Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

  Word soon got round the neighborhood that in the evening almost every night there was music to be heard at the Herzes. Lots of dog-walkers stopped for a few minutes in front of the house to listen, and a few friendly neighbors were happy to be asked in—not just because of the refreshing originality with which the music was played, but also because of the way that the children discussed the music which enchanted their grown-up audience, as in their remarkable interpretation of Robert Schumann’s Träumerei.

  Alice had been able to play the popular piece faultlessly for weeks and with so much feeling that one day Paul decided to take the score with him to his violin teacher. Paul wanted to practice the piece with him, but his teacher objected: “That is really not on, Paul. In the first place Schumann wrote Träumerei for the piano, and secondly it is an expression of deep love. Not loving your neighbor or the love between children! Träumerei is an expression of longing, or the love between a man and a woman.” Paul was agog.

  The teacher carried on teaching: “Only an adult who has known this love is in a position to close his eyes and to plunge himself into the recesses of his memory and bring the piece to life. You are simply too young to do that.”

  Paul replied: “Oh, Herr Professor, do I really have to spell it out?! For weeks now I do little more than sit in the window and wait for Adelheid. She lives opposite us. From the early hours my only thought is of Adelheid; in the evening before I go to bed, I only think of Adelheid; and when my sister plays Träumerei on the piano my heart is filled with Adelheid. Whenever I see her, my heart loses a beat.”

  “If that is the case,” said the teacher with a smile, “we shall practice the piece.”

  “I have already been doing that for several days,” said Paul and to the astonishment of the teacher he played the melody clearly and full of expression. That evening the house concert opened with a violin solo: Träumerei. Their mother and the neighbors clapped with delight, even if they were perplexed that Paul had kept his eyes closed from first to last. He certainly looked rather strange.

  Now Alice followed with her piano interpretation and earned herself just as much praise, but when Alice and Paul tried to play Träumerei together tempers began to fray. After a few bars Alice stopped playing. “Paul, you are not keeping time. You are sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow; can you explain?”

  “It isn’t wrong, it is love. Only someone who knows love can play the piece properly,” said Paul triumphantly. “And you are far too little to do that.”

  “Schumann may well have been in love when he wrote Träumerei,” Alice retorted, “but he had not lost his wits, and he wrote the piece in four-four time. So, let’s heed Robert Schumann and not Paul Herz.” Then turning to her mother, she said: “Mother, is Paul actually allowed to play this piece if it makes him so crazy?”

  THREE

  World War

  “Duty comes first…”

  IT WAS baking hot in the sun and Alice and Mizzi were playing at hopping from one shadow to the next. Together with their friend Helene Weiskopf they were looking for a path using the dark splodges cast by the trees and bushes on the lawns and gravel. Every time they stepped on the light they were given penalty points. Later Irma was going to take the girls to the Civil Swimming School on the Kleinseiten bank of the Moldau. It was 29 July 1914.

  Like every other Wednesday, Frau Weiskopf had fetched the twins to take them off for a walk in Belvedere Park. Helene Weiskopf’s bank clerk father was a third cousin of Friedrich Herz and the Weiskopfs were the only relatives that Sofie really liked. She welcomed the fact that the children of both families had become close friends. During their childhood, the twins and Helene were inseparable, and Paul got on well with Franz Carl, who was the same age as him. Franz Carl later called himself F.C. Weiskopf, joined the Communist Party and achieved some fame as a writer.

  The girls were sitting on the grass deciding which of them was going to talk Frau Weiskopf into buying them an ice cream when the Herz family maid, Marie, came running up desperately short of breath and gesticulating wildly.

  “Alice and Mizzi, you must come back to the house at once. We are at war!” The night before Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia—that morning it was front-page news.

  War was a rather strange-sounding word for something from the distant past that girls of not quite eleven knew only from school. Didn’t they say that the war of 1870–71 had settled the relationships between the European powers once and for all? Hadn’t their father spoken gleefully of the progress of nations and friendly cooperation between scientists from all over the world? Despite that, Alice and Mizzi understood immediately what the normally level-headed Marie meant. Without a word, they leaped up, deserted Helene and her mother and ran home with their maid.

  Their parents and elder siblings were standing in the kitchen talking when the “little ones” came though the door. Alice fled to the piano—the family were well used to that. Each new declaration of war was taken on board, Germany on Russia, Germany on France, Great Britain on Germany, and Austria-Hungary on Russia, though—for the time being at least—it all seemed a long way away. Friedrich, as far as Alice could tell, showed little of the widespread euphoria for war that was in the air at the end of July and beginning of August 1914. He was ultimately a thoughtful man and not easily roused. He did, however, align himself with those who voiced the general certainty of victory—the industrious propagandists, the famous writers and popular thinkers; and like most of the Germans who lived in Bohemia and Moravia he agreed that Austria and Germany were in the right and that war was unavoidable. The outcome would be the creation of a new member state of the Habsburg Empire.

  The German-speaking Jews were happy to subscribe to the appeals printed in liberal papers, such as the Prager Tagblatt, which made it “a duty above all else” to fight for the Dual Monarchy.1 Between 300,000 and 400,000 Jewish men—25,000 of them as officers—served in the Austro-Hungarian Army, most of them volunteers. They were devoted patriots, ready to lay down their lives for a country in which they were at best tolerated. Behind their readiness to fight was concealed not just their longing to be recognized as equal partners in the nation but also fear: fear of anti-Semitic Russia, fear of pogroms, fear of trials for ritual murder and fear of dispossession.

  No one doubted that the war would be won within a few months, but a few weeks after it began the advance had already slowed down. The newspapers announced a “strategic withdrawal” of German and Austrian troops. The Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Royal Army, Conrad von Hötzendorf, knew from before the official declaration of war that victory was by no means certain and each day of the war cost the lives of, on average, six thousand soldiers. Then in September came the news of the fall of Lemberg (Lvov), one of the largest cities in the Empire, to the Russians.

  Sofie Herz heeded the official request to all women and was hard at work knitting socks for the Habsburg soldiers. Alice and Mizzi did their bit too; but so far the war did not affect the two girls for the simple reason that no one in their immediate family had been called up. Physical disabilities excused their brother Georg from military service. Paul was just fourteen years old and their father over sixty. As far as the children could see, even “Irma’s four writers” continued their lives as of old.

  Irma’s marriage to Felix Weltsch, on 30 August 1914, however, had far-reaching effects on Alice.

  * * *

  FOR THE first months of their marriage the Weltsches lived in the parental home. Then they moved into a small flat just round the corner at 4 Kirchengasse, which ran directly up to Belvedere Gardens. The block of flats belonged to the Herzes, Friedrich having acquired it as a nest-egg for the family.

  Friedrich was more than happy with his daughter’s choice of husband, but the bridegroom’s friends saw a bumpy road ahead. Kafka felt that the lovers’ relationship was from the very outset “a systematic battle for unhappiness” and that his friend had fallen for unfathomable Irma with his eyes wi
de open from all that Felix had told him. You have to desire the impossible, was Weltsch’s defense.

  Kafka was in no way objective in his remarks, something which became clear soon after Weltsch became engaged: “My last close unmarried or unbetrothed friend [Felix Weltsch] has become engaged; I knew this would happen three years ago (you didn’t need to be particularly brilliant to see it), but they have only made it official these last two weeks. This means I shall lose a friend up to a point, because a married man is not the same. Whatever people say to him will be silently or loudly transmitted to his wife; and there is no woman who does not present a distorted picture of everything in this altered state.”2 We know from his diaries that Kafka himself certainly intended to marry in the foreseeable future, but he used the wedding as a pretext to loosen what had hitherto been a very tight bond of friendship. “But besides the fact that I naturally wish him well, there is also an advantage for me, for now at least. We had formed … a sort of brotherhood of bachelors that was, from my point of view, completely deadly most of the time. Now it has been dissolved, now I am free…”

  The “Prague Circle” still met in coffee houses and bars during the week, and on Sundays they took it in turn to visit one another in their flats. At first these at-homes followed a roster, but after a while, they were usually at the Weltsches, much to Alice’s joy. After her marriage Irma was very much preoccupied with looking after her younger sister and regularly invited her to the Sunday gatherings.

  Kafka, however, visited his married friends increasingly rarely and one Sunday they waited for him in vain. He had said he was coming and was anything but unreliable, never wanting to offend anyone. “He will come late and will immediately make more excuses,” the others said. But Kafka did not come. Instead Irma received a card two days later on which he made a very formal excuse. He said he was so deep in thought that he had taken a wrong turning in the street and then lost his way and wandered around for hours without being able to find the street again. The friends laughed about it for days, because Kafka knew the area well. They were convinced that no one else would have gotten lost under these circumstances. Irma added another set piece to her repertoire of impersonations.

  * * *

  IN 1915 Irma, who was contributing to the household as a piano teacher as well as teaching Alice, took her sister to her own mentor Václav Štěpán for the first time. He had studied at Marguérite Long’s world famous school in Paris. Although he was only in his mid-twenties he was already appreciated as a chamber musician and coupled with this, his writings on modern Czech composers had made a name for him as a musicologist. Years later he told Alice about Madame Long and her piano school and what she felt were the most important qualities of a musician: “transparency, accuracy and simplicity.” A more fitting description of Alice’s later style is hardly possible.

  Alice liked Václav Štěpán immediately. Štěpán had lost an eye in an early campaign and he spent the rest of the war as an invalid in Prague. The twelve-year-old thought the black eye-patch he wore made him look dashing. Alice played him a Beethoven sonata with unusual technical perfection for one of her years.

  “Alice, that is very respectable, very, very respectable.” Štěpán was astonished. “How long have you been practicing it?”

  “That is not easy to say,” said Alice in fluent Czech, “I practice every day.”

  “When do you practice?”

  “Every afternoon, mostly from two to six.”

  “Do you not have any friends then, someone to play with?”

  “Yes, of course, my twin sister Mizzi, and Daisy and Helene. We do something together every weekend.”

  “And during the week?”

  “I play the piano.”

  “An hour or two would be quite enough to make progress with your talent.”

  “But it gives me so much pleasure,” Alice enthused. “There is nothing lovelier than learning a new piece.”

  For the next ten years, Štěpán saw Alice once a month and became her most important teacher.

  Making music with her brother Paul was an additional spur. They had expanded their repertoire and were now at a loss to find new pieces for piano and violin. When Paul brought home a Czech schoolmate, an excellent cellist, for the specific purpose of practicing a trio-sonata, Alice was over the moon. The three of them were so happy playing together that by the end of 1915 they were an official concert trio.

  In those days Prague schools rounded off their working weeks with music. Pupils sang songs and in some places there were little concerts. Prague was more like a village than a city and the news of a promising new trio rapidly became known in Prague. Alice and her two accompanists were swamped with invitations. Nearly every Friday they performed before a new class.

  After a concert at the Altstadt Bürgerschule a girl came up to Alice and introduced herself as Trude Hutter. She was about a year or two younger than Alice and her grandfather was headmaster of the school. Alice found her strikingly different, just as she found almost all girls more striking than herself.

  “You really play wonderfully,” said Trude. Then she told Alice about a trip to Berlin and an unforgettable concert she had seen. “We heard the Mendelssohn Octet,” she gushed. Since then she had acquired the piano part, a transcription for four hands.

  “Shall we play it together?” Trude asked.

  Alice immediately invited Trude to come to her house the next day, and the two of them practiced for hours. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. “When Trude entered the room the sun came out,” Alice said later. From then on the friends practiced together as often as they could and in the course of the year they played, among other things, pieces from the great Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn symphonies; but their favorite piece remained the Mendelssohn Octet.

  * * *

  IN THE Kirchengasse Alice and Mizzi made another close friend, Daisy Klemperer, one of Irma’s piano pupils. Daisy’s father was a coal merchant and the family was very wealthy. Their smart villa stood in the middle of a large garden, tended by many gardeners, and Alice found it far more splendidly furnished than her parents’ flat. Daisy’s kindness and easy-going nature stood in stark contrast to her lavish circle. On Sundays she often invited Alice home and she enjoyed playing Daisy’s piano.

  In the autumn of 1916 Alice and Mizzi left the Altstadt Bürgerschule and transferred to Daisy’s class at the girls’ Lyceum. Alice’s friend had told such wonderful stories about the elite school at Ferdinand Strasse in the old town that Mizzi above all, with the “airs and graces” which amused Alice at the time, would not give up until her parents agreed to the change. Friedrich Herz had hesitated at first, as the monthly fees were a lot more than the Bürgerschule. He must have known from the beginning that he would have to give way, for Irma had also taken her leaving certificate at the Lyceum. For a long time it had been seen as the best German-speaking girls’ school in Prague. The classrooms were splendidly equipped, and the art room, music room, gym, chemistry and physics labs were fully up to date. There were about thirty children to a class, most of them from Jewish homes.

  Alice was passionate about her teachers, who provided “knowledge for life.” There was the French master from Belgium, the stenography mistress (Alice was top of the class), the history master Herr Pick, who had a talent for telling gripping stories from the past but most ably avoided talking about the current war still raging on three fronts. Politics was not on the syllabus and Alice never heard a single word about how the central powers were acquitting themselves during all her time at school.

  One day the German mistress brought a vase full of spring flowers into the class. The girls had to write an essay about spring. Alice and Mizzi sat together at a desk and used the same schoolbooks. Mizzi liked doing essays and wrote them fast and well, and often she had time left to help bring Alice’s dull script to a rousing conclusion for her. This time, however, Alice was keen to write it all herself.

  A few days later the teacher brou
ght the schoolbooks back. “Some of your essays are so interesting that I should like to read them out,” she said. “I’ll start with the most interesting.” Alice was very excited: it was not Mizzi’s but her essay the teacher had selected! Alice had written about the months of joyful expectation of spring, and the happiness that man and beast feel when the sun finally arrives to provide them with warmth, and the buds burst and the birds sing.

  Straight after Alice’s essay, the teacher read Mizzi’s out. She had also described how people waited for spring. She came to the conclusion, however, that every year nature was reborn ever more beautiful and luxuriant, while man had just one life, and was condemned to die. “Observe the twins,” the teacher said. “One is an optimist and the other a pessimist.” There was no question about it: both essays were good, but all the children sensed that Alice’s text was brimming with joy and happiness while Marianne’s essay was imbued with melancholy.

  The teacher made the two texts an excuse to talk about the different views of the world. Every pupil had to attempt to express the difference between optimism and pessimism in one line. The teacher started at the first desk and intended to proceed row by row, but the first girl she asked said, “I can’t do it.”

  The teacher gave her a hand: “Then tell me: what is the most striking difference between Alice and Marianne?” “Now I know. Alice is always in a good mood and Mizzi is generally serious. Optimists are therefore happier than pessimists.” That broke the ice and almost all the girls were able to make something up. Daisy’s contribution was particularly telling: “Optimists are mostly gay, but pessimists can see the way.”