The prayer was brief, low, and musical. Then she opened her eyes and said, “Good Shabbos, Simon.”
“Good Shabbos, Hannah Hoffman.”
“I love the candles,” Hannah said into the silence. “They symbolize family, warmth, and dreams. Prayer. Wherever you are, the candles make it home.”
“For me,” he said, “firelight takes away the darkness.”
She fixed her eyes on him, like blue flames under water. “For me as well. My world is mostly dark,” she told him. “But sometimes I perceive light. Flickering. Shadows.” She turned away. “I am a woman in shadows.”
“We have more in common than I realized,” he said. But all I see is light when I look at you. His eyes touched on the cello behind her, and he heard himself say, “While we wait for Maggie, will you play something for me?”
“Of course. I promised you only good this evening, did I not? I think … yes, you will enjoy Dvorak’s Cello Concerto. Dvorak always said that the finale should end gradually, ‘like a breath.’ Listen for it.”
“You can play music on Shabbat?”
She smiled. “Every no allows a yes. Reading and music give us peace.” She slipped off her veil, dropped it on the table, and moved unerringly toward the cello. Grasping the long neck, she sat in a straight-backed chair and settled the instrument between her knees.
As if it were a signal, Jac rose and came to settle at her feet, her smooth narrow head close to Hannah’s thigh. Hannah lifted the bow with a soft sigh. And then, in a moment so intimate and intense that Sugarman caught his breath, she simply wrapped her body around the cello.
Dark Rhapsody, thought Sugarman, come to life.
For a heartbeat of silence, there was only this beautiful woman, dark head bowed, lit by the flicker of candlelight. Then, with a slight nod and a dip of her shoulder, she stroked the bow across the strings and began to play.
* * *
Not far away, in the Spanish Riding School’s small stable office, Maggie raised shocked eyes to Johann Vogl.
“What did you just say?”
“Gisela killed the Nazi who found her that night. She stabbed him with an old knife she’d found in the barn loft.”
“But that is—impossible.”
Vogl shook his head. “My Gisela was strong, and strong willed. You would be surprised by what fear will make you do.”
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Maggie heard the gunshots in her head, felt again the small pistol recoil in her hand as—just months earlier—she had aimed at the heart of a man dressed as a monk and pulled the trigger.
“No,” she said to Vogl. “I know what fear can make you do. And rage.”
He stared at her. “Ja, I think maybe you do.” He poured another finger of whiskey into her glass, and one for himself, then turned to gaze out at the darkening sky.
“When I got to the barn that night, it was very dark, too quiet. Then I heard a keening sound, very soft, like an injured animal. I climbed the loft ladder and found Gisela curled in the corner, covered in blood …” Vogl stopped, as if the memory was too terrible to revisit. He turned to Maggie. “She was not hurt, not physically. But her eyes were wide and staring, her skin so cold, she was shaking and in shock. I just held her for a very long time, until finally she was able to tell me about the trucks, the soldiers, the chests. She had been running for her bike when one of the troopers stopped her.”
“Horrible,” whispered Maggie. “She must have been terrified.”
“Ja. The Nazi grabbed her, spun her around. She just reacted out of pure fear, like any of us would. She had the knife in her belt, and then it was in her hand.” His breath came out. “His hands closed around her neck and—she stabbed him in the chest.”
“Good God. Was he dead?”
“She thought so. Somehow her panic gave her the strength to drag him behind the bushes. She did not remember what happened after that.”
“But the soldiers—they must have discovered one of their own was missing?”
He shrugged, the bony shoulder blades sharp in the waning light. “It was very dark, very chaotic. When I came up the road, the trucks were just leaving. I hid in the forest until I could no longer hear them. And then I found Gisela.”
Maggie moved to stand next to him, laid her hand on his arm. “You helped her hide the body,” she said softly.
“I buried him, God help me. Behind a boulder, deep in the woods, along with Gisela’s bloody coat. And then we got the chest, and I took her home.”
“And kept the secret all these years.”
“Ja.”
“What happened to her aunt? Surely the Nazis would not leave any witnesses behind.”
“You are right, of course. But as soon as the cart left for the lake, Gisela’s aunt and cousin fled by the rear door and ran to the village to hide with friends. I do not know what those SS planned. But the war was over, you see. Everyone knew it. The Reich was in flames and German soldiers were deserting, running for their lives. It was total chaos all over Europe. Every man for himself. In the end, I think that is what saved Gisela and her family. But we will never know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
VIENNA
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24
THE LAST NOTES of Hannah Hoffman’s cello shimmered in the dusky room as Maggie entered.
“Like a breath …” murmured Sugarman, as he drew her toward the slender cellist. “Maggie O’Shea, meet Hannah Hoffman. Hannah, this is my friend Maggie. The two most beautiful musicians I know.”
“The only musicians he knows,” murmured Maggie with a smile as she reached for Hannah’s outreached hand. “I’m so happy to meet you, Hannah. Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.” She flashed a surprised look at Sugarman as she realized Hannah could not see. He just shrugged back at her, shaking his head.
“The pleasure is mine,” said Hannah. She made a sign with her hand and her greyhound was immediately at her side. “And this is my beautiful Jac.”
Maggie kept her hands still, knowing not to touch or distract a service dog. “Hi, gorgeous,” she said. “Another music lover, I see. I’m guessing Jacqueline du Pre is your namesake?”
The greyhound gazed at Maggie but stayed by Hannah’s side. Hannah smiled as she leaned down to give the dog a hug. “My biggest fan. Please, sit down, Maggie. I have been playing for Simon while we waited for you. Simon, will you please offer Maggie a glass of wine?”
Again, Maggie flashed him a look, this time with a raised brow. What had she missed? Simon’s expression was enigmatic as he rose to fill her glass.
Maggie leaned toward Hannah. “I’ve heard your stunning recording of the Dvorak. And the Bach Suites as well. But my favorite is your Saint-Saëns. It’s as beautiful and elegant as you are.”
“Ah, The Swan. I love playing that piece, it’s the first I performed in concert. We always remember that terror, don’t we?”
“I still suffer paralyzing stage fright.”
Hannah smiled with understanding, reaching to smooth a hand over the glowing wood of her cello. “I was telling Simon that the cello is the closest instrument to the human voice—the masculine tenor. But—”
“But when you play, it’s in your voice.”
“Of course you would understand. I’ve been listening to your recordings as well, Maggie. Your piano sings, and makes me cry. Your Grieg Concerto is …” She held out two slender hands and smiled. “Well. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Grief,” said Maggie quietly. “Music tells our stories.”
“We have that in common, then. Perhaps you and I could play together one day.”
“Okay, you two. Enough. You’re forgetting that I’m here, an impatient and hungry man.” Sugarman began to set dishes of fruit, bread, and cheese on the table. “Time for dinner. And then Hannah will tell us her story.”
* * *
“My grandparents disappeared in the war.”
Hannah Hoffman’s words fell like cold stones into the quiet room. On the tabl
e beside her, the candles burned low. Two lamps cast soft shadows and wavering pools of light across her gaunt face.
Grief shimmered in her eyes as she leaned forward, seated in a velvet wing chair across from the sofa where Maggie and Sugarman listened in silence.
Maggie reached out to touch Hannah’s arm in gentle sympathy. “Can you tell us about them?”
Hannah’s hand made a graceful arc through the air. “My grandparents were Austrian Jews. Just months before the war began, they fled Vienna and opened an art gallery near the Duomo in Florence, believing they would be safe. Grandfather named it The Felix Hoffman Gallery. He was so proud. The gallery specialized in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings and rare musical scores and instruments.
“My grandmother played the violin, quite beautifully according to my mother, and gave music lessons to the wealthy families nearby. Their young daughter, Rebekah—my mother—had a tiny violin of her own. They were very happy, my mother told me, in spite of life under Mussolini. But then Hitler invaded Italy, and within six months, my grandparents’ lives ended in Poland.”
Hannah’s deep blue eyes glistened with tears and sorrow as she turned away.
Sugarman cleared his throat and shifted his chair closer to the trembling cellist. “But your mother, Rebekah, survived …”
A faint smile. “Yes.” Hannah brushed away the tears as she rose and went to the bookcase. Her fingers counted the shelves and moved unerringly across the book spines, feeling the surfaces, textures, and shapes. Then she drew a small tooled-leather book from the shelf and removed a white vellum envelope from its pages. “I have my mother’s last letter to me; I always keep it close. Would you like to hear my mother’s story in her own words?”
Sugarman took the letter from her and began to read in his low-timbral voice.
* * *
My dearest Hannah,
From the time you could first speak, like any child, you would ask me to tell you the stories of my childhood. I would tell you only of the happy times, about the years when I still lived in Florence with my parents, because you were too young to know the terrible truth. Now you are nine—still too young to understand—but this morning my doctors told me that I am very ill. I can feel the pain in your heart when you read these words. I don’t want to leave you, my darling, my own heart is breaking into a thousand pieces. Now, for the first time, I understand how it must have been for my parents.
Your Grandfather Felix was a renowned art gallery owner who loved music and beauty and telling stories. Your Grandmother Ella loved to sing and dance and play the violin. And she loved to read. They gave me and my baby brother a safe and happy home. You deserve to know their story, my dearest child, because we must remember. We cannot forget what happened to us. To all of us.
Here is how it happened, on my eleventh birthday in 1943, when my parents, my baby brother, and I were taken from our apartment in the middle of the night and sent away to die.
That day is still so clear in my mind, as if it were yesterday. May 3, 1943. I wanted the hours to fly by, because that night we were to have chocolate cake from the pastry shop on the corner. We lived just off the Piazza San Lorenzo, in rooms above Papa’s gallery, and he had promised to close the shop early so that he could come upstairs for a special dinner. Mama had said that she would play ‘happy birthday’ for me on her violin while I blew out the candles …
Finally, it was time. I was wearing a new white dress with tiny butterflies on it. When there was a loud knock at the door, I thought it was the first party guests. But it was Signor Bartolomeo, another gallery owner, who rushed in, shouting for my father.
Then everything happened at once, like in a nightmare. I remember that my mother’s eyes were red and swollen from crying, Papa’s dear face so white that I did not recognize him. Then suddenly the crash of breaking glass, the terrifying sound of heavy boots on the stairs.
The SS troopers and local police stormed in, screaming “Sie müssen mit uns kommen!” You must come with us.
I can still see the shine of my mother’s silver Shabbat candlesticks, knocked over on the dining table. The punctured balloons, the smashed cake. My baby brother clutching his teddy bear to his heart. Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto was being broadcast on the radio as we rushed to gather a few precious belongings. I still hear that music in my dreams.
Down the stairs, with our small suitcases. My mother sobbing because her mother’s candlesticks were too heavy to take with us. As we were pushed into the alley, I looked back and saw the gallery’s smashed windows, huge yellow swastikas painted on walls now bare of paintings. My father’s safe, broken and empty. My father’s face, broken and empty as well.
We traveled by train for three days, packed in like animals. No food, very little water. My beautiful white birthday dress, torn and filthy. They told us we were going south, but the sun through the broken wooden slats told us the truth. We were going north. We were not human, just numbers in a transport headed to Poland. And then we arrived at Auschwitz.
They put us in lines. Right away, my father was separated from us. The last moment I saw him, he was smiling so brightly at my mother. She was gripping my brother so tightly that he cried. The soldiers were taking all the younger children from their mothers. So much screaming. They took my brother, pulled him from my mother’s arms. His bear fell to the earth, a soldier laughed and kicked it away. I never will forget the agony on my mother’s face.
Children under fourteen were always sent immediately to the gas. But I was tall for my age, and strong. My mother lied, she saved me from the crematorium by telling them I was older and could play the violin. The Kommandant liked music, and so he let me stay with her.
We were given those filthy striped pajamas, and then we were tattooed. Ours all began with the number one. After that we were taken to Birkenau, where the women and children were kept. My God, the smell, the sounds … But I was one of the lucky ones. My work detail was in the kitchens, the laundry. The stables, if I was lucky. There was a Kommandant who would let me play my violin late at night in his quarters. For ‘favors’ no eleven-year-old girl should ever have experienced. The next morning, I could not bear to look at my mother. She must have known, but—her eyes were blank.
She lost so much weight, she would not talk. Except once. Her last words were not for me, but for the woman in the bunk next to ours. Another musician, younger and stronger than my mother, named Helen.
“Take her,” said my mother, pushing me toward Helen. “I cannot bear for another child to die in my arms.”
The next morning she stumbled in the work line. They beat her. I tried to lift her, to carry her, but one of the soldiers saw me and held a small pistol to my heart. Then he moved it slowly, so slowly, down my body to my thigh, and smiled as he pulled the trigger. Of course, they did not get me any medical treatment. If one of the women in our barracks hadn’t been a nurse, I would have bled to death.
The Nazi pigs left my mother to die on the cold hard ground. The women said she was the lucky one.
It was a lawless universe, unthinkable. Unimaginable. The SS had swimming pools and tennis courts at the camps, while we lived in hell. What I have told you, my darling Hannah, does not begin to describe what happened to us. If I told you everything, you would not be able to sleep for years.
But somehow I survived, to give birth to you—my joy. I stayed with Helen until the Americans liberated the camp. We found our way to England, and then it took us months to reach the United States. We found an apartment in Brooklyn, and after a very long time, I settled quietly into my new life. I studied, I worked, I learned English, I read and listened to music and played the violin and kept to myself. Like my mother before me, I gave music lessons to the neighborhood children to help pay our bills. You know that I met your father late in life, and that you were our miracle.
What you do not know, what I found out from my mother’s friend Helen only after I was a grown woman, is that my father thought that he p
aid for my freedom with his art. Our neighbor, Bartolomeo Orsini, was another gallery owner—but not as successful as my father. His gallery was struggling. He was an angry man. But he became friendly with the German soldiers who occupied Florence …
Simon Sugarman stopped reading. His eyes, filled with shock and anger, found Maggie’s.
“Simon?” said Hannah. “What is it?”
“Something in your mother’s letter, Hannah. I’ll finish reading and then I’ll tell you what I know about Orsini. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Hannah Hoffman. “I trust you.”
Sugarman flashed pained eyes at Maggie and once more lifted Rebekah’s letter to the light.
Those were terrifying days for Jews in Florence. Every night, families disappeared. One night Orsini discovered that the Nazis were planning to go to my father’s gallery within hours, to confiscate his art and music. They had a list of the treasures they wanted. Orsini went to my father, told him that he would try to get me out of Italy—for a price.
The price was for the best pieces in my father’s collection. My father agreed.
Now you know the rest of the story. I believe that my parents thought they would have time to escape as well, that they would find a way to meet me in America. But that was not to be. The Nazis came too soon.
What I want you to know, to hold on to, is that my parents sacrificed their lives for my life. And without knowing it, for yours.
When I think of your grandparents now, my dear one, I remember the happier times. My mother playing such beautiful music after dinner, my father busy in his gallery. I would join him after my lessons, and he would tell me about his paintings. His stories were better than any fairytale.
My favorite painting was the one he always said he was saving for me. A beautiful woman with dark hair, playing the cello, the night sky glowing through the window behind her. Papa called it Dark Rhapsody. He said it was the jewel of his collection. I don’t know whatever happened to it. Perhaps the Nazis stole it, perhaps that collaborator Orsini. My only hope is that, somehow, it survived.
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