Page 56 of The Pianist's Wife
They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a moment after she’d brought the two coffees to the table.
‘Hans, have you heard anything more of Fred?’ Amira asked. ‘I hate to ask you, but I’m so desperate to hear something, anything, about how he’s faring.’
Hans didn’t reply.
‘Hans, he’s all I have left.’ The words hung in the air as Amira caught her breath, gasping as she said them.If he’s even still alive, but I refuse to believe otherwise until I know for sure.
‘He’s not all you have left,’ Hans said. ‘You have Gisele, she’s been your friend since you were girls, and you could forget all about Fred and meet—’
‘No, Hans,youhave Gisele. You have your wife and your children, but I have no one anymore.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I need my husband to come home. I love him and I want him to come home!’
Hans was silent for a long moment, and she watched as he reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette. He lit it and inhaled.
‘Hans, Fred isn’t just my husband, he’s also an incredibly talented pianist. Why would the Nazi Party want to persecute someone so talented, someone who is such a champion of our great composers?’
Hans lowered his cigarette, considering her as if he were trying to decide whether or not to tell her something. Or perhaps he was deciding whether to believe her show of love towards a man whose sexuality he still doubted.
‘Amira, Fred has been transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp. Somehow, he was one of the few imprisoned men who’ve ever gotten on a train out of Auschwitz.’
‘He’s alive?’ Amira gasped, before asking: ‘Why would they move him?’
Hans sighed. ‘I don’t know, Amira, but I can tell you that I’ve never heard of anyone leaving there, not in recent years, and especially not now. Most of them are being sent straight to—’ His voice tapered off, as if he’d realised what he was about to say.
‘Say it, Hans,’ Amira implored.
He downed his coffee and held the cup so tightly, Gisele feared it would shatter in his hand.
‘They usually exterminate most of them on arrival,’ he finally said. ‘Most of the time...’
She blinked back at him, needing him to say the words, knowing in her heart what he was going to say. He put the cup on the table.
‘Most of the time,what?’ she forced herself to ask.
‘Most of the time they don’t even stand a chance.’
She wrapped her arms tightly around herself as her body began to shake. It had been one thing hearing the Nazi wives gossip about the atrocities, but to hear a man like Hans say it, a man who without a doubt knew what happened there, was truly something else. ‘Can you help him? Is there any way we can appeal the charges? Prove that they were wrong about him?’
‘I don’t know what you think I can do, but my hands are tied.’
Amira looked him in the eye. ‘I want you to tell me about this camp he’s been taken to, this place called Buchenwald. I want to know what it’s like there, and what he will be going through.’
Hans nodded, continuing to smoke. ‘Once an inmate arrives there, he will likely be processed into the main camp and assigned a role. The men there are mostly used as labourers, so it’s unusual that he was sent there at all to be honest. I thought he would have been kept at Auschwitz-Birkenau.’
‘Would he have been taken there by truck?’ she asked, wanting to paint a picture in her mind of exactly what the conditions would be like for him. ‘Is that how they transport them?’
‘No, he will have arrived by train. They transport all the prisoners in the cattle cars.’
She hid her surprise, not seeing any point in telling Hans just how revolting that was. What she needed was information, and she didn’t want to waver in case he stopped being truthful with her. But to be transported in wagons made for large livestock? It was appalling.
‘And will he be safe there? Will he be fed?’
Hans shifted at that question, as if he wasn’t comfortable with the response.
‘Hans? I want you to tell me the truth, I need to hear it.’
‘Safeis a relative term,’ he eventually said. ‘Compared to Auschwitz, his chance of survival is much higher. Many of the new arrivals are taken directly to the crematoria at Auschwitz without being processed, but there is no gas chamber at Buchenwald, so that is one thing. But they work them hard, and they feed them little, so survival rates aren’t high.’
Amira’s hand went to her stomach and she willed herself not to be sick. The very idea that he could have been killed on arrival at Auschwitz was almost impossible to comprehend.
