Munich Signature (2 page)

“If you’re here on behalf of Mark . . . ” She stepped past him, avoiding his hand.

“Mark?” the unknown man asked, inclining his head slightly, then letting his eyes slide from her face to the cello case. “You didn’t get my letter?” His expression was clear, but his voice was slightly slurred.

“Your letter?”

“Yes. I wrote you.” He let his eyes flit from her face to the cello, then back again eagerly. “You are Tikvah?”

Tikvah looked toward Freddy, who rolled his eyes.

“Yes.”

“And you have brought Vitorio along with you?” Now the man stepped toward her.

“Vitorio?” How could this young stranger know the name of her instrument, the name Leah had given the old Pedronelli cello?

“You look so much like Leah!” He was almost bubbling with excitement. “I would have known that you were her daughter even if I had only seen you passing in the street.” He reached out and touched the cello case with a familiarity that made Tikki step back. It was as if he had touched
her
!

“But—” She tried to clear her mind of all the concerns she had lugged into the hall with her. “Are you . . . ?” She could not remember the name of the man who had written her. In any case, the fellow blocking the hall appeared far too young to have known her mother in Austria.

“Yes.” He nodded and crossed his arms almost shyly. Gentle emotion softened his eyes as they searched Tikvah’s face. “So much alike,” he whispered. “Only her eyes were brown.”

Yes, this was the man who had written the letter. This was the doctor from UCLA who had traced the daughter of Leah Feldstein through the Israeli government and had come to San Francisco to hear her play. “Yes. My mother had brown eyes, I am told. I never saw them myself.” There was resentment in her voice. This man had come here on some sort of pilgrimage. There was nothing to pay homage to. He would leave disappointed.

“I remember her eyes. Brown eyes. Warm, and full of love.” He ignored the stiff comment of Tikvah. “And old Vitorio . . . ” He touched the case gain. “He was a friend. He sang to me. Do you mind?” He was eager again. “May I have a look?”

Tikki let her breath out in slow resignation. She would let him see the instrument. Then he would go away and she could get back to her life. What was it with these people? These old friends of Leah Feldstein? “Doctor—” She could not remember the man’s name.

At this moment Freddy, the security guard, rose to his full height of six foot four. “You want me t’ throw this fella out, Miz Thurston?” His hands were open and his arms poised for the grab. “If you don’t want t’, you don’t have t’ show him nuthin’,” he growled.

The stranger’s expression changed to one of hurt astonishment. His smile faded and he looked quickly at Tikvah to see if her level of hostility matched that of the enormous black man. “I assure you—,” he stammered, as if suddenly aware of the quiet misery in Tikvah’s eyes— “I didn’t mean to—”

Freddy lowered his chin in an officially threatening glare. “If you want t’ see the instr’ments, that’s what we got the ticket office for. You can buy a ticket like anybody.” Then Freddy muttered in Tikvah’s direction, “Jus’ say the word, Miz Thurston, and this guy is on the pavement!”

“No, no, Freddy.” Tikki put a hand on the massive arm. “It’s all right.”

“If I’d a know’d you didn’t know this dude, I wouldn’a let him in here!” Freddy seemed disappointed that he would not be permitted to thrash the man in the three-piece suit. There had not been much opportunity for him to display his prowess in a place haunted by these classical musician types. Not like the rock concerts down at Moscone Center where he had regularly been called upon to bash the heads of groupies and drug addicts.

“No, really,” she said in a soothing, almost worried voice as the stranger straightened his tie and ran his finger over his mustache nervously. “He’s all right. An old friend of my mother’s.” She wished she could remember the signature on the letter.
Doctor
. . .
something.

“I’m sorry, really. I shouldn’t have bothered you before.” The stranger started to reach into his coat pocket, but when Freddy stepped forward, he hesitated and held his hands up briefly. “I am just reaching for my ticket. You see, I already bought a ticket.” With thumb and index finger, he gingerly pulled out an envelope emblazoned with the logo of the symphony hall. The words
KRONENBERGER
and
WILL CALL
were scrawled across it.

Kronenberger! That was the name!

It’s okay, Freddy,” Tikvah smiled now. “Dr. Kronenberger wrote me beforehand. I just wasn’t expecting him before the concert. And I was expecting someone quite . . .
different
.” She didn’t say that she had been expecting someone quite old. An old widower. Retired-type doctor.

Freddy’s mouth was a perfect upside-down U of suspicion and disapproval. He sat down slowly and reluctantly. He was just doing his job.

The tall Dr. Kronenberger laughed with relief now and waved the envelope slightly. “As a matter of fact, I purchased several tickets. I’ll be here for a week, you see. Interviewing for a position in the pediatrics department at the University Medical Center, and I . . . well, I bought tickets for several performances. I was hoping—” he was bubbling again—“hoping I might . . . ”

“I am not Leah Feldstein,” Tikvah replied softly, almost apologetically. “She was a virtuoso. Like Yo-Yo Ma.”

The doctor shook his head. “Better than Yo-Yo Ma, I think.”

“You must have been very young when you heard my mother play.”

“Very young. But I have managed to acquire a few of her early recordings, and I assure you—”

Tikvah blinked at him in astonishment. “But you . . . you must have been—a child!” She herself had only heard two recordings of the pre-war Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. How had a man this young managed to collect—? “You have recordings?”

“Two dozen. She was remarkable.” His eyes shone with gentleness again as he studied Tikvah. “And you seem so much as I remember her. I was only five. Six. It was such a time then. And there she was in the center of the whirlwind. I remember it all very clearly. Quite clearly.”

Tikvah’s own eyes filled with tears and her throat constricted. “I never knew my mother.”

Dr. Kronenberger reached out to take the cello from her hand. “I thought perhaps that was the case. When they told me your mother had died in 1948 and then that she had a daughter born the same year, well, I felt somehow that I needed to talk to you. To tell you what she was like from the perspective of a child. I thought perhaps I could share with you what I remembered, give you my memories, and—”

Tikvah was unable to speak for a moment. She stood gazing in a puzzled way at the man who now held Vitorio. She had heard so much about Leah in Jerusalem from Yacov and Rachel and Moshe. She had heard of the music of the virtuoso of Vienna. But here was so much she had never known. “Why?” she asked the doctor.

He touched her elbow as if to lead her down the hallway to a practice room. “Because,” he replied quietly, “we are a generation of children who grew up never having the chance to know our parents. I met your mother at the Musikverein in Vienna in the same hour that my father was killed.”

Tikvah followed him down the hall as though he was now her guide.

“She hid my brother Louis and me in a practice room beneath the stage while Hitler himself prowled above our heads,” he continued. “And later, she blocked the door and took our Vitorio—” he hefted the cello case—“Yes! This
very
instrument!” Pausing mid-stride, he gazed into Tikvah’s eyes.

She was smiling, making his memories her own.

“And she played the
Bach Suites
for us,” he concluded.

“The
Bach Suites
!” Tikvah breathed. “That was what I played for my first recital.” She was trembling like a little five-year-old, thinking of a young boy wandering deep within the bowels of the Musikverein of Vienna.

“Yes!” The doctor saw the excitement in her expression. “I thought you would want to know. I
knew
you would.” He opened the door of a dark and empty practice room, then stepped aside. “And I came here to tell you more than that . . . there is
so much
more.” Switching on the light of the little cubicle, he whispered, “My name is Charles. Would you . . . play the
Bach Suites
for me on Vitorio?”

It was a simple request. Tikvah granted it with a nod. Tenderly she unsheathed her bow and took the venerable old instrument from its velvet nest.

Charles Kronenberger sat across from her on a piano bench and let the tears stream as she played the bright and uncomplicated tunes in their easy key signatures one after another, in the same order Leah had played them.

When Tikvah finished, she lowered the bow and sat silently across from the man who seemed no longer to be a stranger. “Like that?” she asked after a long pause.

Charles nodded. “Just so. I was not able to speak then.” He touched his hand to his mustache as if that explained it all. “I could not tell her . . . how . . .
beautiful!
”

“Only the
Bach Suites
, ” Tikvah began.

He raised a hand to stop her words. “Vitorio is the same. The songs are the same. But what I wanted to tell her . . . something different than the
sound
of the music. Something
more
beautiful. It was in her face when she played.” He closed his eyes as if the memory were fresh before him. “I couldn’t tell her then. Couldn’t speak. But I can tell you now. I saw that same beauty in
your
face, Tikvah.” He smiled. “Do you know you are beautiful, Tikvah?
Beautiful!
Like she was. I saw it in her. I was not expecting this . . . not in you.”

Tikvah blushed and lowered her eyes. She had not thought herself capable of blushing anymore. “Please,” she protested, not sure she wanted to hear this. “Please, I—I . . . ”

“I’m sorry,” he agreed quickly, as if he knew he was saying too much too soon. “I . . . I’ll be here a few days.” He was gazing strangely at the cello now. “Do you like . . . Chinese food?”

“Are you asking me to dinner?”

“There’s a place just off Washington. The Far East Café. It’s the real thing. Peking duck and . . . after the performance we could take a taxi—”

“No taxis.” Tikvah laughed. “How do you feel about lugging Vitorio along on a cable car?”

1

Living Windows

Germany

1938

Throughout this terrible night, the soft glow of the moon illuminated the stained-glass windows that ringed the cupola of the Great Synagogue of Nuremberg. Windows crafted four hundred years earlier told the story of the seven days of creation, of the fall of man, the great flood and the waters that carried the ark of Noah. Bright panels of color and light wound around the gilded dome, wordlessly displaying the history of the Torah. Generations of children had memorized the stories by sight as they sat beside their swaying fathers in the sanctuary below. Little boys craned their necks backward to ponder the image of father Abraham offering his son to God on the altar of Moriah while the ram God had provided struggled in the thicket.

Would Abraham really have plunged the knife into Isaac?

The vision of faith made sons tremble beside their fathers.

Would Papa plunge the knife into me?

Sibling squabbles took on new meaning as children contemplated the glass panel depicting Joseph in his coat of many colors being sold into slavery by his brothers.

Ah, how his father Jacob grieved when the brothers returned with the torn coat!

From this point, half the curve of the dome was dedicated to the slavery of Israel and the life of Moses. Ten plagues upon Egypt. The pillar of fire. The crossing of the Red Sea. Moses receiving the tablets of law on Mount Sinai while the ungrateful Hebrews reveled in sin at the foot of the mountain. Was there anything more frightening than the face of Moses as he smashed the tablets in anger and pronounced judgment against the instigator of the rebellion? Here was a picture of God’s wrath against the sinners who had forgotten their deliverance.

Until this night, those little boys who had grown to manhood beneath this vivid tableau could not imagine anything more fierce than the wrath of God. But this was Nuremberg. This was the German city where the Nazi laws against Jews had first been passed three years earlier.

This was also the great gathering place of the Nazis each year in September. By the thousands, the Hitler Youth came to march and drill with their burnished shovels. Searchlights lit the skies of Nuremberg. Rallies were held and speeches were made by all the great party leaders. Year after year the ranks of the faithful had swelled until thousands were now hundreds of thousands. There was no field large enough to hold them all, these children of the Aryan race.

Hitler himself had pondered the problems. He had studied the map of Nuremberg with his architect, Albert Speer. His eyes had traced the boundary of the Jewish Quarter of the city, and with a sweep of his hand he had condemned that section to destruction. By the expression of his will, the Great Synagogue of Nuremberg was to be demolished.

Tonight the fierce hatred of the Führer of Germany seemed stronger than the prayers of the generations who had gathered beneath this cupola. Once again no stone would be left upon another. Instead of prayers to the God of Abraham, praise would be lifted up to Hitler in ten thousand mighty Heils!

Two hundred brave Jewish men had gathered beneath the dome tonight. Silk prayer shawls covered their heads as they intoned the last prayers that would be prayed in this place. And God mourned for them as Jacob had mourned for his son Joseph when the patriarch saw the torn coat. The light from the moon streamed through the stained-glass windows and fell in brightly colored patches on the white prayer shawls. Tonight every man, like Joseph, wore a coat of many colors. They took on the hues and the substance of the stories portrayed above them. They became one with the suffering of the ages. Suddenly the grief of their fathers had fallen upon them, and they became living windows that wept and prayed as the shadow of destruction moved nearer with the morning light.