Playing for the Commandant

by Suzy Zail

  Karl’s room had been his refuge, the only room in the house without a picture of Hitler, a room filled with art, music, and beauty. I stopped at the door and saw the easel in pieces on the ground, books smeared with paint, a shredded map. I stepped into the room, careful not to tread on the punctured tubes of paint lying on the floor, their blues, reds, and yellows leaking out of them. Above Karl’s bed, the words Die Nazi bled on the wall.

  I fell onto the bed and buried my face in Karl’s sheets. The smell of him was everywhere, in the blankets and the pillows and the pages of his books. I ran my hands along his bookcase and saw his sketchbook on the top shelf. I pulled it from the shelf and opened it to the last page. The delicate girl with the pale eyes Karl had drawn all those months ago had changed. There was a new strength to her lines, less shading, more depth. She wasn’t cowering in the shadows so much as stepping out of them. I tore the sheet from the book and stuffed it into my pocket.

  I sat down at the piano and ran my fingers along the paint-splattered keys. My fingers found a bloodred C-sharp, then an angry purple D. I hadn’t played piano for a month, hadn’t thought about Clara Schumann in weeks, but my fingers found the heartbreaking opening to her Romance in A Minor. I played the love song for my mother, tears streaming down my face. She’d been so thrilled when I’d told her I’d be playing piano with the Birkenau Women’s Orchestra. I remembered her standing in front of the watchtower staring wide-eyed at the thin-armed players.

  I bore down on the keys, and Clara’s music filled the room.

  “I promised to play Clara for you, Anyu,” I shouted above the chords. “I promised never to give up.”

  It felt strange sitting in a train with windows and leather seats and a door I could slide open. I found a window seat and spent the next ten days following the curve of the tracks that would take me home. The train emptied slowly: Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Hungarians, everyone heading home or heading out, scrambling to start a new life, searching for a new home.

  As we neared Hungary, I lifted my eyes to the rolling green hills, the wide stretches of farmland, the grassy banks of the Danube. I saw goats and cows, oak and acacia, and for the first time, I dared to believe that I could leave the camp, really leave. I’d stopped looking over my shoulder and shoveling food into my mouth. I’d stopped scratching at imaginary fleas and standing at attention. My hair was long enough to comb and part on the side. I’d put on weight. People called me by my name; they asked if I was hungry. I mattered.

  We zigzagged through Eger, Budapest, and Szolnok. At night I dreamed not of Karl or the camps, but of home. I was back in the bedroom I shared with Erika. She was brushing her hair; I was reading a book. I could smell challah baking, and the sweet, spicy mix of paprika and brown onion frying in a pan. It was Friday night, and Mother was shelling peas in the kitchen, waiting for Father to return from synagogue. I heard his key in the lock and his footsteps in the hallway, and I ran to greet him.

  I leaped off the train as soon as the stationmaster opened the doors. I was in Debrecen — I was home. Except it didn’t feel like home. The station looked the same, but no one was waiting for me on the platform. The cobblestone streets still tripped me up. There were ducks in the pond and skaters on the ice rink, ice-cream vendors outside the park and boats on the lake. It was as if nothing had changed — but everything had — and I felt like a stranger. I passed traders at their market stalls and children eating doughnuts outside the Piac Street bakery. No one smiled, and no one stopped me.

  I hurried toward Hatvan Street, to the safe familiarity of the Jewish quarter, surprised to see it so unchanged. I stopped at the end of our street. I craned my neck and looked for our apartment building. It was still there, just before the bend, its whitewashed walls in need of paint. Flowers spilled from the balconies; washing hung on the rails. I pulled my C-sharp from my pocket and raced up the hill. The front door was open. I ran inside, climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, two at a time, and stopped at the door to our apartment. The mezuzah was missing and the welcome mat had been replaced, but the brass plate still read Apartment 5B. Vera had warned me not to get my hopes up, but I could smell fish frying, and when I pressed my ear to the door, I swear I heard a noise.

  I swallowed hard and knocked on the door.

  “Hello.” A woman swung the door open. She was holding a wooden spoon and wearing an apron embroidered with strawberries. Her cheeks were dusted with flour. She was smiling until she saw me, then her smile slipped away.

  “What do you want?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest and stepping in front of the door.

  “This is my apartment. . . . I — I’ve been away,” I stammered.

  “Yes, and while you were away, we moved in.” It wasn’t an apology. “You’re trespassing.” She stepped toward me, forcing me back into the hallway. “And if you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.”

  My mouth fell open. Call the police? She was in my home, leaving floury footprints on my hallway runner, switching on my lights and using my oven.

  I elbowed her aside and ran down the corridor, past my father’s umbrella stand and my mother’s white orchid. I reached the bedroom I shared with Erika and lunged for the door. I needed to touch something that was Erika’s, something from before.

  “That’s my daughter’s room. Don’t you dare.” The woman caught up to me. Her eyes were cold, her mouth hard. She grabbed my arm and dragged me from the door.

  “It’s my room.” I shook free of her grip. I imagined that behind the door, my room was just as I’d left it, the pictures of Puccini and Verdi still tacked to the wall. The dollhouse Father had built for my seventh birthday under the window, the clothes I’d sewn for my dolls in a shoe box under my bed. I pushed the door open and stepped into the room, horrified to find that the woman was right. It wasn’t my room. There were no concert programs or ticket stubs taped to the mirror and no scuffed school shoes poking out from under the bed. Instead there were porcelain ponies on the windowsill, an unfinished tapestry on the bed, and a large brown bear tucked under the sheets. A photo of a girl I didn’t know sat in a silver frame on top of the bedside table.

  “Have a couple been here?” I turned on the woman. “They probably look like me — skinny, with short hair. They’re in their forties. He might have a beard; she has blond hair. . . .” I paused to catch my breath. “And a girl a little older than me? Darker, with brown eyes. She’s feisty. You’d remember her.” I grabbed her blouse. “Her name is Erika. Please, you can have everything —”

  “I already do.” The woman pulled away. “Now get out.” She snatched a cushion from the chair in the hallway and flung it at me. I stumbled out the door, clutching the cushion. The stitching had unraveled a little, but I could still make out my mother’s careful letters: a blue E for Erika, a red H for Hanna, a heart beside the letter E, a black treble clef next to the H.

  I staggered downstairs and into the back garden and stood on the silvered lawn, a knot of anger rising in my belly. The yard was dark. I was alone. There were no guards with guns, no dogs, no one to stop me from screaming. And still I clamped my hand over my mouth. If I started yelling, I might never stop, and if I didn’t stop, if I let the anger leak out of me, what would be left? I hugged the cushion to my chest and pictured my mother bent over her sewing machine, pumping the foot pedal with her stockinged feet, a smile on her lips. If I gave voice to my anger, if I went back upstairs and beat down the door and took what was mine, I’d still be no closer to knowing what had become of my family. I kicked at the frozen ground. It was so unfair. I rammed the ground again. A clod of earth loosened under my boot. I dug the wet ball from the ground and threw it at the back wall, watching as the dirt and ice slid down the brickwork. I bent down and plunged my hands back into the wet soil. My fingernails were filthy with mud just like — I shot up and ran to the back of the apartment building, holding up five fingers. Papa had held up five fingers, then taken five steps to the right the night before the
roundup, the night he’d buried our savings in the backyard. I took five steps to the right. How many steps after that? I closed my eyes and tried to recall the words Papa had mouthed, tried to picture him stepping into the garden clutching the battered cookie tin. Three. He’d taken three steps backward into the garden. I took three steps back and bent down to plunge my hands into the earth, but when I looked down at the ground, the soil had already been dug up.

  Papa?

  I turned and ran to my old school. I don’t know why I ended up there, outside the music-room window. I guess I hoped Papa might be there, waiting for me. He’d often stop by the music room. He liked to watch me play. I wiped an arc across the frosted windowpane and saw the violins, flutes, and cymbals stacked on their shelves; the trumpets on the floor, the trombones next to them, and in the middle of the room, my piano. I’d spent more time at that piano than in the lunchroom with my classmates.

  I stumbled on until I reached the synagogue on Pásti Street. I wasn’t looking for God, just somewhere to sleep for the night. Rabbi Myerson sat hunched on a wooden chair by the pulpit. His gray suit was creased and worn, his eyes dull. He looked up from his prayer book.

  “Hannale, you’re alive! When I came out of hiding . . .” He shook his head. “The synagogue’s empty. I’d hoped there were others who had hidden, like me, others with brave neighbors.” He paused. “Birkenau?”

  I nodded.

  “How did you escape the march?”

  I didn’t answer for a long time. I was thinking about Karl. He’d chosen me at the audition. He’d offered up the name of his fifth-grade geography teacher when I was caught playing Mendelssohn, and warned me about the infirmary. He’d lied to his father to keep me from being evacuated, and followed me into a snowstorm to keep me safe. He was the reason I was still here.

  “A brave boy helped me.”

  “And your parents? Your sister?”

  I shrugged. “I was hoping you would know.”

  The rabbi put his hand on mine. “You’ll find a bed and a warm meal at the Jewish Community Center on Radnor Street, and a notice board on the first floor.” He shifted in his seat. “If your parents are alive, their names will be on it.” He looked down at the yellowing pages of Hebrew script. “I pray they were spared. They were good people.”

  The community center on Radnor Street had been converted into a home for refugees. It was a shelter for those who had been turned away from their homes. I found the notice board the rabbi had spoken of. I ran my finger down the list of survivors until I reached the letter M. There was only one name under Mendel: Hanna Mendel, discharged from Auschwitz, 14th February, 1945. I sank to the floor.

  “Just because their names aren’t there doesn’t mean they didn’t survive.”

  I looked up at the sound of a familiar voice. A young man with a thin face and a thick red beard hovered over me.

  “Not all the camps have been emptied. I’m waiting for my mother. We were separated in Auschwitz.” He looked down at me. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s me, Michael Wollner.” He held out his hand and helped me to my feet.

  “You’ve changed,” I said.

  We all had.

  Michael showed me where to collect my blanket and bowl and how to register for my weekly allowance of 22 pengö. We sat in the school hall, ate dinner together, and talked until they turned the lights out. We talked about Auschwitz and our lives before the war and what we planned to do next. He had so many plans. Mostly he wanted to start over. He’d heard of Jews being smuggled into Palestine. He planned to join them and help build the Jewish state. He was learning to fight. He was training to get strong.

  “Dachau, Bergen-Belsen — there are dozens of camps the Russians haven’t reached. When they do, that list downstairs will run to ten pages. Maybe our parents’ names will be on it.”

  I hoped he was right.

  “You’re not the boy I remember from school.” A moment passed before he answered.

  “I guess I’ve grown up. You’re exactly the same as I remember.”

  He smiled and I smiled back. It felt good to be Hanna Mendel from before the war. A girl who had parents. A girl who had plans. A girl with a scholarship. I wanted to be that girl again. Maybe with Michael I could be. My smile wasn’t as wide as his, but it was a start and it felt good. It was easy with Michael, uncomplicated. We were both caught halfway between the past and the future. I didn’t tell him about Karl.

  We agreed to meet up again in the morning. Michael went upstairs to the men’s wing, but I couldn’t sleep. I wandered the corridors, looking for a music room, somewhere I could find myself and lose myself at the same time. I found a door on the third floor marked ORCHESTRA. I pushed it open, fumbled around for a switch, and turned on the light. The instruments had all been packed away, but in the center of the room was a shiny black piano. Butted up against it was a mattress. And curled up on the mattress, like a question mark, was my sister.

  “Erika! Erika, it’s me!” I shook her awake.

  She blinked at the light, then she blinked at me.

  “Hanna!” she shrieked as she leaped from her bed. “Hanna!” she cried, and she wrapped me in her arms. “Hanna!” she whispered, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  We clung to each other like limpets, repeating each other’s names, stroking each other’s hair, kissing each other’s cheeks. I didn’t tire of hearing her say my name. I planted a kiss on her nose. She was alive. My sister was alive. I grabbed Erika’s hands and spun her around, once, twice, three times, till we were both dizzy with happiness.

  Erika pulled me onto the mattress. “When you didn’t see my name on the list of survivors, you must’ve thought I was dead. My name’s not there because I wasn’t liberated from a camp,” she said. “I escaped. I made it to Debrecen very late last night, found this place, and snuck up here, and when I saw the music room, well, it seemed like the perfect place to wait for you.”

  “You escaped?”

  Erika’s smile disappeared. “You waved me good-bye at the main gate, remember? It was snowing. We’d been told we were going to work in a factory. I knew they were lying. I wanted to say good-bye. I wanted to tell you I wasn’t coming back, but I knew you’d come with me or make a scene, and I couldn’t let that happen.” Erika shook her head. “We walked for hours. People collapsed in the snow. The guards shot anyone who couldn’t keep up. I was so tired and cold, but I kept going. I had to keep going — I knew you’d be waiting for me.”

  “And you did. . . .” I kissed her cheek.

  “But if Piri hadn’t been there . . .”

  “Piri?” I stared at her.

  “Piri was on the same march. She dragged me through the snow. I never would’ve made it without her.” She stood up and walked to the window. She looked shrunken, diluted. “We walked for two days, maybe more. A Polish prisoner told us we were headed for a train station. Piri said we weren’t getting on any train. She knew I wouldn’t survive another day without food, so she came up with a plan. The next time someone stumbled and the guards took aim, we’d collapse and pretend we were dead.”

  “The guards could’ve shot you.” My stomach clenched.

  “It was a chance we had to take.”

  I rose from the bed and walked to the window. I held Erika’s small hands in mine and waited for her to continue.

  “At the next round of gunfire, we both fell to the snow. The prisoners marched past. When we finally raised our heads, there were no prisoners or guards, just a few Polish peasants with a cart. They were collecting bodies, clearing them from the road for the SS. When they went to pull Piri from the roadside, she told them the Red Army was closing in and that if they spared us, we’d speak well of them if they were charged as collaborators.”

  “So the plan worked?”

  Erika nodded. “They helped us onto the cart and drove us to their farm. They let us sleep in the stable and share the scraps they fed their
pigs. We hid there till the Russians arrived. Then I came looking for you.”

  “And Piri?” I held my breath. I imagined my teacher renting an apartment near the Karlsplatz and playing piano with the Vienna Philharmonic, or living near the Parc de la Villette and teaching piano at the Paris Conservatory.

  “She’s headed for Italy and, from there, to Australia.”

  “Australia?”

  Erika nodded. “It’s as far away from Europe as you can get.” She turned toward me, her eyebrows raised. “We could join her. Or we could go somewhere else. New York. London. We can start again. I’ll go to university; you can play piano.”

  I shook my head.

  “Erika, we’ll need to get jobs. The money Papa left us . . . I dug up the ground. It’s . . .”

  Erika’s face split into a smile. She lifted the mattress from the floor.

  “Here?”

  Under the mattress was Father’s cookie tin. Erika tossed it to me. I pried open the lid and pulled out father’s pocket watch — 11:46 p.m. It was still keeping time.

  “Paris and New York sound wonderful.” I wrapped my arms around my sister’s narrow waist. “But we’re not going anywhere. Not till we’ve heard about Anyu and Papa.”

  I dragged a mattress into the music room, and we set up a makeshift home. We slept together, between the piano and the wind instruments. We ate in the hall and showered on the third floor, in the women’s gymnasium. I wanted to return to Hatvan Street and demand our apartment back, but Erika was against it. The military police wouldn’t help us, and Erika had heard of too many Jews being chased from their homes. When Mr. Faranc, our neighbor, forced his way back into apartment 12A, I begged Erika to reconsider. But when Mr. Faranc’s body was found floating facedown in Lake Bekas two days later, I dropped the subject.

  The days snaked past slowly. Daylight lengthened, melting the last of the snow. We agreed not to mourn for our parents, not till we knew. We looked for their names on the first-floor notice board every morning before breakfast and every evening before bed. We looked for them at the synagogue and at the doughnut shop in Hatvan Street. We put up posters at the train station. We celebrated Passover in March at the Community Center and left two empty chairs at the Seder table, just in case. We set aside a bowl of chicken soup for Anyu and saved a slice of gefilte fish for Papa, but we celebrated the end of slavery under Pharoah — and our own liberation — alone.