The Holocaust Opera (8 page)

The two men glanced nervously at each other. Aaron came down hard on the piano keys and began the opening to
Twilight of the Gods.
Abraham followed suit with a lush violin entrance. They played well and accurately. The officers in the room all wore bemused expressions. Mengele showed no emotion.

In the middle of the number, Mengele abruptly pointed at Abraham and said, “You, out!” The two SS Soldiers went immediately to the man.

Abraham stopped playing and laid the violin down, bewildered. “But—”

“There will be a place for you in the prison orchestra. Now, I wish to talk to your son alone. Please, out!”

“What about my wife?” Abraham asked. “You said that you would see to her care.”

“So I have.”

“Will I be able to see her?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mengele said sadly, “for she has been taken to the chimney.”

“The chimney?” Abraham said, confused.

“Yes, you fool, the crematorium!”

Abraham collapsed to his knees in sobs. The two SS soldiers roughly dragged him to his feet. “Why?” Abraham begged.

“Because she was ill! Because we do not have enough doctors to see to the sick and injured! She was not strong enough to work, and she was not a musician, or a singer, like Aaron’s wife.” Mengele shrugged as if what he’d done was of little consequence. Brawne could not hide the look of horror on her face, and her expression was not lost on Aaron.

Mengele had mentioned Aaron’s wife, Eva. Although sick with grief over the apparent loss of his mother, hope blossomed in him that Eva had, through some miracle, been spared.

The soldiers dragged Abraham from the room and Mengele turned to the young composer. “Now, if you cooperate,” he said, “I will see that you and your wife are given special treatment.”

“What do you want?”

Mengele smiled. “I wish for your assistance in writing an opera. I have already spoken to your wife. She has...passed the audition...you might say, and you were right, she is a very fine singer.”

Aaron glared confusedly at Mengele. His mind was a whirling mix of assumptions and possibilities. “What sort of opera do you wish to write?” he asked, knowing that he must not show his grief or his deep and inexorable hatred for this terrible man if he intended to stay alive.

“Some of the notes and passages are in my head,” Mengele explained. “Some I have already written down. I will show them to you and we will see what kind of composer you are. Others will come in time. If you are creative, you will live, if I am disappointed, then you, your wife, and your father will all die.”

So that is how Aaron Gideon and Josef Mengele came to know one another. They worked together for months, and in time, a body of music began to take shape. Something had happened between Eva and Mengele that Aaron had no knowledge of. Following their tearful reunion, she was like a wilting flower, or worse, a crystal dish. She no longer confided in Aaron and he was afraid that if he pressed her, she would shatter. So, he remained silent, watching her, watching Mengele, watching the woman, Brawne, who was almost always in their presence while they worked, but rarely spoke. Eva was a physically beautiful woman, and Aaron understood on a deeply emotional level that Mengele was interested in more than her singing. Brawne suspected as well; Aaron could see it in the quick and poisonous glances she gave Mengele when he showed Eva special attention.

As time passed and the silences between Aaron and his wife lengthened, he became convinced that there was a secret between her and Mengele. It began to eat away at him. He was terrified that his own sanity might come unhinged if he wasn’t careful with his emotions and that his resulting actions might jeopardize whatever chances they had at survival. There was no single formula for survival in the death camps, but Aaron was keenly aware of how lucky they were, compared to most of the prisoners, and that any sort of insubordination on his part would mean a one-way ticket to the gas chambers.

Mengele’s command post contained a piano, a bar, all of the luxuries the other prisoners could only dream about. He allowed the young Gideon couple to live in a small cabin next door, let them bathe, and fed them well. During the day, while Mengele was occupied with his other duties, Aaron and Eva worked on the compositions. Brawne was most always there and in time she became more outgoing and began to initiate dialogue with the Gideons. They both liked her, but were always careful of what they spoke of, especially in front of the guards who were sometimes in the room with them. The exact nature of her relationship to Mengele was unclear, although they suspected she and Mengele were lovers.

In the evenings, Mengele dressed Aaron in tuxedoes, Eva and Brawne in evening gowns, as though they were actors in some warped drama and Mengele was its supreme maestro. Aaron did not question Mengele’s eccentricities; instead he played along, and observed, and wondered, and worried.

Together, they worked tirelessly on the body of music. Mengele seemed pleased with their progress and assured Aaron and Eva that their continued cooperation would be rewarded. Aaron was no fool. Although he did not believe Mengele’s reassurances, he had no other choice but to go along and pray for miracles.

In time, however, the music began to affect them all in ways that Aaron did not understand. He and Mengele had been experimenting with harmonic tones inside the structures of the songs and finally began to understand how they could be discreetly placed into the compositions. The tones were so subtle that they added no discernable differences in the compositions from the viewpoint of a casual listener. There
were
definite and noticeable differences in listeners who were exposed to the songs over a period of time.

The addition of these peculiar tones caused headaches and depression in all of them. Mengele became irrational and began to abuse Brawne verbally. He pushed the sessions to the very limits of emotional and physical endurance. Aaron did not like the changes in Mengele and he liked even less what Mengele was forcing him to do. He’d never imagined that music could be manipulated in such a way, and he was horrified that Mengele was so devious, so barbaric, that he would consider using the muse as weapon.

As each session closed, Mengele seemed to be slipping further and further away from rational thought. As a buffer against the sickness and the negative compulsions, he began to drink heavily, and with intoxication he became even more belligerent and abusive. Brawne seemed to be the one taking the brunt of his rage, for she began to show signs of physical abuse. Aaron became convinced that Mengele’s sanity was slipping even as he fought to hold onto his own.

In those days, Aaron rarely saw his father, but realized that a position in the camp orchestra had spared Abraham, at least for the time being. So he played along, biding his time, hoping that he could keep his own sanity intact long enough to take advantage of an opportunity to escape if one should arise.

As Mengele’s rationality eroded, he began to pay more and more attention to Eva. As he coached her singing, he would hold his body close to hers. All the while, Eva would steal terror-filled glances at Aaron. Brawne would avert her eyes, as if in shame, not daring to look upon Mengele and his blatant misbehavior.

Aaron was furious with rage and jealousy and he was nearly crazy with hate for Mengele. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of them could do. Mengele held omnipotent sway over everyone in camp and not a soul dared question his authority.

One night, after a particularity long and brutal session, Mengele, drunk, spirited Eva away, leaving Aaron and Brawne alone together.

“What is he doing with her?” Brawne whispered to Aaron as tears welled up in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Aaron replied in frustration. “She will not confide in me. Something is happening. She is not the same woman I married.”

“He has taken her as his lover,” Brawne said. “I can feel it.”

Aaron gazed at Brawne with intense scrutiny. “You are his lover, are you not?”

“Was,” Brawne said. “Now he beats me when I question him.”

“Are you a prisoner?” Aaron asked.

Brawne shook her head. “I am German. I came here with Josef two years ago, but I do not like what I see here: all the barbarism. I do not like what he has become. He’s obsessed, insane, and I have begun to fear for my life.”

“Why don’t you just leave then?”

Brawne made a noise that might have been a small, humorless laugh. “It would never be allowed,” she said. “I know too much.”

“Then we are all prisoners,” Aaron said. “God have mercy on us.”

Aaron and Brawne parted company then, Brawne leaving of her own volition while Aaron was escorted to his cabin by the guards. It was the last time he ever saw Brawne alive.

Two days later, Eva returned to Aaron bruised and bleeding, tearful and whimpering. There was something else that Aaron noticed other than the physical. There was something in her eyes that had not been there before, some terrible knowledge or infestation, or both. When Aaron pressed her, she had simply said that Mengele was in the process of giving her something that she could never under any circumstances divulge. It was so sacred, so ghastly, that its disclosure would mean death for them both.

So the nightly rituals continued—now without Brawne—and at the close of each session, Mengele would take Eva with him rather than sending her home with her husband. Each day, when she returned to Aaron, that thing in her eyes had grown brighter and more dreadful somehow. Along with it, her fragility grew until she was nothing more than a pallid and lifeless husk incapable of anything but obedience.

Through an accident of logistics, one day Aaron and Eva found themselves alone together for a few moments. It was the first time in weeks, and Aaron, no longer able to contain himself, pressed her for answers.

“Do you want to die?” she said, her eyes bright with terror. “Do you want all of us to die? I cannot
ever
talk about what he is doing to me.”

“You must. I am your husband.”

“No, Aaron, I cannot!”

“Do you know what happened to Brawne?”

“I believe that she is dead,” Eva told Aaron. “I think he killed her. I sense it in him. He will kill us both if ever we speak of this again.”

Although that was Eva’s final word on the subject, Aaron sensed, even as it all ended and they gained their freedom, that it was not over, that Mengele had made indelible wounds on Eva that might someday come back to haunt them both.

Now

“Papa never told me any of this,” Jeremiah said. “I had to find out for myself after they died.” He pointed at the scattered papers on the floor. “After they found out that I’d become...infected, they almost went mad. You see, I never knew
anything
until five years ago...God, if they’d only confided in me...maybe I could have prevented all of this from happening.”

Jeremiah stopped talking as his eyes filled and spilled over. I was both stunned and speechless. I had never heard such a story. Even as I knew that time was running out, I could not take my eyes off Jeremiah. I sat forward, like a child, my eyes round in my face, my mouth open in awe, as I anticipated the rest of this extraordinary tale.

“My mother was a different woman after the abuses of that monster,” Jeremiah went on. “She was distant and cold, her nights filled with terrible visions and panic attacks. In later years, she was overcome with self loathing, and on a number of occasions she even attempted suicide. You see, she
knew
that the Angel of Death would return someday, that he was not done with her. He had instilled his terrible promise in her all those years ago.

“I’m getting a little ahead of the story,” Jeremiah said. “In the camp, during that long and torturous time, while the air was filled with the acrid stench of death and the anguished screams of the condemned, Aaron had to sit there at the piano and play. He had to write and rehearse that cursed opera, wrought upon him by an unholy entity, while in a room nearby the woman he loved was undergoing some sort of supernatural transformation by a monster not of this Earth.”

Then

Aaron vowed each night and each day that he would kill Mengele. If it was the last thing he did before he died, he would destroy him. So, like a child with a particularly fertile imagination, Aaron dreamed of taking Mengele apart, working over the myriad possibilities in his mind until he was nearly crazy with them.

Change was in the air. In recent days, there had been talk of war’s end. Rumors spread quickly in camp. There had been rumors before, but this one had come from the guards.

By this time, Mengele had lost all sense of purpose. He was obsessed now more with Eva than he was with the opera, and the only good that came of those terrible days was that the body of music began to lose focus. Aaron believed that this is what saved all their lives, perhaps the lives of many more thousands, millions even. It was a terrible trade-off, however, for he would never again be able to look at Eva or their lives together in quite the same way as he had before the horrors of genocide changed them so dramatically.

So, one night, more than a month after Brawne’s disappearance, there was a commotion outside that distracted the guards. There were gunshots and people screaming. One of the guards left his post inside and went out to check on the commotion. That left Aaron alone with a single guard. He saw a rare opportunity and tried to overtake the soldier, but he was beaten to the floor with the butt-end of the guard’s rifle.