Vienna Prelude

by Bodie Thoene

  Thomas rubbed a hand over his face in relief. It had been worth the risk. Now if the world would come to its senses, it might be unnecessary for Thomas to leave Germany. The life of his nation could return to some sanity again, and he and Elisa—

  “Thomas.” Ernst vom Rath poked his head into the office. His cheeks were pale, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

  “What is it?” The sense of elation left Thomas as suddenly as it had come.

  Meet me, vom Rath mouthed silently as he held up two fingers. Then he shut the door. Thomas listened to the clack of his heels across the marble floor of the embassy.

  Thomas arrived at Notre Dame a full five minutes before vom Rath. As he knelt before the statue of Mary, his heart thumped wildly. Was Ernst coming to warn him that he had been discovered? Had he been trailed by the Gestapo in spite of his elaborate route to Churchill’s hotel suite in Cannes? The memory of the man who had seen him in the hallway came back to him. He must have been Gestapo. Plainclothes. An agent sent to sniff him out.

  He jumped in spite of himself when Ernst knelt beside him. Thomas glanced at the shaking young diplomat whose eyes looked beseechingly upward as he spoke.

  “At a dinner here in Paris last night,” Ernst began, “your Anthony Eden tried to talk to the Italian ambassador, Grandi.” The words were half choked, a horrified whisper. “Eden wanted to find out how Mussolini was reacting to Nazi pressures on Austria.”

  Thomas looked at vom Rath. He was blanched, white as death. His clenched hands trembled. “And?”

  Tears swam in vom Rath’s eyes. “Prime Minister Chamberlain was there too. He kept changing the subject. Said how he and Mussolini were friends. Talked about Anglo-Italian reapproachment.” He swallowed hard. “About friendship between Britain and Germany. Britain and Italy.” Vom Rath buried his face in his hands. “Chamberlain didn’t let Eden say a word! Count Grandi was on the phone to Hitler this morning. They’re all laughing!” He turned tortured eyes on Thomas. “It doesn’t matter that Hitler planned to have his own ambassador killed. The British prime minister is still talking small talk over tea and cakes! Are they mad, Thomas? Are they mad? We risk our lives to ask for some show of strength, and this is what they reply with! The Führer mocks Chamberlain; Mussolini imitates him to the amusement of his friends. If the English are still talking friendship, what hope have we got of stopping Hitler? What hope?”

  “How did Anthony Eden react?”

  “He asked Grandi again if Italy intended to support Austrian independence. After all, Italy has always stood by the Rome Protocols to protect the integrity of Austria.” He looked back toward the statue. The votive candles reflected against his skin in a bloodred light. “Eden asked if Mussolini and Hitler had some sort of agreement about Austria.” He frowned as though he could not believe what he was about to say. “Then Chamberlain interrupted again. Insisted that they have a bit more tea. That the only business that should concern them was England’s relationship with Italy!” Vom Rath sat, motionless. He was drained, frightened for the future and for himself.

  “The Italians hate Eden because he’s one of the few in the British government to demand the Italians pull out of Spain.”

  “Then they celebrate a great victory tonight. Prime Minister Chamberlain had emasculated his own foreign secretary in front of Grandi. Tonight both Mussolini and Hitler will no doubt drink a toast to silly Chamberlain and his umbrella. And the rest of us—what do we do now?”

  Thomas rose from his knees. He had no reply. There was nothing left to say in the face of Chamberlain’s actions. The British prime minister had already decided that peace meant appeasement. What did it matter to him if there was an incident in Vienna? What did it matter if German troops marched into Austria? Vienna was not London, after all. Thomas looked around the massive cathedral. It was empty with the exception of a few tourists and Ernst vom Rath and himself. He was suddenly sober and clearheaded, as though everything he had hoped and thought and done in the last few days had been the dream of a drunkard. So this was the reality. Berlin was coming to Vienna—then, probably, to Prague. He leaned his head back and stared up into the huge rib cage of the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral. Would the Nazis also come to Paris one day? to London? Where could he take Elisa that they would be safe?

  He looked down at his own hands. The glow of the candles also caught him in the bloody reflection. Ernst vom Rath remained trembling on his knees, in prayer, as Thomas walked away from him. Ernst felt it too. Was there any place left that would be safe?

  33

  Sanctuary in Kitzbühel

  The answer from the Wattenbargers in Kitzbühel came promptly the next morning via telegram.

  Three rooms are available for the spinster aunt and her young charges Stop Please notify of time of arrival Stop Transportation will be waiting Stop

  Elisa folded the message and put it in her pocket. She could imagine the shock on the face of Franz when the spinster aunt turned out to be Elisa Linder. Would he still be angry at her? she wondered. Or would the anger of his love be softened into pleasant unconcern by the passage of a year? She had been cruel to him; she knew that now. She had been even more convinced of it when she had looked into the faces of Murphy’s little wooden angels and recognized the touch of their creator.

  If she had known any other place in Austria where the children would be safe, she would not have taken them to Kitzbühel. But at least within the walls of the Wattenbarger household, the lines between good and evil were defined. Otto was in Vienna, far from the soft, gentle voice of Frau Marta and the warm, playful teasing of Herr Karl. Elisa had seen the way her own brothers had been transformed in the midst of these good, simple people. Their frowns had turned to raucous laughter, and their pale skin had taken on a glow from the mountain air. Those days had made the terrible grief of Theo’s arrest somehow bearable. Frau Marta had comforted her mother then, and she would comfort three children now. With Otto in Vienna among the thousands like him, Kitzbühel would be a safe place for the children until Elisa could get their papers to them. From there, they would travel to the south of France, where Baron von Rothschild was establishing homes for refugee children.

  Elisa found courage in the knowledge that her father had been part of the chain since the beginning. Theo Lindheim had helped smuggle to safety something far more valuable than the artwork that Hitler and Göring stole from Jewish homes—seven hundred children, Leah had told her. There was something holy in the number. Even behind the walls and wire of Dachau, Theo Lindheim’s life had counted for something. But it had cost him the freedom to leave Germany before leaving became impossible. Seven hundred children had passed through to France or Prague and then on to Palestine while Theo had remained behind.

  Elisa’s heart nearly burst with the pride she felt for her father. She should have known, but she had not been able to see past her own worry and the safety of her family. Rudy Dorbransky had never met Theo, and yet, in a way, he had known him better than Elisa.

  “Men like your father understand the risks of gambling,” Rudy had said.

  Now Elisa understood the risks of this desperate gamble as well. She had seen Rudy’s hands. She heard of the horror of the German prison camps. The memories—cold cobblestones on her back, hands holding her down—were still fresh in her mind. Yes, she understood clearly.

  Strangely, in the terrible knowing, she had lost her fear. For a year she had hoped in impotent misery for a miracle. Now she had discovered there was a miracle in the works, and her father had been a part of it! She could be a part of it too!

  She ate her supper alone, then walked to the main telephone office where she placed her call to the café in Paris at seven o’clock. Somehow she was certain that Thomas would be there. She was not surprised when the operator called the name she had given, Elsa, to announce that her party was on the line.

  She closed the door of the booth behind her and sat down, exhilarated at the sound of Thomas’s voice.

&nbs
p; “Hello . . . Hello? Is that Elisa?”

  “Yes, Thomas. Elisa.” She spoke without hint of sentimentality, as though this were a business call and they were discussing the price of violin strings.

  “Elisa, darling! I have been hoping—“

  “Just listen to me, Thomas!” she instructed firmly.

  “You need to leave Vienna soon, darling.”

  “Listen! I need to see you.”

  “Yes. Yes. When will you come?” His voice was eager. “I have been thinking that we might get passage to Argentina. Then on to the United states if you like.”

  “No! You must not do anything like that. I need you to stay where you are, Thomas! Listen to me. My father is alive! He’s alive! You can’t help him if we’re on a boat to Argentina.”

  A long silence answered to her. “Theo is alive?” he asked in disbelief. “We were told he died in a plane crash. Just beyond Munich. They’ve only just said so. Canaris heard it from the Gestapo, and—”

  Impatient, Elisa interrupted him. “Can you leave Paris for a few days?”

  “Right away? No. Maybe in a few days.”

  “When?”

  “The day after tomorrow I could—”

  “All right.” She was surprised by her control. He would do what she told him, of that she was certain. “Go to St. Johann in the Tyrol. Stay at the inn near the train station. On Sunday take your skis to the Kitzbüheler mountain. There is a marked trail to a small chalet at the Ruppen-Alp. It’s about three hours from St. Johann. If you leave early enough, no one will be on the trail. I’ll meet you at the Ruppen-Alp at nine o’clock in the morning.”

  Thomas seemed surprised by her determination and impressed by her insistence that their meeting not be observed by anyone who might take note of it. Obviously, in his position, he could not show up in a city like Vienna without being trailed. Nor could she meet him in Paris with the assurance that they were not being watched. Thomas would have preferred to purchase tickets on the next steamer from Marseilles, but he agreed to the meeting. This new, self-determined Elisa intrigued him. He agreed to the plan without hesitation. He did not ask her where she would be staying or what she had in mind after they met on the slopes of the Kitzbüheler Horn. He only wanted to see her again.

  ***

  Elisa left the telephone office. It was already late, but she walked alone through the park where she and Murphy had gone to buy the little wooden angels. The place was deserted now; the open-air market of the joyous Christmas season had disappeared as though it had never been there at all.

  She tried to find the spot where she had kissed him and he had looked at her with such breathless longing. But all the landmarks were gone, swept clean by wind and covered by fresh snow.

  The stars were out now, bright ice and fire shimmering in the night skies. She thought of her father and wondered if he watched the same stars and thought of her, imagining her free and safe in Vienna. The last few days had cleared her life of every landmark but the one irrevocable hope that Theo Lindheim was alive, that by some miracle he might come home again to his family. She tried to find some words to offer up that hope as a prayer, but there were none, so she walked to the small cellar coffeehouse where the young Spanish prodigy played his guitar.

  She sat at the same table where she had sat with Murphy and there, far away from the great booming bells of St. Stephan’s Cathedral, she let her heart rise on the music once again. When she had prayed for her father and for her own strength through melodies that soared beyond the dank walls of the little meeting place, she listened. And the answers came back to her strong and clear in the cantatas of the man who began each work with the inscription: “Jesu, juva—Jesus, help!” Had that not been Elisa’s own prayer?

  “Wachtet auf, ruft uns die stimme—Sleeper awake, a voice is calling . . . ” the music sang to her.

  I am awake, Lord, her heart sang back. Never before so awake. But, Jesu, juva! What am I to do? I am a musician. I have never done any more than play a violin. I am not brave or strong like my father. Jesu, juva! Show me what I must do.

  “Weiderstehe, doch der Sunde—Withstand firmly all sin, lest its poison infect you. Withstand firmly all sin, lest Satan bind you.” The music played the warning, and as Elisa listened, she knew that there was a bondage more terrible than her father suffered now within the walls of Dachau.

  “Gott soll allein mein Herze haben.” She sang the words so softly that no one in the crowded room could hear her. “God alone shall have my heart.” Her sweet voice whispered a reply to God, and in that answer she could see the men whom she had loved and who had loved her in return: Thomas, Franz, dear Murphy who had touched her so gently with his eyes as they had listened to these songs only a week ago. It seemed like a lifetime before, yet her heart stirred again at the memory of Murphy’s face. She frowned and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the intrusion of his memory. If God alone was to have her heart, then why did she think of this man at the moment of her vow? Was the love of a man one of the things that God demanded she stand firm against?

  The answer whispered back to her, joyfully and without a doubt: “Was Gott tut, das ist wohligetan! What God has done is rightly done!”

  Together she and Murphy had questioned the words to this song, yet now they played back to her, not as some vague philosophy, but as the answer to her own question about John Murphy. Again and again, he had appeared in her life. Suddenly she knew she loved him, and that it was good to love him. But he was gone now. He had left her, or rather she had forced him away. How would she find him again? He had vanished, like all the traces of their day together.

  Again the reply echoed: “What God has done is rightly done!” That alone was to be her answer. The young virtuoso played the last notes of his guitar and then, to a smattering of applause, he laid his instrument back in its case.

  Somehow it was those last lyrics that came back as a challenge to Elisa. What she had questioned before must now be accepted and believed. If her heart was to belong to God alone, then she must have faith that He did not make mistakes. Men might fail miserably—that was in evidence all around. But that which was done by God would not fail.

  Murphy was gone, her father in prison. Rudy Dorbransky was dead. For a moment, Elisa wavered at the challenge to believe!

  The music faded away, and Elisa’s soul quietly sang one last prayer: Lord, I believe; help my unbelief! Jesu, juva!

  ***

  The three children slept like tumbled dominos leaning against one another as the train chugged steadily into the Alps of the Tyrol. The vast majestic beauty of the mountains somehow soothed Elisa. She had lived so long beneath the oppressive tension of the city that she had almost forgotten the peace that seemed to emanate from snowcapped crags and pastel mists that clung to mountain slopes as the tops of the peaks soared and then disappeared into the clouds. She could see her own reflection in the glass of the window as though her face were superimposed on the panorama that slid past as the train wound higher toward its destination. A soft voice spoke within her: God who has created this has also created you.

  “I have been away too long,” she murmured. She hummed the melody:

  “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring;

  holy wisdom, love most bright.

  Drawn by thee, our souls aspiring

  soar to uncreated light.”

  Elisa looked at the sleeping children. They were only three of the millions now in danger. One soul, she thought, so much more beautiful than all the mountains God has created, and yet men like Otto, like Sporer, would admire the unfeeling mountains and destroy little ones like these.

  Her father had seen the irony in that. He had chosen to help children rather than run to the safety of these mountains. The thought again brought tears to Elisa’s eyes. She had not known her father, not really. She had not seen into his heart a year ago when they said farewell to Berlin together. Theo had not been grieving for the loss of his freedom or the loss of his business, or even for Germa
ny—he had grieved for the children of his nation: for those who were being molded to hate in the Hitler Youth, and for those who were being pursued by that hatred. He had grieved because there was nothing more for him to do—no way to stop it, no way to change what was happening. Had he sensed that his presence in Germany would somehow jeopardize the operation that quietly moved Jewish children from beyond the borders of the Reich to safety?

  Elisa knew her father now. She saw him clearly, as she had never seen him in all the years he had simply been her father. He was, indeed, a hero of the Fatherland. Perhaps one day those children who now marched in endless columns of the Hitler Youth would stumble on some fragment of truth left behind by men like Theo Lindheim, and they would know their souls were created to soar toward light, wisdom, and love. Then they would know they had been robbed of their childhood, lied to by men who had sold their souls. Hitler had proclaimed that his reign would last a thousand years. A thousand years of hatred and destruction. Would these mountains still stand as testimony to God’s creative love? Would there still, in the face of such evil, be hearts and souls that aspired to soar to that perfect love?

  With her eyes embracing the beauty of the Kitzbüeler Horn, Elisa prayed for all the children as she knew her father prayed. She prayed for those who marched with upraised hands and for those who ran from the tramp of the endless columns. At last her heart had found room to pity even those who could not see God’s hand in the beauty of His living creations. She prayed the darkness would not last a thousand years, and that she might live to see it end. But still, she could not pray for a man like Otto. He had forsaken all that he knew was right. He had offered himself up voluntarily. He had chosen to align himself with men like Sporer as they attacked the Judenplatz. And if he had known her heritage, no doubt he would have cheered Sporer and watched her raped without a twinge of conscience. He and other like him had turned away from light, and the shadow of their evil eclipsed the sun.