by Karin Tanabe
Emi had practiced almost exclusively on Steinways when she’d lived in Germany, but never in her life had she played on an instrument more beautiful than the Hartmanns’.
After she had finished playing, letting the étude’s last hopeful note linger, Hani looked at her with tears in her brown eyes and shook her head. “What a gift you have. What a tremendous gift. Look at me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Joy. Tears of joy.”
She walked over and sat next to Emi on the piano bench. “You must come back and play for us, Emi. Come every day that you and your family live in Vienna. I beg you. Froschi went off to school with a leather bag and some books he won’t read and came home with a concert pianist. What a very memorable day.”
That hot September afternoon—filled with the charismatic Hartmanns, Hungarian servants, Fragonard paintings and clothes that needed to be mended—was the start of Emi’s days in Austria playing the rosewood Steinway for the family. Sometimes she would play for Leo and both of his parents; sometimes she would come in the evenings and provide the entertainment for a dinner party the family was hosting. But no matter how many people were there, she was always just playing for Leo.
After a few weeks, she called him Froschi, too, and after a few months it was mein Froschi. Leo quickly became hers, and everything that Vienna would come to mean to her was tied up in him.
CHAPTER 16
LEO HARTMANN
SEPTEMBER 1937–NOVEMBER 1938
Leo Hartmann was a good son. He had been an easy baby to take care of, and in later years he was certainly going to be a good man, Hani Hartmann would say to anyone who would listen, but mostly to him. Ever since he was old enough to understand, she’d told him that she’d thought she would have more children but after she had him—with his wild brown hair and bright green eyes—she knew she could never love another baby as much.
“It would have been selfish to have more children,” she’d told him when he was younger and would ask why he didn’t have any siblings. “How could I have loved anyone even half as much as I love my Froschi? When you were a baby you had the fattest little hands and I would squeeze them and saliva would bubble out of your mouth like a hot spring. I’d pray for you to stay small forever. Sadly, it didn’t work,” she’d say, kissing the top of his head, which got harder for her to reach every year. Leo would roll his eyes at his mother whenever she spoke in her sentimental way, but secretly he was glad he was the only one. He couldn’t imagine having to share his mother’s love with anyone else.
The kindness that Hani Hartmann appreciated about Leo, and that he learned to appreciate about both his mother and father, was also highly regarded by their community in Vienna. Having old money, made in honest ways, was something that caught people’s attention, but what held their attention were the Hartmanns themselves. Perhaps it was the smallness of their family, coupled with the largeness of their home, but the ornate rooms were never empty for long. Both Hani and Max—Max especially—came from prominent Jewish families that had been in Austria for more than a century. The Hartmanns had been chocolate tycoons for several generations, as Leo’s grandfather had founded the largest chocolate factory in Vienna in 1850. Max, surprisingly the family’s rebel, had opted not to continue in confectionery and had gone into banking, where he did exceedingly well. He kept his stake in the family business while allowing his enterprising younger brother, Georg, to run it. Hani, who came to Vienna from Linz when she was eighteen years old, did not grow up with the level of wealth Max had, but she was from the Baum family, a name that Max’s mother happily approved of. Even if Hani had sprung from the gutter, Max would have married her. Her joie de vivre was even more intoxicating than her looks and together, they agreed, they would live a wonderful life.
While Max didn’t work at his family’s factory after he went off to the University of Vienna to study economics, he was still monetarily and emotionally invested. If a worker was down on their luck, between roofs over their heads, they were invited to stay with Max and Hani Hartmann. If one had a family member moving to town, needing shelter before they embarked on their own, they stayed at the Hartmanns’. And there was always a handful of Hungarians coming and going, friends and relatives of their staff who needed a few days in Vienna without spending their own money. Max and Hani’s open-door policy made them popular not only within the city’s Jewish community, which they were fairly active in, but among the blue-collar Viennese employed at the Hartmann chocolate factory.
That same openness, the charisma that came effortlessly to the Hartmanns, worked on Emi right away.
It took only one afternoon for Leo and his parents to captivate her, and it took only one more for her to realize that at their school, in 1937, she was the only admirer Leo Hartmann had left.
It wasn’t always that way. Since few things appeal to children more than a rich classmate who also has a never-ending supply of sweets, Leo Hartmann had been surrounded by friends as a child. They were as attracted to his peaceable temperament as they were to the chauffeured black car he came to school in. But in 1937, Austria was no longer the country of Leo’s youth. Emi was the only non-Austrian at their Catholic school, but Leo was the only Jew.
“I thought I’d tell you before everyone else did,” Leo said to Emi outside the stone building before her second day at the school began. On warm mornings, the students lingered outside, soaking in as much of the sunshine as they could before having to sit silently in the cold Gothic building. Leo looked at Emi’s pretty figure, her subtle profile, and wished they could spend the day there together.
“I don’t mind if you’re Jewish,” said Emi, sitting close to him. “Our ambassador to Germany has a German-Jewish wife, Edita. And she’s fascinating. They’ve already come to see us in Vienna twice.”
“A Jew fascinating? Our classmates would disagree,” said Leo looking around them. “But I’m very happy to hear it.” He had hoped that someone as worldly as Emi would find a difference in religion something intriguing rather than worthy of revulsion.
“Why do your parents have you in a Catholic school?” Emi asked. Her eyes were on the priests who had started to usher the children inside. “Isn’t that strange?”
“It’s the best in Vienna,” said Leo. “There used to be other Jewish students, quite a few, but none of them came back for this school year, except for me. I think everyone has been waiting for me to go, too—looking very forward to my exit—but I’m still here. As you saw, my parents like the best of everything. Even if it means that I’m a little uncomfortable sometimes.”
The morning bell rang, and Leo and Emi walked inside with the rest of the students. As she headed up to the girls’ side of the building, he stood below the stairs, watching her long thin legs move gracefully in her ugly skirt. “Can you play again today? The piano, that is,” Leo called after her.
Emi turned around and shook her head. He noticed that she was wearing a new blouse, without a hole in the shoulder. He’d wanted nothing more than to put his hand on her skin through that little hole the day before, and was sad to see that it was no longer an option. “Lessons,” Emi said. “Always lessons. But I’d rather play in your music room.”
“Maybe you can take your lessons in our music room?” he suggested. Emi promised she would ask her teacher, but as she told Leo the next day, the request was flatly denied.
“It turns out he’s an awful man,” said Emi the following morning as they gathered in the courtyard before class. “He said he knows who your father is and won’t teach in ‘Jew houses.’ ”
“At least he’s honest,” said Leo trying to smile.
“He’s an anti-Semite,” said Emi. “But my mother won’t let me stop taking lessons from him, even if I tell her. He’s a very talented anti-Semite.”
“Don’t tell your mother,” said Leo. “It will only worry her.” He tried to look as happy as he had the morning before, but he was sure Emi could see his strain. He hoped that her mother was as open-minded as she was.
/> “I’ll come to your house and play without him,” she said, putting her hand right next to his, so that their fingers touched. “Every free moment I have.”
“I doubt you have that many,” said Leo. “I’ve seen the way the girls speak to you, asking about Japan and living all over the world. I’m sure you’ll have many invitations soon and my piano will be just as forgotten as a child’s music box.” He pretended to cry, though he was smiling and Emi reached up and touched the front of his curly hair, causing him to reach for her hand out of instinct. She held his and he looked at her intensely.
“What is this funny timepiece?” she asked, breaking their gaze. She moved his sleeve and ran her hand over the slightly domed glass of the watch. The cogs were visible underneath and the numbers were mismatched, raised Roman numerals.
“I made this with our Hungarian driver, Zalan, when I was a child,” said Leo, happy to talk about his strange but beloved driver. “His father was a watchmaker and when I was a boy, and rather lonely, he and I used to work on this. See,” he said, taking his watch off. “It says here on the back of the dial, ‘Made by Leo Hartmann.’ ”
“It’s quite ugly,” Emi said laughing. “But I like that you still wear it. It should also say, ‘made by nineteen fingers.’ ”
“It’s not ugly,” said Leo, holding it up to get a better look at it. “It’s unique. And it has never quit on me.”
“And you’ve never quit on it,” she said, and covered it up with his sleeve again. “I seem to quit on everyone. Since we started traveling, everywhere I’ve been, I’ve never been very good at keeping people,” she said.
“Because your life is so transient?” he said, reaching for her hand again.
“Exactly. What’s the use of getting close to someone, even a friend, if you won’t see them in a matter of years? I should get a watch to keep me company instead.”
“You shouldn’t always be thinking about the future,” said Leo laughing. “Don’t you ever just appreciate the here and now?”
“That’s what I’m trying to say,” said Emi. “With you, I think I do. I’m beginning to fall for the here and now.”
While life tucked inside the Hartmanns’ home together was as peaceful an existence as Leo and Emi could imagine, things at school were not as simple. The girls’ and boys’ sides had Mass together every afternoon, and though both Leo and Emi skipped communion, no one bothered Emi about it, while Leo was the object of increasing scrutiny for sitting it out. As the weeks went on and the calendar moved to the end of 1937, that scrutiny turned to anger.
“I’m beginning to understand why you’re a little uncomfortable at school,” Emi said when Leo explained why he preferred to walk through the halls on the girls’ side of the school. What he didn’t tell her was that he often found himself bleeding from the nose or mouth after classes, especially sports class.
He tried his best to hide his reality from Emi, going to the bathroom after he’d been punched in the face and cleaning up as best he could. He had bought more than a dozen white school uniform shirts and matching sweaters and kept at least one of each neatly pressed and laundered in his bag, in case the ones he was wearing that day got ripped or bloodied.
But as he started getting fists put to his jaw more often, the reality of his school day was harder to hide from her. And then one day in October, he could hide it no longer.
When he noticed her brown eyes peeking in at the boys’ chemistry classroom door, he knew she had been heading to the music room and stopped just a few steps past it. She must have heard the glass shatter, he thought, the test tubes that were being thrown at his feet by his usual aggressor.
“Look what I have for you to pick up today, Jew,” Fritzie Dorn, one of the most popular boys in the school, and one who spoke with reverence about the Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth, yelled at Leo. “You shouldn’t have knocked down another tube. Such an ugly, clumsy Jew.”
Leo counted his breaths, made sure there was a long calm pause before he said, “I didn’t knock it down. You did.”
Fritzie laughed, told Leo that their afternoon routine was just starting, and threw a large beaker at Leo’s feet, the shards spraying up to his eyes. Leo felt a small piece of glass tuck into the corner of his left eye, but he refused to close it, letting it sting until there were tears on his cheek.
“And that’s another one,” said Fritzie. “Two glass tubes broken, and all over the floor. Too bad there’s no broom to sweep it up,” he said. “And no dustpan. Just your little Jew hands.” Fritzie crunched his polished black school shoes on the glass, his toes smashing it nearly to dust. “Now if you can pick that all up and not get a single cut, then I’ll let you leave chemistry tomorrow without any broken glass to pick up.”
Without making a sound, or looking at Fritzie or Emi by the door, Leo got on his hands and knees and started gathering the tiny pieces of glass while Fritzie moved a few feet back, sat on a table, and watched him with amusement. He started swinging his big legs, hitting Leo’s back every few kicks with the tip of his leather shoe and reciting some edicts that Leo imagined he’d learned from pro-Nazi literature. Leo stayed unmoving against the blows, trying to keep his spine neutral, focused on cleaning up the glass as best he could.
He was reaching for the tiny dust that remained, the powder that he was pressing his sweaty fingers against to pick up, when he heard Emi breathing too loudly. Why was she still there? He grew anxious but didn’t look up. He knew not to.
Fritzie looked up immediately and Leo could practically hear him smile before he declared, “Jew boy! You have an audience. The Japanese girl!”
“What are you doing to Leo?” Leo heard Emi ask, her voice steady, not panicked. When Fritzie didn’t answer, Leo guessed that she wasn’t talking to him. She was addressing the school’s chemistry teacher, who was in the room with them, watching Leo. He was doing nothing, as usual, to stop Fritzie’s torture of him.
“It’s no concern of yours, Miss Kato,” the teacher said to Emi, while Leo only dared to look up to the teacher’s knees. “Go back to the girls’ side, right now.” The next thing Leo heard was Emi’s feet taking off down the hall. A minute later, after her footsteps were out of earshot, he heard a much better noise. She had started to play the piano. Loudly, angrily. Hard enough to break the strings.
It wasn’t until a month later that Leo brought up the incident. It was the end of November, and they had plans to go to the Prater amusement park in Vienna’s second district before the weather turned too cold. As they walked to the park, arm in arm, Leo pulled her back a little, motioning for her to slow down. He wanted the afternoon to feel long and easy.
Leo had liked Emi from the first moment she pointed out that he was staring at her as if she were a cat playing Chopin. Most of the girls he knew would not dare say such a thing, even if his tongue was on the floor. But he’d learned quickly that Emi said whatever was on her mind, and it was usually something intelligent and a little daring. He liked that she was confident, and talented, yet very self-contained. He had written it off as a Japanese trait at first, but he soon concluded that it was more of an attribute particular to Emi. It was apparent from the first week they spent together that she didn’t need him, or the world, saluting her as he imagined many young women would have liked. She seemed to move through life as her only critic, her opinion of herself, and her expectations, the ones that mattered most of all. But she had assured him that she did need him, and that made him like her even more. Of all the students at their school, many who wanted to be close to her, she had picked him.
They waited in line for the Ferris wheel and when it came, Leo took Emi by the hand, his bare fingers sticking to her leather glove, and helped her climb into the little, swinging compartment. When they were almost at the top, he leaned over and kissed her softly, knowing he couldn’t avoid the subject of the chemistry room any longer.
“Thank you for playing the piano that day,” he said when his lips lifted from hers. “I th
ink I could endure anything if you provided the music.”
“Leo, I didn’t know what to do,” she said, starting to cry. “I should have marched into the room and stayed there until they let you stop.”
“You can’t cry after I’ve kissed you,” said Leo, wiping her tears with his index finger. “Please don’t. I can handle a lot. It isn’t my school, or my city anymore, but it will be again one day. I just have to be patient and wait.”
“Until then you will pick up broken glass with your hands while that malicious Fritzie Dorn kicks you and the teacher looks on gleefully?”
“Yes,” Leo replied. “And probably worse. But I don’t care about any of that, especially not now.”
“What do you care about?” Emi asked, her voice anxious. “Because I couldn’t do it. I could not just get on my hands and knees and pick up glass while being kicked by Fritzie.”
“It’s surprising what a person can endure,” said Leo, pointing out the view of the city. “My parents are happy that I’m still in the school, and while some of the things that happen to me are unpleasant, I’m not in any real danger.”
“Aren’t you?” asked Emi. “Because I saw Fritzie’s face. He looked ready to kill you. And he’s in the Hitlerjugend. You’ve seen the boys wearing the pins around school. There are more and more of them.”
“This is still Austria, not Germany,” said Leo. “We don’t have to live in fear of actually being killed.”
“But for how much longer?” said Emi, reaching for Leo’s arm. “It’s not a secret that Hitler wants Austria. He is desperate to fold it into the Third Reich. And then what? All his policies against the Jews will become law here. Your father won’t be able to work. You won’t be at school. You listen to the radio and read the newspapers, Froschi. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
