Vienna Prelude

by Bodie Thoene

  Tall and handsome, at twenty-six years of age, Thomas von Kleistmann looked much as his father, Wilhelm von Kleistmann, had looked when Lindheim had served in his squadron in 1918. He had been the eldest son of an old Prussian family, commanding his men with the correctness and discipline of a true soldier. Wilhelm had died in a plane crash, and Lindheim had first seen little Thomas in the faded image of a photograph taken from his father’s blood-soaked jacket.

  “Thomas,” Theo said gently, “you do not remember your father. . . . ”

  Thomas looked up sharply, as if not wanting to hear the words of Theo Lindheim. “I have brought you this—correctly, I think.”

  “Why do you serve them?” Theo’s probing eyes tore at the young man’s soul.

  Thomas ignored the question and pressed on. “You should have your passports in order, just in case. Perhaps it would be wise to warn Pastor Jacobi.”

  “Pastor Jacobi has already warned me, Thomas. Last week when they came to the church. He told me they had approached him about our excommunication from the Lutheran church. The Führer spoke publicly on Martin Luther’s hatred of the Jews that afternoon.”

  “Then I needn’t have come.”

  “Yes. It was important for you to come. Important for your own soul, and for my friends, as well.” Theo shook his head. “Why? Why, Thomas? Why do you serve them?”

  “I am a German.”

  “So am I.”

  Thomas looked away. “I am a German like my father was.”

  “You mean Aryan? As Pastor Jacobi is. And he is on the lists.”

  “I do not wish to also be on their lists, then,” Thomas blurted.

  Theo sat back in the leather chair. “If you are not on their lists, then the list becomes your list as well as theirs, I think.” He added quietly, “Your father would not have been one of them.”

  “And if everyone who disagrees leaves? Who will be left?”

  A sharp knock sounded on the door of the office. Thomas placed his cap on his head and stood as Elisa’s voice called, “Papa?”

  “One moment Elisa,” Theo called. Then he lowered his voice and directed Thomas to the back door. “You came in that way.” He extended his hand. “It is not likely that we will meet again soon, Thomas.”

  “May I not see her?” Thomas looked pained and eager.

  Theo shook his head slowly from side to side. “For what purpose? She is over you now. So, good-bye, Thomas von Kleistmann.” His firm handshake guided the young man to the door that led out through the storage room and down a narrow flight of stairs into an alley.

  ***

  Her father’s cheerfulness was forced as Elisa entered the office. She could sense his uneasiness, and perhaps he was aware of hers.

  “Who was here, Papa?” she asked, glancing toward the back door.

  “No one. An errand boy.” He brushed aside her question at the same moment he slipped the long white envelope into the pocket of his overcoat. “We should hurry now, Elisa. Our train leaves in three hours. We have to close up the house.”

  “There is not so much to do.”

  Elisa was puzzled by his brusqueness. He seemed too eager to escape the store; always before he had left reluctantly. Perhaps the words of the tailor had been right. Perhaps there was no safety left in Berlin even for Theo Lindheim. She did not dare repeat old Grynspan’s words to her father, but a knot of unexplained fear gripped her stomach. She suddenly felt the urge to lock the door behind her. “Papa?”

  She questioned his preoccupied stare at a family portrait that hung on the wall behind his desk. In the photograph Elisa and her two younger brothers sat beside their mother as her father stood with his hands on his wife’s delicate shoulders.

  Her father turned to her. “When you walked in tonight,” he said almost wistfully, “I thought how very much you look like your mother.”

  Tall and slender, his wife, Anna, carried herself with the aristocratic bearing of her vocation. She had been a young and promising concert pianist when Theo Lindheim had first met her. Elisa had grown up hearing the story of how Theo Lindheim had waited at the stage door of the concert hall for Anna Koenig after her performance as soloist for Schumann’s Concerto in A minor. He had been a young pilot in the Kaiser’s army on leave for a week in Vienna. While the other men in his squadron had spent their time in the cabarets and brothels of the city, he had returned each night to listen to Anna perform. And he had fallen hopelessly in love.

  Now he reached up impulsively and took their family portrait from the wall. He held it for a moment, as though trying to capture the carefree emotions of those days. Then he frowned at Elisa; she could see the desperate worry in his eyes.

  “We cannot miss our train,” he said slowly. “Anna and the boys will be waiting for us in Austria, yes?” He slipped the photograph into his briefcase. With that gesture, Elisa knew that he was indeed saying good-bye to Berlin and everything he had worked for.

  She stared hard at him. “Please, Papa.” Her voice was hoarse and seemed far away. “Please, we should hurry.”

  Did he feel the same ominous sense of desperation that she now felt?

  He clutched her arm and guided her quickly out the back door and through the storeroom. Crates and boxes towered over them, and Elisa felt the same unreasonable fear that had come to her as a child when she played hide-and-seek in this same dark room. Her breath came quickly and her mouth felt dry. Still her father’s footsteps were deliberate and firm. She wanted to run down the rickety wooden steps to where her father’s cherished old BMW waited. But he set the pace and, once the night air washed over them, began to talk in calm and everyday conversation.

  “And does the professor say that you will be with the symphony soon?” He smiled at her and held tightly to her arm as they descended the steep stairway.

  “I . . . he is encouraging.” This conversation was for the ears of someone else. Someone listening from the shadows of the alleyway. Elisa cleared her throat. “Of course, at my age, Mother was already performing onstage in Berlin and Vienna.” She hoped that her words sounded casual.

  “Your time will soon come,” Theo said. Then he raised his chin slightly as though he was sniffing the wind for an unseen enemy.

  Elisa felt herself blanch. Stage fright. The audience was indeed there, watching their performance from the discarded packing crates behind Lindheim’s Department Store. “By spring . . . ” Her voice faltered. Her father squeezed her arm in encouragement. “By spring the professor hopes I will be ready for an audition.”

  “Good. Good!” he replied.

  They stepped onto the cobbles of the alley. A few yards and they would be in the car. “Have you decided yet what you will play?” he asked.

  “I need to talk to Mother about it.” Elisa focused on the shiny hood of the car. Raindrops had beaded up and reflected the lights from the main street behind them. Car horns still sounded frantically from all around.

  “Mozart, perhaps?” he prompted.

  “So common in Vienna now days. Perhaps something by Schumann. Or Grieg.” She felt teardrops hot behind her eyelids. Her throat constricted, and she hoped her father would ask her no more questions until they were on the Austrian side of the border.

  Her father’s hands did not tremble as he unlocked the door and tossed Elisa’s packages into the backseat. He was so brave, so confident. Was she imagining the threat she now felt? He patted her on the back, and she slipped into the cold interior of the BMW. The smell of pipe tobacco and leather mingled together, comforting her. Theo slipped in behind the wheel and started the engine. His profile was tense and his jaw firm as he drove slowly away from the back of the store. Elisa looked only at him, even though she wanted to search the shadows for some sign of the men she sensed were surely watching their every move. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears until even the blaring traffic seemed distant.

  A strange smile was fixed on her father’s face as he pulled onto the street. He stared repeatedly into the rearview
mirror, and only after they had traveled two blocks did he finally speak to her. “Well done,” he said softly.

  “Papa, who . . . ?” All pretense of the charade vanished.

  “We are Jewish,” he answered simply, and his reply defined the who of her question, even though it could not answer the why.

  “Was it them? In the office before I came in? Gestapo?”

  “Don’t worry.” He turned onto a dark side street. Elisa turned around to see if they were being followed. The road behind them was deserted. “We should have had you meet us in Austria,” he said under his breath.

  “No,” Elisa responded, feeling a little more brave. “It is better this way. Better that they know I have come home for the holidays as usual. Mama and the boys have gone ahead to the Tyrol. The Gestapo thinks I am a student in Austria. It will be less likely that they will suspect if you cross the frontier with me, Papa. You needed me here this week. You needed me to help you get away.”

  He looked at her in amazement. No word of this plan had ever come from him, and yet she understood perfectly. The unexpected visit from Thomas von Kleistmann had only been confirmation that time was running out for him here in Berlin. “We have three hours. Three terrible long hours until our train leaves.” He seemed grateful for her quick comprehension of the situation. “It will not be safe for us to wait at the train station. The Gestapo swarm on every corner there. I am certain that the house is being watched. Are you strong enough to go home and act as though this is simply a night like any other? Get out your skis for the trip, and—”

  “Yes. Yes, Papa. We will open the window a bit, and I will play some Mozart for you . . . and for them as well.”

  Theo smiled at his daughter. “Yes. You are like Anna,” he said proudly. “Like your mother.” They passed the towering edifice of Pastor Jacobi’s church. Sadness, anger, then resignation passed over Theo’s face. “It is best,” he added quietly. “Best if we leave. Pastor Jacobi has slipped his head in a noose for us.”

  “Oh, Papa!” Elisa searched the great shadowed building. So many times she and her mother had performed there. So many Christmas concerts had been played within those walls. “Can we ever come home again?”

  He did not answer. Gone were the words of comfort that he had offered only last summer when the Olympic games had been held in Germany. The signs had all come down then. Hitler had not wanted the world to know that the main plank of the Nazi platform was that of hatred. For a few short weeks they had all hoped—hoped that the terrible campaign against the Jews of Germany was at an end.

  But that too had only been a charade. When the flags and banners had been taken down, the signs had reappeared in the shopwindows and on the park benches of Berlin. Only a week after the games had ended, Thomas had received his warning. Only three weeks later, Elisa caught a glimpse of him as her train pulled away from the station in Berlin. That image she carried with her for all the lonely months she had spent in Vienna. In the darkest nights that image had returned to her—his face anguished with longing, his hand half-raised in a distant, unspoken farewell. She had turned her eyes away from him, as though she had not seen.

  The hand he had raised in farewell to her was the same hand he now raised in salute to Hitler. It all seemed so hopeless. Was it possible that the voice that once spoke of love to her now shouted the same terrible slogans she heard over the radio? Could the arms that had held her so gently now grasp others against their will? Again, her mind rebelled at the thought.

  “I am glad we are leaving, Papa,” she said, suddenly angry. “I’m glad to be leaving a place that lets this happen.” Then, as the church slipped out of view, she murmured, “What will happen to Pastor Jacobi?”

  “He will not leave of his own free will,” Theo answered solemnly. “He is a good man. A good son of Germany. There are many, Elisa. We must hope and pray that perhaps—” He did not finish the thought. Everything had gone too far now even for hope to live in Germany. “There are many good men who will not leave.”

  Elisa put her hand on her father’s arm. “And many more who must leave, Papa!”

  He nodded curtly, and they rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  ***

  The BBC radio broadcast began a sad and stirring rendition of “God Save the King” as King Edward ended his abdication speech. Murphy could imagine that there was not a dry eye in all of Britain. Even his cynical newspaper companions in the Berlin Hotel room sat quietly now. Johnson reached over and snapped off the radio.

  “Well,” said Timmons, “all for a dame. What do you know!”

  “He’s taking a lot of people down with him.” Johnson sounded angry. “This is more than some guy quitting a job as haberdasher in Macy’s, you know. He’s turned in a crown, not a top hat.”

  Murphy nodded, and for the first time since the broadcast began, he turned from the window to face the group. “He’s right. This stupid, stupid thing—it’s going to mean the end of Winston Churchill’s career. They’re already looking for a place to string him up.”

  “Why?” Timmons leaned forward. He was the youngest of the men there and had originally come to Germany to cover the summer Olympic games. Politics were mostly lost on him. “Churchill? You mean the little fat guy who looks like a bulldog? What did he do? Introduce the king to this dame, or something?”

  Someone nursing a bottle of Glenlivet swore quietly at the question.

  “Don’t you read the papers?” Johnson howled and thumped Timmons on the shoulder. “Winston Churchill was the one guy who stood up for ol’ Edward. They’re great pals, I guess. He’ll probably be maid of honor.”

  A renewed hooting released some of the tension in the room.

  Timmons gave half a smile, still not clear on any of it. “Yeah. I don’t get it.”

  Murphy opened another Coke and sat down beside the confused young reporter. “Let’s put it this way, kid,” he instructed. “Winston Churchill was the only guy in England who believed the king would come to his senses if he was left alone. Everyone else kept pushing. You don’t push a guy when he thinks he’s in love, right? So Churchill went against massive public opinion. Unfortunately for all of us, the guy is going to get the axe.”

  “The axe? So what has that got to do with us?”

  The men in the room, most of them drunk by now, exchanged glances, unspoken comments on Timmons’ ignorance.

  “Timmons”—Murphy’s tone was patronizing now—“you never heard of Arms and the Covenant?”

  Johnson joined in. “Probably the one organization with any backbone left in England. Everyone else is pacifist. Isolationist. Leave Hitler to his business as long as he doesn’t bother us. You heard of that, Timmons? Meanwhile, the Germans have broken every part of the Versailles Treaty—”

  “Like when they rearmed,” Murphy said, trying to jog political memories that just weren’t there for the kid. “See, after the big war in 1918, the Germans signed an agreement that they wouldn’t rearm. They were also supposed to stay out of the Rhineland bordering France.”

  Timmons nodded vaguely. “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “So Hitler rearmed. It is still rearming. And, in March, last March, Timmons—you remember last March, don’t you?—German soldiers marched into the Rhineland. The League of Nations did nothing. France and Britain did nothing. Hitler broke the treaty, and nobody did anything. You get it, Timmons?”

  Timmons took another drink. “I wasn’t here last March,” he answered defensively. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “Neither did anyone else,” Johnson snapped, reaching the limit of his patience. “That’s the point.” He snatched his hat off the table and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “What’s with him?” Timmons looked hurt.

  “Churchill is about the only person in England with his eye on Hitler.” Murphy sat back, a wave of depression settling over him. “He was just starting to get a little attention too. And now this. The House of Commons wants to ly
nch him. His own people have drifted away. The Arms and the Covenant movement to rearm Britain is up in smoke,” he finished wearily.

  “All because of a dame.” Timmons shook his head slowly from side to side.

  A strange little smile fixed on Murphy’s face. “Yeah. I’ll bet Herr Hitler and his goons are just loving this. Churchill was the one guy who has been begging England to show a little backbone. Now he might as well curl up and die.” He held his finger to his temple and pulled an imaginary trigger. “That’s all folks.” He looked at Timmons, who was staring back with confused intensity. Several others had drifted off to sleep and were snoring loudly from different parts of the suite. “You understand now, kid?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Okay.” Murphy patted Timmons on the back and then got up to peer out the window again. The huge red banners flapped like waiting shrouds for Berlin and for the people of Germany—for all of Europe. “’Sort of,’” Murphy continued. “That’s all any of us understand about this place and this people and what’s happening here. Frankly, it scares me.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. His breath formed a faint mist on the windowpane. Car lights reflected the red of the Nazi flag until the streets and sidewalks seemed wet with fresh blood. Murphy shuddered involuntarily. “Why don’t they listen over there? Why don’t they believe it?”

  “Nobody likes a Jeremiah,” Timmons responded with an innocence that displayed more than a glimmer of wisdom. “As long as it don’t affect them. Sure. They’ll lynch this Churchill guy and make up to Hitler—”

  “Not bad for a sports writer,” droned someone from the floor behind the sofa.

  Murphy let his breath out slowly, not wanting to respond to Timmons. Maybe the kid was right, but Murphy was hoping for another synopsis to the story. He glanced at his watch. “Okay you lugs. Get out. Get out of here, will you? I’ve got a train to catch, and you’re in my way.” He roused them and shoved them out the door like a sheepdog running his flock out of the pen. He had two hours, but those were hours he wanted to spend alone.