Page 48 of Hell to Pay
“Your grandfather, then?” I asked.
Again she shook her head. “My grandfather died on the Eastern front when my father was a baby.”
“A waste,” I said. “A criminal waste. All these wars. Our fathers, and our father’s fathers. A waste.”
“Indeed,” she said. “I learned to play the piano as a child, though, as girls did then, at leastpetit bourgeoisgirls like me.”
“As I did myself.” I was happy to move on from thoughts of war. “It was felt that a young lady should have at least someaccomplishments, and my needlework was always shocking. How long ago that seems. But please go on. How did the organ come back around to you again?”
She laughed a little. “Maybe it was in my blood, or maybe it was the dullness of growing up in East Germany. Did you ever, as a girl, mix all the colors in your box of watercolors, thinking you would create a beautiful new color that nobody had ever seen?”
“No,” I said, “but then, I was a rather practical child, and no more talented at art than at needlework. Did you find a new color, then?”
“I found brown. That’s what you get when you mix all the colors together: muddy brown. And when you try to make everybody and everything the same, the world becomes like that, too. Those dreary Soviet apartment blocks! I longed for beauty, so I studied music. Piano, primarily, but the organ, too, although there’s really no point in learning to play the organ. It’s complicated and difficult, and no symphony hires an organist. One never hears of an organist making her debut at Carnegie Hall.”
I laughed. “You’re right. An impractical ambition, but you did it anyway.”
“I did, although as a hobby only. I taught music at the university here. I still do, in fact. The government began restoring the church in the 1960s, as you may know, but the organ was only fully restored after the Wall came down. The palace, of course, wasn’t touched until recently. It was a symbol of decadence, and the church not much better. TheFrauenkirchewas the church of the people, and that, they could make a case for despite the awkward religious element. But this? The church of the princes?”
“And both of them too beautiful, really,” I said. “All this Baroque ornamentation. Bah!”
“And now,” she said, “here we are, having the last laugh,because we’ve outlasted all of it. The war, the Nazis, the Soviets … all of that destructiveness is gone, and the cathedral stands again. As do you.”
“Antiquities,” I said with a smile.
“Treasures,” she said. “I came in today to practice my music for Sunday. I’d be honored, though, if you’d allow me to play for you.”
“Please,” I said. “I’d like that very much.”
“Is there any special piece you’d like to hear?”
I told her, because I knew. I knew exactly.
Frau Martin slid out of the pew, and about two seconds later, Alix and Ashleigh slid in.
“How do you meet so many people?” Alix demanded. “You just stand there, and people come up and talk to you.”
“I’m harmless, that’s why,” I said.
“Ha,” Alix said, and I had to smile. Then, of course, I had to explain the story. Quickly, because a few notes were sounding already from the organ pipes.
“That’s, like, a really sad story,” Ashleigh said.
“Oh,” I said, “they were all sad stories then. But I believe she’s about to play the piece I requested. You’ll pardon me if I sit in silence for this.”
I knew, during the next five minutes, that Ashleigh was filming me again. I knew, too, that the tears were running down my cheeks, my handkerchief unable to keep up with them. It was the music, bringing it all back to me.
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.Bach’s masterpiece, pouring from the pipes like a river of golden sound. I didn’t have to close my eyes to see my father in his chair before the fire, listening to the Berlin Philharmonic on the wireless, as happy to hear the music there as he was to hear it at the Semperoperin his evening dress. My mother, so beautiful in her blondness, the fineness of her bones, sitting beside him in her own chair, their hands touching. As much of a public display as they ever made, but the current running between them nearly visible all the same. My mother, I believe, didn’t love my father less for his scars. She loved him more, for his scars were but the visible symbol of his strength.
And, always, I thought of Joe. In our tiny Nuremberg flat, bent over the battered cello he’d bought from a dignified old man in a music shop. His bony face intent, his wiry arm wielding the bow with so much authority, his body swaying a bit, because Joe felt the music all the way through his body, and because he did, I felt it all the way through mine.
I’d never thought, somehow, that I’d have what my parents did, not in the nightmare of cruelty that my homeland, that all Europe, had become. I’d never met a man as decent, as fundamentallygood,as my father. Until I met Joe.
I remembered, too, him propped on an elbow over me after love, smiling into my eyes a little blindly, because he couldn’t see without his glasses. “Making love with you,” he’d said, “is like playing music with the best partner. When it takes you to that other place, the place you almost never find.”
“Yes,” I’d said. “Yes, it’s like that, isn’t it?” And had felt, for the first time in so long, since the night when I’d run from this very church with only as much as I could carry on my back …
Happy. Safe. Hopeful.
