And After the Fire

by Lauren Belfer

  “I’m the director,” Fanny said.

  “Tante, you absolutely can play Titania if you want to,” said Paul. “Don’t be scared. It’s just us. I was scared when I first began acting, but not anymore.”

  What a lovely boy. “I don’t enjoy acting,” Sara said. “For myself, I mean. I like it in others.”

  “In that case, why don’t you be the audience?” said Rebecka. “We never have a proper audience.”

  “That, too, is a kind invitation, and I thank you. I’m rather occupied at the moment, however: I left the reception to walk alone in the garden.”

  “That’s also important,” Felix said with earnest consideration. “You will experience the Waldeinsamkeit.”

  “Indeed.” Waldeinsamkeit: the enrapturing loneliness and peace of the forest.

  “Tante, since you appreciate the garden,” Felix asked, “have you read the latest edition of our newspaper, the Gartenzeitung?” The Garden Times.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You must.” Felix ran to retrieve it from a box positioned on the nearby sundial. He gave it to her.

  “Thank you, Felix. I shall find a secluded bench and delight in reading it.”

  “Thank you, Tante,” he said with a solemnity that left Sara embarrassed. She’d been speaking ironically. He paused, looking worried. “It’s our only copy.”

  “I’ll take good care of it. I’ll return it before the concert.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll say farewell for now,” Sara said.

  “Farewell, Tante,” they said in unison as she walked away.

  Then Fanny instructed: “Pray continue, Felix.”

  “Where was I?” Felix said. “I have it: Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight . . .”

  As Sara continued along the paths, their words faded behind her. The children were charming. Nonetheless Sara found something a bit too precious, a bit too isolated about them, here in their walled garden. Lea and Abraham doted on them endlessly. Sara couldn’t remember herself being doted upon. She could count only a few occasions when she’d experienced her father’s or her mother’s undivided attention. Admittedly, fifteen children growing up in one household was rather different from four.

  But Fanny, Felix, Rebecka, and Paul weren’t precisely children anymore. Fanny was an adult. Lea had sent away the one suitor who’d thus far pursued Fanny—sent him away not for one year, which might be considered a suitable waiting period, but for five years. Fanny would be twenty-three when he returned. If he returned. He was a gifted artist. Sara suspected that Lea’s true quarrel with him was not his relative financial poverty but that Fanny’s marriage would break the dreamlike spell that held the family close. Fanny was a talented keyboardist with a particular gift for the works of Beethoven. She also composed music. Her pieces were skilled and pleasing, if somewhat lacking in originality. Her work was improving, however, and Sara had great hopes for her.

  Finding a shaded bench beneath an arbor of white roses, Sara sat down. The handwritten Gartenzeitung was filled with drawings of the house and garden, poems, and humorous articles on the concerns of the city. Amusing? Whimsical? Sara sighed.

  The bell rang, calling her to the concert. Today’s event was one in a series of midday Sunday concerts that Sara had attended here, the social and cultural élite, Christian and Jewish, brought together harmoniously by music. As Sara returned to the house, she greeted friends along the way.

  The palais had an unusual design feature, not visible from the street: a long rear wing, called the Gartenhaus, or garden house. This rustic structure had a dozen rooms, several kitchens, and, most crucially, a columned performance hall, called the Gartensaal, that could accommodate a sizable crowd, well over a hundred, especially on days like today, when the weather permitted its series of French doors to be opened.

  When she reached the terrace, Abraham Mendelssohn, looking dapper in his fashionable cravat, was saying to one of their distant relations, a cousin from Pomerania who’d called on Sara the day before, “Yes, yes, my daughter Fanny will perform today. Music is the ideal ornament for her. Never to replace her true calling as a wife and mother, of course.”

  This was a constant refrain from Abraham: Fanny was awaiting her true calling (even though her suitor had been sent away). With his ready smile, Abraham was forever kind toward Sara, and she chided herself for her stubbornly negative opinion of him, but he did rule the family like a dictator. Nonetheless he made Lea happy, or so Lea persistently claimed.

  “As to Felix,” Abraham continued, “he’s the master in the making.”

  Always Felix, never Fanny. Felix was the one who’d accompanied his father on a recent trip to Paris. Felix, the one who’d visited Goethe in Weimar not once but several times. Felix, who’d already had his music published, and who performed in public, not simply in the family’s private Gartensaal.

  “Felix will take his place among the greatest composers in German history. Already he’s being compared to Mozart . . .”

  No, Sara could never bring herself to like Abraham Mendelssohn.

  “Tante.” Lea was at her side. “I’ve reserved a seat for you near the front on the left, so you can see the keyboard.”

  “Thank you, my dear. And let me give you the Gartenzeitung. I promised the children I’d take good care of it.”

  “Ah, the Gartenzeitung . . . the ways they find to amuse themselves.” Her tone was at once exasperated and indulgent. “I’ll make certain it’s returned safely to its box.”

  “Thank you.”

  Finding her seat, Sara glanced around. How the Gartensaal came to be built, years ago, she couldn’t imagine. The central cupola provided a soft, filtered light. Surreptitiously Sara counted her fellow guests, giving up at seventy.

  String players, including a violinist, violist, and cellist, gathered at the front of the room, around the fortepiano. They began tuning their instruments. When required, Abraham employed professionals from the royal orchestra for the Sunday concerts. Fanny took her place at the piano.

  At a nod from the violinist, Fanny rose. She announced, “As the first piece on our program today, we will perform the Piano Quartet number 2 in F Minor, opus 2, composed by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in 1823, in honor of his teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter.”

  Bartholdy . . . this was the name by which the family styled itself nowadays. Abraham seemed to believe that the addition of the name of the family dairy farm would downplay the memory of his father, the renowned philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

  Fanny gave the signal, and the music began. The quartet was a solid effort, especially in view of the fact that it had been written when Felix was fourteen. Yes, thought Sara, it was workmanlike, occasionally bombastic, derivative of Beethoven. A few moments in the adagio movement touched her. But overall the piece wasn’t worthy of comparison to Mozart, or to Beethoven for that matter. In due course the piece concluded, and Sara did not regret its passing.

  The string players dispersed. Paul, carrying his cello, joined his sister. After a moment of tuning and adjustment, Fanny rose once more. “Next, the Andante con variazioni in D major for piano and cello, a stunning new work, not yet fully completed, by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, composed in honor of Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy.”

  Young Paul . . . the piece had a technical complexity that he easily managed. Sara leaned forward and focused her attention. His performance was poignant and filled with melancholy. He made the music reveal emotions beyond his years. Sara was moved. Judging from the applause when he finished, others shared her opinion.

  With an appealing diffidence, Paul bowed and left the performance area before the applause ended. Why had she never heard talk from Abraham about a musical career for Paul? She’d love to hear Paul perform Beethoven’s third and fourth cello sonatas, written in Beethoven’s earlier style, free of his later harangues.

  When the audience quieted, Fanny rose and said in a mischievous tone, “And now our final piece for today: t
he concert overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, a brilliant composition for piano four hands.”

  Sara had heard about this piece from Lea. Felix had been laboring over it for months.

  Felix joined Fanny. Brother and sister sat side by side. They exchanged impish grins. They were unusually close. Too close for their own good, perhaps.

  As the piece unfolded, Sara felt herself transported into another realm, ethereal and enchanted . . . I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows . . .

  Sara was amazed, and awed, by the preternatural originality of the music. Fanny and Felix played their parts as if they were of one mind, performing the intricate piece from memory.

  As the closing chords lingered in the air, the two siblings raised their hands from the keyboard. The applause began. Fanny and Felix rose, laughing. They embraced.

  All at once Sara understood: Abraham had not exaggerated. He and Lea did not indulge Felix. The children did not lead lives of empty charm. Felix Mendelssohn (God help her, she’d never add the absurd Bartholdy) was indeed another Mozart. In fact, he was greater than another Mozart. He was himself, fully and completely.

  Fanny stood behind Felix as he bowed, so that the attention was focused on him. He looked back at her, as if for support and approval, which she gave him through a quick hug, but then she stepped aside once more.

  Sara realized that Fanny, too, understood: Felix was much more than her younger brother. The wildly enthusiastic applause continued. Felix bowed again. He was an awkward, modest, gangly boy in formal clothes, a boy not yet grown into manhood, not even fully comprehending what he had already accomplished.

  The future was open to him. How would he fill it?

  Chapter 27

  Seven a.m., and Reverend Frank Mueller was settled on the rectory roof with his morning coffee and his New York Times. His iPod was fully charged, and he wore his headphones. This morning he was listening to J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, on piano, the astonishing Simone Dinnerstein performance. He never listened to Glenn Gould. For him, Gould was eccentric and self-indulgent, too much Gould and not enough Bach.

  Whenever the weather cooperated, he enjoyed his rooftop morning ritual. He defined weather cooperating as neither raining nor snowing and a temperature above 45 degrees Fahrenheit. He was happy to wear a coat and long underwear, as he did today. He made adjustments to his timing in accordance with the ebb and flow of daylight over the course of the year. He liked to arrive soon after dawn, when the sky was lavender, and stay until the sun was above the buildings on Fifth Avenue. On roof mornings, he prepared his coffee mit Schlag, with sweet whipped cream. Because he rose before his dear wife, she didn’t have to confront him on this. She was obsessively concerned about his diet. He, too, was concerned about his diet, but his priorities were different. He’d happily pass up any number of grilled tenderloins with brandy peppercorn sauce (and God knew he loved that) for the privilege of sitting on his rooftop each morning to enjoy his coffee mit Schlag in the peace of the Lord’s own dawning day.

  From his rooftop perch, Central Park and the apartment buildings of Fifth Avenue spread to the east. To the west, the Hudson River and the cliffs of New Jersey. He had much to be grateful for. God had been good to him. Thankfulness filled his heart each morning when he sat down on the roof with his New York Times and his coffee.

  Today, as usual, he began the paper with the news summary on page 2. How he loved his newspaper. He prayed—yes, God help him, he prayed—that the physical newspaper would continue to exist throughout his lifetime, despite the profligate waste of lumber to produce newsprint, the worrying reduction in readership, and the proliferation of electronic devices. Bringing his computer, tablet, or phone up here in the morning to read the digital version of what was supposed to be a newspaper just would not be the same.

  So, the news summary . . . the usual political viciousness in America and violent upheavals around the globe. The Arts section was his reward for slogging through the world’s miseries, and he always read the Arts summary last.

  Musicologist and theologian arrested in Heidelberg, Germany, for crimes against humanity, page A5.

  What? Had he read this correctly? He tried again. The words were the same.

  He turned to page A5. He saw a black-and-white photo of several stalwart SS men standing beside a mass grave. In the mass grave, limbs jutted out at unnatural angles. The SS men smoked and laughed together. The thin young man in the middle of the group, taller than the others . . . could it be, as the article claimed, Dietrich Bauer? The line of the jaw, the angle of the nose, these were similar. The height, too, was familiar, as was the mien, the self-importance.

  But the person in the photo was young. Dietrich Bauer was old.

  In 1941 in what is now the western Ukraine . . .

  Mueller didn’t want to read this. The thought of mass graves overseen by a personal acquaintance cast down his soul.

  He forced himself to continue: 953 men, women, and children were taken from a group of villages . . . He made himself read even as bile rose within him. They were beaten along the road to keep them moving . . .

  The Goldberg Variations in their sacred glory continued singing in his ears. He, Frank Mueller, had often sat with Dietrich Bauer over a few beers and discussed the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. They’d broken bread together.

  Mueller had never suspected. Never once. Okay, Bauer made some surprising references to Jews, but those references came under the category of harmless cranky old men not subject to political correctness. Or so Mueller had decided years ago. And last month in Princeton, Bauer had affirmed that Christian chastisement of Jews should not extend to the taking of life.

  . . . children who couldn’t keep up were lifted by the feet and swung against . . .

  Justice dictated that Bauer was innocent until proven guilty, but Mueller had to assume that the old man wasn’t arrested without probable cause. Again he studied the photo. The strong chin, the well-trained body, the precise uniform. The smile as he and his buddies relaxed with cigarettes beside the trench filled with naked bodies, some no doubt still clinging to life.

  How old was Bauer in 1941? The article said he was eighty-seven now. Mueller wished he had his phone with him, for the calculator. He created a picture of the numbers in his mind and did the math. Bauer was nineteen in the photo.

  At nineteen, Bauer was essentially a child. People change as they grow older. At least Mueller believed they did. Faith had called to Bauer, and he’d matured into a theologian. His many devotional writings . . . Mueller had read them all. Nonetheless, Mueller felt a dread growing within himself: Could Bauer possibly have believed that he’d been doing the Lord’s work during the war? On the other hand, Bauer might have thought of his career as a kind of penance for his actions in the war.

  . . . forced to dig their own graves . . .

  Where was the merciful all-powerful God, while Dietrich Bauer smoked and laughed beside a trench of naked, dead, and dying humans?

  Mueller couldn’t understand. Personal evil, institutional evil—did God allow Himself to wait for the good people in the world to rise up to defeat it?

  So many questions, tugging at him. Did the persistent survival of Judaism open the possibility that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah—was that why Christian anxiety lapsed into violence against Jews? Was it because Christians historically blamed Jews for the Crucifixion, even though they believed the Crucifixion had to take place in order for Jesus to fulfill His mission on earth?

  Although Mueller didn’t like to focus on it, several members of his own family had been members of the Nazi party. It was a way to get ahead. He refused to consider that it was more to them than a social necessity. He would not countenance that his relatives might have believed in the tenets of Nazism in the same way that he, for example, believed in the tenets of Lutheranism. When the war was over, his grandmother said that all their family members in Germany during t
he war had been members of the resistance, risking their lives every day to defeat the Nazis and to shelter Jews. This was the improbable if not blatantly false story that Mueller had been raised on.

  Years later, when he was helping to clean out his grandmother’s home after she died, Mueller had found photos sent from the family in Germany before the war. Family members dressed in Nazi uniforms. Giving the salute. He’d hidden these photos, ashamed to show them to his parents or to his cousins. He still had them, in a shoe box under the bed. Even his dear wife had never seen them. Someday, when he himself was gone, his children, Chrissy, Pam, and Tom, would find the photos, and they’d have to figure out what to do with them, and how to understand them.

  The strains of the Goldberg Variations, aching with longing, tugged at him.

  Dan had been trying to tell him something in Princeton. After his many years counseling the needy, Mueller liked to think that he could always spot the my-friend-has-this-problem trick. Dan must have discovered something important and problematic. Mueller needed to stay alert, to find out what it was.

  The recording reached the remarkable twenty-eighth variation. Dietrich Bauer liked this movement, too. They’d discussed it two years ago, over breakfast during a conference in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

  Mass murder. The Goldberg Variations. Johann Sebastian Bach composed for the Lord, dedicating his compositions, every one, to the glory of God alone.

  Mueller’s brain was teeming. He slowed himself down. He focused on the music, the Lord’s own music, emanating from a rectangular, flat machine that fit into Mueller’s shirt pocket. This amazing little gadget held all of Bach’s music, in the performances that Mueller liked best. Mueller let the music of God suffuse his mind. He’d always been certain of its sacred truth and power. It calmed and steadied him.

  The Quodlibet began. Traditionally this section was described as a medley of frivolous folk tunes, tacked onto the end of the Goldberg Variations as a learned joke. In an epiphany, however, as if the Lord were indeed manifestly with him, Mueller heard the affinity of the Quodlibet’s main theme with the hymn Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, “What God does is done well.”