“Forgive me, Ms. Kessler,” he said with a slight bow to her. “I must do my duty. Dan, Scott,” he acknowledged them.
He followed the young man to the lectern and called the gathering to attention. “Welcome, my friends,” Frederic said, “to this conference of the Neue Bachgesellschaft. I could say welcome in eight or nine languages and be understood, because I look around the room and see colleagues from Japan, France, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Russia . . .”
And so on. When Frederic completed his remarks—by urging the attendees to enjoy the conference and eat and drink their fill of the fine German food and excellent German beer and wine—a receiving line formed. Ever the good sport, Frederic shook hands and exchanged a few words with everyone who wished to shake his hand and exchange a few words.
When he finished this task, he was abruptly, and improbably, alone. He looked around, hoping to find another opportunity to catch Susanna Kessler. She couldn’t possibly spend every single second with those irredeemable former students of his.
“Bonjour, Professor Fournier.”
Why, Natalie, and her Sorbonne colleagues. How chic they were. How respectful. He loved the French.
“We require your opinion regarding a piece by Lully that Bach may have known.”
“Enchanté.” What a nice surprise. He allowed himself to be drawn into their group. But even as he answered their questions, he looked over their shoulders, hoping to spot Susanna.
His search yielded a scene that he regretted witnessing. Susanna Kessler, laughing about something or other, turned to Daniel Erhardt and reached up and placed her hand upon his cheek. Frederic had a direct view of their profiles. Susanna looked at Dan with . . . what was the word for such a look? Dan gave her that same look. More than happiness. Trust. Tenderness. A kind of grace, unexpected and shocking. Susanna put her arm around Dan, under his jacket, pulling him close. They slipped away.
“Would you say then, Professor, that French dance forms were salient in the development of Bach’s concerto structure?” Natalie asked.
“This is an important and complex issue . . .” As he answered the question, Frederic felt a twisting sensation inside himself. He hadn’t felt such an ache in . . . decades. He’d felt it briefly forty-one years ago with the woman who became his wife. He hadn’t given their marriage much attention since then.
A sad regret filled him.
Scott, too, watched Dan and Susanna leave. He’d accepted their feelings for each other, even though he didn’t quite understand them. Luckily, work commitments at the MacLean required that he return to New York after the conference; he wouldn’t have to face going to Weimar with the two of them.
He contemplated what to do with the evening ahead. He’d been invited to dinner with friends, the usual type of conference dinner that was followed by a visit to a bar and drinking into the night, professional gossip becoming more and more revealing as the hours passed. Several attractive women were included in the group, too.
Somehow the fun of it was gone. As he looked around the room, this conference merged with all the others he’d attended, all over the world, and began to seem empty, almost preposterous. Was this how he wanted to spend the next twenty or thirty years of his life? Engaging in pedantic discussions, drinking, gossiping, getting laid? He flinched at his own crudeness. He still loved the music and the research, but because of the cantata, and because of the arrest of Dietrich Bauer, the many intrigues surrounding scholarship had become less compelling to him.
So here he was, alone in the former East Germany on a Friday night. He recalled from previous visits that, remarkably, Leipzig had a small Jewish community and a functioning synagogue, on Keilstrasse. There’d be services on a Friday evening. His nieces and nephews always seemed to be in the process of studying for, doing, or recovering from their bar and bat mitzvahs. His experiences in a synagogue in Germany, the former East Germany no less, would be something he could discuss with them. Something they might even be able to use in their bar and bat mitzvah speeches.
He checked his watch. He had plenty of time to get there.
Chapter 41
A memorial constructed of chairs alone.
Susanna stood at the corner of Gottschedstrasse and Zentralstrasse, in a neighborhood of both gracious nineteenth-century apartment buildings and the utilitarian structures of the Communist era. She faced a raised platform covered with rows of immovable steel chairs. Until 1938, the main synagogue of Leipzig had stood on this spot. It was destroyed on Kristallnacht.
During the past few days, while Dan attended lectures on topics that didn’t interest her, Susanna had been on her own, touring the city, reading in cafés, meeting him at the hotel before dinner. She felt more at ease now, finding a way to navigate this country. She’d learned to shift smoothly between past and present, mass murder and marzipan, Hitler and Mozart.
Amid the empty chairs on the platform, three youngsters chased one another. Three nannies, university students by the look of them, sunned themselves and chatted on a bench a few dozen feet away. Nearby, a man sat on a bench in the shade. As she walked closer to the memorial’s explanatory plaque, Susanna saw that the man on the bench was Reverend Mueller. She’d spoken with him briefly at the cocktail party. He was coughing.
Susanna approached him. “Reverend Mueller?”
“Ah!” He frowned and smiled simultaneously. “Good to see you. I wish I could be more polite.” He struggled to catch his breath as he coughed. “The heat, it does me in.”
To Susanna, this was a pleasant summer’s day.
“Do you need anything? Can I help you in any way?”
“No,” he said in a gasp. “I’ll be fine.” Soon his breathing calmed. He cleared his throat. “You see? Back to normal. It’s allergies. Asthma. Please, join me.”
Susanna sat beside him.
“The hotel is air-conditioned, of course, and I do better there. But I can’t lock myself in the Westin every minute of the day. I have an inhaler, but naturally I left it in the room. God is testing me. For what, I’m not certain.”
He laughed, which brought on another bout of coughing. Afterward he said, “Notice I’ve refrained from smoking. That would be a sacrilege. One doesn’t smoke in a church, as this once was.” He caught himself. “I mean, a house of worship. That is, a synagogue.”
“I understood what you meant. You’re not attending the conference today?”
“Today is ‘Authenticity and Chronology of Bach’s Early Keyboard Works.’ That’s not for me, even though I’m sure sparks are flying among those who obsess over such things.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“Is Dan an obsessive?”
“Not about that.”
“Dan obsesses over more important matters. By which I mean matters that are more important to me. The truth is,” he leaned toward her, as if he felt a need to speak confidentially, “I’ve been having some trouble at the conference. I’ve been concerned about our esteemed colleague who was arrested for war crimes. Dietrich Bauer. Most people are pretending they don’t know him. Never even heard of him.”
“Dan isn’t pretending that.”
“No, not Dan. But plenty of others. Durch Abwesenheit glänzen, as the Germans say. To be conspicuous by absence. The phrase could be applied to a good deal about this country. I know that pretending to forget is easier than admitting to remember, but come on.”
Susanna understood this from her own family. “I know what you mean.”
The children continued their romping among the chairs.
“This memorial is moving, don’t you think?” he said.
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh?” He sounded surprised. “Why?”
Susanna thought but didn’t say: How many years until no one recalled the purpose or the meaning of these chairs? Until the explanatory plaque was worn down by the weather, or overgrown by ivy, or simply ignored? How soon until the memorial became nothing but a peculiar playground?
“I don’t like the kids playing on it,” she said.
“I agree with you. But I suppose the city authorities don’t want to put a barbed-wire fence around it. That would be worse.”
“Yes.” She knew he was right, but she still felt disquieted.
“Where do you travel next?”
“After the conference, Dan and I are going to Weimar. We’re going to visit Buchenwald. My uncle was there, at the end of the war. With the American army.”
“And you want to feel closer to your uncle?”
“I want to try to understand him better.”
After a moment’s pause, Mueller said, “I’m curious, and forgive me for prying, it’s a professional fault. Of course I remember meeting you at Vespers a while back. I can’t deny I was surprised to see you and Dan together at the opening reception for the conference—although I’m absolutely not prying into that.” He lifted his hands palms outward as if to ward off the prospect. “I’m just wondering what brought you into church that day.”
“I was walking by.”
“You’d probably walked by a dozen times without coming inside. What drew you in on that particular day?”
“I saw the sign, for a lecture about Bach.”
“Did you have a special interest in Bach’s music?”
She studied him. He was a man of God. Granted, not precisely the God of her family—and she didn’t even believe in God—but a man of God nonetheless. In theory at least, his actions were governed by a high standard of morality. She’d like to have his counsel about the cantata, and gain his insights about what to do with it, even though she knew to be wary. “I inherited something from my uncle. Something disturbing. I saw the sign outside the church, and I went in. I thought Dan might be able to help me.”
“And has he?”
“Yes. In several ways.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
He did seem genuinely pleased for them.
“What did it turn out to be?” he said. “The item you inherited from your uncle?”
He regarded her intently. Mueller’s keen expectation was like a warning to her, to stay silent.
After a moment, he added, “I’m here, Susanna, for anything you might want to discuss. At any time.”
“Thank you.” She said nothing more.
I could kick myself, Mueller thought. I should kick myself. I’ve scared her off.
He watched Susanna staring at the rows of empty chairs. A gentle touch, that was the best way to elicit confessions. Not coming right out and asking.
Nonetheless, putting together the little Susanna had told him with the cryptic hints Dan had given him in Princeton, Mueller suspected that Susanna had found something that might taint the religion to which he’d devoted his life. He would strive to be more measured the next time he spoke with Dan and Susanna, so that they would confide in him, and he could advise them properly. Properly in terms of how he saw the world, admittedly.
He, too, was going to Weimar after the conference. And to Buchenwald. To him, the camp was a lesson from God about the depths of human sin; about the nature of evil and the nature of goodness both: individual Christians can be good or evil, while Christianity itself is pure and eternal.
Before coming to Leipzig, he’d visited his elderly relatives in Lutherstadt-Wittenberg. They had been Nazis. Small-time party members, his uncle an accountant, his aunt a bookkeeper. Aunt Elsa prepared a sensational meal for him of sausage, thick mustard, and flavorful dark bread, topped off with a terrific Pils.
And he’d said nothing about the past. Asked nothing, even though he wanted to understand the choices they’d made years ago and how they viewed those choices today. He was a coward. Or maybe he was merciful. He didn’t challenge the protective masks they’d made for themselves. They were in their late eighties and unless they were out-and-out murderers, what could it matter now, what had happened long ago? Three generations had passed since they’d done whatever they’d done. After the Nazis, they’d lived under communism. For all Mueller knew, they’d reported on their neighbors to the Stasi. He wasn’t going to ask about that, either, although he wondered.
When an entire society has committed a crime, who is responsible?
He didn’t share his travel plans with Susanna. He didn’t want her, kindhearted as she seemed to be, to say to Dan, We should ask Reverend Mueller to have dinner with us in Weimar, or, God forbid, We ought to ask Reverend Mueller to tour the concentration camp with us, so he won’t be alone. No one should have to go there alone.
In fact, he was apprehensive about touring the camp alone, and confronting such evil, alone.
Although he wouldn’t be entirely alone, he reassured himself: he’d have the music of Johann Sebastian Bach with him on his iPod. And through the music of Bach, the Lord Himself would be with him. Every step.
Wouldn’t He?
Chapter 42
FRANZÖSISCHE STRASSE 35
BERLIN, GERMANY
Autumn 1873
“You’re a lucky man,” said Dr. Joseph Werner, finishing his examination.
The doctor was average in appearance: average height, average hair color, average weight. Paul had it on good authority, however, that the doctor was above average in medical ability, so Paul had decided to trust him. Therefore, for the purposes of this particular conversation, Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy would accept that he was, in fact, a lucky man.
“You may get dressed,” Dr. Werner said.
Paul didn’t like taking orders from those younger than he, especially in his own home. They were in the library, supposedly engaged in erudite conversation over coffee. The coffee service placed on the side table supported this ruse.
“After you’re dressed, we’ll talk.”
Decorously, Dr. Werner turned away and looked out the window, thus giving Paul a measure of privacy as he put on his shirt, tied his cravat, donned his jacket. If Paul had rung for his valet to assist him, the cause of such a disrobing and rerobing in the middle of the day would be known throughout the house, upsetting one and all.
When his brother lay dying, Paul had patted Felix’s forehead with a cloth soaked in vinegar. This was supposed to help him. Felix, that is. So much for medicine.
Nonetheless, one sought the opinion of medical doctors when symptoms occurred.
“Herr Mendelssohn-Bartholdy?” Dr. Werner said, a trace of impatience in his tone.
“Almost ready.”
Paul felt a boyish glee in making the doctor wait. He could well imagine what the doctor was going to say. Paul would be sixty-one in a few weeks. He had lived longer than his siblings, but, given the ache that cut through him now, part of him believed it still wasn’t long enough.
Above the mantelpiece was a portrait of his eldest daughter, Pauline. Dead at nineteen, suddenly, and no one was able to tell him how or why. In the portrait, she never grew old.
He would have been glad to die before her.
“May I assist you in any way?”
Poor Dr. Warner.
“No, thank you, Doctor. Just about finished.”
After they were properly resituated, Paul behind his massive desk, Dr. Werner in a low, hard-backed chair in front of it, Dr. Werner began his learned disquisition, proving that Paul wasn’t lucky at all, except in that his condition might have been worse than it was.
And so it began: the journey to the end. But first, an afternoon musicale, continuing the family tradition.
Paul left the study, Dr. Warner following, and went to the reception room. Albertine joined them. Guests arrived. Paul greeted each of them, considerate host that he strove to be. At a time determined by Albertine, he entered the adjoining music room. The guests took their seats.
Paul adjusted the tuning of his cello. He nodded to the pianist. He began to play: the Variations concertantes in D major, op. 17 (originally entitled the Andante con variazioni), by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
Paul had been performing this piece for more than forty years. The piec
e had grown older as he did, and he’d found within it ever more subtlety and depth. Its twists and turns, its balanced interchange between cello and piano, these were part of him, part of the sweep of his life. A living link to his siblings, and to his parents. He could weep, from his love for them.
When he finished, the applause was more extended than Paul expected. Had he performed the piece with more emotion than usual, in light of the news he’d just received?
After taking a second bow, Paul retreated to the back of the room. Dr. Werner, a talented violist, joined three friends to perform Schubert’s Quartet in A Minor. Usually this piece affected Paul deeply, but today he couldn’t fully hear it. Dr. Werner’s diagnosis kept circling through his mind, all but shutting out Schubert’s transcendent music.
He needed to begin to put his affairs in order. Albertine’s future welfare, his children, leadership at the bank, the disposition of the many charitable organizations he supported . . . there was much to be done. And he had to decide what to do with Tante Levy’s cantata. Sara had died when she was ninety-three, almost twenty years ago. When he sat down to practice the cello, he often remembered her, and her encouragement.
His surviving children were too young to entrust with the cantata manuscript. They were adults, in their twenties, true enough, but possibly they’d always seem too young to him. Oh, they were fine-enough children, all four of them (they’d been five, with Pauline), even though they weren’t everything he might have wished. They weren’t musical. They weren’t literary. They weren’t scientific. Ernst was already at the bank and proving himself competent. Gotthold was giving every sign of planning to live off his inheritance for the next fifty or sixty years, but at least he was a gentleman. The girls would marry and take up their proper roles in society.
Such were his children. He wouldn’t trouble them with Sara’s artifact. What about Fanny’s son, Sebastian? Or Felix’s children, or Rebecka’s? They were all fine and upstanding, but none seemed suitable.
He needed to ponder this question.
And After the Fire Page 33