And After the Fire

by Lauren Belfer

  “Tell me the details of the board’s vote.”

  “You’ll be amazed. Shocked.” He paused for dramatic effect. “After months of lobbying, not one, not one single vote, apart from my own, in favor of supporting a Cornelia and Robertson Barstow Family Foundation Center for Gilbert and Sullivan. I was embarrassed. Humiliated.”

  Susanna decided to stay. At least for now. “If you’d listened to my advice in the first place, this never would have happened to you.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve been hoist with my own petard,” he said with his usual theatrical flair. Then he looked at her with an odd flatness, and she felt as if she were seeing him as he really was, gray, aging, weakening. “It will never happen again, believe me.”

  Several hours later, Susanna sat on a bench in Central Park. She was surrounded by runners, bicyclists, and strolling tourists. She held a latte. A large chocolate cookie with chocolate chips, from a French bakery near her office, was in a bag on her lap. She broke off small pieces of the cookie one by one, to make it last longer. It was crispy. The chocolate flavor was intense and pure. The chips were luscious, melting.

  She was trying to revive herself. She felt exhausted from the praise heaped on her at the board meeting, with more praise at the luncheon that followed.

  The board members (apart from Rob) seemed to believe that she’d achieved a victory, but if it was a victory, she felt no satisfaction from it. She’d done her job. She’d preserved the foundation’s mandate. She’d refused to be swayed by Rob’s whims.

  She’d taken a risk, and she’d come through it. During the past few years, her focus had been on protecting herself; she’d become a passive recipient of her own life. Now, with this issue at work, she’d been able to make a choice, and take a step forward.

  A class of five- or six-year-olds, arranged in two rows, filed past with their teachers. Each child wore a white hat. An older couple walked by, guidebooks in hand.

  She remembered last night, sitting beside Dan in the close. After being fearful for so long, she’d hoped that he would take her hand, would pull her toward him. She’d imagined him doing this. Later she’d stood at the doorway and waited for him to join her. But he hadn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to. Or maybe he was waiting for her to give him permission. She was ready to give him permission.

  One risk after another for me these days, she thought, and she was glad to realize that she could laugh at herself again. She was becoming more like the person she used to be.

  With summer approaching, she was due for a vacation. She could go to Germany with Dan, find the house, trace the family that had owned the cantata. She had a duty to her uncle, to follow through herself, rather than delegate the task to someone else. She could trust Dan, at the very least as a traveling companion. She hoped as more.

  Now that she knew she had a job, she could begin making plans.

  Chapter 34

  Dan had an hour to kill before meeting a colleague for lunch at a café on Sixteenth Street off Union Square. He figured he could fill the time by perusing the used classical CDs at his favorite New York City shop, Academy Records on Eighteenth between Fifth and Sixth. He walked up Sixth Avenue from Scott’s apartment.

  When he reached Sixteenth Street, he decided he’d better find the café before he went to the CD shop. He didn’t want to be late for lunch. Halfway down the street, he saw a building called the Center for Jewish History. He’d never heard of it. A poster advertised the current exhibition: The History of Jewish Philanthropy in America. Susanna would want to know about the exhibit. It provided an excellent excuse for phoning her.

  Feeling the pull of locating the café, he looked down the block. He thought he spotted its sign. A quick check on the map on his phone confirmed it. He was three minutes away at most. He went into the building.

  The Center for Jewish History turned out to be a combination of library and museum, with exhibitions on two floors. The presentation on Jewish philanthropy was on the main floor and began with the Colonial era. It was extensive, filled with family names he recognized—Guggenheim, Lehman—and many more he didn’t recognize, with accompanying photographs of hospitals, museums, and synagogues. The name Schiffman appeared in a photograph of a dormitory at Barnard College, but Dan didn’t know if this was Scott’s family. Scott had never mentioned it.

  Returning to the entry corridor, he checked his watch. He still had time to spare. He looked at the listing of other exhibitions. Jews of Morocco could be interesting, but not for him. A Refugee in Shanghai: One Woman’s Story—no. On the second floor, in Gallery B, Jewish Stammbücher of 18th and 19th Century Germany.

  Now this did sound interesting. Dan knew that in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Germany, people of the middle and upper classes kept Stammbücher. The closest modern equivalent were visiting books, but Stammbücher were much more. It was never enough to write, Thanks for the great party. See you soon. You had to leave a message that was memorable. Guests tried to outdo one another. Some wrote poems. Others created drawings, from caricatures to portraits of pets to botanical studies. Composers wrote brief musical sketches into Stammbücher. Dan had seen such entries by both Bach and Beethoven. The books were treasure troves of cultural history. And they were fun.

  He walked up the stairs and found the exhibition room. The lights were turned down. The exhibit was small, two glass-topped tables containing eight books in each. A note on the wall said that pages would be turned each week. The lighting was kept low to preserve the fragile paper.

  After Dan’s eyes adjusted, he was hooked. The books were delightful. One page showed a drawing of a playful dragon. Another had a poem about the glories of beer. Some guests wrote in English, some in French. He saw a greeting in Russian, with a sketch of a mock-fierce bear beneath it. He saw a script he thought might be Turkish. The handwriting of the entries was remarkably graceful, as if every educated person of that era were the modern-day equivalent of a professional calligrapher.

  When he finished examining the books in the glass cases, he spotted a sign on the wall next to a computer screen: Explore the digital collection.

  And so he did, choosing the albums from the list at random, leafing from page to page, or more correctly, doing the computerized equivalent.

  He reached the Stammbuch of Mirjam Itzig, born Oppenheimer, the wife of Moses Daniel Itzig. His fascination continued. Wasn’t Itzig the family name of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn’s grandmother? One guest had written a note in the shape of a circular maze. Another page featured a silhouette of a lovely woman, seen in profile.

  He clicked to the next page. A three-line message and signature caught his attention. On this page, in Berlin on June 18, 1784, Sara Levy geborene Itzig had written, Laßen Sie Theuerste! weder Zeit noch Abwesenheit aus Ihrem Herzen verdrängen Ihre Sie stets schätzende und aufrichtigst liebende Schwester, which basically translated as, “My most precious one! Let neither time nor absence push out of your heart the sister who cherishes and sincerely adores you.”

  Sara Itzig Levy. He’d occasionally come upon that name over the years. She was a skilled harpsichordist, evidently the only Berlin student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. She was also the great-aunt of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, an intriguing footnote in the story of the famous siblings. And she collected manuscripts of the Bach family, not simply Johann Sebastian, but also his sons Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Johann Christian. She must have been the sister-in-law of this Stammbuch’s owner, Mirjam Oppenheimer Itzig.

  On the next page, with the same date, was the following:

  Ich werde mich bemühen Ihnen durch . . . In Dan’s rough translation of the extravagant prose of the era: “I shall endeavor to show you through more than words that there will be neither far-offness of place nor far-offness of friendship; this I, your friend and brother, assure you.” Samuel Salomon Levy. Berlin, June 18, 1784.

  The fat, triangular B. The looping precision of the S. The distinct clarity of the m and the n. This handwr
iting looked curiously familiar, as if it had been pressed onto his memory without him even realizing.

  An improbable hunch became a conviction within him. He punched his password into his phone. Scott had sent him the digital photographs that Susanna had allowed, of the first several pages of the cantata manuscript.

  The handwriting of Samuel Salomon Levy’s message in the visiting book looked like it matched some of the unknown writing on the wrapper of Susanna’s cantata.

  He needed to share this with Scott. He took a photo of the Stammbuch page on the computer screen before him. He sent it to Scott.

  When he finished lunch, he had a text from Scott confirming the match.

  By dinnertime, Dan was back in Granville, trying to maintain Becky’s usual routine even as his discovery and its implications . . . well, to say they electrified him wasn’t too strong a term. As soon as Becky was asleep, he would begin researching the lives of Sara and Samuel Levy.

  By 8:15, after three adjustments of her night-light and two adjustments of the curtain, Becky was settled and he was free to go to his study. He checked his phone on the way. Susanna had left a voice message, asking him to call her. This was a happy surprise.

  “Hi, I received your message,” he said when she answered.

  “Thank you for calling back.”

  Was she actually worried that he might not? “I made a discovery today.” Damn. He hadn’t intended to tell her yet. He wanted to know more before he said anything.

  “That’s exciting.” When he didn’t continue, she said, “And?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Enthusiasm got the better of me. Once I’ve done more research, we’ll talk about it. Once I have more of a context.”

  “Context—always the crucial word.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m calling because I realized that I have some vacation time coming up. I’ve decided to join you in Germany. If traveling together is okay with you. It’s my responsibility, to try to locate the house in Weimar where my uncle found the cantata, so I can find out who lived there and whether any of their family has survived. Also I want to go to Buchenwald, because my uncle was there. And I’ve never been to Berlin.”

  “Well, that’s great, that you can make the trip. Berlin is a terrific city.” In a rush, he began telling her about his many experiences there, his love for the place—all this a cover for everything he wasn’t saying about how thrilled he was by her news. He didn’t want her to feel threatened, or smothered, by his feelings. “The energy and creativity, in the old eastern sector especially. Of course we should travel together. I’m going anyway.”

  The discussion turned to practicalities. The specifics of dates, airplanes, travel from city to city.

  “In Berlin I always stay with the family that’s hosted me for years, since I was a graduate student.” In Leipzig, he’d be at the conference hotel. He hoped against hope that they would end up staying together, but he didn’t want her to think that he was reading more into her plan than she’d intended.

  “That’s fine. I’ll make my own reservations. I . . .” She paused, and he sensed her searching for the correct words. “I enjoyed our time together in the close last night.”

  “Me, too. Very much.”

  “So we’ll stay in touch?”

  This sounded almost plaintive, as if she needed reassurance from him, he was taken aback to realize. “Definitely.”

  “I’m glad.”

  They said good night.

  Chapter 35

  LEIPZIGERSTRASSE 3

  BERLIN, PRUSSIA

  June 1846

  Sara rested on a bench in Lea’s garden, gathering her strength for the challenge ahead: she was about to perform in one of Fanny’s Sunday concerts. She closed her eyes and reviewed the piece in her mind. She was hoping Lea—

  Lea was dead, Sara reminded herself. Even now, four years later, Sara found herself automatically looking forward to seeing her niece; to sharing meals with her, to discussing questions, concerns, gossip. Lea had been only sixty-five when she died. She’d been fine that day four years ago, her usual self, or so Sara had thought when she arrived at noontime to help Lea prepare for a gathering. By evening Lea had collapsed. By morning, she was gone. The doctors called it a stroke.

  How Sara missed her. She was eighty-five this year, older than she had any right to be, when Lea was already dead. This morning she’d woken up feeling stiff and confused, and for a frightening moment, she hadn’t known where she was.

  Because of this, she’d felt compelled after breakfast to review her last will and testament, to make certain all was accounted for. The cantata her teacher had given to her was not, of course, listed in her will. For years she’d put off deciding who to give it to, as if by pretending that it didn’t exist, she could make it disappear. Now she must quickly determine its future, while she was lucid enough to choose wisely, and still capable of explaining what it was. Her nephew Felix was the logical choice, but given his drive and ambition, she didn’t trust him to keep it secret.

  She opened her eyes and looked around.

  Elias was with her today. Yes, Elias, one of her original orphan boys. He was speaking with Alexander von Humboldt, stooped and white-haired. Elias was too young to receive the burden of the cantata. Alexander was too old. Elias glanced her way continually; he kept watch over her even though they both maintained the fiction that she was self-reliant. Elias had grown to be tall and lanky. She paid his fees at university, where he studied Classics. Of her other first boys, Carl, who’d spoken French that day, had been claimed by a cousin in Freiburg, and Sara had lost touch with him. Georg had died of a fever when he was twelve. Often she mused about the man he might have grown to become. Daniel, who’d admired Frederick the Great, was studying history, and Sara paid his fees, as well. They were the first of nearly a decade of orphans who’d touched her life. She had been the honorary mother for as many as she could.

  So although she herself was unfruchtbar, barren, she’d bettered the lives of many children.

  “Tante. Are you ready?” Sebastian stood before her. He was sixteen this year, and he looked like a winsome angel still. “Mother sent me to find you. The concert will soon begin.”

  “Thank you, Sebastian.” She roused herself, and with his help, she stood.

  “More than two hundred people are attending today,” he said.

  “Astounding.” She suspected Sebastian exaggerated, but she’d credit at least a hundred and fifty.

  “May I hold your arm?”

  “How thoughtful of you, Sebastian.”

  Seeing her rise, Elias hastened to join them.

  “May I assist you, Frau Levy?” To Sebastian, Elias said, “I’m happy to accompany Frau Levy to the performance salon.”

  “I have her arm already,” Sebastian said, squeezing it as if to prove his point.

  Were these two young men actually fighting over her?

  “With today’s heat,” Sara said, “I feel I must have support on each arm.”

  Thus arranged, they walked to the Gartenhaus.

  “Ah, here she is, safe and sound,” said Hensel when he spotted them.

  “Thank you, boys,” Sara said, indicating she no longer required their help. She could most certainly walk by herself to the front of the salon for her performance, in the first piece of today’s program.

  The audience was gathering. Tout le monde attended Fanny’s Sunday concerts. Today the guests included the rather ferocious-looking Giacomo (as he now styled himself) Meyerbeer, who’d experienced fantastic success composing operas in the French style. He accompanied his mother, dear Amalia. From Jacob Beer to Giacomo Meyerbeer . . . he’d changed his name but abided with the faith of his heritage. Sara could give the cantata to him. But could she trust him to keep it secret? He’d become a man of moods and high drama, at least by Sara’s reckoning. No, she couldn’t trust him.

  She took her place, greeted Fanny, and once again reviewed the music in her mind:
the Concerto in D Minor for three harpsichords and strings, by Johann Sebastian Bach. Today it would be performed with three pianos. Although she felt most at home with the harpsichord, Sara found switching between piano and harpsichord to be effortless. For today’s performance, she would be joining Fanny and a young friend of hers, a talented musician in his early twenties.

  “Frau Levy, an exciting day for us,” said this friend as he took his place. He was a handsome and good-humored man, and he had ambitions to join the diplomatic corps. Sara had been introduced to him several times during the past week as they rehearsed, but she simply could not remember his name. She wouldn’t reveal her forgetfulness by asking yet again. Fanny announced the piece.

  And so they began. Sara might not remember the young man’s name, but she remembered this piece, every note, and she played it from memory. What a joy it was . . . the sense of proportion, the balance among the three pianos, the astonishing profusion of trills and runs.

  All too soon, it was over. The applause was sustained. Afterward, Sebastian, with polished poise, escorted her to an empty seat in the audience, next to Alexander von Humboldt.

  “I saved this spot for you,” Alexander said, patting the chair. “You were brilliant, by the way. As usual. Exactly as I expected.”

  “Thank you.” She felt herself reddening, as if she were a girl.

  “Blushing, for me? After all these years?”

  She tried to think of a witty rejoinder, but nothing came to her. What a life Alexander had led, as a scientist and diplomat, exploring such places as South America and eastern Russia. But he was still and always her kind, gentle friend. She leaned against his shoulder for an instant, a gesture allowed them within society because of their elevated ages, and he responded with a quick wrap of his arm around her shoulder.

  The next piece on the program was Robert Schumann’s Andante and Variations, op. 46, for two pianos, performed by Fanny and her friend. After only a few bars, Sara found herself mystified: Why had Fanny paired a Bach masterpiece with such a work as this erratic Schumann? It was technically virtuosic, but tiresome. It jumped from style to style. It led nowhere.