Vienna Prelude

by Bodie Thoene

  Perhaps that is why the skull of Haydn had grinned so hideously at her. Perhaps he knew, like Rudy, that this was all a horrible joke.

  A dull ache throbbed in the back of Elisa’s head. Rudy had once joked with her that he would leave the Guarnerius to her in his will. Now it was hers, through circumstances so haunting that she wanted only to rid herself of the priceless instrument.

  How she longed for the reassuring presence of Murphy! He would know just what to do. He could tell her. But he was gone now, probably forever. After all, how many times could a man be turned away and called back again in the same week?

  She put the violin out of sight in the closet, then sat forlornly on the edge of the bed. She picked up the small box that Murphy had left for her. It was the only reminder that it was Christmas. She lifted one angel from the jumble and held it up to the light from the window, turning it around. There seemed to be something familiar about the features of the carving. She picked up another one and held it beside the first; then, with a gasp, she tore through the top drawer of her bureau until she found the figure of Mary and Joseph that Franz had given to her the year before.

  She had almost forgotten the love with which he had carved the figures. Side by side, there was no mistaking the similarity of the angels and the face of Mary. How touched she had been by the light in Joseph’s eyes as he looked at Mary! And Franz had looked at Elisa with the same tender light. He had held her with the same hope. She had left him so easily, so cruelly. Elisa could still remember his anger at the station. No doubt Murphy now felt the same anger. It seemed strange to her that Murphy’s last message to her had been a box of angels carved by another man who had once loved her.

  First Franz. Now Murphy. Good men, both of them, and they hated her now. She did not blame them, really, and she was sure that there would be no calling back what she had so carelessly tossed away.

  There was no use wishing that Murphy would come and tell her what she must do. He wouldn’t come. He couldn’t help her. He didn’t care anymore.

  She frowned and lay back on the bed. There was no one to help her now. Rudy was dead. Leah was in the Judengasse. Murphy gone. Thomas . . .

  Her thoughts whirled in a fog of exhaustion and despair. She closed her eyes then, and with the name of Murphy on her lips, drifted off into a restless sleep.

  30

  Bloodbath

  It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon before Elisa awoke with a start and sat up to look around the room in confusion. A thousand thoughts tumbled in on her at once. Murphy. Thomas. Leah . . . something about Leah! And Rudy! She struggled to free herself from the tangle she had made of her sheets and blankets; then she ran to the closet door and jerked it open to be sure that she hadn’t dreamed the whole dreadful thing. No. It was not a dream. The Guarnerius was still locked inside the case. No papers. No hope for her father after all.

  Still she could not shake the thought that she might have missed something. She retrieved the instrument and checked the case and the violin again, then slammed the lid in frustration. Even in his pain and suffering, Rudy had told her to take the violin to Leah. Was he capable of misleading her at such a moment, or had his mind simply slipped into the delirium of his battle with death?

  Almost mechanically, Elisa obeyed him. She brushed her hair and slipped on her warmest coat, then grabbed the violin case on her way out. There was certainly no reason for her to feel nervous now. There was nothing ominous or secret about the case. It was just like a thousand others in the city of Vienna. As she locked her door behind her, she was reminded with a surge of anger how the old concierge had let the Shupos into her apartment. What good did it do for her to lock the door?

  Herr Haupt stuck his head out of his apartment as she passed.

  “Have a good Christmas, Fraülein Linder.” He did not call her Eleeeza tonight. His greeting reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. She had forgotten that as well in the last few days.

  “I will pray there are no surprises waiting for me when I get home tonight,” she replied, allowing her indignation to creep into her voice.

  “They made me open the door, Eleeeza!” he called after her.

  She left the glass entry door slightly ajar as she left the building. A blast of frigid air answered the old man in her wake.

  The great gleaming city seemed all but shut down. Already families had begun to pull into themselves and the privacy of their own hearths. She had seen Christmas Eve in Vienna before, but never alone. This afternoon, she felt alone. She remembered last year, the way Franz Wattenbarger had looked at her with such love and longing. How far away that all seemed now. How they had hoped for some miracle together! With one heart they had imagined Theo sweeping into the little church at Kitzbühel like the shepherd in the story, just in time to worship the Christ child. But it had not happened, and no amount of wishing could make it so.

  She tried to walk quickly across the icy sidewalk. The shoppers were gone. Shops had closed early. Only the cruel wind cut through the streets of the city now. If the mobs had rioted after Irmgard’s funeral, there was no evidence of it. Bits of paper littered the streets.

  Elisa boarded a nearly empty streetcar. Karlsplatz was also deserted. It seemed as though the cold wind had blown all of life from Vienna. The makeshift booths and stalls of the flea market had been emptied, and the merchants had all gone back to their little villages. Elisa thought of the warmth of the Kitzbühel farmhouse, the gentle sound of carols, and the crackling of the fire. So far away.

  The trolley rumbled past the opera house on Kärtnerstrasse, then on toward the stately spires of St. Stephan’s Cathedral in the heart of the Old District. For an instant the clouds broke and afternoon sun streamed down like a spotlight on the roof of St. Stephan’s. When she was a child, the colorful zigzag pattern of the shingles had reminded Elisa of a giant gingerbread house decorated with neat rows of icing. “God’s gingerbread house,” she had called it.

  When her father had disappeared down the narrow lanes of the Tuchlauben to talk business in Yiddish with the Jewish cloth merchants of the district, she and her mother and brothers had wandered for hours within the majestic building. They had listened to the tolling of the enormous Pummerin bell as it had boomed out the hours. Cast from a Turkish cannon, the bell had rattled the stained-glass windows like artillery fire. “So loud God can hear it in heaven and the devil in hell,” her mother had said. But from this place, Elisa thought, God can hear even the quietest whisper.

  Just a short walk from der Steffl, as the Viennese called St. Stephan’s, Leah Goldblatt had grown up listening to the same bell. Perhaps as children, the two little girls had passed in the street and never known that they would eventually find such friendship and love for each other. As a child Leah had attended the synagogue nestling beneath the shadow of St. Stephan’s. Elisa had been raised feeling the strangeness of the Jewish culture in which her own father had grown up. The men in their yarmulkes who spoke in such a strange language as they bargained had made her uncomfortable. Little boys with bobbing side locks running through the narrow Judengasse had caused her to giggle behind her hand while her mother whispered that she must not stare.

  Elisa had not liked the Jewish district of Vienna with its memories of massacres and persecutions. And now she wanted to forget that her father was somehow linked to these people and their tragic history. Did that not also link her in some way?

  As the trolley rumbled toward Stephansplatz, she kept her eyes on the roof of the gingerbread cathedral. Der Steffl was where she belonged. She tried not to think about the other—her father as a young boy, dressed in black coat and side locks; her grandfather like the old men in white beards and black hats on their way to morning prayers. No, she still did not like it. The shadow of the Judengasse had chased her family from Germany. Even though the Lindheims talked and dressed like everyone else; even though her mother was not a Jew and her father had only memories of his life before, this shadow—non-Aryan, mixed race—h
ad hounded them with slogans and hatred. In the end her father’s sympathies and Nazi hatred had landed him in Dachau . . . that is, if Rudy had been telling her the truth.

  The sky was growing darker as Elisa stepped from the trolley in front of Stephansplatz. Narrow lanes ran off from the cathedral in every direction like a rabbit warren. Judengasse, Hoher Markt, the cloth district of Tuchlauben, and Leah’s little apartment overlooking the Judenplatz; Elisa knew the narrow lanes and baroque buildings well. Why then did she shudder now at the thought of walking there alone?

  She held the violin case tightly and wavered, wanting to run up the broad steps of St. Stephan’s, away from the medieval city that sloped away from the hill and wandered down the narrow lanes of crooked houses into the Jewish district.

  There were no cars on Jasomirgott, the street called “So help me God.” Everyone was tucked inside safe and warm. A blast of wind howled around the corner as the street narrowed into a dark lane and tall houses shut out what remained of the afternoon light. The Milchgasse broadened again into the cloth district of Tuchlauben, and Elisa stepped into a doorway to button her coat tightly around her. She thought briefly of her father holding her hand as they had walked from arcade to arcade. The memory was almost too painfully distant to give her pleasure. The attempt to capture the past instead reminded her of the terrible present, and the fact that Berlin too had been full of such happy memories. Would the pleasant thoughts of Vienna also be swept away by the Nazis? She shook her head to clear her mind, then stepped back out into the biting wind.

  Elisa peered up into the windows along the lane. Lights burned, but not Christmas lights. Eight bright candles on the window ledges flickered as she entered the Jewish district. It was Hanukkah here near the Judenplatz—a strange Jewish holiday that she did not know and could not understand. She felt sorry now that she had not at least put up a Christmas tree. Maybe when she got home tonight she would get out the little box of Murphy’s angels. She had so hoped that her mother would be with her to decorate.

  God, what has happened to me? The world is upside down! The heaviness of her loneliness and the horror of Rudy’s death nearly crushed her as she made her way toward Leah’s little flat. Here and there was a boarded window, but other than that, there was little evidence of the rioting that had swept through the area around the Judenplatz. In the dim light of evening, Elisa could see patches of fresh paint on the outside of a few buildings. She could imagine the obscene words that had been painted there. Germany was decorated for Christmas with such words. No Jewish family in Berlin would dare light a menorah for their holidays.

  The lane opened suddenly onto the square of the Judenplatz, and Elisa gasped at what she saw. The synagogue was just ahead. Walls were still splattered with red paint. Or was it the blood of the two young Jewish men attacked here? The sound of strong male voices emanated from within the building as the men of the district chanted their evening prayers and psalms commemorating the festival of lights. In a broad brush troke, the words Christ Killers! were splashed across the side of the building along with numerous other threats and slogans. Tonight the Jews inside the old synagogue of Vienna were praying for more than some ancient miracle. No doubt they had raised their voices to ask for a new deliverance from persecution.

  Here and there, around the square, windows were shattered, and an unbroken line of red paint touched every building like a ring of blood. On the facade of the house on Judenplatz 2, there was a relief showing the baptism of Christ. Just beneath that, a plaque told of the terrible events of 1421: Two hundred Jews were burned at the stake while rabbis took their own lives by slitting their throats with kosher butcher knives rather than be burned by the Viennese. Elisa shook her head in disbelief. On either side of the lettering a large red swastika was scrawled. Juden! The day is coming again when your blood will run in these streets! The words were distinct against the white wall of the house. The hands of the carving of Christ were smeared with red, and above His head was written: You will be baptized in blood as you baptized Him in blood! Jews leave Vienna!

  The voices from inside the synagogue did not betray the emotion that must have been felt at such a warning. Was the sound of the great bell of St. Stephan’s a sound they dreaded? Elisa glanced up toward Leah’s apartment. The dark windows looked down on the statue of Jewish playwright Ephraim Lessing in the center of the square. Then Elisa saw that even the statue had not gone undesecrated. A wide swath of red was splashed across the groin of the statue: Race Defilers Will Be Castrated. Her eyes turned to the hand of the statue: The first two fingers of the left hand had been hacked off, and red paint smeared on the hand and arm! “Oh, God!” she cried, feeling ill. “Rudy! Oh, Rudy!” She leaned heavily against the side of the building, uncertain that she could walk past the statue to Leah’s apartment. She drew her breath in slowly, trying to control the nausea.

  Behind her she heard a stirring and turned. Across the plaza she saw the flickering lights of torches as a slow tide of men emerged from the dark lanes and oozed into the Judenplatz. They did not speak or shout, but Elisa heard their feet against the cobblestones. She stood, unable to move forward or run back, as yet another group approached from behind her. Then came the first shout: “Austria for Austrians! Jews out of Vienna! Austria for Aryans! Christ killers! Christ killers!” The cries rolled toward her in a hideous wave of rage and hatred. The words echoed back like the voices of ten thousand in the narrow lane of Judengasse. Elisa ran forward into the Judenplatz as the sound of smashing windows crashed like cymbals amid the tympani of angry voices.

  Elisa cried out as a group of men spotted her flight and ran toward her. They had waited, waited until Vienna had slipped inside for Christmas Eve. They had waited until there was no one left at St. Stephan’s to see what they would do to the Judenplatz.

  “Hund!” a young man shouted at her. “Idiotic whore!”

  Elisa forced herself to keep going past the mutilated statue of Lessing, on toward Leah’s building. Then, as she watched, a rock was thrown and the glass from Leah’s window fell to the street. She cried out, but now the noise of boots and shouts, stones and clubs was too great.

  Two hundred men converged into one foaming mass before Elisa’s eyes. Suddenly they were upon her, and she was caught in the vortex of the whirlpool.

  “Hey! Come on!” A young man grabbed her by the arm, grinning. “I’ve caught a Jewish whore! Come on! Let’s teach these Jewish swine what it feels like to have their women violated!”

  “Let’s teach them a lesson!” Other hands grabbed her, knocking the violin case out of her hands, as she screamed.

  She could not hear her own screams as she was shoved and pulled onto the cobblestones. Two young men pinned her to the cold ground as someone tore at her coat, sending the buttons flying. She forced herself to look at their faces. Faces! Remember their faces! Grinning, leering, crowding over her, the men held their torches high. It was another time, a distant century, filled with horrors in the Judenplatz. She was sobbing, screaming her name, but they did not hear her.

  “Let’s teach them a lesson!” A thin-lipped man with pale skin stretched over prominent cheekbones stooped over her. She could see her own terrified face reflected in the glass of his wire-rimmed spectacles.

  Hands tore at her dress, then pulled the cap from her head. Long blond curls tumbled out onto the wet icy street.

  “Sporer!” an angry voice called and the smile faded. “Sporer! Stop!” The crowd parted.

  “She’s Aryan!” someone said in disgust. “She’s not Jewish! Look at her hair!”

  She looked up as the attackers released their grip on her arms. Suddenly she recognized the man who had made them stop. He was angry, pushing away the ones who had intended to rape her there in the Judenplatz.

  “Elisa!” Otto Wattenbarger shouted.

  She could not say his name. She could not say anything. Fear and humiliation had driven words from her. She put out her arms to him and he lifted her up; then he cursed th
e men around them until they backed away and ran off to find some other prey.

  “What is she doing here?” the one called Sporer asked defensively. “In the Jewish district on Christmas?”

  “Shut up!” Otto threatened in reply. He pulled her torn coat around her as she leaned heavily against him. “Get out of here, Sporer, or I swear I’ll kill you now!”

  “We thought she was just another Jewish whore.” Sporer shrugged and stalked off.

  Otto watched him melt into the violent crowd, now roused to a fevered pitch, then turned to Elisa. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  “My violin!” she cried, looking for the instrument. “My violin!”

  “Elisa!” He could barely make himself heard as he shouted above the din. “You must not be here! Come, I will take you back. Back to St. Stephan’s.” He reached down to retrieve her violin case. Brushing it off, he held it tightly as he took her arm in his strong grip. Then she saw the swastika armband tied to his coat.

  “No!” she shouted, wrenching herself free. The memory of Rudy came fresh to her mind.

  “Elisa!” He grabbed her again. “It’s me! Otto Wattenbarger! Elisa, I will get you to safety. Out of here! You must stay with me!” he said through clenched teeth as he gave her a little shake.

  “Otto!” she cried, feeling herself go limp. “God, oh God! Help me!” The tinkle of glass was met by the shouts of young strong men dashing from the synagogue. They too had clubs. They had been ready when the Nazis came this time.

  Otto propelled her away from the screams and shouts of the street battle. The spires of St. Stephan’s loomed ahead in the dusk. He shook her again when they reached the bottom step; then he placed the violin case beside her. “Don’t go back in there, Elisa!” he warned. The shouts echoed from the narrow lanes. “Don’t go there again, not ever!”