Vienna Prelude (69 page)

A man in a pin-striped suit stepped in front of him, and Theo stopped.
Gestapo?
The man shoved the doors open ahead of Theo, then stepped aside and let him pass through ahead of him.

“
Grüss Gott.”
The man tipped his hat. “And God help us all.”

“
Grüss Gott,”
Theo mumbled as he stared in wonder at the stranger who skipped away down the steps of the hospital.
“Grüss Gott?”
he asked as he let his eyes sweep upward toward the stars that sparkled above the city.

Theo staggered at what he saw: the great spires of St. Stephan’s Cathedral were framed against the evening sky! Beyond that he could make out the top of the Vienna State Opera House and fragments of the Hofburg palace-fortress! Just then a streetcar trundled by. Two young men were unfurling a banner from the rear platform. Theo shook his head, unable to believe what he saw. The lettering on the car’s destination sign read
Musikverein
, but the flag on the streetcar was the bloody-red banner of a Nazi swastika!

All around him, the red-and-white banners of Austria were being torn away from the facades of buildings. It was cold, but Theo did not feel the chill.

He had stepped from one nightmare into another. Vienna, shrouded in swastikas! He wanted to rage against what he saw, to shout that it could never be! But he remained silent. He stopped and picked up a soggy pamphlet:
Yes for Austria! Yes for Schuschnigg!
He dropped the thing onto the sidewalk and gazed up past the red swastika banners to the star-framed spires of St. Stephan’s. For this moment he was still a free man. Elisa might be somewhere in the city.
Elisa!
And he would find her; he
must
find her if she was!

Then he convulsed with coughing as the chill wind pierced him. He had no coat. No hat. His spindly legs could barely carry him. This was the first time since Dachau that he had walked more than a few shaky steps to the window of his hospital room. He scrabbled in his pocket in hopes of finding a shilling for tram fare; he would even ride on that car with the swastika flapping behind if it would only take him to the Musikverein. But there was not one coin in the pockets. The wind howled louder as he lowered his head and struggled against it. He would walk. He had survived Dachau, the quarries, typhus, and by God’s grace he must have been mistaken for the Austrian Professor Stern and brought to Vienna.

He knew he must force himself to move, or all that would be for nothing!
Tell my daughter I am here, God,
he prayed in numb confusion as the very ground seemed to slope upward against his progress, and the harsh freezing wind sucked his breath away. A hundred steps from the doors of the hospital, he had to stop and rest against a streetlamp. Carloads of hooting young Nazis raced by. Theo drew himself up, determined to place one foot in front of the other even though the pavement resisted him and the cobblestones threatened to hurl themselves into his face! “Elisa…she is…here,” he panted. It was almost a mile to the Musikverein. He would begin his search there.

47

Night Vigil

The minutes dragged by like hours. There still were no footsteps on the stairs outside Elisa’s apartment. She had barely spoken for the last fifty minutes as she packed a few of her most precious things into a small scuffed suitcase. She took the angel from the lampshade and slipped it into her pocket.

If Murphy had noticed, he did not comment. Instead he paced back and forth in front of the sofa, paused every minute or so to look out the window onto the dark, deserted street. Then he would glance at his watch and press his lips tightly together.

She knew that he would make her leave when the hour had passed. She prayed silently, desperately, for the safety of Shimon and Leah. Murphy was right. If they could have gotten away, they would be here now. She knew that, and yet she could not desert them. She would wait out this horrible vigil until the last second had ticked off.

In this moment she relived her last night in Berlin, the night she had left with her father. This apartment had been home. Full of happy thoughts, and hopes—so many hopes. But all hopes died here tonight with the final words of Schuschnigg. The whole terrible night in Berlin had returned as a haunting echo, a counterpoint in her life.

At last she broke the silence. “When we left home, my father and I”—she kept her eyes steady on the case of the Guarnerius—“I played for him. And for Berlin.” She had not thought of playing now. She simply could not think of anything else to say to Murphy. “It is all over, isn’t it?” she asked. “Like it was that night we left Berlin?”

He answered with a nod. She could see the pain in his eyes for her. Somehow he knew her desperate hope that her friends would come, and already he grieved for her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

He was apologizing for stealing her hope away. He had been right, of course. Everything he had said was true, but she knew he wished he had been wrong. She loved him for his grief. He had surprised her so often, and now he surprised her again.

He leaned down and took the Guarnerius case from the small stack of belongings by the door. “Will you”—he faltered—“you have never played for me . . . alone. And now . . . Vienna is . . .”

“Vanishing,” she finished for him. She understood what he felt. Could they watch it go without one last loving good-bye? She took the case from him and removed the instrument. She managed to smile at Murphy as she tucked it against her chin, and he stepped forward as if to ask one more favor. “What?” she asked him.

He answered by reaching out to touch her cheek and sliding his hand down to the gleaming wood of the violin. “It is part of you.” He held her eyes. “I have always wanted to touch the two of you together.” Was he embarrassed or just flushed with emotion? “You . . . your soul . . . the violin is your voice. So pray now, Elisa, and your prayers will be heard.” He stepped back and stood with his arms crossed as he leaned against the door.

Elisa raised bow to strings, and for the last time, she prayed within these walls. She raised her heart for Vienna, for those who would remain behind and those who would leave and not return. It was over, over,
over
! And the melody cried out her anguish to God. Did He listen? Did He also weep for what was and what never would be again?

Outside the wind moaned through the streets of the great city, and all hope fled before it.

***

Theo stood outside the Musikverein. It was dark. Deserted. The wind tore at his thin, shabby clothing. Baggy trousers flapped around his legs. He was a ghost, a frail shadow of what he once had been. He was seeing the past and hearing the music of his youth as though he were an onlooker.

It was here he had first heard his beloved Anna play the Schubert sonata. Here that he had fallen in love with her. Once a young, strong German man had waited for her each night just there, at the bottom of the stage doorsteps.

Now that young man had grown old. A year in Dachau had laid twenty years on his back, and he could barely stand against the force of the wind. But he had come back. Somehow, miraculously, he was here again, and he would find the first child of their love. He would find Elisa if she was still here.

The old caretaker inside the Musikverein was drunk. He smelled of schnapps, and his eyes were red as he swayed before Theo just inside the door.

“Elisa Linder?
Ja.
She was here only yesterday.” He squinted as though he were trying to see Theo more clearly. “But that was yesterday and this is tonight. I don’t know if she’ll be back. Maybe nobody will come back. They’ll bring in Germans to play. Aryans from Munich and Berlin. Everyone here will go into hiding, I suppose.”

“Did she say anything yesterday?” Theo questioned. Even his voice had aged to a desperate whisper.

“Hello. Good-bye. How are you?” He shook his head drunkenly. “What is there to say?” He cocked his eye at Theo. “You better get out too, old man. You know what the Nazis do to beggars. You better leave Vienna too.”

Theo had already left the building. The caretaker’s warning was lost in the howling wind that carried no snow or rain, only bitter cold.

As he looked at the quickly vanishing pedestrians, he felt confused, unsure where to go next. He was not even certain that he could remember any longer where Elisa’s apartment was. That had been in another lifetime.
Before
. . .

His eyes returned to the spires of St. Stephan’s. Once he had known Vienna like the back of his hand. The city was the same. It was his hand that was different now.

“
A five-minute walk from the Musikverein!”
Elisa had exclaimed that day. They had rented the place for a year and renewed it again the next year . . . but
where?

The cold stung his eyes. He blinked up toward the bright crystal stars and prayed for help. He had come so far. Would he now die alone in Vienna?

His legs were shaking, but he set out once again. Pieces of torn Austrian flag blew past him. The shouts and laughter of the young Nazis echoed in the air. It was victorious, exultant laughter.

“Heil Hitler!” a young man, perhaps eighteen years old, shouted as though he was testing the sound of the words. The others shouted with him.

“Hey, old man!” They spotted Theo. “Are you drunk?”

Theo did not acknowledge the challenge. He continued to stagger forward, hoping that they would simply pass him by. Suddenly he found himself surrounded. They jeered at him, spit on him, reached out to push him from one side to the other of the tight pack. One final shove hurled him out of the circle and onto the sidewalk.

“Heil Hitler!” The voice rang out again like a gunshot—a proud and insolent voice, haughty, without wisdom or compassion.

Theo lay panting on the cold, wet cement. He reached out to grasp the stones of a building front to pull himself up. The wind resisted his effort, howling that he should give up, that he should lie still and quietly freeze to death. But Theo was a free man for now, and he would not be told where he should die!

“Elisa!” he shouted as loudly as he could, but his voice was a thin, bleating cry against the wind and the shouts of the Nazi thugs up the street.

His strength was gone. He struggled again and again to raise himself, but his legs were numb from the cold and feeble from the weeks of his illness.

From somewhere he thought he heard the sweet high melody of a violin. He whispered the name of his daughter. “Elisa.” He could do no more. The melody of Mozart played for him as it had that last night in Berlin. He had still been young then, and strong. “Elisa. My little girl.” He smiled as a new blast of wind wailed around the corner. God could hear his voice, he knew. He prayed that somewhere Elisa might hear the whisper of her father. That Anna might hear him, and his sons with her. He tried once more in vain to stand, but his strength had disappeared. In one final heroic effort, he managed to pull himself to a sitting position. He looked up into the stars. Fire and ice in the heavens. Crystal windows. Doors through which a soul might soar. He coughed and chastised himself for thinking of death. There were doorways everywhere along the lane. He had only to rest a moment longer . . . just a moment. Then he could drag himself into the warmth and shelter of some building.

He leaned his head back against the stones and tried to catch his breath, tried to find some scrap of energy in his wasted body. Again the music faded in and out of the wind. It was no phantom, no dream—he could hear it! “Elisa,” he tried to say again, but her name was a moan. “
Ahhhhh
. . . ” If he could only break free of his weakness, make his body obey him once again! The the bitter cold, cloudless and cruel, was sapping his life from him. Like Austria, he was dying, and he knew it. He was dying, like all the dreams of the young, handsome officer who had waited for his love at the stage door.

Unless some hand reached to help him out of the wind, Theo knew that his soul, vital and strong again, would rise and soar to the stars. The shell of an old man would remain below to be taken away in the morning.

He did not try to speak their names any longer. But he sang them with the music of the violin.
Anna. Elisa. Wilhelm. Dieter.
They had been, and were even now at the last, his life.
Play for me, Elisa. I am here, just outside your window. Play for me
. . .

***

When the music stopped, Murphy pressed his fingers against his eyelids and breathed in what remained of the lingering melody. He did not speak for fear of breaking the spell of her prayer. Only when she moved to put away the violin did he say in a hushed voice, “There are no words left. But God heard. Somewhere, Elisa, He weeps with us.”

Elisa turned to stare at Murphy.
Here is a side of this man that I haven’t seen before
, she thought. But she did not reply. There was nothing left to say. Time was finished. The hour had passed, and then some. She closed the lid of the case as though she had finished a book. She did not set the case down. She would carry it to the car.

Murphy went to the window one last time and looked down onto the deserted street. Below, just outside the circle of a streetlamp, an old man sat looking up toward the window. He had no hat, no jacket. The clothes on his frail body seemed as though they would be torn away by the violence of the winds. The man raised his hand in the gesture of a drowning man reaching up from a stormy sea. He had seen the man before; he was sure of it. Frail and ragged a skeleton as he was, this was no beggar. He almost looked like—

“Stay here!” Murphy barked. “We can’t go yet.”

“Leah? Shimon?” Elisa asked hopefully.

“No.” Murphy was out the door and down the stairs before she could ask another question. He saw her silhouette in the window above as he bent low over the old man.

There was something in the eyes that Murphy recognized instantly, however emaciated the body might be. He scooped up the frail figure, who could not have weighed much more than one hundred pounds. The old man was trying to speak, trying to form words on his lips as Murphy carried him up the stairs to where Elisa waited anxiously.