Page "The Pianist (memoir)" Paragraph 50

The officer asked him what he was doing.

Szpilman said nothing, but sat down in despair by the larder door.

The officer asked him his occupation and Szpilman answered that he was a pianist.

On hearing this, the officer led him to a piano in the next room and instructed him to play.

Szpilman describes the scene :< p > I played Chopin ’ s Nocturne in C sharp minor.

The glassy, tinkling sound of the untuned strings rang through the empty flat and the stairway, floated through the ruins of the villa on the other side of the street and returned as a muted, melancholy echo.

When I had finished, the silence seemed even gloomier and even more eerie than before.

A cat mewed in a street somewhere.

I heard a shot down below outside the building — a harsh, loud German noise .</ p >