by John Lawton
“Then I think we would be in Ventôse. The windy month.”
She had finished sorting the Kropotkins as they spoke and was well into the Tolstoys.
“My father will not tell me what happened.”
Rosen looked baffled.
“What happened when?”
“In the middle of the month. In the days after I first came here. Was that a revolution?”
“Well, my dear, I am not your father, and with all respect to your father . . . if I had children I would answer their questions.”
“It is Mama,” she said. “It always is. If she gets her way I’ll never know what happens. I’ll never know where babies come from and I’ll end up believing the nonsense the other girls tell me at school.”
Rosen grinned. She thought he might even have swallowed laughter.
“I won’t answer the latter. That really is a matter for your mother. But I am happy to talk politics to you. No, it was not a revolution. If anything it was a counterrevolution. The powers that be trying to nip the activities and the workers in the bud with a surprise attack. The result? The workers struck, they refused to go to work, no trains, no trams . . . and the powers that be attacked them again. This time not with rifle butts but with Howitzers.”
“Cannons?”
“Yes, cannons. You must have heard them. The police and the army fired upon the workers’ flats.”
“Were the poor people killed?”
“Yes. I think many were killed. But I have heard figures bandied about from dozens to hundreds. Only one thing is certain.”
“What is that?”
“That many more have been locked up. The camp at Wöllersdorf must be bulging at the seams. But then there are so many factions one could lock up . . . the fascists, the socialists, the social democrats, the communists, the patriots—who in reality are Nazis. In a country of six million there may well be six million factions.”
He could see now that he had lost her.
She wiped the spine of a Tolstoy and read out, “The Kreutzer Sonata. It is a book of music?”
“No, my dear. It is a book about music, a novel about the power of music to affect us. Have you not heard of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata?”
She shook her head. Now that Tolstoy was shelved, the way through to the piano and his cello was clear. He crossed the floor, set the Goffriler between his legs, tilted the neck slightly to the left, and with the bow in his right hand struck up the intense, dramatic opening of the adagio sostenuto, the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonata.
He stopped at the moment the piano should cut in.
“You like?” he said simply.
Like? She felt blasted, as though the notes had pierced her flesh and entered her blood.
She just nodded.
“I have only two hands,” he said. “Unpack your cello. I will find the score and we shall learn the piece. No exercises today, no scales, we shall play the music of the gods.”
§5
When, four months later, the chancellor of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss—a man so short he was known as Millimetternich—was assassinated in a failed Nazi coup, it was Rosen, not her father, who explained things to her.
He had no idea how much she understood. For all that she asked questions, the child seemed to have so few reactions. She nodded as she always did, accepting silently what he said.
Then they went back to Beethoven.
§6
April 1936
She was twelve now and had grown surprisingly quickly. Rosen insisted on measuring her. She was baffled, but compliant. She slipped off her shoes, stood on the end of the tape. He put his hand flat on the top of her head, compressing the thick waves of black hair, and told her she was a fraction over one metre fifty-five.
“Why?”
“I just wanted to be certain. You are such a slender girl, you have a knack of looking smaller than you are. I wanted to be certain you were big enough.”
“Big enough for what?”
Rosen gestured, an open palm and extended arm, across the room to where his Goffriler cello stood poised upon its metal mount.
“You’re joking.”
“My dear girl, I know I make a lot of jokes. It is a weakness and often lands me in hot water. But not this time, or did you really think you could perform in public on your child’s cello?”
“I’m performing in public? Do you think I’m ready?”
“I think with a bit of practice we might both be ready.”
She sat, wrapped around the cello, fingertips touching the patina of centuries, feeling the muted orange glow of the wood all but seep into her hands.
She drew the bow across the strings, back and forth, hearing the upper register like a bird trilling in the treetops, the low like the rumble of an approaching train in a tunnel.
She was grinning at Rosen now. Brimful of pleasure. Revelling in the tones of a perfect instrument.
“It fits,” he said simply.
“You didn’t have to measure me for this,” she replied.
“Perhaps not. But it was fun.”
“And we are performing where exactly?”
§7
May 1936
Imre Voytek was immensely proud of his theatre on Josefstadt. The Artemis had been begun in the year of the Secession movement, 1898, in the modern style, the Jugendstil, favoured by the architect Otto Wagner, with flourishes and filigree by Kolo Moser. The money soon ran out. The interior boasted a frieze that was considered daringly decadent in its depiction of the goddess after whom the theatre was named, that might or might not be the work of Gustav Klimt. No one was quite sure. The Secessionists had been approached, a frieze commissioned, and in the autumn of 1899 a short, silent, beardy bloke wearing a smock the size of a bell tent had shown up and spent three days roughing out a design, fresco-style, onto the still damp plaster above the bar. He might have been Klimt. He might not. No one had dared break the silence to ask. On the fourth day, the day the money ran out, it was unfinished and the artist conspicuously as absent as the funding. It was still unfinished when Klimt died in 1918. It was still unfinished when Imre took over the theatre some ten years later. But Imre’s first act was to engage a “disciple” of Klimt’s to finish it “in the style of ” Klimt.
He was delighted with the outcome and remarked to his partner, Phillipe Julius, that it was “better than the real thing.”
“How so?”
“Look at the use of red and the deep blues. Klimt would have just plastered gold leaf everywhere.”
“Indeed. It was his trademark. I can hardly think red and blue better.”
“Better? OK, cheaper. It’s a damn sight cheaper! Do you know how much gold leaf costs?”
“Imre, do we really weigh up art as though it were merely double entry bookkeeping?”
Méret had never paid much attention to the frieze. Breasts did not interest her. She had been fascinated at first sight by Moser’s exterior façade, a row of columns each ornamented in the Art Nouveau style with swirls and loops and feathers. She thought of it as being like a row of peacocks viewed from the back. Half a dozen strutting, fanning peacocks. Much to his wife’s annoyance, Imre had adopted this image and every so often would say something like “Just off to the peacock’s bum,” only to be sanctioned with a po-faced “Imre! Pas devant l’enfant!”
The acoustics inside the theatre had been acknowledged from the opening night as being exceptional, and within a matter of weeks the theatre had become a venue for music as well as drama. Two nights a month it would play host to small orchestras or quartets and trios of chamber music.
When Rosen asked for a night in May, Imre leapt at the chance. A Viktor Rosen recital would guarantee a full house. When Rosen said he would be dueting with his daughter, Imre said, “Viktor. Are you sure? The girl is only twelve.”
“Of course, I’m sure. She is the most talented musician I have ever met at any age.”
It was a challenging programme—they would pla
y their much-rehearsed Kreutzer Sonata and César Franck’s Sonata in B major. The Franck Rosen had chosen for the contrast. It was a gentler, more lyrical piece than the Beethoven—but still energetic, passionate. Each lasted more than half an hour. Imre worried about the strain on his daughter and he tried as delicately as he could to raise the matter with Rosen.
“She’s tougher than you think,” Rosen replied. “And so determined. But . . . I shall open each half with some Chopin—or with whatever is at my fingertips on the night—and we will take an interval of at least twenty minutes. She will be fine.”
Imre knew better than to raise the issue with his daughter, she would only turn her hardest face upon him and say something firm, uncompromising, and humourless.
To Imre she looked so small as she stepped onto the stage. Rosen’s arm extended an introduction—but he said nothing. It occurred to Imre that in offering no such fluff as “a talented young lady” or “a tender age,” Rosen was treating his daughter like an adult. She walked on in a plain black dress, precise and unfussy, took her seat, embraced her cello with her right arm, swiftly tuned up, and, the bow in her left hand poised above the strings, nodded once to Rosen and struck up the notes.
An hour and a half later the audience was on its feet. Vienna had a new mistress, and a proud father stood at the back of the stalls wiping away tears of joy.
In the bar, closer to midnight, under the breasts of Artemis, Rosen was on his third Armagnac and Imre had finished half a bottle of claret and was in a mood to be joyously drunk and finish the rest.
“You know, I meant what I said. The girl is a rare talent.”
“I know,” said Imre, feeling he might weep again. “I’d have to be deaf not to know.”
“The direktor of the Symphony Orchestra was in the house tonight. He wants her for his youth orchestra. Can I take it you would have no objection?”
“Of course not.”
“It would mean changing schools in a few years.”
“Why is that?”
“Because at sixteen she would be eligible for the Konservatorium.”
“Viktor, it hasn’t been called that since I was a boy. It’s the Imperial Academy of Music or some such guff . . . quite possibly the only bit of empire we have left.”
“It’s a dilemma.”
“Is it?”
“Imre, Méret is a child of silence and passion. If it were not for the feeling she expresses through her cello one might almost say she was a cold child.”
“Almost, but not quite. But her mother . . . well she gets it from her mother.”
“I have no children. I cannot advise you on her upbringing. But I would ask you to ask yourself. Might she not be better off in a normal school, where she will socialize with normal children rather than an elite of the gifted?”
“Surely you would want her to go to the academy?”
“Of course . . . but I speak as a tutor not a father.”
“Then she must go. I know exactly what you mean. I’ve seen it myself a thousand times. There is a detachment that is disturbing. It may be it is necessary for her dedication, but it is disturbing nonetheless . . . it makes me sad sometimes. But I can give her what she needs. I know I can. She is loved. She will come to no harm. She is loved. That’s her name after all.”
“Sorry, Imre. I don’t follow you there.”
“Méret. It means ‘the beloved.’”
“In what language?”
“Egyptian I think. Or perhaps Greek. I’ve never studied either. I hit the buffers at Latin.”
§8
November 1937
Since 1926, Imre had worked side by side with Phillipe Julius. A man as Viennese as he was himself, but with origins as mixed as his own. The Voyteks had come west a generation ago from Hungary. The Julius family had travelled east from France at about the same time. Central Europe was less a fixed point in geography—more a flying carpet.
They were very different men and made a close and practical partnership. Imre could run a business, any business, on the back of an envelope sitting in a café or bar and delegating to all and sundry. Julius brooded, alternating between prolonged periods of isolated contemplation and the manipulation of crowds of actors into cast and play. As managing director and artistic director they were perfectly matched and were nicknamed Castor and Pollux in the small world of Viennese theatre.
They had made their mark with Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata, and brought Vienna to its feet with a modern-dress version of As You Like It. “What will the twins do next?” was a common question in the columns of Vienna’s newspapers and magazines.
It was the question Imre put to Julius as they sat in the Café Landtmann late in November of 1937.
Julius took a surprisingly long time to answer. For a minute or two Imre continued to scribble on his envelopes and to push them around the table until an order arose. Seeing Julius’s hand pick up and cradle his cup of thick Brauner coffee, Imre looked up.
“Phillipe? I asked—”
“I heard you, Imre.”
“And?”
“Imre. I have to go now.”
“After lunch, then.”
“I mean I have to leave Vienna. Leave Austria.”
“Leave Vienna?”
“Before the bastards get here. You’ve said often enough yourself the Nazis mean to have us.”
Imre sat back amazed. He could and should have anticipated this. But he hadn’t.
“Then perhaps we should all leave?”
“Why? You’re not Jewish. I’m not sure I’d go myself if I weren’t. Vienna is home. I’ve known no other home. But I am Jewish. I’ve not set foot in a synagogue in forty years—and if I wanted third-rate theatre I’d visit one of our rivals rather than a synagogue—but that won’t save me. You . . . no, you stay . . . someone has to keep an eye on Artemis after all. Besides, apart from hating Nazis, do you really have any politics? I’ve always thought ‘live and let live’ summed up your politics rather neatly.”
“Live and let live?!?”
“Forget I said it. Just keep your mouth shut about Nazis and you’ll survive. There’ll be a war. Possibly a short one. The English Royal Navy will sink their ships. The French will kick the shit out of their army at the Maginot Line. Then I’ll come back. We’ll pick up where we left off.”
“So what do we do next?”
“I’ve been working on a new translation of the Oresteia. I’ll leave you the text and a few notes . . . and I’ll see you . . .”
“Quite. When?”
“Oh . . . about 1940 I should think.”
§9
When Imre told his daughter about Julius leaving, she was silent—when was she not?—and eventually said, simply, “1940,” and “Unimaginable.”
“I suppose it must seem that way to anyone of your age. I might just as well have said 2000. Now that really is unimaginable.”
The following day, the first day of December—a Wednesday—Méret called on Rosen just after dusk for her after-school tuition, feeling she was the harbinger of news. She had grown accustomed to Rosen feeding her pieces of history, paring it off from chaos to give her manageable, digestible chunks. Now she had something to offer in return—the morsel that was Phillipe Julius leaving for Paris. She felt it was a mirror, her news reflecting the life of Rosen himself.
The big room was bare. Stripped back to what it had been the first time she saw it. The books, the all-but-endless collected editions of Europe’s masters—Goethe, Schiller, Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Dickens—that she had sorted and shelved with him were gone. The rugs were rolled up and tied, the Bechstein was bound and wrapped in a carapace of heavy felt and standing on edge with its three legs pointing at her like a slaughtered rhinoceros.
Only the two chairs remained. The two chairs and the cello.
“How long have you known?”
It was the most adult statement she had ever uttered, powerful in its elisions of expression and its complexities of
assumption and meaning.
He stood before her, elegant in his simple two-piece black suit—she had come to think of it as his uniform—hands clasped in front of him, paused on the brink of difficulty.
“I decided on Sunday.”
“I was here on Sunday. We always meet on Sundays.”
“I decided after you left.”
“And you did what? Just called the removal men on Monday morning and had them load up four years of your life.”
“I think from your tone, my dear, you mean four years of yours. I have moved before. I have packed and run before. The act is well within my grasp. It revives no old pain, so I cope with the new one entirely.”
“New pain?”
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
She had not the emotional vocabulary to work it out and utter it, but it seemed to her that this must be what lovers leaving felt like. And that that was what he meant. And that was absurd. He was . . . what was he? Fifty? And she was thirteen going on fourteen.
It was a spell crying out to be broken. Rosen unclasped his hands and did what he always did, took out his silver cigarette case, tapped a cigarette against the side of it, lit up, turned his head, and blew the first whiffs of smoke away.
“Play for me,” he said.
“One last time?”
“Why should it be the last? And don’t answer that. Just play.”
“What shall I play?”
“You’ve been practicing a piece in private.”
“How did you know?”
“Just play for me, Méret.”
She wrapped herself around the cello, felt again the sensation she always felt, of music and the lifeblood of time seeping into her flesh, and struck up the piece she had rehearsed as a surprise for him—Bach’s Cello Suite no. 3, the sixth movement. Gigue.
“Shadows and light,” Rosen said when she had finished.
“Yes,” she replied, for that was what it was.
§10
She arrived home in a taxi cab. It was the only way to manage. Rosen had paid the cabbie in advance, and the noise she made staggering up the stairs with her newfound burden alerted her father, who came down to the first landing and, in the half light that the single overhead bulb cast on them, said, “What on earth have you got there?”
