by Suzy Zail
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?” I ran from the room. I flung the front door open and stepped onto the porch. It was bitterly cold, but I couldn’t go back inside, not with Erika out there. I ran onto the road and tramped through the snow, sinking deeper into the drifts with each step. The villa disappeared and then the street signs too. I stood in the blinding white, tears dripping from my chin, not knowing whether to head left or right. I didn’t see Karl until he was by my side. His hair was speckled with snow, his shirt wet.
“Come inside,” he begged, pulling me to him.
I didn’t take his hand, but I followed him home. I sat at the piano without opening the lid, facing away from him, too exhausted to speak. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there, mute.
Karl set a cup of tea down on the table beside me and draped a blanket over my legs.
“I can go.” His words said one thing, his face another. I nodded. I didn’t want to talk. My sister was out there, either walking through a snowstorm, or buried under one. I kicked off the blanket and pushed the tea away. Karl’s shoulders slumped. He picked up the blanket and walked out of the room.
“I’m sorry, I know you don’t want company.” Karl peered in from the hallway. It might have been an hour later. Maybe more. Time had spun away from me. “My father called. He won’t be back for two days.”
I looked at him blankly.
“You don’t have to stay.”
I stood to leave.
“Or you could stay. We could look in the kitchen for something to eat.” He looked down at the dirty cup hooked to my belt.
“No,” I said, though my stomach was rumbling. “I need to get back.” I stood and walked to the door. I couldn’t stay here by the fire when Erika was out there.
“The Russians are close.” Karl followed me. “The SS are dismantling the camp and heading west.” I stopped at the door. “I heard my father on the telephone. The prisoners left by train. Maybe your sister’s with them.” I let go of the doorknob. They went by train. If Erika made it to the train station, she might still be alive.
“Can I show you something?” Karl spoke quickly. “In my room?”
I hesitated. Karl glanced at the door. “It’s locked. The guard can’t come in.”
I followed him up the stairs. In all my time at the villa, I’d never risked going up the stairs. Karl stopped at a door and turned the handle. Stepping over the threshold was like being sucked back to the past. It was like stepping into my own room and my life before the war. There was an open fire, a Persian rug and a leather armchair, just like Papa’s. There was a double bed and a wooden bookcase and an upright piano pushed against a wall.
“An August Förster!” I ran to the piano and threw open the lid. “I had one just like it at home.” I sat down and ran my fingers over the keys, lingering at middle C. Karl sat down beside me, his leg resting against mine. I lifted my hands to the keys and played the opening bars of Erika’s favourite piece, Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, and when Karl touched the keys, I shifted my hands up an octave and we played together. It was like dancing a waltz, as intimate as if we’d been running our fingers along each other’s bodies, caressing skin instead of ivory.
“Thank you,” I said, when the song ended.
“For what?”
“For seeing me, when it would have been so easy to only see this …” I looked down at my bony legs and my mud-spattered dress. I pulled up my sleeve and held out my arm. “For calling me by my name, not my number.”
“I wish we could have met somewhere else,” he said. “At the Symphony, or a dance. If I’d walked up to you and asked you to dance–”
“I would have said yes.”
He weaved his fingers through mine.
“You’re shivering,” he said. “You need a warm drink.” I followed him downstairs to the kitchen. He made me a cup of black tea, dropped a biscuit onto a plate and slipped another into my pocket. The grandfather clock in the hall struck two.
Karl’s smile faded. “You should go.” He pulled off his scarf and draped it over my neck.
I hesitated.
“Go home, Hanna.”
“Home?”
Karl nodded. “You’ll be free soon. Go back to Debrecen. Find your family.”
“Come with me,” I said, surprised by my own daring.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m the son of the commandant.” There was fear in his voice, sadness too.
“I’ll tell them you saved my life. I’ll tell them …”
Karl shook his head.
“It’s not just that. If you go back to Debrecen and find your parents, how will you introduce me? They won’t understand, Hanna, and you can’t expect them to.”
“And if they’re not there?” My voice splintered.
“You’ll start a new life.” He took my hand. “You can’t do that if I’m with you, reminding you of your old one. Every time you look at me you’ll be reminded of Birkenau.”
“Yes, and the music room at the villa.” I leaned in to him. “And our first kiss.”
I stood on my toes and brought my face close to Karl’s. I’d dreamed of our first kiss. I’d played the scene a thousand different ways, but never like this … standing at the front door, saying goodbye. Karl’s eyes dropped to my mouth. I could feel his heart pounding through his shirt but he didn’t kiss me. He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand and then he reached up and pulled my scarf from my head. He ran his fingers over my stubbled head, traced the arc of my nose, the dark circles under my eyes. He looked at me and it didn’t matter that my ears stuck out and my scalp glowed white. It didn’t matter that my dress was damp and my fingernails were dirty, and for a split second I almost told him what I was thinking – I could love you.
And then he kissed me. Just the faintest brush of his lips against mine. It was like being thrown towards the sun. I waited for it to feel wrong, but it didn’t. I thought of the first time I’d sat down at a piano, how wonderful the keys felt under my fingers, how sure I’d been that nothing else would ever come close to the feeling I had sitting on that stool making music.
We stood there, holding each other. Neither of us wanting to be the first to let go. I felt more alive, and afraid, than I ever had before.
And then a loud whistling sound tore through the room and the ground shook. Karl grabbed my sleeve and pulled me to the door.
“I don’t want you here when the Red Army turns up. Go back to camp, Hanna. You’ll be safe there. Please.” His breath was jagged. He reached for the doorhandle.
“Walk around the camp. Go to the bombed buildings hidden behind the trees. Go to the shower block on the other side of the tracks. Talk to people. Find out what we did.”
He pulled the door open.
“What your father did.” I buried my face in his neck. His skin was streaked with sweat, but I could still smell his musky scent. He stepped away from me and took my hands in his.
“Please,” he said, opening the door wide.
“You’ll leave too?” I said, searching his face. “Before they get here?”
He nodded his head and closed the door.
Chapter 17
I walked back to camp alone, but Karl was still with me, the warm, woollen scarf he had given me snug around my neck, his tender touch, the warmth of his skin. It seemed that before Karl, I’d known nothing of life.
“Who cleared you to leave camp?” A guard stood at the sentry gate. The sky exploded in oranges and reds.
He pointed his rifle at me.
“The commandant sent for me.” The lie came easy. “I’m his pianist.” He checked my number against the list on his clipboard and waved me through.
I opened the door to the barrack. A group of women stood huddled around a window. An armoured truck rumbled past. The block leader’s face was pressed against the glass.
“They’re going to put up a fight,” she whispered to the women circling t
he window. “They still have guns.” She pulled a wilted cabbage leaf from her pocket and stuffed it into her mouth. I walked outside, snapped an icicle from the barrack’s sloping roof and sucked on it.
“Please, hurry,” I whispered to the winter sky. I was talking to the Russians. I was talking to Karl.
I walked inside and lay down and waited for the room to grow dark. I listened to the tanks rumble by and the women whimper in their beds.
I tried to sleep but my dreams were filled with Erika. Erika being beaten by a guard, Erika bent over a rusted washbasin, Erika marching through the snow – dreams in black and white and grey. Gunfire perforated the silence. I rose from the bunk in the half-dark and shuffled to the window. The sky was doused in pink, flashes of light exploded in the distance, clouds of smoke rising up after them.
I lay there that night and all the next day, waiting for the Russians to come, waiting for someone to return from the march and tell us that our mothers and sisters were still alive. No one came. The women around me died in their beds. Outside, the guards blew up buildings.
At nightfall, I snuck into my old barrack. I found a turnip tucked under the block leader’s mattress and a potato in her nightstand and I ate them raw. I went to my old bunk and ran my hands along the planks, across the empty grey space where Erika used to sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to recall her face, her dark brown eyes, grown pouchy and deep, the thin skin and sunken cheeks, her shaved head, her brave smile. She’d smiled when I’d told her I was staying behind. Did she know, then, that she wasn’t coming back?
At sunrise, I watched my old barrack burn. I was returning from the latrine hut when I saw three guards run from the barrack as it went up in smoke. I should’ve felt lucky. If I hadn’t needed the toilet … I stared at the flames. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt empty and alone. I hid behind a wall and watched my jail collapse. I’d dreamed so many times of setting the barrack alight, of razing the camp and clawing down the barbed wire and walking out of Birkenau. In my dreams Erika lit the match and I flung it under a bunk and we escaped the flames – and Birkenau – together. I watched the blue plumes engulf the hut and wondered which barrack would be next.
There was no way to escape. There were still a handful of guards with grenades and guns, and maybe others in the forest beyond the gates. And even if I made it to the forest, with the fog and swirling snow I wouldn’t know which way was north. I wouldn’t have any food.
I drew my blanket around me and crept down the snow-blanketed path to the main square, my thoughts swirling. They’re burning the empty barracks. Hiding the evidence. The Russians must be close. In twenty-four hours the war might be over and my new life begun. I could search for Anyu and Papa. I could leave Birkenau and look for Erika. I’d be free.
I edged closer to the main gate, sheltering behind a barrack so I wouldn’t be seen. I peered around the building. There were two guards at the gate and another three standing with their guns cocked. A row of prisoners were lined up against a wall. There was a volley of gunfire. I held my breath and watched them fall: two women with black triangles on their shirts, six with yellow stars and a child no more than seven with scabs on her knees. I threw up on my boots.
I had to hide. If the guards were looking to kill the rest of us, I had to find a place where no one would look. Flames licked at the roof of the shower block. I ran to the latrine hut and threw the door open. The smell made me retch but I scarpered over the boggy ground to the back of the hut and climbed into the pit. I pinched my nose between my fingers, curled my knees to my chest, and waited for a soldier with a red star on his cap to pull me out.
I sat listening to the bombs fall, too frightened to venture out. I left the safety of the latrine hut only once, at midday, to spoon a handful of snow into my cup, but returned to spend the next twenty-four hours in the pit with my arms wrapped around my head to shut out the noise. I played concertos in my head to mask the dull thud of walls collapsing and the sound of my own shallow breathing. I played pieces I’d composed for my mother and father, pieces Erika loved, pieces I’d played a thousand times without ever really understanding them – Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Young Prince and Princess, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.
Shit clung to my coat and got under my fingernails. The smell hung on my hair and stuck to my skin. I cried myself to sleep. The sun was already high in the sky when I woke the next day. When the spray of machine gunfire thinned and stopped, I climbed from the pit and dragged myself to the door. I heard muffled footsteps and whispered words. I pushed the door open. Two women shuffled past carrying a body between them.
My voice was hoarse. “Where are the guards? Have the Russians come?” They didn’t hear me. I stepped outside, dizzy with hunger, and followed them. They tramped through the snow to the far end of a field and swung the limp body between them, once then twice, before letting go. The body arced into the air then plummeted, its fall cushioned by another body. The women stepped away and others took their place, tossing their dead sisters onto the pile.
Prisoners wandered the camp searching for food. I slipped between the women’s barracks, searching for my mother. Most of the huts were empty, their roofs caved in, their walls blackened by fire. The few that still stood were peopled by women and girls too weak to rise from their bunks. They lay on the planks and waited for death.
I walked past a group of women huddled in a burned out barrack, hacking at a block of grey bread.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, my voice sharper than I’d intended. The women swung around, their eyes travelled down my face to my throat and the scarf looped around my neck. The skinniest of the three closed her fingers around the loaf.
“Tell me where you got that scarf and I’ll tell you where I got the bread.” She dropped the bread into her lap, pulled a knife from her pocket and chipped at the frozen crust.
“I haven’t eaten in two days.” I ignored her question. She sawed through the loaf and divided it among the group.
“So you’re hungry.” She gnawed on the stump of bread. “My neck is cold. Looks like we’re even.”
Gunfire erupted in the distance. Up ahead, a truck idled at the main gate, its engine spewing grey smoke onto the snow. A guard clutching a striped shirt to his chest ran past as I lurked in the shadows. He leaped into the waiting truck and pulled the door closed. The gate opened and the truck sped out. I stepped from behind the hut and watched the truck’s tail-lights recede into the fog. The gate closed.
“Where are you, Anyu?” I whispered into the gloom.
Behind me a knot of women were arguing beside a barbed wire fence.
“I’m going to find food. You want to join me, then shut up and follow. You want to stay here and starve, that’s up to you.” A girl stepped away from the group and bent down to survey the fence. She wrapped her hands around a breach in the wire and pulled at the weakened fibres until the hole was large enough to crawl through.
“Don’t be foolish, Klara,” the women hissed. “Wait till the Russians arrive. You don’t know who’s out there.”
I approached the girl.
“I’ll come.” I bent down and pulled the wire apart. She crawled through and I crawled after her, wincing as the barbed wire caught my headscarf. I let it slip from my head and left it shivering in the breeze.
“The guards have deserted.” She put a finger to her lips and crouched down. “But it only takes one … ” I crouched down and followed her.
“SS quarters,” she whispered, pointing to a stand of huts splayed along the fence.
We crept behind the first of the huts, rising onto tiptoes to peer through the window. The guards had left in a hurry. A chessboard sat on a table in the middle of the room, knights poised in battle. Two bowls of soup sat either side of the board, their spoons sticking out. We scrambled through the door, pitched the spoons from their bowls and slurped down the broth. The guards had fled before draining the tea from their mugs, so we emptied those too, sucking at the sugar that dribbl
ed down the sides of the cup. Klara found an empty sack on the floor and we swept through the hut, filling the bag with whatever we could find – custard powder, lard, whisky, potatoes. She pulled an eiderdown from a bed and wrapped it around her body, securing it at the waist with a guard’s leather belt. I wrapped a white cotton pillowslip around my head.
We snuck back along the fence, dragging the sack between us, till we saw my silk scarf flapping in the wind. Klara squeezed through the hole first. I pushed the sack through after her and climbed back into camp.
She handed me a bruised potato. I took it and bit into its soft green flesh.
“My mother used to buy potatoes from the market but they weren’t as bitter as this.” I forced myself to take another bite. “She bought the baby potatoes, the ones with the white skin. She said they were the secret to her silky mash.” I pictured my mother leaning over a bowl of steaming potatoes, peeling each in turn, adding milk and butter and whisking the mash until it stood in peaks.
I thanked Klara and walked back to the women’s camp, past the electrified fences that had separated me from my father for all these months. The gate was open. Papa! I ran through the gate, thinking of all the boys and men locked away from their sisters and mothers and lovers and wives, until today. Papa! My heart quickened.
An old man stood outside a dilapidated hut, his adam’s apple pushing through his thin skin.
“Esther.” He reached out a bony hand and grabbed my coat. “Esther, you’re alive!” He pulled me into his shuddering body. I didn’t pull away. I wrapped my arms around his brittle body and returned to him – if just for a moment – his long-lost daughter or sister or wife.
I slipped from the old man’s embrace and continued down the path to look for my father. There were no guards patrolling the grounds so I swung open doors and peered into storage sheds. I knocked on windows, crawled under bunks and yelled out Papa’s name. I must have called for him a thousand times, until my voice grew faint and I began to lose hope. There were so few men alive and so many dead. They lay collapsed into each other in the shadows of buildings, hidden behind the latrines and collected in carts. I wanted to look away, but what if Papa was among them and too weak to call out? I scanned their faces for my father’s grey eyes, for his dimpled chin and strong, square jaw. I didn’t see him.