Chapter Twenty-One
Fred hadn’t come home. Amira was trying not to panic, but after the way he’d cared for her and looked after her in the month since Maxi’s passing, she was finding it hard to believe that he simply wouldn’t return home.
The apartment was silent, and so she went to sit at his piano, placing her fingers over the keys as she thought back to exactly when she’d last seen him and what he’d said. They’d had breakfast together that morning – she’d woken to him playing and had made them both something for when he finished – and then he’d said he was going to be rehearsing at the hall for another upcoming concert.
Worry began to gnaw at her stomach, and she leaned down over the piano, trying to tell herself that he must have stayed to rehearse for longer, or been waylaid by his musician friends. Fred had become the person she relied on each day, the person who kept her going, and as she glanced outside and saw darkness creeping across the sky, she knew that something was wrong.
Where are you, Fred? It was so unlike him not to be at home at this time of day, and as she placed her cheek against the cool keys of the piano, she tried to imagine a logical reason for his evening absence. And came up with none.
It had been three days. Three long, torturous days of waiting and wondering what had happened, trying to imagine what she would do if Fred never walked back through the door of their apartment again, when she saw him. Amira had only left to get groceries, but the lines were much longer than ever before, and she’d ended up away from home for at least two hours. And now, she could barely believe her eyes as she walked down the street to their apartment.
‘Fred!’ Amira screamed louder than she’d ever screamed in her life as she ran down the road, dropping the bread she was carrying, the scarf around her neck loosening until it eventually slipped to the ground, catching under her shoe as she ran. ‘Fred!’
The SS men were holding his arm and shoving him forward, so hard that she feared his bones might snap.
But Fred didn’t call back. His eyes met hers in a gaze filled with so much sorrow, it broke her heart all over again.
‘Let go of him!’ she yelled, reaching for him, fighting for him. ‘Let go of my husband!’
Her heart was pounding, racing so hard it could have beaten right out of her chest. She dug her fingers tightly against his, refusing to let go even as he was pulled away from her.
‘Let him go!’ she screamed again.
‘Get her out of here,’ one of the men yelled, as another gave her a rough push.
She clung on tightly, but she was no match for the large soldier. This time when he connected with her, it wasn’t just his hand to her shoulder, it was his fist to her jaw.
Amira reeled backwards, staggering as her face exploded in a fiery pain that made her vision blur.
‘Get out of here, bitch,’ he muttered, looking down at her as she tripped and fell to the pavement.
‘You have no right to arrest him!’ she shouted, as the SS man looked ready to kick her with his solid black boot. ‘What grounds do you have to arrest him on? He’s done nothing wrong!’
The two men laughed at each other, as if there were something funny about her predicament, and it was then she realised there was a small group of people huddled together nearby. They’d been arrested too.
‘They’re arresting me on suspicion of being a homosexual,’ Fred said, as tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘Me, a married man! It’s all a terrible mistake.’
She knew how much it would have pained him to say such words out loud, and she pushed to her feet, cradling her jaw in her hand as she stood, helplessly, while they started dragging him again. Their marriage was supposed to keep them both safe, to stop this from happening, to cocoon them against the hate all around them, festering in every corner of the city.
‘You have it all wrong! I’m his wife !’ Amira cried. ‘I can show you our marriage papers, I can prove it!’
But all Fred received for her outburst was an elbow to the face, and despite Amira scurrying along beside them as he was marched away, there was nothing she could do.
‘You want us to arrest you, too? Because we can make that happen.’
Amira opened her mouth and was about to ask them on what possible grounds they could arrest her, when she heard a bark and saw a small, sandy-coloured dog running along the road towards Fred.
‘Otto!’ she called, bending down low. ‘Otto, quickly!’
Thankfully Otto turned at the sound of her voice and ran back to Amira, leaping into her arms. She hated to think of one of the men’s boots connecting with the poor, innocent little dog.
She cradled him close to her chest, and stood and watched as Fred was hauled off and marched with the rest of the group down the street and away. Amira cried into Otto’s fur and stood there until she could see Fred no longer, before finally turning around.
‘He’s my husband!’ she screamed, feeling more helpless than she ever had in her life before. But when she said the words a second time, they barely came out as a whisper.
She saw a woman then, clutching a child as she cried, before slowly looking around and up at the apartment buildings. Had all those people in the group been her neighbours? Had all those men been hauled away because they were suspected of the same thing as Fred? Is that what the SS were doing today? Searching for men?
Amira lowered her gaze and hurried up to their apartment, still with Otto tucked under her arm. When she reached their floor, she saw the door was open, the lock kicked in and shards of wood on the carpet, and some of their things had been overturned. Fred’s things , she thought. He’d told her to make the apartment her own, that what was his was hers, but she now felt as if she were a visitor in his home without him there, no matter how welcoming he’d been.
Amira closed the door and put Otto down, then dragged an armchair over to try to stop anyone from coming in. Then she went to the piano and sat down on the little stool where Fred had sat every morning and sometimes throughout the day, placing her fingers over the keys and imagining he was there. She glanced to her left, picturing him looking back at her, trying to deduce who could have turned him in, hoping that it didn’t have something to do with her being seen with Maxi.
What happened to you, Fred? She went over and over in her mind what he’d said to her the last time she’d seen him, tried to imagine where he could have been other than rehearsals. When she opened her eyes and stared down at the keys, a shiver ran through her as she wondered whether someone could have betrayed him. And if they had, if someone knew the truth, then did that mean they would be coming for her next?
Amira wiped away her tears and cleared her throat, jumping to her feet and fetching her coat. If they were coming for her, there was nothing she could do, but she couldn’t just sit and wait for that to happen; she needed to do something, anything.
‘Stay here,’ she instructed Otto, leaving him looking bewildered in the entranceway as she shut the door behind her and shrugged into her coat, before running quickly down the stairs.
She ran down the street and didn’t stop running, not until she found the SS men with their prisoners, seeing that they were directing them to the train station. Instead of begging this time, she bypassed the men she’d spoken to earlier and went to a more senior SS man, who appeared to be in charge. He was holding a clipboard and stroking his moustache as he studied whatever notes were on it.
‘Sir, I need information about what you’re doing with my husband.’
The man looked up and appeared to study her for a moment, before going back to what he was doing.
‘Sir, my name is Mrs Schulz, and myself and my husband are German citizens. I would like information on what is happening and why.’
The man cleared his throat. ‘He’s in this group?’
‘Yes, yes he is.’ Amira avoided looking at all the other pleading faces. She hadn’t even seen Fred yet, and she almost didn’t want to look.
‘He’s being deported.’
‘What do you mean, he’s being deported?’ Amira asked, staring back at the SS man in disbelief. ‘Check your records again. I demand to know what’s happening to my husband. I don’t believe our Führer would want to have German newly-weds parted in such a way, over what is nothing more than a misunderstanding, and I’ll have you know that my husband is an acclaimed pianist, a favourite of Goebbels no less!’
The man gave her a long, quizzical stare, as if he wasn’t certain what to do with her.
‘Your husband is Frederick Schulz?’ he asked, looking down at his clipboard before raising his gaze again.
‘Yes, Frederick Schulz!’ She found herself holding her breath, waiting to be told it was all a mistake, that her husband wasn’t supposed to be on the list.
Instead, the man ran his finger down the page, not even bothering to look up at her when he replied.
‘Frederick Schulz is being deported to Auschwitz.’
Amira’s legs buckled beneath her. ‘The concentration camp?’ she gasped, as she turned her head and suddenly saw Fred standing there, huddled with the others, most of them not even wearing a jacket, hauled from their homes without warning. She noticed as she stared at him that he was only wearing one shoe, and as he walked away, it was all she could think about.
Her darling Fred, who always looked so immaculate, who would never leave the house without being dressed properly, had only a sock on his left foot, and it gave him an irregular gait that almost made her think it wasn’t him at all. That it was all part of some awful dream.
‘Please, he’s just there. I can call out to him and we can explain—’
‘Would you like to go with him?’
Amira turned, wiping at her tear-streaked face as another SS man in uniform stared at her through beady eyes.
‘No, sir,’ she said, taking a few steps backwards. ‘I was just trying to explain that he’s a married man. He’s done nothing wrong.’
‘You believe a mistake has been made?’
She took a moment to steady herself, standing straighter and raising her gaze. ‘My new husband is being deported. I cannot understand why, so yes, I thought a mistake had been made.’
His smile made her stomach turn. ‘We’ve already rid the place of Jews, now we’re making sure to get rid of all the deviants and gypsies too.’
Amira didn’t know what to say. ‘But . . .’
‘The Reich doesn’t make mistakes,’ he said, his hand moving to rest on his pistol.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, her voice fading, no longer knowing what to say.
‘Heil Hitler!’
She tilted her chin higher, even as her lower lip trembled. ‘Heil Hitler,’ Amira repeated.
But as she turned to walk away, it took all her willpower not to bend over and retch up what little lunch she’d consumed all over his shiny black boots.