Prague Counterpoint

by Bodie Thoene

  “Elisa!” Anna called from the kitchen. “How could I have forgotten!” Elisa laid the last spoon on the gleaming table. There was some satisfaction that the silverware was the same they had used in Berlin. Somehow they had gotten it out, and the thought pleased Elisa. She must find contentment in small things tonight, or she should not be able to act out the charade.

  “What, Mama?” she called, poking her head into the kitchen.

  “Butter!” Anna was dressed in a beautiful cream-colored silk dress, protected by an apron as she labored over the dishes. “I’ve used the last of it, and you know how your father loves fresh butter with his kolache! Maybe if you hurry, there might be time to run to market before it closes!” She seemed as young and fresh now as she had a year before in Kitzbühel. The years of care had melted from her with every hour that Theo was home. “Would you, dear?”

  “Where is Dieter?” Elisa asked, not wanting to walk the quarter mile to market in such a short time.

  “He’ll be home in time for dinner. Off at the house of young Marcus Jeleni for some sort of meeting. No phone.” She opened the oven and basted the golden skin of the hen.

  Elisa glanced at her watch. There was just enough time if she hurried, and, yes, Theo did indeed love heaps of butter on his rolls. Tonight everything must be perfect.

  The evening air was cool, and the fragrance of spring mingled with aromas from a thousand Prague kitchens. Smoke spiraled up from chimneys and blended into the deepening purple of the sky. Elisa walked hastily down the narrow street that led to Mala Strana Square. It was nearly the dinner hour, and the square was almost deserted except for a few harried pedestrians. All around, the shutters of shopwindows were lowered. No one seemed to notice anyone else as each person hurried on his way.

  It was this atmosphere of inattention that first drew Elisa’s eyes to the young man waiting by the clock in the square. As the clock struck six and the figures of Christ and the apostles filed out, the young man did not turn to look at them. His gaze was intent on Elisa, fixed on her as she moved toward the arcade.

  She looked up at the dancing figures of the clock, then back again, hoping that his frank stare was nothing more than a young man noticing a young woman. But it was not so. The light glinted on the lenses of his glasses. She could not see his eyes, but she could feel them as she quickened her pace. A chill shot through her when she peered back over her shoulder and he was walking toward her. His long legs devoured the distance between them until he was only thirty feet behind her. At that, he matched his own pace to hers and simply trailed after her as the figure of Death emerged from the window of the clock and turned the hourglass when the bells chimed the hour.

  Elisa did not look back at him. She could hear his heavy boots on the cobbles of the square just behind her. Her breath came in short, frightened gasps, and in that moment she forgot why she had come out of the house. Ahead of her the shutter of the market slammed down and she remembered. Butter. Sweet rolls. Chicken roasting for Papa’s dinner. She stopped. The man stopped just beneath the arch of the market arcade. The shadows of darkness filled the place. No light welcomed her from the shops. She looked at the shuttered storefronts of the vast hollow market. Like the stage in her dream, it was empty. She fought the urge to cry out.

  Then she turned toward the silhouette of her pursuer. “I came to get butter,” she said in a hoarse voice. “But the shops are closed.”

  A faceless shadow, he did not reply. His hands were in his pockets and he simply stood silent and menacing, blocking her path back out into the square. She looked past him, hoping to see some movement of a pedestrian behind him. But there was no one.

  She took a step, hoping to walk around him, but he moved to the side. He took his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms across his chest, his gesture defying her to get by him. He made no attempt to hide his intention from her. They were alone. She would not get past.

  “W-why are you following me?” she stammered. “What do you want with me?”

  The man tilted his head slightly at her words. “I think you know, Elisa,” he said in a low voice heavy with a Polish accent.

  He had said her name. This was not a chance encounter. How long had he been watching her? watching the little house on the square? How many times had she left the security of those walls to find some solitude, only to be followed unawares by this frightening apparition?

  “What do you want?” She could barely speak. She squinted around him again, judging whether she could run past him and escape. Behind her the vaulted ceiling of the market arcade seemed like a cavern that would swallow her. “I need to go home.” Her voice trembled.

  The man chuckled and took a step toward her. “Yes. Home. Of course. Home to your mother. To your brothers—“ he paused as if to measure the effect of his next words—“and to your father? to Theo Lindheim also, Elisa?”

  “Who are you?” she shouted, finding her voice somewhere in the wave of fear that consumed her.

  “Is it not enough that I know you?” He was enjoying the game.

  “What is it you want? Money? Let me go, and we can pay you.”

  At her desperate plea, he spread his hands wide and laughed as he walked toward her. “Elisa. Money? No, my dear. Money is not what we need.”

  She stepped back, and the darkness of the arcade loomed, pulling her back into itself. “Let me go.”

  “In time.”

  “I have to go home.”

  “Not yet.” He moved within a dozen feet of her, yet still she could not make out his features.

  “Please. Just let me go, and . . . ” She tried to run around him, out toward the open square and the last light of evening. He reached out a long arm and clutched her, then whirled her around and clamped his hand over her mouth, stifling the scream that came to her throat too late. Her eyes rolled back in fright and she fought to remain conscious.

  “No, no, no, little one. You must not run away. You cannot run away, you see. For days I have been watching. They sent me to fetch you, you see.”

  Her breath was labored through his fingers. She struggled against him, but he held her even tighter. The coarse wool of his jacket scratched her skin.

  “You must not struggle.” His voice was insanely patronizing, like a doctor about to give a child an injection. “Come along now. Very quietly, and maybe you will go home.”

  Elisa could feel the hard steel of a pistol at the man’s waist. She forced herself to relax and as she did, he relaxed his grip over her mouth. “Please,” she whispered.

  “You will not scream if I let you loose?”

  “No.”

  He took his hand from her face but held tightly to her arm. “Then come with me.” He shoved her gently away from the open square, turning her toward the dark bowels of the deserted market arcade. Their footsteps echoed in the vaults above them. From every shuttered shop, Elisa expected to see the grim figure of Death emerge and shake his skull from side to side.

  ***

  The bookstall of Le Morthomme was crowded this weekend. Herschel worked helping customers with magazines as the German, von Kleistmann, occupied the attention of the old bookseller. Herschel glared unhappily as the two men laughed over something. How he hated this arrogant German! How he resented the fact that a Nazi walked freely on the streets of Paris and talked agreeably with Le Morthomme! If only Thomas von Kleistmann had looked up, he could have seen Herschel’s hatred. But the lofty German never condescended to lower his gaze to the little Jew.

  Herschel felt a sharp nudge in the ribs, and a German-accented voice spoke softly to him. “That man with your boss is the head of Nazi military intelligence at the German Embassy.”

  Herschel glanced sideways into the face of a young, dark-haired man who was not much older than he. His clothes were also ragged. He was a refugee as well, no doubt. “So?”

  The young man shrugged off his rebuff. “So. You’re Jewish, aren’t you? Like me?”

  Herschel glanced at him again. “
What has that got to do with . . . ?”

  His young companion smiled. “I just wondered if you hated them as much as I do. I work at the Eiffel Café. Washing dishes. As I wash the slop from the pans, I imagine slinging it into their Aryan faces! Or filling their Aryan pants with it! Then they would not strut so proudly, ja?”

  Herschel laughed loudly at the image of Thomas von Kleistmann in such condition. He regarded the ragged young man beside him with a new appreciation. “Yes, I hate them too. Especially that one.” Herschel was grinning. “He comes here all the time.”

  “I know. We watch him.”

  “We?”

  “A few of us. Zionists.”

  “Why do you watch him?”

  “We see every move he makes. A vile fellow, this one. Hates Jews. He would have us all deported back to Germany in a cattle car if he had his way!” The young man did not answer Herschel’s question. “We watch him for our own reasons.”

  Herschel bit his lip. He had not taken time to seek out others who were like himself. A stab of loneliness ran through him, and he frowned. “Are there many of you? I can watch this German when he is here. Do you have meetings?”

  The young man nodded. “There are three of us. All from Germany. All here against our wishes now. My family is still in Hamburg. What about yours?”

  “In Berlin. Except that I stay with my uncle,” he finished lamely. “Where do you meet?”

  “A secret,” the young man whispered. “But if you would like to come . . . ”

  Herschel tucked the address of the meeting place into his pocket. His new acquaintance disappeared quickly down the long book rows. He had not purchased anything, and Herschel wondered why he had stopped here. Probably to watch the German officer, he reasoned. Now Herschel would watch him and report on his activities.

  As he quietly observed von Kleistmann, the hatred welled up so strongly in him that he thought he might be sick. He was glad the young man had spoken to him. Glad that someone else hated the Aryan persecutors. He would welcome the chance to share his hatred with the others he would soon meet.

  31

  Hold Tightly to His Hand

  The stairway to the cellar was long and unlit. Elisa’s captor held tightly to her arm as he rapped three times on the green door at the bottom. A pinpoint of light escaped as the peephole opened, and then the door opened only enough to let them in.

  Fingers released her immediately as the door slammed shut behind them. The cellar was a small room about fifteen feet square. Damp, lichen-covered stone formed the walls. Rusty pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, and a single lightbulb glowed from the end of a wire.

  An elderly woman had opened the door. She stood regarding Elisa with a toothless smile. Gray hair hung in wisps around her wrinkled face. Her eyes were bright, though the film of cataracts nearly concealed their color.

  “Elisa Lindheim?” she chuckled, using Elisa’s Jewish surname.

  The mention of it caused a wave of fear to course through Elisa. Free from the rough hands of the young man, she backed against the door as the old woman walked close to her. Bony fingers reached up to pat Elisa’s cheek. “She is here!” the old woman called, and a door, also covered with green fungus, opened to reveal a larger, brightly lit room beyond. “Well, go on!” croaked the old woman, giving Elisa a nudge.

  The young man stood smirking with his arms across his chest. Elisa glared back at him, but his grin only widened in the face of her anger.

  “Go on, Elisa,” the old woman said again. “They are waiting—waiting for you.”

  There was movement in the far room. Elisa remained rooted where she stood for a moment longer until a man appeared in the doorway. Elisa gasped as she recognized him. His gold-capped teeth glinted in a smile. A wreath of gray crowned his bald head. The suit he wore was the same business suit he had worn at the train station. His eyebrows arched in benign impatience. “Come along, Elisa, dear,” he said in a soothing voice. “As hard as you have been looking for us, I would think that you would not be so reluctant to come in.”

  Looking for us! His words penetrated the fog of fear that had nearly choked her. She looked again at the old woman, who at first had seemed like the perfect picture of a witch from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

  “Waiting, waiting, waiting!” the old woman repeated happily.

  Elisa blushed with embarrassment. The old woman was simply an old woman. The sinister young man who had whisked her into the cellar deserved her anger, however. She glared at him as she walked toward the back room, but he simply replied with open laughter.

  “You?” Elisa asked as she entered what seemed to be an office with file cabinets, a desk, and even a telephone and a dark-haired matron working hard at a typewriter. The secretary barely glanced at Elisa as the balding man led her to yet another office. Three chairs were placed before an enormous walnut desk piled high with papers and folders, all stamped with the logo of Prague Commerce Import-Export Company.

  The phone in the outer office rang as the bald man closed the door. “Please sit.” He swept his hand toward the row of leather chairs, then sat down behind his desk. “I apologize for Avriel.” He shrugged and tapped a pencil on his desk blotter. “He enjoys a sense of the dramatic and sinister, I’m afraid.”

  Elisa raised her chin slightly in indignation. “And you don’t?” she questioned, remembering their first meeting at the train station.

  He laughed at her obvious anger. “Well, you are where you have longed to be, are you not? It is best not to question methods. We have our reasons. As you searched for us, there are others who would also like to discover our identity and whereabouts. We would have contacted you sooner, but we were not certain of your identity.”

  “You called me by name!” Elisa said. “What changed between this moment and yesterday?”

  “We had to be sure. A member of our organization told us of your father’s enjoyment of Faust.”

  “Goethe’s Faust?” Elisa said incredulously, suddenly aware that though the man across from her knew her name, she still did not know his.

  “A good book to carry.” The bald man nodded. “Didn’t I say as much at the station?”

  Elisa blinked at him in wonder. Somehow the edition of Faust was used as identification for this underground organization. Now she understood why her father had picked that book off the shelf! The only outsider who had spoken of Theo’s interest in the work had been the doctor. “All this time . . . ” She leaned forward and put her hand on the desktop. “I want to go back!” Her voice became desperate. “Back to Vienna! I have friends who are in need of my help.”

  “Most of our friends there are beyond our help,” he answered coolly. “There is more at stake here than one man or one woman.”

  Her mind raced ahead. “Shimon and Leah––”

  He interrupted with a wave of his hand. “Shimon Feldstein has been arrested by the Gestapo. He has endured well in their hands, our connection tells us.” He paused. “Leah we are unsure of.”

  Elisa closed her eyes and lowered her head in horror at such news. It was the fulfillment of everything she had feared since the first hours of the Anschluss. “Then what is left for me to do? How can I help them?”

  “It is not for their sake that we have contacted you.” He removed his glasses and polished them carefully as he spoke. “As I said, one life or even two are insignificant now.”

  “Insignificant!” she protested, remembering how Shimon and Leah had risked their lives for others.

  “We speak of millions now, Elisa.” He seemed to look through her. “You must not think of your friends at this moment. You must be able to forget even your own life.”

  “My only thoughts these last few days have been of Shimon and Leah Feldstein! Do you think I had any other reason for looking for you?” She was near tears. “I will pay to get them out! How can you leave them to rot in the Nazi quagmire as other men left my father?”

  The bald man sat back and regarded her, unmoved by her emotion
. “You are ideal for our purposes. Married to an American. Tenured member of the Vienna Philharmonic. Physically, you fit the Nazi ideal of the perfect Aryan. But if you are unable to control yourself in the face of the everyday brutality that now rules Vienna, then you should save your own life and never again cross the border into Austria.” His words were full of warning. “If you are to be of any help to us, you must learn to raise your arm in salute and smile at their jokes even while your insides twist with revulsion at what they are and the evil they serve!” He leaned toward her. “Outwardly you must pretend to be what you most hate!”

  Elisa looked away from the intensity of his gaze. “What do you want from me?” she asked miserably.

  He exhaled slowly and sat back in his chair. “Go back to Vienna. Go back to the orchestra. Tonight at midnight the frontier between Czechoslovakia and Austria opens again. Before then you will get a telegram from your husband asking you to join him in Vienna.”