by Mona Golabek
Mrs. Cohen couldn’t hide a knowing grin, but she thanked him politely as she pocketed the money.
At the factory, Lisa decided it was time to include Mr. Dimble and Mrs. McRae in her “other life,” and she asked if she could work a shorter shift (with a cut in pay, of course) to allow extra time to practice. She showed them the newspaper clipping with its impressive “Royal Academy” logo and told them of her plans to apply for an audition.
“My, my, that’s very posh,” Mr. Dimble said, somewhat skeptical.
“Have a heart, Raymond, you’ve let other people have shorter shifts before, I’ve seen you! Why not let her off to practice the piano?” interjected Mrs. McRae.
Mr. Dimble shook his head as though it were way beyond his understanding.
“Three o’clock it is, then, but no slacking off before then, my girl!”
“Thank you so much,” Lisa called after him as he headed down the line to intercept a cartload of fabric.
Mrs. McRae turned back once more. “Very exciting, all this. You’ll ’ave to come over and play for us East Enders sometime. There’s a piano at the pub,” she said quickly before immersing her head back in her work.
“I’d love to,” Lisa promised, eyes shining.
After work, Lisa went straight to the Royal Academy of Music in the heart of London. She hadn’t been to the city center since the devastation of the December firebombs and was disheartened to see the tremendous destruction. Whole blocks were burned to the ground; the House of Commons was badly damaged; churches and taverns were in ruins. Luckily, St. Paul’s Cathedral had escaped. Johnny had told her about the all-night fire brigades that had saved the great church.
In the midst of the bombed-out buildings, men with pin-striped suits and umbrellas were walking energetically around roadblocks as if nothing at all were strange.
The Royal Academy had also escaped damage. Lisa approached the five-story brick building with a pounding heart and climbed the exterior staircase with its majestic canopy of glass and wrought iron and entered the large foyer, which was presided over by gilded portraits of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth. A magnificent spiral staircase wove upward five floors to a dome above her head. The sounds of French horns, bassoons, and violins descended into a booming cacophony around her.
Even though she realized it was probably bad luck, Lisa couldn’t help but fantasize about what it would be like to study in this exalted institution, following in the tradition of so many of the greats.
She had been worried about how she was dressed, but the serious students who strode by were too busy to notice her at all. She quickly located a sign that led her to the registrar’s office.
The secretary was polite and reached behind her for a packet of papers, handing the mimeographed sheets to Lisa. “The deadline for the application is next Friday. Please fill out your choice of repertoire and bring the completed form back to us.”
As she walked out, Lisa again studied the young men and women who were rushing by her, carrying music cases and smoking cigarettes. She heard snatches of their conversations, which included words like “art” and “soul” and “beauty.” It was all too wonderful.
Arriving home, Lisa ran to find Hans. “I’ve got the application, come sit with me, so we can go over it.”
They got right to work, Hans sitting cross-legged on the sofa as she read: “Applicants are advised to carefully select repertoire to display to best advantage the full range of their capabilities.”
“This is so fantastic!” he said, interrupting her, as excited as if it were his own audition.
“All repertoire must be performed by memory,” she continued. “Well, of course!”
“That’s obvious,” Hans echoed. “Now . . . what are you going to play?”
Lisa continued reading: “The applicant will be required to perform a work from each of the major stylistic periods in classical literature. First: Bach—choose a prelude or fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier.” Lisa thought for a second, then shouted: “The D Minor!”
“Not a bad idea,” Hans agreed. “All right, next.”
“A sonata by Beethoven,” she read. “I could do the Thirty-two Variations!”
“It said a sonata,” Hans corrected her.
“Oh, I did the early A Major when I was in Vienna,” she offered, and hummed the opening phrase.
“Not strong enough. Don’t forget the competition is going to be tough, you have to amaze them. What about the Pathétique?”
“I only just started it.”
“Then do you know the Waldstein?”
“Heavens, no! I’d rather do the Pathétique!”
“The Pathéthique it is, then,” Hans said firmly.
Lisa kept reading: “A major work by a romantic composer: Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms . . . That’s simple, I’ll do the Chopin nocturne, the one that you like.”
“Not substantial enough.”
“But I’m really good at it!” Lisa said defiantly.
“Not possible.” Hans lost himself in thought for a moment. “I know just the piece. It was written for you.” He got up, felt his way to the Victrola, and turned it on to warm up. He pointed to the stack of records.
“Find me the Rubinstein recording. I want you to hear Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor.”
Obediently she found it and guided the needle into place. They lay back on the sofa and listened to the heartbreaking and passionate ballade. It was Romanticism incarnate.
“It’s everything that you are, Lisa. You must play it,” Hans commanded.
They listened as Rubinstein furiously attacked the difficult and thunderous chords of the coda. It sounded as if all hell were breaking loose on the keyboard.
“Do you think I can do that?” Lisa’s eyes were wide in amazement.
Hans looked momentarily worried. “I forgot about the coda. Do you think it’s too difficult?”
The very words too difficult sparked Lisa’s competitive spirit. Wasn’t she Lisa Jura, the prodigy of Franzenbrückestrasse, the one who made all the neighbors proud? What would Mama say if she missed her chance because a piece was “too difficult”? She listened to the roiling passion in Rubinstein’s notes, nodded to herself, and said simply, “Yes, this is the piece.”
From the moment she found the sheet music to the Chopin ballade in a second-hand music store, it seemed to everyone on Willesden Lane that Lisa never stopped practicing.
She practiced from four to six in the afternoon, ate dinner, then continued from eight to nine. She had just under a year until the audition date, and she knew she’d need every moment to learn two major new works. Aaron would often come down to the cellar, give her words of encouragement, then slip out of the hostel to go about his business.
Hans was her mainstay. He became expert at feeling his way down the wooden stairs and sat quietly in a chair next to the piano, reading his braille textbooks. His was a comforting presence. Lisa marveled at how he had changed in the year since his arrival at the hostel. He had toned down the sarcasm about his blindness, perhaps accepting it more, or perhaps realizing that no one was laughing at his blind man jokes. These were terrible times for everybody, and sometimes sympathy was in short supply.
Lisa wondered what it must be like for Hans to lose his sight after having been able to see for his first fourteen years. She closed her eyes as she played and tried to imagine never being able to see again, but she couldn’t stand it for long and had to open them again. At moments like this she wanted to throw her arms around her new friend, but she knew that would injure his considerable pride, so she settled for a simple “Hello over there, Hans, it’s so nice to have you keep me company.” His smile was a rich reward.
She went about learning the notes in a methodical way, and day by day, she started getting the feel of the Chopin and Beethoven pieces into her hands.
Her favorite break from practicing came after dinner, when she, Aaron, Gunter, and Hans got their turn at the record player. Mrs. Cohen had i
mposed strict rationing of Victrola time after fights had broken out about the choice of music. Edith had been playing the same Benny Goodman record so often that there was now a large annoying scratch, which made the music skip every few seconds.
“Maybe I should break the blasted record,” Aaron offered in all seriousness.
“Aaron!” Lisa chastised. “Don’t you dare.”
Johnny’s favorite record was by Glenn Miller. After working his twenty-four-hour shift at the fire station, he cherished his twenty-four hours off at the hostel, when he would wait for the trombone solo and lift his head for a few minutes from the papers in front of him. The rest of the time he scribbled endlessly in his notebooks. Occasionally he showed a poem to Lisa, who thought them deeply evocative. She called him her fellow “artiste.”
While Johnny was not a part of the committee itself, its members had come to appreciate him. The younger children had adored him all along; they loved to sit on his huge shoes and have him lift them up with his legs as he continued to write in his notebook all the while. Ever since Lisa had said how much she liked his poems, he had become more accepted by her friends. She encouraged him to share his work with the rest, but he resisted, saving his poetry for Lisa alone and showing the others only his affable goodwill and occasional goofy antics to the rhythm of Glenn Miller’s jazz.
When it was time for Lisa’s turn at the Victrola, she and Aaron listened for the millionth time to Arthur Rubinstein’s recording of Chopin’s ballade, as she laid her head against his shoulder. They lay close to the funnel shaped speaker, trying to filter out the noise of the children playing around them. If they were lucky, there would be no air raid siren, and they could spend a magical thirty minutes floating in the beauty of music.
Lisa listened carefully to every nuance. But listening to a recording wasn’t the same as having a teacher. Hans helped the best he could, but it was difficult to untangle the complicated fingerings she needed to maximize her power and finesse.
If only Professor Isseles could be here to help, she thought. Yet it wasn’t really the professor she yearned for, it was her mother. Some nights she would put her head on the keyboard and cry, “Mama, why can’t you be here to help me?” She missed her desperately.
Victrola time in the living room was difficult for Gunter. It was summer already and he had seen Gina only once since everyone had moved back to the hostel and he was looking more and more like a lost puppy.
One Saturday afternoon Aaron arrived with a package under his arm. He whispered for Lisa to join him in the presentation. He handed it to Gunter and made him open it. It was a pair of ladies’ silk stockings.
Lisa gasped in amazement. “Aaron! Where did you get these?”
Silk stockings were an unimaginable luxury during the war, strict clothes rationing had made them impossible to find. Silk was for parachutes, not for stockings.
“Why are you giving Gunter silk stockings? I’m the one who needs them!” Lisa demanded with more than a hint of jealousy.
“Dum, dum, da dum dum,” Aaron whistled. “I have a mission for the committee. Poor Gunter is so down in the dumps, he’s no fun anymore. We’re going to go visit Gina and give her these. After that, I have an even bigger surprise!”
Remembering the magic of the Myra Hess concert— Aaron’s last surprise—Lisa softened.
“When are we going?”
“Tomorrow.”
The next day, Lisa felt guilty about missing her practice session but allowed Aaron to talk her into it. Besides, she was feeling a little more tired each day and told herself that maybe a little time off would rest the aching muscles in her arms.
The threesome hurried to the train station. Aaron paid for everybody’s fare, which Lisa thought extravagant.
“Did you get a promotion or something?” she asked. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” he answered, cryptically. “Ooh, you can be so annoying,” she said, but took his hand and smiled. It was no time for a fight.
Lisa didn’t push him—she was used to his behavior by now. Aaron never spoke about his work; the little she knew about his job (as a machinist grinding valves for army trucks) came from Gunter. Aaron always found a charming way of brushing aside her questions.
Richmond was a wealthy suburb of London south of the Thames. Richmond Park had its own herd of tiny deer and acres of fancy rhododendrons. German bombers hadn’t been interested in this part of town, and the streets were as clean as they were idyllic, with houses that were much like what Gina had been used to in her previous life in Vienna.
Finding 25 Temple Hill Road was more difficult than they had anticipated, since all the street signs had been removed at major intersections. The three friends went round and round the same block.
At one point in the confusion, Lisa realized they were yelling at one another in German. “Shhhhhhhh!” she said, panicky. “They’ll think we’re spies and shoot us!” The others quieted down immediately, realizing that as ridiculous as it might seem, it could easily happen.
Finally, they located the house and knocked. A uniformed butler came to the door.
“Is Gina Kampf at home?” Aaron asked.
The butler looked at the teenagers and cleared his throat. “She didn’t say she was expecting visitors. . . .”
Aaron moved forward. “Please tell her the committee has arrived with her tickets,” he said grandly.
The butler looked at them skeptically, but good manners won out. “Just one moment,” he said, and disappeared behind the heavy mahogany door.
Lisa started to giggle. “What tickets?”
“Just wait,” he said, reaching in his pocket for a mysterious envelope and waving it before her eyes.
Gina’s mouth dropped when she saw her friends standing on the doorstep.
Gunter stepped forward. “I’ve brought you a present,” he said proudly, and handed her the package.
Gina shut the front door behind her, sat on the porch steps, and opened her present. She held up the stockings, amazed. “Ooh! Thank you so much!” she cried, delighted. She kissed Gunter on the cheek, and he blushed a deep red.
“You’re w-welcome,” he stammered, trying to regain composure. Gina saw his struggle and rewarded him with a kiss full on the lips.
“Go get your coat,” Aaron said, holding up the envelope. “We’re going to see Gone With the Wind!”
Now it was Aaron’s turn to be kissed, this time from a joyous Lisa.
“I’ve wanted to see that for ages!” she cried, and, waiting while Gina ran to tell her employer, she and Aaron clasped hands and giggled at Gunter, who remained crimson.
“Look at him blush!” Lisa teased.
Gina ran out the door, scarf trailing behind her. “Let’s go!” she cried. “I don’t want to miss one minute!”
They took the underground to Portobello Road, to pass the time before the show began. They rambled through the bustling streets of the outdoor flea market, where vendors were selling old clothes, jewelry, pots and pans, books, tools, and the like. A noisy Punch-and-Judy show was performed out of the back of a cart, and for a penny a throw, you could “Knock Hitler’s Block Off.”
Gina chattered on about the noisy kids she was taking care of, and Lisa, in turn, relayed all the Willesden gossip—about her audition, the battle over the Victrola, and the hole in the ceiling of the girls’ bathroom.
Lisa was surprised to see how well Aaron knew his way around the flea market, guiding his friends down the narrow, crowded streets. He stopped several times to talk with shop owners, and more than once she heard “Mr. Lewin! Mr. Lewin!” called out.
“You’re very popular,” she said finally.
“Just a little business deal,” he answered, happy to be mysterious.
Realizing it was getting late, they raced to Piccadilly Circus and joined the weekend crowds stepping over rubble and bomb craters on their way to the theaters and cinemas. They spotted the enormous marquee with the names Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable and the full-color posters of S
carlett O’Hara swooning in Rhett’s arms, and they ran as fast as they could, making it to their seats just as the lights were dimming.
A spotlight came up on the organist who launched into “White Cliffs of Dover.” The audience joined in, clapping and singing.
When the four of them began to squirm with anticipation, the theater lights finally went down and the newsreel came on. Everyone cheered as tough battalions of British soldiers were shown marching through North Africa to fight Rommel’s forces in the desert. The Brits looked unbeatable.
Then came pictures of the home front—London digging out from the bombings, emergency crews pulling a patient from the ruins, housewives lining up to recycle pots and pans. King George and Queen Elizabeth inspected the ruins of Parliament and looked for all the world as though they were dressed for a garden party. Churchill walked through devastated streets in his homburg, determined and tough.
The newsreel continued with films of a busy factory scene. Gunter suddenly stood up. “That’s where I work!” he blurted out.
“Shhh!” Gina said, putting her hand over his mouth. But Gunter couldn’t be contained. He turned around to the strangers behind him. “I work there!” he exclaimed.
“Down in front!” someone yelled, throwing an empty candy box at him. Gunter took the hint and slid back down into his seat.
Finally, it was time for the main feature.
Lisa was mesmerized by Scarlett O’Hara and her troubles. Her heart raced as she watched the heroine struggle with hunger and war and desperation. She sobbed into her handkerchief as Scarlett swore that “as God is my witness” she would never let her family go hungry again. At times it was hard to focus on the movie, her mind kept racing back to her family in Vienna, remembering how difficult it had been to get food, imagining how difficult it must be now.
When the film was over, Lisa was weeping so hard that she could hardly get up. But once again she rallied her considerable will. I’m going to make it, she said to herself, echoing the heroine’s words. Just like Scarlett . . . by hook or by crook . . . I’m going to make it through.
