Page 57 of The Pianist's Wife
‘There is a chance he could survive this place, then?’ she asked. ‘There is a chance that if he is strong and clever, if he can get by on little food, that he could make it?’
‘There is a chance,’ Hans said. ‘There might not be a gas chamber, but that doesn’t mean that prisoners aren’t killed there. If they do something wrong, if they become unwell or try to escape, or if a guard takes a dislike to them...’ He made a noise in his throat.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What happens then, if they dislike them?’
‘They are shot,’ he said simply.
Amira stood, her breath loud to her own ears as her chest rose and then fell.
‘You promise you’re telling me everything?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want you to spare me any detail that you’re aware of. I need to know what he’s going through, or what might happen to him. I need to be prepared for every possible outcome.’
Hans lit another cigarette. His hand shook ever so slightly, and she wondered if he was nervous or perhaps even unwell.
‘There are rumours,’ he finally said.
‘Rumours?’
‘Rumours about what they do to men like him there.’
Amira swallowed. She knew what he was referring to, just as she knew that neither of them was going to say it out aloud. ‘What do they do to them?’
‘They conduct medical experiments. I’ve heard that the doctor there is interested in experimenting with ways to sterilise them, and other such things. He is known to be rather sadistic in his experiments.’
This time Amira only just stopped the bile from rising into her mouth. She couldn’t even imagine what such an experiment would involve.
‘And you think they might do such things to Fred? In the belief that he is a homosexual?’
‘Verdammt, Amira, I don’t know! You’ve asked me to tell you these things and I have, but I don’t know and I don’t want to know. They are not things we should be talking about!’
Amira knew she needed to tread carefully, even though she wanted to yell back at him and call him a coward, to blame him for Fred even being there in the first place. Instead, she took a deep breath to steady herself before speaking again.
‘I just want to know how likely it is that he will survive,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘I want to know if there is any chancehe will make it out of that dreadful camp alive, if this war ever ends.’
‘You’re suggesting that we may not win this war?’ Hans asked, massaging his temple with his fingers. ‘That is quite a statement.’
‘Is it so unlikely? Is it not true that the tide might be turning against us?’ She thought of what Maxi had whispered to her as they lay in bed, that he no longer thought the Germans were so assured of being victorious.
‘I disagree with you about the outcome of the war, but look, even if he’s one of the lucky ones, the chances are that everyone there will perish from malnutrition eventually,’ Hans said. ‘But there is one chance, a very small chance, that could change his outcome. There’s no doubting his musical genius, after all.’
Amira’s eyebrows rose. ‘What chance?’
Hans pressed what was left of his cigarette into an ashtray and stood, walking back and forth before coming to sit across from her.
‘There is a type of sub camp at Buchenwald for a small number of inmates,’ he said, folding his hands and drawing her gaze to them as he spoke. ‘They hold political prisoners there and anyone else that might be of value, people who have special skill sets and the like. They are hostages I suppose, for the sake of a better word, rather than prisoners.’
‘And why is it different for these hostages?’ she asked.
‘Well, they are more interested in keeping them alive, in case they prove useful, or to preserve their special talents,’ he said. ‘The former French premier, for instance, Léon Blum, is being held there. They call it the Fichtenhain Special Camp.’ Hans looked like he was going to say something else, but then didn’t.
‘What is it? You’re holding something back?’
‘I heard that Blum’s lover followed him there, and they were permitted to be married.’
‘At Buchenwald?’ she gasped. ‘They were married inside the camp?’
‘They were. She refused to be parted from him and joined him in the camp, and they are both being held together from what I understand.’ He chuckled. ‘It was quite the talk among the SS, that this pretty French woman turned up at the camp voluntarily, when the rest of the population is doing everything they can to avoid being sent there.’
‘Then that’s what I’ll do.’
