Vienna Prelude (64 page)

She wished that her father could have found someone to shelter him last year when his plane was forced down. Couldn’t God have led him to an instrument maker? Or a tailor? Or a farmer with a heart that remembered freedom? “Why didn’t You lead him, God?” she asked for the first time since Thomas had told her that there was nothing more to hope for.

She thought about her mother. When Anna accepted Theo’s death, she let go. There was nothing left to be done, and too many questions could only lead to despair. Perhaps there was one thing to do: make certain that she would help as many as she could who might find themselves in the same terrible situation as Theo had.

Elisa took her evening meal in her room. She wore the gold band on her finger and kept the American passport within reach at all times. When she slept, the passport folder rested on the night table beside her bed. It was her one tenuous hold on courage.
Frau Murphy
, they had called her. The name sounded American. Beyond question of the Gestapo. The thought helped Elisa to sleep a deep and dreamless sleep. Tonight there were no nightmares of trains or boxcars full of bones; when she awoke, she was hungry and eager to accomplish what she had come for.

***

It was market day again. The organization picked the most crowded times for her to come to the city. Elisa ate well at the hotel, although she could tell the citizens of Munich were not able to get hot rolls and butter as easily as she could. There were long lines of scowling women waiting outside the bakery in the Marienplatz.

Elisa held tightly to the case and made her way through the throngs toward the instrument shop. There were no lines outside its door, and the glass windows revealed that there were no customers inside. She smiled confidently. It was all so well planned, so beautifully arranged. This was not a place where any illegal activities would be suspected.

A carved wood violin hung above the door. Elisa recognized it, and even remembered the old violin maker when he greeted her from behind the curtain of his workshop and shuffled out to help her. The place smelled like varnish and wood shavings. Like home. Of course a violin maker would help! He understood souls, music, prayers in the melodies. No one like that could stand by and watch lives destroyed.
Why didn’t Papa remember this place and come here when he needed help?

The thought pained her. For an instant, she tried to rewrite the story, tried to see her father here in his uniform asking the old Bavarian instrument maker for shelter. If Elisa had been God, she would have written it that way. And Elisa would be carrying Theo’s passport to him right now. But it was not to be.

“
Guten Morgen!”
The old man adjusted his eyeglasses in appreciation of the lovely young woman before him. He did not remember her, or the fact that she had come to him with the Steiner years before. Or if he did recall, he did not mention it. As a matter of fact, there was not even a hint that anything unusual might be happening here. “How may I help you?” He looked at the band of her finger. “Frau—”

“Murphy.” Elisa gave her new name. She felt proud of it, even if it was all pretense. “I need my bridge adjusted.” She opened the case and pulled back the blue scarf.

The old man stared at the Guarnerius as if it were an old friend.
“Ja.”
His voice grew distant, and Elisa imagined that at some time Rudy must have come into this very place. Or perhaps Irmgard Schüler, the woman murdered with him in Vienna, had carried it here?

His old eyes misted slightly. He touched the Guarnerius. “Of course. Frau Murphy. A beautiful instrument.” He cleared his throat as if to rid himself of emotion. He lifted the Guarnerius, then plucked the strings to enact the little charade. A slight smile played on his lips. He seemed to be remembering.

“When should I come back, mein Herr?” she asked him, suddenly remembering that the name of the shop was Guarnerius Violin Repairs. “You are fond of Guarnerius violins?” Elisa smiled at him. He was almost cradling the instrument.

“
Ja,
this one especially.” he whispered. There was no one to hear.

Elisa had guessed correctly. The old man had been part of the whole plan while Elisa was imagining that Rudy was an irresponsible playboy. The old man knew the Guarnerius. “It is magic,” Elisa said, noticing the tears brimming in his faded blue eyes.

“Yes.” His whisper was so quiet. “Once my father’s. Once mine. Then my daughter’s; then into the hands of a master. Now yours.”

“Your daughter?” Elisa tried to make a connection. The old man’s name was Töne. Rudy had gotten the violin from Irmgard Schüler.

“Her name was Irmgard,” said the old man. “Töne before she married. Yes. She was mine.” His face became animated as Elisa pieced it all together. She would have embraced the old man, but just then the bell above the door jingled and another customer entered with a young boy in tow.

“A half hour then, Herr Töne?” Elisa said as though nothing had passed between them.

“No more. A quick walk through the marketplace is all, Frau Murphy.” He quickly put away the Guarnerius and turned his eyes on the woman and her son as Elisa left the shop.

She felt suddenly as though she wanted to cry. There had been so much that Leah had not told her. Leah had defended Irmgard Schüler before Elisa had known anything at all. The old man had lost his daughter in the battle. How many children had he saved who were not his own? He could have turned his back and claimed that they were not his responsibility, but he had not. And the priceless violin, the Guarnerius that his father had named the shop for, had become his offering to the service of God’s work. He had lost his daughter. Elisa had lost her father. In a way, they shared a fellowship of suffering that made them family.

She wished she could comfort the old man when she returned for the violin, but the shop was now occupied with two other customers. Herr Töne addressed her with correct distance, accepted payment, and she knew that nine passports had been left behind; and the old man had sent his heart back with her to get more of the same!

***

The crash of breaking dishes awakened Theo from a deep sleep. The voice of a man cursed, then retreated down the hall.

Theo propped himself up on his elbow and looked out the window at a patch of clean blue sky. He looked around the small, spotless hospital room, sensing that very soon he would be taken from this place. There had been something in the urgency of the voices that disturbed him. They knew his body had grown stronger, but they remained convinced that his mind had been damaged by the ordeal of imprisonment and his terrible illness. They would inevitably take him away. He had heard it in their voices.

Outside in the hallway he could hear two women talking angrily, but he could not understand their words. There was a harshness that sent a chill down him. Perhaps they had come to take him back.

He had done his best to prepare himself if that was the case. In the night, when they only entered his room occasionally, Theo had lain awake and exercised, slowly and deliberately tightening, then releasing the muscles in his legs and arms. When the corridors were still and the night-duty nurse had passed by his room, he would sit up and place weight on his legs until he was certain that he could walk again. Not far, but at least from the barracks of Dachau to the morning roll call. Perhaps some prisoner younger and stronger than Theo would help him through the work at the quarry just as he had helped the professor. Perhaps he could survive the ordeal a little longer. He still had hope to offer the others, after all.

“Has Herr Stern talked yet?”

“No. Nothing. Not a word. He eats like a well man. We leave the food, and when we come back the tray is empty. But he has not spoken even a word.”

“If he has strength enough to eat, then . . . ”

“The doctor thinks his mind is gone. Even dumb animals know enough to eat. There is no hope for this one. Better he should have died and been done with it.”

“He is Jewish; there is no doubt. Circumcised. If worse comes to worst, the Gestapo will not mistake that. I have heard they shoot sick Jews in their beds.”

They spoke loud enough for Theo to overhear, and he was certain that their words were meant for him. He lay blinking up at the white ceiling. When they came in he would look just the same as he had that morning. He would not even acknowledge their words of terror. They would not be able to frighten a response out of him.

He shut his eyes as a nurse entered the room and lifted his wrist to check his pulse. “Your pulse is rapid, Herr Stern,” she remarked, tucking his hand back under his sheets. “Were you dreaming? A bad dream, perhaps? Yes, we are all having bad dreams now days.”

She walked away from the bedside, and he looked toward the patch of blue again. He was afraid to walk to the window. Afraid to see how high he was from the ground. If someone saw him standing there, he would be taken away immediately, and he did not want to lose even one bit of nourishment, one moment of precious rest. Still he looked at the wrist bracelet and wished that it were off. Throughout the long day, he wondered how much it would take to escape from the hospital. There were no bars on the window. Perhaps he could slip out and disappear into the busy streets of . . .
of where?
He did not even know what city he was in. He had guessed Munich, since that was the nearest large city to the Dachau prison.

He knew Munich well. He had friends in the central part of the city. But he had no clothes, no money; and Munich was thick with Nazis. Here Hitler had established his first grassroots support. Theo thought of the possibilities of walking from the building and finding some haven in the midst of Germany’s hell. But how? Most certainly there were Gestapo and SS guarding every exit and every floor. He would be picked up immediately. And that would mean an immediate return to the prison, the end of his temporary bed and decent food. It would simply mean the end.

43

The Time Has Come!

A breath of hope blew through Vienna on a warm wind. Word had come that Mussolini had sent a message of congratulations to Schuschnigg. He had done the right thing in being so agreeable with the Führer. Nothing more would happen now. Things would soon get better since Italy and England were talking again and Anthony Eden was out of the way.

Someone in the office of the Austrian government had let the contents of Il Duce’s message leak out. It provided a day of optimism in the conversation of the cafés of the city. People shrugged and said, “You see, things will be all right, after all. Austria will always be Austria.”

The people of the little nation were for the most part firmly behind Schuschnigg, and when, on March 9, he announced that a vote be held to demonstrate the political strength of the established government, the decision was greeted pragmatically. The plebiscite was intended as a vote of confidence in favor of a free and independent Austria. Who wouldn’t vote for that? Only the Nazis. Only the Germans. Only Hitler himself.

It was raining in Vienna. Murphy walked down the Ringstrasse without an umbrella. The sidewalk was littered with hundreds of pamphlets announcing the plebiscite, which would be held in Austria on the following Sunday, March 13.

Murphy had heard that Mussolini had also sent along another message to Schuschnigg, this one dealing specifically with the vote.

It is a mistake,
Mussolini had warned.
If the result is satisfactory, people will say it is not genuine. If it is bad, the situation of the government will be unbearable; and if it is indecisive, then it is worthless.

Of course, no one in Austria doubted that the result of such a vote would be overwhelmingly in favor of the government. The simple question on the ballot was:
Are you for a free, independent, Christian Austria?
Yes was the only option listed.

At this moment in history, Murphy was certain that even the Jews of Austria would vote for the Christian government of Austria. This was a vote being held to show the world that the people of Austria wanted their independence! The plebiscite was for the benefit of Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, and Prime Minister Chamberlain, and anyone else who doubted the Austrian people’s will to survive! A free, independent, Christian Austria? A resounding
ja
!
would be heard the world over. But it would make little difference in the long run.

At the embassy, Harry Scotch warned Murphy that Americans in Vienna were being put on some sort of alert. Harry didn’t know what that meant, and neither did Murphy. Harry suspected that it was a warning to lay in a good supply of booze and any luxury items that might suddenly disappear if the Germans decided to invade. He had acted on that suspicion, and now had an apartment full of things that were essential to his lifestyle.

When Murphy went to check on Elisa’s passport, Harry asked about her with a sly wink that gave Murphy an urge to smash him right in the nose. Elisa already had her passport; Harry was surprised that Murphy didn’t know about his own wife. “You know women . . .” Murphy shrugged.

“Did you get her a ring yet?” Harry asked. “I didn’t notice if she’s still wearing the cigar band.”

Murphy pretended not to hear him and left in a hurry. Now he prowled along the Ringstrasse in the rain, searching for a wedding band. Something more than a plain gold band; he wanted it to be noticed on her hand by any Gestapo thugs who might corner her.

On the window of a small jewelry shop words were scrawled proclaiming that the owner was selling out and leaving Austria. Murphy stepped beneath the awning and looked in at the nearly empty case. There were still a few wedding bands on display, several with diamonds. Murphy didn’t want to buy her anything that some goon might be tempted to steal. He walked into the shop. A little bell jingled over the door as he passed the threshold, and a small man with thick glasses and baggy clothes stepped out from behind a curtained workshop area.