Academy of the Dead

by Christopher Wright

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Blake. It's just that I noticed the lights on." Martin Smith sounded embarrassingly self-effacing. As quickly as he'd arrived he was gone, the library door closing almost silently behind him. Blake took a key from his pocket and locked the door on the inside. "I should have done this when we came in."

  Matt realized that Zoé had stayed looking at the microfiche reader. She was probably embarrassed to be seen here by Smith, since he would recognize her from the small orchestra he conducted in the town in the evening. He wondered whether to mention Martin Smith's self-styled alternative Czech name of Martin Kovar, but maybe the man had told Zoé's orchestra about it in confidence. Fancy Kovar meaning Smith, or Smith meaning Kovar. It only confirmed what he'd decided a few minutes ago: someone who spoke only English and French didn't stand a chance at guessing what these Slavic words meant.

  "Excuse the interruption." Blake wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Now, where were we?"

  Zoé sounded surprisingly enthusiastic. "You are telling us about some missing music manuscripts."

  "Ah yes." Blake tapped the screen. "Young Hana's father Jakob possessed the music manuscripts in 1940, because according to these records that is when he showed Vasek Tesar's violin to the Academy principal. The Tesar family had loaned the violin to Dvorak when he went to the United States. He used it in 1893 to write what you probably know as the New World Symphony."

  "Dvorak's Ninth," Matt added, feeling that Blake was talking down to him.

  "Yes, his Ninth," said Blake distantly. "It would seem that the Prague Academy was hoping to be presented with the Tesar violin on permanent loan -- in return for admitting Hana."

  "Buying favors?"

  "It still happens, Mr. Rider. However, we needn't concern ourselves with the violin. One instrument looks very much like another. If we found it, how could we prove it was once a property of Vasek Tesar? Dvorak is unlikely to have carved his name on it when it was loaned to him."

  "And how could you prove ... ?"

  "...That the music manuscripts are genuine?"

  Matt just nodded, but Zoé seemed to know the answer.

  "That is easy," she said. "The way the composer writes the notes on the paper, even the type of pen he uses, is what you would call a giveaway, Matt. And of course the paper, it has to be right. Is that not so, Monsieur Blake?"

  Blake smiled. "I didn't realize you were a musician."

  "Zoé runs the town orchestra," Matt explained. "Martin Smith is the conductor." He wasn't quite sure why he mentioned Smith, but it was interesting to see Blake's face.

  "Please don't refer to that man." Blake seemed to be over-reacting. Maybe he was keen to show his contempt for Martin Smith. "Mr. Rider, let me explain about the missing music. It's not only Smetana and Dvorak's music we're looking for. In October 1787, Mozart's opera Don Giovanni had its debut in Prague, with young Mozart himself conducting the orchestra. Mozart was a prolific composer, and again," Blake tapped the screen, "these records indicate that Vasek Tesar owned some original Mozart pieces, which would almost certainly be unheard of today. But the main treasures I'm after are the preliminary workings of Dvorak and Smetana."

  "And they'd be valuable?" Matt asked.

  "Over the years there have been whispers of an unknown symphony by Dvorak."

  "But Dvorak, he wrote only nine symphonies," Zoé said in surprise.

  "Nine are all we know about, Mrs. Rider, so there may indeed be a wealth of music to unearth. Maybe only a partially completed symphony, perhaps the outline for his tenth. It is of course imperative that no one is aware of this search, or I may find someone will manage to get there first."

  Matt knew he'd already shown an appalling ignorance of Czech composers and the Czech language, so maybe Blake was about to pay him to drop the case and forget about it. He decided to jump before he was pushed. "Give the job to a PI in the Czech Republic." He laughed, even though it probably sounded slightly forced. "At least they'd be able to go round Prague asking questions."

  Blake moved away from the microfiche reader and sat on one of the library tables. "It is like this," he explained. "Right now there is a renewal of nationalistic fervor in the Czech Republic. I am English. Do you really think I would be told the truth by a Czech investigator?"

  "Surely you could trust someone in the Prague Academy," Matt said. "The manuscripts could be tucked away in one of their cupboards. Ask someone there to organize a hunt."

  "Mr. Rider," Blake said, sounding slightly annoyed, "I would put a notice in one of the classical music magazines if I wanted the whole world to start looking. I've come to you because you have already proved you are good, and I believe you know the meaning of the word confidential."

  "I'll need to know where to start." Matt decided the man was not exactly helping himself by taking this attitude.

  "Allow me to make a suggestion. I don't know much about the Internet, but I believe some people use it to trace their family history. There are even Jewish websites, so I have heard. Find what happened to Hana Eisler and maybe you will be able to locate those manuscripts. Who knows, Hana could have ended her days in a concentration camp."

  "It would be easier if I spoke Czech, or could even read it."

  Blake shook his head. "Most of the Jews who search for their European roots are American, so surely most of the websites will be in English. If I knew how to do it I would get on with it myself. But I don't, so I'm paying you."

  "We haven't discussed a fee," Matt reminded him.

  "Payment by results. If you don't come up with anything, you don't get paid."

  Matt turned to leave. "Then you can forget it."

  Blake caught him by the shoulder. "Please do not be so hasty, Mr. Rider. These manuscripts could be worth serious money. Find them and I will be generous."

  "What do you think, Zoé?" It was just as well to find out now rather than wait until they were home and it was too late to avoid an argument.

  Zoé thought for only a fraction of a second. "I think Matt needs some of the money before he starts the job."

  Blake nodded sympathetically. "I am prepared to buy the airline tickets -- and advance the money for a basic hotel when he goes to Prague."

  "I have to go to Prague?"

  "Of course you do, Mr. Rider. You have to bring back the missing manuscripts."

  Chapter Seven

  1942

  Masaryk Railway Station

  Prague

  Czechoslovakia

  HANA IS frozen with fear. If only Papa had come. Papa should be here now instead of hiding in the little attic. But Papa is a Jew and he doesn't like all this fighting. Grandpapa Erich had been a Jew. Would he have fought? Memories of Grandpapa seem distant, like what is left of a dream on waking. Grandmama Pavla had not been a Jew. Had Grandmama been a brave woman?

  The train is moving closer again. Hana can see the tall funnel of the locomotive as it noses its way round the wooded bend below the hill, like a long caterpillar. Maybe the German soldiers have come to meet someone on the train, and are not here for her. She hears one of the soldiers shout, but cannot bring herself to turn.

  Chapter Eight

  "WHAT ARE you doing?"

  Matt swung round from his computer. He'd not heard Zoé come into the small room they used as a study. "I've found a reference to Vasek Tesar on the Internet. It says he was a gifted musician."

  "That is what Monsieur Blake and I have already told you. So why are you looking?"

  Matt sighed with mock impatience. "I'm a detective. Blake tells me something, you tell me something, but I need to check it out for myself. It's how I'm going to work if I take this case on. Anyway, you didn't tell me Tesar was a composer."

  "That I did not know."

  "I'm not surprised. It seems that none of his pieces has survived. His music was considered too controversial for the time. It caused riots in the Prague concert halls."

  "The same thing happened to Stravinsky at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Pari
s," Zoé told him. "It was the premiere of his ballet The Rite of Spring in nineteen thirteen. At first there were a few laughs and objections, but within minutes the audience started to scream and shout with rage. It takes the time for people to adjust to a new sound."

  "Maybe Tesar's pieces would go down better today. Dvorak's tenth symphony? Blake was making that up. He's really after Vasek Tesar's music."

  Zoé tutted. "I am going to bed. Try not to be late. Is it not possible to do all this searching at work?"

  "I don't want Ken to find out. Give me an hour and I'll join you."

  Zoé was just going out of the door when he called her back. "This site is a catalogue of Bohemian musicians of the nineteenth century. It says that Vasek Tesar's daughter Pavla wasn't only an accomplished violinist, she was so pretty she caught the eye of Smetana and Dvorak. She played in Smetena's orchestra where he valued her skills while composing. He'd write a few bars and she'd play them for him on his piano."

  Zoé yawned loudly. "Lucky Monsieur Smetana. You are keeping me and the baby up. Peut-être you will find all you need if you keep looking."

  "Do you think Pavla Tesar was having an affair with Dvorak and Smetana?"

  "Dvorak was a committed Catholic, so I doubt it." Zoé yawned again, although it sounded false. "Smetana, he died of syphilis. He may have slept around a bit, as you would put it, but people catch syphilis from kissing an infected person, and even from public baths and toilet seats. You do not only get it from a prostitute. Is that all?"

  "It will have to be. You can find out a lot on the Internet, but there's always something vital missing."

  Zoé tapped her hand over her open mouth as though stifling a yawn, but made no sound. "As we say in France, c'est la vie. Goodnight."

  He blew her a kiss and returned to the monitor. He already had the names Vasek and Pavla: father and daughter. This website even told him that Vasek Tesar was born in 1826 and his daughter Pavla in 1861. But the trail went cold at this point. Blake said that Pavla Tesar married Erich Eisler in ... 1882, but he couldn't find anything on Erich Eisler. It would be fairly easy to dig deeper to research an English family. He'd done it for lawyers using birth, marriage and death certificates, and old census and parish records. But he had no idea how to do it with a family who'd lived in Prague before 1940, especially as he couldn't speak a word of Czech.

  The door opened again and Zoé came over. Her eyes gleamed. "Me, I have been thinking, and I do not feel so tired. Hana Eisler would not be the only descendant of Vasek Tesar who could have been given the music. So I found myself wondering how many descendents there could be, and whether we could contact them."

  "Too many. Think of your great-grandfather. You think he's yours."

  Zoé looked puzzled. "Of course he is."

  "He is, but there are probably twenty or thirty people in France who also say he's theirs. You don't know anything about most of them, and they don't know about you."

  "I am not sure I understand."

  Matt opened his notepad and picked up a pencil. Computers might be clever but sometimes you couldn't beat old-fashioned paper. He marked two Xs. "Let's say these are Vasek Tesar and his wife -- Hana's great grandparents. I don't know how many children they had but let's say three." He marked three Xs below the first two.

  "I am sure in those days they would have had more than three."

  "Okay, but we'll guess that only three of them went on to marry and have children. That takes us to Hana's grandmother Pavla. So, following my theory of threes, Hana's grandmother Pavla is one of three children. They all have three children who marry and have children -- three each again -- which now makes three lots of nine. So Hana Eisler could have twenty-six brothers, sisters and cousins, and they'd all be able to trace their family line back to Vasek Tesar."

  "It is complicated."

  "And if Vasek Tesar has four children instead of three, and so does everyone else along the line, Hana is sharing her great-grandfather with ... forty-seven others. That was in 1940. By now there'd be another two generations, which would make it ... " He did his sums and looked up. "Six hundred. You're right, we've got a problem. Any of these six hundred descendents could have the manuscripts."

  "And how are you going to contact six hundred people -- especially if most of them are dead?"

  "Blake suggested using a medium, but I think he was joking."

  "We do not know any mediums," Zoé said.

  "Your conductor's mother runs a little sideline in contacting the dead."

  "Martin Smith? He has never told us."

  "I'm glad he's kept a few surprises back from you. I was starting to feel a little jealous."

  Zoé yawned again, and this time it sounded genuine. "Turn the computer off and we will have a big cuddle in bed. Oui?"

  It sounded better than working for Blake. But there was something staring him in the face about Hana, something that Blake had said, but he couldn't see it. Maybe after a good night's sleep he'd get there. He pressed the shut-down key, the hard drive light flickered, and the monitor went black.

  *

  MATT DIDN'T get the undisturbed rest he'd been hoping for. Finally, after what seemed like several hours of worrying about web searches, he sat up in bed. The digital clock showed just after five. Zoé was snoring gently and seemed to be having no trouble sleeping. He slipped out of bed and gripped the door handle firmly. It was the only way to stop it making a noise.

  Across the landing in the little study he switched on the computer and went to the bathroom while the machine was warming up. He decided to risk using the flush, for Zoé would rather be woken than discover the loo unflushed later.

  Soon he was back with the searches he'd given up on last night.

  He typed in Genealogy, Jew and Prague. Several sites came up, but they were the Jewish websites he'd already looked at.

  The words Hana Eisler, as a complete phrase, produced no hits so he tried Eisler and Prague, the words to be found in any order. This produced several references to various Eislers in Prague, but these seemed to have no obvious connection with Hana or music, or even with Vasek Tesar.

  He tried all the relevant words he could think of, in various combinations, and decided it was time for coffee. Slipping down to the kitchen meant avoiding the squeak on the stairs, and he'd learned long ago which tread to avoid. As the kettle was coming to the boil he remembered what had been bothering him. Something that Blake had said last night. Hana could have ended her days in a concentration camp. Concentration camps. Places where the Nazis detained Jews and other unwanted citizens to face forced labor or death -- most probably both.

  He took his coffee upstairs but in his eagerness forgot to avoid the loose tread. It squeaked loudly. He froze, but no sound came from the bedroom. He crept the rest of the way and sat in front of the monitor. A combination of Prague and concentration camp brought up many references, with the name Terezín featuring prominently.

  Within a few minutes he discovered that Terezín was only a few miles north of Prague, on the River Vltava. It seemed that a substantial number of Jews had remained at Terezín until the end of the war. Maybe Hana had survived the terrors of the camp.

  His optimism was short lived. The next search brought up a list of names. Record of Czechoslovakian people who, according to information recovered on the liberation of the camp in February 1945, died at Terezín. Under the letter E he found Eisler, Hana, an orphan child aged 12. Died June 9 1942.

  A sudden feeling of loss came over him. Here was the end of a short life. Whether Hana had died from disease, malnourishment or brutality, the site didn't say. But clearly the girl's life had ended in tragedy. A noise behind him made him jump.

  Zoé stood there. "Why did you let me sleep late?" she demanded. "Now I will have to miss breakfast."

  Matt pointed to the screen. "Hana's dead."

  Zoé leaned forward and read the few words that were hardly an epitaph, just a cold clinical statement. "I am so sorry. Is this the end of your wor
k for Monsieur Blake?"

  He could see that Blake might lose interest if there was no longer a living trail to follow. "I'm going to print this page and think about it. I don't have to say anything to Blake yet. Come on, let's get dressed or we'll both be late for work."

  As he switched on the printer Zoé made no move. "Maybe there are things we do not understand."

  Matt stared at the clock for the first time. Eight o'clock. It was amazing where time went when you were on the Internet. "Such as?"

  "Things we will never understand because we do not speak the Czech language."

  "About the only Czech I know is that Smith means Kovar, and I didn't know that until you told me yesterday. Perhaps Blake means Eisler for all I know. Perhaps he's a descendant looking for the family's music."

  "What is a smith?"

  "Someone who uses a hammer to make things out of metal."

  "Ah, he makes the shoes for the 'orses. Oui? And what is a Blake?"

  "Nothing, as far as I know. You can't translate a name unless it means something."

  Zoé seemed deep in thought. "How could Blake mean Eisler? It is easy if it is a job, like a carpenter."

  Matt retrieved the page from the printer. "Carpenter? That's good. Let's see if carpenter means something in Czech. I'll search for an on-line dictionary."

  "Shut the computer down, Matt. We are both going to be late for work."

  "I'll see what I can find on Ken's computer in my lunch break." He felt excited by Zoé's suggestion.

  Zoé had other ideas. "If Hana Eisler is dead, maybe the mother of Martin Smith could contact her for you. You told me his mother is a medium."

  *

  AT LUNCHTIME, Ken said he had to go to the bank.

  "Take a gun with you," Matt suggested, "and get me enough for a new car."

  Ken just snorted.

  This was the right time to ask the question. "Is it okay if I use the computer? I want to look up some names on the Internet."

  "A name for the baby, is it? Take my advice, kiddo, and let the in-laws choose it. You'll have a lot less hassle that way."

  Matt didn't reply. It Ken wanted to think he was looking up babies' names, that was fine.

  "Meanings are important," Ken said with an embarrassed smile. "My mother used to tell me that Kenneth means Handsome."