I put my head in Anna’s lap and sobbed.
For all my life, I had been focusing on each day as it happened, on what each day, each moment needed, struggling to stay alive, to love my friends, to do whatever I could. Now the true horror of it all was hitting me, and I felt unmoored, lost, broken. I wondered what it had all been for. I wondered if I still had a life in front of me. I wondered if there was still a purpose, a reason to carry on.
That night, I saw the Milky Way; it was like a river of stars. I desperately looked for Sophie among them. Sophie, whose gentle presence gave me enough reason to know that providence had decided that such light could fill darkness. She was the brightest of them all. When dawn breaks, and each day begins, in the province of my imagination, I see myself at the end of a long road, and on each side there are tall green pines and sycamores swaying in a summer wind, and walking toward me is Sophie wearing a smile of smiles, walking step by step, leaving footfalls from a thousand yesterdays.
There were countless numbers of displaced Jews all over Europe at the end; they all carried a strong wish to rebuild their lives, hoping to immigrate anywhere. As before the war, their efforts were limited by quotas put in place by the British, but many managed to make their way over mountains to Europe’s coasts, and some gained passage to Palestine on clandestine boats.
Jewish families crowded onto rickety ships attempting to make it through the British blockade. Discovery meant arrest. Despite the risks, sixty-four ships delivered more than seventy thousand people to Palestinian waters. Another fifty thousand were stopped and taken to British refugee camps on Cyprus, in the Mediterranean. But the brightest moment came for those who managed to get a visa, and Anna had secured one for David, knowing he might soon see his parents, and sent word to them.
I was going to miss him with all my heart. The Topper!
“I guess this is it. I’m finally going to make it to Palestine,” he said, standing in the front hall of the pension surrounded by his few bags. “I wouldn’t have made it without you, Max. I’d be gone and you know it.”
I had tears in my eyes. “Tom and Huck to the end.”
David patted me on the shoulder. “Now I’m not sure how I’m going to manage without you. We’ve been through so much together.”
I felt an emptiness in my heart. “I miss you already, David.” I tried to smile.
“Not as much as I’ll miss you, Max.”
“We’ll be pen pals until I join you. Someday soon.”
Perhaps if I believed this enough, it would come true. David looked at me, eyes bright, and nodded his head.
“We thought we’d run out of tomorrows, but look at us. We made it, and here we are, tomorrow is here.”
He pulled me close and hugged me. “You’re my best friend, the best friend I could ever have.”
I nodded. “You too.”
I could barely stand it. Who was left? What was left of my past, my whole life?
“When you come visit, I’ll have a paper up and running. The Palestinian Post.” He smiled.
“You’re a great reporter, David. You taught me everything I know.”
“Keep your notebooks, Max. Never let them go.”
“Maybe I should censor any passages I’ve written about you!”
“All right, enough of this mutual admiration stuff,” David said, tying his scarf around his neck. I escorted him to the relocation center.
In his pocket, David had a copy of Yeats. He always had a book nearby. Turning to me, he recited, “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends. Put that in your book!”
“Well spoken by my editor!”
“You’ll come and see me?”
I smiled. “Of course. I’ll be there.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
David saluted. The last thing I saw of him was his maroon scarf flying behind him as he walked through the entrance.
I knew he would become a journalist of distinction, grounded in curiosity and truth, fighting with determination—a teacher, a witness. The heads of the Royal Typewriter Company would certainly be inspired to name their most advanced model after him, a fine piece of work named the Royal Topper, which would without exception produce words and narratives that would be remembered for all time by a congregation of editors, so fortunate to be sitting at the same desk, all with green eyeshades, all tapping, each confident that the Topper was destined to be the finest among them, a journalist’s journalist.
As the door closed behind him, I felt more alone than ever.
PASSAGE TO LONDON
A British officer arrived and invited Anna and me to come with him to the station. I was going to London. My trip had been postponed for too long. While we were standing in line for my papers to be reviewed and stamped for Great Britain, there was a man in front of us. “I see you are going to America,” the customs official said to him. “That’s a pretty long trip.”
In an instant, the man responded, “Not so long.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“You don’t want to know.”
A lot had happened in the world. Ships went to the bottom of the sea, soldiers died on blood-swept battlefields, families were lost, a war was fought, music was almost silenced.
He couldn’t begin to describe his camp and years of suffering. He carried a lot of baggage, and I knew how heavy it was.
I was easily accommodated in my own berth as the night train took us to London. I snuggled under my blanket, looking out the window, and calling out to Anna every so often, just to hear her voice, to see if it was all real. My emotions must have been very like those of someone who had been forgotten and locked away, only to find himself suddenly outside. I had savored the sweet taste of freedom, yet I returned in my mind, again and again, to a place inside those dark gates. I was exhausted and gripped with such foreboding about my future that my mind retreated from any notion of what the next years might bring. My thoughts rummaged through and fiddled with the past. I looked over to the night table near my bed and saw the one companion that had never left me: my red notebook. I had not revisited it for a time and turned to one of the last entries before the raft. It was about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
It was an extravagant voyage of freedom, giving relief to Jim’s tormented slavery, confused by incalculable feeling underneath his essential humanity. It was not merely freedom for Jim, but for good people like Tom and Huck.
I read a few passages and then I fell asleep.
I had a dream about Mark Twain. I was sitting on the porch of a plantation house along the Mississippi River, sipping a cool, minted iced tea with the great author. Twain wore the same white linen as the table before me and a coral-colored camellia in his lapel. There was no hesitancy when he turned his deep blue eyes upon me, no embarrassment in the sudden, light touch of friendship by his hand on the back of mine, nor was there anything unusual in his Midwestern manner of speaking as he uttered, “Max Mueller, your diary has been an inspiration to me! Without it, I could not have finished my story.”
But in the end, as I worked through the riddle of conflict, it was Tom and Huck and Jim who had inspired me.
“I’m happy you’re here, Max. You’ve had a long journey. Let’s go home,” Anna said.
Pierre had arranged for me to stay until I reacclimated to life after Terezín. Now London. He’d given me a sealed letter, with these goodbye words: “Open it when you’re ready, Max.”
Anna’s home was an eighteenth-century terrace house that had been in her family for generations and had been given to her by her grandmother. It reminded me that somewhere things had remained as they had always been, that some families had bonds that held. Each generation had something unbroken. Something that had been passed on to them. What has been passed down to me? I wondered.
Th
e house felt oddly familiar to me, reminding me of homes in Prague before the war, with the polished grand piano in the drawing room and the large windows with their miles of silk, roped to each side. Perhaps there were places in the world where you were meant to be. There were flowers and formal green hedges in the park outside, and inside, beige walls hung with paintings. It was a world of riches, one that I had thought belonged to the distant past. It was a crack of new light between my two worlds—the world of my childhood and the years at Terezín. I imagined Poppy hovering above me with a magic lantern. Poppy would have been at home here right away.
It took some time, but eventually I called on every bit of strength in me to go on. Terezín haunted my dreams, and I wondered whether I would ever get through a night without these dark dreams, without returning there time and again.
In a few weeks after my arrival, news from David arrived, forwarded by Pierre, news that brightened my spirit.
Dear Max,
The voyage was a little smoother than the SS Max. It was early in the morning when our ship approached Haifa, and from the deck, I watched the sun rise over Mount Carmel. It was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Most everyone on the boat had survived a camp, and we all stood up and sang “Hatikvah.” It means “the Hope.” Can you imagine? A tune from the Vltava followed me. Then we all hugged each other. I feel I have come home. Hopefully it will lead to a homeland for all Jews.
When we arrived and I walked onto the gangplank, I saw my father. He was crying, “My child, my child!” He had grown much older, and he was there with my mother. I will never forget that Poppy saved them. They had waited so long, and they took me into their arms and kissed me. They hadn’t wanted to leave me, but Viktor convinced them he could keep me safe. He did, didn’t he, Max? The Great Viktor Mueller helped keep me alive. But it was the son of the Great Viktor Mueller who saved me. You saved me, Max. I know Sophie and Hans are gone. I never had any hope that they wouldn’t die at Auschwitz. But you did, Max. And your hope helped me want to live.
All the friends, families, and officials cheered. We all had something in common. We had survived. I think our hearts seem to die a little before we can grow. Let me know how you are, and maybe one of these days, on a street corner somewhere, we’ll play together again. I’ll always remember you, Max. You were, and will always be, my dearest friend. I miss you, Huck.
David
Sitting in Anna’s summer-filled garden in Eaton Square with David’s letter in my hand, I suddenly felt a new sense of calm. Something shifted within me and I was sure that Sophie’s spirit had landed on my shoulder. I sat in the middle of a green patch of lawn at a round table with biscuits arranged on a silver tray and a frosted pitcher of fresh lemonade. I poured a glass.
At the end of the war, there were no marching bands, no fifes, no pipers, no gallant trumpet calls—only a dirge of muffled drums in a gray downpour of memory. Then the rain stopped. Life moves forward, and you can’t will it any other way. I didn’t know where the strength I summoned came from, but I found it. I began listening to music on the radio. One evening I realized that I had not thought about Terezín for an entire day.
I blinked awake on a sun-splashed bed, listening to a bird chirping in the garden outside my window. Only months before, I had been surrounded by death. It was hard to make a bridge, forge any real connection between then and now. Still, I needed to bring the story to an end. I needed to hear it.
I began by tuning the Bechstein in Anna’s drawing room. Out came my tool kit and red ribbons, and slowly, I brought that piano back to life—and in some way recovered a measure of courage.
Later, I used that courage. “Anna, can you tell me about Poppy’s work? Pierre told me about Pink Tulip, but …”
“Viktor worked for us. You probably thought he had lost all reason when he was conscripted into the German army. Heydrich blackmailed him because he knew you were Jewish, and under the Nuremberg Purity Laws, you were marked. They always knew, those bastards. They knew who was Jewish, who had ‘pure’ German blood, who read what newspaper. That is just how it was. Your father made deals, but it was a double one. ‘Protect Max, and I’ll work for you.’ A deal. ‘Send David’s parents to Palestine.’ A deal. He was prominent enough to do it. In his way, he had something they wanted. It was his way of blackmailing them.
“When you were in Berlin, Viktor received an invitation to go to the Berghof. He sent you home, back to Prague. I think it was intentional. We had plans to assassinate Hitler but, in the end, it was too dangerous. We could never lose you or him. We pulled the plug.
“He was a good man. They all were. We were in the company of heroes.”
“And Kurt Gerron?” I asked.
“We all believed his film was a preview of coming attractions.”
All that was left were the closing credits.
Anna, with a deep sigh of resignation, said a single word, “Transport.” That word had enough meaning on its own. It told its own story.
I had no words. Anna was silent. She knew my feelings and hugged me. Perhaps because of all the dispatches she had written, she understood where I had been, all that had happened. It seemed we had a bond that would hold us together.
Every day, I watched her walk down the steps of the terrace on the way to join her colleagues at The Observer. One morning she asked, “Would you like to come with me, Max? After all, you’re a journalist.”
In no time, I was in a room smelling of polished tables and typewriter ribbons, punching one typewriter key while trying to keep up with the precision of her clickety-clack on another. I wandered around the floor, peering into offices. Gooseneck lamps with green shades were arranged on the wooden tables weathered by work and time. David would have loved it. Outside the windows, I saw a city landscape of proud buildings that had been reduced to rubble. Immense yellow cranes were shoving and lifting splintered bricks, shattered windows, and broken doors high into the air. The piles of concrete rubble were the calling cards left by German bombers during the Blitz. London was going to rebuild, piece by piece.
Feeling aimless one day, I returned to The Observer offices. Anna’s job was just as heroic as those cranes, rebuilding the world—the future—word by word, brick by brick. There had been so much destruction: of cities, of the human spirit. Anna filled in all the spaces, telling me so many things I had never known. The world had been transformed, so much had been destroyed, so many people lost. Now was a time of renewal, a time of rebirth, a time for the music to play again.
I was sure I could help that process. I was going to tune pianos in every pub, concert, and music hall in London. No matter how old or new, I would find my ladies, and we’d become friends again.
At St. Paul’s Cathedral, there were flowers around a few marble steps under the charred dome. On the side, a workman had carved 1939–1945 as a reminder of the war. Gentlemen took off their hats when they passed, even if they were on the top deck of a bus. Music-hall songs played over the radio. The famous singer Vera Lynn took to the stage singing “When the Lights Go On Again (All Over the World).” Soldiers returned from battle, still in uniform, and hanging on their arms were “khaki-whacki girls.” And even though I had not worn a uniform, Sophie had been my khaki-whacki girl too. The lights in London were on, and the rebuilding process had begun.
I carried memories that would stay with me for the rest of my life. They were part of me, all that I had known. One day I borrowed Anna’s bicycle, a black one with a straw basket she used when going to market. I felt a need to push my legs and ride until I exhausted myself. I peddled toward St. James’s Park, leaning forward over the handlebars nonstop until I came to a green bench near a fountain. I looked up as I rested and was astonished to see, silhouetted against the blue sky, a flying piano gliding in the distance, ivory keys rippling over a string of chords. I was sure it belonged to Hans. My imagination was being tested. A piano flying over L
ondon. I heard the strains of Brundibár echoing from far away. I thought of all that had passed, everything. I understood then that I was a part of everyone that I had met, and that I was the sum of everything that I had done and seen, every decision that I had made, all the times I had lived through, all the people that I had known and loved. They were all there, still alive, within me. No one is truly gone who lives on in the memories of others and they lived on through me as I would live on through them. Sophie, Poppy, Hans—all of them were gone but all of them had survived because I was still here. We had survived. We were the music makers.
I rode over to the Thames, a winding historical waterway of rippling currents passing beneath a place of history and memory. Leaving my bicycle, I walked and reflected on many things, almost forgiving myself for cutting a path through St. James’s Park, whose gardens were planted by the great landscape master Capability Brown, with streams of yellow daffodils surrounded by endless green lawns. London was under my feet. I passed beneath the shadows of great trees. Crossing a meadow, I came to a pond with children launching miniature boats, in the same place that England’s most inspired child, the poet Percy Shelley, folded banknotes to make his own little rafts and set them sailing. Had I not done the same thing in my own way?
Ahead of me was a pavilion called the Orangery that I had heard of so many times from Anna, and inside were orange trees. I remembered the endless walks that Poppy and I took together in Prague, before the war came. And here I was at the end of the war, walking away from youth and into adulthood.
It was late one night, several days later, and I knew it was time to open the letter Pierre had given me. I reached into my bag and retrieved a battered manila envelope.
My hands shook as I recognized the handwriting and realized that I was reading the last words I would ever receive from my father.
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