The Spanish Bow (61 page)

"Of course! My grandmama has the same problem." He studied my face. "Do you eat much seafood?"

"When I ... can," I said slowly.

"Red meat?"

"When it's available."

"That's the problem. Meat and seafood are terrible for gout. How long do these spells last?"

I looked to Al-Cerraz. He said, "A week, ten days. Comes and goes. In between, we can practice with him a little, but not very much."

"You still play together?"

"Why wouldn't we?"

"Good," the officer said under his breath. "I'm glad to hear it isn't permanent. My grandmama swore by various fruits and vegetables, but especially cherries. Fresh cherries."

"I'll take it under advisement," I said.

The German looked around. Al-Cerraz and I both followed the sweep of his eyes, out toward the grounds. Aviva had crept away during our introductions, and he seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. Relaxing, I let my eyes wander to the tops of the trees overhead—and spotted one of the surrealists' paintings, still hanging in the arboreal gallery of the night before. It showed a naked woman, pressed close to a man-creature with enormous, doelike eyes, crab claws, and a distinctly brushy mustache.

"Oh, God," I exhaled.

Al-Cerraz looked up, looked down just as quickly, and stepped toward me, taking my hands in his. "Is the pain that bad? I think our friend is right—it must be your diet. Have a look."

And with unnerving boldness, he held my hands to the German officers face, caressing my knuckles, drawing attention to the lines and folds and bumps that were my normal hands, nothing more or less.

"They do look swollen," the officer clucked gently, clinically. "A shame. Well," he said, straightening, "it's been an interesting day. If there's just one favor I could ask..."

At Al-Cerraz's urging, Imogene jumped to attention, and ran to retrieve my bow tube from the bedroom I'd used. The German went to his motorcycle to retrieve his camera. I stood for a minute alone with Al-Cerraz, wanting to kill him—yes, kill him, a sentiment that everyone in the house would profess by that evening.

Then we were all together again, and the Gestapo officer was posing me with cello and bow.

"Can you hold it the other way—I know it's less natural, but I want the sapphire in the picture. That's what makes it recognizably yours, after all, isn't it?" He looked through the viewfinder, then pulled the camera away from his face again without snapping. "I consider myself a devotee but there are some greater fans." He shielded his face with the camera again. " This one will be for Herr Doktor Goebbels himself."

Then the final disappointment of the German's day: "But I'm out of film! Well, it's destiny again. Maestro, we will have to meet another time. As soon as possible. I don't get out this way very often, but I'm sure you come into town.... "

And with more hand-clasping and tender words all around, he left, saving his final words for Al-Cerraz: "Take care of this man's health. I'll hold you personally responsible if he doesn't get better!"

The fading putter and bang of the officer's departing motorcycle was still audible from the patio when Al-Cerraz elected to make his exit. He walked quickly to his room, to pack his bags and tell Aviva to pack her own. It wasn't the German's immediate return he feared half as much as our wrath, simmering at the very moment in the far corners of the house. A distant door opened and slammed shut. A baritone voice rumbled through an open window over our heads. Imogene sat down on the ground to cry.

Al-Cerraz recounted to me then everything that had gone before, ending with a plea: "You must trust me about this. It was the best thing I could do."

"It's all right."

"Perhaps it was an opportunity. There are many more like him—did you hear how he referred to Goebbels?"

"Justo, haven't you learned anything?"

Yehoshua came around the corner. "Miss Aviva is waiting in the car, if you still want a ride to Marseilles."

I shook myself, flexed my fingers and started to follow Al-Cerraz around the corner of the house, toward the idling car, but he stopped me.

"You told her the other night you had one regret."

I acknowledged him with a curt nod.

"If you care about her, you'll make sure she gets out of this country soon."

"She may not want to go..."

"Of course she won't. She'd rather be in Germany now, still looking for that ghost boy of hers. Never mind the concentration camps; he might have died from dysentery or typhus or a thousand natural causes years ago. No wonder she can't find him." He exhaled sharply through his nose. "You
should
go. I
want
to go. But she
must
go."

I took another step toward the car.

"Don't say good-bye to her. She'll get the wrong impression. We'll be in touch soon."

The baskets of stemmed cherries arrived two days later, perfect and brilliant and red, though local cherry season was long past. We took it as a sign that our visitor had connections, to distant lands and to air delivery, to power.

"Turkey?" André mused, spitting out the pits.

"Who knows?" I said, feeling glum.

Then Fry arrived, tired but pleased with his success. All of his charges had safely made it into the Spanish mountains, at least as far as he'd been able to see them go. Next they would travel to Lisbon, where they would board a boat—legally—for New York. At the last minute, Alma Werfel had confessed that in one of her many bags she was carrying the original score of Bruckner's Third Symphony as well as a draft of one of her husband's novels.

"I tell you this," Fry said, over a celebratory dinner, "not to encourage you to attempt the same, but to discourage you. If you must try to smuggle out a manuscript of any kind, please let me know. I have couriers who can attempt to move some items. It is always safer to separate the banned material from the banned person. Please let me do my job."

No one wanted to upset Fry's tentatively happy mood by telling him what had occurred in his absence. But it couldn't be avoided, and the half dozen refugees still in residence spent a good hour airing their collective scorn and fear.

"It must be that Spanish temperament," a painter named Gustav said.

"What does that mean?" someone asked.

"What Al-Cerraz did. It was brash, stupid—hot-blooded."

Fry interrupted. " We have another Spaniard present who has none of those traits. Let's leave the ethnic stereotypes to our enemies, can't we?"

Someone tapped a glass with a fork. "Hear, hear."

A woman ventured, "No one has a cooler head—and a better heart—than Maestro Delargo. He's certainly made enough sacrifices."

More clinking.

But Fry stopped the toasts with his next question: "What was the German's name?"

No answer.

"Gestapo—are you sure? Not another branch of the SS?"

"They are not synonymous?" Jacqueline asked.

"Brown uniform or black? Insignia on his uniform—badges, special medals ... Did anyone look? A personal card with the cherries? Did someone notice?"

Faces disappeared behind napkins. One person coughed.

"He did mention the propaganda man, Goebbels," I said. "Perhaps he knows him personally."

"Why does all this matter?" Jacqueline asked indignantly. "We are artists and philosophers at this table, not spies. You can't expect us to pay attention to these imbeciles."

Fry sighed. "They pay attention to all of you."

"We're flattered," Gustav muttered.

After a moment, as if regretting his terseness, Fry elaborated. "Some are friendlier than others; some are smarter or better connected."

"Just stay away from them all—that's my advice," André said.

"It's not possible," Fry said. "I'm having lunch with the inspector of police tomorrow, and he's likely to bring some Gestapo associates. How do you think I know who they're looking for in any given week?" He pushed up from his chair and wished us all the best for the week ahead; tomorrow, he was due back at the Hôtel Splendide.

Later that night, Fry knocked softly at my door. "I can't do much for your friends, you know," he told me. "I'll keep an eye on them in town, if they hang around. But as far as helping them get out..."

"I understand."

"In the meanwhile, I have a project for you."

Knowing I had no plans to leave France immediately, Fry suggested I begin to write an account of my life under Franco, the problems that I and other Spanish Civil War refugees faced now under the German occupation of France, the further threats that future months would bring if the Caudillo and the Führer joined forces. Hitler had bombed Guernica and assisted the Spanish fascists, but Franco hadn't returned the favor by joining the Axis powers. With France's fascist and collaborationist head of state Marshal Pétain under his wing, Hitler was close to controlling the continent. If he won Franco's assistance, he might take control of Gibraltar, and in so doing secure the advantage necessary to conquer Great Britain.

Spaniards—especially those with communist affiliations—were already among the European nationals suffering in the concentration camps. But the Nazis hadn't taken much interest in routing out all of Franco's enemies for him. That could change if Franco entered the war in earnest; if the two dictators declared warmer sympathies for each other. Lucky for us Spaniards—for everyone—Franco was bristly, stubborn, and proud, an isolationist at heart. As of September 1940, Hitler and Franco still hadn't met in person, although it was clear such a meeting had to be imminent.

" Tell us all that," Fry said, when I puzzled aloud over what Americans would most need to understand. "But remember that we are trying to move hearts as well as minds. Stories equal more dollars, more visas. I hate to be crass, but it's that simple. Be accurate, but make it personal."

"How personal?"

"That's up to you," he said, and then smiling, added, "But don't forget, I have only so much paper."

The energy that I had dissipated over recent years by writing letters I now redirected into writing my memoirs. I had not meant to go all the way back to the beginning, but it was easier. The recent past made no sense to me; my early adulthood involved more people, more places, more questions. My childhood was the clearest, the least corrupted. I told myself I was writing for myself alone, as a warm-up, in the way that I had played daily scales all those years, starting with the simplest keys. I told myself I would select later the elements fit for public consumption. Despite what I told myself, I quickly lost control, and memory itself took over.

While I was writing, Al-Cerraz was in Marseilles, telling his own tales. I don't know if he planned the whole scheme from the beginning and planted it in some official's head, or if someone approached him with the idea and he merely accepted and perhaps accelerated it. He knew that time was limited. That week the gendarmes had begun to register all the Jews in Marseilles, calling them to their offices in alphabetical order, then allowing them to travel home again—"Just paperwork," they assured teachers, pharmacists, accountants. Aviva did not fit easily into the pigeonholes. She was not French, not an enemy of the Italian regime, not a German national; but she was a notable Jew, and she had eluded Nazi roundups—they would realize that soon enough. They would scold themselves for having let her slip out of Berlin, unless her present liberty suited their purposes, which remained to be seen.

In October Al-Cerraz sent a note asking me to meet him at the Café le Croix in Marseilles "to discuss some ensemble work—our most creative collaboration to date."

Aviva came, too, looking better than she had at the Villa Air-Bel: rested, well-fed, wearing a bright red belted dress with yellow daisies as big as saucers. It had padded shoulders and it flared at the hips, hiding her gauntness.

"I see you've decided against blending in," I said warmly, reaching for her hand above the café table.

"Justo says we can do better by sticking out."

"Is that so?"

"The key is not to be invisible. It is to be indispensable." He patted the yellow carnation in his buttonhole. "We have nothing to fear. We are celebrities here—all of us." And he took my free hand, and Aviva's, so that we were sitting in a cozy triangle of clasped fingers.

"I realized the mistake I made on that day in the country. I let a stranger think Aviva was just some girl, when I should have explained that she is one of Europe's most famous violinists."

I leaned forward and whispered. "Even in France, they're banning Jewish music now. What does that tell you?"

Al-Cerraz lifted his voice and addressed the crowd around us. "But we heard Offenbach played just the other night. Isn't that so?"

I shook my head, confused.

"The cancan," he explained, laughing. "No one's thought to ban that. We heard it at the Moulin Gavotte—I think they played it a dozen times in one night. And there were German officers dancing to it, on their chairs."

"Are you crazy?" I whispered back. "That German from the Air-Bel could have been there."

"He was. He apologized to Aviva. He introduced us to his superiors. He bought us champagne."

I groaned under my breath. "Champagne..."

"Well you have to have champagne when you're closing a deal."

I let go of the hands I was clasping—first his, then, with greater reluctance, hers. Suddenly every sound around us seemed amplified: the scrape of a chair leg against sidewalk, the high, brittle click of a glass making contact with a tile-topped table.

"What deal?"

Al-Cerraz lowered his voice to match mine. "The deal that allows all three of us to travel legally all the way across France, to a nearly unguarded port on the open Atlantic, where there are many small boats. It happens also to be on a rail line where some important men will be meeting. I have tickets and safe-conduct visas in my pocket. We depart in three days."

I pushed out the words between clenched teeth: "To what end?"

"To the only end that ever mattered." He was speaking loudly again. "To the end of making music, of course."

"Even if it was a benefit for the Virgin Mary herself, I don't perform anymore."