I had so much to tell Erika. I swung the barrack door open, handed the block leader my apple, fell onto the bunk beside Erika, and burrowed into her.

“Vera’s been hurt.” I was going to tell Erika about Tibor and the laundry basket and my conversation with Karl, but first I needed to talk about my friend.

“How bad is she?” Erika asked, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Bad.” I looked up at her. “What’s that?” I pointed to a red gash on her forehead.

“It’s nothing, just a scrape. Tell me about Vera.”

“I’ll tell you everything, once you tell me what happened.”

“I was at the quarry. I was working too slowly. One of the foremen got angry. It looks worse than it feels.” Erika didn’t want to talk about it. She never wanted to talk about it — about the work, her hunger, the guards, the girls. I knew she was just trying to protect me, but it felt like a punishment.

I tore a strip of silk from the lining of my coat and wrapped it around Erika’s forehead. I wished I could do more. I wished I could stop them from hurting her. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of green beans. Then I lifted my skirt and pulled a few small carrots from my underwear. It didn’t matter that Erika hated green beans or that I’d stowed the carrots in my underpants. She thanked me for them, treating me like I was some brave hero, when really I was just a coward who deserted her every day to hide out in the commandant’s villa.

“So will you do it?” Erika asked after I told her about the laundry basket. “Will you get the food to Tibor tomorrow?” Her eyes flashed. I hadn’t seen that look of rebellion on my sister’s face for a long time.

Vera’s words echoed in my ears. Take over the laundry shift. She’d meant for me to see the food. And she was relying on me to have a basket ready for Tibor tomorrow. I replayed every scene in my head, every look, every conversation I’d had that day. Karl had whispered his instructions, he’d carried the heavy basket into the kitchen, he’d been expecting a knock at the door at three, and he knew our names. Did he know about the food in the laundry hamper? I thought about the love song he’d sung and the butterfly drawing. Maybe I’d been wrong about Karl. . . .

The block leader ordered us all out of our bunks.

“There’s something I want you to see,” she said, stroking her whip. I forced myself to look as she dragged a woman from her bunk and ordered her to stand in the middle of the hut. If we didn’t look, if we turned our heads or closed our eyes, we’d be next in line. She told the woman to lift her dress and bend over. We watched and counted under our breath — one red welt across the back of the woman’s legs, two, three. The woman’s knees buckled when the block leader reached fifteen, but she didn’t cry out. The block leader put her whip down at forty and went to bed.

“What did you do?” Frightened voices floated up from the bunks. The woman pulled her skirt down and looked at the women huddled on the bunks. Her eyes were dry.

“I stole a carrot from the kitchen.”

It was drizzling when I left the barrack the next morning. I walked past women shivering in their cotton dresses, their egg-white scalps slick with rain, and the band bent over their instruments, wooden smiles on their faces. The guards stood over the work gangs with whips, their hands warm in their woolen mittens. The sky was gunmetal gray.

I was glad I hadn’t told Erika about Karl. Why would a boy who had everything risk it all for a few Jews? The rest of the world wasn’t interested in saving us. Why would Karl be any different? Handing me a laundry basket and knowing our first names didn’t make him an ally.

By the time I sat down at the piano, I was convinced I’d imagined it all — the whispered words, the look Karl gave me when he handed me the basket.

I touched my fingers to the keys. The commandant drove his fork into a slab of cheesecake and shoveled it into his mouth. He dabbed his lips with a napkin, stood up, and walked toward me.

“What’s that you’re playing? That song, what’s it called?”

My foot froze on the pedal. I’d been so intent on the commandant’s conversation with his guest, a monocled SS colonel, that when Schumann’s Reverie ended, I’d drifted into Mendelssohn’s Adagio in F Major, a piece I knew by heart. The commandant had to know it was Mendelssohn and that Mendelssohn was a Jew and his music was forbidden. I thought of the girl who’d auditioned before me, the one who’d played Korngold and had not been seen since.

“Well? Who is it?” The commandant picked up his baton. Was this some kind of test? Should I feign ignorance or admit my error? My hands slipped from the keys. The commandant was growing impatient. The colonel leaned forward in his seat, his monocle glinting in the sun. I cleared my throat.

“It’s . . .” But I couldn’t go on. I hung my head and waited for the blows.

“It’s one of Franz Hirsch’s early compositions.” I looked up. Karl was walking toward the piano. “It’s a piece about the Rhineland.” He looked his father in the eye.

“Franz Hirsch, you say?” The colonel looked at Karl. “Never heard of him.”

“Well, that’s understandable,” Karl said. “He wasn’t popular, except with the critics and those in the know. He was a student of Schubert. You don’t hear the piece much these days. It’s quite beautiful, don’t you think, Father?”

The commandant looked confused.

“Of course. Franz Hirsch. It was on the tip of my tongue. A beautiful piece of music.” The commandant turned to me. “Continue.”

I looked over at Karl. Franz Hirsch? I’d never heard of the composer. And I was pretty sure Karl hadn’t, either.

At the end of the sonata, the commandant and his guest left for a meeting. Karl stayed in the far corner of the music room, reading.

“Thank you,” I whispered, but Karl didn’t look up.

I took a deep breath. “Thank you.” I forced the words out again, louder this time, but he still didn’t look up from his book. Or say anything. He just kept reading. I don’t know what I expected, but I felt cheated somehow.

I stared out the window, at the winter-white sky. Was I really so horrid that it pained him to look at me?

“Hanna.”

I looked up, struck by the sound of my own name. Karl was standing in the doorway.

“You’re welcome.”

“Sorry?” I said, rising from the piano.

“You’re welcome . . . for before. . . .” His face was a deep crimson, his voice so faint I could hardly hear him. He dug his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet.

“Who’s Franz Hirsch?” I asked as casually as I could, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, the two of us talking.

“Franz Hirsch?” he looked up as he stepped from the room. “He was my fifth-grade geography teacher.”

At a quarter to three, I snuck to the kitchen. The house was quiet. The commandant was out; Rosa, the girl who had replaced Vera, was sweeping the porch; Ivanka was upstairs; and Mr. Zielinski was in the garden doing Stanislaw’s job. The laundry basket was by the back door. I lifted a towel and peered into the mess of soiled linens. No food. I bit my lip and tried to stay calm. I had fifteen minutes to fill the basket, and there was nothing on the stove and no food on the workbench. I swung around to face the pantry. What choice did I have? I’d promised Vera I’d take over her shift. I grabbed the laundry basket and dragged it into the pantry. I had to be smart. There were plenty of potatoes, so I could probably take one or two without them being missed. I lifted a sheet from the basket and tossed the potatoes in. I took three apples, a loaf of stale bread, an onion, a small square of cheese, and a handful of walnuts, tossing them one after the other into the basket, as quickly as I could. A bowl of raisins sat uncovered on a shelf. I dug my hand into the bowl and scooped a handful into my pocket and another into my mouth. Then I pulled the sheet back over the basket and slunk out of the pantry.

I ran to open the back door as soon as I heard Tibor knock.

“Is it all here?” The man looked anxious.

“Yes. Same as yesterday.” I tipped the swollen load into Tibor’s drawstring bag. Something small and brown tumbled out of the basket.

“What’s this?” Tibor reached into the bag and pulled out a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “You’re Hanna, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s addressed to you.” He dropped the parcel into my hand. “Open it.”

I stood there blinking, sweat prickling my forehead. Someone had gotten to the laundry basket and hidden it under the sheets.

“It could be something important, something I need to pass on to Andor.” Tibor stared down at the quivering parcel. My hands were shaking. I untied the string and pulled back the paper. Inside the wrapping was an egg, a perfectly smooth, perfectly white, perfectly plump, peeled, hard-boiled egg. I hadn’t eaten an egg, hadn’t seen an egg, in four months.

“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. Was this a trap? Should I give the egg back?

“What’s to understand? You get an egg from the commandant’s son, you take it, you eat it, and you don’t ask questions.” Tibor stared at the egg.

“The commandant’s son?” I looked up, surprised. “How do you know it’s from his son?”

Tibor’s eyes narrowed. “Vera didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you about Karl. He’s the only one here — besides you and me — who knows about the basket.”

“He knows that we smuggle food into Birkenau?” I could feel the hairs on my arms rise.

“Of course he knows.” Tibor hoisted the drawstring bag over his shoulder and reached for the doorknob. “It was his idea.”