Of Another Time and Place

by Brad Schaeffer

  “I’ve asked Leo about you, you know,” she confessed, breaking the spell.

  “You have?”

  She nodded earnestly. “He tells me you’re a wonderful pianist. At least that’s what I think he means when he calls you his young Beethoven. Although now I’m not so sure.” I flashed a self-deprecating smile. “And he calls you a friend.”

  I’d never thought of Leo as a friend. But I guess he was, yes.

  “You’ll have to play for me one day,” she said, and touched my hand. An electric charge ran through me and there was movement within my trousers that fortunately was hidden from view by the counter, sparing me severe embarrassment. “But right now what you can do for me, Harmon, is help me find my Mendelssohn.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Mendelssohn was a Jew. It’s forbidden to sell his music here.” Her eyes narrowed, and I suddenly felt very small.

  “That’s absurd,” she hissed. “His father converted and he was baptized at seven and he took the Christian name Bartholdy. And, oh for God’s sake, what would it matter if he was bloody Abraham! He was German, was he not? Has this whole country gone mad? Have you?”

  She shot me a fiery glare, and I raised my hands in innocence:

  “It’s not my law, Amelia.”

  She was about to say something more when suddenly a jagged rock smashed through the window from the darkening street like a rogue meteorite! She screamed in shock and whirled around. I barely had time to register the act when there came another projectile, shattering more glass and sending razor-sharp slivers flying through the air like twirling knives. “What the hell!” I shouted. “Amelia, get down and come around here!” I said, crouching low behind the counter and covering my head with my hands. Another crash. More plate glass panes exploded around us. She fell to her knees and crawled on all fours as best she could in her thick skirt until she was tucked up next to me behind the relative safety of the counter. I noticed there was a smear of crimson on the floral pattern of her dress. Another volley of stones came hurtling in from the street. I could make out the faint flicker of torchlights competing with the fading illumination of a setting sun. The rocks shattered more windows and ricocheted off instruments and sheet music hanging on the walls, making an awful clatter. A pair of cymbals were knocked off their hooks and fell to the floor with an ear-splitting crash.

  We found ourselves in each other’s arms, crouched in a ball on the floor behind the counter as a fountain of glass and sheaves of music rained down. I was doing my best to shield her from the razor-sharp splinters.

  When the final salvo of stones careened through the store, landing amidst the patina of glass debris on the floorboards, we heard teenaged voices outside: “Fucking Jews! Get out! Get out!”

  Amelia’s eyes widened as she picked out one familiar inflection. “That’s Johann,” she seethed. She went to stand up to see, but I pulled her back to the ground beside me for safety.

  The murmur of the youthful mob and dancing torches moved on into the fading light of the city streets, and we rose from behind the counter to survey the damage. “Are you okay?” I held up her left hand and examined her palm, which was wet with blood. “You’re bleeding,” I said, as I whipped out a handkerchief from my shirt pocket.

  She glanced down indifferently at her injured hand. “I must have cut it on a piece of glass as I crawled.”

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she said. She winced as I gently pressed the cloth to the half-inch slice to stem the bleeding.

  “It doesn’t look like there’s any glass in your hand. Just make a fist to keep the pressure on until it stops.”

  We rose off the floor together. I took her by her undamaged right hand as we stepped around the counter, the jagged shards of glass crunching under the soles of our shoes. I counted no fewer than twenty rocks the size of a man’s fist lying on the debris-strewn hardwood floor in mute testimony to the savagery of what were Stauffenberg’s opening shots of the cruel nationwide assault on Jewish-owned businesses and homes we would call Kristallnacht…Crystal Night. Or, as was most apropos to our experience, The Night of Broken Glass.

  “That Johann Keitel is a bully bastard,” she said. Indignation pulsed through her veins, giving her milky pallor a fiery glow. I found her zeal alluring.

  “I heard you’re to be his wife,” I reminded her.

  She glared at me as she brushed herself off and looked around at the cruel vandalism. “I’ll be who I wish to be.” She straightened her hair and then looked coolly at me. “Thank you for caring about my safety. And for this.” She held up her clenched left hand with my kerchief. The tiny laceration was already closing. “You really are a good man, aren’t you, Harmon Becker?”

  I shrugged as I surveyed the destruction. “I try to be.”

  Amelia abruptly kissed me on the cheek and then, as if to prevent her passions from getting the better of her, she stormed off into the darkness of the street. I noticed she was smart enough to walk away in the opposite direction of the roving band of torchlit brownshirts. I stood motionless, stunned by her kiss. Then I snapped out of my bewilderment and looked over the scene around me; my heart sank as I stood all alone in the twilight and appraised the damage to Krup’s store. The cold air was pouring through the now blasted-out picture window, and sheet music was dancing and fluttering in the swirling November wind. Krup would be closed for some time, I thought. There was nothing more to do but catch my breath and grab a broom. As I commenced my robotic sweeping, I was relieved that the Krupinskis lived out in the countryside, away from the violent streets of a once friendly village now wrapped in the blackening shadow of the New Order.

  16

  On Christmas Eve 1938 my father and family were invited to a grand ball at the Keitel estate just outside of town. It was a splendid affair complete with orchestra, waltzes, tuxedos, and Bavarian cuisine. All of Stauffenberg was there, as were a few Nazi Party members of some import all the way from Berlin. The ball was, in essence, a symbolic gesture by beneficiaries of the New Order. Johann’s family’s factory had been pumping out machine gun bullets around the clock to fill orders for Hitler’s powerful Wehrmacht. The Keitels were growing fat off the bounty of war contracts for a war not yet begun, but one that was inevitable. They were not the traditional German barons but rather, new wealth—a cabal that owed its good fortune to the Nazis and would repay them with blind loyalty and support. This was the last peacetime Christmas of a beloved Germany that I would later see turned to dust.

  I’d put Kristallnacht behind me. I hadn’t seen Krup since the day after the vandals struck, when I helped him board up his windows. “I will re-open in the spring,” he declared in naive defiance. But I wasn’t thinking of him now. I was instead enjoying the spectacle even as I held up the wall in my evening best. I can still see my mother in her dinner gown, my father in his most formal dark blue constable’s uniform, twelve-year-old Pauli running about the snowy courtyard outside the ballroom making mischief with the younger boys of the town. Over the main entrance to the house, a giant red Nazi flag was draped from the second-floor window and fluttered in the frigid air. Inside, an ornately baubled Tannenbaum greeted arriving guests in the great foyer embraced by two marble staircases. Crowning the tree was a brightly lit swastika. The New Germany encapsulated. We are your new shining star. Your north, your south, your east, your west. A beacon of hope. A covenant between the Führer and the Volksdeutsche. With one body and one soul we will build a Reich to last for a thousand years.

  An introvert by nature, I found myself gravitating towards the musicians near the ballroom windows, a glass of champagne in my hand. They weren’t very good, and my pitch-perfect ear recoiled as they hacked through Die Fledermaus just a hair to the sharp side.

  “Not exactly the Berlin Philharmonic, are they?” A girl’s voice.


  I turned and found myself a yard apart from Amelia. I blushed and, unable to speak at first, furiously guzzled my champagne.

  “You have a lovely ear,” I stammered. “I mean you have a good ear. For music.” This bit of Freudian clumsiness came out in a voice I did not recognize. My cheeks were on fire.

  I looked around for a waiter with a tray and more champagne, but none were nearby.

  “How’s your hand?” I asked.

  She smiled and held up her palm. “You do good work, Herr Doctor.” A thin, pink dash crossing the heart line was the only physical evidence she carried from that night. She sidled closer to me. “I bought you this,” she said, handing me a little square box. I gave her a quizzical look and opened it. Inside was a brand-new handkerchief with “HBN” embroidered in the silk. “The one you gave me was too bloodstained.”

  I felt its softness before tucking it into my pocket. “I love it. But you really didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to,” she said. “I even had the tailor initial it for you. Your middle name is Nantwein?” I raised a questioning brow. She grinned impishly. “I asked Paul.”

  “That kid’s mouth runs like a stream,” I said. “Not the best of names. But my parents meant well. Saint Nantovinus was burnt at the stake. His skull is in a museum in Münich.”

  “Lovely,” she said. Then she lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I was hoping you would visit my home to check up on me so I could give you this in private. But you never came. Should I be hurt?”

  “It was a frightening experience. I figured I’d just remind you of that, I guess.”

  She looked around, as if to see if Johann was near.

  “Well, you’d be wrong. I told you. You have a good heart. That’s rare for the men of Germany these days. They’re all Hitler’s little robots.”

  “Shh!” I admonished her as I instinctively glanced around.

  Amelia moved even closer to me. Her hand brushed against my thigh, sending an electric charge through my waist. My good heart started a drumbeat inside that I thought was loud enough to throw the band off.

  “Play for me tonight, Harmon.”

  Then she disappeared into the crowd of dancers in tuxedos and elegant ball gowns, leaving me stunned.

  I soon regained my composure enough to try my clumsy hand at mingling. Herr Wechsler, the new Burgermeister appointed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who was now also in charge of the Gestapo as well, was engaged in a discussion with another local Nazi party apparatchik. The latter was flanked by fiercely patriotic young men of the SS in their menacing black dress uniforms and visor caps brandishing the silver-skull-and-crossbones Totenkopf, the “death’s head.” I hoped never to cross such men.

  I searched for Paul, as he was the only one here who seemed more socially uncouth than I, but he was off roaming the grounds. Instead Johann Keitel himself bounded over to me with palms out and a warm smile. He was curiously decked out in his black Hitler Youth winter uniform.

  “Becker! I haven’t seen you since secondary school. You’re enjoying yourself I hope?”

  I took his hand and bowed. “Yes, thank you, Johann. The house is just grand.”

  “It keeps the snows off Father’s head. Is your family here?”

  “They’re knocking about somewhere. I’m sure constable Becker is being his usual garrulous self.”

  Johann chuckled at my gentle sarcasm. “Like father, like son.”

  “Mother talks enough for us all.”

  He looked me over. “No uniform yet?” he said.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m hoping things don’t come to that. I’d make a terrible soldier.”

  “You may soon have no choice,” he said seriously. “There will be a war, Harmon. Soon I think. And we both know that we must do our duty to the Fatherland.”

  Johann said he would join the SS on the first of the year. For a boy whose devotion to his Führer was absolute, who threw rocks through Jewish windows, only Hitler’s personal army rather than the Wehrmacht would do.

  “If a war starts,” I said without emotion, “then I’ll do my duty and trust the Führer has it all in hand.”

  Johann nodded thoughtfully. “Well put, my friend. And that world will rue the day it stands in our way. Versailles will be avenged. With single-minded ruthlessness. We are a hail of ninety million bullets. It must be so, Harmon. National honor demands it.”

  “That sounds more like revenge than honor,” I observed.

  He fixed me with his steely granite-black eyes. “They are often one and the same.”

  We turned and gazed out at the crowded ballroom. Swirling bodies spun past us in the thralls of a lively Bavarian folk dance.

  “I noticed you were having a kind word with Fräulein Engel,” he said, trying to sound indifferent.

  “Who?” I asked. I knew who.

  “Amelia.”

  “Oh, her. Yes, well I…”

  “Isn’t she exquisite?” he exclaimed with a boyish squeal. “Am I not the luckiest man in the Reich? God bless Walter Engel…it was his dying wish that she be my wife.”

  I nodded robotically. “I imagine she’s excited to marry the richest boy in town.”

  He hesitated before answering. “She’ll come around.”

  I felt like saying, “No she won’t,” but held my tongue. I had the feeling that something momentous was going to happen this night. I could feel its approach like the rise in humidity before the rain falls.

  Johann put his hand on my shoulder and beckoned for a waiter. He handed me a flute of champagne and took one for himself. “This is living, eh Becker? A good friend, a bright future as we march for the Führer, and a beautiful woman to call my own.” He laughed. “My God, Harmon, will you listen to me! Tell me. Have you ever been in love?”

  I gazed at Amelia, and for the briefest second our eyes locked before she turned and disappeared. “Yes,” I said. “I have.”

  “Then a toast! To love.”

  “To love,” I said. I downed the glass in one forlorn gulp.

  I spent most of the evening orbiting the hall and eavesdropping on conversations among the local townsfolk. A common theme was that the chief threats to Germany were international Jewry and Bolshevism, and their declared nexus. Between glasses of champagne, the notion was put forth that a positive first step would be to rid the country of all the Jews and their Communist lapdogs. I heard not one opinion uttered in disagreement. “Irgendwann mal,” they said. “Someday.” I shied away from such serious matters, as they were not my concern. So I said nothing.

  Instead I tried to absorb the gaiety of the night. The splendor of the Keitels’ columned grand hall lined with more red, white, and black flags of the Nazis. A giant portrait of the Führer hung from the dining room wall, his penetrating eyes like sapphires casting a covetous gaze towards some distant conquerable land just beyond our imaginations. Happy waltzes, laughter, clinking of never-empty glasses, courtesy of a purveyor of bullets in Hitler’s New Germany.

  Eventually my need for solitude welled up in me, and I found myself alone in a quiet drawing room set aside from the rest of the house. I shut the high, whitewashed doors behind me with a loud echo and strode across the marble floor to the shiny black concert grand piano that was the centerpiece of the elegant room. I slid onto the bench and faced the freshly polished keys. With all the gentle touch my tipsy fingers could muster, I thought of Amelia’s late father and entered into the soft octaves of the verboten Felix Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso. It’s easy to be brave when you’re alone.

  So engrossed was I, as I am always oblivious to the outside world when I play, that I didn’t notice when Amelia opened the door and quietly slipped into the room. The piece transitioned from the softness of the two-page introduction to the true rondo section, whose bouncing sixteenth notes, staccato taps, and trills g
ave the impression of sprites darting through moonlit woods on gossamer wings. The song climaxed with a downpour of octaves and a series of ta-da chords.

  There followed a pronounced silence, as if the room required a moment to digest the torrent of notes. But then the quiet was broken by Amelia’s cracking voice.

  “My God, Harmon. That was magnificent.”

  I turned on the bench and found her standing over me in tears.

  “Oh,” I said softly. “I didn’t know anyone was listening.”

  She beamed. “You really do love Mendelssohn.”

  “Where’s Johann?” I asked, reflexively scanning the empty room.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed, still staring down at me. “Nor do I care.”

  She sat herself beside me on the bench. “Now why would you say such a thing?” I asked her with intense interest. “I thought you two are to be married.”

  She shook her head as if clearing away a bad memory. “That was my father’s notion,” she offered. “I didn’t want to refuse him. Not as he was dying. But now that he’s gone…” A look of pain swept over her, then passed.

  “And your mother?” I asked. “How is she?”

  “Cantankerous as always.”

  Amelia leaned forward and brushed her lips to my ear. I saw the fine white hairs of her forearm standing on end. “Enough sad talk,” she whispered. “My life is mine. I’ve already decided…when Johann threw that first stone and you went to protect me. Play something else for me.”

  The door suddenly creaked open, and we both whipped around on the bench as if caught naked. Johann Keitel marched into the room as though he’d been following her. If earlier he was bursting with affection for us both, now Johann was cold in his demeanor with deeply set eyes and a chiseled jaw. Amelia stiffened at his approach. For his part, Keitel said not a word but coolly clenched his teeth until his jowls pulsed, and surveyed a scene that could not have appeared so innocent to Amelia’s groom. His calculating mind quickly came to its own conclusion.