The Savior (11 page)

She was watching him closely, and as he mentioned politics her eyes hardened again, in an inquisitorial stare.

“It's just that in spite of our differences, I love them, and the idea of never seeing them again…well, it's uncomfortable.”

She said nothing, and there was no sign of comprehension in her face.

“More than uncomfortable. It's painful. That's all. I just had to say it, had to tell you. It doesn't mean I'm changing my mind. I'm just not used to…staring at the rest of my life and saying, ‘This is the way it's going to be.'”

“We have no choice,” she said softly. “Not if we want to stay together.”

“I know.” Finally able to unclench his fingers, he turned away and looked at his violin, lying in its open case on the table. “I just wish my practicing were going better. All these secret plans are making me nervous, making it hard for me to concentrate. I don't think I'll have the Beethoven Concerto ready for the audition next week. And now, knowing that your father's going to campaign against me makes it even harder. What if they don't take me?”

“Don't be silly. You're a wonderful violinist. You know, some of the players I accompanied last week have already been accepted. They were good, but no one's been on your level yet.”

“They were accepted into the section. Concertmaster is different, especially in this situation.”

“Yes, but you can do it. Listen…somehow you've got to learn to have more confidence in yourself. Not only in your playing, but in your decisions. Otherwise you'll never get what you want, even if you don't come to Palestine. Even if I weren't in your life.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders, as if to shake him up, and stood at arm's length, studying him. Once again he dropped his eyes, embarrassed by her scrutiny. Until that day, she must have thought he was a decisive man, courageous to want to get involved with a Jew, not a doubt-riddled weakling who needed his parents' approval. It was true: he'd hardly ever mentioned them, because they weren't a big part of his life anymore. He didn't really crave their approval, but it was easier to talk about them than to say he had mixed feelings about leaving Germany with her.

He had shown her a part of himself she hadn't seen before. Would she think less of him, despise him?

He looked up and was relieved to find no judgment, no contempt in her eyes, only the need to know him better. At that moment he wondered how she could still love him. But she had to understand—Palestine meant uprooting himself. For her it was different; she was already uprooted.

“I guess it doesn't matter if they don't take me,” he heard himself saying. “I could still try to get a visa and come to Palestine. Maybe find something else to do.”

His voice sounded hollow, but she didn't seem to notice; the puzzled expression on her face gave way to a look of joy and loving triumph. She put her arms around his neck.

“You know, for a long time I've been obsessed with the Nazis, with all the restrictions they've forced on us. Every day I think about the persecution of my people and how it's probably going to get a lot worse. But now it turns out that the biggest obstacle to my freedom comes from the narrow-mindedness of my own father.”

Gottfried remembered the rigidity that had come over her father's face as he tried to reach out to him.

“I can understand how he feels, though.” It was hard to pretend he didn't know him. “Maybe, with time…”

“We don't have that kind of time.” She shook her head emphatically. “Even though I love him, I'm not going to let him take away what I want most, even if he disowns me. You say all these secret plans make you anxious. You're worrying about your parents. What about me? Think of the pain I'll cause my father, and my mother, too, caught in the middle. I know she sympathizes with me, but she's not strong enough to stand up to him. They're both expecting me to cave in, and they're in for a big shock. Don't you think that weighs on me?”

Her eyes probed his, and he felt ashamed of his weakness.

“But if there's one thing these Nazis have taught me, it's to make sure that no one else runs my life. And that's why I came to you today.” She looked briefly around his room. Her eyes rested for a moment on the bed in the corner. “I want to marry you. Now.”

He could find nothing to say. He had been so careful not to rush things that her eagerness took him by surprise. And he didn't think this was the right time—not when he'd wanted to gag her just a few minutes earlier. How could he be sure he wouldn't feel that urge again, or something worse, when she was naked and defenseless in his bed?

She laughed for a moment, her shoulders hunching up in a nervous shrug. “Not officially. We can take care of that later, in Palestine.” She pulled him toward her. “But what I've learned from playing sonatas with you is that the deepest musical experiences can happen in a room as well as on the concert stage. It doesn't matter what the world recognizes.”

T
he third morning, Keller reached drowsily for his wristwatch on the chair next to the bed. He was surprised to see that it was already nine o'clock: he must have slept through the roll call! How was it possible with that loud music?

He lay in bed awhile, staring through the window. From that angle he couldn't see any barracks or fences. Or the Appellplatz, thank God. Just a gray patch of sky, framed by jagged lines of paint peeling off the walls and a rickety desk in front of the window. For a few moments he managed to pretend that everything in his field of vision was part of a painting—an interior scene with the window as both a source of light and the merest hint of a world outside—and tried to cloak this spartan “guest room” in an imaginary aura of rustic simplicity.

It seems that you don't approve of the camp.

He hated the idea of being the Kommandant's pawn, but he had no other choice; the bastard had made that clear enough. Besides, whatever might happen to his audience after the experiment couldn't be any worse than what would happen to them if he weren't there. So once again he told himself that he might as well do what the man wanted, and do it as well as he could.

The fingers of his left hand were tapping against his chest and stomach. He recognized familiar patterns from the pieces he planned to play that afternoon.

He got out of bed, opened the door and brought in his breakfast tray. He ate quickly and started practicing without the usual procrastination. For the first time since his student days, he was eager for a concert to begin rather than impatient to get it over with. Something felt different in the actual playing, too. His fingers were moving more lightly; he worked through problems more efficiently, brought difficult passages to a satisfactory level with fewer repetitions.

Somehow his attitude had changed during the few hours he'd slept. Maybe it was because of the memories that had flooded him in the stillness of the night. It was the first time in years he had allowed himself to remember Marietta without forcing his thoughts in a different direction, the first time he could picture her face.

If things had turned out differently, she might have been in that room where he played each day, listening to him along with the others through a filter of memories and hopelessness. Thank God she'd gotten out.

If I had gone with her, I wouldn't be here either, he thought. But he hadn't taken that chance.

Now nothing was left in his life but music. He needed to regain some faith in himself as a performer, needed to break down whatever barriers stood between him and his audience. He knew now that if he wanted to reach the prisoners, he'd have to be ready for any reaction from them—moaning, sobbing, or worse.

 

That afternoon, he was disappointed when Rudi didn't come for him; he had wanted to talk some more about Bach with him. The prospect of being able to speak to someone who would actually listen, someone who might share the renewed enthusiasm he suddenly felt for music, had filled him with a kind of joy—if one could ever feel joy in such a place. He walked in silence next to the guard who had come for him.

He began the program with a sonata he had composed himself. It was his first performance of the piece, which would have been too dissonant to appeal to the wounded soldiers. He had no pretensions as a composer, and never would have attempted to play it at an important concert. Besides, in the last few years it would have been risky to present this work in public—it would have been condemned as degenerate. But here there were no printed programs, no music critics, no censors. Here, strangely enough, it seemed possible to offer this sonata full of anguish, whether or not it had any lasting value, as a personal response to the despair that surrounded him.

Inspired by Hindemith and Bartók, he had written the piece in a free atonal style. The manuscript, like his diary, was always locked in his desk drawer, but he knew it by heart. Two contrasting themes were derived from the same motivic roots, a few distinctive melodic intervals and rhythmic patterns embedded in the texture of each theme. Later, the two ideas were combined—played together in double-stops—and only then did their common motive begin to be audible. Gradually the two themes became one. But they didn't survive their union: they disintegrated. Only the motivic fragments remained, and they, too, were broken down to their component parts—the individual notes, reiterated like low grunts or high-pitched shrieks. The first theme was supposed to sound strong, noble; the second, tender and beautiful. All that remained of them by the end was an impotent sputtering and a few protracted wails.

After he had been playing for a few minutes, the moaning began again. Getting louder, it might have disturbed him in any other piece, but it harmonized with his music. A woman started sobbing, and unlike what he'd heard the day before, these cries were no longer suppressed. Soon she was joined by two or three others. He heard groans from the men. Then, straining against its weakness, the cracked voice that had plagued him the first two days was raised once more.

“He shouldn't be here. Don't let him do this.” The voice turned into a plaintive whine as it lost its battle against the rising tide of sound. “Stop him!”

The benches creaked louder and louder. The swaying grew furious in response to the death rattle of the themes of his sonata. Borne along by the waves of sound, he felt an unexpected kinship with those sufferers. They were united through this music of disintegration and despair—united against the oppressors, against the whole world outside that dark room.

As his piece ended, the sounds continued. Unwilling to lose momentum, he closed his eyes and plunged into Bach's Sonata in A Minor. How different it was from the way he had begun the sonata in the past, trying to hear the first few measures in his head before starting, attempting to capture the right tempo, the silence weighing heavily upon him. This time he didn't even try to convey the stately nobility of the prelude. He knew he was diverting the music from its true course, twisting it to serve his purpose of the moment, but he didn't care. A few minutes later the fugue began, and it was no longer rational discourse, an elaboration of subject and countersubject among three voices. The springy, octave-vaulting motive jabbed the air and carried him forward through a labyrinth of keys, goading him into taking more and more risks. He had no idea how it sounded—there was too much noise to tell. But he knew that for the first time in his life, he was playing Bach with total abandon.

In the middle of the fugue, he opened his eyes to take in what was happening around him. Some of the inmates had backed into the corners of the room and were huddled together. It was the first time he had seen any of them touch one another. Three or four women crossed their arms and held themselves tight as they swayed, as though they were rocking babies. Some of the men tried to put their arms around them, to enter into their self-embrace, but the women seemed locked in private grief.

The children they lost.

Two men grabbed each other's shoulders. One stroked the other's face, which was streaked with tears. A man who looked even more skeletal than the rest of them broke away from the group and ran against a wall, hitting it again and again with his fists until his knees buckled and he collapsed. The uproar was something like that ringing in Keller's ears, the web of noise that often tormented him in the silence of the night. Only it was a hundred times louder, as if he and his violin were merely the sounding board of a much larger instrument—the whole building, vibrating with grief.

The prisoners were no longer in their seats. As they groped their way around the room, a few came very close to him, got in the way of his bowing. During the third movement of the Bach, an exquisite duet between a sinuous melody and a pulsing ostinato, his old frustration came back. He couldn't hear himself, couldn't concentrate; it was like trying to whisper by a waterfall. The serenity of the duet eluded him once again.

What makes you think your life will be different after this? What makes you think you'll play better? You're just the Kommandant's pawn, not a great artist. This is the power he offered you, and it won't last. It exists only here.

They started to touch him, but somehow he managed to keep playing. Bony fingers clung to his ankles. Desiccated breasts brushed against his arms. There was a bitter taste in his mouth; his tongue felt glued to his palate. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, trickling down his nose and cheeks.

He began the last movement of the Bach with a sort of relief. It was fast and fiery, more attuned to the clamor—a way of staving them off. He closed his eyes.

Just get to the end of the piece.

But when he got there, he couldn't stop. He began to improvise. He played as if possessed, as if he meant to break the instrument. It seemed like the only way to keep those people from tearing him apart. Strange chords, wild arpeggios, eerie glissandi burst from the violin. The hands were still on him, beseeching, provoking him, pulling the shirt off his back.

Finally he stopped playing, but the hands didn't stop. They kept jostling him, pushing, grabbing. He had to hold the violin high above his head to keep it from getting crushed. Then he lost his balance, almost fell.

“Stop it!” he screamed. “Get away from me!”

Fingernails dug into his cheeks and the back of his neck. The pain in his shoulders grew unbearable as he twisted and strained to protect his instrument. But suddenly the hands and bodies pulled away from him. Staggering toward a wall, he saw eight or ten guards rushing through the door. As he struggled to regain his breath, they pounced on the prisoners and started to beat them with clubs and gun butts.

Benches were knocked over. One was kicked against the wall near where he was standing, barely missing his violin. Though no one fought back, most of the inmates brought their arms up to shield their heads. He was afraid that would be enough provocation for the guards to start shooting.

He backed away to an empty corner. The room was filled with screaming, grunts, curses from the guards, the sickening thud of wood and metal smacking those bony shoulders and shaven heads.

Suddenly the Kommandant appeared, shouting, demanding order. The guards snapped to attention, their truncheons and guns at their sides. The prisoners quickly stifled their moaning. Keller stood there, frozen, barely ready to believe he was safe again. The room ached with the sudden silence.

 

Rudi caught up with him as he rushed back toward his room.

“Are you all right?”

Gottfried wasn't sure if the urgency in his voice came from breathlessness or from concern.

“I'm not hurt, just shaken up.”

“I can imagine. Those people were about to tear you to pieces.”

Maybe it was the worried look on his face that made Gottfried feel like he could trust him. Or maybe it was his desperate need the day before to know why Bach had abandoned Judas in his final moments.

“I don't think they were trying to hurt me. I meant I was shaken up because of the way the guards reacted—with such force.”

He didn't add that he felt responsible. He should have seen where the hysteria was leading. But what could he have done differently?

“You haven't been here very long.” Rudi still sounded out of breath, as if he was struggling to keep up with Gottfried. “By their standards, I would say it was rather restrained.”

But Rudi hadn't been in that room. How did he know so soon what had happened?

“Where were you?”

“Outside. Looking through a window.”

Suddenly the obscenity of it struck him: the Kommandant and his henchmen peering at him and his audience of Jews as if they were laboratory animals in a cage, rescuing him just in time so he could still be used in the final phase of the experiment.

He stopped and turned to face Rudi. “Is that all you do around here? Just watch things happen?”

The doelike eyes narrowed; his lips parted as though he wanted to say something to defend himself but couldn't find the words. His jaw was quivering slightly.

“I'm sorry,” Gottfried muttered. “I didn't mean that the way it came out. It's just that you're not like the other guards here. You're more…more like me, damn it. I don't understand what you're doing here, how you can go on from day to day.”

“Oh, I manage.” There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

“What those people must have suffered—they and all the others…”

“Don't think about their suffering. It'll make you go crazy, because there's nothing you can do to change it. Nothing anyone can do. But let me answer your question: yes, as often as I can, I just watch things happen. I try not to participate, also not to look for answers.” Suddenly his eyes seemed to lose their focus. “But sometimes the others watch me and wait, and I have to pull a trigger.”

“My God, Rudi. How can you…”

“It's not as if they give you a choice, you know. The first time was horrible. I couldn't eat for two days. The worst part was, I couldn't let them see I was upset. The second time, a few weeks later, was a bit less sickening. By the third time, there was…no longer such a big line to cross.”