn’t know how to take care of myself. Not here.

  Erika took my hand and I took Mother’s, and together we walked toward a sign that read WORK CAMP, and through a door marked RECEPTION BLOCK. A large grim woman with a green triangle on her dress took our names and told us to wait. Dozens of women waited beside us. The summer sun shone through the windows and seeped through the walls, and the room grew hot. The sound of a dripping tap echoed across the room. A note above the tap warned against drinking the water. A woman cupped her hands under the spout.

  “Kannst du nicht lesen, du idiot!” A girl with a green triangle on her dress and mud-colored eyes grabbed the woman by the back of her collar and yanked her from the sink. “Can’t you read?” she yelled, and then she punched her. “Wer kann Deutsch?” She swung around to address us, wiping her bloodied fist in the folds of her skirt. She wanted to know who among us spoke German. I’d studied the language at school, but I kept my head down. A woman in front of me put up her hand.

  “Gut. You’ll interpret. Now tell these whores to undress.”

  Undress? I froze. In front ofeach other?

  Mother peeled off her stockings while the women around her fumbled with their buttons and slipped off their shoes. Erika stepped out of her dress and left it puddled on the floor. I closed my eyes. When I open them, this will all be a bad dream.

  “Move it!” the interpreter yelled. I pulled my crumpled dress over my head, crossed my arms over my chest, and hoped no one would notice that I was still wearing my underwear. Ever since I’d gotten my period, I’d undressed behind locked doors. Mother hadn’t seen my changed body, and I was still getting used to it — to the curve of my hips and my rounded breasts and the soft blond hair between my legs.

  A skinny girl wearing a sacklike dress and a yellow star walked between us, scooping up bras, stockings, underwear, and dresses. She pointed a bony finger at my groin. “I’ll get in trouble if you’re wearing those. Take them off or I’ll call the guards.”

  “Don’t call them,” I begged. “I’ll take them off right now. See?” I pulled the C-sharp from my waistband, stepped out of my underpants, and let them fall to the floor.

  We were herded into a hall. Five women with razors, soap brushes, and scissors stormed into the room. Mother had to be held down by three of them, but when it was my turn, I didn’t struggle. I leaned forward and closed my eyes and let them hack at my hair. And when my braids hit the floor, I let the women scrape at my scalp with a razor. They shaved my head, my legs, and my underarms. Then they shaved off my pubic hair.

  “Don’t let them see you cry.” Erika blotted the tears from my face. “It’s only hair. It’ll grow back.”

  I didn’t need a mirror to see what I looked like. A hun
dred mirror images stood in the room with me: hairless, wild-eyed, dirty, and shivering. We were the bald prisoners in rags I’d seen at the station. And the lingering smog that smelled so foul? The bluish clouds that rose from the giant chimney? They weren’t cooking breakfast. They were burning hair.

  We marched, single file, from one hall to another, but the guards didn’t seem to notice our nakedness, or our tears. They looked through us — as if we were transparent — and somehow that was worse. We were in a cavernous room with showerheads in the ceiling. I balled my hand around my C-sharp.

  “Your film will get wet,” I whispered to Erika.

  “I slipped it under a step when we walked in,” she whispered back, and I remembered the step and her stumbling over it and the women behind us grumbling to pass.

  They were grumbling now and looking up at the showerheads. Some were crying. The Markovits twins huddled in a corner of the room, holding hands. A woman with drooping breasts and veined legs sat naked on the concrete floor, reciting Kaddish, the prayer for the dead.

  “Aren’t they glad to get clean?” I asked, but Erika didn’t answer. When the water pelted down, she turned her face up to the ceiling and scrubbed the dirt from her body. I watched the brown rivers of dirt trickle down her legs and disappear down the drain and wished I could disappear, too. Mother stood quietly beside us, her eyes closed, her head tilted up to the water, massaging her hairless scalp with her fingertips, as if she were at home in her bathroom. I lifted my mouth to the showerhead. The water tasted like it came from a swamp, but I didn’t spit it out.

  We were handed drab gray dresses with yellow triangles, worn underwear, and a pair of hard wooden clogs. We weren’t given a towel. I slipped the dress over my dripping body and slid my feet into the shoes.

  Erika’s clogs didn’t fit, so she handed them to the guard and asked for another pair. The guard laughed and said, “Try this on for size.” The rest happened so quickly — the guard’s raised arm, the tip of her whip sailing toward my sister’s face, Erika recoiling, leather catching skin, my sister’s torn cheek, her small, thin cry. I stood there, mute.