Ulli went back to his desk and sat with his head in his hands. He had told Jelly nothing of his visit to Menuhin in Paris; he was afraid of upsetting her at a time when she was already suffering a litany of health problems. Even so, she had insisted on resuming her cathedral concerts for charity. What other artist would do such a thing? He longed to defend her more robustly to Strecker, yet hesitated to reveal their long-distance quasi-intimacy. Blank paper stared up at him while he chewed the end of his pen. ‘My dear Jelly,’ he wrote. He stopped, then pushed the paper aside and on a fresh sheet wrote to Tovey instead, asking if he could please send Jelly some flowers on his behalf.
He decided not to tell her about either the article or Menuhin until the true nature of the situation became clearer, for better or for worse. He had made her a solemn promise that she should perform the concerto – and he could not bear the notion of letting down someone about whom he cared so much, even in if in a ridiculously distant way. She must play the Schumann. Menuhin must play it too. He must find a way to keep his promise to her while also doing his best for Schott’s. And all of this was, of course, to assume that Willy’s plan of action could hold its own against whatever the culture bureau had been cooking up in Berlin.
*
Jelly was indeed having a difficult winter. She had struggled bravely through some concerts and recording sessions with Myra and the cellist Gaspar Cassadó, and played at the Wigmore Hall; but her right elbow had seized up, and the impact of Tom’s death still seemed to be draining her spirit, month after month. Frightened by the newspapers, thrown by reports that the Musicians’ Union was vetoing visits by foreign performers, she applied for, and was granted, British naturalisation. Cinema orchestras were closing down at an alarming rate; many dismissed musicians were desperate for employment, which meant that foreigners would be an easy target for their anger.
‘Sai, that policy is targeting American dance bands, not people like you,’ Alec tried to reassure her, but she had no intention of turning back. Naturalisation was, after all, a gesture of gratitude to the country that had been her home for nearly a quarter of a century – and protection, of course, should foreign performers be banned.
As for her arm, nobody seemed to know what was really the matter. One doctor suggested she might have a form of rheumatoid arthritis, which could flare up, then subside, just as hers seemed to. Another insisted it was plain osteoarthritis. A third said that the problem was probably with her tendons, and time alone would be the solution. Yet another declared that it was all in the mind. ‘You seem very tense, Miss d’Arányi. Perhaps a consultation with a psychoanalyst… ’
‘I don’t need psychoanalysis,’ Jelly assured him. ‘I just have a sore arm.’
She felt guilty about having any problem at all after Myra related what had happened to her in the States the previous year. Suspected breast cancer. Thank heavens it had turned out to be a false alarm, but only after she had had radical surgery. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured Jelly, ‘though it was rather boring to sit around recovering.’ Jelly could scarcely bear to think what must be going through her mind underneath that stoic façade.
‘It’s not life-threatening and I’m sure I don’t need an operation,’ Jelly told the latest Harley Street specialist.
‘I wonder, Miss d’Arányi, did you perhaps suffer malnutrition during the Great War?’ the doctor asked.
‘You were very thin as a girl,’ Adila reminded her. She insisted on going with Jelly to all her appointments.
‘But not malnourished,’ Jelly insisted. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘That kind of thing can affect the strength of a lady’s bones later in life,’ the specialist explained, kindly enough.
‘That’s interesting – nobody ever told me that before. But I’m 42. Is that really “later in life”? And, forgive me, but each doctor I see tells me something different… ’
He gave a wry smile. ‘I find it inspiring, but also alarming, to think how much we in medicine simply don’t know. I’d love to see how the profession will look a hundred years from now.’
Jelly put her blouse back on; she had to fumble with the buttons. ‘I hear there’s a cure being developed for TB. Is that true?’
‘At the moment it’s very expensive. But one day, I hope, the sooner the better, we’ll have medical treatment available to all, no matter the cost. Don’t you agree, Miss d’Arányi, that no human life should be valued less highly than another?’
‘Then we must stop the wars, too.’
The doctor gave her an astute glance; he knew her generation well, those women whose loved ones never came back from the trenches.
*
‘Jelly, my dear,’ came Tovey’s voice on the telephone, ‘I have in my hand a copy of a French journal that contains an analysis of the Schumann Violin Concerto. It came out in December, but it has only reached me now.’
Jelly tried to speak, and couldn’t.
‘It would seem that under this regime, access to the concerto isn’t forbidden any longer. It’s just forbidden to us.’
‘But Eugenie Schumann – ?’
‘I hear she is even more outraged than we are. It looks as if Goebbels and his Ministry of Propaganda have decided there’s a use for this piece, so they’re annexing it themselves.’
‘But they can’t. It’s ours!’
‘Unfortunately they can and they will. They can do anything they like. And remember, it is only you and I who consider that the Schumann concerto is “ours”… ’
The article arrived the next day with the first post: a brown-paper parcel addressed in Tovey’s writing. Jelly shut herself in her room with the package, counted to ten, then pulled off the string.
The words were real, printed: Le Concerto pour violon et orchestre par Robert Schumann. The article was in French; the author’s name, Hermann Springer, German. And it said that the work was to be published by Breitkopf und Härtel in Germany – not Schott’s.
Ulli had said not one word about this to her in any of his letters. He wrote to her often – not always about work, and many times inconsequentially, due, she assumed, to potential interception or censorship en route. He had not even mentioned the military shenanigans in the Rhineland; it was Alec who told her that the German troops had marched across the bridges, including the one at Mainz, to remilitarise the area, without France or the League of Nations being able to do anything to stop them. She wrote back to Ulli, aware that instead of letters to a mortally ill man in Ireland, she was penning missives to one who was perfectly well, but living in an enemy country that could clap him in jail if he had an affair with her. Several months ago an unexpected bouquet had arrived from him via Tovey, tumbling with roses and lilies; what it meant, she could only speculate.
She might adore Ulli, or the fantasy image of him that had lingered since their only meetings; but more importantly, she’d trusted him. He’d made her a promise. Perhaps it was her fault for placing too much faith in him.
Holding the lash of betrayal at bay by reading the article, translating as much as she could, Jelly tried to keep her head; maybe she could pick up the feel of the music from what Springer had written. The first movement, stormy and intense: Schumann’s turbulent, extrovert self. A slow movement that was the jewel of the work. And the finale: a big polonaise, rather slow. The desire to hear it, or better still to play it, took hold of her, so intense that it verged upon the physically painful.
Odd, though: a polonaise, a grand, traditional dance from Poland, seemed a strange way for a German composer to end a concerto. She could think of only one precedent: Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, hardly an obvious model. Jelly considered this, swallowing coffee. Perhaps Myra, who knew Schumann’s piano works inside out, could shed light on his inclinations.
Myra was home when Jelly phoned, though her voice betrayed the fact that she was busy practising. ‘There’s a polonaise in Papillons,’ she remarked. ‘It’s a lovely thing, only his second official work, but it’s deceptive – it’s g
ot some awfully fiddly bits in it.’
‘But what does it mean?’ Jelly pleaded.
Myra paused. ‘I’m not sure it means anything – not the way a polonaise would for Chopin, being Polish… Papillons is supposed to depict a masked ball and I think the polonaise was traditionally the opening dance, wasn’t it? Except that he puts it nearly at the end. Why do you ask?’
Jelly gave Myra a potted update on the Schumann concerto situation. ‘And I’m also anxious about what people will think when I explain how I came across it,’ she added.
At the end of the phone there was a stunned silence. ‘Never mind how you found the concerto,’ Myra said eventually, decisive. ‘That’s not important. The question is: what happens now that you have? And, it would seem, now that they have too?’
‘Alec thinks the German government owns the rights, because it has been in the state library for such a long time – and I don’t know what to do.’
‘I don’t think there’s much you can do.’
‘It ought to be mine to play first,’ Jelly insisted. ‘Nobody would have known it existed if I hadn’t had that message.’
‘Do you have anything official in writing from someone who holds rights in the piece, declaring that you must play it first? Beyond your sister’s, er, transcripts?’
‘If only… No, of course I don’t. And I know that in the end it’s…’
Jelly wanted to say, ‘It’s only a piece of music.’ Not land, or an inflammatory political text, or a shipment of arms. Only a piece of music. And yet… It brought to mind other images of those she could not begin to rescue: first Sep, then Tom – and now, trapped in Nazi Germany, Ulli too. ‘Honestly, Myra, if I lose it now… I don’t know what I’ll do.’
Chapter 11
‘That’s outrageous,’ said Donald Tovey.
‘You’re telling me,’ said Ulli. ‘Did you see the footnote?’
‘Georg Kulenkampff is to give the premiere in Berlin? And he wants a year of exclusivity? It’s… outrageous.’
‘And it is to be published by Breitkopf und Härtel. Nobody would ever have known where to find it if it wasn’t for our efforts and yours.’
‘Then it is in your interests as well as mine to put a stop to this,’ said the professor, the lengthy telephone line crackling between Edinburgh and Mainz. ‘Why have you let all these months go by, Ulli? Why did nobody send me this article sooner? I had no idea whatsoever. You can’t have been entirely preoccupied with your Olympic Games?’
Ulli hesitated. People outside Germany had very little inkling, he realised, of the pressures that now faced him and his colleagues under the Third Reich. ‘Herr Sir Doktor Professor,’ he faltered, for Tovey, in that strange British system, had recently been knighted, ‘we are up against some – well, interesting – situations here… ’
‘And is that a reason not to keep me informed?’
‘Why is it in your interests to put a stop to it?’ Ulli ventured. ‘Because of our beautiful Hungarian?’
‘“Our” beautiful Hungarian?’
Ulli stayed quiet.
‘There is such a thing in life as fair play,’ suggested Tovey. ‘Nobody would have been alerted to this manuscript if “our beautiful Hungarian’s” friend, the Swedish minister, had not gone to tremendous lengths to unearth it, using his intelligence and intuition to discover that it had been sitting all along in the wrong box. And he, and Adila, absolutely insist that Schumann’s own spirit selected Jelly as its representative.’
Ulli let out a swear word in German.
‘You could say “fiddlesticks”,’ remarked Tovey. ‘It’s not inappropriate. Nevertheless, Ulli, as you know, they believe it with all their hearts – and even I’m beginning to think there is some truth in it, one way or another. By the way, isn’t it worth remembering that if Breitkopf publishes that concerto, they stand to make a small fortune out of it? That should belong to Schott’s.’
The conversation at an end, Ulli sat, as was becoming his habit, with his hands over his eyes, breathing deeply. Of course the concerto should be Schott’s; of course he wanted Jelly to be the first violinist to play it. But Strecker’s enquiries had been making it increasingly clear that to assure either of these scenarios was going to require a gigantic fight, and the idea of having to do battle with representatives of this regime scarcely bore consideration… How had music become so entangled with politics anyway?
He had planned to spend the day on correspondence. It would have to wait. He called his secretary.
‘Fräulein Kammerling, please try and get Dr Strauss on the telephone for me.’
*
Richard Strauss, whom Ulli considered Germany’s greatest living composer, had for a short while run the regime’s music department, the Reichsmusikkammer: the committee that also decided which composers and performers should be officially sanctioned by the Nazi party. Ulli had been horrified, but it was not his place to object, merely to make sure that Strauss’s compositions were published on time. Strauss’s appointment nevertheless came to a swift end when officials intercepted a supportive letter from the composer to his Jewish librettist, the writer Stefan Zweig. Strauss was out on his tail and his name was mud. Word reached Ulli that Goebbels had demolished the unfortunate septuagenarian in a final meeting, screaming at him that he was a nobody and would never, ever write music as fine as Franz Lehár’s, leaving him shaking and tearful on the stairs at the Ministry of Propaganda. Strauss insisted that they’d never asked him to take the post, merely ordered him, and the alacrity with which they’d thrown him out said more about the composer’s true self, Ulli decided, than the fact that he had felt obliged to do the job at all.
‘My dear Dr Schultheiss… ’ Strauss’s voice was starting to sound doddery, Ulli thought. He was 72; it should be time for him to retire to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to grow roses and enjoy his grandchildren. Chances were limited that a composer would produce any more important works at this stage of life.
Ulli explained the Schumann situation and met with an exclamation, then a silence, while Strauss took in the story and its implications.
‘Kulenkampff is a fine violinist,’ the composer volunteered eventually.
‘It’s not the violinist we mind so much,’ said Ulli, though for him it was. ‘It is Breitkopf. You see, we’ve been involved with the retrieval of this work from the start. This business of the government overriding everything… ’
‘I know, I know.’ Strauss certainly did.
‘Is there anything you can suggest?’ Ulli pleaded. ‘I should explain that Schott’s has started to lose money from the official blacklisting of our Jewish composers by your Reichsmusikkammer successor, Peter Raabe. It’s not that your works are not doing well – they’re doing extremely well – but if the company can capitalise on a hitherto unknown work by Schumann, then we’ll have more to invest in promoting today’s great composers, such as yourself.’
‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Strauss. ‘I appreciate that, Dr Schultheiss, and I wasn’t born yesterday. But I have no influence now, nor do I wish to. Not after… that.’
‘I’d value your opinion in any case. I know you understand this environment,’ Ulli admitted. ‘I might try to persuade Dr Strecker to organise a meeting with some of the official party people.’
‘Raabe?’ Strauss grunted.
Ulli knew Raabe as a second-rate conductor, a former Weimar Kapellmeister with an unhealthy fondness for the music of Franz Liszt. Ulli liked publishing Liszt, but not playing it; too much bluster for his taste. He had no doubt that Raabe was appointed for political reasons, not artistic ones. ‘Yes, Raabe – and perhaps Goebbels himself. Do you think that, in a case as strange and significant as this, it could be necessary?’
‘That upstart pipsqueak?’ said Strauss. ‘Yes, Goebbels might well take an interest… ’
Ulli was possessed by a sense of unreality. ‘I can’t help wondering what could be so important about a violin concerto. So crucial that it might even capture the time an
d energy of Hitler’s minister of propaganda,’ he remarked.
‘All I can say,’ Strauss growled, ‘is that, well, you’d be surprised.’
All the more reason to hold on to it, not only for the company’s sake, but for the music’s. Hitler had annexed Wagner and Bruckner for his own ends; he must under no circumstances be able to take Ulli’s beloved Schumann as well. This long-buried work must remain a great Romantic violin concerto, and nothing else.
*
Except that the concerto, apparently, was not that great after all.
‘I’ve had a look at it, and so has Kulenkampff.’ Peter Raabe was tapping the base of his pen against the table, an unconscious movement that signalled nerves. ‘It needs work if it’s going to be playable, because it is a very peculiar piece indeed.’
The assembled men sat along two sides of a vast table at the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, under a high ceiling and heavy chandelier. From beneath the trees on Berlin’s Wilhemplatz, the building, a palace once upon a time, had glared out at the Schott’s team, complete with Grecian façade: a relic of the true age of Enlightenment, the concept inverted for the Reich’s purposes.
Ulli had lived in Berlin 15 years ago; each stone had held, for him, an imprint of something he’d heard, someone he’d seen, plans he’d made, somebody he’d kissed. Yet today Berlin felt tense, squeezed by a tourniquet of conformity, crushed beneath monolithic modern architecture. Even this ridiculous table seemed a manifestation of the city’s new and forbidding ambience. Forbidding? Not his Berlin. Not as he remembered it.
He’d contacted Tovey to inform him of the forthcoming meeting, but begged him to say nothing yet to Jelly. Not until he and the Streckers had the outcome they wanted, signed and sealed on Third Reich notepaper.
Ghost Variations Page 17
