“Oh, don’t worry. This is comin’ outta the ‘operational budget.’ Just another thing for Nat to yell at me for. I’m pretty sure she has a list, by now.”
Vicke laughed in his ear all the way to the door.
Valse Triste
Mercedes Lackey
My name is Triste Steinmann. I am fifteen years old. I have been a prisoner for two years, three days, and six hours. I have been an orphan for two years, two days, and twelve hours.
Triste always began her journal entries with the record of her imprisonment. It amused Gruppenführer Bruenner when he read it. And he did read it. She had to leave her journal in a drawer in a little desk in his big office, and she had to write in it every day. She had thought he would be angry the first time, but he laughed uproariously. He would never say why, but by this point she knew. Gruppenführer Bruenner was a sadist, like all of the SS, and a narcissist like many of them. She knew what both of these things were, because she had read about them in the works of Herr Doktor Sigmund Freud, which were in French translation in the library of this stolen mansion. Gruppenführer Bruenner did not know this, because he never bothered to read anything that was not related to the war, much less anything in French. His lover did not bother to read at all. As for Frau Gruppenführer Bruenner, well, she was back in Munich, with the half-dozen little Bruenners, so Triste did not know what she did, other than produce babies nine months after Der Gruppenführer made a visit.
Today I began the piano works of Schumann. Gruppenführer Bruenner wishes me to particularly learn the Lieder, since the Ubermensch—though perhaps that should be Uberfräulein—Brunnhilde is to perform a concert here tonight. There was a piece of Jan Sibelius mixed in with the others, a “Valse Triste,” and I learned it quite by accident. I think I will play it when the Gruppenführer requires music for his guests to mingle by. It . . . speaks to me.
Triste closed her journal and put it in the drawer of the desk where, of course, the Gruppenführer would find it and laugh. There was a little time before the party, a few hours. She would go upstairs to her room, eat when food was brought to her, and wait until she was told to put on the black gown and come down to entertain. She would not need to look at the scores she had studied today. They were in her head, in her fingers, already.
As soon as Triste had been old enough to walk, she had played—first on the little toy piano, to her parents’ bewildered astonishment, then on the piano in her teacher’s studio, where she could not even reach the pedals. As soon as she had connected the black notes on the page with the keys on the keyboard, she had only to read a score through once, and it was in her fingers. At first, she had been a mere prodigy, a freak, a kind of player-piano in child form. It had been her teacher who had taught her to make her music sing. Her teacher, who was now dead, or in a concentration camp, along with the other Jews of the Lorraine.
Triste had escaped that fate, because of Gruppenführer Bruenner. Not because he was kind. Not because he particularly cared for music, even. But because the music of the German Reich was displayed at every occasion, like draping a beautiful pall over a rotting corpse, and it was easy and cheap to keep her about. She did not argue, did not disobey, was fundamentally invisible; she was nearly as good as a music-playing robot, and rather better than a gramophone. She would be relatively safe, she hoped, as long as she was amusing and useful. She really did not want to die.
She reached her little attic room, which had once been the provenance of one of the housemaids. There was a bed with many worn blankets and a bright white coverlet, a white-painted wardrobe, a white-painted wash-stand. Her gown for the evening hung on the back of the door, newly cleaned and perfumed with lavender. It was plain and black, made of heavy, dull satin, with the yellow magen David discreetly embroidered like a brooch on the left side. She did not touch it. She went instead to the white-painted, wooden wardrobe, and made sure that her coat was still there, still untouched. She ran her hands over the inside. The tough little packets of franc-notes were still there, sewn into the false lining she had hung between the wool outside and the real lining. The hair she had tied across the front of the coat, from button to button, was intact. No one had touched her coat. She, and it, were still safe from discovery.
Whenever she got a chance, she stole money from Didi, Bruenner’s lover. Didi had been a nude at the Folies Bergere. Didi never kept track of the money the Gruppenführer gave her; she tipped lavishly, bought whatever she cared to, sent money accidentally down in the clothing to be laundered, and when she ran out of money, the Gruppenführer gave her more. Triste was often in Didi’s rooms, especially when she was tipsy; that was part of her job too, to amuse Didi, playing popular tunes, sentimental German songs, and pieces from operettas, while Didi drank or danced or sang to them. All she had to do was play and tell Didi how beautiful she was. This was easy. Didi did not have a bad temper, even when drunk. Didi had a magnificent body, long, wavy hair that was really, truly golden blond without any help, and the face of a goddess. The Gruppenführer never allowed Didi out except to shop with one of his men, and Didi was exceptionally stupid as well as exceptionally beautiful; she didn’t know what else to do with her time but drink and dance alone, and sing. When Didi finally slept, Triste would prowl briefly about the room, steal money, and slip back to her own room to sew another packet into oilcloth, and then into the lining of her coat. She prayed nightly that God would send her a chance to escape—perhaps when the Gruppenführer was away, or perhaps the English would even bomb Paris.
She knew where she would go. She could see it from her window. Montmartre, the artist’s quarter. There had been musicians from there who had visited with her before the war and made a pet of her. If any of them were still alive, and still there, perhaps for enough money they could help her escape France altogether. Triste no longer believed in the kindness of people—but money, especially now, when the only place you could get anything good was on the black market, meant you didn’t have to trust to anyone’s kindness or lack of it.
She sat back in the little window seat, her fingers moving restlessly against the sill as she gazed out at the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur on the top of the hill. Her fingers played the notes she had learned today, and she let them move without thinking about it. They always did this; it was as if her hands had a mind of their own. When she was not doing something with her hands, they played, and played and played. Unless she clasped them, they played on top of the bedcovers at night. Sometimes she wondered if they would keep playing when she was dead. She hoped this idea never occurred to Gruppenführer Bruenner. He might try the experiment. He would find it terribly amusing to have a couple of disembodied, piano-playing hands he could keep in a box. But of course, without her head, they could never learn anything new, so perhaps that would not be as amusing as he would like.
Then, suddenly, her hands paused. This was unusual enough that she broke out of her reverie to look at them. It was as if they were waiting for her to look at them; they lifted gently off the sill, and the fingers came down, slowly, and she knew what they were playing.
The piece by Sibelius. It had had her name. And it had spoken to her in a way no other piece of music had until this moment. It had called to her. There had been a power in it—she had almost run to the piano to hear it, but fear and caution had kept her at her task. Brunnhilde would decide what Lieder to sing on the spur of the moment, and Triste had been told in no uncertain terms that she must learn them all.
But she had never seen a piece that she had desired to hear more, never in her entire life. It had been so strong, that she had studied the entire score, hungry to know more. Luckily, there had been notes on the score, telling what it was about.
It is night. The son, who has been watching beside the bedside of his sick mother, has fallen asleep from sheer weariness. Gradually a ruddy light is diffused through the room: there is a sound of distant music: the glow and the music steal nearer until the strains of a valse melody float distantly to our ears.
The sleeping mother awakens, rises from her bed and, in her long white garment, which takes the semblance of a ball dress, begins to move silently and slowly to and fro. She waves her hands and beckons in time to the music, as though she were summoning a crowd of invisible guests. And now they appear, these strange visionary couples, turning and gliding to an unearthly valse rhythm. The dying woman mingles with the dancers; she strives to make them look into her eyes, but the shadowy guests one and all avoid her glance. Then she seems to sink exhausted on her bed and the music breaks off. Presently she gathers all her strength and invokes the dance once more, with more energetic gestures than before. Back come the shadowy dancers, gyrating in a wild, mad rhythm. The weird gaiety reaches a climax; there is a knock at the door, which flies wide open; the mother utters a despairing cry; the spectral guests vanish; the music dies away. Death stands on the threshold.
She had almost cried, had crumpled the music in her hand, reminded so sharply of her own dying mother. Her mother had not risen from her sickbed to dance with spectral visitors, but she had kept asking for Triste to play so often in her last illness that Triste had sometimes fallen asleep at the piano.
“Triste,” her mother had named her. “Sorrow.” An odd name for a child, but her mother had insisted. Sometimes Triste wondered if her mother had somehow known what was coming, the war, the SS, the camps. Triste knew all about the camps, although they were still a secret to many, if not most. Bruenner made sure she knew about them. The woman with the cruel eyes had shown her pictures and a film before she brought Triste to Bruenner, properly schooled and obedient. “You will obey. You will do everything the Gruppenführer wishes. Or you will go here.” Sometimes those scenes of horror played behind her eyes at night, while her fingers danced on the bedclothes.
Now Triste was glad that her mother had died when she had, for two months later the boches had come marching in, and two months after that, they had come for the Jews. The last she had seen of her father, as Gruppenführer Bruenner’s men carried her away screaming, was his body sprawled in front of the door in a pool of too much blood, his eyes staring sightlessly, his head caved in by the butt of a rifle. That was when she came to be part of Gruppenführer Bruenner’s household, and that two-week session with the cold woman with evil eyes convinced her to do and be everything the Gruppenführer wanted of her. It had not taken much. She was a timid child by nature. And despite all that had happened, she wanted very much to live.
There was a tap at the door. Triste opened it and accepted the tray from the maid. The servants here were contemptuous of her; she was always polite to them, and never gave them a reason to torment her. The Gruppenführer saw to it that the servants kept her fed; he wanted his music machine healthy. Tonight it was fish, with a little salad, vegetables, some fruit, bread. Coffee, to make sure she stayed awake. She ate it methodically, and put the tray outside the door. She went back to the window, to watch the sun set on the Basilique, and waited. She watched as the cloudless sky behind the Basilique turned a deep and translucent blue, and the white building became pink, then rose, then red. This was her favorite time of the day, and her favorite sight. Her fingers danced on the windowsill, the Basilique turned to ashes of roses, then a ghost floating over the city, against a sky spangled with stars. There were no lights, of course, nothing but what the stars and moon provided. No lights to guide the bombs of the English, for which she prayed nightly.
She was not provided a light in this room. It was not thought that she needed one.
Finally came the tap at her door, the brusque order, “Get ready.” She left the seat at the window, took off her plain dress, slipped on the black dress, brushed her hair and bound it at the back of her neck by touch, pulled on the satin slippers that went with the dress, and went downstairs.
By the servants’ stairs, of course. She must be unobtrusive, go like a shadow to the ballroom, slip into place at the piano and begin to play in such a way that no one would notice her coming. It was not hard; the piano stood at one end, in a kind of bulge in the room with windows all around it, and since she needed no light, no light was provided there. All the windows had been covered with thick, blue velvet drapes, and blackout covers behind them. The cover had already been lifted from the keys; she took her place at the bench and began to play, a mere whisper of sound, gradually increasing it as more and more people came into the room. Outside her bubble of shadow, the ballroom was brilliantly lit, the parquet floor shining, the chandeliers glowing with light and sparkling with crystal. There was a fountain of wine on a table, and white-gloved waiters with crystal goblets waiting to serve it. There was fruit, cheese, bonbons, little crystal plates and linen napkins on another table. At a third, waiters with boxes of cigarettes, cigars, and lighters. More and more people arrived, most of the men in the uniforms of the occupying army, the women like exotic birds in form-fitting gowns, spangled with beadwork, jewels at throat and ears. None—or very few—of these women were wives, of course. No respectable wife would be seen at a soiree presided over by a mistress, especially not one who had been a Folies Bergère nude.
Though Didi did make a very good hostess. She had an instinct for when to laugh, when to smile, and when to be silent and merely look attentive. Triste watched them all, as her hands played inconsequential, tinkling music, mostly Bach exercises that would disturb no one, or lullabies, or popular songs. They moved about the floor like elegant, dangerous beasts on their best behavior at the waterhole. They were sated now, and had the luxury of being playful with one another.
The servants began to bring in chairs, and she knew the concert was about to begin. Two of Bruenner’s men brought in a pair of electric spotlights on tall poles, focusing their light on a spot in front of Triste’s alcove. The crowd began to take seats.
She had wondered which of the guests was Brunnhilde, but she should have realized that someone like the Uberfräulein would not be inclined to mingle, at least not before the concert. The servants dimmed the lights, and lit up the electric spotlights. The guests took the hint and the few who were still standing took the remaining seats. Then the diva made her entrance from the rear, the two servants manning the spotlights illuminating her as she paused in the doorway. Everyone began to clap as she made her way to the front of the gathering.
She looked—well, she looked like a very Germanic version of Didi. Taller, built more squarely and robustly, extremely blond; she wore a gown made entirely of silver beads that looked as if it had been molded to her body. A silver belt clasped her waist, with a long piece hanging down in the front, almost to the floor. There was a heavy silver collar around her neck, and a silver diadem around her head. She did not look at Triste, but Triste did not expect her to. She only looked at the audience. When they stopped applauding, she nodded her head graciously, and said, “Zwielicht.” Triste obediently began to play.
She had to admit Brunnhilde’s voice was glorious, full and rich. She had an enormous range, too, from contralto all the way to coloratura, with no break-point. If Brunnhilde had expected to catch her out, she was to be disappointed; Triste had done her job well, and there was no song that Brunnhilde asked for that she could not play.
Finally the Gruppenführer stepped up into the spotlight as servants began to raise silver balls on ropes to the ceiling. Triste wondered what on earth they could be doing, and why.
“Our gracious and beloved guest has agreed to display for us tonight a little of the power that makes her one of the Führer’s chosen Ubermenschen,” said Bruenner, with a little smirk. “I know that you will be impressed; I know you will be even more impressed when I tell you that this little display will require no more than a fraction of the power she possesses.” He bowed to Brunnhilde, who bowed back, then glanced into the shadows where Triste sat at the piano. “Ride of the Valkyries,” he ordered.
Triste began.
For the first part of the aria, the spotlights remained on Brunnhilde, but there was something about the tone of her singing that was giving
Triste uneasy shivers and making her stomach knot. Then as she reached the thundering conclusion, and the final “to-yo, to-ho” calls, the spotlights swiveled up to illuminate those silver metal balls.
And that was when Brunnhilde showed her power.
With each “to-yo to-ho!” she somehow directed her voice at one of the balls, and the ball literally shredded into a silver metal flower. You could see from where Triste sat that these were no flimsy little foil balls, either; the metal plating was a good quarter-inch thick, and it just peeled back the way a child would peel the foil from a chocolate. In her mind’s eye, Triste could almost see this happening to the front of a tank . . . of an airplane . . . to a man . . . and her insides twisted with horror. Her hands continued to do their job, however, and brought the aria to its thunderous conclusion.
All the guests leapt to their feet, applauding wildly, as Brunnhilde smirked and took bow after bow after bow.
Finally the party began again, with Brunnhilde now circulating among the guests, taking their congratulations. Triste feared that Didi might sulk, but her instincts must have warned her against any such thing; she stood back and smiled, and nodded, and said nothing at all. Finally the chairs were all cleared away, the tables moved back, and Triste knew this was the signal that she was to begin dance music.
Dance music must always begin with a few Strauss waltzes; the Gruppenführer led Brunnhilde out for the first one. Brunnhilde was a competent dancer, and Bruenner was good, if mechanical; there were no mishaps. Meanwhile, Triste played in a sort of daze, still numb with the horror of what this blond creature could do, what a terrible weapon she was. Why, she could be anything from a weapon on the battlefield to an assassin! Who would suspect that music could kill until it was too late?
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