Winter's End

by Jean-Claude Mourlevat

  At first they’d had to call her two or three times before she reacted to her new name. She was used to it now, and she turned at once.

  “In the restaurant? What on earth for?”

  The waiter who had spoken to her spread his arms to show his ignorance. “They just want you there.”

  “Who does?”

  “Mr. Jahn.”

  She took off her rubber gloves and followed the waiter. She couldn’t make it out. The big man had always expressly warned her not to show her face in the public rooms, and now he himself was summoning her. And at a time when there must still be a lot of people around. She climbed the stairs, surprised by the unusual silence on the ground floor, and opened one side of the double door. Jahn was waiting for her there. He took her by the arm as if afraid she might run away.

  “Come on.”

  Astonished, she let him lead her into the restaurant. Turning her head from side to side, she found all eyes intently gazing at her. The customers from the second room had crowded in to join those in the first, so that it was quite difficult for her to make her way past the rows of seats. Milena felt no fear, only immense amazement. And so she arrived at the far end of the room. A smiling Dora met her at the foot of the platform.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  They went up three steps and were onstage. A waiter jumped up behind them and pulled the blue cloth away to reveal an upright piano, an unexpected sight here. So far Milena had not had the time or inclination to object.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, but she was afraid she knew already.

  “It’s a recital, my dear,” said Dora. “I’m going to play the piano and you’re going to sing. We can do that, can’t we?”

  The accompanist was wearing a pretty cream dress, with a bright red flower in her curly black hair. With no more ado, she sat down on the piano stool and struck a cheerful chord.

  “You could have warned me!” Milena protested.

  “Sorry, we forgot.”

  Milena had no choice: she would have to sing. She took up her usual position standing beside her friend, her right hand on the side of the piano, and then froze, feeling sure that she wouldn’t be able to utter a single articulate sound. All the same, she ventured to look at the room, where the lights had been dimmed, and realized that for the first time in her life she was facing a real audience.

  A great many of them gave her encouraging smiles, and she was touched by their goodwill. She saw Bart perched on the back of a chair by the window, surrounded by his friends. He waved a couple of fingers at her. If only I could entertain them, she thought. I’ll never be able to sing. There was absolute silence now. Expectation was at its height.

  “Schubert, D. 764,” announced Dora in a low voice, but just as she was about to play the first chord, she stopped and signaled discreetly to Milena, who failed to understand.

  “What is it?” she murmured.

  “Your apron,” whispered Dora. “Take off your kitchen apron.”

  Realizing that it did look slightly strange, Milena opened her mouth with an expression of such dismay that the audience burst out laughing. In her haste to untie the white apron, she only tightened the knot behind her and had to ask Dora for help, but Dora couldn’t do it either. The more she struggled in vain to undo the apron strings, the louder everyone laughed. It seemed to go on forever, and in the end Milena couldn’t help laughing herself, showing the audience her luminous face at last. It was a moment that overwhelmed everyone present who had known Eva-Maria Bach. They recognized the clear, laughing eyes of the singer they had loved so much in the past, her generous smile, her love of life. Nothing was missing but her long blond hair.

  “Schubert, D. 764,” Dora repeated, and this time they were off.

  Milena had never sung so badly in her life. She felt she was making every possible mistake, mistakes she had patiently put right one by one during dozens of hours of work. She got ahead of the accompaniment, she fell behind it, she mixed the words up, her voice faltered. On the last note she turned to Dora with tears in her eyes, furious with herself. But she had no time to indulge in her distress. Applause broke out and had hardly died down when her accompanist began another song. This one went better. She gradually came to feel new confidence. Inner peace spread through her, and at last her voice rang out full and serene.

  Helen, precariously seated on the very end of a bench at the back of the room, held her breath. A man of about fifty beside her was gently nodding his head, and could hardly hide his emotion.

  “The child sings almost as well as her mother. Oh, if you could only have heard our Eva, young lady,” he murmured to Helen. “When I think what they did to her — it was disgusting.”

  The sound of a scuffle and several stifled oaths made them turn. The horse-men at the entrance were overpowering a man who was obviously trying to leave the restaurant.

  “No one goes out,” the largest of them said calmly, lifting the man right off the ground. “Mr. Jahn’s orders.”

  Then he put the man down in his seat again and pressed on his shoulders to keep him there, as if quelling a refractory child.

  Once peace was restored, Dora and Milena performed another four lieder . Helen recognized the last one from hearing her friend rehearsing it: An die Musik (“To Music”).

  “Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,

  Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,

  Hast du mein Herz . . .”

  She sang melodiously, and the audience paid her the tribute of complete silence. The slightest inflections of her voice could be heard, even the tiny sound of her fingernail on the wood of the piano during a rest. And when the last note had rung out, the silence continued and no one dared to break it.

  “‘In My Basket’” Dora whispered, and she played two bars of the tune.

  Faces lit up. “In My Basket”! Milena was going to sing “In My Basket”!

  The name of whoever had written that artless and very simple little song was long forgotten now. It was to be sung slowly, in a low voice, with nothing abrupt about it. It had come down through the centuries, a light and melancholy tune, and no one tried to work out what the words meant. The Phalange had taken it into their heads, heaven only knew why, that it contained some hidden message and must therefore be banned. The ban was, of course, the best possible way of making the little tune a good-luck charm to the Resistance, in the same way as the giant hog Napoleon had become the movement’s mascot. You never found out what the girl in the song had in her basket, only what wasn’t in it, and no doubt that was what enraged the Phalange.

  “In my basket,

  In my basket, I have no cherries,

  My dear prince.

  I have no crimson cherries,

  I have no almonds, no.

  I have no pretty kerchiefs,

  No embroidered kerchiefs,

  I have no beads, no.

  No more grief and pain, my love,

  No more grief and pain. . . .”

  The first to take up the melody were several women timidly raising their voices. Then the bass voice of a man at the back of the room joined in. Who stood up first? It was impossible to tell, but within a few seconds, the entire audience was on its feet. The only person still sitting down was the man who had tried to leave a few minutes earlier. The horse-man who had barred his way then took him by the collar of his jacket and forced him to stand like his neighbors. Everyone sang mezza voce, all of them simply adding their voices to the rest without raising them. The childlike words of the song rose in the air like a muted murmur from underground.

  “In my basket, I have no chicken,

  Father dear,

  No chicken to be plucked,

  I have no duck, no.

  I have no velvet gloves,

  Gloves neatly sewn, no.

  No more grief and pain, my love,

  No more grief and pain.”

  Helen couldn’t get over it. All around her, dozens of grown men and women
were taking out their handkerchiefs as tears ran down their cheeks. For a little song like that! As she clapped with all her might, she felt a lump in her throat. Don’t worry, Milos! We’re coming! I don’t know just how we’ll do it, but we’ll get you out of there!

  The recital was over. Mr. Jahn went up on the stage, gave bouquets of flowers to both the singer and the pianist, and kissed them. They came down into the restaurant while some men took the piano away and began dismantling the platform. Helen would have liked to congratulate her friends, but there was such a crowd that she couldn’t get through to them. When everyone had left the restaurant a little later, she helped her colleagues to finish the cleaning and tidying up. It was after midnight before she could finally go to her room.

  In passing she knocked on Milena’s door, but there was no reply. She went back two floors down and knocked at Bart’s. No one there either. She went to bed, listening in vain until halfway through the night for the sound of a key in the lock of the room next door. Around four in the morning she thought she heard a shot fired outside. She got up, stood on her chair, and opened the skylight. Icy cold stung her face. Cars were driving fast over Royal Bridge. There was more firing; she heard the sound of voices in the distance, then silence. Helen went back to bed, her heart full of mingled hope and anxiety.

  Not much later she was abruptly woken by the sound of a door being kicked in. She sat up in bed, terrified, thinking someone was trying to break into her own room, but the men outside were forcing their way into Milena’s little room next door. It was ransacked violently but swiftly. There wasn’t much to be taken away or broken. As soon as the men had gone again, she got up and joined five other girls in their nightdresses in the corridor. Mute with horror, they were gazing at Milena’s books lying jumbled on the floor, her broken shelves, her little ornaments trodden underfoot, her scores torn up.

  “I’m scared.” The youngest of the girls gulped, hugging a cushion as if it would protect her.

  “Apparently the revolt began in the night,” said another girl.

  “How do you know?”

  “Didn’t you hear the gunfire? And Mr. Jahn has disappeared.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. He left with Kathleen and her tall boyfriend.”

  “Bart? They’ve left?” murmured Helen. “They never said a word to me!”

  “Or me,” replied the other girl. “But my room looks out on the street behind the building. I was looking out of the window after the recital and I saw them get into two cars.”

  “Two cars? Wouldn’t one have been enough?”

  “No, there were other people with them. I saw Lando, the head chef, and those horse-men who were guarding the entrance to the restaurant. They all left together.”

  “Where were they going?”

  “How do you expect me to know?”

  “No, of course you don’t. Sorry.”

  Helen stayed in Milena’s room by herself to tidy it up a little. Among the torn-up scores, she came upon the music of “In My Basket,” which had survived. She took it away to her own room and slipped it into the inside pocket of her coat.

  Then she went back to bed, to keep warm while she waited for day to dawn.

  The two cars crossed Royal Bridge together and drove away into the freezing night, going east. Jahn led at the wheel of his heavy Panhard. A young horse-man beside him, unsure where to put his long legs, was kneading the cap he held on his knees.

  “I’m your bodyguard, Mr. Jahn. Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. What’s your name?”

  “Jocelin.”

  “Well, Jocelin, your job is to protect me in case of any violence. Me and the passengers in the back seat.”

  “Right, Mr. Jahn. I’ll protect you.”

  He didn’t have to say any more. The fists he raised slightly spoke for him; they were as heavy as anvils.

  In the back of the car Milena, Bartolomeo, and Dora were huddling close together to keep warm. Before they left, Milena had just had time to run to her room and fetch her things.

  “Hurry,” Jahn had told her. “We won’t be back here for some time.”

  Flinging her clothes and a few favorite things into her bag, she had thought that perhaps they were going to take her from place to place to sing for more audiences. She wouldn’t have minded. The pleasure she’d felt in her first recital promised great future happiness. But that wasn’t it. On the contrary, as soon as he had left the city behind and felt certain that no one was following him, Jahn told the two women that they were going to have to hide — again. Whatever happened, they must avoid falling into the hands of the barbarians. He knew a safe place where they would both stay as long as necessary, he said.

  “What was the point of giving the recital, then?” asked Milena, unable to hide her disappointment.

  “What was the point?” repeated Jahn, laughing. “Do you know what will happen after tonight?”

  “No.”

  “What will happen is that hundreds of people who heard you and Dora will tell hundreds of others about it, and they in their turn will pass on the story to thousands more. All these people will be saying that Milena Bach, Eva-Maria Bach’s daughter, sang for an hour accompanied by Dora. They’ll describe the way everyone rose to their feet to sing an encore of “In My Basket.” Tomorrow the news will spread through the whole country, through towns and villages, all the way to the most remote houses. When you sang, you stirred the embers into flames, understand? People will come out of hiding and throw more fuel on the flames — twigs, branches. They’ll fan it into a blaze that becomes a vast conflagration. That’s what will happen, Milena.”

  She didn’t reply. She found it hard to imagine that she had been able to unleash such forces by herself.

  “Why didn’t you warn me I was going to sing?” she asked.

  “It was a Resistance secret, and although you were very closely concerned, there was no need for you to know. Are you annoyed?”

  “I don’t know. A little. It means you thought I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and Dora could. I’m not a little girl, you know. Still, what does it matter? Anyway, I’d have died of fright if I’d known in advance.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  They drove on through the countryside for about an hour, then followed a straight road through a forest of spruce trees. Dora gloomily watched the dark trees pass by in the headlights. At a junction, the second car, driven by the head chef, Lando, tooted its horn briefly and stopped. Jahn stopped too, sixty feet farther on. Turning around, Milena saw two horse-men get out of the car, propelling a man with a hood over his head in front of them.

  “The Phalangist who tried to leave during the recital,” Jahn explained.

  “Are they going to hurt him?” asked Milena.

  “No. But I’m sure that’s what he expects. He’s probably half dead of fright, thinking he’s going to be executed, but that’s their way, not ours. We’re just going to leave him here. A little walk will do him good, and he’s not about to raise the alarm with his friends, because the nearest phone is almost twenty miles away.”

  The two cars set off again. The Phalangist watched them go, holding his hood and astonished to find himself still alive.

  Milena put her head on Bart’s shoulder. They drove on through the forest and then past fields with mist hanging over them. She was just falling asleep when they reached a village with rows of brick cottages. They looked drab in the faint light. At the very end of the road, Jahn stopped his car outside a small house just like the others.

  “Here we are, ladies.”

  They all got out except Jocelin, the young horse-man, who preferred to stay in the car to keep watch on the road. The air was sharp and cold. There was a loose brick in the wall to the right just above the door frame. Jahn stood on tiptoe, dislodged the brick, put his hand into the hole, and brought out a large key. The door opened, squealing, to reveal a small room with rickety, old-fashioned furniture. A single lightbulb
dangled from a wire. Dora ran a finger over the dust on a chair and made a face.

  “What luxury! Oh, you really shouldn’t have! See what a lovely life we musicians lead, Milena! Such a grand hotel! Such comfort! How many stars does this place have?”

  “You won’t be staying here long,” said Jahn, sounding rather put out. “And you’ll be safe; that’s what matters most. Everyone in this village supports us.”

  “Wonderful. And if we get bored, we can always do the housework. Guns for you, brooms for us, right?”

  Milena, who knew Dora very well by now, realized how furious she was.

  “Dora, please don’t think that —” Jahn began, but she gave him no time to go on.

  “I don’t think anything!” she snapped, looking him straight in the eyes. “I just know one thing: fifteen years ago, Eva and I hid as if we were ashamed to be ourselves. We traveled covered by stinking blankets, we could wash only every third night, and we scurried into hiding like insects. And what for, at the end of the day? To be captured. To be tortured in my case and killed in hers. I’m sorry, Jahn, but I have no intention of playing the same part again. That role doesn’t suit me.”

  Jahn was not used to opposition and was left speechless by the angry woman now already on her way to the door and about to march out of it.

  “I am not staying in this hole!” she went on. “Nor is Milena. We’re not dolls to be taken out to make the place look good and then put back in the cupboard once the visitors have gone.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you avoided any risks,” Jahn pointed out calmly. “You two are very valuable to the cause, as you well know, Dora.”

  “Save your breath, Jahn,” Dora interrupted him. “I’m very fond of you, but it’s no use arguing. This discussion is now closed. Come on, Milena.”

  Bartolomeo was torn between astonishment and admiration. He had never before heard anyone speak to Mr. Jahn so fiercely.

  After this outburst, oddly enough, the atmosphere in the car was more cheerful and relaxed. It was as if Dora’s anger had done everyone good, first and foremost herself; it had been on her mind for a long time. Jahn too, for he was tired of secrets and the necessity for silence. And finally Bart and Milena, who would now be able to stay in the fight together.