The Wrong Boy (16 page)

I pushed the door open and walked over to where the block leader stood.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any food for you tonight.”

The block leader glared at me.

“I had to go to the infirmary,” I hurried to explain, showing her my hand. The block leader looked down at my swollen thumb, grabbed it between her leathery fingers and squeezed.

“What are you doing?” I cried, sinking to my knees. The block leader loosened her grip but she didn’t let go.

“I might ask the same of you.”

I looked at her blankly.

“A little birdie tells me you’ve made friends at the villa. One friend in particular. A boy.” She dug her fingernails into my skin. “How could you? After all I’ve done for you.” Spit gathered at the corners of her mouth. “Haven’t I looked after you? When you got that job at the villa the women here wanted to tear you to shreds.” She turned to the women who had gathered behind her. “I held them back. Made sure you were safe. And this is how you repay me?” She crouched down on one knee and brought her face close to mine. “I confided in you. I told you about my husband and my …” She let go of my hand and stood up. “And then you go and screw one of them.”

I stared up at her in horror.

“I haven’t …” I began, but Erika pushed past me. Her bony arms hung by her sides. Her feet were bare.

“Leave her alone,” she said, stepping between me and the block leader.

The block leader laughed. “What are you going to do? Make me?” She elbowed Erika aside to stand in front of me. “Get out. There’s no room for traitors or whores in this barrack.”

I clambered to my feet. Erika put her hand on the block leader’s shoulder. Her eyes shone in the dim light.

“I’m not going to fight you,” she said, walking around to face her. “I don’t need to. What do you think my sister’s boyfriend will do to you when he finds out you’ve thrown her out?” She brought her face close to the block leader’s. “He’ll come after you. Repeat a word of what you’ve just said or lay a finger on my sister and he
will
find out. I’ve made sure of it.”

Erika took me by the hand and led me back to our bunk. She didn’t let go of my hand, not till a long time later, when her hands had finally stopped shaking.

I lined up for rollcall next to Erika. We stood under the frozen clouds, our heads glistening, our breath making ghostly shapes in the dark. The girl next to us collapsed. She was so light she hardly made a dent in the snow. The guards dragged her away.

“I don’t remember what it feels like to be warm.” We walked back to the barrack. Erika’s feet were purple with cold, her fingers frozen. I drew my coat around her.

“It feels like a standing ovation … or breakfast in bed on your birthday.”

“Or a kiss?” Erika stopped in front of our bunk.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, forcing myself to meet her gaze.

“I knew it wasn’t true,” Erika said, holding her thin arms out.

The block leader called lights out and the room went black. I hugged my sister and burrowed my head into her bony neck.

“That was low, even for her, accusing you of sleeping with the commandant’s son. She had to know how that would make the other women feel.”

I shivered.

“It’s okay, they won’t touch you, not after what I said.” Erika eased me from her neck and held my face in her hands. “I hope you didn’t mind … me calling him your boyfriend … it was the only way …”

“I like him,” I said.

Erika pulled her hands from my face. I could hear her breathing quicken in the dark.

“Who?”

“Karl.” I couldn’t lie to Erika. Not any more.

We were both quiet.

“I know he’s helped you, Hanna,” she said eventually. “I know he’s been kind, but that’s not love. That’s gratitude. You don’t owe him anything.” She sounded angry.

“I know.”

“His father is–”

“I know,” I said, burying my head in my hands. “I know.”

Erika didn’t say anything for a long time. I didn’t care what the other women thought of me. I didn’t care whether they talked to me, or talked about me behind my back. I accepted their contempt. Compared to them I had it easy. But not Erika. I couldn’t have Erika think badly of me.

“Please,” I whispered, but she cut me off.

“Look, I know it’s been hard for you, and maybe Karl can’t stand living at the villa either. You both needed an escape, but that doesn’t make it–”

“No. You’re wrong,” I said, feeling bruised. “It’s not about escape. It’s him … he’s sensitive and he’s talented and he understands music …” I touched my hand to my cheek. “I’m blushing just talking about him. I don’t blush in the showers or the latrine, but when I’m near him, I don’t know.” I turned away. “My skin feels hotter, my palms get clammy and I don’t even know if he feels the same way.” I buried my head in the mattress.

Erika didn’t reach out to me. She didn’t say anything. She flung my coat from her body and turned the other way.

“Merry Christmas, Hans.” Lagerführerin Holzman handed the commandant a box wrapped in red-and-gold crepe paper.

“How long has it been?” Captain Jager asked.

“Since my last visit? Five months, maybe six. ” The lagerführerin smiled. “You were looking for a pianist. I brought you some girls.”

“Yes, of course, the audition.” The commandant put down the gift and poured himself a drink. “There were six girls. Karl picked her.” The commandant glanced at me.

Lagerführerin Holzman shrugged off her fur coat, sat down and crossed her silk-stockinged legs. She was wearing a navy blue suit and pearls. The war had been good to her.

“It’s nice to hear music in your house again, Hans.” I was playing Schumann’s
Widmung
, a love letter to Clara that was full of sweetness and despair. My thumb was tender, but I’d get through the day. The commandant drained his glass and picked up his baton.

“We used to do this every Christmas, didn’t we – you and Max, me and Hilde.” He whispered the words, his eyes strangely slack. “She loved to play.” He spoke in a faraway voice, as if the words came from a place deep inside, a place rarely visited.

Karl stood in the doorway, staring at his father. The commandant refilled his glass and loosened his tie.

“Ignore him. He’s always lurking around the house, aren’t you son? Lurking around and looking miserable.” He drained his drink and Karl sat down.

“It’s the war.” The commandant’s face hardened. “My son thinks we’re losing it. I tell him not to listen to rumours but still he mopes.” He refilled his glass and swilled it around. “Where’s that daughter of yours?”

“Sorry, Captain Jager. I was just outside admiring your garden.” A girl, not much older than me, appeared at the door. She was a carbon copy of her mother, tall and lean with the alabaster skin of a film star. She had painted lips and painted nails, and long, loose curls framing her face.

I touched my headscarf.

“Karl, say hello to Frau Holzman’s daughter.” The commandant nudged his son.

“Hello,” Karl said.

“Hello.” The girl smiled. “I’m Marthe.” She unbuttoned her coat, and slipped her arms from the sleeves. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She extended her hand.

I leaped into Wagner to drown out the girl’s voice. I missed Karl’s reply – Wagner’s Sonata in B flat was best played fortissimo – but something shifted in his face and he shrank back in his chair. When the music dipped and I could hear them again, the commandant was talking about his son’s paintings.

“Karl, why don’t you take Marthe up to your room and show her your watercolours?”

Karl looked at Marthe and I belted the keys.

The commandant lifted his baton and struck the piano.

“I can’t hear myself think.” He struck the lid, then the keys. “Your music is to melt into the background. Continue to play as if this were a concert hall and it’ll be your last performance.” He turned to his guests. “Now where were we? Ah, yes, Karl, you were going to take Marthe to your room.”

I took a deep breath and returned to the sonata. Piri had always said if you’re nervous, find one person in the audience and play for them. I didn’t know who Piri played for when she performed for the SS, but I chose Karl.

“I’d rather listen to music.” Karl’s eyes flickered towards me. Marthe’s mouth sagged. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smile and played Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
, hoping Karl would understand. I played it softly, daring him to listen.

“Karl sings, you know.” The commandant’s voice cut through the closing bars. He turned to his son. “Sing for our guests.”

He had me play “Ave Maria”. I played Schubert’s notes and Karl sang the words. A pitch-perfect baritone, just as I’d remembered. But there was something else in his singing, something new, a shimmering in the top register, a dark power in the lower notes. An urgency I hadn’t noticed before.

I didn’t look up from the keyboard until the last refrain. The commandant was sitting in the front row, the lagerführerin behind him. He was leaning forwards in his seat, muttering into the carpet, his fingers at his temple, his face glazed with sweat. I’d kept my head down. I’d been careful. He couldn’t have guessed I was playing the song for Karl. The commandant rose from his chair.

“I have a headache,” he said, lurching towards the piano. “No more music.” He pointed his baton at me, then laid it down on the lid. “Go home.”

The commandant stumbled from the room.

Karl turned to Lagerführerin Holzman. “I’m sorry but I have to arrange for the girl’s escort.”

I slipped from the piano, bowed to the lagerführerin and followed Karl from the room. We walked down the hallway, through the kitchen and out the back door into the still, muddied light, the two of us standing there under the same square of sky.

“How did you know?” Karl stopped under the snowy branches of the weeping willow.

“Know what?” The guard at the front gate had his back to us and his scarf wrapped around his ears, but I whispered anyway.

“The
Moonlight Sonata
; it’s my favourite.” His cheeks flushed and then he looked at me – not past me, or through me, but at me. It was like stepping into the spotlight from a darkened stage.

“I’m sorry I can’t walk you home.” He shifted from one foot to another, and then the guard turned around and Karl’s smile fell away.

I walked back to camp, pulling Karl’s words apart and putting them back together, trying to piece together the puzzle of his affection. After a time I couldn’t remember what he’d said, only what I wanted him to say – that I was more to him than a Jew in need of saving.

It was dark by the time I reached Birkenau. The cold gnawed at my fingers and clung to my skin. I saw Michael Wollner in a column of boys heading back to camp. He saw me and smiled but I couldn’t smile back. I turned away, but everywhere I looked there were more Michael Wollners – stick-thin boys in blue-and-white rags with heads like peeled onions and limbs like twigs. Boys who might never fall in love or be kissed. I’d left the villa thinking about Karl, imagining what it might feel like to touch and be touched by him. I watched the dark, skeletal boys disappear into the steel-grey dusk, and I felt like a traitor.

“They’re losing the war,” I told Erika as I huddled against her for warmth. The wind whistled through the cracks in the barrack walls and the cold crept into our beds. An aeroplane roared overhead. “It’s the Russians. They’re coming. Everyone’s talking about it.” Erika didn’t raise her head from the mattress. “The commandant’s miserable,” I persisted. “He must know it’s over.”

The commandant had only asked me to play twice in the last week, and when he did he had me play military marches with rousing crescendos in strict 4/4 time. Karl stayed away from the music room. He hated the music his father had me play. I hated it too, mostly for the transformation it wrought on the commandant. He’d enter the room sullen and exhausted and leave an hour later galvanised for battle. Karl and I spoke less; the house was too quiet. The officers who assisted the commandant moved soundlessly through the rooms and the soldiers who guarded the villa patrolled the grounds like bloodhounds. People skulked around with dour expressions. No one made small talk.

“So the Russians are coming. When? Tomorrow? Next week?” Erika shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t wait another month.” She pulled herself up to rest on an elbow. She looked pale and worn. Her eyes were glassy and she was hot to the touch. I wanted to stroke her forehead but I kept my hands by my sides. She was still angry about Karl.