Page 62 of The Pianist's Wife
Fred nodded. He didn’t need to be told twice.
When the door was opened, Fred was marched through the house, straight down the hall and past an open door where he saw a table of people eating. It appeared to be a family and some extra men, all in uniform, but he dared no more than a cursory glance before he was directed into a sitting room, with a glossy black grand piano in the corner.
‘You are to start playing when the commander walks in,’ the guard said. ‘Make it something he’ll like.’
Fred took his position and sat, wishing his back wasn’t so sore as he placed his aching fingers over the keys, knowing to play something suitable by Beethoven or Bach. He shut his eyes and relaxed his shoulders, inhaling as everything drained from his body in preparation to play, pretending he was at home rehearsing for a concert. This was what he’d been born to do, and if this was the way he saved himself from certain death, then he finally felt as if he had a chance.
The commander’s clipped step down the hallway alerted Fred that it was time to begin, and by the time the man came through the door with his guests following behind, he’d begun playing, hisfingers dancing across the keys with an energy that belied the fear he’d lived with since arriving. He’d almost forgotten how much he loved his music, how alive it made him feel. And even as his damaged fingers strained and ached, bringing tears to his eyes, he wouldn’t stop.
Believe in yourself. Believe that you’re the best they’ve ever heard. And as he finished one piece and moved on to the next, he played with the same passion he would have in a crowded concert hall in Berlin, the people gathered in the room falling silent as they listened.
Please let this be enough. Please let this be enough for them to keep me alive.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Amira
‘Remember that your every move will be scrutinised,’ Gisele said to Amira, as they sat in the back of the car together. ‘Remember everything Hans said to you.’
Hans had arranged a driver for them, and Gisele had insisted on seeing her to the gate, since Hans had said it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to do so. He’d done as much as he could, personally meeting with SS Oberführer Hermann Pister and explaining what had happened. It hadn’t been enough for Fred to be released, given the evidence against him, but it had been enough to have him transferred, and for Amira to be given a dispensation to join him.
She’d waited, terrified, for her paperwork to be scrutinised before she received an answer, but Hans had assured her there would be little attention paid to someone wanting to enter the camp. It had made her think of her father, who’d worked such long, tiresome hours, checking through papers and looking for false documentation. She knew it had broken his heart every time he detected a forgery, for it would have spelled the end for someone just like the daughter he’d worked so hard to protect.
‘I know you don’t agree with what I’m doing, but thank you,’ Amira said, putting her arms around Gisele, feeling so guilty fornot telling her she was pregnant, but knowing there was no way she would let her out of the car if she knew the truth. ‘Thank you for everything, and please thank Hans again, too.’
‘He ended up being quite the unlikely ally.’
‘Perhaps we should have trusted him sooner,’ Amira said. ‘It might have avoided all of this.’
‘Don’t say that, it only makes me feel worse for not trusting him in the first place.’ But of course they hadn’t told him everything – he still believed that Fred was an innocent man, by Nazi standards – which was the way it had to be. Otherwise, Amira doubted he would have even considered helping them.
‘I wish I could give you something, or that I could talk you out of this entirely, but Hans said you would only be allowed the small suitcase of clothes and whatever you were wearing,’ Gisele said. ‘He said to pray that you weren’t asked to surrender it, but that in the special quarters you should be able to keep it all.’
Amira nodded. Hans had told her the same, but she was under no illusion about what could happen. She shuddered, thinking of the endless piles of clothes and other goods that she’d helped to sort through, of all the prisoners who’d had everything taken from them.
‘I best go now before I lose my nerve,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Gisele.’
‘I’m going to walk you.’
‘No, let us say goodbye here. I couldn’t bear to have you standing there when I walk through.’
Gisele had tears streaming down her cheeks as she hugged her. ‘Are you certain there’s not another way? I just, I can’t stop thinking—’
‘There’s no other way,’ Amira said, kissing her friend’s tear-damp cheek. ‘Please don’t make this harder for me than it already is.’
Gisele nodded, smiling and squeezing her hand, which only made it more difficult not to tell her. She’d always imagined Gisele being the first person she’d tell when she was expecting, had thought it would be a special moment they’d share, and instead she was keeping it from her entirely.
It took all of Amira’s willpower to get out of the car instead of huddling beside her friend and telling the driver to leave. When she did get out, she closed the door and walked as quickly as she could towards the gates, looking up at the ironwork and trying not to shudder as she glanced to each side and saw the guards in towers. She prayed they didn’t point their rifles in her direction.
‘Halt!’
Amira halted and held out her papers. ‘I am Amira Schulz, and I am here to join my husband Frederick Schulz at the Fichtenhain Special Camp.’
The guard laughed. ‘Here to join him, are you? I’d turn around then get back in the car if I were you.’
‘My papers have been issued by SS Oberführer Hermann Pister, and he told me to report today to enter the camp.’
At the mention of Pister’s name, the guard reached through the gates to take her papers, scanning the first one and then the other, before passing her identity papers back to her.
