Of Another Time and Place

by Brad Schaeffer

  62

  Just outside of London proper is a cemetery dotted with crumbling headstones marking the final destinations of generations of British farmers, craftsmen, artisans, and others who’ve lived and died in these fields since the Norman Conquest. An old gated archway constructed of five-foot-diameter stones beckons visitors to the top of a dale, where the wind never seems to stop gusting into the faces of those who come to pay their respects to those who rest here. Even on this sunny day, there’s an autumn bite in the frigid November air. My face grows numb and my cheeks and nose show a bright pink, but I’m glad to be here.

  I stand over the most recently set grave within these walls. The ground is still churned, though no longer that black moist earth of a freshly dug hole but dried to khaki. It speaks of a newness that implies a grief still being borne by those who love the person lying beneath our feet.

  I’m not alone. Rachael, Jakob, and Dora stand beside me like fighter escorts. Two taxis wait patiently in the nearby gravel lane. Their engines are turned off, but their meters still run. No matter. The Krupinskis insisted on making this pilgrimage before heading to Heathrow Airport and then across the Atlantic back to their adopted home, America.

  All stand in reverent silence as I recite a soft prayer for the soul moved on from the decaying body beneath us. For Rachael, the headstone brings the true reality of what Amelia and I did for her family into clear focus. And once again, this woman who has seen children die of horrible wounds in their mothers’ arms in far-off lands cannot seem to squelch her tears. Her Uncle Jakob holds her tight, offering that he has never seen his usually stoic niece display so much raw emotion.

  But Jakob, too, cannot fully shut the floodgates of oft-muted feelings triggered by the memories of a childhood trying to survive in a country immersed in the acid bath of manic hatred. For him, seeing this old fighter pilot one last time, ravaged as I am now by the lashings of time, and then standing here at this place today, brings back long-forgotten imagery to be recaptured for good or ill on the canvas of his fertile mind. There is much pain in his past. But today also offers him the sweetness of triumph as well. And so Jakob Krupinski comforts himself with the notion that one has to have survived the whirlwind to remember at all. He remembers fondly that I gave him life. I and the woman beneath the headstone, which reads:

  Amelia Becker

  B. 1920–D. 2004

  Devoted Wife, Loving Mother

  Giver of Life When Others Turned Away

  We each take our turn laying a rose on such an unassuming stone for so incredible a woman. They seem so utterly incapable of articulating the depth of our sorrow. I stand immobile and read her name again and again. “Amelia,” I say, as if my spirit fled this world when she was taken from me.

  Dora takes me by the arm. “Come on, Papa. You’ll catch a death in this wind.”

  I turn to my daughter and ask: “Would that be so bad?”

  “Oh, Papa,” she says while taking me in her arms.

  “I miss her so,” I sigh while my body shakes. “I feel hollow. Scooped out inside.”

  Rachael puts her hand on her uncle’s shoulder. She doesn’t know what to do now. They can no longer tarry if they hope to catch their flight. Yet how can they leave me in such a way?

  I must give them leave to go. I compose myself and say to the pesky Yank reporter, “Well, Miss Azerad. I guess you have your interview.”

  She offers me a loving smile. “I have much more than that, Mr. Becker.”

  I put a hand up to dismiss her. “Your uncle will tell you. It’s Harmon.”

  “Mr. Harmon,” she says, trying to lighten the heavy mood. I make a motion for her to come close. She leans in. “You,” I say, “have a better sense of humor than your grandfather.”

  She laughs. “Thanks to you I’ve had a better life. Goodbye…Harmon.”

  I take her in my arms like another granddaughter. In some ways I suppose she is. She backs away and tries in vain against the wind to right her hair fluttering across her sharp nose and high cheekbones.

  I then turn to Jake. “Look at you,” I say with not a little pride and some sense of accomplishment at my having lit the fire. “Did you ever learn to fly?” I ask.

  “I’ve had my pilot’s license for years now,” he says with a deserved sense of accomplishment. “I’m even certified to fly a 737, my company’s jet.”

  “More Boeings,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I see enough in my dreams already.”

  He laughs. “At least commercial jets don’t have machine guns.”

  “Thank goodness for that! It must be difficult to fly.”

  “Believe it or not that Heinkel was trickier,” he says.

  “Bah!” I say. “I have no doubt you can handle anything with wings. I was there for your first flight.” I shake Jacob’s hand at first. Then I give him a final hug and a manly slap on the back.

  “Well, Harmon. Let’s just say if it was me flying one of those 190s, you wouldn’t be here today,” he jibes.

  “Oh really,” I say. “I don’t know about that. But, I will say that if it had been anyone but you with me in that Heinkel, you’re probably right.” We laugh together. Cocky pilot to cocky pilot. As it should be. The world turns and life moves forward.

  “It’s too bad we flew together only that once,” he says. “But we made one helluva team, didn’t we?”

  I tap him on the bicep. “We’re here, aren’t we? Oh Jake, it was good to see you after so many years. I can’t thank you enough for coming.”

  His jocular demeanor dies. “And you, Harmon. I only wish I’d made it before…” His voice fades as he looks towards the headstone.

  “I know. Still, I cannot help but think she’s watching us right now. Probably figuring out how best to get you two safely to Heathrow in this traffic.”

  “Of course. Getting us out of tight spots is a Becker specialty.” He pauses. “I’ll never forget you, Captain.”

  “Nor I you, Jakob.” A pause and then I break the long goodbye. “Now go before you end up spending another day and risk losing the good weather we’ve been having.” I look up at the clear sky above us. Wisps of fine clouds against the blue. “It’s a good day to fly.”

  Rachael looks up with me. “I suppose it is.”

  I nod my head. “And a good day to finish it.”

  At first Dora is unsure what to make of this. “Finish what, Papa?” she asks cautiously.

  “Yes,” echoes Rachael. “Finish what?”

  I wink at them. “Finish my book. I have some chapters to add.”

  Relieved, Rachael laughs. “You may need this.” She retrieves the little recorder from her purse. She pops it open and hands me the micro-cassette.

  “Keep it,” I say. “It’s all stored away in my memory as if it happened yesterday. And between you and me, I wouldn’t mind reading about myself in the papers. It’s said that concert pianists and fighter pilots have tremendous egos. You can only imagine what goes on in my head!”

  After one more round of farewells, hugs, and handshakes, Rachael and her uncle Jakob climb into their taxicab.

  “Heathrow then?” asks the taxi driver. An old man with a scarf peers at them through the mirror. It’s as if the London tourist bureau purposefully picked them to drive home an image of all that is charming about this ancient city.

  Dora and I stand arm in arm next to Amelia’s flower-topped stone and wave goodbye as the first black cab peels off down the lane.

  “I would have liked to spend more time with them,” I say with regret.

  “Maybe you’ll see them again, Papa,” my daughter reassures me.

  Maybe, I think. Who knows? My life with the Krupinskis has already taken so many unimaginable twists, why should one more be out of the question? I look back at my dear wife’s memorial one more time before my daughter escorts me down the hill to our wa
iting taxi, as the red sun sets to the west behind us.

  EPILOGUE

  “Whenever I play, I try to penetrate the mental state of the composer as I interpret his work. What was happening in his life when he wrote this? What fired the creative furnace to forge such a beauty? When I launch into Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, I try to become that young distraught Pole, far from home, flailing away with pen to sheet in an angry stream of defiance to the Czar’s violation of his nation. Music has a supremacy among the human expression. It is unique among the arts in that it pulls you into the mood of the creator. You are powerless to resist it. The ear is touched, the head bobs, the fingers drum, and the feet tap. Your emotion is now in a different place. All you can do to prevent the metamorphosis is plug your ears and flee from the sound. Otherwise you are a prisoner of the air. There is no neutral ground.

  “Nations are like that. If I think too hard I find myself astounded that an entire people can more easily turn a deaf ear to the pounding resonance of a monstrous injustice—indeed the suffering of millions—than it can hold back a single tear at the first measure of a Mozart aria. How is this possible? This question plagues me. It has haunted my dreams for sixty years. I still have no answer for it.”

  —Excerpt from My Cross to Bear: Bitter Skies—The Rest of My Story, by Harmon Becker. Select chapters featured in the New York Times Magazine, with a foreword by Rachael Azerad.

  It’s late and yet I cannot sleep. In my pajamas I heave myself out of my lonesome bed and slide into my robe and slippers. I need not be quiet or mindful of turning on the lights anymore, as Dora’s now back home with her family in Dover, where she belongs. It’s not anxiety or sadness that robs me of my sleep. It’s not even the fact that I’ve finished re-writing my memoirs to include my true story and that of Amelia and the Krupinskis. I’ve sent off the manuscript to Rachael Azerad in New York, who thinks she can do much with it, as my old German publisher has chosen not to release the updated version. We shall see.

  What arouses me from my bed is the simple desire to play one more time before my forever sleep. My health is now deteriorating rapidly, although I haven’t led on to anyone close to me. Why should they worry? Death isn’t so bad for an old man like me. And I know it’s caught up to me now. These fleeting moments feel like they will be my last on this earth. It’s okay. I’ve lived longer than most, and the prospect of being with Amelia does little to stoke the flames of self-preservation. Besides, I’ve cheated the reaper so many times in the course of my life that I owe him the final victory. I no longer run from him. My heart flutters, and my legs wobble below me. And as my breathing grows shallower, and my head swims, I now ponder what shall I do as I ride out these last precious minutes?

  I’ll do what has always given me the most pleasure. I’ll ease myself, with some pain and fading strength, down the stairs and stumble my way through the French doors to the piano. It waits in dignified silence to welcome me as an old friend. I’ll lower myself before the keys, and sweet music will careen off the walls of the empty flat one last time. Two items will sit in my field of vision as I play. They will be the last images I see. So weak will the trek down to the conservatory make me that I know I’ll not be able to get up once I’m settled at the instrument that has kept me alive when I should have been dead many times, along with the rest of the world.

  I’ll click on the lamp that overhangs my Steinway, and my eyes will linger on the photo of Amelia and me on the boat just off the Channel Islands. We both look away from the camera, as if remembering a different time when we shared such danger and excitement together that tempestuous June of 1944. Opposite the photo rests a shiny Ritterkreuz, always there for me to remember when I reached the decisive moment in my life, and can drift away from this world knowing that I made the right choice. That God will forgive me my many sins when weighed in the balance.

  My hands will continue to move across the keys, but their strength will dwindle until only a slight hint of pianissimo breaks the silence. All will grow dark around me as the Mendelssohn Fantasy comes through to me only in gentle waves by the last measures. And then I’ll be off to a place where the skies are always clear, where all people can stand upright in the sunlight, unafraid of what is to come, and my love will be with me until the end of time.