The Spanish Bow

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  Every second that she did not lift the violin to play, my stomach clenched more tightly. Goebbels leaned toward a uniformed man and whispered in his ear. The sound of my own beating heart pounded in my ears, and my ears themselves became more acute, so that every sound outside the station—the bell-like tolling of boat cleats and clips and posts ringing against each other, the light slap of waves against the seawall—was amplified.

  And then another noise—not my heart, though just as regular. It was a train coming from the southwest.

  The guards posted at the south entrance of the station squinted into the sun and down the tracks. But not Hitler. And not Goebbels, next to and slightly behind him. Their eyes remained fixed on Aviva. A few guards and officials, noting their line of sight, emulated them, fixing their own stares, though they could not control the twitches and throat clearings that made it plain how badly everyone wanted to look the other way, toward Spain.

  For a moment, I thought she was saved. Her panic, her failure to perform, would be forgotten as the train rushed into the station, washing us all in a dust-laden breeze, obscuring our view with steam. If she walked away quickly to the back of the room, and kept moving as the excitement of Franco's entrance swept the platform, she could get to the seawall, and down the stairs to the water's edge. What a strange and unexpected white knight Franco had become, at that moment.

  But the train did not arrive in a rush. We heard the tee-kah, tee-kah of its motion down the tracks, the squeal of brakes. It was slowing well before the station, out of view.

  A German voice rang out: "Begin!" All faces turned toward the sound. Hitler's dark eyes burned beneath his peaked cap. The prolonged wait had enraged him.

  That shout, that command, melted the last of Aviva's resolve. I looked at her just in time to see her knees buckle, toppling her forward, shins smacking against the hard black platform. The violin flew from her wrist, spun once, and stopped, two meters away. A circle of uniformed men appeared around her. Between their legs and the butts of their guns I could make out her hair, one slim arm trying to push herself up—but not her face.

  I do not pretend that my choice to stand up then—to approach her and part the circle of guards and lead her away to a chair at the back—was in any way heroic.

  Hadn't Enrique always said I was like Paquito, my fellow matchstick-legged stray, eager to prove his worth, his stature, his meaning in this world? He had insisted on making his own delayed entrance, and so had I. He had insisted on controlling the flow of the day's events, as if to pretend he was not a pawn, not subservient to a stronger foe, and so had I. And to what end? Only to the end of raising the stakes yet further, worsening the consequences. Hitler's and Franco's negotiations that day would not go well. Nothing that day would go well.

  My last words to her, as I leaned over to reach my cello strap, were: "When I begin, and no one is looking—go."

  Until then, Al-Cerraz had always been our showman, our master of ceremony and surprise. But on this day, I surprised them all: Goebbels, whose large brown eyes grew even larger and wider, while his mouth remained a thin pencil-line of strategy and manipulation. The three photographers—one French, one German, and Hitler's personal portraitist, Heinrich Hoffmann. I surprised even Hitler, who gripped the black edge of the railway car's balcony, and then, to the sharp snap of extended arms, stepped down to the platform. He gestured to a chair, and it was drawn up for him. There was no chair for me. I looked for Kreisler's face and found it briefly, at the edge of the room, clouded with confusion and dismay. Then it was gone.

  In place of a proper chair, I proceeded to the piano bench, pulled it just away from the piano, extracted my cello, and reached out to tune quickly.

  The sound of the distant train started up again, pulling forward, but no one looked down the tracks this time. Not when Hitler was sitting in a chair, alone, in the center of everything, looking soberly entranced. I pulled out my bow, testing its new weight in my hand. Then I pulled it across the strings and began to play the first Bach cello suite.

  I was playing to save a woman's life—perhaps too late. I can make that claim for the first measures, at least. And then I was playing only for myself: all six movements. It had been so long; not just the two and a half years since Guernica, but the nineteen years since Anual, the twenty-six years since Madrid, the thirty-one years since Barcelona. I did not see the man for whom I was playing, or even the train that finally pulled in behind us both, releasing three guards followed by Franco himself, who surely must have been astonished to arrive without fanfare, the Fuhrer's back to him, as I continued to play. I was not there. I was living the words written by a Jew and spoken by a Nazi—Cease from trembling, prepare thyself to live! I was being resurrected on that railway platform—destroyed, too, but in that destruction, reborn.

  For years, people would try to understand why I was willing to play for dictators on October 23, 1940, considering all the statements I had made, the careers I had ruined, my life history. I would have my accusers and my detractors; when I sought entrance to the United States, it would be denied. Cuba would offer me a home—no small irony, considering that a future dictator would reign there as well; but by that time, I had learned to stay out of the limelight completely. I did perform once more, a decade later, but I never recorded again. Far more people made excuses for me than I ever made for myself. The full truth could not be known.

  But in that moment, it did not matter. I was that boy—the boy Al-Cerraz had seen once, in a dusty town, lost to playing; the boy Al-Cerraz had attempted to convince himself was not even real, whose unachievable purity had brought him to despair. He had brought me to this moment—the moment of my destruction and my rebirth. But hadn't he been present at every important moment in my life?

  The applause echoed through that cavernous space. I set down the cello awkwardly; it rolled forward, cracking the bridge. The bow, without its sapphire, still hung from my right hand. I reached down and grabbed the case with its music manuscript inside, but not the cello. There were voices everywhere, buzzing in my ears. I dared to look—there was Franco, full lips set grimly, downturned eyes watery with self-pity, as Hitler extended a hand toward him belatedly and the camera strobes flashed.

  I walked, and kept walking. Out the front station door, down the stairs. No one stopped me. At the street I looked left, and saw a talluniformed German approaching with a long, purposeful stride. I looked right and saw a cluster of men clustered like bees around a hive, two of them walking backward. They were lifting something, half-dragging it. The officer to my left walked faster—it was Kreisler, his face stern, coming from the direction of the harbor.

  The men on the right called out to Kreisler in German. He shouted an order back at them, came quickly to my side, and grabbed my left elbow. I felt a moment of relief until I looked into his eyes. "I thought you had integrity," he muttered in French. "I would have done anything to save you and your music. But you have shown me—music is just politics and opportunity. It is worthless." He gripped my arm painfully.

  "There," he said. The cluster of men on my right dropped what they were carrying and parted slightly. Two of the men were wet and capless, their uniforms dripping. My mind refused to see, to admit. They had been walking from the wrong direction—not from the seawall, not from the harbor, but from the other way—from the bridge.

  Her hair was wet and stringy; her skirt clung to her thighs. Seaweed had wrapped itself around her calves and one shoe; the other foot was bare.

  "She jumped from the bridge," he explained. "They saw it and dragged her out."

  One of the wet officers explained something in German to Kreisler. I moved toward Aviva, got down on my knees, searching for signs of life in her gray face.

  "Stand back," Kreisler said. I moved quickly, thankfully; the vision of the flowers he'd bought at Toulouse filled my mind; the vision of Aviva smiling as she received them. Despite what he'd said to me, I expected him to save her.

  One of the wet men
leaned forward to put his mouth against hers.

  "No!" Kreisler shouted. "Don't contaminate yourself. She is a filthy Jew."

  He unbuckled a flap at the side of his leg. "They say she swallowed something just before she jumped. Jews are always doing this—stealing before they escape." He unsheathed his knife. "Gold teeth, diamonds. We find all sorts of things."

  And like an angler crouching on a riverbank over his catch, he hummed softly to himself and opened her. A straight line from the esophagus down; pressure, the sound of a cracking sternum. I looked away.

  I begged him to keep what he found, but he pressed the sticky sapphire into the palm of my trembling hand. "It would not be allowed," he said coldly. "On principle."

  To the other guards he said, in French for my benefit, "Let him walk. He can't do anything now. He is a ghost."

  CHAPTER 25

  "The Nazis killed her," William said.

  "We killed her. We took away her illusion and forced her to believe her son was dead—we had no proof either way—so that she would do what we felt was right. We cornered her into taking her own life."

  The journalist said nothing.

  I continued. "Fry had warned me. He had told me you shouldn't take a person's idea of herself away, especially when that person is preparing to embark on a dangerous journey."

  "And Al-Cerraz?"

  "For a moment after I played inside the train station, I felt real gratitude toward him—not respect exactly, but sympathy and gratitude. But then I saw Aviva, and I understood the damage we had done. I hated him again—no less than I hated myself. I vowed never to be in contact with him."

  "She might not have escaped anyway."

  "That is true. But he did manage to escape—I'm sure of it. I imagine he hid in the rowboat for hours, waiting. There were no shots; he couldn't have known that she had died, but I suppose he guessed something went astray, and finally rowed to the sea stacks after dark and talked the captain into taking him, even without the money. He could talk anyone into anything. And later he pieced it together, from the story that ran in the French newspaper; you've seen that one. It inspired him to write Don Quixote as he did—whether it was a message to me, an effort at reconciliation, or just a way to deal with what had happened, I don't know. We never spoke."

  William said, "At least now I know why my mother killed herself."

  We didn't speak for several minutes. Then I broke the silence. "She would have loved to have known that you became a concert pianist, in America."

  He snorted. "I didn't."

  "Well, you tried. It's a different musical world now. There is more competition; it's even more celebrity-driven than it was in our day—something I wouldn't have thought possible. Anyway, the world needs critics too, and music biographers—people who can explain our stories, mixed up as they are."

  "Is that why you brought me here? To help you explain your story?"

  "No."

  I got up, refilled our glasses a final time, and gave him one.

  I had been clutching the pages so long that I had left damp marks from my fingers on the edges. Where I had pressed the top page against my shirt, a spot of blue ink had transferred. I laughed at the ridiculousness of it—a thirty-three-year-old stain. I turned the pile over on my lap, so my manuscript was face down, and Al-Cerraz's piano compositions were faceup.

  "William, I told you on the phone, when I asked you to fly here, that I had done a terrible thing."

  He wiped his face roughly with his hands, pushing his hair back. "Yes."

  "Not everything I did—or failed to do—involved your mother. There was also this."

  I gestured for him to approach. He stood behind my chair, studying the first page, and then motioned for me to hurry and turn, so that he could read the second one. But I wasn't ready. I pointed at the first page. "That dotted rhythm. The first time I saw it, I felt sure it was his heartbeat. But it wasn't. It was the train."

  "Which train?"

  "Our train—all our trains. Our Spanish tours. Before. In every town, he was listening, piecing it together; I'm sure he didn't know the value of it for many years. He always felt pressured to compose one great symphonic or operatic work, but unity has never defined Spain. We are a country of many kingdoms. By the time Al-Cerraz and I were together in southern France, he had started to understand. He had said as much—that even small works could be subversive and that after meeting Franco, he had seen the power in even the simplest folk-inspired melodies. And he had let himself be inspired by Monet, by impressionism—by the idea of capturing the real Spain in these small, disconnected pieces, which is what Spain is: diverse, irreconcilable."

  I continued. "Until recently, I didn't let myself look at the other pages. I was angry at first. Then, frustrated. And then: I simply underestimated him. I did not respect him or his work. Me—of all people."

  "Anyone could overlook—"

  "No," I interrupted. "Don't try to make me feel better. Who more than I should understand the power of a suite for solo instrument? I have always valued simplicity and humility—I have always been able to perceive larger musical meanings in what appears to be disconnected."

  "It's easy to miss what's right in front of us." William gestured toward the piano. "May I?"

  He reached for the manuscript, all of it. I squeezed it more tightly to my chest. I wet a finger, and slowly started peeling off the top forty pages or so; the pages that were Al-Cerraz's manuscript.

  "Come on," William said, suddenly impatient. "What are you afraid of?"

  I was afraid of what would happen next, what did happen. William started sight-reading, slowly at first, then warming to it, playing with confidence and with style.

  I tried to talk through the first three compositions, to point out the elements as I recognized them—there was the sound of the train, yes; and there was an imitation of the strumming style of Andalucían guitarists. But there—another corner of the country again, a fluty Galician sound. A rhythmic reference to the banned sardana of my home country, Catalonia, followed by a blend of Arabic and Spanish elements that I'm sure represented our trip to the Alhambra; less romantic than Falla would have written it, less harmonious. There were sounds and images from the New World, too—Caribbean sounds, Central American rhythms, all the places the empire had touched.

  At last William raised a hand to stop me. "You've done a lot of talking, Maestro," he said gently. "Listen now. Please."

  I did, and soon enough, I could not make out the notes on the distant page, or the back of William's head. As I tried to blink away the tears, everything was a blur. This was my life in music, but more than my life. It was Spain's life, both interpreted and preserved.

  I'm sure I would have recognized it as beautiful in 1940. I had heard one of the pieces at the Hendaye concert. But I couldn't have appreciated the entire suite then, because I wouldn't have realized then what music could ultimately accomplish, or what it could contain.

  Franco had stayed in power an astonishing thirty-six years, from 1939 to 1975. In that time, Spanish culture had faded, succumbed, blended into a simplistic parody: "Sunny Spain." Tourism posters. One music. Simplified dance exhibited to tourists. Few literary works. Cultural homogeneity. Even from my exile in Cuba, I'd come to understand how successfully Franco had wielded his power. Mussolini was killed by the partisans. Hitler killed himself. But Franco lived on, beating them all. And beating us. We had accepted his "pact of forgetting," as people began to call it. We had lost our soul. In defiance of him, I had requested that musicians stop playing, that artists stop painting—and that had only made his mission easier. Silence had been his ultimate weapon, not mine. And the one who would not be silent, Justo Al-Cerraz, had seen farther than us all, seen to what would truly last: art, and art alone.

  Now Franco was finally dead. Why had I outlasted him? Perhaps only so that I could do this.

  The directors of the new Spanish museum had been sending me letters all month, wondering when I would deliver m
y bow, as I had been promising since Franco's funeral. I had stalled for a year, but now at least one person understood why. If they wanted the bow, I would make them take the manuscript, too; and not only that, I would see to it that they treated every page—every note—with more respect than I ever had. They would let national experts verify its authenticity, evaluate it, perform it—and then, let history decide.

  "You will help me, William?" I said when he had played the last of Al-Cerraz's Spanish Suites.

  He walked over, gently removed the rest of the pages from my hands, and set them down. He put his arms around me, a little stiffly at first, our shoulders bumping awkwardly. I allowed my lips to brush his forehead, scarcely able to see his face through my tears.

  "Will it make you happy?" he asked.

  "Very happy."

  * * *

  EPILOGUE

  On December 29, 1977, King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía of Spain presided over the opening of Madrid's new Museo de Música, where they accepted the gift of Maestro Feliu Delargo's bow, set with the sapphire that had once belonged to the King's grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenia. On the same day, in the new museum's auditorium, they attended a concert featuring the recently rediscovered Spanish Piano Suites of Justo Al-Cerraz, who was posthumously awarded the ceremonial title of Duke of the Alhambra for his contributions to Spanish culture.

  Six months later, William Erlicht, son of Italian violinist Aviva Henze-Pergolesi (1910—1940) published a revised edition of his biography, Vanished Prodigy, including a critical reappraisal of Al-Cerraz's Don Quixote (1941).

  On August 5, 1978, Feliu Aníbal Delargo died in Cuba at the age of eighty-five, of congestive heart failure.

  In February 1981, King Juan Carlos, grandson of King Alfonso XIII and the first monarch to lead Spain following Franco's death, survived a coup attempt. Contrary to historic precedent and popular expectation, he refused to impose a military government in response. Since that time, he has been heralded as a champion for democracy—and with his wife, Queen Sofía, as a supporter of the fine arts.