Playing for the Commandant

by Suzy Zail

  “You’re a Jew?” The commandant’s voice echoed across the room.

  I turned from the boy to answer the commandant’s question. “Yes.”

  “Where from?”

  “Debrecen, Hungary.” I looked across at the boy, who was stifling a yawn.

  “And your position? Whom did you play for? The Budapest Philharmonic?”

  I shook my head.

  “The ballet?”

  I shook it again. The commandant frowned and turned to Lagerführerin Holzman.

  “So, what’s she here for, her looks?”

  “Nein,” I answered in my best German. “I’m here because I play piano. I’m here because I’m good.” I wasn’t going to win the audition, no matter how well I played. I was no match for Rivka Hermann, but I wanted the chance to compete. I wanted to play on the commandant’s Bösendorfer grand. I wanted the boy to put down his book. “I was promised a place at the Budapest Conservatorium. I was awarded the Budapest Medallion for most promising pianist under sixteen. I was the one voted most likely to —”

  “You have five minutes,” he said, cutting me off. “Impress me.”

  I climbed onto the stool and slipped my bare feet onto the pedals. I didn’t know the commandant’s favorite composer, but I knew this place, this piano. I knew what the commandant wanted. He wanted what we all wanted: to be transported. I didn’t know where he wanted to go, but I knew where I wanted to be, so I played the music that would take me home. I played Clara Schumann’s “Die gute Nacht,” and when he instructed me to continue, I played a Bach sinfonia for Mother and Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor for Father. I played Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no. 6 for Piri and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit for Erika. I wasn’t in the camps, and I wasn’t playing for an extra crust of bread. I was back in my world: Hanna at the piano, in control of the harmony and the happy ending.

  I looked up. The boy’s nose was still buried in his book.

  “Continue,” the commandant said, and I lowered my head. I was deciding between The Blue Danube and Mozart’s Piano Sonata no. 11 when something in the piano’s gleaming black lid caught my eye. I hadn’t seen my reflection in months, and it took me by surprise — the dull skin, the bristles, the face staring back at me. I was ugly, a skeleton in stage makeup. I saw it in the piano’s mirrored surface and in the boy’s refusal to look at me.

  I put my hands on the keys and tried to find my way back home, but my heart wasn’t in it. I delivered an empty Mozart sonata, sure that my finale had extinguished any chance I might have had for that extra crust of bread.

  “Gut.” The commandant unfolded his legs, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and dabbed his eyes.

  We were told to line up. I smiled at Rivka. Her red hair was growing back in uneven tufts. She looked like a sad clown, with her painted red cheeks and smeared lipstick. She deserved the extra crust of bread; we all did. Piri was right. There was no shame in wanting to survive. I didn’t want to die. I’d hardly lived. I wanted to keep living, and I wanted to keep playing the piano.

  “So, Karl, whose music most impressed you?” The commandant turned to face the boy at the back of the room. The boy lifted his eyes from his book. He looked irritated.

  “None of them, Father.”

  The commandant smiled. “Come, now. One must stand out.”

  The boy — Karl — stood up and looked us over. “That one, I suppose,” he said, pointing to me.

  Lagerführerin Holzman looked disappointed. “A10573? The blonde?”

  “Yes, A10573.” The boy’s mouth twisted in disgust.

  The commandant smiled. “You have a good ear.” He turned to face Lagerführerin Holzman.

  “You heard my son.” He placed his baton on the seat and reached for his dog’s leash. “We’ll take her.”

  We walked back to camp in the rain — five of us, when there had once been six. I hoped the girl with the bruised cheek, the one who had played Korngold’s banned sonata, had made it back to camp. I turned my face up to the gray sky, opened my mouth, and gulped at the fat, delicious raindrops. I hadn’t had anything to drink since breakfast. My cotton dress clung to my body and mud sucked at my shoes, but I didn’t care. The commandant had chosen me to be his pianist.

  Rivka turned to me. She didn’t look sad or angry. She looked relieved. “Congratulations.” She mouthed the word silently.

  “Think you’re lucky, do you?” Trommler dug her nails into my shoulder. “I hope you’re luckier than the commandant’s last pianist. She was a pretty blond thing like you. Didn’t do her much good. Imagine losing a finger just because you hit the wrong note.”

  Trommler waited for a reaction, but I refused to give her one. I didn’t let my face register surprise or fear.

  “So”— she released her grip and turned to face the other girls —“if you want to say anything to the winner of today’s little competition, perhaps instead of ‘congratulations,’ it ought to be ‘good luck.’”

  Another long hour passed. We kept walking. Globe flowers shivered by the roadside. Lulled by their beauty, I bent down to pull one from the mud, my right hand curled around its dark green stalk, when I noticed one of the guards standing over me, his boot lifted off the ground, his heel hovering over my hand. My fingers froze around the flower.

  “Not the hand, you idiot!” Trommler screamed. “She’s Captain Jager’s new pianist. That hand belongs to him now.”

  I looked down at my jagged nails and blistered palms. It wasn’t just the hands he owned. It was all of me. I was the commandant’s now. I belonged to him. I’d sold my soul for a chance to sneak into the commandant’s kitchen.

  I plucked the flower from the earth and kept walking.

  It was dark by the time we reached the main gate. Roll call was over, and the prisoners were being marched back to their bunks. They turned their heads to watch us pass, five women in stockings and silk scarves. A haggard old man spat at us, and then someone smiled, a young girl in a wet dress with a yellow star. Her right eye was swollen shut, and her feet were bare. I’d spent the day entertaining her jailer — I didn’t deserve her smile.

  I was almost glad when they herded us to block 11 to change back into our old clothes. I pulled my dirty underwear on, slid my C-sharp under the fraying waistband, and slipped my dress over my head, the tin cup dangling at my waist. Erika was already in bed when I returned to the barrack.

  “I hear you got the job.” The block leader stepped between me and the bunk. “I hope you can keep the boss happy. You do know how to keep men happy?” Her breath smelled of vodka. I stepped around her and fell onto the bunk beside Erika. My sister’s eyes were puffy. Her mouth sagged. I hated seeing my sister so wretched. She’d stepped off the train at Birkenau so angry, but her anger had disappeared and with it, her strength.

  I handed her the yellow flower. Half the petals had fallen off and the stem was bent, but she took the flower gratefully. She lay her head on my shoulder and wrapped her arms around my waist. She didn’t ask about the audition.

  “What’s wrong?” I lifted her face from my neck and saw that she was crying. “Where’s Mother?”

  Erika buried her head in her hands.

  “Where’s Anyu?” I pulled away from her.

  “Anyu’s gone.” Her face caved in. “The guards at selection made us hop up and down. They took her away.” Erika’s face was wet from crying. “It’s just us now.”

  “Don’t talk like that!” I shook my head. “She was too sick to work in the quarry. They’ve probably taken her to the infirmary.”

  “I don’t know.” Erika’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve heard things —”

  I cut her off. I didn’t want to know what she’d heard. “They want us scared, not dead. They need us alive so we can work.” I buried my face in her dress. What if I was wrong? I pulled the blanket around us and closed my eyes. “We’ll see Anyu again,” I said, and then we were both sobbing, our grief muffled by the scratchy wool.

  We stayed like that, our b
odies heaving, crying soundlessly under our blanket, until the block leader called lights out and the barrack grew still. Outside, it was dark, the cold silver moon strung up in the sky. I lay in bed but I couldn’t sleep. There was so much I wanted to tell my mother. I’d been so angry at her, so hateful. I wanted to tell her that I finally understood. She hadn’t chosen to ignore what was going on in the camp — she hadn’t chosen to ignore us — it was just all too hard: losing her home, then her husband. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t angry with her anymore. I wanted to tell her that we’d be okay, that I had a job and a plan and a way to get food. That I’d find her and feed her, and feed Erika, too. I wasn’t losing her. Not yet. Not till she’d seen me graduate from the Budapest Conservatory and watched me perform at the Budapest Concert Hall and taught me to cook and watched me walk down the aisle.

  I comforted myself with Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, rehearsing the music in my head, picturing the notes on the page, trying to lose myself in the melody. I thought of the perilous situations Clara had survived. In 1849, during the Dresden uprising, she’d walked through the city’s front lines, defying a mob of armed men, to rescue her children. Anyu and Erika had looked out for me my whole life. It was my turn to take care of them. It was my turn to be strong.

  I was back in block 11 the next morning. I pulled off my dress and shoved it into the bag on the bench opposite the shower stall. Erika had bitten into the stitching of my dress to make a hole for my piano key. She thought it would be safer hidden in a bag in block 11, given our block leader’s fondness for stripping our beds to search for food.

  I hoped so.

  When I emerged from the shower, the guard on duty directed me to the other side of the room. There was a row of metal lockers against a wall, one of which had my number on it. The guard took a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. Inside the locker was a pair of shoes, a pale-pink linen dress with a yellow star fastened at the chest, a white chiffon scarf, a cardigan, underwear, a slip, stockings, and a bra. I pulled out the clothes and shoved my worn shoes and clothing bag into the locker.

  “When you undress tonight, leave your clothes over there for washing.” The guard pointed to a trough on the opposite wall. “You’ll find a set of clean clothes in your locker tomorrow. And don’t even think about trying to keep them. The clothes are only to be worn for Captain Jager, underwear included. When you’re in Birkenau, you dress like everybody else.”

  The guard left me to finish dressing. I pulled the pink dress from the locker and when I went to undo the buttons at the back of the neck, I noticed a tiny row of neatly stitched letters inside the collar. A name: Eva Lakatos. She was my size, probably my age — if she was still alive. I fingered the pearl buttons and the stiff white collar, and my eyes started to fill. Eva’s mother must have stitched every letter by hand and starched the collar so that it would sit just right. A tear slid down my cheek, but I batted it away. Tears got you killed. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the dress over my head.

  “Your face!” The commandant’s housemaid clamped her hands over my shoulders and steered me from the front door. “Captain Jager can’t see you like this!” She dragged me to a wooden outhouse at the back of the villa. “Splash your face at the sink, wash off the mud, and straighten your scarf.” She handed me a towel. A cracked mirror hung from a hook on the wall. I looked at my reflection. My eyes were red, my face pale.

  “Come here every morning before you report for work.” She opened the cabinet above the sink and pulled out a lipstick. “Redo your makeup, fix your scarf, straighten yourself up. The commandant likes everything in his house immaculate, including his staff.”

  I stared into the mirror. My dress was pretty, but it gaped at the neck. I looked like a coat hanger. The last time I had looked at myself in a mirror — really looked — I’d been trying on my yellow organza dress for Erika. I’d been shocked by my reflection then, too: shocked by the curves that were made obvious by the drape of the dress, and by my breasts and hips. Erika had brushed eye shadow onto my lids and swept my hair into a loose roll. Father had whistled from the door and I’d blushed, but I’d liked the woman I had become.

  I turned from the mirror and followed the girl to the house. Her name was Vera. She was from Czechoslovakia, and had been working for the commandant for a year. She spoke quickly.

  “Once we’re through the front door, we can’t talk until we’re in the kitchen. I’ve a lot to tell you, so listen carefully. Leave your shoes at the front door. There are shoes for you inside. Keep them clean. You won’t find shoe polish in the camp, but if you save your bread, you can trade it for margarine. Margarine makes great shoe polish.” I looked at her blankly. “You’ll find margarine in Canada.” She looked at me and sighed. “It’s the warehouse barrack behind the infirmary. They call it Canada because it’s the land of plenty. I’ll arrange for you to get in. You’ll find everything you need there — soap, toothpaste, toilet paper . . .” She looked down at my nails. “Nail clippers, too. It all costs. A potato for a toothbrush, a piece of bread for a scrap of margarine.”

  “Where do they get it all?” I asked, confused.

  “The suitcases left at the station. They’re taken to Canada. The furs and jewelry are sent to Berlin; the rest stays at Canada for the SS and the block leaders, the interpreters, the runners . . .” She touched her bony hand to my scarf. “You could trade that scarf for margarine. They might even throw in some nail clippers if it’s real silk.”

  “But the guards will notice it’s missing.”

  Vera smiled knowingly. “Tell them Captain Jager used it to wipe his boots.”

  We reached the front door, and Vera handed me a winter coat. “Winter is coming,” she said. “This is yours to keep. You mustn’t get sick, not when the commandant has guests to entertain.”

  “My block leader hinted that the commandant likes blondes. Is that why I got the job?”

  Vera’s smile faded. “Captain Jager likes blondes, but he doesn’t like blond Jews. He’d sooner flirt with a pack of wolves than touch Jewish skin.” She opened the front door.

  “One last question,” I whispered. “My mother was taken last night and —”

  Vera shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips. “No talking in the hallway.” I tiptoed in after her. Every door she pointed to was locked, every room out of bounds, except for the music room where I’d be spending all my time. Vera stopped outside the kitchen and swung the door open. Seated at a wooden table in the center of the kitchen was an old man chopping beans. His face was creased and gray. The woman at the sink peeling potatoes wore a cheerful yellow dress, but her eyes were empty. They both wore yellow stars. They whispered their hellos.

  A pot of cabbage simmered on the stove. The smell reminded me of all the wasted meals I’d left on our kitchen table in Debrecen — the abandoned peas, burned potatoes, crusts of bread, the last drops of apple juice poured down the sink, the crumbs of poppy-seed cake tossed into the bin, the fat cut from meat, the flesh left on seeds.

  “We’re lucky to be here washing dishes instead of carting rocks, but it’s no holiday,” Vera said. “The scarf, the dress, the makeup — it’s just for show. You won’t get a three-course meal here.” She glanced back at the stove. “If the commandant is home, you won’t even get lunch. Don’t confuse the commandant’s love of music with any feeling for those who play it. If he’s home, he’ll expect you to be in the music room, waiting for his summons to play.”

  “And if he’s out?”

  “If he’s out, you can sneak in here to look for scraps.” Her face grew hard. “But if you’re caught, you’ll be shot.”

  I swallowed hard. “Do I practice?”

  “If you want to keep this job you will . . . but only when Captain Jager is away from home. Eating, using the toilet — anything that might remind him you’re human — is to be done while he’s out. And don’t talk to him,” she said, stepping into the hallway. “Unless he addresses you first. Sa
me goes for his son, their guests, and the guards.”

  I followed Vera to the music room. It looked the same as it had the day of the audition except that a small table had been rolled into the center of the room. On it sat a Black Forest cake, a strudel, a pot of tea, and an assortment of handmade chocolates. Vera looked at me and shook her head.

  She’d just shown me how to stand behind the piano, with my feet together and my arms by my side, when a portly couple strolled into the room. The man was laughing at something his wife was saying, his arms encircling her doughy waist.

  “Viktor, Helga!” The commandant strode in, bowed to the woman, and slapped the man on the back. “How are my oldest friends? How’s Berlin?”

  “We haven’t come here to talk about ourselves. We’ve come to see our dearest friend. Tell us, Hans, how are you?” The woman looked at the commandant, then at me.

  “She’s the pianist,” the commandant said. “I’ll have her play for you.”

  I’d always performed best in front of an audience. It was easier to play warmed by the smiles, buoyed by the audience’s expectations, jolted by the extra electricity an audience provides. But not this time, not here. I wasn’t onstage. There were no draped velvet curtains, no chandeliers. I was wearing a dead girl’s dress, and no matter how well I played, there’d be no applause.

  I rested my hands on the keys. What was it Trommler had said about the last pianist? That she’d played the wrong note? I glanced at the commandant, seated in the front row, his legs crossed, his metal baton poised in the air. My hands trembled; my head was pounding. I started to play a Chopin nocturne, tentatively at first, wary of my fingers and nervous of the notes. By the third nocturne, my breathing had returned to normal. I was in the middle of Bach’s Piano Concerto in D Minor when I saw the boy standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed. His father saw him, too.

  “Karl, you remember Helga and Viktor. Come and say hello.” The boy took a step forward and pulled out a chair. His blond hair was perfectly parted, his skin smooth, his teeth white. If he’d lifted his head, he would have been looking straight at me.