Prague Counterpoint

  “Well, the piano is a bit out of tune,” Anna babbled excitedly. “It has been locked up so long. So much music and happiness all locked up inside!” Is she speaking of the instrument or herself? Elisa wondered.

  “Even so it is the most beautiful sound I have heard in quite a while.” Theo put out his hand and grasped Elisa’s fingers. “And now the evening is made more perfect yet.”

  ***

  Anna was singing softly in the bathroom. Theo was reading the Bible by the light of the bed lamp when Elisa poked her head in to wish them good night.

  He glanced up and smiled. “Come in for a minute, Elisa,” he said quietly.

  Elisa obeyed and sat on the edge of his bed. An expectant silence followed. “I am glad I missed my plane,” she said, trying to imagine what she would be doing now if she had caught a flight to London to be with Murphy or if she had been allowed across the border. The evening with her family truly had been wonderful, and there had been moments when at last she had put thoughts of everything else out of her mind.

  But now there was a question in Theo’s eyes. “I see you still have the Guarnerius violin,” he stated simply. A flash of understanding passed between father and daughter.

  “Rudy’s violin.” She nodded once. “Yes, Papa. I carry it now.”

  He frowned. “How long have you known?”

  She did not answer his question. “I should have known sooner, Papa. You could have told me.”

  “And risked involving you and your brothers and your mother?”

  “Weren’t we involved already? You know that Nazi law says if one member of a family is guilty of resistance, the entire family will be punished equally. We were involved, Papa; we just didn’t know it.”

  “That was why I had to get all of you out. Out of Germany. I was not certain that I was being watched until Pastor Jacobi was tipped off.”

  “How long had you been helping, Papa?” Elisa studied him thoughtfully, as if she were meeting a true hero for the first time.

  He closed the Bible and set it on the bed beside him. “You children barely noticed when Hitler first came to power in 1933. Law declared that we of Jewish heritage had to turn in our papers and have them reissued with the Jewish identification stamp. Along with everyone else, we complied. We were Germans. Germans who happened to be racially Jewish, but Germans nonetheless. The papers were returned, marked with the letter J, which you carried each time you returned to Germany. The penalty for falsifying your papers was prison, as you know, so we complied. But I sent you away to school, Elisa, so you did not have to experience the rest. You were luckier than most. I don’t think you were aware of how serious it had become until Thomas rejected you.”

  She averted her eyes. Her father seemed to looking into her soul, and she could not bear for him to see her secrets. “I was working too hard to notice,” she mumbled.

  Theo continued. “There were issues that touched non-Jewish Germans also. As early as 1933, the Nazis drafted laws that forced the sterilization of those considered ‘racially unworthy’ to produce offspring. Of course, the church was furious. Catholics and Protestants protested and were imprisoned. Jewish groups protested and were jailed immediately. The erosion of German rights began with the abolition of rights for those not yet born. Then children with even a slight deformity were considered ‘unworthy of life.’ Adults with some defect were sterilized. Next, religious schools were closed down. Jewish, Catholic, Protestant schools were shut, and all education passed into the hands of the state.”

  “I was so involved in my own life in Austria. Study and . . . ” Elisa was ashamed at the recitation of events that had led to this night. She had hardly noticed. Her father was right. Until the one man she thought she loved had turned his back on her, she had thought of no one but herself.

  “That was my intention, Elisa. I wanted you to have as normal and happy a life as possible. Your mother agreed with me. We would have sent Wilhelm and Dieter away to school as well.” He was trying very hard to make sense out of what was, in fact, incomprehensible.

  “But, Papa,” she asked, “how long were you involved in the resistance?”

  “I provided money. That is all. I did nothing brave or wonderful, Elisa. Others arranged bribes to the Gestapo. Those who were most in danger, they smuggled out of the country. Almost all the leadership in the church with the courage to resist were arrested. They were replaced by those wiling to bend to the Nazi doctrine. Slowly all organized effort to resist was eroded. I was among the least important. I provided money, not courage. I tried to play it safe for the sake of my family. I thought this madness would pass away. It has not.”

  He took her hand and gazed steadily into her eyes. “And now somehow you have gotten involved.” He glanced out toward the parlor and the violin case near the piano bench. “You still have the Guarnerius,” he repeated.

  She nodded. “Papa . . . , ” she began and then paused, unsure of her feelings. “I must play this terrible performance through until it is over. Or until I am stopped.”

  Theo regarded her silently. “I thought as much,” he said sadly. “And today? Did you try to go to London?”

  “And Vienna,” she replied truthfully. The admission was a relief.

  He frowned and pressed his lips together. “Yes. You were worried about someone in Vienna last night. I remember.” Then he looked at her sharply. “Elisa, you must not think of going back there now.”

  “I must.”

  “Not right away, child.”

  “I am not a child. Or if I am, I am your child! You would do the same!”

  “Listen to me!” He voice was urgent but not reprimanding. “All that has happened in Germany slowly over the last six years will now come to pass in Austria overnight! Overnight! Do you hear me? What the Gestapo did in Berlin in darkness will be done in Vienna in broad daylight! Elisa, God has spared you the fate of your friends! Whatever organized resistance there might be in Vienna will be shattered! You must stay with us here for a few days. Maybe weeks or months. You must! And when the time is right—if there is a right time—you will be an instrument in the hands of God!”

  His words drained the last energy from her. If he was right, then she was helpless in Prague—worse than that, she was useless! “My friends?”

  “Tonight you must pray for them, Elisa.” Theo lifted her chin. “There are times when there is no light in the darkness, and then we must pray for even a tiny candle that will guide us.” He patted the worn leather cover of his Bible. “That small lesson I learned in a corner in Dachau. Pray, and I will pray with you, child.”

  She nodded reluctantly. How hard it seemed to wait and do nothing! “Yes. Yes, Papa. But when Murphy comes—if he comes back and if he can go to Vienna—I must go with him then.”

  The questioning look remained in Theo’s eyes. “Murphy. A fine fellow. Of course you will go with him. He is your husband, isn’t he?” He gestured toward her ring.

  She flushed deeply. Her father indeed seemed to see right through her tonight. Could he also somehow sense that her marriage to Murphy was simply a business arrangement? “Yes. My husband,” she said, but the words stuck in her throat.

  “And you love him, don’t you?” Now there was a half smile on Theo’s face.

  She sniffed and sat up rigidly. “We are married,” she defended, wanting to shout that she could never love a man who left her so callously, who took money for a marriage certificate. And yet her feelings were raw at the mention of his name.

  Theo appraised her with a look that appeared to comprehend every unspoken detail. “An American passport will no doubt be of great benefit. I am happy that you do not need to pretend to be Elisa Linder from Czechoslovakia any longer.”

  Outside in the hall they heard Anna emerge from the bathroom. The air smelled instantly of tooth powder and perfume. “Mother is . . . so happy tonight,” Elisa said, trying not to sound unhappy. “I am glad you have each other.”

  “Let’s keep our little secrets
to ourselves, Elisa. No need for Anna to worry, I think.” He patted her hand.

  She was glad for the chance to be honest with him. He understood the need for her to do what she could. Somehow he understood even about Murphy. He could read her eyes as if he were looking into a mirror. “Thank you, Papa.” She kissed his forehead, and he hugged her tightly.

  “Yes, you are my child,” he answered quietly as Anna came into the bedroom humming the melody of a Bach suite.

  12

  Curfew

  Leah remained with the two boys in the shadows outside the Musikverein. A caravan of troop lorries rumbled beneath a streetlamp. This time they did not carry German Wehrmacht troops, however. Crammed into the back like cattle were the hundreds of Austrians who had been arrested during the day of celebration. Leah could see their pale, grim expressions clearly as they moved into the halo of the light. On the cobbles, like bouquets strewn on a mass grave, lay flowers crushed by the wheels of the lorries. So this was the end of Vienna’s first day as a part of the Thousand-Year Reich!

  Leah’s breath quickened with fear; one of the prisoners might be Shimon! She stood rooted as the melancholy parade continued on and on. This could not be mere hundreds, Leah realized; thousands were under arrest! Where were they being taken? The prisons of Germany were already crowded and overflowing into new camps!

  There seemed to be no civilians left free on the streets. The cheering masses were gone. The thoroughfares beneath the huge red Reich banners were devoid of life. Only the trucks remained and the sad faces that stared out through the slats at the passing city. Somehow this desolation was more terrifying to Leah than the roaring mob had been. At least in the crowd she had not been noticed. But how could a woman alone with two boys and a cello not be noticed when there was not another civilian to be seen?

  She pressed her fingers against her forehead and tried to think what she must do. It had all seemed so clear as she had played her violoncello and thought through a dozen different plans. Elisa’s flat was only a five-minute walk from the Musikverein. She would take the boys there, and then go on alone to the Judenplatz to be with Shimon. Even the thought of his name made her search the faces in the slow-moving troop lorries. She had to know if he was among those who had been taken!

  In her crushing fear for Shimon’s safety, she found the courage to act. “Come on, boys.” Drawing a deep breath, she stepped out into the light of the sidewalk. Prisoners’ eyes continued to gaze bleakly down at her—through her—as if she were not there. She raised her chin slightly and tried to keep her eyes straight ahead as the brothers trailed behind her. The smell of reeking diesel exhaust and the drone of engines were not easy to ignore. Her head throbbed with the noise and the smell. Ahead, in the shadowed doorways of the shops, she could see the dim shapes of German soldiers on guard. The trio walked quickly beyond the Musikverein. Still the lorries continued to roll on, under the glow of a streetlamp into the darkness and then once again into the light, until every truck and each ashen face looked the same.

  Heads of the soldiers on guard turned toward her in unison. What was she doing out on the street at this time of night? Two soldiers stepped out to block her path twenty yards ahead. And in that terrible instant the face of one captive became clear in the eerie light. Leah gasped and clutched at her heart as large familiar hands reached out to her from behind the slats of a prisoner transport.

  “Leah! Leah!” Shimon shouted. His face was contorted with grief. His cry was no hallucination; they had arrested him! Her own Shimon!

  The world spun around as the voice hung on the roar of engines; then Shimon’s face passed irretrievably into the darkness. The cello case fell from her limp hand as her knees gave way. Even the darkness seemed yellow, and as if from a great distance, Leah heard an echoed slap of hobnailed boots running toward her. She tried to speak the name of Shimon, but no sound came from her lips as darkness closed over her.

  ***

  That night Elisa lay alone beneath the warm, soft quilts on the bed. Never before had she realized how vast and lonely a bed could be. She reached out to touch the empty pillow beside her. It was as cold and undisturbed as her life had once been. Things were always so much neater when life was solitary. No one to worry about. Nobody else to consult on schedules or plans for meals. One set of dishes to wash. Everything in its place. She had told herself all these things after Thomas had smashed her dreams. She had almost believed that life alone was really better.

  Then something had happened. John Murphy had entered her life like a new and unforgettable melody. The music of his laughter, his clear gray eyes searching hers, the gait of his long, lean, muscular body as he walked away from her—all of this played back to her against her will. To love this man was even more hopeless than her love for Thomas von Kleistmann had been.

  Murphy was American. Someday he would go back to America. Right now he was here only because he had a job to do. He helped her because she had paid him. She was certain that he would not have resisted now if she had offered to repay him by sharing the warmth of this bed and her body tonight. At the thought of his kiss she put her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes. “Murphy.” She whispered his name.

  She stiffened in resistance to the desire that rushed through her. No! She would not sell herself to any man out of gratitude. Her marriage to Murphy was a marriage in name only. She would remember that. She would steel herself against the chance that they would ever meet again. If indeed he came back in two weeks as he promised, she would smile politely and ask him how his work had gone. But for tonight she would not let herself give in to the longing. Love for her was nothing but a wish, a whisper in the night that could never be spoken out loud in the cold light of reality.

  She turned her head and stared at the coals that glowed on the grate of the fireplace. The fire had blazed within her. She had known the pain of that fire when she had given her heart to Thomas. Her love had been a sweet song he had played along the banks of the soft-flowing Spree. Life had been young then and beautiful. She had allowed herself to dream and to believe. When he had left her, she had walked alone beside the waters and wondered why they seemed so beautiful still. The fire had consumed her, nearly destroyed her. Then the coals had dimmed and finally died. She knew she must not make the same mistake again with this American journalist. Like Thomas, John Murphy would leave. He would leave Europe. He would leave Elisa and never look back.

  Through the ancient walls of the house, Elisa could hear the sweet murmur of Anna’s voice. Then Theo’s soft, familiar chuckle followed. They were together again at last. Their first night together in over a year. In all that time they had never stopped loving, never stopped hoping. He was home now, and their love was stronger than ever.

  Someday . . . Elisa dreamed. Maybe someday there would be someone who loved her with such a love. Theo and Anna were friends as well as lovers even after all these years. That was as it should be. Somehow their friendship was a stark contrast to her own loneliness tonight. Thomas had never been her friend. And Murphy? There had been moments when she had hoped, a fleeting instant when she had turned and found that he was watching her with such tenderness. But that had been before she had told him about Thomas. After that he had only looked at her with an impatient disdain. And now that he knew she had given herself to another man, his glance held the thought that perhaps she might also be as willing with him.

  “Forget it, Murphy,” Elisa said aloud in the darkness. She felt the blush of shame color her cheeks. Somehow those words were a script she had written for some future moment when Murphy would look at her and asked for payment. Then the fire that burned within her in hopes of love would grow dimmer with each passing day. Someday John Murphy would be the ashes of a memory in her life, a well-worn American passport, and a name only.

  Elisa touched the ring he had given her. She took it off and held it up to the glow of the firelight. The gold of the tiny leaves gleamed softly. She turned it and read again the inscription inside t
he band: Elisa—Song of Songs 5:16—Murphy. She remembered the words without looking at the verse: “This is my beloved, and this is my friend.” Beloved? Friend? How dare he!

  A surge of anger replaced her sorrow, and she flung the ring across the room. With a clatter, it hit the wall, and almost as quickly Elisa was out of bed. She flicked on the lamp and fell to her knees in search of the ring.

  It lay in the center of a rosebud on the floral carpet at the foot of her bed. She grasped it and held it to her heart for a moment before she slipped it back onto her finger. “Murphy!” she cried softly. “Oh, Murphy! Why does it have to be such a terrible game?”

  There on her knees, the magnitude of her helplessness again returned with a crushing weight. What could she do about John Murphy? Nothing. And what about Leah and Shimon and the others in Vienna? There was nothing she could do. No way to help. Her personal life was out of her control. The events of the world were beyond her comprehension. “What use am I here?” she cried softly. “God, I am so useless!”