The Mozart Question

by Michael Morpurgo

  “So Benjamin – Signor Horowitz I always called him then – became my first teacher. Now every time I ran over the bridge to see him he would show me a little more, how to tighten the bow just right, how to use the resin, how to hold the violin under my chin using no hands at all and what each string was called. That was when I told him about Papa’s violin at home, and about how he didn’t play it any more. ‘He couldn’t anyway,’ I said, ‘because it’s a bit broken. I think it needs mending a bit. Two of the strings are missing, the A and the E, and there’s hardly a hair left on the bow at all. But I could practise on it if it was mended, couldn’t I?’

  “‘Bring it to my house sometime,’ Benjamin said, ‘and leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.’

  “It wasn’t difficult to escape unnoticed. I just waited till after school. Mama was still at the laundry round the corner in Rio de le Romite where she worked. Papa was downstairs with his customers. To reach the violin on top of the cupboard I had to put a suitcase on the chair and then climb up. It wasn’t easy but I managed. I ran through the streets hugging it to me. From the Dorsoduro to the Arsenale where Benjamin lived is not that far if you know the way – nowhere is that far in Venice – and I knew the way quite well because my Aunt Sophia lived there and we visited her often. All I had to do was find Benjamin’s street. I had to ask about a bit, but I found it.

  “Benjamin lived up a narrow flight of stairs in one small room with a bed in one corner and a basin in the other. On the wall were lots of concert posters. ‘Some of the concerts I played,’ he said. ‘Milan, London, New York. Wonderful places, wonderful people, wonderful music. It is a wonderful world out there. There are times when it can be hard to go on believing that. But always believe it, Paolo, because it is true. And music helps to make it so. Now, show me that violin of yours.’

  “He studied it closely, holding it up to the light, tapping it. ‘A very fine instrument,’ he said. ‘You say this belongs to your father?’

  “‘And now I want to play it myself,’ I told him.

  “‘It’s a bit on the large side for a young lad like you,’ he said, tucking the violin under my chin and stretching my arm to see how far I could reach. ‘But a big violin is better than no violin at all. You’ll manage. You’ll grow into it.’

  “‘And when it’s mended, will you teach me?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve got lots of money saved up from my sweeping; so many notes they cover all my bed when I spread them out, from the end of the bed right up to my pillow.’

  “He laughed at that and told me he would teach me for nothing because I was his best listener, his lucky mascot. ‘When you’re not there,’ he said, ‘everyone walks by and my violin case stays empty. Then you come along and sit there. That’s when they always stop to listen and that’s when they leave their money. So a lesson or two will just be paying you back, Paolo. I’ll have the violin ready as soon as I can and then we can start your lessons.’

  “It was a week or two before the violin was mended. I dreaded that Mama or Papa might discover it was missing. But my luck held, and they didn’t, and my lessons began. Whenever I wasn’t having my lessons with Benjamin, Papa’s violin, now restrung and restored, lay in its case wrapped in the grey blanket and hidden away on top of their bedroom cupboard. My secret was safe, I thought. But secrets are never safe, however well hidden. Sooner or later truth will out, and in this case it was to be sooner rather than later.

  “I took to the violin as if it had been a limb I had been missing all my life. I seemed to be able to pick up everything Benjamin taught me, effortlessly and instinctively. Under his kind tutelage my confidence simply burgeoned, my playing blossomed. I found I could make my violin – Papa’s violin rather – sing with the voice of an angel. Benjamin and I felt the excitement and pleasure of my progress as keenly as each other. ‘I think this instrument was invented just for you, Paolo,’ he told me one day. ‘Or maybe you were made for it. Either way it is a perfect match.’ I loved every precious moment of my lessons and always dreaded their ending. We would finish every lesson with a cup of mint tea made with fresh mint. I loved it. Ever since, I have always treated myself to a cup of mint tea after practice. It’s something I always look forward to.

  “I remember one day with the lesson over, we were drinking tea at his table when he looked across at me, suddenly very serious. ‘It is strange, Paolo,’ he said, ‘but as I was watching you playing a moment ago, I felt I had known you before, a long, long time ago. And then just now I thought about your name, Levi. It is a common enough name, I know, but his name was Levi too. It is him you remind me of. I am sure of it. He was the youngest player in our orchestra, no more than a boy really. Gino, he was called.’

  “‘But my father is called Gino,’ I told him. ‘Maybe it was him. Maybe you played with my father. Maybe you know him.’

  “‘It can’t be possible,’ Benjamin breathed. He was staring at me now as if I were a ghost. ‘No, it can’t be. The Gino Levi I knew must be dead, I am sure of it. I have not heard of him in a long while, a very long while. But you never know, I suppose. Maybe I should meet your papa, and your mama too. It’s about time anyway. You’ve been coming for lessons for over six months now. They need to know they have a wonderful violinist for a son.’

  “‘No, you can’t!’ I cried. ‘He’d find out! You can’t tell him. You mustn’t!’ Then I told him, through my tears, all my secret, about how Mama had shown me Papa’s violin and made me promise never to say anything, never to tell Papa, and how I’d kept it a secret all this while, mending the violin, the lessons, everything.

  “‘Secrets, Paolo,’ said Benjamin, ‘are lies by another name. You do not lie to those you love. A son should not hide things from his papa and his mama. You must tell them your secret, Paolo. If you want to go on playing the violin, you will have to tell them. If you want me to go on teaching you, you will have to tell them. And now is usually a good time to do what must be done, particularly when you don’t want to do it.’

  “‘Will you come with me?’ I begged him. ‘I can only do it if you come with me.’

  “‘If you like,’ he said, smiling.

  “Benjamin carried Papa’s violin for me that day, and held my hand all the way back to the Dorsoduro. I dreaded having to make my confession. I knew how hurt they would be. All the way I rehearsed what I was going to say over and over again. Mama and Papa were upstairs in the kitchen when we came in. I introduced Benjamin and then, before anyone had a chance to say anything, before I lost my courage entirely, I launched at once into my prepared confession, how I hadn’t really stolen Papa’s violin, just borrowed it to get it mended, and to practise on. But that’s as far as I got. To my surprise they were not looking angry. In fact, they weren’t looking at me at all. They were just staring up at Benjamin as if quite unable to speak. Benjamin spoke before they did. ‘Your mama and papa and me, I think perhaps we do know one another,’ he said. ‘We played together once, did we not? Don’t you remember me, Gino?’

  “‘Benjamin?’ As Papa started to his feet, the chair went over behind him.

  “‘And if I am not much mistaken, Signora,’ Benjamin went on, looking now at Mama, ‘you must be little Laura Adler – all of us violins, all of us there, and all of us still here. It is like a miracle. It is a miracle.’

  “What happened next I can see as if it were yesterday. It was suddenly as if I was not in the room at all. The three of them seemed to fill the kitchen, arms around each other, and crying openly, crying through their laughter. I stood there mystified, trying to piece together all I had heard, all that was going on before my eyes. Mama played the violin too! She had never told me that!

  “‘You see, Paolo,’ said Benjamin, smiling down at me, ‘didn’t I tell you once it was a wonderful world? Twenty years. It’s been twenty years or more since I last saw your mama and papa. I had no idea they were still alive. I always hoped they survived, hoped they were together, these two young lovebirds, but I never believed it, not really
.’

  “Mama was drying her eyes on her apron. Papa was so overcome, he couldn’t speak. They sat down then, hands joined around the table as if unwilling to let each other go for fear this reunion might turn out to be no more than a dream.

  “Benjamin was the first to recover. ‘Paolo was about to tell you something, I think,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you, Paolo?’ I told them everything then: how I’d gone for my lessons, how Benjamin had been the best teacher in all the world. I dared to look up only when I’d finished. Instead of the disapproval and disappointment I had expected, both Mama and Papa were simply glowing with joy and pride.

  “‘Didn’t I say Paolo would tell us, Papa?’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell you we should trust him? You see, Paolo, I often take down my violin, just to touch it, to look at it. Papa doesn’t like me to, but I do it all the same, because this violin is my oldest friend. Papa forgives me, because he knows I love this violin, that it is a part of me. You remember I showed it to you that day, Paolo? It wasn’t long after that it went missing, was it? I knew it had to be you. Then it came back, mended miraculously. And after school you were never home, and when you weren’t home the violin was always gone too. I told Papa, didn’t I, Papa? I told him you’d tell us when you were ready. We put two and two together; we thought you might be practising somewhere, but it never occurred to us that you were having lessons, nor that you had a teacher – and certainly not that your teacher was Benjamin Horowitz, who taught us and looked after us like a father all those years ago.’ She cried again then, her head on Papa’s shoulder.

  “‘But you told me it was Papa’s violin, that he’d put it away and never wanted to play it again, ever,’ I said.

  “At this the three of them looked at one another. I knew then they all shared the same secret, and that without a word passing between them they were deciding whether they should reveal it, if this was the right moment to tell me. I often wondered later whether, if Benjamin had not come that day, they would ever have told me. As it was they looked to Papa for the final decision, and it was he who invited me to the table to join them. I think I knew then, even before Papa began, that I was in some way part of their secret.

  “‘Mama and me,’ Papa began, ‘we try never to speak of this, because the memories we have are like nightmares, and we want to forget. But you told us your secret. There is a time for truth, it seems, and it has come. Truth for truth, maybe.’

  “So began the saddest, yet the happiest story I ever heard. When the story became too painful, as it often did, they passed it from one to the other, so that all three shared it. I listened horrified, at the same time honoured that they trusted me enough with their story, the story of their lives. Each told their part with great care, explaining as they went along so that I would understand, because I was a boy of nine who knew very little then of the wickedness of the world. I wish I could remember their exact words, but I can’t, so I won’t even try. I’ll just tell you their story my own way, about how they lived together, how they nearly died together and how they were saved by music.

  “The three of them were brought by train to the concentration camp from all over Europe: Benjamin from Paris, Mama from Warsaw, Papa from here, from Venice; all musicians, all Jewish, and all bound for the gas chamber and extermination like so many millions. They survived only because they were all able to say yes to one question put to them by an SS officer on arrival at the camp. ‘Is there anyone amongst you who can play an orchestral instrument, who is a professional musician?’ They did not know when they stepped forward that they would at once be separated from their families, would have to watch them being herded off towards those hellish chimneys, never to be seen again.

  “There were auditions, of course, and by now they knew they were playing for their lives. There were rehearsals then, and it was during these rehearsals that the three of them first met. Benjamin was a good twenty years older than Mama and Papa, who were very much the babies of the orchestra, both of them just twenty. Why the orchestra was rehearsing, who they would be playing for, they did not know and they did not ask. To ask was to draw attention to oneself. This they knew was not the way to survive, and in the camp to survive was everything. They played Mozart, a lot of Mozart. The repertoire was for the most part light and happy – Eine kleine Nachtmusick, the Clarinet Concerto in A major, minuets, dances, marches. And Strauss was popular too, waltzes, always waltzes. Playing was very hard because their fingers were so cold that sometimes they could hardly feel them, because they were weak with hunger and frequently sick. Sickness had to be hidden, because sickness once discovered would mean death. The SS were always there watching, and everyone knew too what awaited them if they did not play well enough.

  “At first they gave concerts only for the SS officers. Papa said you just had to pretend they were not there. You simply lost yourself in the music – it was the only way. Even when they applauded you did not look up. You never looked them in the eye. You played with total commitment. Every performance was your best performance, not to please them, but to show them what you could do, to prove to them how good you were despite all they were doing to humiliate you, to destroy you in body and soul. ‘We fought back with our music,’ Papa said. ‘It was our only weapon.’

  “Papa could speak no Polish, Mama no Italian, but their eyes met as they were playing – as often as possible, Mama said. To begin with, it might have been their shared joy in music-making, but very soon they knew they loved one another. The whole orchestra knew it, even before they did, Benjamin told me. ‘Our little lovebirds’ they were called. For everyone else in the orchestra, he said, they represented a symbol of hope for the future; and so they were much loved, much protected. For Mama and Papa their love numbed the pain and was a blessed refuge from the constant fear they were living through, from the horror of all that was going on around them.

  “But there was amongst them a shared shame. They were being fed when others were not. They were being kept alive while others went to the gas chamber. Many were consumed by guilt, and this guilt was multiplied a thousand times when they discovered the real reason the orchestra had been assembled, why they had been rehearsing all this time. The concerts for the SS officers turned out to be sinister dress rehearsals for something a great deal worse.

  “One cold morning with snow on the ground, they were made to assemble out in the compound with their instruments and ordered to sit down and play close to the camp gates. Then the train arrived, the wagons packed with new prisoners.

  Once they were all out they were lined up and then divided. The old and young and the frail were herded past the orchestra on their way, they were told, to the shower block; the able-bodied, those fit for work, were taken off towards the huts. And all the while Mama and Papa and Benjamin and the others played their Mozart. They all understood soon enough what it was for – to calm the terror, to beguile each new trainload into a false sense of security. They were part of a deadly sham. They knew well enough that the shower block was a gas chamber.

  “Week after week they played, month after month, train after train. And twenty-four hours a day the chimneys of the crematorium spewed out their fire and their smoke and their stench. Until there were no more trains; until the day the camps were liberated. This was the last day Benjamin ever remembered seeing Mama and Papa. They were all terribly emaciated by now, he said, and looked unlikely to survive. But they had. Mama and Papa had walked together out of the camp. They had played duets for bread and shelter, all across Europe. They were still playing to survive.

  “When at last they got home to Venice, Papa smashed his violin and burned it, vowing never to play music again. But Mama kept hers. She thought of it as her talisman, her saviour and her friend, and she would neither sell it nor abandon it. She said it had brought her through all the horrors of the camp, brought them safely across Europe, back to Papa’s home in Venice. It had saved their lives.

  “Papa kept his vow. He never played a note of music again. After all th
at had happened he could hardly bear to hear it, which is why Mama had not played her violin either in all these years. But she would not be parted from it and had kept it safe at the top of their bedroom cupboard, hoping against hope, she said, that one day Papa might change his mind and be able to love music again and even play it. He never had. But they had survived and they were in time blessed with a child, a boy they called Paolo – a happy ending, Benjamin said. And I was the one who had brought the three of them together again, he said. So two happy endings.

  “As for Benjamin, he had found his way back to Paris after a while, and played again in his old orchestra. He had married a French girl, Françoise, a cellist who had died only recently. He had come to Venice because he had always loved visiting the city and always longed to live looking out over water, and because Vivaldi was born here – he had always loved Vivaldi above all other composers. He played in the streets not just for the money, though that was a help, but because he could not bear not to play his violin. And he loved playing solo violin at last. He was more like Mama, he said. It was music that had kept him alive in the camp, and music had been his constant companion ever since. He could not imagine living a single day of his life without it, which was why, he said, he would dearly like to go on teaching me, if Mama and Papa would allow it.

  “‘Does he play well, Benjamin?’ Mama asked. ‘Can we hear him, Papa? Please.’