While the Music Played

by Nathaniel Lande

  Suddenly it all made sense. I had been afraid but I was starting to think that I had courage to move into unfamiliar territory.

  Brundibár and I belong together.

  THE SWEET AIR

  OF BERLIN

  We flew over checkerboard patches in a thousand shades of green. The treetops towered above Tiergarten Park. Far below us was the golden figure of Winged Victory, whose two-hundred-foot column was ringed at the base with the barrels of French cannons captured during the Great War. Poppy had told me about the city of his birth my whole life. And now at last I was here.

  Poppy turned his gaze from the plane’s window to smile at my wide-eyed amazement. “Welcome to Berlin, Max!”

  A taxi met us at Berlin’s Flughafen airport.

  “Where can I take you, Captain Mueller?”

  The driver was thinly mustached, wearing a wool cap, brimming over his face.

  “You know my name?”

  “I used to drive you to the theater every so often in the old days; you weren’t wearing a uniform then, of course. Does the name Frankie ring a bell?”

  “Yes, I remember Frankie.”

  “I used to substitute for him. Have you been away long?”

  “I’ve been living in Prague.”

  “Ah, you people in Prague. You have no idea how good we have it here.”

  “Really?” Poppy said, settling into his seat next to the driver. I sat in the back, listening closely, taking in every word, every nuance. I was intent on getting the hang of reporting. David had told me that a journalist always pays attention to details. He also told me that a good reporter knows how to listen in.

  “Sometimes a reporter needs to be invisible as they listen to the conversations around them. You learn things when you listen in. Especially if the people speaking don’t notice that you are paying attention.” David loved to give me tips.

  “Eavesdropping, you mean? That doesn’t sound ethical, David.”

  “Sometimes a good reporter needs to follow his own ethics—the ethics of getting the truth. Remember, Max, you must report the truth. It’s the highest obligation of a reporter. But to report it, you have to find it.”

  David’s words echoed in my head as I sat in the taxi listening to Poppy talk with the driver.

  “We Germans are on such good terms with the Nazis that after I park my cab at the garage, they insist on driving me home in their army trucks.”

  “That’s nothing,” Poppy replied. “In Prague, we not only drive you home, we invite you in and give you champagne, and there you can drink and smoke all you like. Afterward you can take a long, leisurely, warm bubble bath in our tub.”

  “Propaganda,” the driver said with a snort. “Do you mean to tell me all this has happened to you?”

  “Not to me,” Poppy confessed, “but it happened to my sister!”

  The driver laughed uncontrollably. I also laughed at the joke, even though I hadn’t the foggiest notion what it was about. A mere courtesy, as Poppy would say.

  Poppy loved mutterwitz—humor directed against authority.

  “Captain, what brings you home?”

  “I want to show my son Berlin.”

  “You’ve come just in time. I’m not sure how long Berlin will be Berlin.”

  The taxi dropped us off in the heart of town, and we set out on a leisurely walk to our pension. With a sense of nostalgia, my father showed off his city.

  “One of my favorite things is something all Berliners pride themselves on, Max. It’s a German sausage with a special sauce. There’s a stand at 171 Ku’damm. The longer name is Kurfürstendamm and it’s the most famous boulevard in all of Berlin.”

  It was a very wide avenue with couples promenading past fashionable shops, gated homes, and outdoor restaurants. And in contrast, on this famous street was Poppy’s favorite stand. Poppy knew what I liked, and every bite was a treat for me. It was the best grilled sausage and potato salad I had ever had, and I was quick to add a mention in my notebook.

  We walked down Unter den Linden, another fashionable boulevard, that had been widened earlier in the thirties to accommodate military parades and that was now crowded with poets and students, musicians and pretty girls. Poppy ran history for me: “In the twenties, the whole world camped on our doorstep, to watch theater, argue about art, and listen to our music. I was a part of it all. We called it Berliner Luft, the air of Berlin.”

  He reminisced, gazing at the people wandering past: “I remember going to plays and operas. You can learn a lot by just watching. The beautiful actress Marlene Dietrich used her incredible legs and smoky voice to enrapture crowds with the song, ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt,’ a sultry ‘I’m Ready for Love.’”

  Just off the Ku’damm was the Romanisches Café, with a glassed-in terrace and revolving doors. The bistro was a favorite haunt of Poppy’s, and he was well remembered there. He introduced me to the oversized proprietor, Wilhelm Furst.

  Furst was happy to see the Great Viktor Mueller. “Your father came for lunch dressed like an American cowboy with leather chaps, silver spurs, and a ten-gallon hat, and other times like a London stockbroker with a bowler and furled umbrella. The patrons loved him. His performances were always better than the cabaret downstairs,” Furst said wistfully.

  Poppy told me that the playwright Luigi Pirandello came to this café when he arrived in Berlin. He had gone in search of a production for his famous play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Had he come just a few years later, he would have found the Great Viktor Mueller, performing and holding court.

  The time passed quickly and after dinner we went to the Pension Schmidt, Poppy’s preferred place to stay in Berlin. He introduced me to its landlady, Frau Schmidt, who, I thought, was built like a world heavyweight champion.

  Hearing Poppy explain that she was held in high regard by the performers of Berlin, as she attended theater four or five nights a week always dressed to the nines, Frau Schmidt blushed and gave Poppy a small pat on the arm. Her laughter matched her full frame.

  “No opera or play can succeed in Berlin without her approval, Max. So, mind yourself!”

  “Oh, Viktor, you are so kind to humor me. Surely, I don’t have that much influence.”

  She gave a little wave of her hand and walked off to see to other guests.

  “She’s a diva,” Poppy said.

  “A diva?”

  He leaned over and whispered, “Max, Frau Schmidt is a star herself. She is a celebrated talent and can make Brundibár a hit!”

  “Poppy, do you think so?”

  He nodded as I watched the sizable retreating form of Frau Schmidt going upstairs. She looked an unlikely star to me, but Poppy seemed very sure.

  The fourth floor boasted enormous rooms where patrons stayed. Our room was round, with curved bay windows and massive oak doors fitted with silver-plated door handles. The bathrooms provided an ideal environment for vocal exercises. I could hear sopranos and tenors singing scales bouncing through the halls and walls. Of course, the Great Viktor Mueller joined the musical community right away. In a tenor voice, he sang snatches of Verdi and Puccini recalled from old opera recordings and tried to duplicate the style in improvised and inaccurate Italian. Above the showers and flushing toilets, he invented fruity vocables, la-la-la-laaaaaa-amore!

  “Guten Morgen,” Frau Schmidt called out the next morning, her arms opened in an expansive greeting. Breakfast was delicious, and she expected her guests to eat as much as she did herself, insisting that Poppy and I work our way through freshly baked rolls, cold cuts, cheese, butter, and homemade plum jam. Following the meal, Frau Schmidt had a custom of reading tea leaves for her guests, an art she said she had learned from a band of gypsies.

  She examined my cup and, after a moment’s contemplation, announced, “Ah, yes, I see a fine young lady in your future.”
r />   Sophie!

  “How does she know that, Poppy?”

  “Some people have a gift.”

  Poppy nodded at Frau Schmidt. She gave a laugh. “Don’t jest, Viktor, I’ve read your future many times. And you know the surest way to see the future is to see the past and present with clear eyes. I’ve seen your past, Viktor, and as to your present, well, I never would’ve foreseen this outfit you’re wearing.”

  She raised an eyebrow in disdain and wrinkled her forehead. “But I suppose there are reasons.”

  Poppy had told me the night before that Frau Schmidt referred to the Nazis in a tone she usually reserved for tenors who sang flat. I could tell now that she wasn’t happy that her old friend was working with the Germans. When Poppy carefully explained to Frau Schmidt that he was just working for the Ministry of Culture, she shot a dubious look his way. My father clearly loved Frau Schmidt and respected her opinion, and it was equally clear that she had serious doubts about her old friend. Somehow, I had to make sense of this tension, and had to remind myself of that tough lesson I had learned over and again in recent times, that some things just didn’t make sense. What if things were no longer right or wrong? Maybe that was the truth about the new world in which we were living? Maybe understanding this was part of growing up? I didn’t know. But I did see how the very word Nazi made Frau Schmidt frown with distaste.

  Frau Schmidt invited us to the opera that evening. When we arrived, the ushers treated her like royalty. Whenever Frau Schmidt applauded, the sound resonated through the theater, but if a note failed to reach her standard, her silence was fierce. I noticed some patrons gauged her reactions before giving their own. If she laughed, the house boomed with laughter.

  Afterward, we all went to a café on the Ku’damm for a final assessment of the evening. I focused mainly on demolishing a vast portion of a chocolate torte with an accompanying mountain of whipped cream.

  “Are you performing in Berlin, Viktor?” Frau Schmidt asked. “You do so many things we love: conducting a concert, directing a play.”

  Poppy beamed. “Not at the moment. But I plan to do all I can to make sure we have pleasant evenings.”

  For Frau Schmidt, concerts were the reason for her existence. “An audience can only make a performance better, especially when they applaud in the right places.

  “Passions these days still run high inside and outside the theater. We think about the world, we talk of art and politics. Still, we have the Schiller Theater, the Philharmonic Orchestra, and the State Opera. I have the feeling that the whole show is being put on for my benefit, except when they sing those awful army songs.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Well, it’s still a lovely town. I won’t leave Berlin unless they throw me out, and even then, I’ll only go on the last train.”

  “My affection for Germany is conflicted,” Poppy said while walking along a tree-shaded path in Grunewald Forest, where he had spent much of his childhood.

  “I was born here, yet I feel that I’m an outsider,” he confided. “Still, we return to Berlin to see how the old town is getting on. When I was young like you, Max, my Berlin was a beautiful city. I had a secret ambition to be part of the Prussian cavalry. I used to watch an old field marshal trotting by on his morning ride in this forest. He must have been about sixty, old school, silver-haired, straight as a tree, a big flowing moustache, and a bit of an actor. From that moment, I wanted to be like him, to be dressed like him, on his majestic horse, medals gleaming on my chest.”

  I tried to reassure myself that for Poppy it was about the show—the performance—and not about the ideas that were bubbling beneath them. Then I found myself thinking that this was not so reassuring after all.

  When we reached the woods, Poppy said, “This could be a setting for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “Mendelssohn?”

  “Good for you, Max.”

  The woods exuded a peaceful sense of solitude, and I felt as though I was in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Suddenly Poppy was quiet, lost in his own memories. And beside him, I was lost in my own worries.

  INTO THE LIMELIGHT

  The following evening, I saw Max Mueller as Brundibár listed in the program and knew there was no turning back from the State Opera House.

  “Are you sure I can do this?”

  “Max, all great artists get butterflies,” Poppy assured me. “Let them fly away and you’ll enjoy the moment.”

  I was part of the bill that included the State Orchestra and Das Meistersextett, elegantly dressed in white tie and tails, and formerly known as the Comedian Harmonists: the group had been renamed after Heydrich requested, after all, that only their non-Jewish members perform. So much for “working it out.”

  Standing in the shadows, I peeked into the hall from behind the curtain. During intermission, the orchestra played music by Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer.

  There were hundreds of tiered golden boxes, and in the dress circle, Hitler was with his lady, a woman named Eva Braun, surrounded by a group of well-dressed officers, all appearing as though they were posing for a photograph.

  I remembered what Hans had said: “Pretend they’re not there. And remember why you are there, what it means, what it really means.”

  The curtain rose on the second act and I was introduced. I didn’t know if the applause was for my father or partly for me. The audience had been ecstatic to welcome the Great Viktor Mueller back to Berlin.

  Before the footlights, wearing a moustache and a top hat, rouge on my cheeks, I felt alone at first. Alone and frozen. But then, something happened, something magical. I felt the distance between myself and the audience vanish, as if we became one somehow. It was something that my father could do effortlessly. It felt as though I could do it too. I was a true performer after all.

  A yellow spotlight hit me, and as I placed my hand on the brass handle of the hurdy-gurdy, there was a hush. I turned the instrument slowly at first and then a little faster. I was no longer at all afraid. I felt that I belonged there. I had a job to do and the words began to flow from me, clearly and powerfully, over the stage and directly out to the audience.

  Music played, and I sang the second stanza from Brundibár, my voice loud and assured.

  The performance over, I held my breath, exhaling with relief when I saw the audience rise from their seats, clapping, demanding an encore. But I didn’t have one. So instead I just sang the song again, and after another round of applause, the orchestra played an oom-pah-pah-ing beer-barrel polka, as I pretended to play along. The audience, including Hitler and his generals, clapped along with the music.

  “Music’s for the poor and wealthy,

  If you wish to remain healthy,

  Listen to my songs and dances,

  They will satisfy your fancies,

  Waltz and polka, fox-trot, gallop

  All my nice tunes give a wallop!

  Dance to them, go slower, faster,

  Welcome, please, your music master,

  Good and kind, strongest by far

  Here I am, your Brundibár!”

  Frau Schmidt was in the crowd on that April night. I heard her call, “Bravo!”

  Her voice soared over the crowd. I had won her approval.

  The Great Viktor Mueller had given the Führer a birthday celebration, and he’d apparently enjoyed the show. I had been part of it, and I felt that I had been divided in two. Part of me felt shame and confusion and another was proud of my performance. But I kept hearing Hans’s argument with my father and felt that I had been a part of something that didn’t include me at all.

  “Last night really was a triumph. We’ve been invited to the Berghof,” Poppy announced the next morning, opening a packet delivered by courier and sealed with red wax.

  “Berghof?”

  “Eagl
e’s Nest. It’s Hitler’s home in the Bavarian Alps.”

  “Wow, are there eagles there?”

  Poppy sat in an alcove below a window in our room.

  “When do we go?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t have to sing again for the Führer.

  “We don’t,” said Poppy. “This is a trip I must make alone.”

  I frowned. “But, Poppy, I—”

  “Max, enough!” he said, whipping around to face me. “This is a unique and unusual time. I want you back in Prague.”

  He took a deep breath.

  I scowled and pushed my potatoes around my plate.

  “I’m playing Hitler, shouldn’t I meet him? Study him up close?”

  “You’re playing Brundibár, and you’re just fine. Take it from me, Max, that is as close as you need to get.”

  Not an hour later, there was another knock at the door. Frau Schmidt had come to say her goodbyes. She also handed Poppy an envelope and a briefcase with a camera inside. I caught a glimpse of the camera, and a letter before Poppy slipped it inside his jacket pocket. It read, For your eyes only.

  “Goodbye, dear Max,” said Frau Schmidt, walking over to me. “It was a delight to meet you and attend your debut.”

  “I hope you visit Prague someday. We have a wonderful opera house.”

  Frau Schmidt smiled. “I would love that, Max.”

  She turned. “Viktor, I wish you Godspeed.”

  Poppy embraced her, and excused himself from the room, returning a few minutes later.

  “Poppy, what’s that letter?”

  “Nothing, Max, just a message. A note of good wishes.”

  “And the camera?”

  “I have some pictures to take.”

  He sighed and looked away, effectively ending my questions.