We weren’t allowed to return to Hungary. The guards told us it wasn’t safe. Hungary was still under siege. The Red Army had surrounded Budapest, but the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross gangs still ruled the streets. They roamed the capital, robbing Jews. They beat them in their homes and threw their bodies into the Danube.

The Russians moved us from Birkenau to the nearby Auschwitz camp. We slept in the SS officers’ quarters on beds with thick mattresses. It took me a long time to sleep well on those clean, white sheets, to turn on a tap and not be surprised by the gush of clean water. To be called by my name and have people smile at me. I looked down at my arm, at the number in blue ink etched into my skin. I might have survived, but I wasn’t free. No matter how hard I tried to erase what happened, I was still marked. Nothing could rub out the past, not even Karl. Especially not Karl. Maybe he was right. Maybe every time I looked at him, I’d be reminded of what his father had done to us. Maybe we couldn’t help but drag each other back to this place.

I tried not to think about Karl, but every time I heard someone hum a tune or speak German, I was reminded of him. I hoped working at the camp hospital might help. Anything to keep me busy and stop me from thinking about Karl. And worrying about my parents. And fretting over Erika. On my third day on the ward, I ran into Vera. I was washing the dormitory windows, staring out at the navy sky. I heard her voice before I saw her.

“Has anyone got a sponge they can spare?” she called out, and without even looking, I knew it was her. I jumped down from my ladder and grabbed her by the arm.

“Vera! You’re alive!” I wrapped my arms around her.

“Hanna!”

We stood there looking at each other until we both believed it was true: we’d survived. I took her hand and led her outside.

“Did you know?” I asked her, my smile fading.

“Know what?”

“That Mengele sent babies and pregnant women straight from the train to the gas chambers?”

Vera nodded. “Old people, too. My grandmother was one of them. My mother and I were sent to the right and my grandmother to the left.” She took a deep breath. “Two weeks later, they took my mother.”

“At a selection?”

Vera nodded. “All those men and women picked off, one by one.” She shook her head.

“They weren’t all sent to the showers?” Not my mother, not Anyu.

“No, not all of them.” She spoke quietly. “But the SS could only squeeze so many bodies into the barracks and we kept coming, week after week. They had to make space for the new inmates, the ones who could work.”

“I was thinking about going home to see who . . .” Bile rose in my throat. “I won’t see my mother. That’s what you’re trying to say, aren’t you? That she’s dead.”

“Your mother . . .” Vera’s hand flew to her throat. “I’m so sorry, I forgot.” Vera shook her head. “My mother was weak. I think it was typhus. She was dizzy, and when they asked her to hop up and down . . .” Vera covered her face with her hands. “She could barely walk. If she’d been a little stronger, maybe they would have sent her to the infirmary. Maybe your mother . . .” Vera looked up at me. “I don’t know, Hanna.”

I buried my face in my hands.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Go home.” Vera pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped my nose. “Go back to Debrecen. If your family’s alive, they’ll be waiting for you.”

I shook my head.

“Miracles happen.” She blotted my tears. “The day Mengele pointed you to the right, that was a miracle. Winning the audition, watching the Red Army walk through those gates . . . Maybe there’s a miracle waiting for you in Debrecen. You need to go home and find out.”

“What about Karl?”

“Karl’s in a prisoner-of-war camp, being interrogated.”

“What?” I stumbled backward. “He was captured? But I was with him. We said good-bye. I came back to camp. The SS were still here.” I stared at Vera “He had time to get away.” I counted the days in my head. “He had a week.”

“The commandant got away.” Vera pressed her handkerchief into my palm. “If the Red Army stormed the villa and found Karl there, it was because he wanted to be found.”

I left Auschwitz the day the German troops surrendered Budapest. It was a sunny day in February; the snow had finally begun to thaw, and the sky was blue with possibility. I left with a toothbrush, a spare pair of underwear, and the promise of a new beginning. I had a coat, a pair of secondhand boots, Karl’s scarf, and a train ticket to Debrecen. I kissed Vera good-bye and promised to keep in touch.

I stopped at the gates of Birkenau on the way to the station, looking through the gaps in the barbed-wire fence at a place I didn’t recognize. There were no bodies lying in the snow, no scarves of smoke spiraling from the chimneys. Grass sprouted in the cracks between bricks. Last time I’d stood at the fence, the sky had screamed with fighter planes. Now bees buzzed overhead. Last time, my head had been covered with bristles. Now my hair skimmed my ears. I was wearing a dress without a yellow star on it, and in my bag I had three plums, a loaf of rye bread, and a thermos of water.

The barracks had been flattened, but I didn’t need the windowless walls and corrugated iron roofs to navigate my way through the camp. I could still see the imprint of the shower block where I’d scrubbed myself clean and the burned-out remains of the barrack I’d shared with Erika. I knew the exact spot where the orchestra had plucked their strings, and in which corner of the yard the SS had erected their gallows. I ran to the shower block where they’d stripped us of our clothes and stopped at the step leading into the showers. I bent down, reached under the wooden slats, and pulled out Erika’s film canister. The tin was rusted, but its lid was fixed firm, so the film inside was dry.

I had one more stop before I could board the train. I walked to the commandant’s villa, my heart hammering against my ribs. The cobblestone streets of Oswiecim were deserted. Coils of black smoke filled the air, bricks littered the pavement, and doors hung smoldering on their hinges. I picked my way through the rubble to the commandant’s house. I headed straight for the music room. I don’t know what I was looking for or what I expected to find, but it wasn’t there. The room was a mess. The curtains reeked of urine, and the walls were doused with wine. The piano stool lay on its side, its black leather seat slashed. Beside it, the piano sloped on three legs, its hammers and strings wrenched from its frame. I climbed the stairs to Karl’s room. The last time I was in the house, we’d kissed. I didn’t want the memory distorted by shattered glass and splintered wood, but I had to say good-bye. If I couldn’t say good-bye to Karl in person, then I’d say it to his paintbrush and easel, to his music and the books that he loved.

Karl’s room had been his refuge, the only room in the house without a picture of Hitler, a room filled with art, music, and beauty. I stopped at the door and saw the easel in pieces on the ground, books smeared with paint, a shredded map. I stepped into the room, careful not to tread on the punctured tubes of paint lying on the floor, their blues, reds, and yellows leaking out of them. Above Karl’s bed, the words Die Nazi bled on the wall.

I fell onto the bed and buried my face in Karl’s sheets. The smell of him was everywhere, in the blankets and the pillows and the pages of his books. I ran my hands along his bookcase and saw his sketchbook on the top shelf. I pulled it from the shelf and opened it to the last page. The delicate girl with the pale eyes Karl had drawn all those months ago had changed. There was a new strength to her lines, less shading, more depth. She wasn’t cowering in the shadows so much as stepping out of them. I tore the sheet from the book and stuffed it into my pocket.

I sat down at the piano and ran my fingers along the paint-splattered keys. My fingers found a bloodred C-sharp, then an angry purple D. I hadn’t played piano for a month, hadn’t thought about Clara Schumann in weeks, but my fingers found the heartbreaking opening to her Romance in A Minor. I played the love song for my mother, tears streaming down my face. She’d been so thrilled when I’d told her I’d be playing piano with the Birkenau Women’s Orchestra. I remembered her standing in front of the watchtower staring wide-eyed at the thin-armed players.

I bore down on the keys, and Clara’s music filled the room.

“I promised to play Clara for you, Anyu,” I shouted above the chords. “I promised never to give up.”