BOOKS by NATHANIEL LANDE
Cricket: A Novel
Mindstyles, Lifestyles: A Compressive Overview of
Today’s Life Changing Philosophies
Stages: Understanding How You Make Moral Decisions
Self-Health: The Life-long Fitness Book
The Emotional Maintenance Manual
The Moral Responsibility of the Press: A Graphic Folio
Blueprinting: Rebuilding Your Relationships and Career
The Cigar Connoisseur: An Illustrated History and
Guide to the World’s Finest Cigars
Dispatches from the Front: A History of the American War Correspondent
The 10 Best of Everything: An Ultimate Guide for Travelers
The Life and Times of Homer Sincere, Whose Amazing Adventures
are Documented by his True and Trusted Friend Rigby Canfield:
An American Novel
Spinning History: Politics and Propaganda in World War II
Copyright © 2020 by Nathaniel Lande
E-book published in 2020 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Sean M. Thomas
*Don’t include cover design credit for Westerns unless it’s in the print version
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Any historical figures and events referenced in this book
are depicted in a fictitious manner. All other characters
and events are products of the author’s imagination, and
any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-982632-35-9
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-982632-34-2
Fiction / Historical / World War II
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
They were the dreamers of dreams, the singers of songs. They were the music makers. They would not hear nor play nor love without each other. This is a prelude to their experience, an overture to who they were and how they arrived on the shores of friendship.
It is twelve o’clock. The hands on my watch have come together, the watch that is my prized possession, given to me by my father to always make sure “you keep your appointments.” It is a timepiece that has gone through everything with me—the worst, the darkest times—a constant companion. It is a very personal thing, part of me, a vintage silver army wristwatch from the First World War, with slender Breguet hands, hands whose points extend out into tiny circles at their extremities. The second hand arrives at six o’clock. It’s a twilight number, marking out that period between day and night, and this hand moves with delicate, musical rhythm, taking small jumps, one at a time, keeping a perfect beat. It has black Arabic numerals and the number twelve was once a deep, rich crimson, but is a slightly faded red by now.
In my pocket are strips of red felt. I have always carried them. Like the watch, these are signatures of who I was and who I am, a reminder of the perfect pitch I inherited from my father, the Great Viktor Mueller, a reminder of how things were. A reminder of the music I always heard. On my lap is a red notebook, the most recent of the many I’ve kept since childhood, in which I am writing these memories.
Prague 1955
The church outside Prague was full. Those who had somehow made it through everything, had survived that terrible time, that terrible place, that grotesque camp that I still visited every night in my dreams—had come to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the end of the war. I was just one of them and had come back with the rest, the few, and like them I had to face my past. One way or another, we all, those who had come through, faced it every day. But this was different, being there, going back, not knowing how much and how vividly it would return.
When it was all over in 1945 and the camps closed, only a few had survived the place where I had been. The world we had known then and before the war, all that had been taken away. There was almost nothing, almost nobody left. Most of us moved on alone, traveled alone to wherever we were going, wherever fate or choice—if we were lucky enough to have any choice left—would take us. I’m still here, and now I am back where it all started, where it all unfolded. I am here, somehow I survived. Back then, so long ago, when I was so much younger and still untainted by seeing what I would see, I used to think of strength and courage, of heroism and kindness and resilience and God or the gods, all the curious, unknowable forces, whatever and whoever they were, that save and condemn us, that shape our lives. Now I just call it luck. Nothing more. Plain, dumb, ugly, stupid luck. Destiny is a concept that means nothing to me now.
I survived because of luck and because of a community that took me in, that withstood, until—
THE BELLS
TOLLED MIDNIGHT
I sat waiting for the service to begin in the ornate baroque church. I thought of how my father had once marveled at the familiar biblical scenes, fading but still there, enduring on that impossibly lofty ceiling, and a choir sounding like angels singing Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. Gazing at me from behind the altar was a stunning painting created by a gifted artist I had come to know so well—Norbert Troller, who had also been at Terezín. It was a very large painting of redbrick fortress walls. At the fortress’s entrance, where the gates once stood, Troller had painted a landscape of fruit trees, clouds, and mountains, inviting a notion of freedom in a quiet distance.
Stirring rhythms came from an orchestra consisting of flutes, piccolos, oboes, clarinets, horns, trumpets, trombones, strings, timpani, and bass drums. I listened to the quiet notes; the last time I had heard the Requiem, I was a boy. I remembered when I would lie awake at night and hear music rising through my soul, and I would feel warm and secure. I would think that no one had a better father than mine; no one could have a better, more charmed life. And I would think of myself growing up, what I might become, when I wasn’t a child anymore, when I stepped into manhood, when I became somebody, some perfect fusion of my parents with the elegance of my mother and the talent of my father. That was and would continue to be such a fine time to be alive, I thought then. I would always be happy and loved, I would always hear beautiful music, immeasurable, almost touchable but always out of reach in its invisible dimensions. There was always music, the sweet dialogue between piano and strings and the deep-throated horns, before the Germans swept across the continent and occupied Prague.
The memories came unbidden, unwelcome, assaulting me as I sat there in that church, these bold visions with their vivid colors and jarring sounds. I closed my eyes and the past unfolded before me. I remembered that early morning in September with those new dissonant chords: the screaming sirens, the throttling motorcycles, rumbling and smoking tanks, the minatory clacking of footsteps, the sharp rhythm and relentless pace of unstoppable platoons invading our landscape. Prague’s passing parade had a new song.
The Requiem sung that night was a refrain in honor of all who had died—it overpowered me and overwhelmed me, its beauty somehow wrapped in horror. I could take no more, not a moment more of the sound or thoughts and images, all those memories pressing in against me from all sides. I left my pew quietly and sought respite, refuge in the cold air outside. In the bitter chill of night, I walked down to a railway track below the stone steps, past a wreath of green and red holiday lights hanging from paneled church doors whose brass hardware seemed to be washed in pewter and was as old as
the republic itself. There, as far as I could see, were rows of scintillant flickering candles, lights of hope and life, their flames bouncing around inside glasses along the tracks, just below a rising silver mist. I followed their procession, the lights leading me on, leading me back, leading to my childhood, returning to a time standing still, frozen in the past.
TEREZÍN
Through this fog that seemed to me the natural habitat of ghosts, some compulsion drew me onward, and I walked inside the gates. Beyond grass-covered slopes was the church’s bell tower, housing a blue clock—long broken and itself frozen in time and never repaired. The church was supposed to be a protector of the weak, the guardian of children, a place for prayer and hope, but it was here, within these walls that I saw the worst of things; it was here where humanity paused. I wondered then as I had wondered countless times before why God had abandoned that church, that place, and so many of us through those times.
In front of the church, on the many squares, were patches of gray-green fields where children had walked and played in their strange uniforms, wearing stars on their jackets, stars over their hearts. The children played in barrack yards, went beyond the walls to work in gardens, went to improvised schools. Secretly they drew pictures and wrote poems, for a year or two, depending upon their luck, as the trains to the east continually came and went. They did what we couldn’t and somehow saw past the endless lines of those arriving, leaving, of those queuing for meager rations, saw past the famine and fear, the beatings, the funeral carts and infirmaries, the summary executions. They heard it all: the tears, the screams, the shouts of SS men, the roll calls, and the faint mumblings of prayer at curfew. They witnessed it all, yet still they saw or somehow made themselves see that thing that Norbert Troller was trying to capture—that sense of hope, the beauty beyond the village gates, past the ribbons of highways—and they imagined road markers heading toward Prague, toward freedom. They acted out fairy tales and sang in an opera called Brundibár. Did they ever imagine death?
There were still rusty railroad tracks near the small town with tree-lined streets, tracks leading to Terezín and another to Auschwitz, where the last doors were thrown open with a breath of fresh air falling upon the bleary-eyed, tired, unwashed, stumbling, terrified human cargo. The passengers filed in single columns to the deceptive strains of a quartet playing a sweet tune. Then the musicians stopped playing when an officer selected who would go one way and who the other. Then the music started up again.
An approaching winter wind carried some of the strains of the Requiem from the church, and with the music came memories that seemed like a lifetime ago, of my friends. David was my best friend. And a picture of Sophie was conjured up from somewhere within, because we had first heard this mass together. I remember how Poppy, my father, used to say that friends are treasures that come our way only occasionally and we must be sure to spot them when they do. A peculiar sense of inner peace enveloped me, amazed me as it did so, along with an awareness of a time and of people, this company of heroes there beside me who, like me, clung on to some ineradicable hope bolstered by the awareness that there really were things to live for, and that someday we, or some of us, would be able to reclaim the shattered pieces of our lives and compose new beginnings for us all. That is what we hoped for, the dream that we all shared. Sophie, David, and the others, they were my friends, they were with me, they saved me. We had vowed to save one another, to make it together. They changed my life forever. This is how it was. This is how it all began.
Part I
Prague
THE TOPPER
Prague 1938
“Let’s face it, Max; you need to open up. I’m incredibly smart and charming, of course, but”—David snapped his fingers—“you need a girlfriend!”
I rolled my eyes. I should try to be more like David. As usual, his black hair desperately needed cutting. But he pulled it off, managing to look like a young reporter should, always breathless, always in search of the next story. Right now, the next story was my romantic life.
David laughed. “I’m all you need in terms of a friend, but have you ever thought about having an actual girlfriend?”
“I’m perfectly okay with Poppy and Hans,” I said. Even as I said it, I realized I sounded stupid. I was just reaching twelve years old, racing to become fourteen, skipping over as many years as possible. But was I okay with just David and my father and his best friend as my social circle? Brilliant musicians they might be, but David was right. I should want a girlfriend. But I dreaded the sweaty palms and stammering that overcame me whenever I tried to talk to a girl.
David snapped his fingers again. “The written word, Max. That’s your answer. It so often is.”
David acknowledged that I was, as usual, not quite as quick as him: “Letters, my friend, letters! That’s it! Boys our age have pen pals, Max. At least consider it. I may not always be around, and I can’t teach you everything. Well, most things, but not everything. And she’ll never know you’re nervous.” He paused and grinned. “As long as you’re not actually shaking while you write. You’ll be fine. You’ll be a hit.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I sighed. I was still struggling to make sense of the world. David was always a step ahead to know things, to understand. Unlike me, David was always sure of himself. His powers of persuasion were impossible to resist. He could even convince himself of anything. I remember the first time he told me about it all on the way to school a few months earlier. We were crossing a square and he stopped me in my tracks. “Look around you, Max. What do you see?” I shrugged. He pointed from person to person. “Stories, my friend. Everyone has a story, and I am curious to know them all. Max, it’s perfectly clear. I’m going to be a writer, a journalist. I’m going to tell people the truth. And you know how I know? Because I looked at myself in the mirror last night and told myself that I am going to make it, I am going to find out the truth and tell people.” I shook my head and he smiled, but I guess you had to be like that if you had ambitions to be a world-famous journalist. He planned to start with becoming the most famous one in Prague, then Czechoslovakia, then the world.
Right then, I knew resistance was futile. “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll write a letter to a girl. It will improve my writing at least. After all, I’m going to be your next ace reporter.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Max,” David said. “As editor of the school paper, it’s my job to keep out the riffraff.”
“Riffraff ? ” David used phrases I wasn’t too sure of.
“Riffraff. Undesirables.”
“Now, why would I need another friend when I have you?” I asked.
David Grunewald was my best friend. He was a topper, a word I made up. He was tops—in friendship, in school, in music. In persuasion. He was a musician, a writer, a footballer—a topper. He had been with me from my earliest memories, he’d helped me through the very sad days when my mother’s illness was terminal, and I imagined he’d be with me always.
“So since you know everything, who will be receiving my letters?”
“Sophie, that’s who. She’s the daughter of a friend of my family. She lives in Austria. She’s perfect for you. She’s musical, she’s pretty, she’s a girl. Perfect. Write about things you like, what you want to know, about yourself. With every word, you’ll be making a new friend.”
The thing about David was that he really made you believe everything he said.
That evening I sat at the desk in my room, laid out a crisp sheet of writing paper, dipped my pen in the ink, and set out to write my first letter. I wasn’t sure what to write at first. I was nervous, beginning with a rough draft, just the way all writers do, David said. Gradually I began expressing myself, even better than I thought I could.
May 14, 1938
Dear Sophie,
I’m happy that David suggested I write to you and that you like music.
Music is part of me, too, a great part of my life. I came by it naturally. My father is the conductor Viktor Mueller.
We live in an apartment in Malá Strana, the old quarter, near the castle. Nearby there are parks where I play, and concert halls I love, and classic boulevards where I walk, usually with my father.
In Old Town, there’s a telegraph building, where messages are received and sent. Sometimes I pass by, hearing the keys clattering away, hoping that I will receive a message from my mother. It’s just a silly thought, I know, because she died when I was little, but somehow, I still hope. I often go to Prague Castle. It’s in a beautiful place across the river, where there are a million steps. It’s like a castle in a dream or a fairy story.
This is a city of red-tiled roofs and flowers, and a tram that introduces her bells as she swings around the corner. Even the trams have a musical rhythm.
But something is happening now, and I see my father and others whispering about the flags that are appearing everywhere, red flags with their black swastikas on white circles, and I wonder what it all means.
Maybe I’ve not written enough in my first letter to you.
I hope you’ll write me.
Max Mueller
For days that turned into a week, and more, I wondered if she’d got the letter, if she’d read it—but at last, a lilac envelope appeared in my mailbox, and I just knew. I ran up to the music room, grabbed my father’s silver letter opener, almost panting as I slit open the envelope. It was like a gift.
May 28, 1938
Dear Max,
Thank you for your letter. I’m pleased to learn about you, to meet you through your words. Well now, I love music too. I don’t like to brag, but my great-uncle was Gustav Mahler.
While the Music Played Page 1