In the Claws of the Eagle (27 page)

In the deep silence of the salt mines, Louise Eeden was wide awake. She had felt Izaac drawing on her, working with her, fighting some technical battle with his violin, and had
wondered
at the memories of Helena Stronski that this had invoked. Could it be Helena who was playing? She listened for her characteristic style, but no, this was definitely Izaac.

Louise would ‘return’ after these sessions, tired but
triumphant
. Perhaps there was a major concert coming up? Izaac was certainly playing at concert pitch. Then there were periods of silence when she was out of Izaac’s mind. It was during one of these that she began to think about Erich, or perhaps Erich was thinking about her? She wondered where he was, and to amuse herself began to picture in her mind the compass points from which Izaac’s and Erich’s messages were coming. She imagined them as two steady beacons in the blackness of the mine. Then, quite suddenly, she was alert. Surely one of the beacons had moved; they were no longer so far apart. They were converging. Erich had set out for Auschwitz.

Ramon looked with deep misgivings at the order sheet that had come from SS headquarters. Not only did it demand an orchestra for a selection, it listed specific players, most of them from Terezín. Izaac Abrahams’s name had even been
underlined
! Ramon had survived the camp longer than most, and had come to understand the Nazi mind. They loved to spring surprises. It was as if, bored by the daily quota of death, they needed to spice it up with special events, ‘entertainments’, which were invariably at the expense of their victims. He
wondered
if he should share his misgivings with Izaac; after all he was the leader of the orchestra. Then he decided against it. Ramon hadn’t survived by taking risks.

When he saw where they were to play, Ramon was even 
more suspicious. Though out of doors, it was like a stage set. The orchestra had been placed so that the players were on a slight rise facing the barbed wire that would separate them from the people arriving from the transport. It looked to him as though they had been placed there not so much to play, but to see. A transport had arrived earlier and the last of the people were filing past when they arrived to set up.

‘We are Hungarians!’ one of them had shouted up to them, but Ramon knew that his orchestra had not been called out to play for the Hungarians. Ramon looked to the right, to where the SS men in their black uniforms were standing, casually laughing and talking among themselves, boots and leather gleaming. What went on in their brains that they could laugh and look so normal, knowing where these starving, broken, people were going? As he watched, the SS men became alert; two trucks were backing up. Ramon got the impression that these were what the SS men had been waiting for. Several of them looked up towards the orchestra to see their reactions. Get the orchestra playing, quickly, was his solution. The busier they were, the less upsetting it would be. He tapped on his music stand to call the orchestra to attention.

Izaac had been sitting in his place in the front row of the orchestra, trying to keep his hands warm enough to play. It was October and the air was sharp. He was trying not to think, fixing his gaze on a clump of thistles that grew a few metres away, their downy seed-heads sticking up like white shaving brushes. There was a whirr of small wings and the thistles sagged and bobbed under the weight of half a dozen
goldfinches
. Izaac smiled, but at that moment Ramon tapped on his music stand, and the birds were gone in a flash of colour and a puff of thistledown. Louise had always said she loved 
goldfinches; he wished she was here, and then almost
immediately
was glad she wasn’t.

He looked up at Ramon, his thoughts still full of little red and gold birds, and raised his violin to lead the orchestra into ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz. While he played, his eyes settled on the two trucks that were now unloading their human cargo.
I’m not looking
, he persuaded himself as the tailgate of the first lorry dropped with a distant clang.
At least the soldiers are offering the people inside a hand down
. The trucks were high; too high for some of the smaller children to jump from. Some of the older children lifted down the little ones.
Just keep playing, even though it’s still too far for them to hear us
. There are boys in one lorry and girls in the other. They seem delighted to see each other again.
Look, they are hugging; that’s nice. They must know each other
. At that moment the impact of what he was watching hit Izaac like a fist below the belt, leaving him gasping for breath. Of course the children knew each other. Hadn’t they been singing together in the opera Brundibár for a year?

This then was the ‘treat’ the Nazis had planned for him and for the other Terezín players: they were to play their own young friends into the gas chambers. There was Pepíček, one of the two children who had gone off to buy milk for their mother. Where was his sister, Aninka, Izaac wondered? But the ice cream man was there and the sparrow, and the cat. And there was Pafko – Brundibár himself. No clipboard or bucket could save him now. Izaac could feel himself rising in tribute to his young friend. Ramon shook his head, so Izaac sank down, recognising more faces from the two choirs, boys and girls mixing together for the last time.

The orchestra played through ‘The Blue Danube’ again. The children were nearly below them now, looking more subdued. Their first greetings over, they were beginning to look about them, beginning to wonder. Izaac turned the page. What had 
they been told to play for them next: ‘The Trish Trash Polka’.
The Trish Trash Polka!
Sudden rage exploded behind Izaac’s eyes. He could control himself no longer, and neither, it seemed could he control his violin. They rose together. Ramon coughed, his eyes blazing a warning, willing Izaac to sit down and not to be a fool; they could all be shot. He saw that one of the officers had indeed detached himself from the group of smirking SS men, delighted at having got a reaction from the Terezín players.

With a curt nod of apology to Ramon, Izaac walked away from the orchestra. Let them shoot him if they must, there was no need to endanger the others. He walked to the edge of the raised platform and looked down on the children. They looked up and saw him. He could see the relief in their faces; here was someone who would look after them. Their false trust ran through him like a sword. Without a smile or a wave he signalled to them to line up, just as their choirmaster would have done. Immediately, and to the astonishment of their guards, the children ran and formed themselves into their choir groups. Izaac raised his violin and played the first bars of the Terezín March, the defiant cheeky march that was
performed
at almost every function in Terezín. He could hear the noise of the little orchestra behind preparing to play too. One … two … three … the high clear voices of the children rose as if to heaven and the audience of SS officers shifted uneasily as their ‘little entertainment’ began to go sour on them.

Izaac glanced behind him; the SS officer who had detached himself from the rest looked strangely familiar. Afraid of 
reprisals, he stepped forward and urged the children to walk on; he didn’t want any shooting. Pafko was the first to move, grasping the situation in one. With a cheeky grin up at Izaac, he set off in a wonderfully exaggerated goose-step.

Izaac watched them go, their voices still ringing in his ears. Despite Pafko’s efforts, they looked small and so vulnerable. This was monstrous! They must not be allowed go alone! He wanted to rush after them, but what good would it do them if he hurled himself against the barbed wire? Was there no way he could go with them, was there nothing he could do to
support
them on their journey?

As if it had waited two hundred and fifty years for this moment, Helena’s Stradivarius rose to his shoulder. Yes, he did have something to give them: his music. He drew his bow. For a moment the violin seemed to gather its breath; then the bow bit into the strings and the music poured out. Rising, it seemed to fill the vastness of the open air about the children as Izaac played the composition that had exploded in his
three-year-old
head in Vienna all those years ago; Helena’s ‘
Humoresque
’. The children knew it because he had often played it between rehearsals to keep them happy; they turned to wave. Watching them down the length of his strings, he noticed that they were beginning to dance, a whirling movement that seemed strangely familiar. How often he had seen them
playing
like this on the Brundibár set and wondered what they were dancing about.

Then in the very vortex of the dance he saw a flash of green, and Louise was there, reaching out as if to catch their hands and swing the little ones as they swirled about her like a flock of birds. So this was the origin of those games! Despite his efforts to shield her from the horrors of the camp, she had been there, invisible to him but not to them. For a second his resolve faltered; he would give his life for those children; he 
would sacrifice his music for them, but Louise – was she his to give?

‘Louise,’ he called out silently, just as he would have called to during a performance: ‘Louise, you shouldn’t be here. Do you know what you are doing? Do you know where you are going?’ Her reply came back to him as clearly as if she was beside him. ‘Yes, of course I know, Izaac. I’ve been with you all along. These are my children too, you know. Just play on, and we’ll see them through this together.’ And so they did.

Then they were gone. Izaac’s arms sank slowly to his sides. He turned to face his fate. The members of the orchestra were standing, staring after the departed children, applauding them by tapping their instruments with their bows, a tiny rattle of sound that swelled and faded. Behind the orchestra the small group of SS officers was breaking up, drifting away, kicking at thistles, tasting perhaps the first bitter taste of defeat. Izaac stood, wondering what to do with his violin; it still throbbed with fury in his hands.

He found himself staring into the face of an SS officer who must have walked up while he was playing. He handed him the violin and waited for the shot. The officer took the violin but his eyes were focused on where the children had just
vanished
. In an awed voice he said, as if to himself, ‘Dear God, what are we doing, what have we done? At least they had Louise. It’s what she would have wanted.’ Then he looked at his hand and saw that he was holding Izaac’s violin. He pulled himself together visibly. When he spoke next it was a prepared statement.

‘Izaac Abrahams,’ he said. ‘If you recognise me, I would ask you to keep quiet about it. If we get away safely there will be time enough for explanations.’

Erich and Izaac sat facing each other in silent animosity as their train inched its way across Poland towards Austria. Erich had given the Jew a brief account of how he had come to
Auschwitz
specifically to rescue him. The Nazis had thought that they were entertaining Klaus Steinman, who for them had an enviable reputation for brutal efficiency, so they had invited their guest to observe their own little display of Jew baiting. Now that the fear of discovery was receding, the sheer horror of what he had seen was beginning to take effect on Erich.

‘At least the children are safe in heaven now,’ he sighed.

The train clacked mechanically on; the Jew appeared not to be listening. He was looking out of the window. Erich watched him in his reflection. When he did reply it was to the passing fields.

‘You know, Herr Hoffman, I think heaven is the one thing that you have denied them. What is heaven but a promise, and a comfort for those of us who are left behind? Perhaps it exists, perhaps it doesn’t, but you know, even in your concentration camps we found heaven … little bits of it, scattered on the ground; we picked these up and treasured them far more than any promise.’

Someone, lugging a suitcase, passed in the corridor, looked
in, saw the SS uniform and what looked like a Jewish prisoner, and went on. Erich looked down at his jack-booted feet.

‘Can we ever be forgiven?’ The train plunged into a tunnel, smoke swirled against the windows and the rotten smell of brown coal caused them to catch their breath. When the train emerged again into the weak autumn sunlight, Erich got up to open the window.

‘Don’t look to me for comfort, Herr Hoffman.
I
can never forgive you.’ Izaac’s voice rose momentarily: ‘and
what right
… excuse me … what right have I to forgive you on behalf of the people you have murdered? Nobody, not even God, can
forgive
you. You have to
work
for forgiveness; you have to
earn
forgiveness by accepting what you have done in the depth of your heart. Don’t ask someone else to do this for you.’ A thin, almost apologetic smile crossed his face, and he looked Erich in the eyes for the first time. ‘Now, tell me, why have you have come to rescue me alone, out of so many?’

Deep underground in the salt mines of Altaussee the silence of oblivion wrapped itself like a protective cloak about Louise. The slender threads of consciousness that had given her life had been burned up in the horror of what the Nazis had done. All that remained for her was a lingering awareness of self and, just occasionally, a sound that might have been the whisper of a pen moving on paper.

She knew nothing of the conversation that took place between Erich and Izaac on the train; a conversation that ended, not so much in reconciliation, but in understanding. She was unaware when the SS manoeuvred a
five-hundred-pound
bomb into the mine directly above her, with the
intention
of blowing the entire collection sky-high should Germany lose the war. 

Spring came slowly in the mountains above where Izaac lay hidden in the loft of Sabine Hoffman’s house. He heard a sudden commotion below, and sat up. It was Erich, who had been waiting to engage in a peaceful handover of the priceless contents of the mine to the victors. What had happened? Izaac heard the ladder being put in place, followed by the agreed tap on the trap door. He slid the bolt. Erich stood shoulder high in the light from below.

‘Herr Abrahams, you must come. The Americans are about to enter the valley, but I have just heard that the SS have planted a huge bomb in the salt mine, and that they will explode it before the Americans arrive. I must take action now. I have been in touch with the salt miners, who are horrified, partly because of the art, but chiefly because this is their place of work. They know of ways into the mine that the SS don’t know about. As I know where the pictures are stored, and have been trained in defusing mines from my SS days, I am going with them. I may not succeed and I certainly can’t do it carrying Louise’s portrait under my arm. I want you to come, take Louise’s portrait and escape with her picture from the mine. I promised her she would be safe; I need you to help me fulfill that promise.’

‘I will come,’ Izaac said.

They entered the mine through an old drainage tunnel and waded in until they came to an iron ladder. At the top was a grill with a padlock. Long handled cutters soon disposed of this and they were into the modern workings. While the miners searched for the bomb, Erich led Izaac down to the underground chapel. The package containing Louise’s portrait was still there, the seals intact. This was the moment for Erich to hand it over. A sudden urge came over him to open it and see Louise for a last time.

A shout from above indicated that the miners had found the bomb. He would have to go. But down in the chapel a bizarre tug of war was taking place. Erich, having initially offered the package to Izaac, found that his hands just would not let go. Suddenly old resentments and old hates resurged and boiled between them. Then, as quickly as they had come, the
resentments
passed. Erich managed to give the package to Izaac; they embraced briefly, then one of the young partisans showed Izaac the way out of the mine. It was May 1945; in a few days the war in Europe would be over.

Izaac returned to Vienna later in the summer. He half expected to find that his apartment had been requisitioned by some Nazi family, but when he rang the bell, it was Lotte, her hair nearly white now, who opened the door and welcomed him with tears of joy and sadness. She told him how his mother and father had been taken away, not long after he was transported. She was sure that he would have met them there? ‘No,’ he told her, tearfully. No, he had not met Father or Mother, nor, indeed, Uncle Rudi or Nathan and his family. Lotte supposed that the east must be a very big place, then, and Izaac agreed.

For weeks he occupied himself in searching for their names on lists; but it was too soon. All he could do for now was put their names down as ‘missing’ and hope for a miracle. He sat in the music room, but every corner held memories, and he decided that he must get away. Gretchen and her husband implored him to come and live with them, but he couldn’t bring his countless ghosts into that happy family. So he sold the apartment and in doing so released Lotte to take up Gretchen’s offer of a place in her home where, if she wished, she could help look after Konrad, the little boy who had waved to ‘Uncle Izaac’ the day he was taken off to Terezín. He 
made over half the proceeds of the sale of the apartment to Lotte by way of thanks for looking after it throughout the war. A pension would follow, but that would have to wait until he had persuaded their Swiss bank to open an account for him. It was time for Izaac to leave. When Konrad asked him where he was going, Izaac told him he was going to visit Herr Schnurrbart.

‘Mummy, Mummy, Uncle Izaac is going to visit Mr
Moustache
! Isn’t he funny?’

Gretchen was the only person he told where he was going. ‘Gretchen, people keep telling me that I have to learn to forget, to blot it all out and start again.’ Izaac could feel his voice
tightening
, rising. ‘But, Gretchen, I don’t
want
to forget.’ He got himself under control. ‘I’ve told you about the children in the little opera we put on! Am I to blot them out of my mind just for my own survival? Or the people I played with, or the weary Hungarians on their way to nowhere? No, there is something I can do for them still. I feel it in my bones, but I can’t do it here. Every evening as the dark creeps out of the east, the black dogs come padding with it. Years ago, after I was nearly lynched by a Nazi gang in Berlin, I found myself in Ireland. There, between the mountains and the sea I found a place where I felt I was safe.’

‘And Louise, can’t she help you? I notice you haven’t unwrapped her picture.’

‘Oh, Gretchen, how can I explain? I played Louise into the gas chambers with them. She is just a memory too.’

‘Look, Izaac, we created music together, and I know its
healing
properties. I want to see you happy. I don’t know what you can do, but don’t try to do it alone. Think of us and we’ll think of you. Perhaps one day all three of us, Willie, Konrad and I, will come and find you in your place between the mountains and the sea.’ 

Gretchen and Konrad came to see Izaac off the following day. He had with him just one suitcase, Madame Helena’s violin, complete with clown sticker, and a square package securely wrapped and sealed. Konrad was fascinated by the clown sticker.

Izaac stood on the deck of the mailboat from Wales, his back protected by the ship’s funnel, watching their approach to Dublin. Early morning sun sparkled on the waves and lit the creamy underside of the seagull that hung close above him, riding the updraft from the moving ship. The two arms of Dublin Bay seemed to be held wide in welcome.
Colour-washed
houses lined the shore, and grey spires pierced a thin veil of mist. The humpy hills beyond the city were just
beginning
to glow.

Going through customs on arrival was disturbingly like arriving at a concentration camp. He chose his customs officer with care; a sleepy one.

‘Just an old violin, you say?’ the man said when Izaac opened its case. ‘Well, it’s not wrapped in silk stockings anyway.’ He yawned and prodded Louise’s portrait. ‘A portrait, you say?’

‘Of a friend.’

‘Will you look at the wrapping, we’d never get that back together again.’ A quick rummage in Izaac’s case, and he was through. He was still blinking in the doorway when he got a hearty thump on the back and turned to see Paddy
McCormack
– he of the mighty moustaches – beaming down on him.

‘Well, how are you, Mr Izaac? You don’t look a day older!’ Paddy lied happily. ‘Give me that case. I got your telegram and I have the perfect little house for you. Near to where you played your violin to the seals all those years ago. Thirteen is it, 
well, time flies.’ He heaved Izaac’s bag into the train that stood waiting on the pier. ‘We’ll take the train to Galway, sir; petrol is terrible scarce these days. It’ll be an ass and cart from then on.’ He roared with laughter at his own joke and Izaac, who had no idea what an ‘assncart’ was, leaned back in the stuffy carriage. Apart from his expanding waistline, Paddy had hardly changed from his last visit. When he said, ‘Which way, Mr Izaac?’ Izaac remembered the response: ‘West, Paddy bitte. To the sea!’ and they laughed together.