Page 40 of The Lost Husband

A Soviet soldier with a long olive drab trench coat and a fur-lined hat storms toward me. His eyes lock on my face, making it known I shouldn’t try to run. His hand lowers to his hip and my blood turns to ice.

He stops just before me and pulls his fingers into his palm, signaling me to follow. “Come.” He turns to the side, allowing me to move past him, then falls into step at my right. He doesn’t touch me. A German soldier would have grabbed and dragged me along then left me somewhere to rot, if not already dead.

I debate whether to speak, beg for my release, or simply tell him to look at me and ask what he could want with someone who was just liberated as a prisoner from a death camp. I’m a woman in a striped uniform, unarmed, and clearly unimportant. I’m too frail to be a threat, yet too alive to be ignored.

But the memory of Noah’s words—never stand still. We’ll become targets—keeps me silent.

We cross in front of the abandoned train depot, making it appear much wider than it looked from the side. The rifle tapsagainst the soldier’s hip with each step, his boots making a much larger crunch in the snow than my wooden soled clogs.

I strain my eyes, searching to my left at the columns of German prisoners, but for every step forward, the sight of them grows blurrier until they’re behind me.

I pull my coat tight around my chest, remembering how damp it is from hiding in the snow. I’m shivering now, but from fear rather than the cold. Each step adds distance between me and the columns of men. I peek over my shoulder for one last glance, and now I don’t know which one I thought might have been him.

The soldier steps in front of me, just slightly, as if herding me around the far corner of the building before rejoining me at my side. I don’t know where he’s taking me, and I fear the woods…some quiet place where he can shoot me and leave me for another flagged rock to mark the spot of a body.

I’ll speak up before that happens. I’ll beg and plead for him to release me. I haven’t done anything wrong unless they consider the act of leaving Auschwitz and walking in a direction with hope of finding shelter to be unlawful too. Avi was right to fear them. If we don’t know their intentions, we should assume the worst.

The soldier moves ahead, forcing me to an abrupt stop. He pivots toward a door on the side of the train depot then retrieves a set of keys from his pocket. Once the door is open, he stands to the side, waiting for me to enter.

I face a set of cement stairs and grab the railing as if it’s a lifeline, pulling myself up each step, my muscles and bones screaming with each bend of my knees.

The stairs bring me to a mezzanine level, the bottom floor still visible beneath. The soldier steps in front of me once again and moves to the first door on the right, unlocking and pulling it open for me to step inside.

Scaffolding crisscrosses the ceiling, forming geometric shapes, altering my perception with every tilt of my head. And the yellow painted bricks form a long narrow space with smoggy windows. Mold, mildew, moss, and debris coat everything; the broken machinery, pipes, and vents. It’s a corroded mess with no other person in sight.

“Stay here,” the soldier says, pivoting on his heels and leaving me here alone.

Here. Not a prison cell, or a barrack, at least. With my foot, I sweep a small spot between two protruding columns along the wall and lower myself down within the nook. I pull my knees into my chest, seeking relief from the constant ache trapped within me. The large room is eerily quiet, but I can still hear occasional gunshots and whistles coming from elsewhere. The whistles are different from what I’ve come to fear. They aren’t German whistles. These ones are higher pitched.

Did they bring the German prisoners inside? Are they being held on the floor directly below me? I press my ear to the beam beside me, hearing an echo of voices muffle together as one. I can’t decipher if they’re speaking German or Russian.

* * *

The door opens. It’s been hours, maybe more. The sun has set, and the room is dark except for a faint glow from the moon that comes and goes through thick passing clouds.

I remember what Avi said about the Soviets—how they stole her childhood, killed her father, destroyed her life all before the German soldiers even got to her. It’s all I can think as footsteps descend into the dark room.

My heart pounds, pulse races, waiting for the next tragedy I’ll endure. There’s nothing left to take from me. Except my life. Andif Noah hadn’t asked me to live with his final words, I might have given up long before the last few days at Auschwitz.

A Soviet soldier steps into the dim moonlight just in front of me, and drops his hands into his pockets before taking slow, small steps closer until there is nowhere else to move. I could stand, but unless he demands this of me, I’d prefer to keep the distance between our heights within this nook of the wall.

“Where are you from?” he asks, his voice mellow as if this will be nothing more than a casual conversation. He sounds younger than he looks. Somewhere between eighteen and forty like all other soldiers, perhaps at the latter end.

“Amsterdam,” I reply.

Only say what’s necessary. Never give them more, Noah would warn me about a potential encounter with the police in Amsterdam.

“Do you speak Dutch?” he continues. Only his mouth moves. His stale dark eyes stare down at me, his hands still resting in his pockets, his knees locked.

As the person I once was, I would return his question with another, asking if he can speak Russian. I’m not allowed to be her anymore. “Yes.”

“Any other languages?” he presses.

“German out of fear. Yiddish for faith.” It’s obvious I was a prisoner. What isn’t obvious is what side that puts me on.

His expression doesn’t change one way or another, as if he didn’t hear me at all or doesn’t care and is forced to ask questions by someone more important than he.

“Do you have an occupation?”