The Butterfly and the Violin (20 page)

“Michael.”

Penny seemed to realize she’d brought up a painful memory. “Look, I didn’t mean to bring it up. But I haven’t seen you like this in so long. I almost dared to be happy—”

Penny broke off as the office phone rang.

They both glanced over at the phone in unison. It was barely nine o’clock on a Monday morning. Who could be calling that early?

Who else?

Penny picked up the handset. “Sera James Gallery, Penny speaking.”

Sera had hoped, at the very least, for a few days to prepare herself for the next time she’d hear his voice on the other end of the line. It was strange to think the same lips that would speak from miles away had brushed a butterfly’s kiss on hers just a day ago.

She touched her fingertips to the pout of her bottom lip, lost in the memory.

“Yes, just a moment, please.” Penny pressed a button on the phone, then held it out to Sera. “It’s him.”

“It is?” The
him
part required no explanation.

Penny gave a long, exaggerated nod and pulled a chair up closer to the phone. She plopped down in it, fully intending to stay through the conversation.

“So?” She nudged the phone closer to Sera, giving her a gleeful smile. “Do you have any idea what time it is in California?”

“Don’t you, uh, have some work to do?”

Penny shook her head. “Not a thing. This gallery practically runs itself.”

Luckily for her, the brass bell above the front door chimed and an elderly couple walked in off the street. Sera’s heart leapt.
Customers!
She could have kissed them. Given them a free painting. Anything to show gratitude for their absolutely perfect timing.

She tilted her head toward the door, raising her eyebrows at Penny.

Realizing her plans at listening in had been conveniently thwarted, Penny rose and playfully mumbled, “By all means, Madame James. Allow me.” Her heels clicked against the floor
as she walked away. Her hand rested on the antique knob of the glass-paned office door.

“Open or closed?”

Sera almost rolled her eyes. Did she really have to ask? “Closed, thanks.”

“Six o’clock in the morning. That’s what time it is in California.” She winked and closed the door behind her, almost trotting away on a cloud. Sera knew why. Penny was practically gleeful to think that a man had any kind of effect on her love-starved boss.

Penny disappeared around the corner and Sera stared at the phone, the continually blinking red light toying with her already frayed sensibilities. She tapped a pencil on the tabletop while she debated answering.

The prospect of speaking to William was nearly as bad as the prospect of him not having called at all. But she had no clue how to formulate words on her lips.

She picked up the handset and pushed the button to answer the call. “This is Sera.”

“Good morning.”

A softness was evident in his voice and that, along with the easy way he greeted her, brought an instant familiarity that warmed her cheeks with a blush. The fact that William hadn’t felt the need to state who he was said more than she’d expected.

In hearing his murmur in the phone, she could tell he was smiling. It was one of those things a woman knew—a smile could never be hidden in a voice.

“You must be busy there in your Manhattan office. I’ve been waiting for a while.”

“Have you?”

“Yeah,” he said on a pause. “Almost two minutes.”

She heard the teasing in his voice and played along. “Well, I’m sorry about that,
Mister
Hanover. I’m sure you’re not accustomed to such outrageous waiting.” She fumbled through the file
folders at her desk, sticking a pencil in the chignon at her nape, and fluttered around for Adele’s case file. “But I’ve got my file right here. I was reading on the plane and found something that might help. I know it’s around here somewhere.”

“Would that something you found be his name?”

Her hands froze. The young musician in the photographs? “You know his name?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“How? I mean, I just left California and—”

“And you think the only thing this businessman can do is sit behind a desk and issue orders all day. Or rake leaves in the yard.”

Sera leaned back in her chair, the antique wood creaking with the action. “And?”

“Uh-uh. Not until you acknowledge the fact that you didn’t think I’d call with anything more than questions.”

“Okay. I didn’t,” she admitted, almost laughing. “That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

“Good.” He seemed satisfied with her answer, because she could hear that he began typing on a computer keyboard while he talked. “I’m e-mailing you right”—he paused and she heard a click—“now. Check your inbox.”

Sera sailed into action and pulled up her e-mail program.

The urge to stop breathing toyed with her, the excitement was so great. After months of dead ends, after the hours Penny had spent poring over art auction sites and the many late-night hours they’d both spent at the gallery elbows-deep in research, they were finally on a hot trail again, one that might lead her to the real painting of Adele.

She entered her password, fingers trembling slightly.

And suddenly there it was. His name. Staring back at her from the computer screen.

“Vladimir Nicolai.”

“Yes.” She could almost hear William smile again through the phone.

“And you know this is him because . . . ?”

William’s voice turned all business. “I contacted the Austrian national archives in Vienna and spoke with the curator of the museum. She put me in contact with a colleague at the Vienna Philharmonic, and after a couple of conversations, we were able to do a little cross-research over e-mail. I sent pictures and he sent the name.”

“You make it sound so easy,” she mumbled, still scanning the paragraph of information that accompanied the name in the e-mail. “Penny and I have been looking for a link like this for a while.”

“But you didn’t know the connection between Adele and Vladimir. Now we do.”

“You’re right. Now we do.”

William cleared his throat. “Maybe we can talk about it in person,” he said, pausing slightly. “I’ll be in New York next week.”

“Really?” She kept reading, hardly noticing what he’d said.

“Yes. A week from Friday,” he said.

“William, it says here that there is no record of Vladimir after January 1945. That’s when the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz, isn’t it? So if he was a concert cellist before the war, I wonder why he didn’t go back to it after? It says here that there was no record of any performance with his name in the program after the war ended. Dear God.” She stopped, wondering if the same fate that had taken Adele had snuffed out Vladimir’s life as well. “Maybe he didn’t survive Auschwitz either.”

She began scrolling down through the rest of the information in the e-mail, looking for something, anything that stuck out.

“I thought maybe we could have dinner.”

Sera supposed that William’s asking shouldn’t have surprised her, given that he’d held her so close on the dance floor.
The wedding had made its own magic around them . . . Despite their differences, he’d kissed her and, heaven help her, she hadn’t been able to think of much since.

“Dinner?” She swallowed hard. “You mean to talk about the painting?”

Was he wondering the same thing she was—whether what they’d felt on that dance floor was something real? A picture of Michael flashed before her eyes. The memory of a discarded wedding gown and returned gifts . . .

“It’s just dinner.”

“No, I know. It’s . . .” How could she tell him what really bothered her? “I didn’t expect you’d be in New York quite this soon.”

She dropped her free arm down on the desktop and rested her forehead against it.

“Sera.” He said her name so softly, without the reproach she’d expected. “Do you think you’ll ever be able to trust again?”

No, no, no,
her heart rebelled.
I can’t trust anyone. Please don’t ask me to.

She bit her bottom lip so she wouldn’t say the thoughts aloud.

He didn’t wait for an answer, just said, “Keep digging. I’ll call next week for an update.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

June 30, 1943

A
dele and the rest of the members of the fledgling orchestra had been moved from their one-room barracks to block twelve—which they called the music block—in the general camp population.

When she’d first arrived, the quick decisions of the Nazis might have surprised her. But now? Adele had seen the truth of what was happening in this place. And she didn’t question. To stay alive, they went where they were told, stood at attention or knelt for hours, lined up in the sweltering heat, or played their instruments at the SS guards’ whims. The prisoners in the orchestra, whether Jew or not, had a distinction amongst the general population. It became clear that the orchestra was her means of survival.

The ragtag group of musicians had grown almost organically. Adele couldn’t remember how exactly they’d formed, but when they’d come together as the camp orchestra, she was surprised at the instruments that ended up in the block. Violins. A cello or two, one of which Omara could play. Even a mandolin and an accordion had been brought in from the train platform and now rested with the pile of instruments they looked after.

Though they’d been relocated to live and rehearse in the
music block, Adele had spent the last few months working in Canada during the day and playing at the whim of the SS. Their group expected that the rehearsal schedule would increase, but whether that meant the work in the warehouses would decrease with it, none of them could know.

None of them questioned. They just did. They worked. Walked where they were told. Never stepped out of line or had an original thought—especially not with the daily roll calls in the yard. The orchestra was a part of it, but they were sheltered from some of the horrors that other prisoners were subjected to . . . standing for hours in the rain. Kneeling, unclothed and without dignity, as the camp doctors walked through the lines of souls and determined who would be pulled out and sent to the gas chambers.

Adele tried not to think how naive she’d been when she’d first come to the camp. She knew nothing of the truth. She’d thought the brick wall was the worst of it.

It was painful that Adele and the rest of the girls in the orchestra were forced to catalog the useful items in the block, teeming with provisions while thousands of prisoners wore scraps and walked barefoot, then ship them back to Germany.

It was where she stood now, thinking on the naïveté of her first months in Auschwitz, wondering how she’d become so hardened in so little time. Her feet registered sharp pains up the length of her shins after weeks of standing on the concrete floors. She picked up an old woolen suit coat with cracked leather elbow pads and a small hole in the lapel where a hungry moth had left a telltale mark and ran her hand along the seams. Despite the rather sad condition of the suit, it was known that the Jews hid money, family jewels, heirlooms, and modest pieces that would bring even a small sum of much-needed money in the hems of clothing to keep them from the Germans.

Adele ran her fingers over every seam, paying special attention to the bottom of the coat and inside the pocket holes. The
wool was scratchy, but smooth underneath the surface. Finding no evidence of hidden items, she tossed the coat onto a nearby pile so it could be cataloged. Those wares deemed unfit for shipping back to Germany would be destroyed.

Always cataloging. And filing. And re-cataloging.

The Germans certainly liked to use up paper. Adele doubted there would be many trees left in Europe based on the way they recorded such trivial matters. It seemed important to them, to a dizzying degree. Adele could not figure out why keeping track of every last item that had come into the camps was of such importance—yet the people, the living and breathing souls who worked their fingers to the bone, were treated with such wretched abhorrence.

“Have you finished with this bin?”

Omara approached her, clipboard in hand.

Adele nodded.

“Good. You may go,” she said, and scribbled something on the clipboard paper. “We have an early morning ahead of us. Go get rest, Adele.”

“I will.”

“And, Adele,” Omara added, giving one of her strictest mothering glances. “Be sure you wash. I can’t have you falling ill. Understand?”

With another nod, she was dismissed.

Adele trudged back to the musicians’ block with a few of the others and entered the bunk room. They must have been as tired as she was, for no one much favored talking. They shared a wash bucket, each cleaning up in silence as they prepared for bed. No one quipped about her hair now. Some of the others had been shaved, the Jews of course, but others had not. And they had a small collection of wares, dresses and such that had been pooled between them.

For whatever hatred had emanated from the girls in her first
weeks, there was none of it now. They may have resented her still, but none of it was spoken aloud. Barring illness or selections, the musicians had no choice but to stick together for their survival. If one played, they all did.