Winter's End (20 page)

She took Helen into an echoing room with a pleasant aroma of coffee and toast in the air. Over twenty people were eating breakfast already. Most of them were young, but some were older. There was much laughter and joking; baskets of bread
were passed around, along with bowls of jam and steaming coffeepots.

“Sit here; you’ll be in good company.”

Helen let her friend move away and sat down beside a woman of about forty with dark, curly hair, wearing the maid’s blue apron. She had round cheeks and a slight squint in her left eye; Helen noticed it at once. The woman smiled at her kindly.

“Hello, my name’s Dora. Are you new?”

“Yes, I’m Helen. Do you work in the restaurants too, Miss . . . ?”

“I do, so I can show you the ropes. It’s not difficult. And please call me Dora.”

Later, Helen always remembered those first words they exchanged and the instant liking she felt for this woman: the sense of a secret affinity and the confidence she felt in her for no reason at all. And perhaps, she told herself, it wasn’t just chance that they met in a kitchen underground, a place where things were warm and went deep.

As they talked, she noticed that Dora had some difficulty in using her right hand. The fingers were oddly distorted and reddened at the joints, while her right thumb was permanently half bent.

Mr. Jahn put in a brief appearance. He said good morning to everyone with a sort of shy restraint, then drank some coffee standing up as his eyes wandered over his employees. When his glance met Helen’s, he made her a discreet sign that evidently meant,
Everything all right?
She replied in the same
way:
Yes, everything’s fine,
and she did in fact feel hopeful.

The day passed at surprising speed. From eleven in the morning onward Helen felt as if she were caught up in a whirlwind. The two restaurant rooms filled up within minutes, and the noise went on until two in the afternoon. Luckily there was one set menu for everyone, so the customers didn’t have to choose what they ate. The waiters and waitresses, all wearing blue aprons, took what the kitchens sent up in dumbwaiters and shouted orders back down the megaphones fitted to the walls: “Ten starters! That’s right, ten!” or “Four main courses, please.”

Helen’s job was simple: she was responsible for a row of six tables. As soon as one of them was free again, she had to hurry to clear the dishes away and clean it. She often had to mop up a spilled jugfull of water, wash the floor, or sweep up the remains of a broken plate. Dora kept an eye on her all the time, helpfully showing her what to do.

As soon as her midday break came, Helen went to her room, fell on her bed, and slept like a log. She woke up just in time to go and eat in the canteen and begin the evening shift. When that was over, she had to help cleaning both restaurant rooms, and it was after eleven at night before she was finally able to hang her blue apron up behind the door of her room and leave Jahn’s Restaurant.

Outside the front door, as agreed, she met Milena, who was waiting for her, muffled up in her
black coat. Dora was with her and was amused by Helen’s surprise. Both Dora and Milena wore the same kind of fur cap, which made them look like sisters.

“Don’t worry,” Milena assured Helen at once. “You can talk as freely to Dora as to me.”

They walked together along the roads leading uphill from the square. It was a chilly but clear night. A few dimly lit windows cast patches of light on the somber granite facades, and Milena slipped her hand under Helen’s arm. “Remember the last time we walked like this?”

“Yes, crossing our bridge. I feel as if I’ve lived ten years since then.”

“So do I!”

Dora went ahead. She seemed to be very much on her guard, stopping and looking around intently whenever they came to the corner of a road. Twice she decided that they should retrace their steps and take a different route.

“The idiots — they hide in porches, but they can’t keep from smoking. You can see their cigarettes glowing two miles away.”

“What idiots?” asked Helen.

“The security police on night duty. I’d advise you to avoid them as much as you can.”

“So how do I spot them?”

“Easy. They’re all over the place. They’re muscular and stupid, and they go around in pairs.”

Higher up, Helen recognized the roads she had
gone along the night before on Mitten’s motorbike. They stopped for a moment.

“Jahn’s Restaurant is over there,” said Dora, pointing. “Just beyond the factory. See it?”

Three tall brick chimneys reached toward the sky. In the absence of any wind, gray smoke was rising slowly from one of them. Helen could also see the Wooden Bridge to the north, with several fires flickering below it, and farther away, the Castle. Its dark mass dominated the city on the other side of the river.

When they reached the cemetery, the three women thought at first that Bart hadn’t come to the meeting place. They waited a little while on the grassy promontory, watching the roads below for his arrival. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and they could hardly make out its pale disk. Helen blew on her numb fingers to warm them.

“Would it really be so dangerous to talk down there where it’s nice and warm?”

“Yes,” said Dora. “The Phalange has spies everywhere. There are ears listening where you think you’re safest: in the corridors, in the canteen, even in your room. Mr. Jahn is closely watched. If anyone was caught criticizing the regime in his restaurant, they could arrest him and close the place down within the hour. It’s the same in the city, as you’ll find out. At least up here we’re sure of not being overheard, we can see people coming a long way
off, and the people behind that wall couldn’t care less what we talk about!”

As if to contradict her, the rusty gate of the cemetery opened with a long, low, moaning sound, and the tall shape of Bartolomeo emerged from the night.

“Were you waiting in the cemetery?” Milena was surprised.

“Yes,” he said, coming toward them. “Know anywhere safer and quieter?”

“Don’t you find it scary being around all the dead people?” asked Helen, impressed.

“No, the dead don’t make trouble. It’s the living I don’t trust. Now, tell me about Milos.”

Helen cleared her throat and began at the beginning: their climb to the school roof, the extraordinary spectacle of the staff at their annual assembly, Van Vlyck, how they went to free Catharina, who turned out to be free already. Then she did her best not to leave out any of what followed: their flight, the night in the bus, their freezing wait in the snow, Milos’s terrible fight. As her story went on, Bart shook his head, sighing. He had known that his friend was fearless and generous; he’d never thought he would take on two men and six dogs with his bare hands to protect him.

“He really did that?” he murmured incredulously.

“Yes, he did,” Helen confirmed. “But he’s paid such a price for it!”

She found it hard to keep back her tears as she described the way the men had thrown Milos’s racked body on the sleigh like the carcass of an animal.

“Dr. Josef thinks he’s alive,” she finished, then blew her nose. “He said that if he wasn’t, they wouldn’t have taken him away so quickly.”

“I’m sure he’s right,” Dora comforted her. “Try not to worry.”

And she opened her arms. Helen fell into them, and all four stood there in silence for several seconds. In the quiet night it was like a mute prayer for their friend, a prayer that he was still alive and well. Bart and Milena too were in each other’s arms, standing very close.

“What about Basil?” Bart asked at last, in a voice full of concern. “Did they keep him in the cell? Did Milos say anything about that?”

“No,” Helen lied, promising herself to tell him the truth some other time. She just didn’t feel brave enough to do it at the moment. “And what about you two?” she asked. “Tell me what happened to you.”

They told her about their crazy expedition into the mountains, their journey down the river in the boat, their meetings with so many people who were sure that they recognized Milena as her own mother.

“Are you really that much like her?” Helen smiled. “Now I understand about your hair. But why did you turn back?”

“To fight,” said Bart. “You know I’ve just been walking among the graves here. It may be silly, but I like it. Even at night. At school I’d sometimes go to the cemetery instead of seeing my consoler or walking around the town. Milos thought I was crazy. He said it was no way to use our few hours of freedom. But I like such places; I don’t find them sad, not at all. They make you think of your own life and what you’re going to do with it. And that’s what Milena and I decided: we made up our minds to do something with our lives. We want to fight back against the Phalange.”

“Oh, is that all?” said Helen ironically. She had spoken without malice, more with the melancholy feeling that they were powerless.

“Yes, that’s all,” said Bart, unperturbed. “And we may have more weapons than you think.”

“Meaning?”

Bartolomeo turned to Milena. “Will you explain?”

Milena took a deep breath. “It’s a love story, Helen. Do you want to hear it? Even at midnight outside a cemetery, in the freezing cold?”

“Go on.”

“Right. It’s the story of a girl of twenty who has a lover. One day she notices that her stomach is swelling a little too much. And then her lover leaves her; he goes off into the wide blue yonder and never comes back. The girl cries her eyes out, and a few months later she has a baby, a little girl, and calls her . . . Let’s say she calls her Milena. Are you with me so far?”

“I think so. Go on.”

“OK. The young mother is quite pretty, and she sings rather well.”

“No,” Dora interrupted gently. “She isn’t ‘quite pretty’; she’s staggeringly beautiful. And she doesn’t just sing ‘rather well’; she’s a contralto and her voice is miraculous. Put it that way and it makes a difference, doesn’t it? She joined a choral society when she was fourteen, and all the other girls who sang with her, like me, for instance, suddenly decided to give up singing and go in for drawing or painting or something else instead! She was a soloist at sixteen. At nineteen she was engaged by the Opera House, and all the concert halls in the country were fighting over her. You have to put it like that if Helen’s going to understand. Now you can go on!”

“All right,” Milena continued. “So yes, she sings very well. One day a big red-headed guy happens to hear her singing in a Requiem Mass in a church. This guy is a policeman. He’s married, and he has a family of kids, all redheads like him. He’s not a music lover; in fact he’s something of a brute. Don’t ask me why, but this woman’s voice knocks him sideways. He falls madly in love. He makes advances to her. She doesn’t want to know him. He persists. He pesters her. He leaves his wife and children for her. She still doesn’t want to know him. He’s beside himself with pain and rage. He swears that she’ll pay for it. His name is Van Vlyck. Are you still with me?”

“Van Vlyck!” Helen was trembling. “The man I saw at the staff assembly?”

“That’s him. With less of a paunch, not so much beard, and more hair, I expect, but the same man.”

“I saw him break an oak table with his bare fist.” Helen remembered. “It still makes me shudder to think of it.”

“Then you know what kind of man he is. I’d rather leave you to tell the rest of the story, Dora. I don’t think I can manage it.”

Dora spoke softly in her beautiful, deep voice, even when she had terrible things to say. In the cold, her breath made little clouds of white vapor that dispersed at once.

“The real love story, Helen, is about a whole nation falling in love with a voice. The voice of Eva-Maria Bach, Milena’s mother, as you know now. You can’t imagine how everyone loved that voice. It was natural, rich, dramatic, deep. It touched the heart. I was Eva’s friend; I had the privilege of accompanying her on the piano when she sang
lieder
in recitals. She put so much sensitivity into them, such perfection. I never got used to it. I was always transfixed with admiration for her as I sat at the keyboard. But in ordinary life she was cheerful, lively, incredibly funny. We had some really good laughs together, even onstage! And she sang traditional tunes too, the songs of the ordinary people. She never would give those up. That’s why they adored her, even if they didn’t know much about music. She brought
everyone together. She hated violence. And then the coup came and the Phalange seized power. Eva joined the Resistance. Shall I go on, Milena?”

Milena bowed her head and scraped the ground with the toe of her shoe. “Go on. I want to hear it again.”

“Eva joined the Resistance. So did I. When it got too dangerous, we left the capital. They were checking every car leaving by the roads, so we traveled in horse-drawn carts, hidden under covers. We went on giving recitals in secret for months, in provincial towns, then in little village halls, sometimes for an audience of only fifteen. I wore my fingers out on dreadful pianos that were badly out of tune! But none of that mattered. Eva said that whatever happened, we mustn’t give up. The barbarians weren’t going to silence her. And word went out all over the country: ‘Eva-Maria Bach sang here. Eva-Maria Bach sang there, and there, and there . . .’ While she still sang, the Resistance wasn’t giving up. You’d have thought that hope depended on her voice. Such persistence infuriated the Phalange. They had to silence her.

“They finally caught up with us in a little northern town early in winter. Van Vlyck was in command. They broke the door down and burst in, howling like animals. Half of them were drunk on beer. We were just finishing Schubert’s song
An die Musik,
“To Music.” I shall never forget it. Eva said, ‘This was bound to happen sometime. Thank you for accompanying me . . .’ and I thought she was
going to say ‘on the piano,’ but she said, ‘Thank you for accompanying me all this way.’ Those were the last words I ever heard her say. The platform was very high. Two men tipped the piano over into the orchestra pit. It shattered with a terrible sound of jangling notes and broken wood. They took everyone in the hall away. As for me, I was given special treatment: they threw me down on the floor. One of them held my right hand flat at the edge of the platform under his boot, and another man hit it with the butt of his gun, crushing it. He brought his weapon down on my fingers and wrist at least twenty times. I fainted. When I came around, someone was shouting at Eva, ‘You get out of here! And don’t let us ever see your face in this country again!’