In the Claws of the Eagle (29 page)

Izaac waited until morning before he attempted to open the parcel. When he had arrived back from Galway last night it had been dark and he didn’t want his first sight of the picture to be by candlelight. He cut the string. Erich had done a
thorough
job with layers of tissue, waxed paper, and then
corrugated card. Izaac had moved his kitchen table so that the light from the half-door would fall across the picture as he unwrapped it. Now he took a deep breath and lifted the last sheet of wrapping.

Izaac staggered back. He thought he was going to have a heart attack. What appalling trick was this? Adolf Hitler! He dashed to the door, gasping for breath. Rabbits scuttled for their burrows. How could that swine Hoffman have done this to him? He turned to get a kitchen knife to slash the hateful image into strips. Then he hesitated. That frame was not the one he knew; it was a funny shape. He walked back and
carefully
turned it over. There it was, the so familiar Dutch interior. He carried it to the door. And there she was too, as the Master had painted her all those years ago, as fresh and as demanding as ever.

It was just as he expected; she gave out severely to him over his playing. He was contrite; she was unforgiving. How could he have let himself slip like this? It was like old times. There was, however, one difference, and it affected them both. In mid-sentence Louise would pause, and Izaac would look up and see her lip tremble. She would turn away then and come back full of unnecessary bustle. The same would happen to him; some two-note phrase would remind him of the
Brundibár
lullaby perhaps, and he would have to stop and blow his nose.

One stormy evening when they had both hovered like this on the edge of the abyss, Louise said, ‘Izaac, this has got to stop, we’ve got to stop playing for ourselves; just this once let’s play for them.’ 

Michael Joyce hesitated above the Professor’s house and looked out over the bay. A luminous half-light lit the sand. The storm had just about blown itself out; he had been checking his boat to see that it was safe, and had thought to call in at the cottage on his way home. When he looked out over the sand, however, he saw that the Professor was out there, but this was a surprise; he had company!

There were two of them walking away from him, the
Professor
and a girl in a dress of almost luminous green. As Michael watched, the girl broke away from the older man, and ran barefoot on the sand, spinning to let the wind whip at her dress and at her hair. Michael blinked; a whole flock of
children
had appeared, laughing and swirling about her as if
playing
tag. They must have come down by bus, Michael thought, and turned towards the road to see. When he looked back, however, all he could see was the Professor. Of the girl and the children there was no sign.

A flock of shore birds flew past Michael in an excited twitter and settled further down the sand. A curlew called. The
Professor
bent to pick up a seashell, put it to his ear, and then he walked on out towards the sea. Curious, Michael crossed the sand to where the children had been playing; the only
footprints
he could find were the Professor’s. But he could see where the Professor had turned to watch them play.

For as long as the Professor lived in the cottage, Michael would often see the girl in green, and sometimes see the
children
playing on the sand. He never told anybody else. It seemed to him to be a purely natural phenomenon.

I
n April 2003, while on a visit to Czechoslovakia, my wife and I visited the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, a former Hapsburg fortress, about an hour's drive from Prague. Our older than usual guide was a cultured, soft-spoken lady, who nevertheless managed to convey to us the horror of the conditions in the camp. One hundred and forty thousand people passed through the camp, most of them on their way to the Nazi gas chambers. Three thousand five hundred died from the appalling conditions in the camp. Our guide concluded our tour with the following words:

‘We mustn't forget the victims of the Nazis, and this terrible history mustn't be forgot. Ladies and gentlemen, that is all. Thank you for your
attention
and your pleasant company, allow me to wish you a beautiful stay in the Czech Republic.'

It was only after we had left Terezín to return to Prague that we learned that our guide had, almost certainly, as a child, been a prisoner in Terezín. It was with her exhortation in mind that I began to look at the Terezín story. It is a story of horror, but it is also a story of human and artistic triumph. It is the story of Jewish musicians, dramatists,
comedians
and teachers who not only entertained their fellow prisoners, but composed and performed to the highest level. Not least among these were the children who sang in choirs and played in the
seventy-odd
performances of Hans Krása's opera ‘Brundibár'. Sadly, most of these children died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in the period of the war, as did most of the adult musicians and performers in the camp. Many of the situations and incidents that I have described in this book are based on fact, and my characters have been inspired by real people. However, the book is a work of fiction; the scenes and
characters 
are simply as I have imagined them. My main source of information on the musical life in Terezín has been the book:
Music in Terezín 1941-1945
by Joža Káras.

Ever since I first visited, and fell in love with Austria and its people in the 1950s, I have been haunted by the question: would I have been able to resist the lure of, for example, the Hitler Youth. My interest in outdoor activities could easily have drawn me towards them and thence into Nazism. As a teenager I was easily impressed by people more confident than I. One of my great heroes of this time was
Heinrich
Harrer, a climber famous for his ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, and subsequently for his wonderfully humane account of his seven years in Tibet. How, I wondered, would he have reacted to the emergent Nazism of that time? Then, when halfway through writing this book, I learned to my surprise and dismay that Harrer had indeed served in the SS. More recently still the great German pacifist writer, Günter Grass, has confessed to having been a member of the SS. In Erich I have attempted to show how easy it can be to be drawn into a position of prejudice, and how difficult it is to break out of it.

Izaac Abrahams could be any one of the many Jewish child prodigies that sprang from the nursery of culture that was Vienna at the turn of the last century. There is an excellent description of Vienna at that time in Amy Biancolli's biography of the great violinist Kreisler:
Fritz
Kreisler. Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy
. Though I learned the violin for a year or two as a youngster, my eyes were opened wide by sitting in on a master class conducted by violinist Mary O'Brien in the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. Madame Helena Stronski is not modelled on anyone, but she is wholly inspired by the way in which Ms O'Brien worked to bring out the musicianship in her already competent
players
. I hope she will not wholly disown my Izaac.

Izaac's home is based on my parents' apartment as it was in Vienna
 
in the 1950s, close to the Volksgarten where the lawns were then still being mown with scythes.

In 1938 Hitler had the idea of creating what he intended to be the largest collection of art in Europe. As an aspiring art student he had
applied
to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and had been rejected. He never forgave Vienna for this rejection and so chose Linz, his home town, to be the site for his future gallery. The great Jewish art
collections
were to be his principal source of art, but as his armies swept west and east across Europe this soon turned into wholescale looting of galleries and collections in the conquered states. The Jeu de Paume in Paris was one of his collecting points. Situated in the Tuileries
Gardens
near the Louvre, it is now a museum of modern art, but during the war, lorries drove in at night from the Place de la Concorde stuffed with looted art. Old masters and the realistic art of the nineteenth
century
were what appealed to the Nazis. Picassos, Van Goghs, and other ‘degenerate' works were separated out to be sold. Göring was a
regular
visitor, travelling in his private train to Platform 1 in the
Gare de l'Est
. He seldom paid for what he carried away.

It had been known for some time that the atmosphere in the salt mines in the Austrian Lake District was perfect for storing pictures. Altaussee is every bit as beautiful as Eric and Louise found it. The salt mine where the art was stored can be visited. Because of the
atmosphere
, the timber of the Nazi shelves looks as new today as the day it was put in. So does the box marked ‘Marble, do not drop,' that once contained a bomb designed to destroy the whole collection. A level or two lower in the mine, reached by a wooden slide, is the chapel where I imagined Louise's picture being stored. This fascinating story is told by Peter Harclerode and Brendan Pittaway in
The Lost Masters. The Looting of Europe's Treasurehouses.

As always, Norman Davies'
Europe, A History
, provides the
backbone 
of my research. There have been numerous television
documentaries
and videos on the Holocaust in recent times. The Internet is a valuable source of information but I find it is necessary to verify
everything
I use, checking where possible against a reliable source such as the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
or Norman Davies.

This is the final book in the
Louise
Trilogy. In
Wings Over Delft
we met Louise as she was in life, three and a half centuries ago. In
The
Rainbow
Bridge
and
In the Claws of the Eagle
I have used the tools of fantasy to bring Louise to life, while in reality the only way that Louise could come to life would be through the eyes of those who looked at her portrait, or perhaps those who read her story.

Aubrey Flegg

AUBREY FLEGG was born in Dublin and spent his early childhood on a farm in County Sligo. His later schooldays were spent in England, but he returned to Dublin to study geology. After a period of research in Kenya he joined the Geological Survey of Ireland; he is now retired. Aubrey lives in Dublin with his wife, Jennifer; they have two children and three grandchildren.

As well as the
Louise
trilogy, he has published two other books for young people: the first,
Katie’s War
, is about the Civil War period in Ireland and won the IBBY Sweden Peter Pan Award 2000. His second book,
The Cinnamon Tree
, is a story of a young African girl who steps on a landmine.

Wings Over Delft
is the first book in the acclaimed
Louise
trilogy, followed by
The Rainbow Bridge
and
In the Claws of the Eagle. Wings Over Delft
won the Bisto Book of the Year Award 2004, Ireland’s most prestigious children’s literature prize, and the Reading Association of Ireland Award 2005. It was also chosen for inclusion in the White Ravens 2004 collection – a selection of outstanding
international
books for children and young adults made by the International Youth Library in Munich.

Aubrey’s books have been translated into German, Swedish, Danish, Serbian and Slovene.