In Another Time

by Jillian Cantor

  “It’ll just be a few days,” I told Stuart as I set my violin and suitcase down inside the second bedroom in his apartment and looked around. The room was small, much smaller than what I’d had at Julia’s, containing only a bed and a nightstand and a very small chest of drawers. But it would be more than adequate. “I’m sure I’ll find a place of my own soon,” I said.

  “Stay as long as you’d like.” Stuart smiled kindly. “I don’t use the extra room.”

  I already missed Lev and Moritz and our daily walks back from the Academy as they regaled me with stories of their school day. But I couldn’t wait for orchestra rehearsal to begin next week. Stuart had been holding auditions while I’d been searching for housing, and he’d filled out the rest of the orchestra pretty quickly. There were enough struggling musicians in Paris looking for work that they were willing to accept the small salary of a start-up, and Stuart said they were a talented group. I was glad to see him smiling again now, even though his finger still looked oddly bent. I tried not to stare at it, but my eyes were still drawn toward it.

  “I haven’t tried to play in months,” Stuart said, following my gaze. “But I can conduct.” Conducting, choosing the orchestra’s players and pieces excited him. His blue eyes shimmered in the last of the day’s light coming in through his kitchen window. Then he changed the subject: “I was going to cook a shepherd’s pie for supper. My mum’s famous recipe. Would you like some?” he asked.

  It was hard to breathe, the awkwardness of our arrangement hitting me swiftly, all at once. Stuart hadn’t just offered me a room in this apartment, but a home, a life here with him. Shared meals and conversations. Temporary or not, I knew it was all terribly inappropriate. Julia would be beside herself, if I told her about it, which I didn’t plan to. “I think I want to walk around, explore the neighborhood a little,” I told him.

  He smiled. “Of course. Suit yourself. I can save you some food, if you’d like?”

  “I don’t want to trouble you,” I said. “There are so many cafés. I’ll stop and buy something for supper.” Stuart nodded and walked into the small kitchen. I heard him moving copper pots around, lighting a match for the stove.

  Obviously, I couldn’t do this every night. It would be a habit much too expensive for my small salary. But I needed time now to clear my head, to ground myself here in Paris alone.

  I walked out of Stuart’s apartment, down the two flights of stairs to the street, and then outside. There was a garden just next to the apartment building, and many of the flowers were still in bloom, even in the fall. I took a deep breath of the Parisian air: smoke, a hint of rain somewhere in the distance, and true to the street’s name, flowers. Paris was my home now, but it didn’t smell like home. Maulbeerstrasse had been lined with mulberry trees, and when they bloomed each year, the air felt thick and smelled like fruit. In the winter, the trees were bare and the air smelled like snow and coal.

  It had been over three years since I’d woken up in a field outside of Berlin with no memory of the preceding ten, and moving here, moving in with Stuart, however temporary it might be, made it feel like I was giving up on that other life now. Moving on. Julia’s house had always been a transition, a resting place before beginning my life again. I knew that from the second I’d stepped on the train with her in Berlin. But now, here, on my own, with a real job in an orchestra, my life was finally moving forward again, no matter what had happened to me in the ten years I was missing, the three years since. No matter what had become of Max, too. And it felt strange and wrong and oddly dissatisfying to be beginning again, without him.

  I bought a crepe from a street vendor and sat down on the curb in front of the apartment building, eating it for supper. Paris was supposed to be the city of love, and eating my crepe alone only made me ache for Max even more than I had in London.

  Stuart and I mostly kept out of each other’s way in my first week living at his apartment, before our rehearsals started. I explored Paris by myself during the day. I tried to learn the Métro, but many stations were still closed since the war and it was often easier to walk. So I did, my legs taking me everywhere, kilometers and kilometers. I took in all the sights: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe. Notre Dame. The Louvre. All this beauty and history had survived the war, even the paintings at the Louvre, as the docent told me that the curators had shipped them out in secret trucks, hiding them before Hitler invaded France.

  I walked and I walked through the city. I stopped at street vendors and bought and ate crusty loaves of bread, so much tastier than anything I’d eaten in London and no longer rationed in Paris. As I walked and explored, everyone around me speaking an entirely unfamiliar language, I could feel my own heart beating in my chest, the sound echoing in my ears.

  I was here. I was alive. I was all alone.

  On the first day of rehearsal, I told Stuart to go on ahead without me, that I would catch up. I was ready to leave when he was, but I didn’t want to arrive with him, didn’t want the other musicians to know yet we were friends, much less that I was living in a room in his apartment.

  “I’ll see you there then,” he said. It was quite early in the morning. The sun had barely risen; the light in the apartment was dim, a shadow cast across Stuart’s face, but I could feel his excitement. It surrounded him, a new energy.

  I felt it too. Coffee was still rationed, but I allowed myself a small celebratory cup in the half-dark kitchen, and my fingers buzzed. Here was my chance, at last! Not at all how I’d envisioned it, not at all what I’d expected and dreamed about and worked toward for so many years in Germany. But still, here it was. I was going to play in an orchestra, a position I’d be paid to do. This was my life and my job now. It still almost didn’t feel real. But it was.

  I finished off my coffee, picked up my violin, and walked the three blocks to the Cathédrale, where Stuart had secured rehearsal space. I hummed the Ravel Stuart had chosen for us to play first (a French composer to delight Le Bec) as I walked inside. There was a sign by the door, Stuart’s handwriting: Répétition d’orchestre, with an arrow pointing down the flight of steps. I followed it, and ended in a basement, which was somewhat small, a little dark. It didn’t in the slightest resemble the hall where the symphony practiced in Berlin or even the stage where the Royal Orchestra had practiced in London. But that didn’t matter. I breathed in the damp, musty air. This was it; this was mine.

  I took my seat in the front of the orchestra, looked at the music in front of me on my stand, and took my pencil and etched today’s date across the top. Then I took my violin from its case and started to tune. Stuart stood in front of me, at a podium, and as he tapped his baton against it, calling rehearsal to order, he caught my eye and he smiled.

  Max, 1933

  It would be traditional to ask Hanna’s father’s permission for her hand, but her father had died when she was a baby, and if Max were to ask her mother, she would almost certainly say no. Though Max knew that he, and Hanna, would somehow need to gain her mother’s approval before they actually got married, he decided it was better to ask only Hanna herself first. Then they could convince her mother together, a united front. He only hoped that Hanna wanted to marry him as much as he wanted to marry her. And as he sat upstairs in his bed and listened to her violin floating up from his shop, he silently prayed she did.

  In two weeks’ time, on the first night of Hanukkah, he would tell Hanna he had a present for her. Then he would drop down on one knee, tell her how much he loved her, how he didn’t want to spend any more time without her, and he would pull the ring out of his pocket.

  He was still nervous she would say no, like the last time he’d asked. But that was a long time ago, and they knew each other better, loved each other more. He jotted down notes about what he would say to her in his notebook, right next to the startling news he read in the paper. Now, Hitler had declared Germany and the Nazi Party one and the same.

  Hanna was still practicing downstairs in his shop, and it was getting
so late, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He put his journal away and closed his eyes, reveling in the music. He fell asleep and dreamed of placing the ring on Hanna’s finger, the sound of her violin playing on in the background.

  When she finally finished practicing, came to his bed, woke him with a kiss, it was nearly dawn. They made love, and he was still so hungry for her. He pulled her back into his arms when she began to get up again, to leave. “Max,” she said, gently pulling away. “I have to go. Mamele will worry. And I have chamber orchestra rehearsal at nine.”

  “But I don’t want to let you go.” He held on to her arm, pulled her back toward him.

  She giggled, fell back into bed, and kissed him, a long, deep kiss that made him feel so much it was hard to breathe. “I’ll try to make it back tonight. Or if I can’t tonight, then tomorrow,” she promised. She got out of bed, slipped her dress over her head, and leaned back down for one last kiss.

  After she left, he got the ring out and ran his finger across the diamond. Once they married, he wouldn’t feel so empty each morning as she left him, not knowing exactly when he would see her again.

  The shop was surprisingly crowded that morning. People actually looking for books, German books, of course. He’d hidden the banned ones in boxes that he’d stacked in the storage room and had intentionally mislabeled (just in case his shop was raided), but he hadn’t been able to decide what to do with them yet. He couldn’t dispose of them, couldn’t throw away all those beautifully bound words just because a madman made them illegal. But he couldn’t risk displaying them in his store, either. He understood that much. The SA arrested people who disagreed with them publicly now, jailing them as political prisoners.

  Midmorning, as he was trying to help Frau Schneider, a frequent customer, find a German-approved book that would replace the American pulp romances she so adored but were banned now, Herr Feinstein stormed in through the front door of the shop. “You knew?” he spat at Max. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

  Frau Schneider dropped the book she’d been holding, then froze. “Pardon!” she said, leaning down to pick the book up. She eyed Herr Feinstein with suspicion, the way many in town, sadly, had since the brick incident. She handed the book to Max and quickly told him she’d come back for it later.

  Feinstein didn’t seem to notice he’d scared away a paying customer, and Max put the book back on the shelf. “Knew what?” he said. He could feel blood rush to his ears, though he wasn’t sure what Feinstein thought he knew. He knew only that at some point in the future, things would not be well for the Feinsteins.

  “You kept asking me about Frau Feinstein, and I kept saying to myself what a sweet boy, but why does he suddenly care so much about my Rachel?” Max opened his mouth to speak but Feinstein kept talking. “You knew about her pamphlets, didn’t you?”

  “Pamphlets?” Max shook his head.

  “You asked me if I wanted to leave the country and that is why, isn’t it? But why couldn’t you just tell me what you knew? What am I to do now when it is too late?” Feinstein held up his hands; they were shaking. His whole body was shaking.

  “Come,” Max said, gently leading him toward the steps up to his apartment. “Come upstairs with me and we can talk in private.” He walked over and locked the front door of the shop, flipped the sign in the window indicating that he’d stepped out, and led Herr Feinstein up the steps.

  Feinstein sat at the dining table and put his head into his hands and Max went to the stove and boiled water for tea. “I didn’t know about the pamphlets,” Max finally said, when the tea was ready, and he handed a cup to Feinstein. “Tell me.”

  Feinstein’s hands were still shaking as they took the tea. “Rachel and her sister, Marta, have been making pamphlets, distributing them at the Lyceum and the Universität. Speaking out against the . . .” He paused and looked around, as if afraid to say the word out loud. “Nazis,” he finally clarified, though he didn’t need to. Max felt his stomach drop as he realized how bad this was. You couldn’t speak out against the Nazis; you certainly couldn’t put it in writing and distribute it. “Rachel didn’t tell me, said she was afraid I’d tell her not to. And she’s damn well right, I would have.” Max nodded. “Then today she got a letter in the post, and she confessed everything to me. The SA is requesting an interview with her. Tomorrow morning.” His voice cracked. “And we both know if she goes to that interview, she won’t be coming home. If you had just told me earlier . . . I could’ve saved her. I could’ve gotten her out of the country. But now . . .”

  Max closed his eyes, put his hand in his pocket, and ran his finger against the cool smooth diamond. He couldn’t let Frau Feinstein go to that interview tomorrow. “You can still save her,” he said softly. “I can help her. I can help both of you.”

  Feinstein laughed bitterly. “It is too late. Oh God,” he cried out. “It is too late.”

  “It’s not too late,” Max said, putting his hand over Feinstein’s to stop the shaking. “There is still a way. Come back tonight with Frau Feinstein and any gold and jewelry you can carry, okay? I will explain everything then.”

  Feinstein shook his head, like he believed Max had gone crazy, but then what other choice did he have now?

  Hanna, 1950

  The Pierre Le Bec Orchestra became my life so quickly, it was as if it had never not been my life. If all the days at Julia’s in London with Lev and Moritz felt like only a distant dream now, then my life in Germany, my nights at the bookstore with Max began to feel like another lifetime. A life lived by someone else, a girl too young, too innocent, who loved too much. Now I was a woman, with the same violin, who didn’t love at all. It hurt too much.

  A few weeks living at Stuart’s apartment turned into a few months, and then we both stopped pretending I was still looking for another place. I wouldn’t have found one anyway. The housing shortage in Paris grew worse, not better, and I was quite comfortable at Stuart’s. We went to rehearsal each morning, shared supper together each night, taking turns cooking it. I practiced afterward, and Stuart listened, often offering suggestions. My teacher, my partner, but not quite. We had a strange kind of happiness, an undeniable kind of domesticity. The neighbors believed us to be husband and wife—I could tell from their hellos and comments made in passing, even with my tenuous grasp of French. But it didn’t strike me as strange, improper, because it didn’t feel like any of those things, until Julia and the boys took the train to visit on the boys’ spring holiday. And my first thought was, how was I going to hide my living arrangement from her?

  Julia knew my address. I’d written her and the boys once a week since I’d left, regaling them with stories of the dazzling City of Lights, many of them (nearly all of them) madly embellished. I didn’t mention the housing crisis, or the fact that I was quite slow to learn French and had trouble communicating with most of the musicians in the orchestra, other than Stuart, and Ling Li, the first chair cellist who’d been born in China and spoke Chinese but also English, like me. I was so grateful Mamele had enrolled Julia and me in the international school in Gutenstat where we’d both learned English as young children. But Ling was somewhat aloof and had come to Paris with her entire family, and she wasn’t much interested in being friends with me. Stuart spoke fluid French, apparently learned in boarding school, but he translated important directions into English for me and Ling during rehearsal. Perhaps if he hadn’t, I might’ve picked up the French more quickly.

  Still, it didn’t really occur to me that this life of mine was a strange and somewhat isolating life until Julia arrived. It was a Sunday morning—the orchestra’s day off from rehearsal—and I went to meet Julia and the boys for brunch at their hotel, not wanting them at Stuart’s apartment. I asked him if he’d mind leaving for the day so I could bring Julia back after brunch to see where I lived and pretend I lived here all alone. He’d frowned; he didn’t understand. But his kindness overwhelmed his confusion, and he said he owed Monsieur Le Bec a visit anyway and would sp
end the day there with him. That I was free to bring Julia over and tell her whatever I liked about the apartment.

  I walked into the Hotel du Paris that morning, a bit nervous to see Julia and the boys. Seven months had passed, and everything about my life and world was different than when I was in London. I was different. But as I walked inside the hotel restaurant, I spotted Moritz first. He saw me, too, and he jumped up and waved. He was already so much taller, his shoulders a little broader, but he still broke into his funny little grin, revealing his two crooked front teeth, when he saw me. “Tante,” he called across the breakfast room, waving his arm wildly.

  I waved back and walked toward their table. Julia was sipping a tea and Lev was stuffing a croissant in his mouth, as if the flaky pastry were the best thing he’d ever eaten. I couldn’t deny him that. I’d put on a few pounds in my midsection from all the bread I’d been eating in Paris.

  I squeezed each of the boys’ shoulders and kissed their heads. They smelled exactly the same, like gingerbread and sweat. “Ah, you have gotten so big in just a little bit of time,” I said.

  “Boys do that.” Julia smiled a little into her tea. Her cheeks were sunken, her face gaunt, and she looked almost the spitting image of our mother. Even her hair looked much grayer than I remembered it in my head. But I kissed her cheek and told her she looked wonderful before taking my seat next to her at the table, folding the linen napkin in my lap and grabbing a croissant of my own from the basket on the table.