The Storm Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  ‘And what about his children?’

  ‘Horst married Astrid, who was fifteen years younger than him, and they lived here at Froskehuset for most of their lives. They had a son whom they named Jens after his grandfather, although he was always known as Pip, for some reason.’

  ‘And what happened to him?’ I asked, confused, as I studied the family tree.

  ‘This is the story I mentioned and it’s pretty harrowing, Ally. Given you’re not well, are you sure you’re up to it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Okay. So, Jens Junior proved himself a talented musician and set off to Leipzig to study, just like his namesake before him. But of course, it was 1936 and the world was changing . . .’

  Pip

  Leipzig, Germany

  November 1936

  38

  Jens Horst Halvorsen – more commonly known as ‘Pip’, a nickname given when he was just a tiny seed in his mother’s stomach – walked swiftly towards the grand pale-stone building that housed the Leipzig Royal Conservatory for Music. This morning he and his fellow students had a master class with Hermann Abendroth, the famous conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and he was tingling with excitement. Since coming to Leipzig two and a half years ago after the narrow musical confines of his hometown of Bergen, a whole new world had opened up to him, both creatively and personally.

  Instead of the beautiful – but, to Pip’s ear, old-fashioned – music from the likes of Grieg, Schumann and Brahms that he had listened to with his father, Horst, since childhood, the Conservatory had introduced him to composers that were alive now. His current favourite was Rachmaninoff, whose Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which had premiered two years ago in America, was what had first inspired Pip to write his own music. As he walked through the wide streets of Leipzig, he whistled the tune under his breath. His studies in piano and composition had fired his creative imagination and exposed him to progressive musical ideas. As well as admiring Rachmaninoff’s brilliance, he had also been spellbound by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a piece so modern and daring that even over twenty years after its Paris premiere in 1913, it still prompted his own father, an accomplished cellist himself, to pronounce it ‘obscene’.

  As he walked, Pip thought about the other love of his life, Karine. She was the muse that inspired him and drove him forward to improve. One day, he would dedicate a concerto to her.

  They had met at a recital in the Gewandhaus concert hall on a chilly October evening over a year ago. Pip had just begun his second year at the Conservatory and Karine her first. In the foyer of the Gewandhaus, waiting to take their seats in the back row of the audience, she had dropped a woollen glove and Pip had retrieved it for her. Their eyes had met as he’d handed it back to her and they had been inseparable ever since.

  Karine was an exotic mix of French and Russian parentage and had been brought up in a distinctly bohemian household in Paris. Her father was a French sculptor of some renown and her mother a successful opera singer. Her own creativity had found its métier in the oboe and she was one of the few women to study at the Conservatory. With her black hair as velvety as a panther’s coat, and glittering dark eyes that sat above angular cheekbones, Karine’s skin, even in the height of summer, always remained as pale and white as Norwegian snow. She dressed in a unique style, shunning the usual feminine adornments and preferring trousers paired with an artist’s smock or a tailored jacket. Far from making her appear masculine, her clothes only enhanced her sultry beauty. Her only perceived physical imperfection – which she complained about regularly – was her nose, apparently inherited from her Jewish father. Pip wouldn’t care if it was the size of Pinocchio’s after a lie. To him, she was perfect, just perfect.

  They had already discussed their future together: they would do their best to find jobs in orchestras in Europe, then they hoped to save enough to go to America and build a new life there. This was more Karine’s dream than his, if Pip was honest. He could be happy anywhere as long as she was by his side, but he understood why she wished to go. Here in Germany, the anti-Jewish propaganda spread by the Nazi party grew apace and in other parts of the country, Jews were continually being harassed.

  Luckily, the mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, was still a staunch opponent of the Nazi ethos. Pip assured Karine daily that nothing bad would happen to her here and that he would look after her. And when they married, he always added, she would have a Norwegian surname to replace her rather more obvious ‘Rosenblum’ – ‘Even though you are a beautiful rose in bloom,’ he would tease her whenever the subject arose.

  But today was a glorious sunny day and the tense rumblings of the Nazi threat seemed distant and over-exaggerated. He had decided that morning, despite the chill in the air, to take the pleasant twenty-minute stroll to the Conservatory from his lodgings in Johannisgasse rather than take the tram. He reflected how the city had grown since his father’s day. Although Horst Halvorsen had lived in Bergen most of his life, he’d been born here in Leipzig and the knowledge of a family connection gave Pip an extra sense of belonging.

  As he neared the Conservatory, he passed the bronze statue of Felix Mendelssohn, the music school’s founder, which stood outside the Gewandhaus concert hall. He mentally tipped his cap to the great man before checking his watch and stepping up his pace as he realised he was cutting it fine.

  Two of Pip’s close friends, Karsten and Tobias, were already waiting for him, leaning against one of the colonnaded arches that formed the entrance to the school.

  ‘Good morning, sleepyhead. Karine kept you up late last night, did she?’ Karsten enquired with a mischievous grin.

  Pip smiled amiably at his teasing. ‘No, I walked here and it took longer than I thought.’

  ‘For God’s sake, hurry up you two,’ interrupted Tobias. ‘Do you really want to be late for Herr Abendroth?’

  The three of them joined the steady stream of students now filing into the Großer Saal, a vast space with a vaulted ceiling supported by rows of pillars and an upper gallery that looked down onto the ground floor and the stage. It was used as both a lecture theatre and a concert hall. As Pip sat down, he remembered his very first piano recital here and grimaced. His fellow students and professors were a far more critical audience than any he would find in public concert houses in the future. And indeed, his performance then had been duly analysed and torn to shreds afterwards.

  Now, two and a half years on, he felt almost impervious to any acid remarks about his playing; the Conservatory prided itself on producing professional musicians who were toughened up and ready to walk out of its doors to join any orchestra in the world.

  ‘Have you seen the newspaper this morning? Our mayor has gone to Munich to meet with the Party,’ whispered Tobias as they took their seats. ‘No doubt to be put under further pressure to employ their anti-Semitic tactics here in Leipzig. The situation becomes more dangerous by the day.’

  A rousing cheer went up as Hermann Abendroth entered the hall, but as Pip applauded, his heart beat a little faster at the news Tobias had just imparted.

  That evening, he met with Karine and her best friend Elle in their usual coffee house that lay between his lodgings and theirs. The two women had been thrown together in their first term at the Conservatory, when they’d been allocated a room together. As they were both French by birth and shared a mother tongue, they had bonded immediately. Tonight Elle had brought along her young man, Bo, of whom Pip knew little other than that he was also a second-year music student. As they ordered a round of Gose beers, Pip was struck by the contrast of Karine’s arresting dark-eyed looks against Elle’s blonde, blue-eyed prettiness. The gypsy and the rose, he thought as their drinks arrived at the table.

  ‘You’ve heard the news, I presume?’ Karine lowered her voice as she spoke to him. These days, one never knew who was listening.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ he replied, seeing the tension etched on Karine’s features.

  ‘Ell
e and Bo are worried too. You know Elle is also Jewish, even though she doesn’t look it. Lucky her,’ Karine murmured before turning her attention to her friends sitting on the other side of the table.

  ‘We think it must only be a matter of time before what is happening in Bavaria starts to happen here,’ Elle said quietly.

  ‘We must wait and see what the mayor can do whilst he is in Munich. But even if the worst happens, I’m sure they won’t touch students at our school,’ Pip reassured them. ‘Germans have music in their hearts and souls, whatever their politics.’ As he spoke, he wished that his words did not have such a hollow ring to them. He looked across the table at Bo, whose haunted eyes were sombre as he rested his arm protectively around his girlfriend’s shoulder. ‘How are you, Bo?’ Pip asked.

  ‘I am well enough,’ he replied.

  He was a man of few words who had earned his nickname because of his insistence on carrying his cello bow with him everywhere he went. Pip knew he was one of the most talented cellists at the Conservatory and great things were predicted for him.

  ‘Where will you spend Christmas?’

  ‘I . . .’ At that moment, Bo looked over Pip’s shoulder and his body jerked in shock, the colour draining from his face. Pip turned to see two SS officers in their distinctive grey uniforms sauntering through the door, pistols sheathed in leather holsters around their waists. Pip watched Bo shudder and avert his eyes. Sadly, it was hardly an uncommon sight in Leipzig these days.

  The two men surveyed the occupants of the café, then sat down at a table close by.

  ‘We are not sure of our plans yet,’ Bo replied, recovering himself. He turned to Elle and whispered something to her, then a few minutes later they stood up to leave.

  ‘They are both so frightened,’ Karine sighed, as she and Pip watched the pair depart as unobtrusively as they could.

  ‘Is Bo Jewish too?’

  ‘He says not, but so many lie, even if they are. His concern is for the woman he loves. I think they may leave Germany soon.’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘They do not know. Paris perhaps, although Elle says Bo worries that if Germany wishes to make a war, it will reach France too. My home.’ Karine reached out her hand, and as Pip took it, he could feel it trembling.

  ‘As I said, let us see what happens when Mayor Goerdeler returns,’ Pip repeated. ‘If necessary, Karine, we too will leave.’

  The following day, Pip walked through the soft grey November mist of the Leipzig morning on his way to the Conservatory. As he approached the Gewandhaus, his legs almost buckled under him as he stared at the crowd that had gathered in front of it. Where only yesterday the glorious statue of Felix Mendelssohn, the Jewish founder of the original Conservatory, had stood proudly, there now lay nothing but a pile of rubble and dust.

  ‘Oh dear Lord,’ he muttered under his breath as he hurried past everyone, hearing the chants of abuse shouted out by a large crowd dressed in their Hitler Youth uniforms standing amidst the ruins of the statue. ‘It has begun.’

  When he reached the Conservatory, a mass of shocked students filled the entrance hall. He found Tobias and walked over to him. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘It was Haake, the deputy mayor, who ordered the destruction of the statue. It was all planned for when Goerdeler was in Munich. Now he will surely be forced out. And then Leipzig is lost.’

  Pip searched for Karine amongst the chaos and found her staring out of one of the arched windows. She jumped as he placed a hand on her shoulder and when she turned to him he saw the tears in her eyes. She shook her head wordlessly as he took her into his arms.

  All classes were cancelled that day by the principal of the Conservatory, Walther Davisson; tensions were running high in the area, and it was deemed too dangerous for the students. Karine said she was meeting Elle in a coffee shop on the corner of Wasserstraße and Pip offered to accompany her. When they arrived, Elle was sitting with Bo in a discreet alcove.

  ‘Now that this has happened, we have no one to protect us,’ said Karine as she and Pip joined them. ‘We all know that Haake is an anti-Semite. Look at how he tried to enforce these horrible laws from the rest of Germany. How long before they stop Jewish doctors from practising and Aryans from consulting them here in Leipzig?’

  Pip looked at the three pale faces surrounding him. ‘We shouldn’t panic, but wait until Goerdeler returns. The newspapers say it will be in a few days. He went from Munich to Finland on an errand for the Chamber of Commerce. I’m sure that when he hears of this, he will head back to Leipzig immediately.’

  ‘But the mood in the city is so hateful!’ Elle blurted out. ‘Everyone knows how many Jews are studying at the Conservatory. What if they decide to go further and raze the whole place to the ground, like they have done with synagogues in other cities?’

  ‘The Conservatory is a temple to music, not to a political or religious power. Please, we must all try to keep calm,’ Pip reiterated. But Elle and Bo were already deep in a whispered conversation between themselves.

  ‘That is all very easy for you to say,’ Karine remarked to him in an undertone. ‘You are not Jewish, and will pass for one of their own.’ She studied his light blue eyes and wavy red-blond hair. ‘It’s different for me. Just after the statue was taken down, I passed by a group of youths on my way to the Conservatory and they screamed out “Jüdische Hündin!”’ She dipped her eyes at the memory. Pip knew perfectly well what it meant: ‘Jewish bitch’. His blood boiled, but it would not help Karine if he lost his temper.

  ‘And what’s more,’ she continued, ‘I cannot even speak to my parents. They are in America preparing for my father’s new sculpture exhibition.’

  ‘My love, I will keep you safe. Even if I have to take you back to Norway to do it, no harm will come to you.’ He grasped her hand in his and smoothed a strand of glossy black hair from her anxious face.

  ‘Do you promise?’

  Pip kissed her forehead tenderly. ‘I promise.’

  To Pip’s relief, things did calm down over the next few days. Goerdeler returned and promised to rebuild the Mendelssohn statue. The Conservatory opened again and Pip and Karine did their best to avert their eyes from the wreckage every time they walked past it. It seemed the music played by the students was now infused with a renewed passion and poignancy. As if they were all playing for their lives.

  The Christmas break arrived but it was not long enough to allow either Pip or Karine to return home. Instead, the two of them spent a week in a small hotel, checking in as man and wife. As he had been brought up in a Lutheran household with strict views on sex before marriage, Pip had been surprised at Karine’s laissez-faire attitude towards it when she’d suggested they sleep together only weeks after they’d met. He’d discovered that she wasn’t even a virgin, as he was. Karine had found it amusing that he was so shy about the whole thing when they’d made love for the first time.

  ‘But of course, it is a natural process for two people in love,’ she had teased as she’d stood naked in front of him, arranging her long white limbs with effortless elegance, her small perfect breasts jutting upwards. ‘Our bodies are made to give us pleasure. Why should we deny them?’

  Over the past months, Pip had been schooled in the art of physical love and had happily drowned in what his local pastor had called the sins of the flesh. It was the first Christmas he had spent away from home, and Pip decided that being in bed with Karine was far preferable to any present he might have received at home from St Nicholas on Christmas Eve.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered constantly in her ear as he lay next to her, whether asleep or awake. ‘I love you.’

  The new term began in January and Pip, knowing he had limited time left at the Conservatory, concentrated his energies on imbibing all he was taught. Throughout the freezing Leipzig winter, he hummed Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms as he trudged through the snow. And as he did so, his own tunes began to form in his head.

&nb
sp; He’d arrive at the Conservatory, grab some blank sheet music from his satchel, and with half-frozen hands, scribble them down before they were forgotten. He’d gradually learnt that the method of composition that worked best for him was one that relied on thinking freely and letting his imagination flow, rather than that favoured by other students which involved meticulous planning of themes and writing only one carefully-arranged bar at a time.

  He showed his work to his tutor, who critiqued, but encouraged him. Pip lived in a state of high excitement, knowing that this was only the beginning of his unique process. His blood pulsed with energy and pumped faster through his veins as he began to listen to his inner muse.

  The city was still relatively calm as Goerdeler was standing for re-election in March. The entire Conservatory supported him, distributing pamphlets and posters urging the city to vote, and Karine seemed confident he would win.

  ‘Even though he has so far failed to have the statue rebuilt, surely, once the people have spoken and he has been re-elected, the Reich will have no choice but to support him in the venture?’ she’d said hopefully as they drank coffee with Elle after returning from a long day of canvassing.

  ‘Yes, but we all know Haake is openly against his reelection,’ Elle had countered. ‘The destruction of the Mendelssohn statue fully revealed his stance on Jews.’

  ‘Haake is just drumming up tension to feather his Nazi nest,’ Karine had agreed darkly.

  On the night the votes were counted, Pip, Karine, Elle and Bo joined the crowds outside the city hall. And cheered euphorically when they heard that Goerdeler had been re-elected.