Page 85 of The Pianist's Wife
Gisele made a little noise in her throat as she began to read the words he’d written, and Amira leaned into her, reading the letter herself and wishing there had been something she could have done, some way she could have convinced him to make any decision other than this one. For all he’d taken from her, he’d also been the one to give her and Fred their freedom, and for that she would always be grateful.
To my beloved Gisele,
Where does a man even start when his heart has already broken? You have been the love of my life for as long as I can remember, the only woman I’ve ever loved, and certainly the only woman I ever wanted as my wife. I always imagined us growing old together, watching ourgrandchildren play one day as we admired the life we created, but instead I am writing to you to say my final goodbye.
My heart wants to come home to you, but I know that I cannot. I cannot live with the burden of what I have done bearing down on my shoulders, in the knowledge that I have been complicit in what’s happened here. How can I be a father to our children, when I’ve been witness to such atrocities? How can I tuck my daughter into bed at night, with the decisions I’ve made weighing on my conscience, knowing that I’ve been party to ripping other families apart, to taking parents from their children? It’s easy to believe in the beginning that you’re just following orders, but the truth is that I made a decision to do awful things to other human beings, and I can no longer live with myself.
Gisele, I want you to start a new life without me, once all this is over. I want you to promise me that you will care for our children and remind them of the man I was when we first met. The man who did what he had to do to save your friends. Tell them that I loved you with all my heart, and them, but that I couldn’t face coming home. The murders that have been committed here, and in camps all across Europe, will one day be discovered, and perhaps I am a coward for not being prepared for that day. I deserve to be paraded in front of those who survive, to be treated the way we treated them, as beings less than animals, but I choose to end this now.
I hope you can understand my decision, and that one day you can look back and remember me as the man who helped two people you loved leave this camp, instead of the man who helped to send them and so many others there.
I love you, Gisele, with all my heart. Hans.
‘No!’ Gisele wailed, as the letter fell from her fingers to the floor. ‘No, he can’t, this can’t be true. It can’t be.’ She sobbed. ‘When did he give this to you?’
Amira wrapped her friend in her arms, understanding her pain in a way that others might not. She knew what it was to lose someone you loved, to comprehend not only the loss of that man, but the loss of all the hopes and dreams you once had for the future, too.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amira said, as she started to cry, because she was. She was deeply sorry for Gisele’s loss, for the loss of the man she’d loved, for the father of her four beautiful children who would now have to grow up without the father who’d adored them. ‘He loved you so much, Gisele, you and the children. Truly he did.’
‘When did he write this letter?’ Gisele asked, as tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘When did he give it to you? Is there still time, could I get to him, wouldn’t someone have come to notify me, how did I not know—’
‘He told me,’ Amira said gently, her voice breaking as she stared into her friend’s panicked, wide eyes, ‘that by the time I gave you this letter, there would be nothing you could do. That it would already be done.’ She tried to soften what she had to say by delivering it quietly, but as Gisele’s howl of pain cut through the air, she knew there was nothing she could do to soften that type of news.Just as the passing of her parents and then Maxi had cut through her in a way that could never be repaired, Gisele was now broken, her heart ripped from her chest as she digested the information, never to be the same again. ‘I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but now I understand. He wanted you to know that by the time you read the letter,’ she whispered, ‘he would be gone.’
‘But I don’t know what to do without him,’ Gisele cried, as she folded herself into Amira’s arms. ‘I don’t know how to go on without him, how to be a mother to our children without him. What am I supposed to do?’ She blinked at her. ‘How could no one have come to tell me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Amira said. ‘I’m so sorry, Gisele.’
Amira held her friend and rubbed circles on her back, knowing that no words would help, not now. But she said them anyway, because she couldn’t hold her in silence and not saysomething.
‘You go on because you have to,’ Amira murmured. ‘You go on for your children, because you are their mother and they need you. You go on because you’re my best friend, and I need you more now than I ever have. You keep going because so many have lost those they loved. We can’t give up now, Gisele. We can’t.’
Gisele cried in her arms, and Amira cried, too. She heard the children and even little Otto, who’d come to see what the fuss was all about, but Fred appeared then too and was quick to usher them from the room, the news of their father’s passing not to be told to them yet, not until their mother had gathered herself. As much as Amira wished they could scoop the children up and mourn with them, as much as she desperately wanted to lift little Otto into her arms and press kisses all over his fur, Gisele needed time to accept the news, and Amira intended on holding her until she was ready.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Gisele asked, when her tears slowly shuddered to a halt. ‘How do I tell the children? They will be devastated.’
‘You’re supposed to grieve,’ Amira said. ‘And then you’re supposed to keep going and make a new, different life for yourself. You hold him in your memories and force yourself to keep putting one foot in front of the other.’ She waited for a moment. ‘And you don’t have to tell the children on your own. I will be with you, and I won’t leave until you ask me to.’
Gisele nodded, as fresh tears slipped down her cheeks. ‘We have each other,’ she whispered.
‘We have each other,’ Amira repeated. ‘And we will have each other for the rest of our lives, because I’ll never, ever have another friend like you.’
Gisele looked around the room, and Amira reached for her hand and held tight.
‘I don’t think I can stay here in this house,’ Gisele whispered. ‘I don’t want to be here without him, with all the memories of what once was.’
‘Then we shall move as soon as we can, once the war is over, as far away from Berlin as possible,’ Amira said, remembering Fred’s words whispered late into the night before Buchenwald, before they’d known how bad things could truly become. He’d dreamed of New York, and that was where they would go. She would tell Gisele when she was ready to hear it, once they’d begun to make arrangements, once it was safe for them to secure passage. ‘But wherever we go, we go together. We’re not going anywhere without each other. Our children will grow up together, as family, forever and always. I promise.’
It was then that Gisele seemed to remember, and she wiped her cheeks and stared at Amira’s middle, her eyes widening.
‘May I?’
Amira laughed as Gisele held out her hand, which in turn made Gisele laugh. It was laughter filled with tears, but it was still laughter, and for a moment she could almost imagine that everythingabout their lives hadn’t changed. That she was just enjoying sharing a beautiful moment with her friend.
‘I can’t believe you’re going to become a mother,’ Gisele said, her eyes shining with fresh tears as she pressed her hand to Amira’s stomach and met her gaze.
‘I’ll be able to learn from the best.’
They both cried again when the baby moved, the kicks stronger than they had been only days earlier. Her little baby, who’d defied all odds by surviving Buchenwald with her, as determined as its mother to live, if only to live long enough to make sure that those responsible for the atrocities there were held to account, to ensure the truth didn’t die with those killed in the camps.
