Prague Counterpoint (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  “We have our visas for Palestine.”

  “You know how much that will mean if they decide––”

  “Decide what? To throw us into a concentration camp? A cellist and a percussionist? We are of no significance. They have no reason to keep us here, Leah. We will simply tell them that we shipped the china plates to Jerusalem last month. We have nothing left for them to smash.” His words contained a false cheerfulness, and Leah knew that he also was frightened.

  “What now?” She turned and looked beseechingly up at him.

  “Now?” He stared toward the patch of blue sky. “Make coffee. Wash. Comb your hair. It is Sunday, and there will no doubt be a concert for us to play at the Musikverein.”

  “Stop!” she almost shouted. “It is not just any day! Shimon, quit pretending or I will lose my mind!”

  He would not allow her the luxury of self-pity at such a time. “If you lose your mind, then I will have to unpack the dishes myself in Jerusalem. No doubt I will break a few.” A near smile turned the corner of his mouth.

  Leah blinked back at him angrily. “How can you talk as though nothing has happened?”

  “Because at this moment nothing has happened to us.” He stretched and stood up, avoiding her eyes as he made his way toward the door. “Not yet, anyway. And before it does, I want a cup of coffee. I want to brush my teeth and go to the bathroom. And I’m going to take my shoes off for a while, too.”

  He disappeared into the other room as Leah glared after him. She was angry at him now, and somehow it helped her. She sat up slowly and looked down at her rumpled clothes. She would change. Shimon had a point. Nothing had happened to them yet, and she might as well be clean and pressed if something did happen. She heard the clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen as she rummaged through her drawers for a blue sweater and skirt. Shimon was hopeless when it came to making coffee. “I’ll make it!” she called, suddenly no longer angry or afraid. Shimon had made it easy to pretend. She glanced again at the sky. They would pretend until reality demanded that they pay attention.

  Shimon stood grinning in the doorway. His feet were bare now, his shirt unbuttoned, and the hair on his head stood up on one side. “I was hoping you would.” He thrust the coffeepot into her hands.

  At that moment a sharp cry sounded from outside in the Judenplatz. The roar of smashing glass filled the little flat.

  “This is what we think of Jews!” One stone was followed by another, and then another. Splinters of glass flew across the room and fell to the floor as Shimon pulled Leah behind the door of the closet. What sounded like a thousand voices chimed in with taunting insults.

  “We will paint the walls with your blood!”

  “Now you Communist Jews will taste justice!”

  “Come out, Jews! Come out from your nests! Out into the bright light of Greater Deutschland!”

  Shimon closed the closet door behind them, and they stood trembling together in total darkness amid the heavy smell of mothballs and wool. Leah rested her head against Shimon’s broad chest. She gripped the coffeepot tightly as still another rock smashed through the high window above the bed.

  Leah tried to speak but could not find her voice. The thought ran through her mind that they had waited too long to have coffee. It was a strange thought to have as the clatter of boots sounded outside on the stairs, but at that moment there was nothing she wanted as much as a cup of strong Viennese coffee.

  2

  Elisa’s Question

  The tiny bathroom in the ancient house in Prague was something like Elisa imagined the boiler room of a ship to be. Steam from her hot bath curled up around pipes that snaked in and out of the walls and ceiling from every direction. Each time she turned on the water, the pipes wailed and vibrated threateningly. It was obvious from the low slanted ceiling that the cubicle had once been a closet. There was no window or ventilation, and moisture from the steam condensed on the pipes and dripped down the walls onto the chipped tile floor. Plumbing was a crude afterthought in Prague; and yet, this very minute, no place on earth seemed quite so near to perfection.

  Elisa slid down in the tub and let the water wash over her aching shoulders. She laid her head back until strands of thick golden hair floated in the warmth. For the first time in a year her father was home, sleeping safely between clean sheets while Anna kept watch beside the bed in the room upstairs.

  ***

  “You have been a very sick man, Theo Linder,” the doctor had said in a heavy Czech accent. “Very sick indeed.” He had clucked his tongue and checked Theo’s pulse once again.

  “Typhus,” Theo had rasped. He did not need a doctor to tell him how ill he had been.

  The doctor’s eyebrows had shot up, then slammed down in a frown. He repeated the word typhus in a respectful tone. “But not here in Prague, surely!” He turned to Anna. “I have not seen typhus in Prague for some time! Who has told him he had typhus?”

  “Not here. No one here. No one here,” Anna replied, reaching out to smooth back Theo’s thin gray hair. “He has been . . . away for a very long time, you see.”

  “Where has he been, madame?” The doctor looked first at Anna and then back to Theo. “Where . . . that he would return in such condition?”

  “Germany, Herr Doctor,” Theo spoke softly.

  “Germany? We hear of no such epidemics in Germany.” The doctor appeared puzzled and concerned.

  “I was . . . a place near Munich. Dachau.”

  Recognition flooded the doctor’s face. “Yes,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Such places in Germany we have heard of. Here in Czechoslovakia we have indeed heard the rumors.”

  Theo lay before him as proof of the reality of Nazi justice. Elisa had watched the round little doctor as his imagination colored in all the details. A shadow of fear slid over his features and he stood over Theo for a long time without speaking. Finally he turned to Anna. “Theo is a lucky man, madame, to survive such a place. Here in Prague we are a people who believe in the miraculous.” He shrugged as if to say there was no other explanation.

  Anna had taken Theo’s hand and held it in hers. Tears filled her eyes. Elisa had turned away, as if the moment were too private for anyone to see. Her father had come home. He would get well. There was, indeed, a miracle in that.

  ***

  As Elisa soaked in the tub, her worries about her father rose and drifted away like the steam. It was only when she thought about those she had left behind in Vienna that another concern surfaced, dripping into her consciousness like the drops on the rusty pipes.

  John Murphy had left the house only seconds after the doctor arrived. He would be back as soon as he got a call through to the International News Service office in London. Elisa still held some vague hope that he would come back with news that the British had joined with the French to stop what Murphy called “the rape of Austria.” Surely the world could not stand by and watch as Nazi Germany’s epidemic of lawlessness spread!

  She shuddered in spite of the warmth of the water. Leah and Shimon Feldstein would be among the first destroyed if such an event happened. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the cool iron tub. How naïve she was to hope that Germany’s control over Austria was not already a fact! Hadn’t Thomas von Kleistmann told her that the German High Command would never let Hitler march if the great powers would only stand firm against him? The celebration of Nazi youth in the streets of Vienna last night could mean only one thing. The resignation of Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg under force could only mean that the British and the French had denied their help in stopping Hitler. Austria was lost. A plague much worse than typhus was finally let loose in Europe.

  Thomas had warned her about all of this. But then, Thomas had also told her that there was no hope for Theo. Hadn’t he said that Theo was dead? With his words, her hope had died for her father. And yet . . .

  A soft knock sounded on the door. “Elisa, dear,” Anna called to her, “may I come in for a moment?”

&nb
sp; Elisa drew the flimsy curtain around the tub and flipped the lock on the door. “Sure, Mama.”

  Cold blasted the bathroom as Anna slipped in, then pulled down the toilet lid and sat down at the foot of the tub. “Feeling better?”

  “Uh-huh.” Elisa sounded drowsy, but she was wide awake and wishing that Anna would come straight to the point. Her mother’s tone of voice asked much more than how Elisa was feeling. Elisa suspected this visit had something to do with John Murphy.

  “The doctor is gone. He says your father will get well with food—good food and lots of rest. It may be some months until he is really himself again, though.” There was a long, awkward pause. “Your papa tells me you are married.”

  Elisa looked down at the lapis wedding band. She wished now it was off her finger. How could she explain her marriage to John Murphy? Anna would not understand the fact that it was merely a business arrangement—something she had done for the sake of an American passport and the protection it brought her.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “To this nice American fellow, John Murphy.” Anna sounded hurt. “But you didn’t tell me.”

  “It all happened so fast, Mother.” The ache in Elisa’s shoulders was returning. She could never explain about her trips into Germany or the refugee children. Or the smuggled passports. Anna had enough to concern herself with.

  “So fast? Too fast for a telegram?”

  “Yes. I . . . it was . . . very sudden.”

  Anna cleared her throat in a motherly way. “I don’t mean to pry into your business, Elisa, but such impulsiveness is not like you. Not at all.”

  Anna was right about that. Elisa had been anything but impulsive her entire life. Even her relationship with Thomas had been a matter of years of longing. Elisa had not been impulsive in her marriage to Murphy. The entire matter had been thought out in every detail. But how could she explain to her mother that she was involved in smuggling Jewish children out of Germany? Now she would almost certainly do the same in Austria. Could she really say, “Mother, he is handsome and wonderful and I think I am really in love with him, but I paid him six thousand dollars to marry me? This is simply a business deal?”

  “You’re right.” Elisa was grateful for the curtain. She could not see Anna’s disapproving face. “I’m not usually impulsive.”

  Now Anna cleared her throat again. Her voice became gentle and full of understanding. “Elisa, I know this has been a difficult year for all of us. I understand that you must not have wanted to bother me. But if you became involved in something you should not have . . . ”

  How could Anna know? Elisa had not told anyone outside her small circle about the trips to Munich. Nor about the violin case or the passports or . . . “Involved? What do you mean, Mother?”

  “I know how it is when you meet a man. A handsome man. And . . . I know how Thomas von Kleistmann hurt you. And I’m not at all surprised that you might become involved with some handsome young American like this Murphy fellow, and . . . ”

  “And what?”

  “Your father says he remembers you met him at the train station in Berlin over a year ago. That night . . . the night your father was arrested.”

  “Murphy helped me.”

  Elisa’s head was beginning to throb. She thought about the night she stood overlooking Dachau. She remembered the open stares of the German soldiers on those long train rides into the heart of the Reich. She remembered the look on the Nazi Sporer’s face as he had stripped the Jewish woman at the border check last night. And Otto Wattenbarger as he flipped open her passport. “How did Papa know I was married?” she asked.

  “He heard the fellow at the border check last night. He said the man seemed to know you. That he commented that you were married now, and––”

  “It was Otto Wattenbarger, Mother.” Elisa hoped that Otto’s involvement with the Nazis would pull Anna from the topic of marriage.

  “Not surprising,” Anna said after a moment’s consideration. “His poor mother. Poor, dear Marta.” Then without missing a beat she blurted out, “Are you pregnant, Elisa? Is that why you married this man?”

  Elisa laughed out loud at the question. She laughed like she had when she was a child watching a Charlie Chaplin film and the little hobo got a pie in his face. “Mother!” The question seemed unthinkable! Hilarious and outrageous! “Mother!” she said again through her laughter.

  Anna was embarrassed but defensive. “You said yourself that you are not impetuous!” she sniffed. “I simply could not think of any other reason why you would marry an American journalist without at least telling me first.” The hurt returned to her voice.

  “For money, Mother!” Elisa laughed again. It was true; Murphy had married her for money, but Anna was certain Elisa was making fun of her.

  “All right, then!” Anna stood up. “You can’t blame me for asking, for being curious about a new husband my own daughter did not bother to tell me about.”

  Elisa became instantly subdued and contrite. “I’m sorry, Mama. I was going to tell you when the time was right. I would have. But there were so many things, and I . . . ” She held her left hand out through the curtain and extended her ring finger. “He got me this.”

  “Beautiful, Elisa! Blue lapis overlaid with tiny gold leaves! It is exquisite!” Anna held her daughter’s hand. “I am so happy for you, dear.” Her voice sounded teary. “So happy for all of us!”

  Elisa squeezed her fingers and let her hand remain cradled in her mother’s gentle grip. “You and Papa were impulsive, weren’t you? I mean, when you married him?”

  “Ummm. There was a war on. It seemed like the thing to do. Grab every moment of life. I have not regretted it. Not even a moment.” Anna sounded wistful and more contented than Elisa had heard her since before that terrible Christmas in Kitzbühel. Anna sighed and let go of Elisa’s hand. “I should go to your father now. He is sleeping, but I can hardly believe that he is here. I’ll go sit with him for a while and leave you to your bath.”

  For a long time Elisa sat in the water. She hardly noticed when it began to cool. She stared at the blue band and could not help but wonder why Murphy had bought something so beautiful for their phony marriage. Probably guilt, she concluded. He felt guilty for . . . for what? Europe was absolutely rotten with marriages of convenience. People got married every day for less reason than a passport and for less money than six thousand dollars! Maybe Murphy had not meant for her to keep the ring. Not forever. She would tell her mother she had lost the blue lapis ring down the drain. She would say it had slipped off in the tub.

  The thought of the band sliding off her finger and disappearing down the maze of pipes made her close her hand into a fist. She did not want to lose the ring. It was ridiculous, she knew, but she did not want to lose Murphy either.

  She dried off and dressed quickly, hoping that Murphy would be back by the time she put on her makeup and fixed her hair. Maybe he would stay with her. Or take her with him. Maybe they could go back to Vienna together and find Leah and Shimon. And maybe, if they spent some time together, he might look at her and see that there was more than just an American passport for Elisa in this thing.

  She rubbed a clear circle on the foggy mirror. “Murphy,” she whispered, “do you want me?” That was a silly question. Of course Murphy wanted her. It had been obvious he wanted her every time he was with her. She frowned and reconsidered what she would ask him. “But, Murphy, do you love me?” She closed her eyes and imagined a dozen ways he could say, “Yes! We have been through so much together; how could I ever be apart from you again, Elisa? My life would be such emptiness without you. Do I love you? Why not ask me if I want to go on breathing?”

  He might say all those things. But then again, he might also look at her with amusement and say, “Are you kidding? Me? John Murphy in love with one dame? Sorry, Elisa. I’ve got to catch a plane. See you around maybe. By the way, I’ve got this girl in London. Would you mail me the ring?”

  She shook her head as if
to knock loose her own foolishness. Murphy had made up his mind about her a long time ago. She didn’t blame him. And she didn’t need to ask him either.

  3

  Murphy’s Story

  “Murphy! John Murphy? Is that you?” The startled voice of Larry Strickland crackled over the telephone from the London offices of the International News Service.

  “Right. Last time I looked.” Murphy caught his own exhausted reflection in the glass pane of the telephone booth. Even in this imperfect mirror he could see the dark circles under his eyes. After the events of the night before, he was not certain that the grim shadow in the glass was his own face.

  “Where . . . ” Strickland’s voice faded out. “Are you in Vienna?”

  “Prague!” Murphy shouted over the static. “Nobody in the INS in Vienna will be calling London for a while.”