Playing for the Commandant

by Suzy Zail

  The block leader called our barrack to attention.

  “I can get you into the orchestra. There’s room for another pianist. Think about it,” Piri said, slipping back into line. “We’re in barrack 14.”

  “It’s the only way to beat them,” Erika said when I told her about my conversation with Piri. “Survive, and when you do, tell everyone what you saw —”

  “And what they did to us,” I said, remembering Father’s parting words. “I just don’t know if I could live with myself.” I thought of the girls in barrack 24, their hair grown out, their lips painted red. I’d seen the guards go in there at night and come out again, buttoning their flies and straightening their shirts.

  “Do it for Anyu, then. You could give her your extra rations. She barely escaped the last selection. If she gets any frailer, they’ll take her away.”

  I watched my mother drag her feet through the mud. In two days, the guards would force us to hop up and down at the next selection so they could pick off the weakest among us. Last week a woman had tripped; another had collapsed. They were taken by the guards and hadn’t come back.

  I slipped away the next morning, after the block leader left for the washroom. I ran to Piri’s barrack and knocked on the door. No one answered, so I swung the door open and stepped inside. A stove was burning in the corner of the room, a pot of coffee bubbling on the flame. I closed my eyes for a moment and inhaled, the smell tugging me back to our kitchen in Debrecen.

  There were beds with straw pallets, blankets, and sheets, and at the foot of each bed, there was a small washbasin and soap. Farther along the wall was a podium cluttered with music stands and a wooden table buried under sheet music. I didn’t stop to look at the music; I walked straight to the piano.

  I’d never played a Bechstein before. I ran my fingers over the keys, and the music reached out to me like an old friend. I flirted with Schubert and waltzed with Chopin. By the time I was halfway through Clara Schumann’s Second Scherzo, I was lost to the music. It seeped into the corners of the barrack and slipped under the sheets. The bunks blurred at the edges and the bars on the windows disappeared as the melody wrapped its arms around me and carried me away.

  I didn’t hear the door open. I didn’t know I had an audience until a cymbal skimmed past the piano and clattered to the floor. I looked up from the keys. The conductor of the women’s orchestra was standing at the door. Behind her was Piri.

  “Who the hell are you?” The conductor reached for a bar of soap and flung it at my head. I ducked for cover behind the piano’s sloping lid. “Get away from that piano!”

  I slid from the seat and crouched on the floor.

  “Frau Schroeder, if I may.” Piri stepped forward and faced the conductor. “This is Hanna Mendel, one of my students from Debrecen.”

  I stood up and faced the conductor. My hands were shaking.

  “She’s a talented pianist and —” Piri was pale.

  “I don’t recall asking you to find me a musician.” The conductor took a step toward Piri. “Did I?”

  “No, Frau Schroeder, but I thought —”

  The conductor slammed the piano lid shut.

  “I have no need for her.” She brought her face close to Piri’s. “And if she isn’t out of here by the time I sit down, I’ll call for the guards.”

  I got back to the barrack just as the women were leaving for the quarry. I slipped into line behind my mother.

  “I’m joining the Birkenau Women’s Orchestra,” I whispered in her ear. I needed to see her smile.

  “That’s wonderful, darling. You’ll get to practice. You must keep practicing.” My mother smiled, but her eyes were sad.

  “Of course, Anyu.” I took her hand in mine. It was tiny as a child’s. She opened her mouth to speak, but a terrible sound ripped through the barrack, a deep rumbling, then a low growl. The floor shook, and our plank beds with it, and through the cracks in the barrack walls, we saw the sky turn red.

  My mother turned to face me. “Maybe you’ll play a little Clara Schumann for me when you get out of here.” Her eyes searched mine. “Hanna,” she said, “don’t ever give up.”

  I thought she was talking about the piano, but the way she looked at me made me think she was talking about something entirely different.

  “A10562! A10563!” Lili and Agi Markovits stepped forward. “You’re excused from today’s selection. You’re to meet Herr Mengele at the infirmary.”

  Agi smiled. Herr Mengele had promised he would call for them, and the twins had since found out that the man they had called the conductor was an SS captain and a doctor. In Birkenau, they’d learned, it was all about who you knew.

  “A10573!” I stepped forward. “You’re wanted in block 11.”

  A guard opened the door and ushered me into a shower block. I’d showered twice since coming to the camp, but never in a room with shower cubicles and towels. A woman at the far end of the room stepped out of a cubicle, her hair dripping. She pulled a dress with a green triangle from a hook on the wall and slipped it over her head.

  The guard pressed her gun into my back. There were five girls wearing yellow stars standing in the middle of the room. I hurried to join them.

  None of them turned to look at me. They stood, silent and still, staring down at their feet or blinking nervously at the door. I turned to the girl next to me. I knew that face, those eyes . . . The girl was bald, and skinnier than I remembered, but she had the same pale, freckled face as the shy third-year pianist at the Budapest Conservatorium who stuttered when she spoke but made the keys dance when she touched them. Her name was Rivka Hermann. Rivka glanced up, but she didn’t look at me. Lagerführerin Holzman was striding toward us, flanked by two guards.

  “Permit me to introduce myself,” the Lagerführerin began, but she needn’t have. We all knew the commander. She was head of the women’s camp, the most powerful woman in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Women trembled when they talked of her and dipped their heads when she passed. She sat down on a bench and crossed her silk-stockinged legs. I stood in front of her in my gray sack dress, my fingernails caked with dirt.

  “I have good news for one of you,” she began, but I didn’t look up. I’d seen her standing at the camp gate waiting for someone to turn and look at her. I’d seen too many girls make the mistake and be pulled out of line, never to be seen again. “The commandant of the camp, Captain Jager, is looking for a pianist. You have been recommended for the position. You will be auditioning today.” Today? I looked down at my hands. My fingernails were ragged, and my fingers were stiff. I hadn’t practiced for months. I hadn’t done my exercises or scales or drills.

  The Lagerführerin looked us up and down. “You’ll shower, of course. The commandant can’t abide filth, so be sure to scrub your faces and clean your nails.” She clicked her fingers, and the guards rushed to distribute bags. “Leave your clothes in the bags. You’ll get a new dress after you shower.” Her voice was clipped. “You won’t get to keep it.” A guard stepped forward holding a sealed cardboard box. The Lagerführerin pulled a switchblade from her belt, sliced the box open, then beckoned us forward to pull out a soap and shampoo. As we filed past, she assigned each of us a number. I was the last to arrive, so I’d be the last to audition.

  We undressed. I shoved my dress and my cup into the bag, hoping it would still be there when I returned from the audition. Rivka stood next to me, naked and shivering. The girl beside her stood with her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest, her face beet-red. I’d stopped blushing long ago. The washroom guards didn’t see us — we were invisible to them. Invisible to God, too, it seemed. We all looked alike, anyway: flat-chested and bone-thin. Six birdlike creatures with spindly legs and sticking-out hips. The Lagerführerin gave the order, and we stepped into the showers. I adjusted the temperature, stuck my head under the showerhead, and let the hot water pound my face, slide down my body, swirl around my ankles, and escape down the drain.

  “Grab a dress,” an angr
y voice said from across the room. I stepped from the shower and saw Oberaufseherin Trommler standing in the Lagerführerin’s place. She was second in command at the camp and was rumored to be the meaner of the two women. People whispered that she kept half-starved dogs that she liked to unleash on the inmates. She had a whip in her hand and a pistol on her belt. She pointed to a rack of dresses that had been rolled into the room. “Now that the Lagerführerin’s gone, I’m in charge,” she said, glancing down at her gun. “There’s underwear, slips, brassieres, and stockings on the bench. Schnell!”

  We dressed hurriedly under her venomous gaze. I pulled on a pair of underpants, glad that my period still hadn’t come. I was a week overdue and thankful for the reprieve. Last month I’d had to work with soiled rags between my legs and sneak to the washroom to rinse them out after dark. The Polish girls hated those of us who still bled — we were considered the spoiled new arrivals because our bodies still worked.

  Trommler walked among us as we dressed, handing out scarves, rouge, and lipstick. She dropped a compact of shimmering blue eye shadow on my lap and told me to tart myself up. I brushed the pressed powder lightly over my lids and skimmed the lipstick over my lips, but I didn’t use the rouge. I wasn’t going to pretty myself up for anyone, especially the commandant. I didn’t want him noticing my lashes or admiring my lips. It was bad enough having to entertain him.

  Rivka picked up a lipstick from the bench and sighed.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered, dabbing the color on her lips.

  “You need more,” I whispered, pointing to her lips, but she misunderstood and grabbed the rouge. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t a beauty contest; it was a piano audition, and Rivka was sure to win, with or without face paint. I grabbed a pair of shoes from a box, wrapped a silk scarf over my corn-colored spikes, and followed Trommler out of the shower block.

  We filed through the main gate, accompanied by two men with machine guns. It was Sunday. On Sundays the quarry was closed. Cleaning the latrines and washing down the barracks didn’t warrant musical accompaniment, so on Sundays the band didn’t play at the gate. We marched to our own beat — six musicians without instruments.

  I was surprised to find, a few miles from our own camp, another just like it, with chimneys spilling smoke and a concrete compound of barracks. In front of the camp’s main gate was a sign that read ARBEIT MACHT FREI —“Work Brings Freedom.” A group of men in striped suits were repairing a barbed-wire fence. Michael Wollner was among them, but I didn’t call out to him — there was a gun at my back and one at his.

  The smell of the camp gave way to the smell of freshly turned soil as we neared a field. In Birkenau there was only gray — mud, concrete, and smoke. Beyond the barbed wire and only a short hike from our camp, was green, blue, and yellow — a blue sky unsullied by smog, green grass, and up ahead, a globe flower, the color of the sun, pushing through the soil. It was the first beautiful thing I’d seen in months.

  We walked on, past peasants tilling the fields and farmers tending their cattle. An old man with a bent back pulled a potato from the ground and dusted it off. He looked up as we passed, saw the guns at our backs, and our stick-thin legs, and returned to his plowing. A young boy worked beside him, his gaze fixed on the ground. The girl who’d blushed in the showers turned beet-red again. I was too hungry to care what the farmers thought of us. I saw the old man drop the potato into his basket and wondered what he and the other farmers would be having for lunch.

  When the green fields turned to cobblestoned streets, Trommler tucked her gun under her coat.

  “I can still shoot through the fabric,” she warned, “so don’t do anything stupid.”

  The sign we’d just passed read OSWEICIM, POPULATION 12,000, but there were only a handful of people on the streets, most of them elderly. The shop windows were bare, and the townsfolk went about their business. No one stopped to watch us pass. We were just six women wearing silk scarves. We were a little thin, but we weren’t doing badly; we had silk stockings and shiny shoes.

  Trommler pulled out her gun when we reached the commandant’s villa. The house was as big as our barrack, but it wasn’t a windowless shed. It was a two-story redbrick mansion with a pitched roof and a weeping willow in the front yard. The grass was a perfect rectangle of green. Even the flowers stood at attention in their beds. The path to the front door was swept of leaves, and on the front porch were two wicker baskets, each containing a pair of black boots, beside them a scrubbing brush and a neatly folded rag. Mother would like this house.

  “Shoes off,” Trommler ordered, pulling her boots from her feet. I yanked off my shoes and looked down at my ragged toenails and the sores on my feet from working in shoes two sizes too small.

  “Come in.” The girl at the door wore a maid’s outfit, a pale gray dress with a white scallop-edged apron tied at the waist. We followed her into a wide hallway. I stood under the soaring ceiling, feeling dwarfed by the towering walls. The floors were dark wood, the walls a stark, bright white, all of them bare. There were no rugs to soften the floor, no wall hangings or side tables or umbrellas in stands, no hooks on the walls on which to hang coats or keys. The commandant may have slept in this house, but it wasn’t a home.

  I peered down the hallway. The doors were all closed, save the very last one.

  “The piano room,” the girl announced, stepping aside to let us through. I followed Trommler into another vast space, but this one was softened by rugs. In the middle of the room was a Bösendorfer grand. I sat at the back of the room, my eyes glued to the glossy black piano. Tucked under the gleaming piano was a black lacquered stool with a black leather seat, and on top of the piano’s polished lid sat an antique glass lamp and a handsome mahogany clock. A row of dining-room chairs was fanned out behind the piano. Lagerführerin Holzman sat at the end of the row, her blond hair in a braid, her face turned toward the window. Behind her stood a soldier with a gun slung over his shoulder, and to his left, Hitler watched from a photo in a silver frame.

  A man entered the room, trailed by a German shepherd and an SS guard. He had the bearing of a man accustomed to walking through doorways first. It wasn’t his height, though he was tall, or the gun gleaming on his belt, or even his uniform, which was cinched at the waist and dripping with medals. It was the way he moved across the room; he expected to be noticed.

  Lagerführerin Holzman and Oberaufseherin Trommler jumped to their feet.

  “Would Captain Jager like to hear some music?” the Lagerführerin asked. The commandant ran a hand through his cropped yellow hair, undid the top button of his jacket, and sat down. A scar ran across his square jaw, pale white against his pink skin. His eyes were a metallic blue, his smile glacial. His face gave away nothing. I’d hoped his appearance might give me some clue as to his taste in music, some hint that he preferred Hayden to Handel or romantic waltzes to fugues.

  The commandant pulled a metal stick from under his chair.

  “Danke schön, Frau Lagerführerin. Please begin.”

  The Lagerführerin called the first girl. “A10512. Take a seat at the piano.”

  Trommler elbowed the first girl from her seat. She scrambled to the piano, ovals of sweat under her arms. The commandant yawned before she reached the end of the first page.

  “Tyrolean marches aren’t to my taste,” he said, ordering the girl back to her seat. The commandant wasn’t a patient man. When the second girl faltered in the third stanza of Mephisto Waltz no.1, he had her wait outside. The third girl to audition played a Korngold piano sonata. My heart dipped as soon she started to play. Piri had taught me the same sonata in the ghetto, on the condition I play it whisper-quiet. I hadn’t asked why; I knew Korngold was Jewish and all his sonatas were banned. The poor girl’s fingers struck the keys, and I said nothing. And then the commandant was getting out of his seat, and it was too late to warn her because he was standing over her and yanking her from her seat and striking her flushed face with the back of his han
d. A bruise flowered on her left cheek, and something inside me turned black. A soldier hurried to the commandant’s side. He pulled his gun from his holster, thrust it at the girl’s head, and forced her through the door. I cowered in my seat and watched them leave.

  Commandant Jager returned to his seat and waited for his next victim. The room was silent except for the dog’s heavy panting. Trommler shoved the next girl from her seat, and she sat down at the piano, her face a dangerous plum color. The commandant sat through Brahms’s Scherzo in E-flat Minor and let her play a Chopin prelude through to the end, though she played it dully. She returned to her seat, trembling with relief, and Rivka took her place. She played Beethoven and Wagner, Chopin and Brahms, and she played sublimely, but that only made my heart hammer harder in my chest. The commandant lifted his hand from the scruff of his dog’s neck to applaud but then thought better of it and returned to scratching the dog’s head.

  I walked to the piano, sick to my stomach. What if halfway through my Bach prelude my memory failed? What if the commandant detested Bach?

  “Who’s this one?” the commandant asked. He hadn’t asked about the others.

  “A10573, Herr Captain.”

  “Her name?”

  Lagerführerin Holzman looked confused. It wasn’t her job to know our names.

  The commandant stared at me.

  “Take your scarf off.” He looked at the others. “All of you. Scarves off!”

  That’s when I saw him: a boy of sixteen or seventeen. It was difficult to tell his age. I’d become accustomed to boys with sagging mouths and bent backs who looked like old men. He looked nothing like the boys behind the electrified fences. His hair was the color of honey and his eyes the color of the sky. He was tanned and tall — at least a head taller than me — though I couldn’t be sure because his head was buried in a book and he sat slouched in a chair. He was the second lovely thing I’d seen that day, and I wanted to strangle him. How dare he read while we play for our lives.