The Savior (4 page)

“Leather shoes were distributed to them, instead of the wood and cloth monstrosities they usually have to patch together. Oh, I'm sorry if this shocks you. We just don't have enough food or clothing to provide adequately for the entire camp.”

Keller was sure he had shown no reaction.

“They were given much lighter workloads. The men and women were permitted more contact with each other than usual; eventually they were all put together in one barracks. I wanted to see what effect these new conditions would have on their behavior.”

He looked at Keller and paused, as if anxious to reassure himself that the violinist was following every step of his experiment with undivided attention.

He must have noticed my distraction a few minutes ago, thought Keller. Like a schoolteacher. Maybe that's what he was before the war—a professor somewhere, and he misses the classroom as a forum where he can expound his brilliant ideas.

Once again Keller felt he had to make some show of interest. “What changes did you observe, Herr Kommandant?”

“After two weeks their complexions had improved somewhat, and they no longer seemed dazed from hunger. But they were still withdrawn, apathetic…even when the guards pushed them around a bit in the course of a day's work.”

He snuffed out the cigarette in a heavy glass ashtray, got up from his perch on the desk, walked around it and sat down again in his chair.

Keller glanced at the bookshelves full of Goethe.
Can they ever come back to life from this living death?
Was he trying to be poetic? A touch of Goethe or Schiller, or even Shakespeare, perhaps? Yes, he must have been a professor before the war. A man like him would have needed the stimulation of a university, with all its different disciplines, and the university would have had a laboratory where he could conduct his research.

Now, of course, the Reich had provided him with the perfect place for research—far superior to any university laboratory.

“After a month, though, their behavior became a bit more animated. I admit the change was modest: they still had periods of depression and didn't communicate much with each other. Yet somehow it seemed that they had begun to hope. Their movements weren't as sluggish as usual. As I spoke to the group, I began to notice a—how should I put it?—a certain responsiveness in some of their faces. Nothing specific, just a general level of attention or expectation that was different from before. I'm sure they would have continued to improve, but then…one of them tried to escape. They were on their way back from the factory, and it was getting dark. The road skirts some woods—he must have thought it would take only a few seconds to get in there. He didn't seem to know there was a ditch at the side of the road.”

He paused, as if for dramatic effect. When he spoke again, his voice was lower in pitch and volume. “He fell into the ditch, and the guards shot him as he was trying to scramble out. If I had been there, I would have stopped them, of course. My chosen ones didn't have much of a reaction at the time, but that one death erased all the hope I had planted in their hearts. Over the next month they became more withdrawn than ever, and ate less, too.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“The experiment was at a standstill. For several days I asked myself what could be done to reverse the damage. Then I remembered that the ones who'd lived here in Germany must have had some cultural background. Until a few years ago everything was available to them—theater, poetry readings, concerts. They had their own Kulturbund, you know.”

Keller tried to look as if the name of that organization meant nothing to him.

“So I decided to give them music. What better way was there to remind them of their past lives, to kindle in them the hope to live again? Of course, I would have preferred to bring in an orchestra, or a string quartet, or a pianist. But there's no piano here, and I would have had to get one from the city. That would have involved paperwork; it was too complicated. With larger groups there would have been too many people to control effectively. So I had to settle for solo violin.”

Keller retreated into his chair, the words
control effectively
resounding in his ears.

“The repertoire is small, but it includes a few of the greatest pieces ever written. I mean the sonatas and partitas of Bach, of course. Ah, I see. You're surprised to find a cultivated man in charge of such a place. But then you have no idea how closely these camps are related to the core of our culture.”

He scanned the violinist's face for a reaction to this sweeping statement. All Keller could do was shrug and shake his head slightly, trying to look attentive.

The Kommandant smiled sympathetically. “I understand the needs of artists. What would you say if I told you that the rubber plant will suspend operations while you're here, just because the smell is so overpowering and you're not used to it yet? I don't want anything to distract you from your music. So you see the esteem in which I hold the arts.”

“Yes, Herr Kommandant.” Keller tried to hide his disgust with the man's posturing. The esteem in which he held the arts seemed as abstract as his theories, and Keller found nothing flattering in it. He hadn't been summoned in order to hear an expression of esteem, he was sure enough of that. He had no idea why a Kommandant would suspend the normal operations of a camp, and couldn't begin to figure out the real reason while he was sitting in this office, listening to speeches.

“Production is important to me, but not as important as the success of my experiment. How many Bach works do you have in your fingers?”

“Three or four.”

“And what else?”

“Some Paganini caprices, two sonatas by Ysaÿe, a few pieces by Reger…” Keller found himself listing things, unable to respond to the substance of what he had been told. It struck him that he was answering these questions as if he were arranging a series of programs with a concert promoter.

“Do you have anything modern, like Hindemith?” asked the Kommandant, eyeing him intently. “Yes, yes, I know the government has called it degenerate music. But I'm not a pedant. Do you think that what I'm engaged in here is strictly in line with regulations? No—it involves a much broader view of science and life than the usual experiments, which are more…anatomical. So, do you have any Hindemith?”

“I know one of the solo sonatas,” he admitted.

“Good. Well, that should be enough for about an hour of music each day. This part of the experiment will last four days, during which you'll live in the camp. Oh, don't worry, you won't be treated like the Häftlinge. You'll have a room and bath to yourself, good food and so forth. You'll be allowed to move around the camp freely. Only it would be foolish to let you return to the city each day—too great a security risk.”

A security risk? Because of what he had just heard?

“What about after the experiment, Herr Kommandant?”

“After the experiment, you'll understand a great deal more of this.” He made an all-encompassing gesture with one hand, as if to indicate the camp and what it stood for. “You will be different; there will be no security risk.”

He didn't say specifically that Keller could leave after four days, but there was no use belaboring that point; it was clear that the Kommandant had no intention of satisfying him with solid assurances. He stood up, looking at his wristwatch and then at the door behind his visitor.

But Keller had one more question. “Excuse me, sir. I suppose you may have conducted some experiments here that might make the layman uneasy, but this one seems less…” He tried to think of a neutral word. “Less detached. You seem to be hoping…”

“Yes, I'm hoping to reverse the process of decay.” There was a dryness, an edge of impatience in his voice. “To prove that it's possible. But instead of wondering about my motives, you would do well to concentrate on your own reasons for being here.”

“My own reasons…” The only reason Keller could think of was that he had no choice.

“You're a performer: you need an audience as much as I need experimental subjects. Those soldiers you've been playing for—well, it's a nice gesture, but what does it really amount to?”

“I've sometimes wondered the same thing myself.”

“Most of them couldn't possibly understand Bach. Soldiers might enjoy hearing Beethoven's Ninth, with its overwhelming power, and some of them might even think they understand it. But a violinist, by himself, trying to pull them into the inner world of Bach?”

A smile spread slowly across his face. He shook his head.

“The nuances would be completely lost upon them when the music doesn't have enough bombast. Now, the Jews, at least the ones who've lived in Germany, have claimed an intimacy with some of our greatest musical treasures. They're Untermenschen, yet they always believed they had a stake in our heritage. That's part of what makes them dangerous: look at the arrogance of Mendelssohn, for example, claiming to be the one who rescued Bach's sacred works from oblivion. But for the time being, it will be to our advantage to revive their illusion of equality.”

“I still don't grasp what my own reasons would be for…”

“The war has more or less put an end to your normal concert activity, hasn't it? You no longer play for sophisticated German audiences, but you have to stay in shape as a performer. You need to try out your repertoire on the Jews.”

“I've never played for prisoners, for people…like the Jews you've described. I'm not sure I'll be able to accomplish what you want.”

“It won't be easy, but it's the only possible way to bring them back.” He moved toward the door. With his hand on the knob, he looked back at Keller as if he had just thought of something. “You must be an Orpheus to them, and thaw their frozen souls.”

He seemed impressed by the resonance of his own words as he turned the knob and slowly pulled it.

“I will do my best, Herr Kommandant,” Keller stammered. He walked through the doorway. It was only once he got outside and heard the door close behind him that he realized he hadn't been breathing normally for the past half hour. He tried to relax his arms and let his shoulders drop a little. The way he felt now, it would be impossible to play.

At the top of the steps outside he hesitated, looking at the road and the gently sloping fields beyond the barbed-wire enclosure of the camp. It wasn't quite as muddy here as it was nine or ten kilometers back toward the city. There were still some patches of snow that last night's rain had failed to wash away. Here and there a crust of ice glinted under the late morning sun.

Suddenly a long-forgotten scene from childhood came back to him. He was walking in the country with his parents. It must have been late spring; it was already quite warm, and the air was fragrant with the scent of wildflowers. He saw a tiny hole in the ground, out of which big black ants were emerging one by one, at perfectly even intervals. His parents kept walking while he stopped to observe the insects. They seemed to have a destination, or at least an instinctive sense of purpose. That seemed strange, even humorous to him; he couldn't imagine where they were going in such order and harmony. After a while he lifted his foot and stepped firmly on one ant, then on another, and so on. They kept coming. After killing seven or eight of them, he got upset and ran to catch up with his parents.

“Why did they keep coming out?” he asked tearfully. “Why didn't they hide from me?”

I
t is beyond our comprehension that the immortal German violin concerto of Brahms could be entrusted to a Jew.”

The brief review ended with that damning sentence; there was no commentary on the actual playing. He pushed the newspaper back across the table to Ernst. The young man was biting a corner of his lower lip, and his sky-blue eyes locked onto Gottfried's, searching for a reflection of his outrage. Finally he said, “Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?”

“I can imagine. Such filth!” Gottfried looked away from him for a moment and saw an elderly gentleman dining alone in a corner of the café. He was wearing an old-fashioned gray wool suit with a vest and a gold watch chain. He had a high, stiff collar; his hat and cane lay across the table, partly covered by the newspaper he had stopped reading. His gray hair was close-cropped, the hairline receding, and he had a bristly mustache.

“But there are other papers that gave you good reviews,” Gottfried said, looking back into Ernst's probing eyes. “This is just an upstart Nazi rag. Do you think a review in here means anything next to the
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
?”

“I'm not talking about what the review will do for my career.” He shook his head and pursed his lips. “I'm talking about what it means for Germany.”

“Kellner!” called the old man in the corner. In his voice there was a note of command that seemed to come naturally. “Rechnung, bitte!” The waiter scurried over and took out his pad, figuring out the bill while the gentleman waited.

They were sitting in the Goldener Adler, the café where Ernst had a job as Kapellmeister, leading and playing solos with a small string orchestra in light classics like Lehár and Johann Strauss, as well as transcriptions of the latest dance tunes and popular songs. He had to do this to support his family, and often joked about the silliness of some of the frothier music he had to play. Gottfried came to the café at least once a week, not only because his best friend was the featured “act.” He loved the way it felt to come in there on a cold, rainy evening, or at lunchtime, and be greeted by the smell of stewed meat, fried potatoes, Spiegeleier, and the hum of a dozen conversations.

There were two large rooms besides the kitchen. The inner room had a small stage, but Gottfried didn't spend much time in there because he wasn't interested in light entertainment music. In the outer room the bar, table and chairs were all made of solid oak and mahogany; on the walls were somewhat primitive murals of pastoral and agrarian scenes in faded colors, illustrating old, homey proverbs that were inscribed on the bottom of each tableau in elaborate Gothic lettering.

That afternoon in July 1933, the café was almost empty—4
PM
wasn't a peak hour. The other customers were all on the opposite side of the room. They were in Gottfried's peripheral vision as he faced Ernst, and he was only marginally aware of them. Still, as the conversation turned to politics and Ernst's status as a Jew, Gottfried found himself hoping that Ernst and he would be able to keep their voices down. The Party had been in power for five months already, and he regarded it as a hopeful sign that at least they could still talk about politics in a public place rather than having to slink away to one of their homes.

Gottfried glanced once more at the review in the
Völkischer Beobachter.
“Well, what can you do about it?” he asked.

“I'm going to write a letter to the editors, pointing out that Brahms dedicated his immortal German concerto to the Jew, Joseph Joachim, who helped him write the violin part.”

“No, Ernst, you're not going to do that.”

Ernst nodded his head slowly, the corners of his mouth rising in grim satisfaction. He was drumming softly on the table with his long, tapered fingers. He was an elegant-looking man, even when casually dressed, as he was that day. His blue silk shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, and the wide collar fanned out over the lapels of his jacket. He had full lips, a straight nose, and curly golden-brown hair. Nobody would have guessed he was Jewish. He looked more Aryan than a lot of Germans did, and he was completely assimilated. As far as Gottfried knew, Ernst didn't speak any Yiddish. His family name, Schneider, was neutral: it revealed nothing about his background. Someone had told Gottfried that Ernst was Jewish as he was just getting to know him; otherwise it never would have occurred to him.

He had recently graduated from the Hochschule, where he was one of Professor Kerner's favorite students. Kerner once said to Gottfried, “Ernst is not only one of the most naturally gifted pupils I've had; he has also made the most of his talent. He's a hard worker, and he's got imagination. He absorbs everything I tell him like a sponge, then comes up with something new, all his own.” Sometimes Gottfried was jealous of all the attention Ernst got, but then he would remind himself that Ernst was three years older, and more advanced. Besides, Ernst had been encouraging to him about his own playing, enthusiastic even, at times when he needed it. So Gottfried was glad for him when he did well.

For his graduation concert, Ernst had been scheduled to play the Brahms Concerto with the school's top orchestra. In April 1933 a Nazi had been appointed administrative director of the Hochschule, but everyone thought this man was merely a bureaucrat, a token presence installed by the Ministry of Culture. The real power in the school seemed to lie in the hands of the artistic director, Dr. Knapp, a conductor with no obvious political affiliation.

The program for the graduation concert was prominently posted in a glass-encased bulletin board near the entrance. When Ernst arrived at school one day and found his name crossed off the program with a few thick pencil strokes, he suspected and almost hoped it was an expression of resentment by some envious student. But he learned soon enough that his removal from the concert was official. Professor Kerner went with him to the administrative director's office and threatened to resign if Ernst wasn't reinstated on the program. Kerner was important enough to the school for his threat to carry some weight, and with the mediation of Dr. Knapp, a compromise was reached: Ernst would play only the first movement of the Brahms Concerto.

“Ernst,” Gottfried said gently, “don't you think you're overreacting a little? When I mentioned those other papers, I wasn't thinking about your career. I was thinking about what's still good and decent and clearheaded in our society. No one I know believes the crap they print in the
Völkischer Beobachter.
Look, there are four well-established papers in this town; two of them gave you good reviews, two gave you raves, and you choose to focus on what some rabid hatemonger has to say.”

The old gentleman got up from the table, and Gottfried noticed he was slightly unsteady on his feet as he put on his overcoat. It seemed to be something of a struggle for him to raise his arms high enough to get them into the sleeves. The waiter came over again and helped him. The old fellow indicated his thanks with a stiff nod, then proceeded toward the door. Gottfried was glad to see that the shaky moment had passed, that he was really quite steady once he got moving. The cane was still mostly ornamental; his independence and dignity were still intact.

There was something comforting to him about the elderly man, with his aura of long-settled habits and perhaps more than a hint of pedantry. Was it that he reminded Gottfried slightly of his father? No, it was more than that. This gentleman, probably a retired lawyer or doctor, was a familiar figure: he had seen so many others like him all over the country, in cafés and restaurants, at tram stops, in railroad cars. At concerts. That was why his habits, like the late afternoon beer and cigar over a newspaper in his favorite Stammlokal, felt so comfortable to Gottfried, even though he knew he would never become like that himself. A touring musician couldn't have such settled habits. But he liked having people like that around.

“All I know is that this hatemonger and his rag aren't alone,” said Ernst. “Somebody has to send a message to these people—I mean not only the ones who write this trash, but those who read it, too. You may not know anyone who does, but the
Beobachter
has a big circulation.”

“You think they'll print it? Next to the editorials, maybe.” Gottfried laughed, but when he continued, it surprised him to hear a slight shaking in his voice. “Please don't send that letter, Ernst. It's not a good idea. You never know what might come of a gesture like that; it could come back to haunt you later.”

“I'm sniffing a contradiction in your argument. The good and the decent are still by far a majority. I'm making a mountain out of a molehill by paying too much attention to these Nazi crackpots. It doesn't matter that one of them is our chancellor now. The whole thing will blow over—isn't that what you're implying?”

Gottfried shrugged and looked again at the corner table the old man had occupied. The waiter was leaning over it with a dishrag in his right hand, the used plates and beer mug cradled in the crook of his left arm.

“So I shouldn't write the letter because the whole thing isn't important enough to get worked up about. At the same time, you tell me not to write the letter because something bad could happen to me as a result. Do you mean that the newspaper might send some thugs to beat me up? Or that the Nazi state we now have, once its apparatus is securely in place, will take care of me?”

“I…I don't know, Ernst, it just doesn't seem like a good idea.”

“Either way, it doesn't bode well for our good and decent society, does it? So maybe it is worth getting worked up about, after all. And don't forget that at the concert, the first three rows were filled with the SA in their shit-brown shirts. How do you think it felt to stand in front of the orchestra and look down at those faces of steel? They couldn't believe a Jew would dare play their music.”

“You gave a great performance in spite of them.”

“Maybe. But how can I keep playing my best from now on, when I know those bastards will be there every time I walk onstage? I was lucky they didn't disrupt the concert. That will come, too, believe me. You know, I teach a little.”

Ernst had a way of changing subjects when you least expected it, without a pause for breath. Yet there was always a connection.

“A few months ago one of my pupils came in for his lesson with a swastika armband. It was just before Hitler was elected. I spent the whole hour trying to figure out if he knew I was Jewish, whether this was a deliberate insult or he thought I was a ‘good Aryan' who would share his views. It occurred to me that some idiots don't even know the swastika stands for hatred of Jews as well as for the economic recovery they're always talking about. In any case, he's hardly more than a boy, sixteen or so, and what he believes is probably a carbon copy of what his parents believe. Which doesn't make it any better, any less threatening.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, at first. That's what bothered me. I was furious with myself the whole week until his next lesson. When he walked in again with that filthy thing on his sleeve, I asked him to take it off. He looked at me for a long time without saying anything. I thought his jaw would drop. Then he asked, ‘Are you trying to interfere with my right to express myself politically?' He probably figured I'd back down once he expressed that lofty sentiment.”

Gottfried laughed. “So he's the champion of freedom of expression, and he's wearing one of those armbands! I gather you didn't back down.”

“No, I didn't. I put it to him like this: ‘Normally I wouldn't interfere with any of your rights. It's just that this offends me personally.'

“He kept staring at me, and I had the feeling that he was really seeing me for the first time, not just as his violin teacher but as a person. Then I saw him swallow before he spat this out: ‘So…are you a Jew-lover?'”

With those words, Ernst's imitation of his student's voice turned into a high-pitched, singsong whine. Gottfried was glad that his friend wasn't mimicking the boy too loudly; he didn't want him to attract any attention to their table. Not while they were talking about this subject.

“Well, by that time it could hardly have been much of a surprise for you,” he said. “It must have been disgusting, though, to hear that kind of filth coming from a youngster you thought you knew. How can one respond to a question like that?”

“I just moved toward the door. My hand was on the knob, and then I turned and looked back at him. You know, at that moment I really hated him, with his perfect straight blond hair always slicked down. I remembered the whole year of lessons we'd had. I hated the way he held his head, the way his jaw jutted so squarely over the chinrest when he played. I hated his pedantic accuracy, hated even the progress he'd made because it was all technical. His phrasing never improved, no matter what I said.”

Ernst grimaced and shook his head, as if he was hearing the boy's scrapings all over again. “If it could even be called ‘phrasing.' Stiff as a board. But most of all I hated that dry tone of his, which I hadn't been able to change. Vibrato exercises, working on smooth bow changes, getting him to listen to singers—all useless.”

Ernst had always seemed so calm, so self-assured in a modest way, that he didn't need to criticize anyone else. This was one of the qualities that had drawn Gottfried to him: he rose above the gossip and occasional backstabbing that peppered the usual conversations at the Hochschule. It disturbed the younger man now to hear him put down his student like that. He felt a sudden impulse to defend the boy, even though he abhorred his politics.