Vienna Prelude

by Bodie Thoene

  As the sound of his sleigh bells reached the farmhouse, Franz saw the door open and his mother gazing out into the darkness. Plump and pleasant at forty-five, she still had color in her cheeks, and only a trace of gray streaked her hair at the temples. Marta Wattenbarger managed her home and children with a discipline and care that showed in the gleaming floors of the farmhouse and the bright embroidery on the boys’ jäger jackets and Gretchen’s dirndls.

  Franz leaned forward a bit and squinted at the sight of her. Tonight her easy smile, usually so evident on her face, was gone. She wrung her hands and frowned toward the sound of the bells, at last calling out in German, “Franz! Is that you? Hurry, Franz! Papa and Otto are in terrible need of your help!”

  Franz slapped the lines down hard on the back of his mare, jogging her into a lope up the road. The mare stopped at the door and Marta grasped the bridle.

  “What is it?” Franz asked.

  “The heifer!” she replied. “The calf is turned. Neither Papa nor Otto can get a grip. Papa’s hands are too big, and Otto’s arm too short.”

  As if on cue, Papa stepped out of the barn. “Well, what are you waiting for?” He seemed angry. “We’ve probably lost the calf, and we’ll lose the heifer too!”

  Franz was already peeling off his jacket as he sprinted toward the stable. Gone was the feeling of peace that had ridden up the slopes with him. Inside the stable two dozen milk cows were tethered to their stalls. Liquid brown eyes gazed at Franz expectantly. Otto, covered from head to foot with manure and bits of straw, groveled on the floor behind a large heifer in obvious distress. At the sound of Franz’s voice she rolled her eyes and bellowed mournfully. Her sides were heaving, and she was covered with sweat.

  Franz tossed his jacket and shirt onto the hay. “You wouldn’t think she would have trouble.”

  “She’s big enough. But the first calf, you know.” Karl, his papa, brushed sweat from his brow. “Otto and I just aren’t built for this sort of fishing.”

  Otto’s arm was extended up to the shoulder as he grimaced and attempted to reach the calf’s hoof with the loop of a rope. “Well, I can’t do it!” Otto spat. His dark red beard was caked with filth. He withdrew his arm and rolled to one side, then rose stiffly as Franz washed his arm and soaped it slick.

  The heifer looked at Franz, then laid her head on the straw with a groan as another useless contraction struck.

  “Poor dear.” Marta knelt to stroke the heifer’s cheek. Franz had been unaware that his mother watched the drama. “Poor Hilda.” The heifer lifted her head slightly, then let it fall again as Franz dropped down and worked his hand and arm into the birth canal.

  His arm was longer than Otto’s, but it was also bigger and more muscled. He stretched out on the cold floor and gently probed inward in search of a tiny hoof.

  “Well?” snapped Otto. “It was there. Just beyond my reach. You should—”

  The heifer moaned again and a fresh contraction began, the muscles constricting Franz’s arm.

  “There now,” soothed Marta. “It will be over soon.” Then she whispered a prayer just barely audible.

  “Yes.” Otto sounded bitter as he washed the sticky mess from his arm. “We’ve lost the calf, and we’re going to lose the heifer too.”

  “You don’t know that yet,” said Marta defensively.

  Franz knew the special affection his mother held for this heifer.

  “Besides, she doesn’t need to hear it,” Marta insisted.

  Otto slipped on his shirt, then stood scowling over Franz as he strained to reach the calf. “I told you, Papa, we should have killed the heifer and at least taken the calf. Mother would have raised it. Now we’re going to lose them both.”

  “Shut up,” Franz warned, his fingertips brushing a hoof. “I can—I can feel it.”

  “So could I. But you won’t reach it.” Otto looked toward Karl. “This heifer should be put down. See how she suffers.” Turning as if to go, he asked, “Do you need me for anything else?” It was obvious that everything was over as far as he was concerned.

  “Yes,” Karl said coolly, seemingly ashamed of his eldest son’s attitude. “We’ll need your strength when we pull the calf.”

  Otto shrugged and sat down, brushing his trousers off and attempting to remove the manure from this beard.

  Franz laid his cheek against the heifer’s hip and scrambled for a firmer foothold on the cobbled floor of the stall. Only a fraction nearer and he could close his fingers around the hoof. The heifer groaned as yet another contraction racked her body. Franz grimaced with the force that tightened around his arm. “A fraction,” he breathed. “Come on. Just a bit . . . ”

  Marta comforted the little heifer as the animal’s eyes rolled back in agony and exhaustion.

  “Over soon, little girl.” Marta caressed the muzzle. “First is always the hardest.”

  “This time the first is the last,” Otto mumbled. He was uninterested, cold and hungry, and unhappy with his father for some reason.

  But now was not the time for Franz to wonder about the conversation between his father and Otto. The contraction built to a bone-breaking intensity and then lessened. Franz could barely feel his own fingertips. He wiggled his fingers slightly, surprised that a hard wet bone rested beneath his hand. For a moment he did not speak; then his fingers closed around the twisted leg of the calf. “Front leg,” he grunted. “The other one . . . here’s the problem.” He tugged gently, mindful that he could tear open the heifer’s uterus. “The other leg. Turned back at the knee.”

  “Can you bring it forward?” Karl knelt beside his son.

  Franz did not answer. He gritted his teeth as he maneuvered his fingers inside the viselike grip of yet another contraction. He held tightly to the knee of the calf, and as the muscles released he could feel the nose of the baby tucked beneath the right front leg. Carefully Franz rotated his own position so that he lay on his back with his hand cupped beneath the muzzle of the calf. Flexing his fingers forward, he began to move the head around the tangle of the leg until it was straight in line with the birth canal.

  “Yes,” Franz finally said. “Now the loop. We’ll have to pull it.”

  Karl handed Franz the soft cotton rope and again Franz reached inward to loop the end of the rope around the calf’s front legs. He secured it, but was unsure whether it would hold the force of their pull. At least the heifer seemed more comfortable now that the position of the head had been righted. She looked up at Marta as though to ask if the ordeal would soon come to an end.

  With the next strong contraction Otto joined Franz and Karl at the rope. Franz still lay behind the heifer with his arm inside to guide the gangly legs of the baby.

  “She’s moving!” Franz called as the legs and head inched forward.

  The heifer bellowed piteously, and Marta continued to soothe her with gentle words.

  Franz held tightly to the hoof of the calf, almost certain that the little beast would emerge in pieces. Still the muscles pushed downward until at last a muzzle and two spindly legs emerged.

  “Come on, little girl,” Marta urged the heifer. “One more good push and pull!”

  As though Hilda understood Marta’s words, the heifer pushed hard with the next contraction, and as the men gave one final tug, the calf slipped out onto the straw. The newborn lay there silent and still for half a second before Franz pulled the birth sack from over its nose and began to rub the calf vigorously with straw. It gasped and shuddered. Shortly after, the heifer expelled the afterbirth and rose up slightly to examine the tiny heaving creature behind her—a mottled brown color with a white face and long spindly legs. It bleated and coughed as its mother ran a rough warm tongue over the offspring’s face again and again. Franz continued to work on the calf as Karl and Marta cleaned up the mess and replaced the soiled bedding with fresh straw. No one spoke, but Franz saw his mother brush away a tear and raise her eyes in gratitude toward heaven.

  After a few minutes Otto slung his coat over
his arm. “I’m going to wash up. I have a meeting in the village. You don’t need me any longer.” It was not a question. He had simply had enough.

  Karl shook his head slowly as Otto left the barn. “Perhaps he should have stayed in Stuttgart,” he said softly. “For three hundred years we have farmed this land and milked our cows; given birth and seen death.” There was amazement in Karl’s voice that his eldest son could not find even small pleasure in an event like tonight. “Where has he gone, Mama? Where has he gone?”

  “He buried his heart beside Katrine. That is all, Papa. Everything here reminds him of her. Even us. Three years he was married to that girl, and it is as though that is all the life he ever had.” Marta shook her head as she stroked the bull calf gently.

  Karl lifted his chin and leaned against a post. “He is young. Our firstborn.” He looked at the calf. “He will survive.” Then he forked more straw into the stall. “No one ever claimed it was easy.”

  Franz rinsed his arms quickly in the cold bucket of water. He did not want to be included in his parents’ conclusions about Otto’s grief for Katrine. There was a darker reason for Otto’s strange behavior. He had begun to withdraw from them even before his wife’s death. Now Katrine’s face, her smile, and the shine of her eyes haunted Franz. Her love for his brother had been the one thing that had almost driven Franz from his beloved mountains. For three years he had tried not to notice when she brushed her fingers across Otto’s forehead or followed him with her eyes when he walked by. Katrine had loved Otto. And all the time, Franz had loved her with a desperate, silent ache that taunted him in the dark of night when he heard her laughter through the wall of the bedroom.

  When Katrine had died and Otto had gone away, Franz had found some measure of peace again. Nights in the big chalet were quiet, his longing silenced. Katrine was out of reach and out of his sight, but even with that came some satisfaction that she did not lie in the arms of another man. She was no longer Otto’s either.

  “What do you think, Franz?” asked Karl, gazing at his son. “Maybe if you would find a bride, Otto could also find another woman to comfort him . . . to give us grandchildren.”

  “No, Papa.” Franz could not say more. He could not tell all the things he felt. Katrine was only one woman, but she had been the only love of two men. Two brothers. Neither would love again, of that Franz was certain. And Otto had long ago found other things to occupy him—things that had, in the end, drawn him away from Katrine.

  “There are so many girls in the mountains,” Karl tried again, leaning heavily on the pitchfork handle. “My sons are blind?”

  “Not blind,” said Marta firmly. “Just careful.” The lantern light shone on her face, and her eyes searched Franz’s for some answer.

  For an instant he thought she must know what his secret was—what it had been like to watch Otto and Katrine together.

  “Yes, Mama. Careful,” he mumbled, busying himself with the other stock. But he knew his brother was not careful about friends and ideas. Sometimes Franz was certain that Otto hated the farm—hated Austria now.

  “Katrine was herself a widow. She knew about love, Papa. Such a girl as Katrine will be hard to find. But the lakes are full of fish, ja?” Her voice sounded more resigned than hopeful. Franz knew that his mother had not entirely approved of Katrine at first. Yes, Marta was also careful for her sons. “Otto will come back to himself. Back to us.”

  Karl did not reply, and his silence expressed his doubt. “Perhaps it is best if he leaves again. Maybe there is too much of her here.”

  Otto’s silent bitterness made life difficult for all of them. But Franz had seen his mother’s grief when Otto was gone. It was better to suffer with him here than to suffer without him.

  “He wanted to be a priest before he met her,” Marta said almost wistfully. “Do you remember that, Karl?”

  “Remember? It scared me to death. There is something strange about the thought of calling your own son Father!”

  Franz laughed. “Otto has always acted like my father!”

  Marta rose from the straw and raised her nose in regal disapproval of their jokes. “He would have been happier than he is now.”

  “No doubt!” exclaimed Karl, nudging Franz. “Just think how happy you would be sitting in the confessional all day and hearing about everyone else’s sins! Not quite as fun as doing something to confess about but—”

  Marta gave him a hard clout on the head. “You are hopeless!” she snapped. “I’ll go and make tea.”

  As the stable door slammed shut behind her, Franz and his father roared with laughter. There was something remarkably absurd about the image of Otto in the cloak of the church. “What your brother needs now, my dear Franz, is a lovely heifer who will give him a brace of sons to call him Father!”

  There was much more to it than that, Franz knew, but somehow his parents saw life in the most simplistic terms: love, children, the church. The world around them trembled in the sinister shadow of Hitler’s plans for Germany, and yet Karl and Marta Wattenbarger could see no further than the borders of their farm. They did not suspect that Otto had brought the shadow of darkness to their very doorstep.

  3

  The Exchange

  Piles of orchestra luggage were stacked on the loading platform of Prague’s vast railway terminal. Musicians sprawled here and there on the long mahogany benches. Saints gazed down from high niches in the stone walls, and every footstep and whisper echoed like sounds in a cathedral.

  Leah and Elisa sat off by themselves and giggled at the postures of various members of the company who dozed without dignity. Shimon Feldstein slept in a sitting position on a trunk beside his tympani. His head nodded slowly forward to his chest; then it jerked back and his mouth fell open, closing briefly only to fall again. Leah covered her mouth with her hand in an attempt to muffle peals of laughter. Even after weeks on the road together, Leah never quite got bored with the sleeping positions of her friends. The bulletin board in the hall in Vienna was always filled with candid photographs of exhausted musicians curled up on benches or dozing among the baggage. On this trip, however, someone had secretly taken Leah’s camera into custody early on, so she had to content herself with simple observation.

  “Look”—she nudged Elisa—“all we need is a few flies to turn loose, and he would inhale them all!” More laughter as Shimon began to lean precariously to the side. “Look, look! He’s going over!”

  Elisa watched the somnambulant balancing act for a moment, then scanned the place for some sign of Rudy. “I thought Shimon was going to protect Rudy from his card-playing gentlemen friends.”

  Leah eyed her with amusement. “Since when are you worried about Rudy?”

  “Actually I’m worried about the Guarnerius,” Elisa replied flippantly. “Although if Rudy would ever settle down—he is a great violinist, you know.”

  “The world is full of great violinists. Almost any one of them has more sense than darling Rudy. Did you hear the latest?” Leah leaned close and whispered, “He’s seeing the wife of a formerly prominent politician in Vienna.”

  “Yes?” Elisa was not surprised. Rudy was always in the middle of something unsavory.

  “Yes. And this politician has very definite connections with Germany, they say. He is now in prison.” Leah rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Imagine. A Jewish violinist and the wife of a pro-Nazi! Ridiculous, if you ask me. Rudy has rocks in his kopf!”

  “The same woman who gave him the violin?” Elisa asked in amazement.

  Leah nodded and shrugged. “He says they are only friends. I should have such friends.” She patted her cello case. “It took my parents six years to pay for my cello. And it is only a Pedrinelli.”

  “A sweet fiddle,” Elisa said approvingly.

  Leah lifted her nose in imitation of the wealthy concertgoers. “Can you imagine how much his Guarnerius cost? Have you seen the label? Made in 1674, I think. Rudy told me all about it once when he was trying to get a loan from me
.”

  “I have thought of it,” Elisa said enviously. “It makes me angry every time I think of it. Hocking a Guarnerius—”

  “He had to pay the rent. Three months’ rent.”

  “Did you help him?”

  “Never.”

  “Did he lose his apartment?”

  “No. The Nazi’s wife paid his rent. She is a big patron of the arts.” The sarcasm in Leah’s tone was not lost on Elisa.

  Elisa searched the enormous waiting room for sign of Rudy. He still was nowhere to be seen when the first announcement for boarding boomed out over the public address system. “Too bad his friend isn’t here now,” she muttered, anxiouis about the irresponsible young virtuoso.

  Then came the announcement: “All boarding. Track three for Vienna!”

  Leah gathered up her things and embraced Elisa quickly. “Well, don’t worry about your little friend here.” She patted Elisa’s violin. “I’ll look after your fiddle and feed the cat. Just go and have a good time. Berlin and where?”

  “The Tyrol. Skiing. A few days to shop in Berlin, and then my father and I meet Mother and my brothers in the Tyrol.”

  Leah squeezed Elisa’s hands. “Well, don’t break anything.”

  As though waiting for the announcement, musicians stirred from their various corners and shuffled onto the waiting train. Elisa hugged and kissed friends good-bye as though they were members of her own family. Indeed she had come to think of them as relations. Shimon gave her an all-engulfing bear hug and then helped Leah juggle cello, violin, and baggage onto the train. Still there was no sign of Rudy.

  Leah lifted the window. “I don’t think Rudy made it,” she called down to Elisa. Now she sounded worried.

  Shimon poked his head out and grinned broadly as he pointed to the entrance to the ladies’ room. Clutching his violin, Rudy sneaked out the door and charged across the lobby toward the platform.

  “Leave it to Rudy!” Shimon roared. “Hiding behind skirts again!”