Page 52 of The Pianist's Wife
Fred began to move, shuffling through at the same time as the man was ordered to leave his boy. He knew he should hurry, but he couldn’t help but listen to the conversation, surprised when the German guard told the man to stay with his son if he didn’t want to leave him, but they would not take them both. It was an act of kindness that Fred hadn’t been expecting, but as he glanced back and saw the relief on the man’s face, still holding tightly to his son, something didn’t sit right with him.These guards know no kindness. Kindness doesn’t exist in a place like this.
Fred tried to cover his nakedness as he walked, surprised when he was nudged in the back and told to return to the undressing room where he’d taken off his clothes only minutes earlier, only he had no hope of finding his own pile. There were prisoners in striped pyjamas fossicking through everything, scavenging as if they were thieves.
They’d been told to undress because they needed disinfecting, that their clothes would be washed and returned to them and to leave them in neat piles with their shoelaces tied together, but now Fred had the feeling that none of those people he’d travelled to Auschwitz with and been processed alongside were going to be wearing their clothes again.
‘Keep walking,’ the guard behind him said.
They prodded him towards another room, and indicated that he should pick up the striped clothes that were the same as the other prisoners were wearing. He bent over and retrieved them, dressing as quickly as he could.
‘Shoes,’ they said, pointing back to the other room.
Fred nodded and did as he was told, looking for the shoes he’d carefully put on top of his folded pile of clothes, but to no avail.
‘Those ones,’ the guard said, pointing to the closest pair of boots, a pair that Fred immediately knew would be too big for him.
He leaned down to take them, even more certain now that the owners of these belongings were never going to see them again. But as he reached down, he also saw a thick pair of socks. He took them, as well as another pair of smaller ones that may have belonged to a woman, putting them on and then the thicker ones over the top, before pushing his feet into the boots. He didn’t even have time to lace them before he was prodded again, sharply in the back with what he imagined was a pistol.
‘Get moving.’
Fred did his best to walk in the large boots without tripping over the laces, but when they emerged back out into the cold wind, his feet stopped moving, his jaw falling open as tears immediately filled his eyes.
‘No,’ he gasped.
‘Keep moving!’
But Fred couldn’t. He couldn’t take his eyes from the bodies being pulled from the very building he’d been standing in, only minutes earlier. They were being dragged by the prisoners in striped suits, and the first two bodies he saw were the man and his son, their mouths gaping open.Dead.
‘How?’ he asked, turning to the guard. ‘What is this place?’
‘The crematoria,’ the guard said, with a shrug. ‘They have no idea what’s coming until those doors are closed.’
He must have seen the confused look on Fred’s face, because he laughed.
‘They think it’s going to be water to clean them, but it’s Zyklon B. Our favourite poison.’
Fred began to cry then, and he was shoved once more as another guard joined them. The road seemed to stretch out for miles ahead of them as Fred shuffled forward, one foot in front of the other. Gas. They were killing them silently with gas, their screams muted by the concrete walls of the chamber they werestanding inside, walking like lambs to the slaughter with no knowledge of the horror that was to face them.
He’d been seconds from death, it seemed. And somehow, by the skin of his teeth, he’d survived. By saying the one thing he’d hated about his life, the job that his father had wanted for him that he had not. Now he just had to hope that he wasn’t asked to do anything too complicated, because he had given up his apprenticeship after less than a year when he’d been accepted to study music.
‘Get this one on the train, I’ll get the others,’ the second guard said to another.
And Fred’s first thought was to be thankful that he wasn’t being transported or put to use on his own. He’d never been afraid of solitude before, often craved it when he was composing or rehearsing, but Auschwitz was not a place in which he wanted to be alone. He was hopeful at the simple word:others.
‘They try to escape, shoot them,’ the guard said, gesturing at Fred. ‘They’re going to be useful, but don’t bother chasing them. There’ll always be more.’
‘Why were you spared?’
The whisper came from a man who seemed to appear from nowhere, but must have been sitting in the shadows by the train platform. He moved slowly, as if to make sure he wasn’t going to be told to halt. Or perhaps he was exhausted and couldn’t move any faster even if he’d wanted to.
‘I was once an electrician,’ Fred said. ‘And you?’
‘A plumber,’ the man said. ‘I’ve been here for almost three days, and they just came through and asked our kapo for any labourers.’
Fred nodded, wishing he had something to drink. His throat felt as if it were burning.
‘You came here alone?’
‘I did,’ Fred replied. ‘You?’
