The Pianist’s Wife

Chapter Thirty-Nine Berlin, April 1945

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Berlin, April 1945

‘Amira?’ Gisele dropped the cup she was holding, coffee splashing all over her shoes and the floor as she stood in the doorway, staring back at them. ‘Oh my goodness, Amira! It’s truly you!’

Amira stepped forward and threw her arms around Gisele, tears streaming down her cheeks as she held on to her friend. They hadn’t gone so long without seeing each other since they were children – it had been months.

‘Quickly, get inside before anyone sees you.’

Amira’s lips were cracked and dry, and she moistened them with her tongue as she reached out to hold on to Gisele. Her legs felt ready to buckle, they were so tired from walking from the train station after everything they’d endured, but just seeing Gisele made everything they’d been through worth it. There had been so many times when she’d thought she’d never see her again, that they’d never make it, that someone would see through her stolen clothes or Fred’s dramatic limp, and question what they were doing or where they were going. But everyone had looked upon him with pity, an injured soldier clinging to his young, pregnant wife, and they’d somehow arrived safely back in the city.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Gisele gasped, wrapping her tightly in her arms once they were inside the house. ‘And Fred. Oh my goodness, Fred! I barely recognised you in that uniform.’

Gisele let go of her to hug Fred, looking between them in amazement.

‘What are you doing here? How, I mean—’

‘We escaped,’ Amira said, clearing her throat and trying to speak louder. ‘You haven’t heard from Hans?’

It had been five days since they’d left Buchenwald, and she’d spent much of that time worrying about what might have happened to him. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way they’d parted, the way he’d spoken almost as if it were the end.

‘I knew he was doing everything he could for you, but I haven’t heard from him in days.’

‘We don’t know who’s looking for us or whether we are safe to come here, but,’ Amira said, trying to catch her breath, ‘we didn’t know where else to go. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Mind? I would have been horrified if you’d gone anywhere else,’ Gisele said. ‘Don’t you remember me telling you that this would always be your home, too?’

‘But your mother, is she—’

‘She’s not here. It’s just me, I promise.’

They’d presumed someone else would have moved in to their old apartment, and besides, it wasn’t as if they still had a key, even if it was theirs. But Gisele’s house did feel like a second home to Amira in a way, and it was the only place they could go.

They walked down the hallway, and Amira started to cry; she couldn’t help it. Just being in Gisele’s house again, finally believing that they’d escaped, that it was all close to being over... after so long hoping for a miracle, she felt as if she’d finally received one. Amira reached out to steady herself against the wall, all of a sudden feeling so light-headed she wasn’t sure she could walk another step. But Fred was there to put an arm around her waist, guiding her as Gisele fussed and hurried ahead, opening the door into the front sitting room, and carrying the broken cup that she’d dropped when answering the door.

‘I’ve been so worried about whether you had enough to eat and how you were being treated, and Hans refused to tell me anything more than that you were alive and he was providing whatever extra he could.’

When Gisele paused for breath, Amira glanced at Fred, who looked as exhausted as she felt. To someone like Gisele, who’d lived the entire war in a safe home surrounded by her children and protected from the worst of everything, it would be almost impossible to explain to her what they’d been through; the kind of bone-tired exhaustion and starvation that they’d experienced not something she could possibly understand. The fear they’d seen in the eyes of others, the smell of death in the camp, the terror of helplessness that swept through every single human being kept behind the wire. But none of that was Gisele’s fault, and one day, when she found the words, Amira would do her best to explain.

‘We’ve had very little to eat this past week, so we would both be very grateful for some food,’ Fred said. ‘Do you have anything to spare in the kitchen?’

‘It’s truly been so bad?’ Gisele’s eyes were wide as she stared at them. ‘I kept trying to tell myself that it couldn’t be as terrible as I was imagining it to be. But yes, of course, please help yourself to anything, anything at all.’

‘Hans made sure we had food in the camp, but it’s been almost a week since we left,’ Amira told her, not about to share the truth about the camp, most especially the main camp. It had taken Amira seeing the dead bodies at the crematorium to understand why Hans had believed she wouldn’t survive it; and he’d been right. ‘You haven’t seen him in all that time?’

‘I haven’t. But please tell me that he was responsible for your escape? He promised me that he had a plan, but he hasn’t been home and there hasn’t been so much as a letter from him or—’

‘Gisele,’ Amira said, fighting past her own exhaustion to stop her friend from talking as Fred disappeared in search of food.

‘Please tell me that he’s been doing everything he could,’ Gisele continued. ‘I told him that there was nothing more important than—’

‘Gisele,’ Amira said again, forcing her voice, her tone making it clear that she needed to speak.

Gisele stopped and looked at her, and Amira noticed the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the weight loss in her face; the manic way she had spoken, her hands trembling as she kept hold of the broken cup. She was a shadow of the woman Amira had left behind. And that was when she realised – Gisele may have lived in relative safety all this time, but she had suffered in her own way, waiting for news and fighting for them from the home front, no doubt terrified that her best friend was going to perish and they would never see each other again.

Amira touched her arm and gently rubbed her fingers against the fabric of Gisele’s dress.

‘Gisele,’ Amira said. ‘I need you to listen to me.’

‘I’m talking too much, and all you both want is a cup of coffee and something to eat,’ Gisele said. ‘I’m so sorry, just having you here, safe... I just can’t quite believe it. I don’t know quite what to do with myself.’

‘Gisele, Hans gave me something before we escaped the camp,’ Amira said. ‘I didn’t realise how much it meant, but now that you’ve said he hasn’t been home...’

‘What would he have to give you that he couldn’t give to me himself?’ Gisele asked. ‘I keep telling the children that he’ll be home soon, but it’s been well over a week since we’ve seen him. It’s just not like him at all.’

‘He gave me this, to give to you,’ Amira said. ‘He told me that I was to make sure you received it as soon as we found our way to you. It was his only condition for helping us.’

Gisele seemed surprised, or perhaps she was suddenly nervous, Amira couldn’t tell. ‘Surely he could have either come home to tell me whatever he had to say, or given it to me directly.’

Amira reached inside her coat pocket for the letter, not able to shake off the sense of foreboding. She’d known when he gave it to her that the contents were for his wife’s eyes only, but something hadn’t sat right with her this entire time, and suddenly she wished she’d read it first, simply so she knew how best to support her friend. She couldn’t stop thinking of the way they’d stood there in the rain, the way he’d passed it to her, the sadness in his gaze. She’d touched her pocket countless times since, reliving that night over and over again.

‘Did he say anything to you?’ Gisele asked. ‘Before he gave it to you, did he say why he had to write? Was there a reason he couldn’t come home?’

‘He told me to give you the letter and to stay with you while you read it,’ Amira said. ‘It was dark and he pressed it into my hand and made me promise that I would guard it with my life. But he was insistent that you not open it alone.’

Gisele reached for the envelope, staring down at it as if she didn’t want to open it, as if Amira had passed her something that she didn’t want to have in her possession. It had been perfect and crisp when Hans had given it to her, but after getting wet that first night and then being hidden for so long in her pocket while she was hiding and travelling, it was now crumpled and slightly dog-eared, as well as being smudged with dirt.

‘I’m sorry it’s not as pristine as it should be, but I’m hoping that the words are still legible and not smudged.’

‘Would you read it with me?’ Gisele asked. ‘I don’t know why, but I don’t want to read it on my own. Hans has never written to me before, not even when he was first courting me, and I just...’ She shook her head. ‘He wasn’t in a good way last time I saw him. I’ve been so worried about him.’

‘Of course,’ Amira said, as Gisele finally slid her nail beneath the seal and opened the envelope, taking the single folded page out. Her friend’s hands shook, and Amira reached out to place her fingers over Gisele’s to steady them.

Gisele opened it and held it between them so they could both read it, and Amira knew as soon as she read the first line that the letter she’d been carrying all these days was going to break Gisele’s heart. It was not from a man who intended to come home; far from it.

Gisele made a little noise in her throat as she began to read the words he’d written, and Amira leaned into her, reading the letter herself and wishing there had been something she could have done, some way she could have convinced him to make any decision other than this one. For all he’d taken from her, he’d also been the one to give her and Fred their freedom, and for that she would always be grateful.

To my beloved Gisele,

Where does a man even start when his heart has already broken? You have been the love of my life for as long as I can remember, the only woman I’ve ever loved, and certainly the only woman I ever wanted as my wife. I always imagined us growing old together, watching our grandchildren play one day as we admired the life we created, but instead I am writing to you to say my final goodbye.

My heart wants to come home to you, but I know that I cannot. I cannot live with the burden of what I have done bearing down on my shoulders, in the knowledge that I have been complicit in what’s happened here. How can I be a father to our children, when I’ve been witness to such atrocities? How can I tuck my daughter into bed at night, with the decisions I’ve made weighing on my conscience, knowing that I’ve been party to ripping other families apart, to taking parents from their children? It’s easy to believe in the beginning that you’re just following orders, but the truth is that I made a decision to do awful things to other human beings, and I can no longer live with myself.

Gisele, I want you to start a new life without me, once all this is over. I want you to promise me that you will care for our children and remind them of the man I was when we first met. The man who did what he had to do to save your friends. Tell them that I loved you with all my heart, and them, but that I couldn’t face coming home. The murders that have been committed here, and in camps all across Europe, will one day be discovered, and perhaps I am a coward for not being prepared for that day. I deserve to be paraded in front of those who survive, to be treated the way we treated them, as beings less than animals, but I choose to end this now.

I hope you can understand my decision, and that one day you can look back and remember me as the man who helped two people you loved leave this camp, instead of the man who helped to send them and so many others there.

I love you, Gisele, with all my heart. Hans.

‘No!’ Gisele wailed, as the letter fell from her fingers to the floor. ‘No, he can’t, this can’t be true. It can’t be.’ She sobbed. ‘When did he give this to you?’

Amira wrapped her friend in her arms, understanding her pain in a way that others might not. She knew what it was to lose someone you loved, to comprehend not only the loss of that man, but the loss of all the hopes and dreams you once had for the future, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ Amira said, as she started to cry, because she was. She was deeply sorry for Gisele’s loss, for the loss of the man she’d loved, for the father of her four beautiful children who would now have to grow up without the father who’d adored them. ‘He loved you so much, Gisele, you and the children. Truly he did.’

‘When did he write this letter?’ Gisele asked, as tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘When did he give it to you? Is there still time, could I get to him, wouldn’t someone have come to notify me, how did I not know—’

‘He told me,’ Amira said gently, her voice breaking as she stared into her friend’s panicked, wide eyes, ‘that by the time I gave you this letter, there would be nothing you could do. That it would already be done.’ She tried to soften what she had to say by delivering it quietly, but as Gisele’s howl of pain cut through the air, she knew there was nothing she could do to soften that type of news. Just as the passing of her parents and then Maxi had cut through her in a way that could never be repaired, Gisele was now broken, her heart ripped from her chest as she digested the information, never to be the same again. ‘I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but now I understand. He wanted you to know that by the time you read the letter,’ she whispered, ‘he would be gone.’

‘But I don’t know what to do without him,’ Gisele cried, as she folded herself into Amira’s arms. ‘I don’t know how to go on without him, how to be a mother to our children without him. What am I supposed to do?’ She blinked at her. ‘How could no one have come to tell me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Amira said. ‘I’m so sorry, Gisele.’

Amira held her friend and rubbed circles on her back, knowing that no words would help, not now. But she said them anyway, because she couldn’t hold her in silence and not say something .

‘You go on because you have to,’ Amira murmured. ‘You go on for your children, because you are their mother and they need you. You go on because you’re my best friend, and I need you more now than I ever have. You keep going because so many have lost those they loved. We can’t give up now, Gisele. We can’t.’

Gisele cried in her arms, and Amira cried, too. She heard the children and even little Otto, who’d come to see what the fuss was all about, but Fred appeared then too and was quick to usher them from the room, the news of their father’s passing not to be told to them yet, not until their mother had gathered herself. As much as Amira wished they could scoop the children up and mourn with them, as much as she desperately wanted to lift little Otto into her arms and press kisses all over his fur, Gisele needed time to accept the news, and Amira intended on holding her until she was ready.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ Gisele asked, when her tears slowly shuddered to a halt. ‘How do I tell the children? They will be devastated.’

‘You’re supposed to grieve,’ Amira said. ‘And then you’re supposed to keep going and make a new, different life for yourself. You hold him in your memories and force yourself to keep putting one foot in front of the other.’ She waited for a moment. ‘And you don’t have to tell the children on your own. I will be with you, and I won’t leave until you ask me to.’

Gisele nodded, as fresh tears slipped down her cheeks. ‘We have each other,’ she whispered.

‘We have each other,’ Amira repeated. ‘And we will have each other for the rest of our lives, because I’ll never, ever have another friend like you.’

Gisele looked around the room, and Amira reached for her hand and held tight.

‘I don’t think I can stay here in this house,’ Gisele whispered. ‘I don’t want to be here without him, with all the memories of what once was.’

‘Then we shall move as soon as we can, once the war is over, as far away from Berlin as possible,’ Amira said, remembering Fred’s words whispered late into the night before Buchenwald, before they’d known how bad things could truly become. He’d dreamed of New York, and that was where they would go. She would tell Gisele when she was ready to hear it, once they’d begun to make arrangements, once it was safe for them to secure passage. ‘But wherever we go, we go together. We’re not going anywhere without each other. Our children will grow up together, as family, forever and always. I promise.’

It was then that Gisele seemed to remember, and she wiped her cheeks and stared at Amira’s middle, her eyes widening.

‘May I?’

Amira laughed as Gisele held out her hand, which in turn made Gisele laugh. It was laughter filled with tears, but it was still laughter, and for a moment she could almost imagine that everything about their lives hadn’t changed. That she was just enjoying sharing a beautiful moment with her friend.

‘I can’t believe you’re going to become a mother,’ Gisele said, her eyes shining with fresh tears as she pressed her hand to Amira’s stomach and met her gaze.

‘I’ll be able to learn from the best.’

They both cried again when the baby moved, the kicks stronger than they had been only days earlier. Her little baby, who’d defied all odds by surviving Buchenwald with her, as determined as its mother to live, if only to live long enough to make sure that those responsible for the atrocities there were held to account, to ensure the truth didn’t die with those killed in the camps.

Gisele dropped to her knees then, and Amira went with her, cradling her on the floor, the thick rug cushioning them as she rocked her like a child. Her elation at touching Amira’s stomach had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and she was broken from the pain of losing her husband all over again.

‘He’s not coming home,’ Gisele whispered. ‘Amira, my Hans isn’t coming home.’

‘No, my love, he’s not, and I’m so, so sorry.’

There was nothing else Amira could say, and so she cried with her, her tears leaving Gisele’s hair damp as they both cried for what they’d lost, and for what could have been. For everything they’d fought for.

They were never going to grow old and holiday at the beach house they’d dreamed of; she was never going to see Maxi again, and Gisele was never going to see Hans. But they were both alive, and no matter what pain she’d suffered, Amira would never, ever take that for granted. They had their children, and they had each other.

Fred walked back into the room then, and Amira’s eyes met his, his smile as kind and reassuring as always. And I have Fred. She had lost a lot, but she’d also gained a man who loved her with all his heart, in his own way, and who she knew would be the most amazing father to her child. A man who would never walk away from her and the life she was carrying.

‘I’ve just heard news of the Allies’ advancement on the wireless,’ Fred said, his voice low as he walked towards them. ‘Amira, the Americans have arrived at Buchenwald.’

‘Truly? The Allies have reached Buchenwald? They’re in Weimar?’

‘Yes, my love. The Allies are closing in.’

Fred dropped to his knees then, too, and Amira opened an arm to him, smiling through her tears as he joined them on the floor.

‘We’re going to be able to leave?’ she whispered, as she realised that was probably why no one had notified Gisele. It would be all hands on deck as the Allies advanced, or perhaps more like every German for himself.

‘We’re going to be able to leave,’ he whispered back. ‘It’s almost over, Amira. This war, this nightmare, it’s almost behind us.’ Tears streamed down his cheeks as he held them.

He was right, it was almost over, but for those of them still alive, it would be a nightmare that lived on forever, the cruelty etched into their minds, the pain piercing their souls. But they would go on. Even Gisele, eventually, would make her peace with what had happened, because in times like this, they had no choice other than to keep going.

They were the survivors, alive when so many others were not.

I will live for you, Mama. And you, Papa. And you, my beloved Maxi.

Amira would live because she’d been given the gift of life, and she wouldn’t take it for granted. Not now, and not ever.