The Devil's Piper

by Sarah Rayne

  Burkhardt said, almost stammering in his eagerness, ‘But surely – the famous legend is how the music can summon the ancient High Priest who possessed the secret of immortal life—’

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard that one, have you?’ said Jude vaguely. ‘Ahasuerus and the sorceress, Susannah. I expect that’s as true as any.’ He lifted the brandy glass again.

  ‘Power over minds,’ said Karl Vogel softly.

  ‘Yes, that’s believed to be another of the music’s properties.’

  ‘It is that that our masters covet,’ said Vogel, and Jude regarded him thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I imagine they would.’

  ‘Also,’ said Irma Greise, ‘there is the power over bodies. Sexual potency.’

  ‘Do they credit it with that?’ said Jude, sounding bored.

  Burkhardt leaned forward. ‘You mentioned another condition?’ he said, and Jude smiled and made the age-old gesture of rubbing his thumb and index finger together.

  ‘Money,’ he said. ‘What else did you expect? If you proposition us, do we not bargain?’

  He stopped, and Vogel said thoughtfully, ‘Ah yes, you are also Jewish.’

  ‘Are you thinking of throwing me into one of Himmler’s work camps, Karl?’ said Jude softly. ‘But if you do that, you will never get the music.’ He reached for the brandy decanter and refilled his glass as unhurriedly as if they were seated in Eisenach’s dining room. ‘My services are for sale to the highest bidder,’ said Jude. ‘But the bids have to be very high indeed.’ He paused and then said, ‘However, if you are prepared to meet my demands, I will put my music – the Devil’s Piper music that has been handed down in my family – at the disposal of your masters.’

  There was an abrupt silence, and then Vogel said, ‘You know who our “masters” are, Weissman?’

  Jude looked around the room, and glanced at the iron hooks and the armed guards and then back to Vogel himself. ‘Oh yes,’ he said softly. ‘Yes, I know exactly who they are.

  ‘And I am prepared to strike a bargain with them.’

  Jude had never wholly trusted the thin legend that had come down from his great-great grandfather, and he did not really trust Mozart’s part in it either, because Mozart had possessed that Puckish sense of the ridiculous. Jude knew the legend of the Black Chant as well as anyone, and Mozart would have known it as well. The trouble was that Jude had never been able to entirely quench the sneaking suspicion that Mozart might have considered it a huge joke to bequeath to the world a worthless piece of music on the premise that it was truly the Chant, the ancient sinister sequence of notes that could call up the creature of the legends.

  But it was astonishingly easy to visualise Mozart towards the end of his life, his money and his health failing, falling into the raucous motley world of his Magic Flute librettist and fellow Freemason, Emmanuel Schikaneder of the People’s Theatre; enjoying the company of Schikaneder’s disreputable, attractive actors and the ragamuffin gypsy dancers and acrobats and circus dwarves.

  A travelling musician of Italian descent and dubious origin, Jude’s great-great grandfather had said, and had told how the Italian boy had parted with the music very reluctantly indeed.

  ‘Of great value,’ the boy had said. ‘In my family for hundreds of years.’

  But he had been starving and Mozart, according to all the stories, had been generous to a fault. Jude had never been sure of the truth of it all, but he was inclined to tilt the scales just very slightly in favour of the story being true.

  And if so, it looked as if the ancient music that so many musicians had believed to possess diabolic powers, that could call to men’s minds and their bodies, and that was so immeasurably old its origins were believed to stretch back to before the days of Solomon and the Temple Magi, was about to be used again.

  In the service of the Nazis.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Angelika von Drumm curled into a corner of the book room at Eisenach and said pettishly, ‘My dear, I cannot imagine why you agreed to go to a work camp of all places!’

  ‘I cannot imagine why either,’ said Jude urbanely.

  ‘Especially after your reception at the concert last night – wasn’t it rapturous, I thought they would never stop cheering. And when those women started to bombard the platform with flowers – so extravagant and marvellous – of course, it was the Piper music that affected them, exactly as Erich and Karl said it would, and I know perfectly well that there is something peculiar about that music, although I can not decide what, but I must say—’

  ‘A little champagne before you say it, Baroness?’

  Angelika wriggled in delicious anticipation and held out her glass. ‘Champagne in the afternoon –sinfully luxurious. I always associate it with you, not that one drinks champagne in the afternoon as an everyday thing of course, at least not if one is married to Erich—And of course, he will be your friend for life for bringing it, always supposing you want Erich as a friend for life—What was I saying? Oh, the concert. My dear, wasn’t that Sonia Esterhazy creature obvious at supper afterwards? She did everything but take off her clothes and lie at your feet, too shaming, because she must be forty if she’s a day, and I’d wager my last cent that she came to your bedroom later, not that you’d admit it—’

  ‘It would be against my religion to admit any such thing.’

  ‘Nonsense, you haven’t got a religion, you’re a pagan.’

  Jude said, ‘Some to Mecca turn to pray, and I towards thy bed, Yasmin.’

  ‘Rubbish, you pray to music if you pray to anything,’ said Angelika, at once. ‘And I do think—Oh, this is very good champagne, Jude, trust you to have the best—Do you remember how we drank Bollinger that afternoon in your apartment in Vienna?’

  ‘Clicquot,’ said Jude.

  ‘Was it really? And there was caviare and those exquisite Viennese petit beurres, and you played the piano so violently that I was positively awash with desire, in fact between Schumann and lust – or was it Schumann? I forget now – but what with Schumann and you, I couldn’t think properly! If you hadn’t picked me up and carried me into the bedroom, I should have expired. I promise you!’

  ‘If memory serves, we didn’t actually reach the bed that time—’

  ‘Nor we did! Imagine your remembering! We had such fun, didn’t we? I can still see that marvellous white silk rug—’ She sipped the champagne, wrinkled her nose in pleasure and then said suddenly, ‘Why are you really going to the work camp with Otto?’

  ‘To give a series of Workers’ Recitals.’

  ‘Oh, Hitler’s ridiculous idea of bringing culture to the masses,’ said Angelika. ‘Very bourgeois – I said he was a parvenu, didn’t I? And I do think it extraordinary of you to have paid for that odd couple to travel back to their home. I know they are Jews, and that you all have this absurd fellowship, hugely admirable of course, but so tedious I should think! And I cannot imagine where you found them—’

  ‘You would not believe me if I told you, Baroness,’ said Jude.

  ‘Which means there is some kind of secret going on,’ said Angelika. ‘Well, I do think you might tell me what it is, because everyone knows I am the soul of discretion.’ She lay back on her cushioned sofa, regarding Jude from limpid, guileless eyes.

  Jude smiled, and sipped his champagne with silent enjoyment, and presently Angelika said a bit crossly, ‘Anyway, what shall you give the workers, poor dears?’

  ‘Oh, something stirring,’ said Jude vaguely. ‘Whatever doesn’t need orchestral back-up. Tchaikovsky might do. Possibly Liszt.’

  ‘The Piper doesn’t need orchestral back-up,’ said Angelika slyly. ‘And it’s what they want, you know. Erich and Karl and that cold-eyed Otto Burkhardt – oh, isn’t he boring that Otto? Did you ever meet anyone so charmless? How you are to endure him in that work camp I cannot imagine. Shall you do what they want?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Which means,’ said Angelika shrewdly, ‘that you will do
exactly what you want. I think you are really rather ruthless, Jude, darling. And as for Hitler’s marvellous idea,’ she said, holding out her glass for more champagne and digging out a hefty scoop of caviare to accompany it, ‘if you were to ask me, I should say the entire thing sounds like force-feeding the poor souls.’ She curled her feet under her, eating caviare with industrious pleasure. ‘I was thinking,’ said Angelika, her voice sliding down several octaves into an intimate purr, ‘that I might invite you to stay for a while, Jude. After Erich has gone back to Berlin, you understand. Just ourselves, very intime.’ Her eyes slanted with mischievous optimism.

  Jude spread his hands. ‘Forgive me, Baroness. You’re very tempting, but I can’t.’

  Angelika regarded him, and for a moment something unexpectedly serious showed in her eyes. ‘Is she very beautiful, your wife?’ she said, and Jude looked up from refilling his own glass.

  But he only said, ‘Yes, very.’ And waited.

  There was a brief silence, and then with a return to her normal manner, Angelika shrugged and said, ‘Oh, well if you must go to that dreary work camp, you must. The journey will be appallingly tedious you know. And when you do get there, there will be nothing to see.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Jude expressionlessly.

  ‘Well then, I cannot imagine why you should want to go to this – what is it called?’

  ‘It’s the largest camp of them all,’ said Jude. ‘It’s in Poland near to a place called Oswiecim.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Angelika. ‘Mark my words, it’ll be precisely as I said, the end of the world, this—what did you say it was called?’

  ‘Auschwitz,’ said Jude. ‘More champagne, Angelika?’

  The journey to Auschwitz was exactly as Angelika had prophesied. It was long and tedious and uncomfortable, and the railway station, when they finally reached it, was cold and stark and grey. The colourlessness of despair, thought Jude, turning to oversee the unloading of his luggage from the guard’s van. He had not brought very much, save a few changes of clothing and his music case; Burkhardt had promised that a piano would be available for the recital. ‘Although I’m afraid a Bluthner may not be possible,’ he had said, and Jude had stared at him coldly.

  ‘I do not play anything but a Bluthner.’

  Burkhardt was waiting for him on the platform, which Jude supposed was inevitable, although he had not expected the presence of so many Schutzstaffel officers. Most of them wore the characteristic rounded helmets of Himmler’s Gestapo and all of them were armed. They stood watchful and alert, stamping their booted feet on the ground, their breath turning to vapour in the sharp air as orders were rapped out.

  ‘They are waiting for a new detachment of inmates for the camp,’ said Burkhardt, escorting Jude out to a parked car with a chauffeur at the wheel.

  ‘Jews?’

  ‘Oh yes. They are to arrive on the next train.’

  ‘Why are the guards so heavily armed?’

  ‘Well, we do not anticipate any real rebellion,’ said Burkhardt, after a moment. ‘Because the Jews are happy to be leaving their ghettos, which are over-crowded and insanitary, you understand.’

  ‘I’m sure they are ecstatic to be coming here,’ rejoined Jude, and Burkhardt glanced at him suspiciously.

  But he said, ‘With so many numbers there may be isolated outbreaks of panic. Our aim is to ensure obedience and calm.’

  ‘And with all those sub-machine guns you can scarcely fail,’ said Jude politely. ‘How many people are being transported?’

  ‘About four thousand today. That is why the trucks are here. They could be made to walk to the camp, but trucks are quicker, and we can get a great many into each one.’

  ‘Four thousand today,’ said Jude thoughtfully.

  ‘Five or six times that many are coming in total. All will be brought up during the two days.’ Burkhardt glanced at Jude. ‘You look as if you’re doing sums in your head, Herr Weissman.’

  ‘How perceptive of you, Herr Burkhardt,’ said Jude.

  Auschwitz Camp, when they reached it, was far larger than Jude had been visualising. He stared at it and felt a coldness enter his heart. This was surely the grimmest, most desolate place anyone could ever imagine. The end of the world, Angelika had said, but this was a world by itself, a stark, lonely world marooned amidst dank marshlands.

  The gates opened for them and as their passes were inspected by the guard, Jude could see the serried rows of barrack buildings beyond. The entire compound was surrounded by what were plainly electrified wire fences, and set into the fence at intervals were guard towers with black-snouted machine guns. As they went inside, Jude experienced a sudden surge of terror: this is a fearsome place. This is like entering one of the cold, ancient hells of the poets. Dante’s despairing stone-built Malebolge – ‘Of iron hue, like to the wall that circles it about’. If I was writing music about this place, I should make it huge and dark with lots of bass – maybe a slow, sombre cello, maybe even an organ.

  At his side, Burkhardt said, ‘I think this is the first time you are to perform inside any of our camps, Herr Weissman? You do not object to doing so?’

  Jude replied carelessly, ‘If you prick us do we not bleed, and if you pay us highly enough do we not perform at your request?’

  ‘You sound cynical.’

  ‘Merely venal.’

  Provision had been made for the recital to take place in a long, single-storey building on the edge of the main compound, which Jude assumed was some kind of mess-room for the officers and camp commandant. Armed SS guards lined the walls, and a platform had been erected at one end, with narrow, half-curtained windows behind. Jude glanced out. In the cold, raw air of this place, it was possible to make out long, narrow tracks in the ground, marked by rusting railway sleepers, leading to a group of brick-built buildings with jutting chimneys. There were eight or ten of them and they were perhaps half a kilometre away, a little apart from the main compound. Jude frowned and turned his attention back to the platform and the anxiously hovering Burkhardt.

  ‘None of this is satisfactory,’ he said coldly.

  ‘I regret there was not very much time, Herr Weissman. And the facilities here are of the most basic—But you see there is a Bluthner.’

  ‘Nevertheless it is what I am accustomed to.’ Jude looked around the bleak wooden-floored room. ‘It is certainly not what you led me to expect.’

  Donning the arrogance and the prima donna mantle and seeing Burkhardt’s worried glance towards the assembling commandant and camp officers drove the horror back slightly, but beneath it Jude was beginning to doubt if he could give a performance here at all. Music needed warmth and light and space; it was a soaring, marvellous thing, a thing of love and delight and peace. To play music in this terrible place, reeking of such despair, was so wrong as to be nearly obscene. He considered walking out, but as the guards brought in the prisoners, he knew at once he could not.

  ‘The dissidents,’ Burkhardt said, watching them, and lowering his voice, and glancing over his shoulders as if he had made a vaguely blasphemous observation. ‘In every community there are always a few disruptive ones—’

  ‘But in here you reward your rebels with piano recitals?’ Jude waited to see how Burkhardt would answer that one, but Burkhardt simply shrugged.

  ‘We do not question orders,’ he said. ‘And Herr Himmler has many ideas which are regarded by some as—’

  ‘Bordering on madness?’

  ‘Progressive and modem,’ said Burkhardt reprovingly. ‘You should not let Herr Vogel hear you speak that way.’

  ‘I don’t care if the entire German High Command hears me.’

  There looked to be about two hundred of the prisoners regarded as dissidents, but the hut was very large and they were huddled closely together so that it was difficult to be sure. Several of them clutched small bundles of belongings and all of them were thin and ragged. But an angry light burned in the gaunt faces, and when they looked at Jud
e they did so with unmistakable hatred.

  The officers had seated themselves directly in front of the platform, courteously helping one another to chairs, Karl Vogel, his thin, austere face unreadable, among them. Jude stood at the front of the platform, his eyes going over the assembly, and then without any ceremony, he walked across the platform and sat down at the piano.

  It was important to shut out the ragged, hollow-cheeked prisoners and the feeling of their hatred. It was important to shut out the appalling surroundings as well. The Devil’s Piper suite was complex and powerful, and it took every ounce of Jude’s concentration to control it. An orchestra would have helped, because the musicians would have shared the huge weight of the concentration, but Burkhardt and Vogel had been adamant. No orchestra. A piano recital only. And we are paying you very well indeed for it.

  Jude half closed his eyes, forcing his mind to a single glittering point until he was aware only of the music and the creature waiting at the music’s heart. The Piper, the eerie enigmatic being, waiting to prowl the world . . . Did I truly create him or does he actually exist somewhere, as Mozart believed and as his Italian gypsy believed, and as my great-great grandfather believed?

  There was no emotion quite like this, there was nothing in the world to compare with the moment when you deliberately drew together the glittering strands of your own creation and .rolled them up into a prismatic globe, a huge, vibrant humming top, that you could whip into life and send spinning into the waiting silence in a cascade of pure sound. Jude took a deep breath and brought his hands down on the Bluthner’s keys.

  The eerily beautiful music – the music born from Mozart’s ancient yellowing score; the legendary music that contained the medieval diablo chords, that was called by some the Black Chant and believed by others to have evolved from a harlot’s dark passion for an immortal High Priest – poured into the room.

  Jude fell fathoms deep into the music at once, going down and down into its allure, so that for a while he lost all sense of time and he certainly lost all sense of place. Nothing but the music. Nothing but the drawing out of the enigmatic creature from his lair. Nothing but the approach of the deep midnight when the Piper – bound by the music for ever – must walk, his footsteps echoing on the deserted cobbled streets, snatching victims from their beds: virgins for their blood, children for their souls . . .