There was an almost instant rustling of chairs as the girls rushed to their bunks to bring forward whatever meager provisions they’d been rationing with utmost care. Misty-eyed, Flora and Violette watched a small pile grow on their communal dining table—dried fruits and cookies, preserves and smoked sausage, cheese and even cubes of sugar—a veritable feast few Auschwitzers had seen.
Busy dividing the food in two equal piles, Alma didn’t notice at first a small group of Polish veterans conferring a bit aside from everyone. Only when Sofia’s voice rose over the general commotion and descended upon the group with its rapid crescendo of incomprehensible, indignant screams, did it catch Alma’s attention.
“Is something the matter?” Alma inquired, approaching the group.
The girls’ voices subdued, turning to mutters. Alma couldn’t understand their language, but she recognized defiant notes in them just fine. There were only five of them and each was staring at anything but Alma’s eyes.
“These obstinate cows refuse to hand over their rations,” Sofia reported, staring at her fellow countryfolk with cold disdain.
“Why?” Alma asked softly.
She already knew the answer but wanted them to openly say it, out of some perverse desire to confirm her own theory.
“We don’t think it fair to give them our food,” one of the girls replied in her halting German. “Why should we do that?”
“Because they have been sick and need food to recover.” Alma managed to keep her tone calm, even though she could already feel her anger rising. “You can’t blame them for getting sick, can you now?”
“We don’t blame them. We’re only saying that it’s not fair to give them our food. They should have watched themselves better. If their health is weaker than ours, why should we pay for it? They never receive any parcels from their relatives—”
“Because their relatives are all dead.” Alma’s chest was rising and falling visibly now. She was aware of Miklós’ eyes on her. The very thought of him seeing her in this state revolted her, but what revolted her even more was such attitudes in her ranks. She would drop dead before she permitted this poison to spread among her girls as well. “They have all perished right here, in Auschwitz, sometimes, in front of their very eyes. Is that their fault also?”
“We’re not saying it’s their fault. We’re saying it’s socialism, taking from the ones who have something and sharing it among the ones who don’t.”
“Socialism, you say?” Before Alma could stop herself, her hand flew up and slapped the girl on her cheek with a resounding smack. “That’s not socialism; that’s called regular human decency, if that notion is new for you!”
The girl stood stunned before her; in another instant, she broke into sobs. Yet Alma didn’t feel an ounce of shame for what she had just done, only blinding, overpowering rage.
“First, I had to sit and listen to that SS sod’s racial theories and now you shall start repeating them to me, under my own roof? Like a good SS-trained parrot, no less! I’ve already seen the likes of you, right in the sickbay, tearing the last piece of bread out of her dying friend’s hands and justifying it! Can you get it, once and for all, there are no Jews and Poles here, no French and no communists, there are only SS and inmates, and that’s what it all comes down to. We’re all equally nothing to them. Do you consider yourself superior to Violette because she’s a Jew and you’re a Pole? Well, let me give you this news: in the eyes of the SS, you’re still dirty vermin that needs to be exterminated. The more we quarrel among each other, the better it all works out for them. The more we act like animals toward each other, the less work is left for them. That’s what they were counting on when they organized this entire camp; do you not understand that? We’re all in this together. They’re the enemy, not your fellow inmates.”
“And you’re just like them!” the girl shouted back. “Slave-driving us worse than the SS. You don’t have the right to call yourself a Jew. You’re a typical, cold-blooded German. No wonder they appointed you as a Kapo. They recognized one of their kind.”
This time, it was Sofia who slapped her, much harder than Alma.
“Ungrateful sow!” the former Kapo roared in indignation. “Frau Alma has done so much for you lot; all of your privileges—the new clothes, double rations, Red Cross parcels, your blasted naptime after lunch, roll calls inside the block instead of freezing cold, a stove to warm us all, a shower every day, laundry once a week—all forgotten already? Selfish, rotten child. Today, it’s Violette; tomorrow, it could be you. Would you still think it was socialism if Frau Alma shared her ration with you as you lay dying from fever?”
The girl didn’t reply. She was too busy nursing her stinging cheek and sniffling.
Her comrades now appeared to hesitate and, a few minutes later, they brought their supplies to the communal table. Alma accepted them silently. When their leader approached the table with a few tins, Alma stopped her in her tracks.
“Keep your food. I don’t want you running about the camp and complaining to everyone who agrees to listen how Kapo Alma extorted the rations from you, the socialist bitch that she is.”
“I’m sorry, Frau Alma.”
“No, you’re not. You’re afraid; not sorry. Afraid that I will take some sort of revenge on you or banish you from the orchestra altogether.” Judging by the girl’s startled look, the words hit the nail squarely on the head. Alma grinned crookedly. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Your own conscience will be your worst punishment. Every day, when you look at Flora or Violette, you shall be reminded of your own cowardice and selfishness. Every single day, for the rest of your life you shall live with yourself. No punishment can outdo that.”
Before long, the girl was crying again. This time, it was guilty tears; she was nudging the tins into Alma’s hands with a pitiful, pleading gesture, but Alma just stood before her, still and cold like a statue, with her arms crossed over her chest, blocking the table from her and her attempts to put the food into the collective pile.
At last, acknowledging her defeat, the girl approached Violette directly and gave her two tins, leaving the other two for Flora.
“Forgive me, please… I don’t know what came over me…”
“It’s all right.” Violette smiled. “I understand perfectly. You don’t have to—”
“No, please, take it. It’s for you. You ought to eat.”
“There’s enough there for everyone—”
“No, you eat. You’ve been sick. You need it…”
When the Stubendienst girls—the block caretakers—brought in the lunch for the block, Alma divided her entire portion between Violette and Flora. They were still protesting when she headed toward the door, patting her pocket for her cigarettes absentmindedly.
Outside, it was a veritable North Pole; the frosty crust of snow crunched underfoot, but Alma secretly welcomed such biting cold as a twisted form of self-inflicted punishment. Shivering against the gusts of wind in her light cardigan, she lit up her cigarette from the third attempt.
“Hunger strike again?”
In spite of herself, she smiled at Miklós’ voice. She was grateful that he hadn’t interfered with the affair, but she was even more grateful for his standing next to her now. Something heavy fell on her shoulders; she brushed her fingers on it and recognized her own camel-wool coat.
“I’m not hungry. Just very tired and full of nerves.”
“One should imagine.” He narrowed his eyes, gazing in the distance.
“If you tell me again that I’m too strict with them, I shall first drop something on your head and then divorce you.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything of that sort. In fact, I think you handled the situation admirably well.”
“With one exception.” Alma took a deep pull on her cigarette. “I hit a person today. For the first time in my life, I hit someone.” Her voice was full of disbelief at the event.
Much to her surprise, Miklós broke into soft chuckles. “An uni
maginable feat for a Kapo, to hit an inmate for the first time after months! They ought to put your name into some local book of honors or some such. Most Kapos don’t last as long as one day without bashing someone’s head in with a baton.”
“They have different batons. Mine is for conducting music, not for hitting anyone. That’s the entire reason why I’m so disappointed with myself. I feel this camp is changing me into something horrible. I’m becoming much too coarse, too hard-hearted.” She looked at him tragically. “I’m becoming one of them, Miklós,” she finished with the note of some desolate finality in her voice.
At once, he took her face in his hands. “Nonsense! No filth, no degradation of this place, is enough to touch you—”
“It has already touched me,” she interrupted him, calm and resigned to the fact. “I have become good friends with the SS. They call me Frau Alma and address me with the polite, Sie. They talk about music with me, about Vienna, and about all matters refined.”
“That’s not friendship. You know that you ought to show deference and keep decorum with them if you want your orchestra to survive. If you yourself want to live.”
“They taught me how to be violent.”
“No. You simply lost your temper. Anyone’s nerves would snap, after everything you’ve been through.”
“I slave-drive my own girls and the SS praise me for it. You know you have become a terrible human being if the SS begin praising you and admire your ‘Aryan character.’ Do you know what Aryan stands for, in their eyes? Ruthlessness, overachieving, and blood as cold as ice under one’s skin. Mengele just told me I embody all three. He said, he admired me.”
“Stop it.”
“No, I won’t stop. I want you to hear it, so you know what sort of person I am. She was right, my little Polish mandolinist, just like Hössler before her, and Mengele along with him. They all stated the same thing and were right about it; I’m not a Jew. I’m a German, and that’s why it is so easy for me to survive here. They consider me as one of their own, the SS. They recognize the kindred spirit,” she nearly spat out the last words.
Miklós didn’t ask her to stop this time; merely pressed his mouth hard against hers and felt her choke on a sob she was desperately trying to stifle.
“You may hate yourself all you want,” he declared with a fearless smile when he finally pulled away. “I will always love you for the both of us. No, no; no tears just now. They can’t see you like this. They need you strong, all of them.”
“Yes.” She wiped her face with her sleeve and smiled bravely at him.
“That’s better.”
“Will you stay working with Flora till the curfew?”
“Of course. I will keep working with Flora and you take Violette. I’m certain that Sofia can manage the orchestra just fine. You have already trained them perfectly. Did you hear how magnificently they played before Mengele just now?”
Alma smiled through the tears. “They did, didn’t they?”
“And they will play even better at Christmas. We both shall see to it.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders to take her inside and, suddenly, the burden didn’t appear to be as heavy as it used to be.
“Play just this first line, but play it perfectly.” Alma stood over Violette, her hand planted firmly on the back of the girl’s chair.
After a generous meal, some of the color had returned to Violette’s cheeks and her eyes began gleaming brighter. When she tucked the violin under her chin, the former mortal weariness and desperation was no longer there. Under Alma’s intent gaze, she played the first few notes carefully but without mistakes.
“Good. Now play the second line the same way.”
Violette did so and looked up at Alma, who nodded in encouragement.
“Now play both of them.”
This was where Violette’s faltering hand slipped for the first time. At once, her face fell. She began lowering the instrument, but Alma was having none of it.
“No breaks until we finish the entire piece. Play just the third line where you made the mistake. Twenty times in a row.”
Violette’s head shot up.
Alma only shrugged with a grin. “This is what my father would tell me to do when I made mistakes. Having talent is all fine and well, but practice—and more practice—is essential for mastering the piece you’re playing. When you practice something ten, twenty, thirty times, your fingers will begin playing it correctly automatically. You’ll grow sick of that part, but you will never play it wrong again; take my word for it.”
By the end of the first hour, they had been over only the first three pages. By the end of the second hour, Violette, her hands shaking and her eyes swimming with unshed tears, began to beg for a break. Alma fed her a few pieces of dried apple and a cube of sugar for energy but refused to be moved otherwise.
“I said, no breaks until we finish the entire piece and we will finish it. You may cry, you may curse me, you may hate me for what I’m doing to you, but you shall master that piece, Violette. From the beginning.”
By the end of the day, they had finished the piece. There was blood on Violette’s fingerboard, her fingers were cut raw, but she played the entire piece with only two mistakes.
Alma brought the girl to her room and began cleaning her wounds.
“You played exceptionally well today, Violette.”
Much to her surprise, she discovered that Violette was smiling.
The violinist tossed her head at Alma’s fingers. “Those are violin scars.” It wasn’t a question; a statement, if anything, with a measure of admiration to it.
“Yes, they are.”
“Your father made you rehearse until you cut your fingers, too?” she asked, in her accented German.
“No. He didn’t have to make me do any anything. He was such an excellent violinist, all he had to do was play his chamber music. I couldn’t bear hearing it, it was so magnificent.” Alma paused and then added with a soft smile, “I’m not a particularly talented violinist.”
Violette looked at her in stunned disbelief.
Alma shook her head, grinning. “I really am not. Not naturally talented, like my father or uncle, at any rate. I trained myself well enough to pass for one. But it’s all technique, for the most part. I play with my hands. He played with his heart. But you can only tell the difference if you’re a musical critic of the highest rank. They always called me out on that and they were right.” She finished applying the salve on Violette’s cuts. “If I could train myself into confusing the general population, so can you. Only, you have to confuse just one man. But it’s utterly important that you confuse him; do you understand?”
If Violette was frightened by Alma’s grave expression and her final words, she didn’t show it. She only nodded instead and promised to start early the very next morning.
“Brave little soldier!” Alma took her face in her hands and kissed the girl on the forehead.
Chapter 24
Christmas Eve, 1943
Since the morning, the Germans around the camp were in excellent spirits; it was Alma’s orchestra girls who were growing colder and colder with fear. The concert was a mere few hours away. To Alma, the time had never felt more like an ax that hung over her head, threatening and indifferent, ready to fall at any moment now. Miklós held her hands and assured her that she had done all she could for the orchestra. She had rehearsed with her girls until she could no longer feel her right arm; until the baton had grown so heavy it was a torture to hold it upright; until the spot on her back, just under her shoulder blade, began to pulse with searing pain as though the camp Gestapo was prodding her skin with a hot poker. And yet, Alma still felt as if she hadn’t done enough. If Flora or Violette played badly that night, their deaths would be on her conscience. She was their conductor after all, their Kapo, their mother they no longer had.
All around the SS mess hall, inmates rushed to and fro in a great hurry, assembling and setting the tables, wrapping the sharpl
y smelling tree with tinsel and little swastika flags, fixing the portrait of Hitler on the wall. Miklós’ comrades from the waiting staff Kommando made it a point of honor to make an indecent gesture in the portrait’s face whenever they passed it by. At least that appeared to lift Alma’s girls’ spirits. That, and double rations straight from the delectable SS kitchen fed to them by the Green Triangles, Miklós’ Kommando mates, who guarded the girls like hawks while they ate their fill behind the closed doors.
“At least now, if we die, we’ve had our last meal,” Violette-from-Paris jested grimly, and Alma suddenly felt very sick to her stomach.
“You won’t die. I won’t let him touch you.” It was a promise she had no right to make and still, Alma made it, because it was something that her girls needed to hear.
At ten to six, Maria Mandl came in to check on her mascots. Alma heard her address one of her wardens, “Aren’t they pretty in those blue concert uniforms?” and cringed inwardly. That’s all they were to the women’s camp leader. Dolls to demonstrate to her colleagues. Dolls, who played music if one pressed the right buttons.
“Make sure the girls smile when they perform.” This time, Mandl spoke directly to Alma. “They look so much prettier when they smile.”
Something dark and vile surged up in Alma at those words. She was overcome with the desire to walk up to this ignorant woman and slap her hard across the face. Her girls’ lives were hanging by a thread and she wished them to smile, while they quite possibly lived through their last hours?
The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel Page 24
