The Savior (10 page)

The Kommandant couldn't hold him accountable if the experiment failed.

But Rudi had just revealed a finely tuned ear for the psychological complexities of Bach's sacred music, even if he had no formal musical education. He didn't fit in here, anyway. Keller wondered if Rudi had been planted in this camp to lure him into saying something he shouldn't. Or to judge his playing. Could he really be as sensitive—and as innocent—as he seemed?

Keller loosened the hair of his bow slightly, straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath before launching into the first piece. Maybe he should try to do his best, after all. Besides, if he played well enough for the experiment to succeed, whatever that meant, it could help these particular inmates. Not the ones in striped uniforms he'd seen at the Appellplatz that morning. No: he knew in his gut there was no hope for them. But for his listeners, the “chosen ones,” perhaps it wasn't a meaningless exercise, like playing for the wounded soldiers. A lot might depend on these performances.

He began with the first solo sonata by Paul Hindemith, whose music was too progressive for the authorities. Hindemith had been condemned as a “Bolshevik” composer, and his music put on display as an example of “degenerate art.” Its pungent harmonies, tonal ambiguities and often ironic stance—its complete lack of sentimentality—were all anathema to the Nazis.

Whenever Keller had practiced this piece, he put on a heavy mute and closed all the windows and doors in his apartment. Now he thought again of Herr Maier downstairs, wondering if the old fellow had heard him. After a moment he shrugged it off. A violin is not that loud, especially with a practice mute. And his musical ignorance was a further assurance; no, Herr Maier couldn't be the reason he was here. He must have been recruited for this experiment simply because nobody else was available.

It felt wonderful now to forget about the mute and dig into the bold, sharply accented opening movement, to let himself be propelled by its strong rhythmic currents. Within the first few notes the stage is set: the thematic material spans two octaves, with outlined triads and fourths vying for supremacy in the atonal fabric. Rising and falling sequences abound; motivic fragments are confronted with their own mirror images.

Even though he'd been forced to work on Hindemith, Berg and Bartók in secret, he felt more at ease with modern music than with the first day's repertoire. It was the dissonance that freed him. If he played slightly out of tune, it wasn't as glaring, even to his own critical ears. And he could approach Hindemith without so much concern for beauty of tone, because the music had harder edges than Bach. His sound was stronger, more focused today, and he didn't feel hamstrung by a lot of technical problems.

His concentration on the music was complete except for one thing: he kept thinking that the audience's reaction would have to be different from the day before.

Maybe yesterday you thought I wasn't much. But listen to me today. If you don't respond now, at least I'll know it has nothing to do with my playing.

The wistful, lilting slow movement carried Keller through constantly shifting keys and colors, intensifying into thorny chords. An accelerando leads to a Presto that plummets from the highest to the lowest registers, where the music briefly regains its repose. Near the end of the movement, the recurrent lilting figure makes one last appearance, extending itself and expiring on the keynote it has found, a tentative resolution in D.

He began to feel the presence of women in the room. The day before, he hadn't been able to tell them apart from the men. Perhaps today was a little brighter, so he could make out their shapes better. They were interspersed with the men, as they must have been the first day. Though they were all emaciated, there was a suggestion of roundness or softness in some of the huddled forms.

Reveling in the chromatic language of the lyrical Intermezzo, he noticed that one of the women sitting near him had full breasts, which contrasted strangely with the boniness of her face and arms. She and a few others were looking straight at him, with what might have passed for concentrated attention anywhere else. Here it was impossible to guess what they thought or felt, but at least they weren't staring through him, as if he weren't there.

The woman's chest fascinated him with its rhythmic rise and fall. The Kommandant was right, damn him—he needed this audience, and not just to have them listen to his playing.

How long had it been, he thought, since these women had seen anyone like him? He wasn't beaten down like their men, terrorized like the inmates he'd seen at that morning's roll call, and he wasn't a gun-wielding guard. He felt their eyes on him, imagined them following the motions of his hands. What echoes of their past lives could his playing awaken in them?

As he continued the sonata, he began to imagine there was one woman in the group whom he had to meet. A strange sort of certainty took hold of him, a sense of familiarity, expectation. The woman he wanted or needed was somewhere in the back of the room, in the shadows—a presence, not yet a face.

At the end of the Hindemith, the applause sounded a bit more spontaneous than on the first day. The opening bars of the next piece, a Bach sonata, were already running through his mind as he bowed. He was trying to gauge the tempo and the attack of the first chord. But when he raised his violin to play, the door swung open. An inmate was dragged in and placed on a bench by two guards. Keller believed he recognized the man from the day before, but there was no way to be sure: all those cadaverous faces had looked so much alike.

As the guards left, one of them barked out an explanation. “He didn't want to come. He was hiding under his bed.” The man stared at the floor, his long, narrow face set in an expressionless mold. But when he looked up at Keller for a moment, there seemed to be a glint of resentment in his eyes.

Anywhere else the incident might have been laughable, but not here. It made it so obvious to Keller that his listeners were in the room because they'd been forced to come. This man hated his playing, he decided, and would do anything to avoid hearing him. The poor bastard had been discovered and humiliated—if he was still capable of feeling humiliation over something like this.

Was he a musician, too? A violinist? Or had he been a critic for one of their newspapers before being sent here? Keller felt like the man could see through him, could hear what a struggle it was for him to play well.

The other inmates had no visible reaction to the latecomer, so he went on with the program as though nothing had happened. But it was hard to get involved with the music; in his mind's eye he kept seeing that wretched man hiding under the bed. He pictured him crouching in the dark, or stretched out immobile beneath the bedsprings. What had the man felt when the guards entered the room? The door opening, their footsteps approaching. Hiding in a place like this—for any reason—could probably get you killed. He was lucky this time, Keller thought. They just forced him to come to my concert.

He was playing the rhapsodic prelude of Bach's Sonata in G Minor, trying as always to produce full, rounded chords and flowing figurations between them. Sometimes he heard a dull moaning, which seemed to correspond vaguely to the shape of the music. And from the intermittent creaking of the benches, he guessed that some people must have been swaying gently in rhythm with his playing. He half-opened his eyes a few times to make sure. This was their first genuine response to him, far removed from yesterday's ritual of clapping on command.

The lean, muscular G minor fugue came next, with its concise staccato subject, obsessive repeated notes and insistent pedal tones. The intensity that Keller brought to this movement amplified the creaking and moaning. Then the gentle undulations of the Siciliana and the warmth of its B-flat major tonality afforded some relief from the angular textures of the fugue. But the moaning continued, which alarmed Keller because there was nothing sensual in it; it seemed to him that these noises revealed a world of pain that had little to do with the mellifluous music. The cascading arpeggios and propulsive sequences of the final Presto were better suited to the guttural counterpoint his playing had set in motion.

When he finished the Bach, the clapping began to sound like real applause. But as it died away, he heard the same voice that had challenged him the first day.

“We don't want you here.” The voice was weak, but each word was pronounced clearly, with weary determination. “Go away.”

It was getting dark, and he strained to see who had spoken. Was it the man they had dragged in? No one moved. Keller didn't say anything, wondering if he had really heard or had only imagined those words.

Then a woman's voice broke the silence. “No, that's not true. Stay with us…please stay.” This voice was a bit hoarse, or dry, as if it hadn't been used for some time. He kept trying to hear the simple, clipped rhythms of those phrases after they had faded into silence.

His ears were ringing from all the practicing and playing he had done. He had planned to finish with the Bach, but couldn't stop now, not after what the man had said. He wasn't going to admit defeat so easily. And how could he ignore the woman's plea? So he began the Ballade by Ysaÿe, his thoughts racing far from the music.

He pictured that warehouse full of shoes, and the train chugging away from the camp. Was he too blind to see some horror coming, preoccupied as he was with the petty concerns of his violin-playing? Maybe he should listen to the man and get out today, while he still could. But then the Kommandant's threat about the Gestapo chipped away at his resolve. If he left before the experiment was over, that might be all the evidence they needed that he was a security risk.

During the Introduction of the Ysaÿe he began to feel disoriented, dizzy; waves of sound swelled up and receded, buffeting him as he groped for an answer. Then the Ballade theme sounded forth, passionate, defiantly virtuosic. The moaning started again, only louder now, punctuated by muffled sobs. The sobbing came from just one woman, and he was almost sure she was the one who had asked him to stay. But these sounds were out of tune with the music. They didn't belong to the world of Ysaÿe; the Ballade was an emotional piece, but it didn't express
that
kind of emotion. Yearning, passion, yes, but not desolation and despair!

How could he play with those sounds invading his ears? He had to get this over with and get out of that room. His fingers ached, his head was throbbing. He garbled some passages toward the end of the Ballade in his haste to finish, and cursed himself as he bowed. There was no more moaning after the applause, thank God. The sounds were only an accompaniment to the music—so far.

 

That evening, in the silence of his room, the thoughts that had been unleashed during the Ysaÿe kept swirling through his head. If he left himself open to that moaning, if he let that swaying and creaking mesmerize him, he might become…
like them.
Yes, he could already see himself in a gray sack, head shaved, eyes staring. Why not? The Kommandant could keep him there, behind barbed wire, a gray-clad raving witness with no one to listen.

But no, he wouldn't become one of them. He had certain rights, after all. It was not for nothing that he had this room to himself, that in the concert hall they were a blurred mass in the shadows and he, removed from them by a few paces, received whatever light was to be had in that dark world.

He would keep himself separate.

But the woman's voice kept coming back to him:
Please stay with us.
He had to find that woman and talk to her.

Occasionally he heard footsteps not far from his window. A guard must have been pacing the perimeter of the camp. As the footsteps receded, everything grew quiet; in the stillness he could hear his heartbeat resounding in his skull, and there was a ringing in his ears like the hiss of steam escaping from a boiler, a piercing din that kept him awake half the night.

T
hank you for agreeing to see me, Herr Lupescu.”

“You said you were a friend of my daughter's?”

“We worked together in a sonata class at the Hochschule. I'm a violinist.”

“Oh, yes—I think she told me something about you when you started playing together in the fall. She said you were quite talented. So, what can I do for you?”

His voice, a velvety baritone, seemed to create its own resonance in the thickly carpeted room. The walls of his study were lined with books, many of which were laid on their sides and stacked in order to maximize the space on each shelf. There were titles in Russian, French and German. Kleist's
Michael Kohlhaas
caught Gottfried's eye, as well as a worn copy of Büchner's
Woyzeck
with several bookmarks curling over the tops of the pages. On one shelf stood a few thick volumes with silver Hebrew lettering incised on the spines; he could almost feel the creamy softness of their leather bindings.

“Marietta told me something about the organization of Jewish artists you work for.”

The bushy brows came together over Herr Lupescu's deep-set black eyes as he leaned forward and folded his soft white hands on the desk. He had a high forehead topped with wisps of grizzled hair, but on the sides his hair was as thick and curly as Marietta's. A gray cardigan fit loosely around his sloping shoulders.

“I have to admit, I'm surprised she would discuss it with someone who's not…in our circle.”

“I believe she trusts me, sir. And she's proud of the work you do.”

He made no response, but the full lips Gottfried had noticed moments earlier were now compressed. Gottfried cleared his throat, beginning to regret that he had come. Marietta had warned him about her father.

“I had an idea for a concert that she and I could play together, to raise funds to assist the Kulturbund in its work.”

“Have you talked about this with her?” Lupescu's voice suddenly seemed tense, guarded; the words came out in a clipped monotone.

“No, it's a new idea I've had, since she left the Hochschule. You see, Herr Lupescu, I've signed with a management recently. I had wanted to make Marietta my accompanist, but she felt it wouldn't be a good idea, given the political situation.”

He sniffed. “That's something of an understatement.”

“I…I couldn't disagree, and was happy to continue working with her just in the class. Then, after she left, my manager suggested that I play a few house concerts for some wealthy people in Cologne and Frankfurt, in order to raise money to buy an old Italian violin. Also to make contacts that would be helpful in building my career. But I've decided it would be much more meaningful to play a concert to benefit the important work you're doing.”

When Gottfried paused for breath, Herr Lupescu said nothing. His coal-black eyes, which at first had seemed friendly or at least civil, focused tightly in a visible effort to assess his visitor and figure out what he had really come for.

“A number of the potential donors mentioned by my management are Jewish,” Gottfried added, feeling almost as if he should apologize to Marietta's father for making what had seemed like a generous offer before he met him.

“Then they probably contribute to us already,” Lupescu said drily. “Excuse me, but I need to ask you something. In the last month that Marietta studied at the Hochschule before she was forced to leave, she spent a lot of time away from home. She said she had made some new friends with whom she was going to the theater, opera and so forth. When I asked if those friends were Jewish, she wouldn't give me a clear answer. I know her well enough not to press her when she doesn't wish to talk about something.”

He paused, his beady eyes boring into Gottfried's as if he already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask.

“Were you one of the people with whom she was going out so often?”

“Marietta and I…were on very friendly terms.”

“I see. Please understand: in principle, I have nothing against her making Gentile friends. She had several before we left Romania. You know, I used to run a theater in Bucharest. Jews, Gentiles—we all worked together. Assimilation…” A momentary grimace twisted his features. “The word never even crossed my mind. I only became aware of that word here, in the past few years, as a definition of what is no longer possible.”

“I understand that you feel that way, Herr Lupescu, but…”

“Coming back to your offer, one thing you may have overlooked in your calculations was Jewish pride.”

Why did he use the word “calculations”? Gottfried wondered.

“We could always use more money,” he continued, “but we're not desperate, and until we are, I would prefer not to look beyond the Jewish community for help. Besides, money isn't our main problem. Getting visas from foreign consulates, smoothing things over with the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin—those are the tough things for us.”

“Excuse me, sir, but it seems to me that promoting an insular attitude within the Jewish community would be giving the authorities what they want, playing into their hands.”

“That's what we have to do in order to survive in this country.” His voice was accusatory, as if his visitor had caused or somehow contributed to the problem. “And I don't think it's your place to say how we Jews should deal with the situation your country has put us in.”

Gottfried's throat tightened. “Surely you don't believe that I support these new laws.”

Maybe Lupescu realized he'd gone too far. He both acknowledged and brushed aside the young man's disclaimer with a perfunctory wave of a hand, shaking his head briefly, his lips forming a silent “No.”

“I must confess I'm disappointed, Herr Lupescu. I thought that for a Gentile and a Jew to play together, even if only in a private concert, would be a gesture of solidarity.”

“In normal times such a gesture of solidarity, as you call it, might mean something, but not now. The concerts and exhibitions we organize go beyond gestures. We need to insure our survival, culturally and, yes, physically: I'm sure the day isn't far off when that will be at stake, too. I'm sorry to disappoint you. You've made a…a generous offer, but it's simply not feasible at this time. I could say things might get better and we could use your help in the future, but I don't see much hope on the horizon.”

He stood up; so did Gottfried. As Lupescu moved around the desk and toward the door, he added, “To be honest, young man, I'm not sure whether your disappointment is more for your idea of what would benefit us—or for yourself.” The last few words came out very softly; he hadn't turned to face him.

Gottfried could think of nothing to say as the blood pumped into his cheeks. How could Marietta have grown up in the same household as this proud, bitter man? She would be furious with him for having had the clumsy audacity to approach her father with this grand idea.

Herr Lupescu opened the door, and Gottfried walked ahead of him through the narrow hallway to the front door of the apartment, where he half-turned to go through the motions of saying goodbye.

“I see now that it was a mistake to come here. Could I ask you not to tell Marietta about my visit?”

Lupescu hesitated, then nodded slowly. “In return I'd like you to consider that Marietta will leave for Palestine within the next few months. Please don't do anything that would deflect her from that purpose, from her safe destination. She must not be confused now.”

Gottfried wanted to argue that her happiness was also at stake, but the proprietary expression in her father's eyes kept him from saying anything further.

 

“I had to see you.”

She came in, pushed past him, tossed her coat onto a chair. She had never been to his apartment before, and this was not the way he had imagined her crossing the threshold for the first time. He wondered what she was doing back in Cologne. Had her father broken his promise and told her he'd come to see him last week? Or had the Gestapo raided the offices of his organization?

For the past few days he'd been haunted by the feeling that something would go wrong with their plans. Every hour was tinged with nagging doubts that interfered with his work and his sleep. Just before Marietta knocked at the door, he had been thinking that if the audition were scheduled for that day instead of the following week, he would never be accepted into the Palestine orchestra.

He wanted to ask her what had happened, but when they faced each other, he dropped his eyes. How could he hide from her what he had done? Or how could he find a way to tell her, if she didn't already know?

“I told my parents about you.” Her voice was lower than usual, husky: she had been crying. “It was time. I couldn't keep up the sham any longer, not with the audition coming.” She looked away, her jaw working, her eyes fixed on the opposite wall. “My father…”

She paused, swallowed. Even when she was upset, the way she held herself was striking. Her whole body, in its momentary immobility, was brimming with energy, and her stance was as centered as a ballerina's. Despite the plainness of her brown woolen suit, the mass of dark curls framing the pallor of her face made her look like a
maja
from an old Spanish painting—a figure poised on the brink of action, an image made real.

“My father threatened to disown me if I don't break it off.”

This was no surprise to Gottfried after his disastrous meeting with him. And considering the political and racial climate in the country—every week a new restriction on what the Jews could do, every day more posturing and bullying in the streets—he couldn't entirely blame the man, even though he'd treated him with contempt. In the week since Gottfried had seen him, with his practicing going so badly, he had come to feel as if he deserved her father's scorn.

But she was looking at him again, and there was so much pain in her eyes that he felt he should be outraged by her father's threat. Never mind how Lupescu had treated
him.
In his bitterness over what was happening in Germany, and in the name of protecting her, he had trampled on his own daughter's happiness.

“It's worse than you expected…” Half question, half statement. Why couldn't he respond more forcefully? This was Marietta, his Marietta slowly nodding her head, not a figure from a painting—there was no frame, no two-dimensional canvas interposing itself like a screen between them. “What are you going to do?” Passive. He had no suggestion. He would let her decide.

“What can I do? I have to ignore what he said. Get around him.”

“How do you mean?”

“He threatened to speak to the audition jury, to try to impose a rule that the orchestra be absolutely closed to those who aren't at least half-Jewish. The jury hasn't made up its mind yet; maybe a Jewish grandparent will be considered enough, but my father might have the power to influence the way things go.”

“So how do we get around him?”

“By giving you some Jewish blood.” There was a calculating glint in her eyes, those liquid deep black eyes now hardened with determination. “Through the Kulturbund I met a man who's very good at arranging papers. For a price, of course.”

He remembered Professor Kerner's concern about the path he was on with Marietta. What if this didn't work and he was stuck in Germany and from now on, somewhere, there was a document attesting to his Jewish ancestry?

He was seized by a sudden impulse to cover her mouth, to do something that would block the steamroller of her will. It took an effort to keep his hands at his sides. He dropped his eyes, attempting to swallow the bitter saliva that was flooding his mouth.

She's just trying to find a way for us to stay together. Why am I clenching my fists?

Was it because she was more forceful and decisive in pursuing her plans than he could ever hope to be? Or was it because she was trying to turn him into a Jew?

“What's wrong?” she asked.

Until that moment, he'd never felt anything but tenderness toward Marietta. And since the day he returned from the chamber orchestra tour, there had been no need to disguise what was going through his head. Now he had to look up, keep the conversation going, respond somehow to what she had said.

“Nothing,” he lied. “But speaking of blood, I doubt that my own parents would approve of your idea.”

“Your parents? You've barely said a word about them.” Was there a note of challenge in her voice, as if his parents, too, might thwart her plans? Or was she simply distracted? Just then it struck him that the whole focus of their relationship, by unspoken consent, had been Marietta and her need to emigrate, and their strategy for staying together. His background and his feelings about the future hadn't seemed that important; even his ambitions hadn't played much of a role.

“It's true I'm not very close to them,” he admitted. “They could never understand my wanting to become a musician. They thought it meant a bohemian lifestyle. Which it does, compared to the way they live. And now…it turns out that we don't see eye-to-eye politically.”