The Pianist’s Wife

Chapter Ten

Amira smiled politely at Fred as she and Gisele excused themselves. She didn’t utter a word until they reached the sitting room, before finally turning around to address her friend.

‘Marry him?’ she hissed. ‘You thought I would say yes to marrying your, your—’

‘Homosexual friend?’ Gisele asked. ‘There, I said it for you. I know it’s shocking at first and hard to understand, but he is no different than you. Well, of course he’s very different from you, but you’re both facing the same problem as far as I can tell.’

‘ No different than me? ’ Amira repeated. ‘You’ve lost your mind. Honestly, Gisele, of all the hare-brained things you could come up with...’ Not only hare-brained, but Gisele knew how dangerous it would be for her to apply for a marriage document and have her papers scrutinised.

‘Please, just listen to me for a moment,’ Gisele said, her cheeks flushed a deep pink. Amira was happy that she at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

‘Oh, I’ve been listening to you this whole time! Listening to you appears to be my problem, because for some reason, you think you can take it upon yourself to solve all my problems!’

‘Have you finished?’ Gisele looked exasperated as she folded her arms across her chest. ‘Fred has a partner whom he loves very much, and who he is makes him as hated by the Nazis as you are. You can’t deny that gives you both something in common.’

Amira held her tongue. Gisele wasn’t wrong, but still, marry him ? She could have told her to travel to the moon and it wouldn’t have sounded any more absurd, not to mention that someone other than Gisele now knew her secret.

‘Do you know something about Maxi that you haven’t shared with me?’ Amira asked. ‘I need you to be truthful with me, Gisele. Has Hans told you anything? Has something happened?’

Her friend shook her head and placed her hand on her heart. ‘I haven’t heard anything, I promise you I haven’t. But there is something.’

Amira’s breath caught. She knew Gisele had been keeping something from her, and her heart began to pound as Gisele reached inside her pocket and produced a letter.

‘Oh no, please tell me that’s not—’

‘No! It’s nothing to do with Maxi. I said I’d promise to tell you if it was.’

‘But if it’s not Maxi . . .’

Gisele’s sigh was deep. ‘It’s my mother. She’s just written and announced that she’s moving to Berlin to be closer to us. Apparently the country life doesn’t suit her anymore, despite me telling her how unsafe it is here.’

Amira knew she’d paled at the mention of Gisele’s mother. She’d never, not after all these years, forgotten the way that woman had looked at her when she’d been just a schoolgirl.

‘Even more unfortunately, she’s planning on staying here until she’s settled.’

Amira swallowed the news. Two weeks. She’d had two weeks of feeling safe since her father had passed, and now the one person who could threaten her carefully maintained secret would be here. ‘Here? In your home.’

Gisele held up the letter and read from it. ‘ It doesn’t seem right for a stranger to assist in looking after my wonderful grandchildren, when they have a perfectly capable grandmother who could help raise them .’ Gisele sighed again. ‘But the truth is that she’s all excited about my Mother’s Cross award and wants to parade me around, I’m certain of it.’

Amira closed her eyes for a beat, a feeling of helplessness washing over her. When she opened them, it was to see Gisele’s hands on her arms, holding her, her gaze seeming to implore Amira to agree with her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If I could turn her away, I would.’

Amira nodded. ‘I understand. I just...’ She took a deep breath. ‘I just wish that I wasn’t faced with an impossible choice every which way that I seem to turn.’ Her entire life had been marred by loss, by sacrifice, and she was just so tired of everything being taken from her. She was still holding on to her dreams, but there was only so long she could keep believing she would one day be a teacher, get married or have a family of her own.

‘Please, just tell me that you’ll consider Fred, that’s all I ask,’ Gisele said. ‘But if you do this? It has to remain a secret between the three of us. No one else can know that it’s not a real marriage.’

‘Not even Hans?’

Gisele swallowed, her eyes wide. ‘Not even my husband. He is a tolerant man, but I fear that even he wouldn’t tolerate this.’

Just as he wouldn’t tolerate me if he knew the truth. They were the words they never said, because there was no reason for Hans to ever discover the truth, but it was always there. The only reason she was welcomed into their home was because Gisele’s husband thought Amira was no different than his wife, because he wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that she was Jewish.

There was a soft knocking sound then, and when Amira turned, she saw that Fred was standing just inside the door to the sitting room. She noticed then how handsome he was, with light-brown, thick hair brushed off his face and bright blue eyes.

‘His name is Christoph,’ Fred said, quietly, as if to make sure that no one else could hear his words. ‘We first met at the College of Music, and we fell in love when we were invited to join the same orchestra after graduation. I played the piano and he the violin, and I will never forget the way he looked at me when we finished playing.’ His eyes lit up as he spoke, as he walked closer and stood before her. ‘Our families would never have understood, so we were always careful to keep our relationship a secret, and then we began to realise what would happen to us if anyone discovered what we were.’

Amira glanced at Gisele, who nodded at her.

‘Go on,’ Amira said, turning back to Fred.

‘We were always so careful. We were only seen in public together for our performances, in a professional capacity, and we never so much as brushed shoulders in public, but it seems that someone told the authorities about Christoph and some of our friends. They were all taken from an underground bar that we used to frequent sometimes after rehearsals, one of the places that used to be safe for us, before everything changed.’ He swallowed and dabbed his eyes. ‘I was always telling him that we had to be more careful, but he seemed to believe that nothing would ever happen.’

Amira swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat. She knew this story all too well, for it was the same story of her people, of her mother’s people; all the things they’d been forced to give up, the traditions they’d been forced to abandon. It made her wish with all her heart that she’d at least been able to save her mother’s precious candles, and she was slowly beginning to understand why Gisele had said she and Fred were similar.

‘They came for him in the night,’ Fred said, wiping tears from his cheeks as they fell. It was as if his entire face had fallen, too, his mouth bracketed by a sadness, by a pain that she knew was indescribable. Because it was the same way she’d felt when her mother died, and then when she’d received the news of her father; as if her heart had been cut from her body. ‘Christoph disappeared, he never came to rehearsals last week, and I’ve since been told that he was deported.’

‘To one of the camps?’ Amira asked.

Fred nodded. ‘To one of the camps, yes. But no one knows which one.’ His voice faltered. ‘I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead, if he even has any chance of survival, if...’ Fred cleared his throat, taking time to gather himself. ‘I don’t know if I will ever see him again.’

‘Does anyone have any reason to suspect that you were his partner?’ Amira asked. ‘Could the authorities come for you next?’

‘If they knew, they would have come already,’ he said. ‘We both know that the Gestapo aren’t prone to waiting when they want to eliminate someone.’

She took a long breath as she considered what he’d said, as she accepted that he loved this man Christoph as much as she loved her darling Maxi. ‘So let me understand this correctly,’ Amira finally said. ‘If I were to marry you, it would be a complete ruse? We would presumably court for a short time before we married, and we would stay married until the end of the war. If this war ever ends, that is.’

Fred nodded. ‘Correct. We would be like ships in the night at home, seeing each other only when we wanted to, and then it would all be over after the war.’

‘And we would be free to go about our own lives then? You would agree to a divorce, and we would go our separate ways? It would be over?’

Fred nodded again. ‘Yes, Amira. We would never have to see each other again if that was what you wanted. We only have to pretend for as long as it takes for this madness to be over.’

Amira’s head was spinning, but as she glanced over at Gisele and saw the hope in her gaze, she knew that it wasn’t the worst idea in the world, as much as she was loathe to admit it.

‘If my Maxi comes home, if he’s alive, you wouldn’t stop me from seeing him?’ she asked. ‘I promised him that I would marry him when he returned, and if he is alive...’ Amira swallowed. ‘It would break his heart.’

‘So long as you were discreet, I can’t see there being a problem.’

She looked between the two of them. She hadn’t agreed to marrying Maxi because her father had forbidden it. He’d warned her of how much scrutiny each marriage application came under, how all it would take was one overzealous party member to cross-check her entire family tree. But now that her beloved papa was gone, it was a risk she might have to take.

‘If we do this, Amira, we can both hide in plain sight,’ Fred said. ‘If we do this,’ he added, staring into her eyes as he spoke, ‘we might actually survive this war.’

She couldn’t deny that he had as much to lose as she did.

‘I would like to know how you even knew about Fred’s situation, Gisele,’ Amira said. ‘Before I agree to even consider this—’

‘When we were younger, it wasn’t quite such a secret,’ Fred said, interrupting her. ‘I mean, we were careful, of course, but it was obvious to those closest to us that some of us were different. And I also happened to know Gisele’s brother.’

Amira turned to Gisele. ‘Your brother?’ He’d been a few years older than them, and by the time she’d reunited with Gisele in Berlin, he’d already moved away.

Gisele nodded. ‘There was a reason he travelled abroad when he finished university. Let’s just say that it allowed him more freedom to be who he truly was.’

Amira tried to comprehend what she was being told.

‘He confided his secrets to me years ago, before he left, and I knew that he and Fred had the same circle of friends. When we saw each other after the concert recently and we had a moment alone, I asked Fred how he was, whether he felt safe, and he told me everything.’

‘It seems you’ve been keeping quite a host of secrets all this time, then,’ Amira said. She checked herself, trying to wrap her head around all the secrets Gisele was the keeper of, but at the same time reassured about how trustworthy she was. ‘What I should have said was that you’re clearly very good at keeping secrets for those you care about.’

‘Which is why I immediately thought of Fred when I received this,’ Gisele said, holding up the letter from her mother. ‘I know you feel as if I’ve betrayed you, and I know it’s a lot to take in, but I need you to believe that all I want is to keep you safe, Amira. I would never share your secret with anyone else, and I’m sorry I took the liberty of telling Fred, but I could see a way to save you both.’

Amira nodded, closing her eyes for a moment as she took a deep, shuddering breath and then let it out. When she opened them, she looked at Fred. ‘If I do this, if I consider what’s being proposed, you will keep my secret, and I will keep yours?’

‘Yes, Amira,’ he said. ‘If we do this, I will keep your secret until my very last breath.’