Page 70 of The Pianist's Wife
‘Can we sleep in your bed tonight?’ Archie asked, as he put his thumb into his mouth.
‘Not tonight, because Papa is here, but when he goes away again, you can both sleep with me every night, alright?’ she said.‘I don’t think he’d be very happy to come upstairs and find his bed taken tonight though.’
‘But what if the bombs fall again?’ Frieda asked.
‘Then we shall come and get you, and sweep you out of bed and into the cellar with us,’ Gisele said. ‘But perhaps Otto could sleep in your room to guard you tonight?’
At the mention of the dog, the children became particularly animated and ran off looking for Otto. And as soon as they were gone, she took a moment to lean against the wall in the upstairs hallway and catch her breath. She shut her eyes, not sure whether to be terrified or relieved that Hans would soon be closer to Amira.
Buchenwald was becoming the place of her nightmares, a place she couldn’t even imagine in her mind. And now all three of the people she cared deeply about were going to be there, although at least Hans would be able to come and go. But if someone found out what he’d done, that they were personally connected to Amira and Fred and that he was trying to help them... She squeezed away her tears, refusing to let them fall. She’d never let herself be afraid of protecting Amira before, and she wasn’t going to start now.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Amira
Amira touched her stomach, turning side to side as if it might change what she could see there. She’d always been slender, but since arriving at Buchenwald she’d become painfully thin, despite the fact that they didn’t have to work and received more generous portions of food than the general camp prisoners; even so, there was a definite roundness to her abdomen. She counted back in her mind to when Maxi had been home, to the blissful days they’d spent together, trying to work out exactly how far along she was. She’d been certain about her pregnancy before, but this somehow made it more real. She was also starting to realise just what she’d done; what a perilous situation she’d put both herself and the baby in by entering the camp.
You have to tell Fred.She sighed, trying to ignore the voice in her head. Of course she needed to tell Fred, but he’d been so sad since she arrived, and she didn’t want to add to the weight of what he was carrying around, even though their good news would help to indicate that their marriage wasn’t a sham. But now she was showing, now that it seemed real, it was time.
Amira walked back into the room where she and Fred slept, along with some of the other prisoners. She had hoped to be sharingtheir sleeping quarters with Léon Blum and his much younger wife, Janot, given they had both followed their men into the camp, but the former French leader had his own quarters and a rotation of guards who watched his every move.
‘Fred,’ she murmured, as she sat down beside him on their bed, knowing that if she didn’t tell him then and there, she’d lose her nerve all over again.
He was still tucked beneath their threadbare blanket, often sleeping in after playing for the commanders or the larger groups of SS until late in the evenings to entertain them, but he roused when she nudged his shoulder. He still felt painfully thin beneath his clothes, even though he kept telling her that he was fine and appreciated the better meals he was receiving. She knew how much he hated it though, when he was given extra food at the commander’s quarters, because there was no way he could bring any back for her.
Amira had not stopped worrying about him since she’d arrived in the camp, knowing that he was finding it almost impossible to stop being lost in his thoughts, his memories as painful as hers. The only difference was that she was better at pushing them away and focusing on the here and now.
‘Fred,’ she said again.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, turning over and rubbing at his eyes as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘I don’t know how to say this, but—’
His eyes widened, visible even in the almost dark. ‘Did someone hurt you while I was gone? Has something happened?’
‘Fred, I’m pregnant.’
‘Pregnant?’ he repeated. ‘You’repregnant?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘We’re going to be parents.’
They both stared at one another, and when he saw that she was starting to cry he folded her in his arms. ‘Don’t cry, Amira. This is the most beautiful, unexpected of gifts.’
She shook her head. It didn’t feel like a gift; it felt like another way for her heart to be ripped from her body. It felt like pain in its most raw form – a baby, fathered by a man she’d loved with all her heart, a man their child would never meet.
‘I thought it was the right thing in coming here, but now that I’m here, now that I can see what it’s like—’I should never have come here pregnant. I cannot have a baby behind the gates of this godawful camp!
Fred held her as she began to cry, soothing her by stroking her back and rocking her gently in his arms. It wasn’t until she looked up at him through red-rimmed, burning eyes that he pressed a kiss to her forehead and said words that she knew she would never forget for as long as she lived. Possibly the kindest words that a man could have ever said to her, that any other human could have ever said to her.
‘Shhh, Amira, everything is going to be fine. I promise.’
‘I thought this would save us, that they’d finally believe...’
He kissed her head. ‘I understand now, why you came. I wish you hadn’t, but I do understand.’
They’d made a show for the guards of touching and sleeping tucked tightly together, in front of the other prisoners as well, in case anyone had been tasked with reporting back to the SS. But this was the proof they needed, and they both knew it.
‘We will love this baby like the miracle he or she is,’ he murmured, only loud enough for her to hear. ‘Whatever happens, she will know that she’s loved more than any other child in the world, by both of us. This changes everything, truly it does.’
