The nearby footsteps continue, then stop, followed by heavy breaths, expelling air filled with coffee and cigarettes.
Someone might have me right in their sights, but I’m too afraid to open my eyes. The person snuffles and clears their throat.
Please, no. Please God.
“Ernst?” the other person calls out.
He lifts a foot, scratching against the grimy floor.
“One moment,” the man in the room—Ernst—replies.
TWENTY-NINE
LUKA
I can speak fluent German. It’s something we all learned years ago, but I don’t know what I’m singing about. I’m following the tune of the piano. My mind is somewhere far from here, in the corner of the open foyer where a small party of SS officers and their wives mingle.
I could be anywhere else, far away from German soldiers and their wives. Ella could be with me, standing as my wife, perhaps, both of us mingling with others as I lovingly wrap my arm around her lower back. I would be watching her laugh at a joke, reveling in the sound and beauty she emits through happiness. She would flash me a glance, loose curls framing her face, a complexion of porcelain, flawless. I’d squeeze my hand around her a bit tighter, a silent gesture between us. Then I’d ask myself how on earth I was lucky enough to have my arm around this perfect woman, to call her mine.
The sharp clang of glass jolts me back. Ella isn’t by my side; my arm isn’t around her. I’m not among the crowd mingling with other couples. I’m a slave to the SS.
She’s all I want and everything I’ll never have.
“What are you singing?” the pianist, Franc, utters, glancing at me with quick blinks as he sprawls his long fingers across thetops of the ivory keys. He seems as if he’s been in Auschwitz a while, or at least much longer than I have. He must be around my father’s age, too, and the thought of what he’s doing at this moment sends a queasy wave through my stomach. “The words are on the music sheet,” he says, pointing at the papers resting atop his piano. “You must sing the right lyrics.”
I stare straight out ahead of me at the small crowd, wondering if they’ve noticed I lost track of what I was supposed to be singing. Just as I make eye contact with the officer who brought us here tonight, a champagne flute comes flying toward me, spinning in the air. I duck, trying to move out of the way, but I’m not as fast as I once was and not fast enough now. The edge clips the top of my scalp before breaking against the post I’m standing in front of. The glass shatters, shards spraying along my back.
“What aboutGermanuplifting musicdo you not understand? You will not sing in—” an officer snarls as if his next word is bitter on his tongue, “Polish.” He’s shouting at me from across the room, making a spectacle that creates a silence between all four walls.
“I thought it was quite beautiful,” the woman beside him, I assume to be his wife, says. “It’s nicer than the folk songs that are supposed to bring a smile to our faces. This man is singing about love. Clearly.” The outspoken woman takes a sip from her glass and turns around, placing a hand on the officer’s back.
“Less folk…and sing in German. We don’t speak your language,” the officer says, giving his presumed wife a questioning side-eye stare. “Go on. Continue.” He flaps his hand at me as if I’m a fly he’s shooing away.
“I’ll follow you,” Franc says as sweat glistens across his forehead, reeling in a slight reflection from the ceiling light.
When you think you know
The meaning of love,
But it’s only a tale for show
The heart bleeds with tears
Broken, shattered dreams,
Wrapped in a cloak of fears.
Reasons we refused to see
Can you hear me? Please, let it be.
Tell me it was love, or take my heart,
Hold it close—or set it free.
A light round of applause startles me and ends as abruptly, a warning that I’ve crossed a line I didn’t intend to cross.
“Did you write that yourself?” Franc asks, talking without moving his lips. He repositions himself on the piano bench, his stocky pale frame causing a creak and moan beneath him.
