Vienna Prelude

by Bodie Thoene

  In the soft light, Elisa’s skin took on an almost ethereal glow. She drew her bow across the strings in counterpoint to the strong melody that Rudy played. The beauty of the woman and the music seemed to be united, and Murphy held his breath in awe at the sight of her. An ache, so profound that he had to shut his eyes, filled him nearly to overflowing with tears. He caught himself, controlling his emotions. It had been so long since he had experienced anyone or anything so beautiful. For a year he had been witness to Nazi disregard for innocence and beauty in Spain. Spain was only a practice bombing run for Hitler and Mussolini.

  Vienna was certainly their next target. How can I tell her so that she will believe me? It was the Nazis’ goal to crush anything that varied from their stunted perspective of the Aryan ideal. How can I convince her? Rudy, Leah, Shimon—her friends . . . family, really. The fire is coming. The fire is already here. It consumes everything that is not forged in its own furnace of hatred. It feeds on people like you, Elisa. And talent like yours, Rudy Dorbransky. Your lives will be sacrificed to feed its flames. This moment is only a memory even as it happens; the only reality left to us is the coming fire.

  He had seen it in Madrid. He had glimpsed a frightening vision in London. Now he looked upward as redolent melody swirled into the highest reaches of the hall. In one horrible instant, he saw the stars winking down through charred and gaping holes in the roof. Yes. The molten rain will fall here too. Terrible, terrible, scorching rain.

  24

  Elisa Awakens

  Elisa and Murphy were seated at the same table where Murphy had spent his loneliest Christmas a year before. It was ten-thirty, but the busy waiters of the Sacher Café were still serving late dinners. Elisa smiled and waved at the omnipresent string quartet in the corner. They recognized her, of course, and Murphy wondered if there was anywhere in Vienna where a cup of coffee could be served without being accompanied by music. They began to play as Murphy ordered Tafelspitz, the boiled beef and dumplings that had been a favorite of Emperor Franz Josef. It seemed the only logical choice with the portrait of the emperor watching over them.

  Elisa continued to look at the musicians; then, for the first time since they had left the concert hall, she spoke to Murphy. “Do you like the music?” she asked in English.

  He was startled, both by her use of his own language and by the question. “Beautiful,” he answered, feeling like the musical ignoramus he was.

  “Do they play this often in America?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know. Probably.” He wished she knew something about the jazz of Scatman Caruthers.

  “But you like Dvořák, personally?”

  “Personally . . . ” He hedged. Personally, he had never heard of the guy.

  “And this?”

  “This?” He had the feeling that he was being set up. Was she trying to pinpoint just how much he lacked in the way of musical education—that they really had nothing in common beyond one terrible night on the train from Berlin? Maybe she was right. “I’ll be honest, Elisa,” he confessed, hoping his honesty would stop her subtle attack. “I don’t know anything about music. Nothing. Except that I find it beautiful. As beautiful and stirring to listen to as you are to be with.” He reached across the table to touch her hand, but she pulled it away.

  She quickly looked back toward the quartet as though she had not heard him. “This is the Amerikanisches . . . the American composition of Dvořák. I thought perhaps you listened to it often in America since he wrote it there.”

  “He is an American?”

  She laughed nervously. “No. Czech. From Prague. But the happiest time of his life was in America. A place called Spillville, I-Owa.”

  Murphy brightened. “Iowa!” he exclaimed. “Spillville, huh?”

  “You have been there?” Elisa seemed interested in his response.

  “Lots of farms in Iowa.”

  “Yes.” She looked dreamy. “I can hear that in his music. Do you hear it, Herr Murphy?”

  “Just Murphy,” he corrected gently. And yes, he did seem to hear the sound of horses and buggy wheels on dusty roads—and maybe the sound of crickets on a summer night when a fella sat in the porch swing with his girl. “Yes, it sounds a lot like home. In the summertime.”

  “He wrote it in the summer, 1893. The only happy time in his life. He wrote it in only three days, and when he finished, he said, ‘Thanks to the Lord God. I am satisfied. It went quickly.’” She turned her eyes on Murphy as though she were no longer angry—in fact, never had been. “America must be a beautiful place if it sounds like this.”

  Murphy took her hand and did not let go, even though she tried to pull away for an instant. Then she let her fingers rest in his palm—warm and soft like a little bird. How he loved her hands! “Would you like to go there, Elisa? Would you like to see America? I’ll take you to Iowa if you want to go; I can take you there!”

  She lowered her eyes. “I would someday love to go there. But I do not really know you, Murphy. I cannot go with you.”

  “Then I’ll send you there. I’ll stay here, and you go to America.” His heart was beating fast. He was grateful for the music of this Dvořák guy in the background. If she wouldn’t listen to words, maybe she would hear freedom and safety in the music.

  “A generous offer. But I must work.”

  “You can work there . . . like this Dvor . . . whatever-his-name is.”

  “He came back. Back here to his home. My family . . . what is left of our hearts without Papa . . . live in Prague. A democracy. Like in America.”

  “But too close, Elisa. Hear me! Too close to Hitler! The eclipse has begun! The shadow is already touching the face of the sun! In America you would be safe. Rudy was right; I can write a letter to sponsor you—”

  She looked at him calmly, without response. “My family is in Prague,” she repeated.

  “I can get them to America too. My parents have a farm in Pennsylvania.”

  “We cannot leave my father, Murphy. My mother will never leave until we know for sure—”

  “If you knew . . . if you knew for sure he didn’t make it, then would you leave Europe?” He leaned close to her, his eyes pleading with her.

  “I . . . how could I leave Vienna?”

  “You could come back. When this thing blows over, you can come back—”

  “I do not know the term . . . blows over.”

  “When the danger is past. When the storm is over.” He frowned and licked his lips nervously. Was she listening? Was she hearing the reason in his argument?

  “There is no storm in Vienna. Only some . . . disagreement. America has no disagreements? I have read about the Great Depression. I have read the magazine articles and seen the photographs. There are many Communists marching there. Beggars on the streets and talk of revolt. People are hungry there, and the land is said to have dried up and blown away” —she appeared to chose her words carefully—“There is a bowl of dust where I-Owa used to be, ja?”

  “Things are tough at home, yes.” He felt his arguments being blown away like the dust. “But we aren’t neighbors with Nazi Germany.”

  The waiter brought out big helpings of Tafelspitz, then bowed and backed away without interrupting their conversation. “We have beggars here in Vienna, to be sure,” Elisa replied defensively. “But there is nothing so terrible as we read about America. It is not like it was when Dvořák was there. Besides, the President Roosevelt and your Parliament has said very clearly they do not want refugees from Europe taking American jobs.”

  “I can get you in!” he insisted. “Our farm—in Pennsylvania. I wrote my parents. You would be most welcome, and there isn’t a drought there.”

  “Why would they take in total strangers?”

  Murphy squeezed her hand. “Not strangers, Elisa. Elisa, I want you to marry me!” He was almost as startled by the words as she was. She took her hand from his and averted her eyes. The music played louder behind him, and Murphy could tell that his proposal had bee
n a mistake. Not a mistake, really—it was an accident. He hadn’t meant to say it. The truth was there, in his heart, but he regretted the words the instant they popped out of his mouth. “You may divorce me later, but let me at least get you out of this mess,” he said, trying to redeem his hasty words.

  Elisa did not reply. She seemed embarrassed by the question. Most certainly she could not go to America under such circumstances. His offer no longer depended on news of Theo Lindheim or convincing her that America was a safer place to be at this moment in history. She dismissed all of that and looked at him with gentle pity. “Herr Murphy . . . ” She again lapsed into her own language.

  “Murphy,” he corrected again; then he passed a hand over his face. “I did not mean to say that. I . . . I don’t know how that came up. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled sadly and leveled her penetrating blue eyes at him. “I thank you for the offer,” she said with dignity. “It is, of course—”

  “No.” He raised his hand to stop her. “You don’t have to say more. It was a . . . shock to me too.” He laughed nervously.

  “Tonight I won’t slap you.” She laughed too, and the tension dissolved. “Unless you tell my friends why I slapped you last night! Then you had better duck.”

  He raised his hands in surrender, feeling defeated in more ways than one. “We started our relationship as allies. No civil war is impending, I hope. Friends?”

  She nodded and lifted her first spoonful of Tafelspitz in a toast. “To friendship then, Murphy.”

  “To friendship,” he responded in kind, feeling somehow comforted by her words. “Now, I want you to promise me something.”

  She looked doubtful. “Perhaps.”

  “If you find things getting rough around here, remember my offer. And I don’t mean the marriage offer—”

  “So fickle, Murphy? Well, it was the best offer I have had all day.” She was trying to lighten the conversation.

  Murphy would not let the subject pass. “What I mean is, if I am right—and I hope I’m not, but just in case things go badly for Austria—I want you to think about America, will you?”

  The quartet played the third movement of Dvořák’s composition. “As often as I hear Amerikanisches Streichquartett, I will think about America . . . and you. But I must remember that Dvořák chose to end his life in Prague, ja?”

  She was politely patting him on the head and telling him thanks, but no thanks. She would not offer him even one small word of encouragement. Throughout their meal she talked of Leah and Shimon, of Rudy and the tone of the Guarnerius violin compared to the voice of a Stradivarius. She asked questions about Pennsylvania and Murphy’s career in New York but America was not a place she looked to for any answer to life’s difficulties.

  Their first evening ended on a hopeless note for Murphy. Somehow he had hoped that she would invite him to her flat for coffee, but she did not. With a firm handshake, she thanked him for the Tafelspitz and refrained mercifully from mentioning his proposal again, then got into a taxi and went home alone.

  ***

  Leah was waiting for Elisa when she arrived home. She had let herself into Elisa’s flat and had brewed her own cup of tea, entirely without an invitation.

  Elisa almost rolled her eyes at the sight of Leah sitting at the small kitchen table. “Have you lost your lease on your apartment?”

  “No.” Leah sipped her tea matter-of-factly. She gazed thoughtfully at the row of houseplants perched on the windowsill.

  “You have come to water my plants?”

  “At least they are one thing alive in this apartment.” Leah made no effort to soften what she had come to say.

  The comment cut deep into Elisa. Was her solitude that obvious? “Don’t patronize me!” she snapped angrily. “If you have something to say—”

  “All right. If you think you can hear it.”

  “There is nothing I need to hear. I am fine. My life is exactly what I want it to be. It is my own choice to be alone! My desire!”

  “Don’t tell me about desire!” Leah raised her voice. Her usually warm brown eyes flashed angrily. “Stop denying! You can play that self-sufficient game with everyone in town but me, Elisa. I have known you too long! I remember those long nights in school in Salzburg when you dreamed of your Thomas! It’s been over a year since you mentioned him, a year since you came back from Berlin and he was no longer the one you dreamed about or spoke about! What happened, Elisa? You are dead inside! We joke. We laugh. But that is as far as our friendship goes now. What has happened to you?”

  “That is none of your business!” Elisa was shouting. She had never before shouted at Leah.

  “You have turned to wood. A dozen fellows ask you out each month, and you will have nothing to do with them. Tell me, for your own sake, what happened to Thomas von Kleistmann?”

  “I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that you have no right—”

  Leah stood suddenly. “All right. Your best friend has no right. Does anyone have a right? You have become a stranger to me. To yourself. The most encouraging thing I have heard in months is that someone made you angry enough that you struck him.”

  “Leave me alone, or I will strike you as well!” Elisa stood trembling with anger.

  “Well, at least that is proof you are still alive,” Leah said flatly. “I know you love me. Do you love this Murphy fellow as well?”

  Tears began to flow from Elisa. “No. I love Thomas. I want him. And I hate him because I cannot have him! Oh, Leah!” Instead of striking her friend, she wept against Leah’s shoulders in a desperate embrace. “Oh, Leah, I have loved Thomas so long. All of my life, I think. And now—” She wanted to tell Leah everything! About Berlin, her father, Murphy on the train, Thomas . . .

  “You are wrong, Elisa, not to tell me. You bear it all alone. And there is much I think I know already.”

  Elisa hesitated, trembling inside. How much did Leah know? And how did she know anything at all? “What?”

  “Does the name Lindheim mean anything to you?” Leah said gently.

  Elisa felt suddenly faint. She groped for a chair. Leah sat down beside her. “How?” Elisa said pitifully. “How can you know this?”

  “Last spring,” Leah said solemnly. “When you were in Prague with your mother. After that terrible Christmas you had when you would not tell me what happened . . . ” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “A letter from Paris.”

  “Paris?” Elisa had heard from her mother that Thomas had been transferred to Paris.

  “From a person named Herschel Grynspan. It came to the Musikverein. Addressed to someone named Elisa Lindheim.” She paused, carefully watching the expression on Elisa’s face. “Lindheim. The watchman asked if that could be you. I told him it was impossible, and he sent the letter back unopened. Dangerous. Dangerous thing, Elisa. Especially in these times. Elisa Lindheim. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  Elisa nodded bleakly. She felt the color drain from her face. “Yes.”

  “Your father?”

  “Theo Lindheim.”

  “Oy!” Leah frowned. They sat together in silence for a full minute as the implications of such a revelation made impact. “So,” Leah sighed, “you are not Aryan.” Her eyes were full of pity for Elisa. “This is not a good time to be Jewish.”

  “My father is Jewish. My mother is Austrian.”

  “So to the Nazis you are mixed race. Mischling. First degree.” Leah spread her hands in helpless frustration as she questioned God in the silent gesture. “And you would not even tell me.”

  “I just told you.”

  “I knew anyway. We will hope no one else knows. Hope that no more letters come addressed to Elisa Lindheim. The name is too close. Couldn’t you have chosen something further removed from your German-Jewish name?” It was not a question that needed answering, really; it simply expressed Leah’s fear for Elisa.

  “I suppose you can guess what happened to Thomas.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Bitterness thi
ckened Leah’s voice. “The Nuremberg racial laws.”

  “Yes. He said—” Elisa choked back a sob again.

  “If he said anything at all” —Leah wrapped a protective arm around Elisa—“if he did not take you away that instant and leave a place where such laws can dictate love, then he is unworthy of you! For him you have shut your heart away, Elisa? For a coward like this man? How could anyone not love you?” She was indignant, and Elisa was comforted by the rage of her friend.

  “My father was arrested, and I told myself I could never love Thomas. As long as he was part of such a pack of—”

  “Unkosher swine!”

  “Yes. But still I dream of him at night. I still remember . . . ”

  Leah frowned and studied Elisa’s face. “The two of you were lovers then?”

  Elisa flushed and she murmured, “I thought we would marry one day.”

  “Enter Hitler and the Nazis.” The anger in Leah’s voice was real. “Exit Thomas.”

  Elisa sobbed against her friend again, as if all the hurt and anger inside her needed to be released. “Why? Why has this happened?”

  “I have another question for you Elisa. Why do you still hold on so tightly to someone who would cast you off so terribly? What possible worth can you see in such a man? What respect for one who would deny your family?”

  “It was the law; he could not—”

  “Nonsense. There is right, and there is wrong. The Nazis have turned those two absolutes upside down. You are not a racial half-breed, a subhuman. You are Elisa, beautiful and talented and . . . so very alone,” she finished heavily.

  “What can I do?” Tears brimmed in Elisa’s eyes.

  “Do you enjoy playing the martyr in love?”

  “No.”

  “You must. Otherwise, why do you act it out so completely? You are not made of wood or stone. Look at you!” She brushed away Elisa’s tears with her thumb. “You look awful! Your eyes are all swollen and puffy! Oy! Such a mess you are. I have never seen stone weep, although wooden trees can sometimes become sticky with sap.” She took a handkerchief from her pocket. “So blow your nose before you drip on me.”