by Aubrey Flegg
‘Guten Morgen,’ the voice came from only inches behind him. Erich stiffened but did not turn. Whoever it was had come up to him without a sound.
‘It’s still night,’ he corrected.
‘You missed the best of it.’
‘What?’
‘The fire down there, it looked spectacular from up here.’ Erich tried to size up the voice behind him. It was a boy’s voice but older than his; it had already broken. The voice came from above him, so the boy was taller.
‘It looked spectacular from down there too.’
‘You were watching?’
‘No, trying to put it out.’
‘Why?’
‘My dad works … worked there.’
‘But you’re not a Jew!’ It was a statement.
‘How do you know?’
‘What! With that thatch of fair hair?’ The boy behind him laughed. For some reason Erich felt jealous of that laugh. It was relaxed … assured. Perhaps one day he would be able to laugh like that. He realised also that perhaps the boy was right about it being morning. The palest of light was beginning to fill in panels of darkness about him. Erich stepped to one side before he turned to face his companion. He had been right about his height, what he hadn’t expected was to find himself looking into a face that could have been his own, given a year or two in the difference. The same thought must have struck them both. The older boy recovered first saying with a laugh, ‘You need a haircut.’ He held out a hand. ‘Klaus,’ he said introducing himself.
Erich took his hand. ‘Erich,’ he said, and the older boy silently clicked his bare heels.
‘Come on over. We are camped in the ruins. We won’t wake the others, they are just lads, but like you, they have been busy tonight. There will be life in the fire if we uncover it, and we can talk.’ Erich watched as the boy uncovered the coals and swiftly fed it twigs until a bright flame danced. Immediately the remaining darkness closed in around them, leaving them to examine each other across the flames. Erich noticed that Klaus was wearing a type of uniform that he hadn’t seen before.
‘Are you Vandervögel?’ – Scouts,’ he asked. He’d always rather liked the idea of ‘Wander-birds’.
‘Sort of,’ the boy replied, eyeing Erich, still sizing him up. ‘The lads are scouts,’ he said, waving towards the ruins.
‘Not you?’
‘I’m not from here. Not now. I live in Germany with my father but I come home here to stay with my mother in the summer. It’s boring so I join up with your Vandervögel and teach them things.’
‘Like?’
‘How to bank up fires,’ he shot Erich a grin. ‘Then I tell them stories of our great Germanic past.’
‘Rhine maidens?’ asked Erich absent-mindedly.
Klaus laughed. ‘You’re too young to be thinking of Rhine maidens. But you have the right idea.’ Klaus went on, ‘You see, Austria has lost its way, hasn’t it? We’ve lost an empire and have nowhere to go. It’s time for us to join up with Germany.’
‘Ein Volk, ein Reich,’ Erich quoted.
‘Exactly! We are one people so we should come together – Anschluss – to form one state: Germany and Austria together. We could conquer the world!’
‘How do you know about these things?’ Erich asked. Klaus reached into the top pocket of his shirt and pulled out an armband with a swastika on it.
‘Hitler Youth,’ he said. ‘I’m a group leader back home in Germany. Not everyone likes us here in Austria, so I don’t wear it in public.’
‘Am I public?’ Erich said.
‘Perhaps. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?’
Erich told Klaus about himself and some of his frustrations. Klaus said very little; he was a good listener. When the boys, who had been sleeping in the ruin, began to stir, he didn’t introduce Erich to them, but suggested that he would walk a little way with him. Though still early, it was broad daylight when they said goodbye and promised to meet in a week’s time.
Only one person saw Erich’s return, a quick fluid run this time along the top of the wall from the roof of the garden shed, then like a shadow across the tiles and in through the skylight. Grandpa Veit scratched at his stubble. He needed to feel young again after his performance last night. He wouldn’t tell Sabine that the boy was going wild. Let the woman rot.
Up in his bedroom Erich undressed quickly, preparing to slip back into bed for as long as he could get. He noticed a smear of yellow paint on his right hand. He must have picked it up at the timber-yard. Never mind, he’d wash when he got up. He dropped off to sleep dreaming of the Star of David dancing in the flames of the burning yard.
CHAPTER 11
Holiday in Mödling
This looks like one of those posters of families setting off for the seaside, Izaac thought, as he watched his extended family embark on their summer holiday in Mödling. Uncle Rudi had borrowed a large motorcar for the journey; its leather hood was folded back into a neat concertina so that they could travel open. In the front sat Madame Helena, once again an honorary member of the family, because it was she who had been responsible for finding them a suitable house for their holiday. She was wearing a wide straw hat, held down by a gauze scarf tied firmly under her chin. She also had with her a longer scarf, which Izaac guessed she would ‘fly’ once they were underway.
Mother and Nathan’s pretty wife, Krystal, sat in the back with their precious cargo, Krystal’s new baby, in a basket between them. Father and Nathan sat opposite to them, facing to the rear on two rather uncomfortable fold-down seats. Lotte, like a life belt in case of emergencies, had been inserted into what Uncle Rudi called the Dickey seat at the back, her head almost invisible between the folded hood and the mountain of trunks and cases on the rack behind.
Izaac watched with a mixture of alarm and amusement as the car gathered speed, everyone waved, and, yes he had been right, there was Madame Helena’s scarf floating like an admiral’s pennant in the slipstream. Izaac turned back into the house; he was to travel on the ‘Bim,’ the special tram named after the bell that it clanged at every stop, crossing, dog, and wandering pedestrian as it ran south from Vienna along the edge of the Wienerwald.
The whole idea of a summer holiday had started with a rebellion. For weeks Vienna had sweltered under a blanket of air so dense that it felt as thick as soup. While officially a graduate, and with a diary full of concert engagements lined up – the Konzerthaus Vienna, Prokiev, Schuman and Kreisler, then off to Graz – Izaac still regarded Helena as his professor and relied on her advice and guidance. For her part, she was beginning to worry that his repertoire was too old-fashioned. Her plans for his summer included a whole new raft of composers: Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg.
Izaac was not impressed. ‘Why must we study these wretched twelve-tone-wonders? They don’t even use the normal scales.’
‘The point is, Izaac, they are all composing. And somebody will have to be able to play them.’ As the University was closed for the summer, Helena came to their apartment. Despite the open windows, Izaac’s violin, slippery with sweat from his hands, developed the properties of an eel. It slithered under his chin, his fingers skated on the fingerboard, and his bow, which he couldn’t grip properly, writhed like a live thing in his hand. Suddenly it was all too much.
‘Plink plank plonk… how does anyone learn this stuff, let alone play it, it’s not even music? Take five hundred assorted notes, throw them in the air and scribble them down where they fall!’ He turned on Madame Helena. ‘You are a slave driver! Other people have lives. They have holidays, they have friends, and they don’t have to spend the summer rotting in Vienna. Look, I could wring water from my violin.’ He gave the neck a graphic twist, then he fell, pleading, to his knees. ‘Please, Madame Helena, most gracious, most wise, just tell our agent that Izaac Abrahams has melted away, and is now no more than a stain on the carpet.’
Helena attempted a snort, failed, and sank instead into a cane chair; it creaked fatalistically. ‘Two s
tains on the carpet, Izaac, mine will be pink,’ she sighed. ‘I feel like a marshmallow about to melt.’
Rescue was at hand; the door opened and Lotte came in carrying a tray with two tall frosted glasses of lime-juice. The ice tinkled as she placed the tray on a small table beside the collapsed Helena. Louise looked longingly at the tall glasses of green juice. She felt exhausted after their practice. It had been heavy stuff, like their old game of musical tennis, with Izaac scattering Mr Stravinsky’s notes about the room as he grappled with this most modern of modern composers. She imagined reaching out and feeling the cold glass in her hand and then lifting it! What would Helena say if her drink suddenly rose up and emptied itself into clean air? She chuckled; she was never quite sure whether Helena might not see her one of these days.
‘Bless you, Lotte,’ Madame gasped. ‘Delicious!’ Then to the world at large, ‘We need a holiday.’
‘The mistress was saying that too, only this morning, but all the hotels is booked, so she says.’
Izaac looked disappointed, Madame Stronski, however, swirled the ice around in her glass as if thinking.
‘I wonder?’ she said. Then she put her glass down and pulled herself upright. Izaac looked up questioningly. ‘Mödling …’ she said. ‘Friends of mine have gone to Prague for the summer months; they won’t be back till September. It’s a barn of a house. I’m sure they’d let me have it, but we’d have to do for ourselves. It might not be so much of a holiday for you, Lotte. Would you mind?’
‘Anything to get out of the heat here, Mam.’
‘Just think, Izaac, you could be walking in the steps of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Mozart; they all went to Mödling to work.’
‘Work! Am I going to have to work?’
‘Izaac, my love, an artist never ceases to work,’ she looked dreamy. ‘You lie under a tree watching the sky and you say you are working; you meet with friends, and you are working; you sleep, and you work in your sleep; you walk in the woods, and your friend Igor Stravinsky will walk beside you.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ Izaac laughed, but Helena was beginning to lever herself up.
‘Give me a hand, Izaac; I must talk to your mother. Come, Lotte.’
They left the room. Louise, wondering if there was anyway that she could be included in this expedition, lingered. It was up to Izaac. He was staring into his glass … perhaps he was thinking of Stravinsky. She was struck by how tired he looked. He had been working so hard; they both had. A weary smile crossed his face.
‘You’ll come too, won’t you?’ He said. Then, more seriously, ‘You’ve … you’ve … been a bit standoffish lately.’
So he had noticed. Ever since that nearly disastrous concert when he had lost his place in his music, she had indeed been ‘a bit standoffish’. That flood of affection that had swept over her that night might not have had anything to do with his losing his way in his music, but it had affected her deeply. Why, oh why aren’t I able to love people just a little? she sighed to herself.
‘I’d like to come, Izaac.’ Then, with a smile, ‘We can work on the Stravinsky together.’
‘Not you as well!’ he groaned. ‘We will both go down on the Bim and we will walk in the Wienerwald, and listen to the birds singing, and pretend that we are working. Oh, will I have to bring your picture too?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she laughed. ‘There were whole weeks when Gaston and I rode out ahead of the troops, miles in front of the baggage train where my picture was, but I knew it was there.’
Izaac only had a rucksack and his violin to carry as they made their way around the Ring to where the tram for Mödling waited.
Louise was glad when they left the suburbs of the city behind. To their right were the wooded slopes of the Wienerwald. To their left, stretches of golden corn and dusty stubble. Carts piled with sheaves of wheat waited for them at crossings. Girls, wearing broad straw hats and bright dresses, sat on top among the upright pitchforks. Izaac, relaxed now, told Louise how the flatlands to their left stretched as far as Hungary.
She embraced the little town even as they tramped up the hill from the tramway below. It nestled into the side of the hill like a dog curled up in its basket. The dusty yellows of the fields merged with the orange glow of the tiled roofs. Pools of shade invited them in out of the searing heat. Above the town, craggy outcrops of rock showed through the trees.
‘Look, Louise,’ Izaac had stopped. ‘Madame Helena was right, Beethoven did live here; it says so above the door: 1818 to 1820. Come on, we must go in.’ Beyond the arch was a narrow courtyard, cloistered on both sides, opening beneath another arch into a tantalising garden at the end. ‘Imagine the music that must have filled this place?’ he murmured. ‘Do you remember the sonatas we worked on? And the Violin Concerto? Oh, to have been here!’
At that moment a woman emerged from a door to one side. She looked Izaac up and down, saw his violin, his rucksack, and his awed expression.
‘Looking for Herr Beethoven, love?’ she called out. ‘Well, you’re a hundred and twenty years too late. My great-great-grandmother threw him out because of the noise he made. Roaring like a lion he was, and hammering at his piano till the strings broke. We haven’t lodged musicians since!’
Before Izaac could explain that he wasn’t looking for a room, she had disappeared with a genial chuckle. ‘He was deaf as a post,’ he explained to Luoise as they retreated, ‘and used to get furious when he couldn’t hear his piano.’
They got directions to their new address from the clerk in the town hall, a lovely little building with an onion dome. Ten minutes walk brought them to another court-yarded house, with Uncle Rudi’s now dusty car waiting like a guard dog in the entrance. The windows had all been thrown open, and Madame Helena emerged, looking like an Arab dancer, with a gauze scarf across her face. ‘There was a fire that destroyed the local sawmills a week ago,’ she explained. ‘The smell of smoke seems to have got in and lingered inside.’ She plucked off her scarf. ‘The first of my seven veils! We are going to have fun!’ She led Izaac inside. ‘I have chosen a room for you. It backs up onto the woods so you won’t disturb anyone when you begin to practise later. However…my orders now are for no practising for at least a week!’
Louise, wanting privacy, went off to find a place for herself; the Abrahams family seemed to have expanded into every room available. Trunks and cases stood open everywhere. Helpless men waited for their loved ones, or Lotte, to unpack for them. Eventually she found her way up to the attic where she discovered what had probably been a servant’s room. It reminded her of her attic back in Delft, so she furnished it in her imagination in the Dutch style and went on a welcome journey back into her past, thinking of Father and Pieter and of her home in Holland.
Madame Helena closed the door and Izaac was on his own. He shed his rucksack, laid his violin on his bed, and bent to undo the two clips that held it closed, but then stopped. Helena had been adamant – no practising – but yet the itch, the urge to take out his violin and start playing was overwhelming. If he couldn’t practise, what would he do? And Louise? What about her? She had been on his mind recently. She and his music were bound together as his one great love in life, but, looking back, he’d made a slave of her, hadn’t he? Now, for the first time he was become aware of her as a person. They were much of an age. He decided that they would explore Mödling together and perhaps venture up into the woods as Beethoven and the others had done. If Helena was right, it would still be part of their music together, but he would make it Louise’s holiday as much as his. He lay back on his bed, closed his eyes, and promptly fell asleep.
Louise was delighted to be included in Izaac’s explorations and thrilled with the lovely little town. They walked the streets and the courtyards, and when it got hot, they took refuge in the cool of one of the churches. The exuberant altars and the baroque decorations of the church, all trumpets and angels and gold, were so unlike the austere interiors of her native Dutch churches. Then she remembered the little Cat
holic church, hidden in an attic in Delft, where there had been colour and light like this. She smiled at the memory. Izaac, seeing it, offered her a penny for her thoughts, so she told him about the little town of Delft, its high walls and criss-crossing canals.
They went back to the Beethoven house on the following day and the fierce lady thawed and showed Izaac the room where the great man had composed what she called his ‘Diabolic Variations’. Louise wondered what devil had got into him, but Izaac laughed and said that she meant the famous Diabelli Variations; Diabelli had written the tune and Beethoven the variations.
As they exhausted the sights of the town, they began, tentatively at first, to explore the paths and tracks that led up into the Wienerwald. The paths left the town wherever they could, threading their way between people’s gardens and behind their houses until they joined a whole network of paths that spread throughout the woods. Coloured splashes of paint and little signposts showed the different walks through the forest. The first day, Madame Helena joined them, determined to walk the Beethoven Way, but soon decided that she could enjoy the company of the great composer perfectly well sitting on a rock overlooking the town.
To Louise’s surprise, Izaac found he liked walking. He even went off and bought a pair of stout shoes. When he started worrying about remembering his Stravinsky, she suggested that he associate the music with their walks. Then when it came to performing, all he would have to do was to remember the walk. So he would stride along, humming to himself. Blisters on his feet were Izaac’s only problem to begin with, but he soon became hardened to the exercise, and reports came back to town of the young violinist striding through the woods talking to himself, just as the young Brahms was said to have done; they understood musicians in Mödling.
A week later, Madame Helena announced that she had booked a table for them in the local vineyard. Izaac explained to Louise how the vineyards had their Heurige evenings on rotation, when they were allowed to sell their own wines and keep their customers happy with traditional dishes. As most of these were based on pork, including crackling and fat bacon, Helena had taken the precaution of ordering a special goulash for her predominantly Jewish table.
