Auschwitz Violin (7 page)

A tremendous amount of work had to be accomplished before that moment would arrive. He was almost sorry when the siren sounded, for this meant he couldn’t begin work on the C ribs. He couldn’t risk skipping the meal, however, or doing anything else that would attract attention. It could well be that a fellow worker envied him those two sips of beer! To cheer himself up, he thought about Freund. Then about Bronislaw, who had probably spent all morning cutting turnips and washing pots with hands so delicate they could make a violin sing, hands that one day would move across the finger-board of the instrument Daniel had crafted at the
lager
. He should be thinking about the musician, not the Commander, who didn’t deserve the violin. With this thought in mind, Daniel discovered that his soup tasted better than usual, and he good-naturedly accepted the inmates’ jokes about his makeup. He’d completely forgotten about it! He’d have time to remove it that night; it was his turn for a shower. Right now he had to think about lunch.

As often happened at that time of day, Daniel began to recall the meals his mother had cooked for him. The longer he stayed in the camp, the more his mother’s image was superimposed on the blurred vision of Eva. His mother and his niece Regina. He remembered walking up the stairs from his workshop, smelling the food, guessing by the aroma what he would be served for lunch: soup with noodles, thick soup, sometimes noodles with chopped walnuts. The table well set, the cheese platter placed to the side on the days that meat was served, following the ritual of separating meat from dairy products. All of that, of course, before the days and months in the ghetto. Now it was turnips and more turnips, turnip soup and more turnip soup.

He felt a friendly hand on his shoulder. It was a fellow inmate, the former professor who was now a baker. The man secretly slipped Daniel a thick slice of bread that he had managed to steal from the bakery. It was dangerous to do so. He could have been killed or whipped, but he risked it sometimes and would offer the stolen morsels to his fellow inmates, following a strict order that was intended to keep others from being envious. Daniel had forgotten that it was his turn! These little conspiracies, in the midst of so much misery, were like flames that warmed the inmates. The professor was fortunate to work in the bakery, but he deserved it; he remembered his friends.

Feeling more cheerful after the extra piece of rye bread, Daniel strode to the heavily guarded row of men who would be taken to the factory. Everyone realized that a truck had just arrived with a new “load of misfortune.” One of the inmates turned around to glance at it, but a heavy fist sent him staggering; the prisoner started walking faster, eager to avoid being struck again. Let’s hope he stays in line, Daniel thought, or they’ll kill him just like they did Dénes the other day.

He felt as though he had been in the camp for an eternity, was rooted in it; yet his own arrival seemed like only yesterday. The stupor, the shouts of
Raus!
, the shoves, the humiliating rituals. The long hours of standing naked at attention in the freezing cold, waiting his turn for the miserable, perverse ceremonies: face and body shaved by common prisoners—criminals who wore the terrible green triangles—arms marked by indelible tattoos, hair sheared, bodies disinfected as if they were plants. The fear that the showers might be gas chambers rather than the freezing water that scarified their bodies but was finally inoffensive if the men weren’t under it too long. (Sometimes the guards amused themselves by forcing the prisoners to remain in the cold shower until they shook uncontrollably, their teeth chattering.) The thrashings if you didn’t immediately understand orders or walked too slowly. The screams and sobs from prisoners whose wives or children were wrenched from them, the defiant eyes of the gypsy who had switched lines and stood by his elderly father while his little boy headed for death.

Daniel trudged along, never pausing in case he too would be struck, but his memory again unearthed the insults issued—at him and at all the newcomers—as he’d descended from the crowded truck, the gentlest being the oft-repeated
bledehunde
, “You stupid dog!” He thought, as he had that first day, that no response was possible for the terrible suffering, released with such fury against them all on what seemed like an interminable Yom Kippur—the day of abstinence and atonement.

Daniel had thought about his violin for hours, wondered for days about the possibility of his survival. During the Spring Cleaning he had felt more concern for himself than pity for the condemned. But now suddenly, hearing in the distance the shouts directed at the newly arrived prisoners, he marveled that his heart had not completely died, that he could still feel for others, that compassion for other men could spring from him like a tiny blade of grass emerging not from some wasteland but from the rich earth. Despite the derision and his forced smile that morning, despite the months of cold, hunger, and threats, his body bruised by beatings, the tremendous effort to stifle the cries when he was whipped, learning not to long for anything, not to think of anything beyond the immediate, despite it all, his heart was alive. He recognized a similar feeling in the eyes of the boy standing in line next to him, a young political prisoner who had just been struck in the face. Daniel silently squeezed his hand, secretly sharing the modest pride of knowing that they had not become subhuman. That was what
they
were.

The guard had moved in front of them now, out of their sight, and Daniel managed to find the energy to comfort the young man.

“Did it hurt much?”

“I can take it.”

Thinking that he had been left too much alone, Daniel put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The youngster—everyone knew everything in the
lager
—had been cut off from his people; he could receive no packages or letters, though he was neither Jew nor gypsy. He had been included in the group for “supplementary punishment,” what the Nazis referred to by the widely known
secret
name the Decree of Night and Fog. The name itself reflected the perversity of imagination, beautiful words for a terrible practice: leaving the prisoners completely uncertain of everything. Not even the boy’s parents knew where he was.

Was it possible that a semblance of morality existed in this world of concentration camps? No, more probably it was simply that they wanted to make the most of the cheap labor that produced such huge earnings. The men in charge of the subsidiary plant of the powerful I.G. Farben had just announced over the loudspeakers that prisoners would be divided into groups for fifteen-minute rest periods. Almost immediately after the announcement, a bonus was distributed among the men, money that could be used to buy food at the canteen. An enormous din, a huge dull clamor like a surging sea, swept through the factory.

“Schweigt! Still!”
the guards yelled in their attempt to stifle the prisoners’ shouts.

The machines finally muffled the sound of human mouths. Daniel’s companion was weeping. When it was their turn to go to the canteen, little remained to choose from, and the boy and the violin maker—forgetting all laws other than hunger—attacked a sausage and, like two babes grasping at a breast, quenched their thirst by loudly downing a large glass of milk. When Daniel had swallowed the last drop, he reminded himself that he would need every gram of food he could encounter if he wanted to have the stamina to finish the violin.

 

 

 

The violinist began the slow, rhythmic theme of the melody. The bow moved with assurance; soon he would be joined by the simple accompaniment of the violoncello. He had devoted considerable thought to the choice before finally settling on Arcangelo Corelli’s variations on “La Folia,” in Hubert Léonard’s version, a piece he knew by heart. He had made one change: instead of piano or harpsichord, he had chosen the cello for the bass part. They fit together perfectly. He had been wise to select a piece that demonstrated the wide range of the violin’s tone quality, displaying string brilliance but no risky acrobatics. Soon the melody danced, bounded. The short fragment of paired notes and trills appeared as the sonata flowed easily, elegantly; then the theme imposed itself again with such beauty that the audience sat in absolute silence.

The cello stopped, and the violin solo concluded the piece. Bronislaw played with great sensitivity and depth. The musician closed his eyes and kept them closed until after the strings had grown mute. Now, he thought in a flash, I’ll hear an explosion of applause. He was twenty-six years old, and every concert since his first, at age twelve, had ended in thunderous applause.

He opened his eyes and abruptly returned to the present and his own situation. He was actually surprised to hear a few people—very few—applauding. The Commander himself clapped his hands twice, and the two musicians bowed.

“You played well, it’s a good violin.”

Bronislaw breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the words. He was especially relieved because he was conscious that the violin had not been allowed to dry as long as it needed. He noticed that the Commander glanced over at Rascher with an ironic half-smile, a look of satisfaction.

“For the time being, the two of you and the luthier,” he said—no longer referring to him as “our little carpenter”—“won’t be sent to the quarry.”

The Commander turned to the half dozen guests and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, they deserve a reward,” as he beckoned to his assistant, who handed him a coin.

Now he’ll offer it to me, Bronislaw thought. But that didn’t happen. The cellist had left his case open, and the Commander threw the coin in it, as one would for a begging musician. The guests, including a girl in an SS uniform, followed his example. With an expression on his face that showed he was thinking of the food he would buy, the cellist quickly leaned down to retrieve the coins that bore the hated effigy. But no, Bronislaw thought, he would not bend over—unless he was forced to—not after playing with all his soul in defense of Daniel, playing as no doubt Corelli himself would have. His eyes clouded with rage. No, I will not stoop, he thought, and he grasped the precious instrument tightly. For one moment I am a prince.

“What are you doing? Give me that violin!”

Bronislaw held it tightly, then with tremendous regret, his cheeks scarlet with rage, he handed the precious violin and bow to Sauckel, who was exultant as he exhibited it to the others, as if he had made it himself. Bronislaw noticed that one of the guests who had not tossed them any money was observing him with eyes filled with admiration. He had seen the face before, noticed that he was wearing a Wehrmacht uniform, not an SS one; he must have been a well-known musician who’d been mobilized. The man approached and, with no attempt to conceal his action, placed a large bill in the violinist’s hand.

“Out of here, now!
Raus!
” Sauckel shouted as he turned around.

The Commander was clearly anxious for the banquet to begin. Delicious food no doubt lay beneath the silver cloches on the white tablecloth. A profusion of flowers, countless bottles of red wine, sparkling champagne glasses … as if no concentration camp existed, no war.

Bronislaw—robbed of the violin—and the accompanist with his cello hurried out of the house to change clothes, as they were always ordered to do.

“We’ll split the money among the three of us,” Bronislaw told the cellist as he opened the bill to see how much it was.

He found a tiny slip of paper folded inside the bill. On it were written incredible, blinding words, so blinding they seemed engraved in gold: “I’ll get you out of here.” Quickly, he hid the paper from his companion—then swallowed it so no one would know.

Bronislaw finished the piece with the last two strokes: crisp, emphatic, and soft, all at the same time. He hadn’t performed this piece for a long time, but its melodic contour had taken flight from the first notes, dazzling, never hesitant, perfectly on key. The violinist was the first to realize.

He closed his eyes as he played the final measures; he didn’t need to see in order to do justice to the piece. He waited during the brief moment of silence that followed as the air settled. His thoughts wandered from the music: he was wondering if his performance would have satisfied the Commander, if it would have saved his life and Daniel’s. The roaring applause banished the bitter mirage. Good Lord, what had happened? Beside him stood a pianist, not the cellist who had accompanied him so many years ago. The two of them took their bows as the stage was strewn with flowers. The applause continued, a standing ovation. The accompanist signaled to Bronislaw to move forward, alone, to take his bow. A beautiful little girl came onto the stage and, with a charming gesture, offered each player a bright red rose, then handed Bronislaw a branch of orchids.

It all seemed like a dream, despite the fact that he had played like a virtuoso, conducted himself with assurance, smiled, signed programs for the melomaniacs who petitioned him, and praised the smorgasbord that followed the concert.

Only then could he return to the peace of his own home, but he wasn’t ready to go to bed. He was certain that the familiar nightmare would reappear.

“I’m going to read for a while,” he told his wife Ingrid, who immediately understood. She knew the story of Daniel’s violin that her husband had played in the Auschwitz camp. She knew the pain associated with the Corelli sonata.

The heat was turned on and the house warm, but Ingrid had built a fire. He poured himself a glass of cool, refreshing white wine and sat down by the fireplace, something that always gave him pleasure. He closed his eyes for a moment before he began flipping through the pages of the book he had been reading that week. Maybe it would keep his mind off things, especially today, keep his memories from surfacing. But they were tenacious. It was his fault. He should never have played Corelli’s “La Folia,” a piece he hadn’t wanted to perform for years. It carried him back to the
lager
, the image so vivid it was almost a hallucination.

His hair now white, in the calm of his own home, he was finally—after so many years of relative peace—able to confront those memories without trembling. What had become of his companions in misfortune? He almost never talked about that period in his life; he could hardly recall what many of them looked like. He could remember Daniel, however, as if he were standing before him, as if the flames from the fire were illuminating his face. Those eyes that not even hunger could dull—eyes that reflected every movement of his spirit: courage, fear, anger, desperation the day he learned of the bet, him against a case of French wine. He could see Daniel’s thin, skillful hands—the backs slightly scraped—the insidious tattoo that both of them bore. Those hands that had waved good-bye to him when he had the immense good fortune to leave the
lager
with an elderly male prisoner and eight sickly women. That was the Dreiflüsselager quota on the shopping list. Yes, Count Bernadotte had bought them—and many more prisoners from other death camps—in exchange for trucks. Bernadotte had run the Swedish Red Cross and had organized the “white buses” that carried thousands of Jews to Sweden. Bronislaw had always assumed that he had been included on that list because Bernadotte had known the kind-eyed Schindler or the Wehrmacht official who had given him the bill after he had performed for the Commander. My God, what a journey: difficult, never-ending, the devastated countryside, the intense hope. A wild sort of joy, but also regret, a sense of blameless guilt for all those who remained among the Nazis, especially the other two musicians in the trio. Especially Daniel.

Clearly, he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on his book tonight. He put on some soft music but didn’t pay much attention to it. Tomorrow evening, after the banquet that was being held in his honor, he would be able to enjoy himself. They were going up to their bungalow in the forest of birch trees, beside a lake where swans and ducks swam. He had never wished to leave Sweden, the country that had welcomed him after Auschwitz. Never. One of the marks the camp experience had left on him was a certain phobia, an insecurity that manifested itself as an irrational fear of travel, of leaving the country. He never felt safe away from his new home, and he soon abandoned the concert tours that provoked nightmares. The exception was an occasional performance in nearby countries: Denmark; Norway; Finland, the land of Sibelius. As soon as he had been given his papers and granted Swedish nationality, Bronislaw had accepted the position of full professor at the conservatory. His rare concerts became quite celebrated. Violinists from around the world visited him to learn his fingering technique and his classical cadence.

No, he decided, I will never again do “La Folia.” It was the first piece ever played on the violin crafted by his friend, performed before the despised tyrant, performed with all of his being. Bronislaw remembered how he and Daniel couldn’t tolerate the idea that the precious instrument would remain in the hands of the Commander; they had even devised impossible schemes to substitute it! It all seemed so recent.

The day after the performance at the Three Rivers Camp, Bronislaw had found it difficult to calm Daniel. The anguish had resurfaced when he discovered the Commander had announced that the two musicians could continue in their present jobs “for the time being.” The despicable man had said nothing about the luthier’s fate. Had the violin been finished in the agreed-upon time? They thought it had but weren’t completely persuaded, and that uncertainty plagued Daniel.

One evening a few days after the performance, Daniel told Bronislaw that he’d been summoned to the Commander’s house at noon on the previous day. To his amazement, Sauckel had congratulated him on the beautiful violin. Daniel had stood there, his heart pounding furiously, hoping to learn that he was off the hook and wouldn’t be sent to Rascher. Then he’d heard these words:

“I’ve decided to give you a bonus, even though you did nothing more than comply with your obligation.”

“Thank you, sir.” It had been such an effort to utter those three words. But what came next was unexpected:

“Take him to the kitchen and give him some food. Make it snappy, the factories can’t stop.”

The deception was so great it had almost taken Daniel’s appetite away, a fact he quickly forgot as he gulped down the plate of stew the cook placed before him. He explained to Bronislaw that, as he’d worked that afternoon, he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that the Commander suspected he knew about the bet and was playing with him. But that wasn’t all. The day after he had been served the plate of stew, a kapo had appeared at the workshop looking for two carpenters, Daniel and another, younger man. “Come along with me.”

The two men had put away their tools and followed him as best they could: the kapo was agile, had good shoes, and walked fast.

“Schnell, schnell!”
the kapo had yelled at them, turning around and giving them a shove. “Hurry up, you lazy bastards, a van has to be unloaded at the Sturmbannführer’s.”

So that’s it, the luthier had thought, he regrets congratulating me, and now he wants to make me pay for the plate of stew, turn me into a beast of burden to demonstrate that no privileges will be derived from crafting the violin. This wasn’t the first time someone had suddenly appeared with orders like this. The two carpenters had been surprised to find Sauckel standing with his dog at the foot of the stairs to his house, beneath the greenhouse filled with plants and blooming flowers, apparently waiting to give instructions.

They’d soon understood: new plants had just arrived. The two men had been ordered to the van, and Daniel had proceeded to unload—one after the other—three huge planters with roses. He wasn’t accustomed to the heavy work, and his knees trembled. He was exhausted. After the third trip up the stairs in his clumsy wooden shoes, carrying the heavy plants, he had begun to wobble and felt dizzy. He’d stopped for a moment to catch his breath, and the aide had beaten him on the buttocks with his cane.

“
Ja
, Markus.” The Commander had smiled approvingly. “Keep them working, they haven’t finished.”