by Aubrey Flegg
Over the next two years the list of composers and pieces Izaac mastered grew and grew: Bloch’s ‘Abodah’, Wieniawski’s ‘Scherzo-Tarantelle’, and Schubert’s gorgeous ‘Ave Maria’. To begin with, these were just names to Louise, but now it was dawning on her that when people talked of Izaac as a prodigy, they really meant it. Though Izaac would fret that Madame Helena was holding him back, he seemed gloriously unaware of his genius. Finally he was ready for his proper debut concert.
When Izaac had played in the music room to his family and their friends, the applause had sounded like a sudden shower of rain. As if it had caught them all by surprise. How could this seven year old, in short pants and a floppy bow tie, produce sounds that wrenched forgotten emotions from their hearts? Today, however, the applause was of a different magnitude; it swept over Izaac like a wave, crashing about his ears as he stared, bewildered, at the audience from which this amazing sound was coming. The uniform black of the men’s suits was enlivened by a speckle of colour from the ladies’ dresses. Their faces merged, hands blurring, clapping as if their lives depended on it. A rumble began that seemed to rise through the boards at Izaac’s feet, like rocks churning in the backwash of a wave. The audience were stamping their feet in an ecstasy of delight.
The nine-year-old glanced towards the safety of the door at the side of the platform. There was Madame Helena, signalling urgently, bending almost double to get her message across. Of course … he should bow! His paralysis passed and he bowed and then bowed again. He let his eyes sweep the audience, as Madame Helena had told him to do. ‘You won’t see a thing, Izaac, but they will love it,’ she had said, but he was looking for someone special. There, beyond the blur, a spot of colour stood out sharp and clear. There was only one green like that in the world: Louise was there, just as she had promised. He could see her standing at the back, clapping like everyone else. A broad smile lit his face, and the crowd loved it. Those generous Viennese hearts that love music and musicians above all else opened to him as one. A final bow, and he turned to leave the stage.
Once through the door he was engulfed by his dear Madame Helena, simultaneously cuffing him for having forgotten to bow, hugging him, and trying not to cry. Having held him as long as she dared, she turned him around and sent him out to play his one short encore.
Once again he scanned the audience, looking for Louise, and there wasn’t a mother in the crowd who wasn’t convinced that his look was for her alone. He found Louise on a second pass, at the back in a seat just vacated by an early leaver. He could feel her laughter and delight running through him. As he played his encore, the laughter got into his fingers and they danced on the fingerboard.
Three times he was called back. He pleaded with Madame Helena to be allowed to play again, but she was adamant. In the end she just took his violin from him and pushed him out for his final bow. She heard the wave of clapping break, saw Izaac’s last bow, and without waiting for him, gathered her scarves and proceeded towards the Green Room. She had a thing or two to tell him about his vibrato. At that moment there came a roar of laughter from the auditorium. Madame Helena turned, but all she saw was Izaac lunging through the door from the stage, a broad grin on his face.
The following morning, Madame Helena’s maid, Hanna, had been sent out to buy the morning papers and had stacked them neatly on the side of her mistress’s breakfast tray. Helena ran her eye over the front page of the Neue Zeitung while she buttered her roll, postponing the reviews until she had both hands free to open the papers. ‘Food Shortages Ease,’ was the banner heading. Beside it was a short column about a young comedian. Sliding that paper to one side, she looked at the Tages Bladt; its headline reported on a meeting of a new political party in Munich that seemed to be upsetting the Communists, but she didn’t mind upsetting the Communists. She was about to read further when she noticed that the comedian had made it onto the first page again. She read the first line and her heart nearly stopped. ‘Prodigy violinist Izaac …’
Hanna heard her mistress’s shriek from the kitchen and came running. She found her enveloped in as many newspapers as she normally wore scarves.
‘Listen to this, Hanna,’ she commanded as she read from the paper. ‘Infant prodigy entertains audience with duck dance …’ She raised her eyes, saucer wide, to the mystified Hanna. ‘Oh, Izaac, how could you do this to me?’ Papers flew and Hanna rescued sheets on demand as Helena plunged after the serious reviews that were always hidden on the inner pages. Little by little she relaxed. ‘Superb technique for one so … pure musicianship … a credit to his teacher.’ Then a gratifying mention of the great Madame Stronski. Hanna, who had been worrying about where she had put the smelling salts, relaxed too. ‘A bit too heavy on the vibrato …’ Yes, she had been going to tackle him on that when he had careered off the stage, but there was more to come. She read on in trepidation: excellent reviews, but one and all critical about Izaac’s behaviour after his encore. ‘Vienna expects her young performers to behave with decorum in the halloed precincts of the concert hall, where the ghosts of the great composers linger yet.’ Even while she cringed for Izaac, Madame Stronski couldn’t entirely suppress a little snort of laughter. ‘Stuffy old fuddy-duddies,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Mozart would have loved it.’ She rather wished she had seen exactly what the little monkey had done.
Izaac was hanging his head as Madame Helena whirled around him like a Dervish, berating him about his fooling on stage.
‘Izaac Abrahams, what … did … you … do?’ Louise, who knew only too well what he had done, was quite glad of the protection of her picture frame. She was already feeling guilty for having been so ready to laugh at Izaac’s antics.
‘I did my duck act,’ he whispered.
‘Your duck act!’ He made to show her. ‘No! I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to know about it. I particularly never want to hear about it again. You are never, ever, to put on one of your little performances on stage again. You have disgraced me, and apparently the whole musical profession in the process. I don’t know, in the circumstances, if you even deserve to hear what the reviews actually say. However …’ Now, walking up and down, Madame told him about the reviews, as if reading him his school report. Musicianship: excellent. Technical ability: good. Vibrato: too much. Intonation: good except in pizzicato. ‘No time to slide about looking for the note, is there?’
As she went on, adding glowing comment to glowing comment, her voice softened. Her prowling slowed. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this, but you know that the Konzerthaus is part of the University?’ Izaac nodded. ‘Well, the Professor of music heard you and suggested to me, after your performance, that you should enrol at the University and study with me there.’
‘But I’m only nine!’ Izaac said, his jaw dropping.
Helena reached forward and raised his chin. ‘You’ll still have to go to school, but well done, my little wonder. Now give the old dragon a kiss. I deserve it. We can talk vibrato later.’
CHAPTER 8
The Face in the Ivy
Erich was doing his homework while his mother painted. He liked the smell of turpentine as it mixed with the piny smell of his pencil parings. She was relaxed, singing quietly to herself, Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot…They were like two overlapping circles, each with their own centre but each aware of the other. Erich didn’t understand her paintings, splashes of colour and criss-cross lines, but he liked cutting out pictures of ‘real things’ from her monthly magazine and pasting them on to the walls of his room. He would imagine walking into the pictures and having adventures.
He looked up. Grandpa Veit was resting, and Father was still at his work. Erich could see his mother over the top of her easel. The light falling over her right shoulder was catching the curtain of fair hair across her face. Grandpa called her a Rhine maiden, so Erich thought Rhine maidens must be the most beautiful people in the world. Yet there was something in the way that Grandpa said it that made Izaac feel protective and possessive
about her. People said that he looked like her. Once, when Grandpa had him on his own, he had pushed Erich’s shoulders back and lifted his chin, and had told him he was ‘good Aryan stock’. Erich had no idea what this meant but, like most things Grandpa told him, he kept it to himself.
That evening after work, Mr Solomons, the owner of the timber yard, knocked on their door. They were all there, Father, Mother, Grandpa and Erich, about to have dinner. Though there was little enough food, Mother, impulsive as always, invited Mr Solomons to join them. He refused politely but stood there awkwardly, a book under one arm, twisting his hat. Then he explained that he had been in Munich on business. While there he had gone to an exhibition of modern art. Knowing Mrs Hoffman’s interest, he had taken the liberty of bringing her the catalogue of the exhibition, if she would be so kind as to accept it.
Mother’s face lit up. ‘Oh, how kind, how wonderful.’ In a moment, forgetting all about dinner, beckoning them to her, she said, ‘Come and look, everyone!’ She began turning the pages of the catalogue, exclaiming over the pictures with cries of delight. ‘Oh look: Picasso, and Matisse, that’s Miró surely …’
As his mother was excitedly turning the pages, Erich felt Grandpa’s hand on his shoulder, biting in and drawing him back from the others. When he had been pulled to a safe distance Grandpa Veit bent and whispered in his ear.
‘Mustn’t let you get contaminated, boy.’ He made a dusting gesture at Erich’s front as if Erich had rubbed up against something dirty. Confused and embarrassed, Erich tried to move away but Grandpa Veit held on to him. ‘Notice that he wouldn’t eat with us?’ Erich supposed he meant Mr Solomons. ‘Because we’re not kosher … we’re unclean, might give him pig.’ The old man’s stale breath blasted in his ear. ‘He’s poisoning her now with all that rubbish – modern art – it’s a conspiracy, son! All cut-up people, and nudes that nature wouldn’t recognise; it looks like kid’s art, but it’s corrupting; all part of their plan.’
‘Whose plan, Grandpa?’ Erich whispered.
The old man bent even closer. ‘The Jews’, he whispered in his ear.
Erich stopped on the stairs to listen, his pyjamas cold on his shoulders. No one had heard his scream. He had woken in a sweat. Mr Solomons had been cutting up people with scissors and mixing the pieces in a drink for mother. Could Mr Solomons really be trying to poison her? He could hear Grandpa snoring and was glad; this was something Erich wanted to investigate on his own. He had never understood his mother’s paintings, but if she was happy, he was happy. He took a deep breath and turned into the sitting room where there was a row of them propped up against the wall. He approached them suspiciously and began to move methodically down the line.
Some were very simple, just lines and blocks of colour; he felt safe with these, and began to wonder what the fuss was about. All these were the elite, the few that had survived Sabine’s frequent over-painting and scraping-out of old canvasses. They were in many styles, mostly abstract, shapes and colours that were meaningless to Erich. It was just as he thought – her playthings – nothing even as meaningful as his Wiener schnitzel. He had reached the end of the line and was about to go, when out of the corner of his eye, one of the pictures appeared to move.
He whipped around. Nothing. He was sure though. He had seen a person move! He turned away slowly and there it was! Out of the corner of his eye there was a person that had not been there before. He turned back, careful not to lose the image. It was a girl dancing, head thrown back. How had he missed her? Now, as he looked down the line of painting, he realised that there were more. Not moving, that had been an illusion, but people and faces, and possibly places, emerging and fading as his eyes moved from picture to picture. Some of the pictures gave him feelings of sadness.
‘Poor Mother,’ he murmured, as his eight-year-old mind unwittingly revealed the pain his mother had so successfully concealed from the world. He moved slowly, falteringly, back down the line. Here was one he could hardly look at now: a seascape or a troubled sky? Then suddenly out of the tormented blues his father’s face emerged, cyanose, as Erich had seen it one time when his heart was bad. The image went and he could not see it again. Feeling shaken, he arrived at the end of the line. The last canvas had been turned to face the wall. Erich turned it and looked at it curiously; it was easier, much more realistic than the others, a gnarled tree covered in ivy. He knelt to prop it up, and then nearly reeled back as the ivy seemed to burst apart in his face, and there was Grandpa Veit, his face staring out at him. Erich dropped the picture back against the wall and covered his eyes.
What evil magic was this? What spell was Mother under that made her paint these terrifying things? Still half covering his eyes, he ran for the door and nearly straight into Grandpa Veit who stood blocking his way, spindle-shanked in his nightshirt. Erich staggered to a stop and stood, waiting for a blow to the head or a blast of the old man’s anger, but none came. To his amazement, his grandfather began speaking to him seriously, as if talking to a young soldier just back from patrol.
‘So you have seen it, have you? You have been looking into the heart of darkness, boy. The pure apple infected by the worm. The Rhine Maiden sings, but the worm has the ring. Who will be our Siegfried, Erich, where are our heroes?’
Grandpa had told him the Siegfried saga at great length, even so, Erich had only the vaguest idea of what the Rhine Maidens were, except that they must be beautiful, and that Siegfried was a hero of heroes. But Veit had seized Erich by the shoulders. ‘We have work to do, lad. Not only have we an empire to recover, but a race to save.’
The words and the passion behind them stirred Erich like the rousing music that would boom out from Grandpa Veit’s hissing gramophone. Nobody but Grandpa spoke to him like this: man-to-man. His words made Erich proud, so that when his grandfather reached forward, lifted his chin, and looked him in the eye, Erich felt his own shoulders broadening and his chest expanding, as if some great purpose was being revealed to him.
But then something happened. The old man’s eyes were boring into him…piercing but changing … the face was transforming, wrinkles deepening into rugged bark. Now ivy leaves were crowding round his face, framing it. Erich pulled back in terror, but the evil mask remained, it was a warning and he knew where it came from. He turned and fled for the stairs.
CHAPTER 9
On the Crest of a Wave
‘Follow me, Mr Abrahams.’ Maestro Herzfeld, Izaac’s conductor, a formidable man with fierce bushy eyebrows and a shock of grey hair, swept past him and out onto the stage. Izaac followed, holding his violin high above the seated players. He had given dozens of recitals, had played several times with student orchestras and had loved it, but this was his first full professional engagement. Helena had intentionally held him back until he was sixteen, saying that he was too volatile.
‘This is your chance, Izaac. Play well for Maestro Herzfeld and you can call yourself a professional. I want no histrionics … Understand?’
Izaac had never felt less volatile, or more in control. He sidled past the violins, and exchanged grins with the woodwind players on his left.
‘And remember to shake hands with the leader;’ Helena had reminded him. ‘He’s a better violinist than you are! No bobbing up and down; turn to the audience and give one polite bow. The years when you were applauded just because you looked cute in short trousers are over.’
Izaac had wished she’d shut up. He was well able to look after himself.
Louise found herself an empty seat tucked away to the right of the platform where Izaac could see her without turning if he really wished. She relaxed, relishing the anonymity of the crowd. She was exhausted, but elated too. They had worked so hard on the Dvorak that she was sure that nothing could go wrong. As they had worked, bar by bar, line by line, she had felt the music drawing them closer and closer. Most of the time her role was to help Izaac to stand back and listen and ‘feel’ the music while tackling its technical difficulties. As they approached performance st
andard, however, the concerto began to grow, developing into a living thing, no longer a succession of lovely notes, but at one moment a monster that raged and terrified, leading them into the dark places of the soul; and next a friend that walked them through fields and gardens. Locked in the world of music, they shared the drama and pain, laughter and tenderness, as if they were one person. But when their practice together was over, they shed their intimacy and walked away as if their close encounters had never happened.
Izaac was lucky, he had the release of his performance to look forward to, but Louise had no such release. Without her noticing it, the cumulative effect of these collaborations began to grow. She thought back to her own short life, and her cruelly interrupted love for Pieter, the Master’s apprentice back in Delft. Then there had been Gaston, her French Hussar; if she hadn’t loved Colette like a sister she could never have stepped aside for her.
Why did she have this so human need for love and affection, if it was never to be fulfilled? Her love for Izaac might be that of an older sister, but bitter experience had taught her that such love can spill over. She had no right to his heart outside of their music. And time, her enemy, would inevitably take him beyond her. The sadness of her immortality, of being constantly left behind, was a bitter pill. Now, as she watched him on the platform, relaxed and confident, she let go her hold on her feelings. The audience enclosed her, sending out their own warmth to him; a little more affection from her could do no harm.
