In the Claws of the Eagle (3 page)

BOOK: In the Claws of the Eagle
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Izaac knew that the place where the music came from was where the strings were held up on a wooden little bridge. So, gripping the bow by the middle, and still thinking more of a sword than of a bow, he thrust it lustily into the gap between the strings and the fiddle. To his surprise and amazement the creature let out a most terrible screech, not at all the music that Izaac had expected. He looked at the impaled instrument in horror; he hadn’t meant to hurt it. An unnatural silence had fallen over the house; it gave him a sense of urgency. There was only one thing he could do, and that was to pull out the offending bow A second appalling shriek rang out. He heard the clatter of knives and forks, the cries of ‘Izaac’. They were coming for him. However he still had the violin, and even to a three year old, possession is nine tenths of the law. All he needed was a little time to tame the creature.

An appalling, jarring screech cut through the quiet
conversation
about the dining room table. In the shocked silence that followed, only the flames of the Sabbath candles dared to move, shifting in the summer air from the half open door into the music room. Forks were arrested on the way to mouths; knives were held poised.

‘What on earth was that?’ breathed Father.

‘The cat?’ wondered Mother.

‘A violin?’ said Uncle Rudi. A second screech rent the air.

‘Izaac!’ burst out as one voice from around the table. There was a clatter as the entire company dropped their cutlery onto their plates and headed for the door.

At any other time the sight of all four members of the Tuning Fork Quartet trying to get through the dining room door at the same moment would have had him in stitches, but today Izaac meant business. When eventually they uncorked and burst into the room towards him he waved his bow menacingly. Their expressions changed to horror as they all realised that what Izaac had on his knees was not one of their own violins but the priceless Stradivarius. They faltered to a man, held back by the thought that at a wrong move from them Izaac might do literally anything. They were hopping around him like vultures when a cry rang out from the door.

‘Stop. Leave the boy!’

The four men fell back, walking on the tips of their toes in an agony of apprehension. Izaac had a momentary glimpse of the Cloud Lady standing like a fairy godmother in the doorway. This was his moment. He lifted the violin as if to fit it under his chin as Uncle Rudi did, but that’s where things had gone wrong last time; his arms were too short. He was aware of the expectations of the audience gathered about him; it was clearly up to him to entertain them, but whether with a solo performance or a full-scale tantrum he wasn’t sure. The Cloud Lady was standing above him, but for some reason she seemed to be encouraging him. At that moment he remembered how Father held his cello. So, still sitting, he spread his legs wide and put the bottom of the violin on the carpet. He exercised his
right arm, remembered how his father played and took a cello-like swipe at the strings. It was not a success; the bow slipped and skittered across the strings, but fortunately the noise was deadened by his grip on the neck of the instrument. The Cloud Lady bent down and gently guided his left hand so that he was holding the violin by its shoulder; now the strings were free. As he drew back his arm, he could feel her fingers over his on the bow, light but firm. Now at last the magic he had been looking for was flowing through him. His bow found the lowest of the four strings, the G string. As if of itself it began to move and the full rich tone of the open string sang out.

The next three seconds would prove to be Izaac’s most enduring musical memory, the moment when he realised that it was
he
who was making this magical sound. And what a sound! Not just a single note but the countless other notes and harmonics that make the sound of the violin unique. His mind, like a well-prepared plot of land, was ready for this and he would remember the moment as minutes not as seconds. Half a bow was all that his reach would allow but he used every inch of it and sustained that note to the very end.

Now came the applause, but Izaac was too shocked and dumfounded even to acknowledge it. He dropped the bow as Madame Stronski swooped forward and lifted the violin from his hands. Without saying a word he rushed out of the room, past his mother, and buried his head in the neutral starchiness of Lotte’s apron.

Some hours later, when the visiting members of the
Tuning Fork Quartet
had departed, still laughing at the incident, Madame Stronski came back into music room to collect her violin. For a moment she shed her merriment and turned to Izaac’s parents.

‘About your little Izaac …’

‘Oh, we’re so sorry. We hope he didn’t …’ they exclaimed in unison.

‘No, my dears, it’s for me to apologise. I’m very much afraid I have woken a monster in your little fellow. Hopefully he will get over it and become a banker or keep bees, but if he takes an interest in the violin, keep him away from it till he is six or more. Then send for me, and I will help him if I can.’

She gathered up her things and turned to leave, looking around the room with affection. Her eye was caught by the portrait of the
Girl in the Green Dress
hanging on the wall. ‘You know, this really is a little gem, have you told me where she came from?’ she asked, sailing up to look at it closely.

‘Oh, Louise? She’s been in the family, passed down from father to son, ever since we had to flee from France at the beginning of the last century.’

Madame Stronski shook her head. ‘I would say she had broken a few hearts before that,’ she said and she sighed: ‘You won’t believe this, but I was once as slender as her. Look how she challenges us! I’d like to think that I looked like her when I told the Academy selection board in Kraków what I thought of them. Lot of old fuddy-duddies, misogynists to a man. “
The concert platform is no place for a woman
.” Pah! I told them. So I came to Vienna instead. I still miss Kraków though,’ she sighed.

She smiled at the portrait and said: ‘Look after my little
protégé
for me, won’t you.’ Then, gathering her scarves about her, she left.

Autumn changed to winter. Izaac was restless and irritable and inclined to interrupt people when they were playing or
practising
. Mostly he ignored Louise; if he wanted her attention he would either act out his frustration in front of her picture or try to explain it in long speeches that would end in frustrated
gobbledegook
. Then, quite suddenly, the situation changed; he found he could lift the lid on top of the piano keyboard. Louise couldn’t see him from where her picture hung but could hear him playing notes, as if searching for a tune. Then there would be clashing chords, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. He was self absorbed, not looking for an audience, so Louise withdrew into her own distant thoughts. Then, all at once she was in demand again.

‘Lees, I want you! Come here!’ Izaac had never addressed her directly like this before. Invariably their exchanges had been his one-way commentary on life, with her just making encouraging thoughts. Clearly something had happened over by the piano, the one part of the room which she couldn’t see, and where he couldn’t see her. She could feel his frustration and anger mounting; he wanted her and he wanted her now! There was only one thing she could do to avoid a scene, and that was to go to him. She didn’t want to frighten him by
suddenly
appearing, but she needn’t have worried. As soon as he began to see her outline forming, he waved her forward.

There
, he commanded, waving her into the curve of the grand piano where she could see him. Now that she was
looking
down at him, he could start. Using one finger on his right hand he began to pick out a tune. Louise recognised it at once –
Frère Jacques
– the round game that Madame Stronski had got the quartet to play the last time she had been here. She was impressed; he even managed the quick notes
Sonnez les matines
at the end. She raised her hands to clap.

‘Bravo Izaac …’ she began, but he hadn’t finished; he shook his head impatiently, his mouth set in a hard line. Louise stood, hands still raised, hardly able to believe what she was heard next. At exactly the right moment, he had started to play the tune again with left hand, eight notes lower on the keyboard, just like Nathan following Uncle Rudi that day when they had all played. Louise had never been good at the childhood game, ‘Rub tummy, pat head’ – her hands would never obey her, but here was Izaac, standing at the piano, both hands working away independently. All went well until his left hand came to the quick bit at the end, and he lost the tune. It was too much for him; he crashed his hands on the keys in frustration and rushed for the door. There he seemed to recover his dignity. He turned to Louise and bowed to her, a perfect replica of Madame Stronski bowing at that first concert, and left the room. Louise hadn’t even recovered enough to clap.

Gone now was the frustration, gone were the tantrums. It was as if Izaac had found a new and better language to speak. He and the piano became inseparable. While he was at the piano his whole character changed. This wasn’t play; it was work. His roguishness disappeared. The only expression he would allow himself was a small smile of satisfaction when some phrase or chord pleased him. The family noticed too. The men
thought of him as a budding piano tuner, while Mother dreamed of seeing him on a concert platform. But Louise was finding another side to Izaac altogether; the flip side of the coin.

His and Lotte’s daily routine, winter and summer, piano or no piano, included a walk down the street, over the busy Ring Road to the Volksgarten, the People’s Garden, where Lotte would talk with other nannies, and Izaac would potter and sometimes play with the other children. Recently he had demanded that Louise come too. It didn’t seem to bother him that nobody else could see Louise, in fact it he seemed to enjoy it.

‘He’s got this imaginary friend,’ Lotte explained to her fellow nannies. ‘“Lees” he calls her. Insists that she comes down here with us. I hear him chatting away to her as if she was really there. I wonder if he’s alright in the head?’

‘Is Lees a rabbit?’ Frauline Kreutz, one of the more
experienced
nannies, asked. ‘I had a little girl once who had a
pretend
rabbit. Nearly drove me mad, Kani was his name. Kani had to have breakfast at every damned dandelion between here and home, one of hundreds I can tell you, and then we had to stop while Kani …’ The nanny snorted with laughter, and then went on. ‘She married a Councillor…the girl did, not the rabbit … and had triplets. Perhaps that was Kani’s
influence
in the end.’ They all laughed and Lotte was reassured. At least Izaac’s friend didn’t stop at every dandelion. She
suspected
that Lees was his idea of the girl in the picture back home; he’d talked to that since he was tiny. She wasn’t jealous, if anything Izaac was easier to handle when he had his ‘friend’ with him.

These walks to the park were a delight to Louise. All she had seen of Vienna so far was the small square of stucco on the building opposite their third floor apartment. Izaac wanted to watch everything, so their progress down to the Ring Strasse,
the wide tree-lined street that embraces the old city, was slow. The stately fronts of the houses towered above her, gleaming white in the morning light. As they reached the Ring, the view opened out and Louise gazed in wonder; there seemed to be palaces in every direction. The trams – just passing sounds to her before – clanged their bells and swayed and hissed as they passed. There was so much that was new to her, so much she wanted to know. How did these move without horses? What was the purpose of the wire that occasionally sparked above them? Beyond the trams and the trees was the main road, loud with traffic: carts, drays and smart carriages and, more startling to Louise, motor cars that growled, purred, and occasionally back-fired. Everywhere she could see the work of science, just as her father had predicted all those years ago. But, as they waited while ranks of drab-uniformed soldiers passed, she wondered what had happened to the brave new world that he had predicted. Lorries and guns drove past too, the men sitting up with rifles between their knees. The talk was of war. Had they learned nothing of the folly of war in all these years?

Lotte would be edgy until they had crossed the terrifying stream of traffic and had plunged into the sudden tranquillity of the Volksgarten. Here gravelled paths formed a labyrinth to be followed between beds of scented roses and lawns lined with low box hedges; there were fountains, statues, even a Greek Temple and a small area where children were allowed to play. In the early morning, hoses made rainbowed arches in the low sun, and the grass would glisten with fresh drops. There were ducks in the park that enjoyed the watering and were a particular attraction to Izaac.

Louise noticed his interest in the ducks but didn’t think more of it, apart from hoping that he wouldn’t start chasing them, because there was so much for her to look at and to see. There were the distant buildings of the Hofburg palace and a
stirring statue of some great man rearing his horse. She thought with nostalgia of how Gaston would rear his horse just for the fun of it. She was lost in her dreams when Izaac passed in front of her. He looked perfectly innocent, but there was something about his walk that caught her attention, a certain busyness that said, as loud as words, ‘look at me’.

Sure enough, as soon as he saw that he had her attention, his walk changed to a waddle. Louise blinked, for a second she could have sworn that she was looking at one of the park ducks. The transformation was extraordinary; the hand behind with the two curled fingers for a tail was obvious, but it was his walk that had Louise choking with laughter. His small body was tilted forward at an improbable angle, his toes were turned in, so his feet appeared to be flat, giving his body just the right swaying motion, while the bright-eyed movements of the head and eyes gave him a knowing very duck-like look. Louise laughed out loud, and then, forgetting that the men mowing the grass nearby could not hear her, put her hand over her mouth. One of the men, who had seen Izaac’s
performance
, quacked.

For the next few days Izaac entertained the park regulars with his duck impersonation. The only person who did not approve was ‘the General,’ the park warden, and the ogre of the Volksgarten. He was a bearded replica of the old Emperor Franc Joseph himself. Unlike the Emperor, who was a kindly man, the General was a sworn enemy of all small boys whether they were pretending to be ducks or not. He carried a long polished wooden stick and a whistle on a silver chain, given to him, he claimed, by the Emperor himself. He was a Hapsburg man to the core and had a row of campaign medals to prove it. He terrorised everyone in the park, from doddering pensioners to small children, his one aim being to keep all and sundry, particularly Izaac, off the grass.

As Louise was new to the park, she knew nothing about the General or the taboo about the grass; she was as tempted by the smooth perfection of the lawns as any small boy. She therefore accepted Izaac’s kind invitation to sit beside him in the middle of the greenest and most perfect sward in the park where he propped himself comfortably against a small metal notice that seemed made for his back. An expression of
content
settled on his face and he closed his eyes. Louise was happy just to sit and gaze at the pinnacled excesses of the Rathaus – the Town Hall – that she could see through the trees. She was just wondering where all this wealth had come from, when she was woken from her reverie by a whistle followed by a roar like a lion from the nearest path.

Izaac had leapt to his feet and was busily gazing about him, pretending not to know where the roar had come from. To Louise, a law-abiding Dutch girl, the source of the rage was obvious: a bearded figure with an upraised stick, who was making enough noise to command a parade ground. She hadn’t met the General but she recognised authority when she saw it. Izaac was going to get into terrible trouble and it was
all her fault
.

The man was gesticulating, pointing at the notice that Izaac had been leaning against; surely he couldn’t expect the boy to be able read? Louise glanced down, and for the first time had reason to doubt Izaac’s innocence. The notice needed no words; it was a picture of an elephant leaving huge footprints on the grass, the message was clear even without any words. Izaac was now walking towards the enraged keeper, his
shoulders
hanging, a picture of injured innocence. Louise bit her knuckles; surely the man wouldn’t beat someone so small? She need not have worried. Before Izaac got within range of the long stick he turned parallel to the path and began walking along just out of reach, taking huge elephant strides and
glancing at the keeper as if inviting him to put his polished boots on the grass and come after him. What Izaac knew, and Louise didn’t, was that nothing would induce the General to walk on the Imperial grass, grass that he had protected for a quarter of a century.

She could see Izaac’s plan now, but so could the General. In a moment Izaac would be opposite to where Lotte and the gaggle of nannies sat behind a wall of prams, watching the standoff like spectators at the races. The General felt he had him now, he was cut off from his only retreat; the prams. He and Izaac stood facing each other. Behind the General’s back Louise could see a ripple of movement. The nannies, seeing Izaac’s predicament, were quietly turning their prams to face out, leaving just one small-boy-width between them. Izaac saw his chance, made a start to the right, then dodged left, and in a flash was across the gravel and inside the corral before the General could turn. When he did the boy had disappeared. There was nothing he could do, and his wrath bounced
harmlessly
off the starched uniforms of nannies.

Izaac got a very light clip over the ear and a scorching from Lotte but the other nannies seemed delighted with him. The General stamped and fumed; it all seemed harmless enough, but Louise, standing close when he turned, heard him mutter: ‘
Juden!
’ under his breath, Jews. Where had she heard ‘Jews!’ uttered in just that way? Then she remembered; a hundred years before, when the Abrahams family had been turned out of their home in France, ‘Juif!’ was the word in French, but the hate had been the same. She looked at the gaggle of nannies, fair homely Austrian faces, and then she looked at their charges, mostly dark, mostly Jewish in looks. Did these
nannies
have to stick together because their small charges were Jews? The incident passed, but for a moment it had been like a cloud on a sunlit day.

One day Louise noticed that Izaac was preoccupied. It was as if he wanted her to be there, but equally didn’t want her to see what he was up to. She was beginning to understand his moods and guessed that he was preparing some surprise for her. Sure enough, in the park a day or two later, he drew her out of sight of the others and treated her to a preview of his latest transformation, not a duck this time, but into a miniature version of the General himself. He had the parade-ground walk, imperious glance, and wielded an imaginary version of the General’s stick with that special swagger which the
General
used to show that he was no ordinary park warden. Soon there wasn’t a nanny or an old hand in the park who hadn’t enjoyed Izaac’s impersonation of the common enemy. Louise thought uneasily of the old man’s muttered comment about Jews and warned Izaac never to do his impersonation in front of the man himself. He shrugged and didn’t argue, but he couldn’t resist just a step or two to tease her whenever he saw the General coming.

BOOK: In the Claws of the Eagle
12.46Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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