Chapter 49 A Visit With Johann and Franz #2
“So does this mean,” I said, “that I may take Joe away for a bit now and perhaps discuss books with him, if you’re finished for the day?
Or would you like to vet the reading list?
” My temper was well and truly up now. “At the moment, I’m attempting to finish Brideshead Revisited.
The dullness and passivity of Charles, though!
And that silly teddy bear, Aloysius. It isn’t charming for a young man to behave like a child.
Why would any author put such a stupid thing into a book?
The weakness, the drunkenness, and oh, the dreary Catholicism!
I’m Catholic, you understand, but not as boringly so, I hope. ”
“Not boringly so at all, Fr?ulein Glücksburg,” the captain said. “Not at all. And I’m very pleased to have met you. Sure, take this guy away. For now.”
We left him at the table. When we were outside again, I asked Joe, “Will he forbid you to see me, do you think?”
“Would you be sorry if he did?” Joe asked.
I turned to him in astonishment. “Of course I would be. How can you ask that?”
“Oh,” he said. “Good to know. Sorry. He’s been in my head some, asking me about you. Well, you’ve seen. He’s one heck of an interrogator.”
“And you believed him.” I turned on him. “You doubted me?”
“Of course I didn’t. What, I think you’re a Russian spy?
Or just a well-concealed Nazi? No.” He took my hand, then.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hold his. It depended on what he said next.
Which was, “Both things are ridiculous. Pulling me out of the street and bringing American troops back to your front door would have been a pretty risky bet, for one thing, and anyway—no. Not possible. That’s not who you are.
But he did have me half convinced that I was seriously overestimating my chances.
Every time I saw you, it felt like we fit—it feels like we fit—but after a couple of days, I’d start to wonder.
I’m a pretty ordinary guy, you know, and you’re—well, you’re not. ”
“You’re an ordinary guy?” I had to laugh, even though I was still outraged. My feelings were very confused today, but yes, I was still holding his hand. “You? No. Would any woman who’d been raised by my father settle for that?”
He didn’t say anything I’d have expected. He said, “I wish I could’ve met him. I guess you probably know that I wish I could meet him now.”
Which had me in confusion again, and saying nothing. He said, “When we talked last week with the professor about what we missed from before the war, you said, ‘Music.’ You haven’t said that before.”
“No point,” I said. “Music, I fear, is gone from Germany for some time.”
“Did you play an instrument, then?” he asked.
“The piano. Since I was small.” I was still irritated, you see.
“Ah,” he said with satisfaction. “I thought so. Come on.” He still had my hand, and now, he hurried with me around corners and through alleys until we were standing before a little shop. Its window was scrupulously clean, but that only made the instruments inside look more battered.
I said, tugging at his hand, “I can’t play for you. I’m terribly out of practice, and anyway, I’m not that good. I was only ever competent; my mother was the real musician.”
“If we can’t hear music,” Joe said, “we can still make it. Come on. Let’s go in.”
The proprietor came forward to greet us.
A small, bald old man, he bowed slightly and said, “Welcome. I am Herr Volcker, and this is my shop. How can I help you today?” That was in German, and then he said, “Alas, I speak no English,” in a heavy accent.
After that, he looked at me expectantly.
His suit was threadbare, but his dignity was immense.
Joe said, in German, of course, “How do you do, Herr Volcker. Joe Stark.” He put out a hand. “I’m glad to meet you. You have a cello in the window.”
“Yes,” Herr Volcker said.
“Do you think I could try it out?”
“Of course. Few have money for such things now, I’m afraid.
Every day, they bring things to the shop.
I cannot afford to buy them, but I tell them that I will do my best to sell them, for a small fee.
Alas … But the cello is better than it looks.
It’s been sitting here some time, waiting for an owner so it can sing again. ”
“Well,” Joe said, “let’s give it a try, shall we?”
Herr Volcker hauled it out of the window, with Joe lending a careful hand to lay it on its side beside a chair. “And could the young lady play one of your pianos and accompany me?” Joe asked.
“Naturally,” Herr Volcker said. “This one is in the best tune.” He indicated a scratched and battered upright, a far cry from my mother’s Bechstein grand, with its beautifully polished woods and ivory keys. “Will you require music?” he asked.
“Definitely,” I said, “for my part. It’s been a year since I’ve played.”
“A year,” he said gently, “isn’t such a very long time.”
Joe said, “Something simple, maybe. Bach’s Minuet No. 2?”
I said, “Well, yes, I can play that, of course. I won’t need music for that.”
“Fine,” Joe said. He pulled the chair near me, then went back for the cello and placed it before him with care before picking up the bow, while I slid onto the piano bench and ran through a few chords.
My fingers and hands were stronger than ever from all the kneading, but they felt stiff and much less than nimble.
“Perhaps the music after all,” I said, “if you have it, Herr Volcker.”
His search gave me a few precious moments to practice my scales.
My heart was beating rather hard, and my stomach was a flutter of nerves.
How ridiculous, to feel the need to impress Joe!
Had I just been showing off back there in the brewery, then?
Was that why I’d showed the photo of my parents, with my mother in all her bejeweled splendor and my father with his decorations, and talked of nannies and governesses and cooks?
Oh, I hoped not. What would I have become if that were so?
At that moment, Joe said, “You don’t have to be perfect, you know. I wanted to do this because—well, honestly, because my soul’s feeling pretty battered right now.”
“The deposition,” I said.
“I hated him,” he said. “I wanted to kill him.” He’d finished tightening and rosining his bow and was tuning the cello, plucking strings and turning pegs and not looking at me.
“I thought you looked so tired,” I ventured, “in the shop. Almost defeated. I wanted to—” I stopped.
“Yeah?” Joe still wasn’t looking at me, just going on with his tuning. “I’m sure I presented a compelling picture. Enter the hero.”
“How can you say such a thing?” I felt as impatient as I had when reading about the teddy bear Aloysius. “What, I can’t care for a man who has feelings? Who is angered and sickened by injustice? Am I a Nazi, then, in your eyes?”
“Oh,” Joe said. “Well, all right, then.” He looked at me and I looked at him, and suddenly, I laughed and said, “I’m going to decide that you’re right. That neither of us has to be perfect. We’ll just be, shall we, and not think about it too much? Bach, you know, is excellent for such things.”
He smiled back, and the nervousness folded its wings inside me and went to sleep. And when Herr Volcker brought the music, we played.
The Bach Minuet No. 2 is a simple piece, a learning piece, one that I’d been playing since I was nine or ten. It isn’t even really by Bach. I won’t say that I performed it adroitly, but once we started, that didn’t matter, because I was listening to Joe.
He played beautifully. On an unfamiliar cello in a cold German shop, he performed the simple piece so crisply.
The rich tones of the cello melded with the bell-like ones of the piano, and for those few minutes, I was in a different place and a different time.
What did Nazis and bombs and rats and soldiers have to do with this?
This was sunny meadows and bright flowers and the gentle river.
All too soon, it was over—it’s a very short piece—and Joe said, “What do you think? Try another one?”
I found it hard to speak. “Yes,” I said. “Please.”
He said, “Something beautiful, that we can play slowly and enjoy. Herr Volcker, would you have Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring?”
“But of course I have it,” the little man said. “And it would give me great pleasure to hear you play it.”
When he brought the music, I looked it over and remembered my tutor telling me—was it only a year ago?
—“You have the notes correctly—it is deceptively simple, no? This performance, though, is all in the feeling. You must express the music. It comes not just from your hands, but from your heart and your soul.” But no matter how I tried, he was never satisfied.
Today, though? Today, with my work-roughened hands, on a battered old upright, I played the notes and rejoiced in them.
In their beauty, and in their simplicity.
And when Joe joined in, playing with such intensity, such emotion?
It was as if everything I’d seen and felt since that February night was here with me now.
The pain and the pleasure, the courage and the fear.
The ache of loss, and the slow dawning of hope.
I could never have put it into words, for it was too deep for that, but my hands could express it, for they were following Joe’s lead.
And the exultation of that moment … it brought tears to my eyes.
We played for an hour, one piece after another.
The day darkened to gray, and then to black.
The shortest day of the year was almost upon us, but after that, the days would lengthen again, and spring would come.
We played Ave Maria—Schubert again—and I thought of the organ in the Hofkirche at that last Christmas mass, and the boys’ choir with the voices of angels—how many of those innocent boys were still alive now, or still innocent?
But surely Schubert had known of such things, and Bach, too.
That was the reason for music, wasn’t it, to give one’s weary soul a place to rest?
At last, I said with reluctance, “I must be getting back. And we’ve kept you, Herr Volcker.”
“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed my concert very much.”
Joe set the cello back in the window with evident reluctance, then turned to Herr Volcker and said, “Do you suppose I can buy this cello and leave it here? I’m in the barracks, and—well, the other guys probably don’t want to hear a sonata.
And quite honestly, I want to play with Fr?ulein Glücksburg again. What do you think?”
Herr Volcker spread his hands. “Of course. It’s a fine old instrument with a wonderfully rich timbre despite its looks—looks are not everything, you know—and you have indeed made it sing.”
“Give me a price, then,” Joe said, “and we’ll have a deal. I only have American dollars, I’m afraid.”
“American dollars,” Herr Volcker said with dignity, “will do very well.”
How different it was, walking home with Joe again!
Barely ten minutes, and we didn’t speak for most of it.
He held my hand, and it was as if the music was still threading its way around us and through us, as if it tied us together.
I said, when we stopped outside my door at last, “That was the happiest I’ve felt since Dresden. ” Wonderingly, for that was how I felt.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Yeah.” We were in the shelter of the doorway, out of the snow and wind, and he still had my hand. He didn’t seem to have any more to say than I did, but just looked at me, and I looked back with my heart beating so hard, I felt it in my throat.
He said, “I’d like to kiss you.”
“I haven’t kissed anyone before,” I said. “I don’t know how to do it right.”
“We’ll just try it, then,” he said. “And see.”
He didn’t grab me. He didn’t even hold me, other than my hand. He just bent his head and brushed his lips softly over mine, then stood back and asked, “OK?”
I touched my lips with my fingers. “How does it feel so good?” I asked. “As if there are sparks?”
He smiled, and it was so tender, it nearly hurt. “It feels like that, I think, if you’re kissing the right person.”
“Oh,” I said. Stupidly, I’m sure. Then, “Will I see you tomorrow? For our book discussion?”
“Just try to keep me away,” he said. “Just try.”