“Thank you very much.”
“Oh, not at all,” my benefactress replied beamingly. “I was only too happy to do something for the poor Finns.”
We hadn’t yet reached the Continental Divide when gasoline rationing set in. There we were with those darling cars of ours, each one doing ten miles per gallon. Our allowance was only the minimum amount, allotted to all private cars. This wouldn’t even get us out of Colorado. From now on we had to visit the local rationing board in each town, explain our situation, and ask them to help us to get back home.
We had reached Chicago when the local Draft Board summoned Rupert and Werner.
The boys, who felt bad about leaving the family in such a critical moment, were still the bravest ones.
“Mother, remember the old saying: ‘If God closes the door, He opens a window.’ You’ll see that everything will turn out all right again. It seems to be God’s Will that we go.”
“And God’s Will hath no why” went through my head.
We were back East and had finished the concert tour. Georg and I, two girls, and the two boys went up to Stowe to prepare for the family moving. The boys started immediately to make firewood before they had to report for training. It was the beginning of March and still bitterly cold. In the deep snow nothing else could be done.
On March 9 Georg and I drove the boys to Hyde Park, our county seat, where the new draftees assembled. Not much was said on that trip. Each heart was filled to the brim with the one wish: God bless you!
How dry eyes can get when they are not allowed to cry! In the silent group of elderly parents, brides, and children we watched the small local train disappear around the curve, waving “Godspeed” and trying not to be afraid of the future.
It never rains but it pours! F. C. Schang had tried for months, and not left a stone unturned, to get into the Army. When I came to the office with a heavy heart to talk over what was to be done since the boys had left, he received me radiantly in a Captain’s uniform; this was his last day in the office. My knees grew weak. In this most critical moment of our career as singers we would have to do without the support of the one man who had believed in us and who, through that trust and with his personal experience and skill, had helped us to build up our nation-wide reputation. I went to a florist and came back with twelve red roses.
“That’s one from each one of us, Freddy,” I said; because now I was not only talking to the great manager, before whom I had once trembled in my boots—I was also talking to the man with the warm heart and the irresistible laugh, the quick wit and the brilliant mind, the personality whom you are proud to call your friend. Very European as we still were, we had many, many acquaintances from coast to coast, but only a very few whom we called friends. Freddy Schang was one of them.
When he saw now how hard it all was on us, he grew serious and came over from behind his desk.
“Thank you, Maria,” he held my hand. “I feel sure that the Trapp Family Singers, who have weathered many a storm, will also survive this.”
There was a request at the office for one belated single concert in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, ten days hence. The office pointed out to us that this was a chance to try to see whether or not we would be able to sing without the boys.
Of course, we had to try. This seemed like an insurmountable obstacle: first, the finding of genuine music written for women’s choir; and second, the learning of it by heart in practically no time. Father Wasner did the impossible. In one sweep through music libraries he came home with motets by Vittoria and Palestrina for equal voices, and also precious rounds by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and some songs by Schubert and Brahms for women’s voices. Besides that, he arranged some of our old numbers for the new ensemble. From then on, we hardly took time to eat and wash dishes. Once more the house on Merion Road resounded with music. The closer the day came, the more discouraged we grew. We missed the boys so much; not only in singing, but everywhere, all over the house. There wasn’t the same joyous spirit of rehearsing. It was subdued, serious, dutiful. When the day came, we drove over to Bethlehem, knowing that if this concert was not a success, our singing had come to an end. Columbia Concerts would have no more use for us; and there was a $12,000 mortagage on our place, and a run-down farm to be built up, which would cost a lot more money.
At that time we knew over two hundred pieces by heart, but each one was for mixed voices—all of which didn’t do us any good now. It added to our excitement and tension when we discovered several well-known faces from the New York office among the audience; they also knew of the importance of this performance. And all this happened not in some corner of the United States where there hadn’t been many concerts before, and the people would most probably like whatever we did; no, it happened in Bethlehem, where we had sung a year before, and where the audience was composed of singers and music lovers. The world-famous Bach Festivals had educated these people to a high taste in music. If we could please them, we would be all right.
With the help of God we came through with flying colors. I was told that it wasn’t an average, good concert; it was one of those outstanding, excellent ones which one remembers after years, and after having sung hundreds of times. When we sang Brahms’ “The Day Has Come When Thou and I, My Dearest One, Must Say Good-bye,” the audience was in tears; and when we sang finally “The Orchestra Song,” it got the people to their feet, they clapped and clapped and clapped. And that makes the success of a concert: to keep the audience between tears and laughter. The art of your music must be so convincing and so strong that it makes people forget themselves. It must take them out of that everyday state of mind. They had cried and they had laughed, and they wanted more encores than we had prepared. The performance was a great success, and Columbia Concerts was satisfied. Half dead but relieved, we went back to Merion the same night, after having sent a telegram to the boys, saying:
BATTLE OF BETHLEHEM HAS BEEN WON!
Wherewith Western Union demanded to know whether this was a code.
No, it was the truth. It marked the beginning of a new chapter. God, Who had closed the door, had opened a window.
XIII The End of a Perfect Stay
THE next days were full of commotion and unrest; the packing and moving from Merion. Three happy years we had lived in the shelter of this house, which seemed much larger inside than outside. Trying times had been followed by easier ones, and each one of us left many memories within its walls. This had not been an ordinary three years. An important metamorphosis had taken place within us. It changed us from hundred-per-cent Europeans, not into Americans yet—that is a matter of growing and developing which means time—but into people who wanted to become a part of this nation. We could never understand those refugees who seemingly had undergone a magic transformation aboard ship, which they had entered as Europeans and left as ready-made Americans, finding everything wrong which they had left behind, and everything “swell” and “O.K.” which they found here. It had been a slow and almost painful process with us. One cannot love what one does not know. The more we knew about America, the country and its people, the more we felt a strong, warm love grow in our hearts. For instance: there was a war going on, and we were registered as enemy aliens; and not only were we not locked up in a camp, but we could go about our business unmolested, while wearing our foreign costumes and talking our native tongue on the street and in the trains and elevators. There had always remained some German numbers in our programs, and never had the audience minded that. This attitude was completely un-European, this lack of prejudice was heart-warming. The Americans never seemed to ask, “Who are you?” but “How good are you? Let’s see.” They gave you a fair chance to give your best, and then they accepted you for that, whether you came from Poland, Russia, England, or Austria. They even overlooked the language angle. With our music, that language beyond languages, we had sung our way into their hearts, and on that day when the boys were leaving we felt it: that country our boys would be fighting for, and perhaps
dying for, we wanted to be our country. We declared our intention to become citizens. We were allowed to go to Toronto, Canada, and enter the United States, this time not as visitors, but as immigrants. Now we had a quota number, and had to wait five years to become citizens.
The little house was bulging with furniture which belonged to us, the family who had arrived with a few suitcases and four dollars in cash.
It happened like this: Once we met the publishers Sheed and Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sheed from England, who also spent the war years near Philadelphia. We found we had many things in common, and from then on, spent many delightful hours together.
On my first visit to their house I exclaimed:
“Oh, what beautiful rugs!”
This item of furniture the little house on Merion Road didn’t contain.
“Oh,” said Maisie Sheed, “they are from an auction. This one was eight dollars, and this, five dollars, and this one here was the most expensive: twelve dollars.”
They were beautiful old oriental rugs, one even a Bokhara like the one in the living room in Salzburg, and Maisie Sheed told me that there was a place in Philadelphia on Chestnut Street, Samuel T. Freeman’s, where there were auctions every Wednesday. You got good things there very reasonably.
“I always go on Tuesday first to look over what they have. Then I mark down the numbers in which I am interested, and then I take just as much money with me as I want to spend. As you have to pay cash, you don’t run into temptation that way.”
I could hardly wait for next Tuesday. And then I started out to investigate and discover what was behind the name of Freeman. There were three very distinct worlds: the basement, the ground floor, and the second floor. The basement contained a lot of junk. It looked like a receptacle for the contents of other people’s attics; many washbowls and pitchers, mattresses, pillows, and bed springs, dozens and dozens of oversized pictures in old-fashioned frames which, if sold by the pound, should bring good money; nothing which made your heart beat louder. The second floor—what a difference! Only high-priced articles with a high-brow audience. Ladies with the newest hats and gloves. Very expensive furniture, illustrated catalogues which showed its origin abroad, Wedgewood china, crystal glass, jewelry, and acres of carpets, shiny and expensive-looking. Then there was the ground floor, a hybrid of the other two. The majority of the items on sale was mediocre, but somehow one or two first-rate pieces, unrecognized by the crowds, always escaped. I looked all over the huge room.
I returned the next day to the auction with five dollars cash. Very soon I was seized by that special fever which comes while one is witnessing bidding. A tall young man by the name of Bill was the auctioneer. His sonorous voice held the audience spellbound. That voice had many shades. It could sound matter-of-fact, sympathetic; it could plead; it could get outraged: “What, only four dollars for this easy chair? That’s a darn shame!” And sure enough, he would frighten somebody into $4.50. The voice could sound reproachful and then die down to a whisper, which it did now.
“This sideboard, genuine pearwood lined with green felt, four dollars. No one gives more? No one gives more than four dollars for this wonderful piece of craftsmanship? Ladies and gentlemen, if you go to a lumber yard, the lumber alone will cost you three times as much! Who gives more?”
“I,” I said, unnecessarily loud, and when everybody turned towards me, I wished I were inside that sideboard.
A benevolent glance from Bill’s eyes hit me, and “Five dollars, sold!” made me the owner of a genuine pearwood sideboard. It also started a silent friendship. Bill somehow never forgot that I had understood the disgrace that sideboard would have suffered, and had rescued it.
That was the first of many Wednesdays to come. Bill, who had learned that I was a refugee without a table or chair to my name, helped me with all the organ-like registers of his voice. Obviously I was the only refugee in the place. My competitors in bidding were mostly second-hand dealers (the antique store owners went to the second floor), and somehow I seemed to deserve preference over the professionals. When I, very timidly in the beginning, indicated by raising my hand that my heart was set on a certain bed, sofa, chair, table, carpet, etc., Bill’s voice immediately dropped down to contempt:
“And here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those pieces…”
“One of those pieces” seemed to mean, “whoever takes that junk home is an outright fool,” and no one wanted to show such lack of discrimination. Almost invariably I got my piece for a very reasonable price, always under ten dollars. Other people go to the races or to ball games or to Friday Symphony Concerts. I went to Freeman’s, whose ground floor was a heaven of bargains. It had all the flavor of a treasure hunt to search all over the ground floor, crawl behind the furniture, duck under beds and desks to look at the small pictures which were stored there until one found the disguised prince: a chest with the carved inscription “1738,” which finally nobody wanted because of its size, or a beautiful rug, which a hole in its middle had gotten down from the second floor, or a heavily carved bed coming from Tirol, of all places. By and by the place on Merion Road was filled until it couldn’t swallow any more. That was before we had bought the farm, and my husband got worried. Carpets, for instance, according to an unwritten law of Freeman’s, came together with curtains, and I had brought home scores of curtains in all materials, among them very beautiful old brocades, silks, and velvets.
“We shall never have enough windows,” Georg moaned, and he invented most artistically engagements which absolutely had to be done on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. He usually had to do without me, though.
When the family sighs became louder and remarks like: “Everybody can sleep in only one bed at a time” became more frequent, I decided to get me an accomplice, and after I had once lured Father Wasner into Freeman’s, he succumbed to the charms of the place immediately. That time we bought, for practically nothing, six old carved-wood statues of Apostles, a couple of large crystal vases, and a bunch of silver spoons. When I came home that evening, I explained that for mere necessity, for lack of space, I had to buy smaller items now, and that I had, so far, strictly adhered to the principle: first the necessary (tables, chairs, and beds); then the useful (carpets and curtains); and then the luxurious (pictures, vases, and silver spoons).
After we had bought the farm, my situation at home grew no better by any means, as the house on the farm was about half the size of the one in Merion, and where, just where, would we put all these things?
There was a large cow barn on the upper farm, and that’s where we were going to store the furniture for the moment. And now we were packing it into a big van, destined for Stowe, Vermont. These days we were packing from morning till night, and interrupted the packing only for a hasty lunch. We never had to prepare supper, as there was a farewell party every night; at the Smiths’, the Crawfords’, and at many another friend’s house.
And finally, at the Drinkers’. Once more we sat around the large dining room table with Harry at one end and Sophie at the other, with me next to him, and Georg and Father Wasner next to her, the family in between; and in came one of those giant turkeys which Harry carved with such elegance that watching him was at least as much pleasure as eating the turkey. Once more we sat around the fireplace in the large music room and sang no end. This time there was no “let’s do it again.” We wanted to sing every piece once which we had ever done together, and that was a large order. Once more Emily came in with a tray of ginger ale, beer, and pretzels. And then there was that awkward situation which arises invariably when your hearts are full of emotions which cannot be pressed into words. We were so grateful to the Drinkers, with the gratefulness of refugees who have found what they are named for—refuge—for their trust and all their efforts; and the Drinkers, this we could feel, were pleased that we were on our own feet now, and we could sense that they would miss us, the neighbors from across the street. And that is the ingredient absolutely necessary for good parting: that you will be misse
d afterwards. It was the early Pennsylvania spring, forsythia blooming all over the place, all the trees budding, and the robins, fat as ducks, busy with their nests.
“Spring is such a good time to start out something new,” Sophie said.
Then we grouped once more around Father Wasner and sang Bach’s Chorale of Thanksgiving. This we didn’t sing with the Drinkers, we sang it for them.
As I crossed the street looking at the moon which stood bright on a cloudless sky, I couldn’t help thinking:
“Even if Harry and Sophie don’t believe it as literally as we do, how pleased they will be one day when Our Lord says to them: ‘I was a stranger and you took me in. As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me. Come, enter into eternal joy!’”
XIV The New House
EARLY next morning we left for Vermont—for home. North of Rutland there was snow; and after we had passed through Burlington and come into the mountains, there was lots more. When we reached Stowe, we came into a real blizzard.
The dark floor in the living room of our house was partly covered with a thin layer of snow, “like sugar on a cake,” as Johannes remarked, because windows and doors did not shut tightly.
“That’s very good for sweeping,” exclaimed Hedwig, taking a broom and demonstrating how well you can get after the dust that way.
The man who had lived with his family on the lower farm, which we had bought, too, had remained there and was now our farmer. He had helped the men when they came with the furniture. All we had to do was put up enough beds for the first night. While Georg went down into the small cellar to make a fire in the one-pipe hot air furnace, we ran to and from the barn with parts of beds and mattresses and pillows. The beds were pretty large, and the house was pretty small, and it was only twenty degrees above zero and rather chilly. Johannes discovered a register in the living room floor. Lying flat on his stomach, he pulled a chain which opened the furnace, and he could gaze right into the flames. When he let the chain drop, it made a loud bang. What a delightful heating system; not dull and invisible as in a city house. Then Martina came in with a lighted kerosene lamp. My enthusiastic exclamations of how homey, how cozy it was, as in the olden days, couldn’t shatter Georg’s stony silence. Poor Georg. He couldn’t see any of the romance of all this. In fact, he didn’t see the doughnut at all—he only saw the hole. I knew he was genuinely troubled about the shabby little house, into which we really couldn’t fit for longer than a weekend, “and a weekend in summer with picnics out-of-doors, I mean,” he had said. The crooked barns, the boys gone, and not much money, with half a year to go before we would make any more, and how many concerts would we get without the boys—this nobody knew. It was a picnic supper that first night with paper cups and paper plates, which were burned afterwards in the furnace while Johannes pulled the chain. After supper there was a knock on the door, and the farmer came in.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers Page 24
