In the Claws of the Eagle

by Aubrey Flegg

  CHAPTER 23

  Brundibár

  Jacob Edelstein, Elder of the Terezín Governing Council, leaned back in his chair. This was a joint meeting of the Elders and the Free Time Activities Administration. Jacob looked tired. We don’t know the half of the load he has to carry, Izaac thought.

  ‘Gentlemen, ladies, before we proceed to our free time activities, at our last meeting disturbing rumours were circulating that the transports to the east were of a more sinister purpose than just for resettlement and labour. Recently we have been asked for lists of over a thousand of our people for transport that include whole families. Yesterday I requested a meeting with the camp commandant, Hauptsturmführer Anton Burger.’ There was a stir of interest about the room. People leaned forward; ‘I told him frankly that rumours were circulating in the camp that the “labour transports” were nothing but a cover for annihilation.’ There was a general gasp; one did not talk to Germans like this. ‘I am glad to say,’ Jacob went on, ‘that he appeared shocked at the suggestion, and that he has since come back to me to assure me that these are just that, merely rumours.’ Relief rippled though the room. I wonder? Izaac thought to himself.

  ‘Now, we have a long list of reports to get through: the Ghetto Swingers are in need of a drummer, I believe. The cabaret, The Lost Food Card, has been doing well. The Czech Folk Singers say that they are getting too many people for their loft performances and want a better venue. Also the camp commandant says he wants to attend the lecture on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, so it will have to be in German. I think you have an elementary version which might be translated for the Commandant, Herr Brandovski?’ Everyone chuckled and Izaac dropped into a pleasant daydream of playing musical games with Louise back in Vienna.

  ‘Izaac! Izaac Abrahams. .. calling Izaac!’ He shot up in his chair to laughter all round. ‘Izaac, we have just volunteered you as leader of an orchestra!’

  ‘Not another! I am already leader of two…’

  ‘Wait till you hear. Herr Krása will explain. It’s a children’s opera, but the music is difficult and modern. Herr Krása … ?’ The composer then explained to Izaac: ‘The opera is a simple story of two children pitted against a wicked organ grinder called Brundibár. The opera is called Brundibár after him. It is sung by children and I hear you are good with children, but your role will be to lead a small adult orchestra. I am writing it now but I need to know what instruments you can find for me so I can write the proper parts.’

  Izaac had hidden himself away in order to study the music score, the black notes still almost wet from the composer’s pen. He heard a soft footfall and looked up from the manuscript.

  ‘Pafko!’ he said. ‘It’s after curfew, and I bet you haven’t a pass.’

  ‘What’s that, Mr Izaac?’ asked the boy sidling forward, his head at an angle, to see what Izaac was working on.

  ‘Brundibár, a new children’s opera. I have to learn it for the auditions.’

  ‘What’s it like, Mr Izaac?’ Pafko asked, coming around behind Izaac and looking over his shoulder.

  ‘So you want me to go back to the beginning?’ sighed Izaac, as he turned back to the first page.

  ‘I’ll test you on it, sir.’

  ‘Cheeky! Here the choir is introducing Aninka and Pepíček. They have no father and their mother is sick. Only milk and rest will cure her, but how will they get milk without money?’

  ‘The music looks modern, doesn’t it?’

  ‘If you interrupt, you go, young man.’ Izaac said severely. Pafko just reached forward and turned the page. Izaac went on, ‘Here the two children are singing of their plight, as the street gradually fills with citizens: the ice cream man, the baker and the milkman all shout their wares. When Aninka and Pepíček ask the milkman for milk for their mother, they are told in no uncertain terms that to buy milk they must have money, and to make money they must work! The children watch as people buy and sell but notice that one old man is making money without having to sell anything. This is Brundibár, the organ grinder. All he has to do is grind out a tune by turning the handle of his organ and people fill his cap with coins.

  ‘Aninka and Pepíček decide that they will try this, and they sing a pretty song of ducks and geese and a flying machine, but no one pays them any attention. Then they imitate the organ grinder and begin a crude dance. Brundibár is furious, and encourages the people to chase the children from the square.’

  ‘I like Brundibár!’ murmured Pafko.

  ‘You would!’ said Izaac. ‘At any rate, during a night spent on a bench, the two children are visited by a sparrow, a cat and a dog, who reckon that with the help of the three hundred children they know, they can defeat Brundibár. The three animals sing the children to sleep. That’s the end of Act 1.’

  ‘Go on, sir.’

  ‘In the morning, the choir sing about the people getting up to do their morning chores, and the animals, true to their word, recruit the children to help Aninka and Pepíček against Brundibár. When Brundibár begins to play, the cat mews and the dog howls; Brundibár tries to drive them away, but the dog gets hold of his pants and Brundibár is silenced. Now Pepíček conducts the children’s choir in a beautiful lullaby and the people fill Pepíček’s cap with money. The children think their troubles are over until suddenly Brundibár darts in and steals the cap and their money. A huge chase begins; the children recover the money and hunt Brundibár away. The opera closes with the choir singing a triumphal march.’

  ‘Turn back sir, please, to before the lullaby, when Brundibár sings last.’ Izaac turned back, and Pafko began humming, then singing. ‘Ty pra – ši – vý, sta – rý čok – le …’ it was a typical edgy Czech voice. He made only one mistake.

  ‘No Pafko! it’s B flat on the dotted crochet. I didn’t realise you could sight read?’

  ‘Turn the page … ’ Izaac could feel him vibrating with excitement. ‘Look, Mr Izaac, this is where I steal their money!’

  ‘What do you mean you?’ Izaac asked.

  ‘Me! Mr Izaac, I came tonight because I wanted a part … any part, but now I want to play just this one, this Brundibár,’ he hummed. ‘See, I already remember his tune. I know my voice is rough, but I can be the worstest villain ever!’ Izaac glanced at the eager face beside him and imagined him in the part. Here was a rogue that could be lovable as well, but Izaac had two worries. Every child singer in Terezín would be auditioning and Pafko would have to audition with the rest. Secondly, could he ever handle an opera of kids with Pafko in the cast?

  ‘Pafko,’ he said. ‘You will have to take your luck with the rest. This is the only manuscript, and it is like gold. It must never leave this room, but now that you know where it is here, I can’t really stop you glancing at it from time to time.’ Pafko reached out. ‘But with clean hands!’

  ‘Oh thank you, Mr Izaac!’ and he was gone.

  The noise in Block L417 was deafening.

  ‘Children! Children! Order please.’ The choirmaster was holding his head in despair. The excitement of the first rehearsal, and the fact that boys and girls were allowed to mix together for once, had created a near riot. Izaac walked across the stage behind the choirmaster but in full view of the children. Suddenly, he hesitated, then carefully stepped over something. A couple of the children stopped shouting and began squinting this way and that trying to see what it was that Mr Abrahams had stepped over. Izaac was walking back across the stage now, this time carrying a chair. At exactly the same place, he took another careful step over the invisible object and walked on. The clamour of voices subsided; everyone was watching, fascinated.

  ‘Is it a wire?’ someone whispered.

  ‘There must be, but I can’t see it!’ observed another. Suddenly Pafko stepped forward.

  ‘I’ll show him!’ he boasted. ‘Mr Abrahams sir! It must be a trick of the light, there’s nothing there, no wire, nothing.’ Izaac looked puzzled and scratched his head. ‘Look, sir, I’ll walk straight through it!’ said Pafko
marching towards him. There was a sudden gasp. At exactly the spot where Mr Abrahams had been making his step, Pafko tripped, somersaulted, and landed with a thump at Izaac’s feet. Izaac picked him up, pretended to cuff his ears, and they both walked off the stage together. Some of the smaller children even went over to assure themselves that the wire really wasn’t there.

  ‘Did you rehearse that with Pafko?’ Rafík, the choirmaster asked later.

  ‘No. He did it off his own bat.’ Izaac chuckled. ‘You’ve got to use that talent. He’s your Brundibár!’

  From then on, Rafík had them at least partly under control and Izaac relaxed. The music was difficult, not just for the ten principal child singers, but for the two choirs as well: the ‘School Choir’ that sang on stage, and the ‘Through the Windows Choir’, whose singing would be heard coming from the cottage windows on the set. At rehearsals the accompaniment was provided by a wheezy old harmonium, but Izaac soon learned to imitate the young Czech voices on his violin and would play along with the weaker sections or show them exactly what Rafík really wanted them to sing. Izaac’s little orchestra grew too: a flute, a trumpet, a guitar, an accordion, a piano, drums, four violins and a bass, with Hans the composer busily writing parts for the new instruments.

  They are like a flock of birds, Izaac thought to himself. One minute they would be still, next they would be off in a whirl of wings, circling, landing, and chattering. Sometimes it seemed as if they had an unseen companion forming a focus to their game, someone who made their eyes dance with excitement? Izaac often thought of Louise during rehearsals; she would have enjoyed the children, but he kept to his resolve to only think of her through his music, and so spare her the squalor and misery of the camp.

  It was Pafko who nearly brought the whole house of cards tumbling down. They had been discussing costumes when Izaac suggested that Brundibár, the tyrant, should have a moustache, Pafko was small, and a bushy moustache would make him look older. Nobody noticed when he slipped away, until suddenly he appeared, strutting purposefully across the stage with an unmistakable Hitler moustache! In seconds he became the Führer himself, the walk, the head pressed forward the right arm jutting forward. There was a shout from the door.

  ‘The Camp Commandant’s coming!’ A shocked silence filled the rehearsal room.

  ‘Pafko! Hide! Hide!’ But there was nowhere to hide. The room was bare except for the harmonium. Izaac gazed at him stupidly, the moustache had been put on with burned cork, there was no getting it off. They could hear jackboots approaching. Suddenly Aninka, the heroine in the opera, rushed at him, dragging two other girls with her. She was wearing a long dress.

  ‘Down, Pafko!’ As he dropped to the floor she lifted the skirt of her dress, threw it over him, and sat down on him. The other girls rushed forward, one threw herself down in front of Aninka, while two more knelt in decorative poses on each side; the other girls crowded around. Now what? Izaac realised the next move was up to him. He shouldered his violin and slipped straight into the introduction to the lullaby that comes at the very end of the opera where the mother rocks the cradle and wonders how things will be when time has passed and her little birds have spread their wings. Just as the door was thrown open and the Commandant strode in, the girls began to sing. For a second Izaac thought he was about to call everyone to attention, but there was something about the scene, and the young voices, that melted even him. He raised a finger for them go on. When they came to the end Izaac skilfully led them into a repeat.

  ‘Schön!’ was all he said, beautiful. The door closed; the sound of boots on the cobbles faded, and suddenly Aninka leapt to her feet with a shriek.

  ‘You ungrateful little worm! After me saving you from death, no less!’ She rubbed her behind. ‘Wait till we’re in stage with a whole audience in front, I’ll show you.’ Pafko emerged, smudged but defiant. Izaac told him to apologise. Not only had Aninka’s quick action saved him from punishment, but it had possibly also saved the whole opera. Pafko’s offer of a kiss was indignantly refused. He thought for a moment and then dug deep into his pocket, took out a small notebook and extracted something precious. It was a special meal ticket, the kind that people only got for exceptional labour. He gave it to Aninka and her eyes lit up.

  The dress rehearsal had gone so well that everyone now expected a disaster on the night. Behind the scenes, Izaac’s unruly flock of performers were sitting like hunched fledglings lost in the misery of first night nerves. As the hall of the Magdeburg barracks began to fill, curiosity began to replace nerves. When the small orchestra, with Izaac as leader, stood up for the conductor, they were ready. Rafík, concealed behind the painted houses of the set, had his hand up. Count eight bars, breathe in, nine bars. ‘Tohle je malý Pepíček…’ and they were away, introducing the two children and their sick mother.

  Marie had bargained and cajoled in order to get a bunk beside a window, partly because she wanted to be able to read, partly because she kept a journal and she needed light for this. She read through yesterday’s entry:

  22nd September 1943

  I thought that by working in the kitchen I would get more food. But you can’t eat raw rotten potatoes or meat that already stinks. Will this hell never end?

  Now she sucked her pencil; a lot can change in a day. She enjoyed making entries by the beam of the searchlight because she liked the feeling that she was using the German’s light for her clandestine activity. She wrote:

  23 September 1943

  And then waited for the searchlight to creep across the window again.

  What an evening! Klara, bless her, came up with tickets for the new kids’ opera in the Magdeburg tonight. The place was packed but we got two seats when some boys moved up on their bench for us. Even that was nice for a start, not segregated for once; I’d forgotten what it was like to sit beside a boy. That was the only missed opportunity of the evening because, as soon as the little orchestra struck up, we forgot all about them. You’d think it would be silly, two children wanting to get milk to make their mother better, getting help from a sparrow, a cat and a dog, but within seconds I was back five years to when I was ten and Michko and I would put on plays for the family. It was all very nice until Brundibár the organ grinder came on. He is the villain. He’s quite a little fellow, and he doesn’t really do very much, and he doesn’t even sing very much, but I just couldn’t take my eyes off him. He has this ridiculous sticky-outy moustache, like straight handlebars and has a special twitch for every situation. One moment I wanted to hug him, next I was as frightened as Aninka and Pepíček, and at the end I was standing up with everyone else cheering his defeat, but yet sorry to see him go. I’d love to meet the boy that plays him. We all stood and clapped and clapped, and cheered, even the Germans. When we all went out it was strange; it was as if we were walking on air. The whole sordid town looked like a stage set made of cardboard, we could puff and it would blow away. A group of German officers passed, laughing at Brundibár and his moustaches. For them it was just a young boy in a kids’ opera. To us it was a victory over tyranny. We saw Hitler with a dog at the seat of his trousers and three hundred children chasing him away. We will defeat them in the end … surely we will.

  Izaac was being jostled and pushed like seaweed in an ebb tide as he stared at the transportation list. Pafko had given him the news; he just had to see it for himself. There it was at the top of the list, a name clearly added by the Nazi administration: Jacob Edelstein. Izaac thought back; it was barely two months since Jacob had taken the unprecedented step of asking the Nazis about the transports, and what was at the end of them. Well, Jacob was about to find out.

  CHAPTER 24

  The Turning of a Nazi

  ‘Damnation!’ Erich said to himself as he thrust the sheet of paper away from him and dropped his head on to his arms. ‘Why did I talk to her? Blast her!’ It was well past midnight now, and every attempt to draft his resignation to General von Brugen and request his transfer back into the SS had failed. His wast
e paper basket was half full of frustrated attempts, all of which would have to be burned because the ink and the process that he used were top secret; no one must know of his Gestapo connection. He emptied his waste paper basket, and, following his instructions to the letter, he burned the drafts in an old enamel basin, crushed them, and then washed them down the sink in his room.

  At times of quiet, Louise would listen for sounds of Izaac’s playing, a faint vibrato to reassure her that somewhere out there she was participating in his music. Her waking dreams would be more vivid, but harder to interpret: sudden laughter and the impression of children circling about her, or bright young voices singing in a language she couldn’t understand. Had Izaac become a chorus master? Then she would see things that made her shudder: cockroaches on a floor, a cart covered by a cloth, a foot sticking out. But these soon became confused with her Klaus nightmares and she would wake, sweating, unable to disentangle what she had been seeing.

  She woke this morning with a feeling of despair. Her dreams had been bad, and she was certain that Erich had written his letter to General von Brugen. She could hear him moving about, with abrupt angular movements. He walked towards her picture; she felt a surge of hope, but then he moved away humming tunelessly. The door banged.