Forever (27 page)

Sammy opened his mouth to say something, but
checked himself and took a sip of wine instead.

Stephanie considered him without haste. He
was suddenly poker-faced, and while she didn't have an inkling as
to what was going on in his mind, she was convinced that he knew
something she should know.

'All right, Uncle Sammy,' she said at last.
'Out with it. Now's not the time to hold out on me.'

He pushed his chair back. 'Why don't we take
our drinks and go sit over there on the beds?' he suggested,
getting to his feet and picking up his wineglass and the bottle of
Belair Lussac. 'This will take a while, and we might as well get
comfortable.'

'Might as well,' she agreed, scoffing one
last, big bite of pizza as she got up.

Sammy said, 'Think Budapest all over
again.'

'Budapest?' Stephanie repeated blankly. She
was lying sideways on one of the lits a la Polonaise, head propped
up on an elbow. 'Budapest . . . Budapest . . . now what? Of courseV
Suddenly she sat up straight. 'The reason Lili got fired from the
opera!' She snapped her fingers. 'Don't tell me, Uncle Sammy - let
me guess! Lili was an understudy there, too. And ambitious. Far too
ambitious for her own good, I bet. How am I doing so far?'

'Getting warmer and warmer, Girlie.'

'Aha! In other words, instead of waiting
patiently in the wings like a good understudy, our Lili contrived
her Big Opportunity. That's it, isn't it, Uncle Sammy?' Stephanie
was feeling inordinately pleased with her deduction. 'But what
could Lili have done? Poisoned the leading soprano?'

Sammy laughed. 'No, but you're definitely on
the right track,

Girlie. Like in Berlin, this incident also
happened on opening night, but onstage - during the season premiere
of La Rondine, no less. Anyway, what should fall open as the star
soprano came on, but a trap-door, right where the poor woman should
have been standing?'

'Good God!' Stephanie stared at him. 'You're
kidding!'

'I kid you not, Girlie. Had the near-sighted
lady been standing in the spot the stage directions required, she
would undoubtedly have been seriously injured. Maybe even killed.
Certainly put out of commission.'

'Nasty, our Lili,' murmured Stephanie.

'Oh, yes.' Sammy nodded. 'Definitely not one
to bide her time or leave anything to chance. But she learned a
powerful lesson. You see, she was caught red-handed, and by no less
than three eyewitnesses. Still clutching the lever of the trapdoor,
apparently saying something like, "Ooops! I just leaned against
this! I hope it wasn't anything important?" '

'That's . . . awful!'

'When you think about it, she really did
have the luck of the devil. Instead of being fired, she could have
had criminal charges brought against her. And justifiably so.'

'What I want to know,' Stephanie said, 'is
since you knew all this, why didn't you tell Grandpa? There isn't
anything about this in his manuscript, or in his notes.'

'Why?' Sammy snorted. 'For the simple reason
that Carleton never asked me, that's why. He kept his research such
a secret, you'd have thought he was guarding the gold at Fort Knox.
You see, Girlie, if he didn't tell me what he did know, how was I
supposed to guess what he didn't?' He added dryly, 'I may be many
things, but psychic I'm not.'

'No, of course not,' Stephanie murmured,
'and no one expects you to be. Now then ... in Berlin -I take it
Lili got antsy waiting in the wings? And once again tried her old
incapacitate-the-diva trick?'

'Yes, but she'd learned an important lesson
in Budapest. Subsequently, this "accident" occurred far from the
opera premises, and she had an alibi - she was in a meeting with
the theatre director at the time.'

'How did she manage that?'

'Easily. She simply arranged for some
friends to do it instead of getting her own hands dirty.'

'Friends?'

'Brownshirts, actually. You see, Lili'd
become thick as thieves with a group of them. At any rate, as you
already know, they succeeded in doing in Berlin what she had failed
miserably at in Budapest. The story handed out at the time was that
the soprano, who was an Austrian Catholic, was mistaken for a
Jew.'

Stephanie could see Sammy's wineglass
shaking in his angrily trembling hand.

'Can you believe that?' he asked hoarsely.
'Saying it was all right to beat a woman half senseless merely
because she'd been labelled a Jew?'

Stephanie could only shudder. It was all too
easy to imagine the ghastly scene ... the gang of young ruffians
... an innocent, defenceless woman attacked and kicked and beaten
... An act not only condoned, but in those years, probably
applauded.

It was too awful to contemplate, the world
gone mad.

Too awful, too, that a singer of Lili
Schneider's calibre should have resorted to such abhorrent means to
justify her ends.

'Anyway, continue with your story. Girlie.
Perhaps I can be of help and fill in some more gaps for you.'

Stephanie nodded gratefully. She polished
off the rest of her soda, put the glass down, and tucked her legs
under her, sitting in the Lotus position. 'Back in Lili's day,' she
said, 'the Berliner Staatsoper was under the direction of Detlef
von Ohlendorf -'

'That unrepentant Nazi!' Sammy swore in a
soft explosion of breath.

'He's still around,' she said, 'isn't
he?'

'Oh yes, and riding a crest of popularity,'
Sammy said sourly. 'He must be well into his eighties, and he's so
in demand he flies from one opera house to another in his private
jet, conducting the Stuttgarter Philharmonic one day, and the
Melbourne Opera the next. It's unbelievable, the way his past has
been forgiven. Would you believe, his recordings have sold in the
hundreds of millions of copies? Anyway, he lives in Austria now.
Somewhere outside Salzburg, if I'm not mistaken.'

'According to Grandpa's manuscript, Lili and
von Ohlendorf - or should I say, "The Maestro?" - became like
this." Stephanie held up a hand, two fingers crossed.

'Quite true,' said Sammy.

'He also wrote that they were like Fred
Astaire and Ginger Rogers - they were that perfectly attuned to
each other's creative juices.'

'That's true also. Whether or not I
personally despise the man - and make no mistake about it, Girlie,
I loathe him - the fact remains that no matter what he directed
Lili in, the result was utter magic. It all started with their
first Bregenzer Festspiele, where they knocked 'em dead with their
Fidelio.'

'After which,' she added, 'their Cost Fan
Tutte made history at the Salzburger Festspiele, and their Rienzi,
by Wagner, became the hit at Bayreuth.'

'You have done your homework,' he said,
sounding impressed. 'Please. Continue.'

'Well, not surprisingly, an invitation to
visit Hitler at Berchtesgarten soon followed, during which the
Fiihrer confided to Lili that he was her greatest fan. Naturally,
propaganda minister Goebbels was on hand, and promptly trumpeted
the news in the papers and over the airwaves, after which our Lili
could do absolutely no wrong. Oh, and one more thing. Contrary to
popular belief, it was not Goebbels, but von Ohlendorf who actually
came up with the idea for Lili's Sunday afternoon radio
broadcasts.'

'The ones which made her the Third Reich's
number one soprano,' murmured Sammy, half to himself.

'And the hottest thing to hit the German
airwaves since Hitler's speeches.' Stephanie was silent for a
moment. 'I wonder. What was it? That crystal-clear voice? Her
incredible range? Or her ability to embrace the entire repertoire
from light operetta to heavy-duty Wagner?'

'Most likely,' Sammy said dryly, 'she just
struck a deep Teutonic chord in the Germans of the time.'

'Yes. That does make more sense,' Stephanie
said. 'But whatever it was, she sure had the country eating out of
her hand. I mean, Lili fever suddenly gripped Germany. Every
Sunday, millions of Germans and Austrians gathered around their
radios to tune in and hear her sing. Uncle Sammy, did you know that
in one week alone - one single week! - over four hundred newly born
girls were named Lili?' She stared at him. 'Or that toy
manufacturers couldn't keep up with the demand for Lili Bielfeld
dolls? And that a street in virtually every major city was named in
honour of her?'

'No, but it doesn't surprise me.'

'And then, what should happen?' All those
Bielfeldstrasse signs were barely up, when they all had to come
down again and be changed!'

'Because of Friedrich Wilhelm
Schneider.'

'That's right.' Stephanie nodded. 'The SA
Gruppenfiihrer of Berlin, and SA Chief of Staff Ernst Rohm's
right-hand man. Apparently, Gruppenfiihrer Schneider was one of
those ironies of the Third Reich: a convicted murderer, known
homosexual, and opera groupie, all rolled into one. At any rate,
physically he looked like Hitler's Aryan ideal: blond hair, blue
eyes, pale Nordic skin, freckles. Plus a somewhat pretty face on a
musclebound body. According to Grandpa's manuscript, he was also
one of Rohm's favourite gay playmates.'

'Now that,' said Sammy mildly, 'I have
heard.'

'Which brings us to the next big event in
Lili's life,' Stephanie went on. 'Her wedding to Gruppenfiihrer
Schneider in May of 1933. The ceremony was held - where else? - in
the Berliner Staatsoper, and was - what else? - broadcast all over
Germany. The Berliner Philharmonic played; the opera chorus sang.
There was an SA honour guard and an SS honour guard. Hitler,
Himmler, Goering, Goebbels and his wife Magda ... let me see ...
Gerhart Hauptman, Germany's greatest living playwright . . . von
Karajan, von Ohlendorf, Friedelind Wagner, granddaughter of the
composer, no less than three von Bismarcks, Mussolini's son-in-law,
Count Ciano - you name them, they all attended. It was a civil
ceremony, mind you, but staged by Albert Speer with all the pomp
and circumstance worthy of a Wagnerian coronation.'

'Or,' Sammy interjected drily, 'a Nuremberg
rally.'

'That too,' she said. 'But do you know what
I still can't understand, Uncle Sammy?'

'And what, my darling, is that?'

Why they got married, what with thdir
respective careers - not to mention his sexual proclivities. I
mean, it could hardly be called a match made in heaven.'

'No,' Sammy said, 'that it certainly
couldn't. It was an arrangement made right here on earth.'

'But for what reason?'

'The question you want to ask, Girlie, is:
arranged by whom?'

in that case, uncle dearest, who was it
arranged by?'

'Numero uno.''

'You can't mean -'

'That's right, Girlie, I do. Schickelgruber
himself.'

Her mouth actually fell open. 'Hitler!' she
whispered, tugging at her ear and staring at him. 'But
why?

'Because, my darling, although the Fiihrer
detested his friend's sexual proclivities, personally he really
liked Friedrich Wilhelm Schneider. The two of them went way back,
all the way to the trenches of World War One.'

She sat there, digesting this new
information in silence. 'I . . . see,' she said slowly after a
moment. 'Hitler tried to change him. To steer him straight.'

'Precisely! And, since the Gruppenfiihrer
was such an opera buff. Hitler used Lili as bait. But, the marriage
didn't make the gay man straight, nor did it quell the rumours
about his continuing relationship with Rohm and his boys. If
anything, the gossip only intensified, now that Lili's spotlight
included poor Friedrich.'

Stephanie's face shone with a sharp, rapt
beauty, her precision-tuned mind assimilating what amounted to
having struck a bonanza in pure gold. After a moment, she said,
'Yes, Uncle Sammy, yes! Knowing it was Hitler who arranged the
marriage suddenly makes everything fall into place! My God! It
explains, for instance, why Lili should have been in the process of
getting an annulment when, what should happen -'

'June of '34?' Sammy suggested.

'Exactly! When Rohm's merry band bought it
on the Tegernsee, all slaughtered for so-called "treason" -
Gruppen- fiihrer Schneider included!' Stephanie shook her head in
bemusement. 'And here I was, ready to swear on a stack of Bibles
that Lili was either psychic, or else must have possessed an
uncanny knack for survival.'

'Which she did, Girlie. Make no mistake
about it.'

'Oh, believe me, I won't. But in this
instance, her survival instincts had nothing to do with it. Uncle
Sammy! Don't you see?' Stephanie sat forward, eyes gleaming, bolts
of excitement streaking through her like live charges of
electricity. 'Lili must have been forewarned about what was going
down! My God! Think of what this means! She was probably told -
even ordered - to distance herself from her husband, maybe by the
Fiihrer himself!' After a moment she murmured, 'Small wonder she
rose above the stink like a helium balloon.'

'And,' Sammy added, his lips twisting in
irony, 'in the process came out smelling like the proverbial
rose.'

Stephanie nodded. 'Anyway, afterwards, she
and von Ohlendorf left on a whirlwind world tour. First stop, the
Paris Opera, where everyone went bananas over Lili. The second, her
Covent Garden triumph in London, where she was pelted with flowers
during every performance. Then it was on across the Atlantic to the
old Metropolitan Opera House in New York, where both Lili and von
Ohlendorf were offered contracts for astronomical sums of money -
which, being the good Nazis that they were, they graciously turned
down. Then it was on to Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio,
and finally back across the Atlantic. Everywhere they went, word of
their previous triumphs preceded them, and resulted in sold-out
performances and mob scenes. Lisbon . . . Madrid . . . the Teatro
Grande in Brescia ... La Scala in Milan - Lili packed them in. And
then came the highlight of the tour, when, at the request of the
pope, she sang a special High Mass at St Peter's Basilica in
Rome.'