Inspired, he asked if he might play the organ after mass, and the request was granted. Encumbered by his rifle, gas mask, helmet, and bandolier, he approached the organ, leaning his rifle and his mask against it—not bothering to remove his helmet or bandolier. He began to play and, very slowly as he did so, the notes he played sounded more and more surely like the notes that needed to be played. He wondered if this was because it was so, or if in playing them that way he had made it so—and what the difference was. Then the air raid sirens rang out, interrupting the composition of both his thoughts and the song. The composer flew down the stairs of the choir loft, grabbing his gas mask on the way, but forgetting his rifle. He returned for the rifle but as he reached for it he instantly regretted it, thinking: What use do I have for a rifle? Then he ran back, bombs exploding around him, to rejoin the rest of his unit, who had been crouched all that time, miserably, underground.
What the hell were you thinking? asked Pasquier, when he arrived. We thought you were dead.
The composer only shook his head. His ears rang with the deafening screech and roar of the bombs.
Later, they picked their way among the debris. Men’s bodies, in whole or in part, were scattered among the wreckage. Abandoned rifles, canteens, packs, and photographs blew about like fallen leaves. All the real leaves had been burned from the trees so that only their charred stalks remained—pointing, like crooked fingers, uselessly toward the sky.
Now the composer knew why his father had never spoken to him of the Great War.
THEY MARCHED. TOWARD WHAT? Everywhere it was the same. Overturned tanks and trucks, bombed-out artillery vehicles and gun carriers, the abandoned bodies of men. There was no time to stop to bury the dead. The Nazis were advancing, leveling everything as they went. In their wake were only the skeletons of buildings: flattened, burned, still smoldering. A parade of refugees staggered from the ashes. Mothers carried children, children carried one another. Everywhere overturned carts and spilled suitcases indicated the interrupted journeys of men and women now nowhere to be seen. They combed through the ruins shamelessly for food or ammunition, but found nothing. They woke to the scream of Stukas, and headed south along what had once been the Maginot Line. Broken, it was only what it was—an essay at form that it did not, could not, hold. They kept their eyes trained when they could toward no-man’s-land, where the drone of military planes and bombs reminded them it was only a matter of time before the Germans arrived and they would surrender.
Finally, the shout went up. It was Pasquier. No more grenades! We are out of ammunition, men! Then, the final admission of defeat: Abandon any souvenirs! If the Germans catch you with anything of theirs— medals, rifles, or anything else—you will be shot on sight!
We will be shot on sight anyway, someone shouted back.
No grenades, no rifle, even, the composer said, looking with sad affection at his young friend Henri. And yet—you still have your clarinet.
Yes, returned the clarinetist, his eyes trained on the distance.
Just at that moment, they heard it: the barking dogs of the approaching Nazi soldiers.
THEY SCATTERED. PASQUIER, THE clarinetist, and the composer took shelter together in an abandoned building, which had been partially demolished. Without eating, hardly sleeping, they remained there for nearly four days.
Outside, they could hear the Nazi soldiers as they passed through, and once the sound of Frenchmen whom the composer urged them to join.
Pasquier refused. They are pro-Nazi French, he told the composer.
How can you tell?
Pasquier frowned. Better to wait, he said, and the clarinetist agreed.
The composer shook his head in disbelief.
Well, what did you think? asked the clarinetist, suddenly annoyed.
Did you think there was a clear line that separated things—good from bad, German from French, Catholic from Jew? Is that what your religion teaches you?
Of course not, the composer replied.
Listen, said Pasquier. Be quiet, both of you.
They listened and did not hear anything but the distant rattle of guns. But then they heard what Pasquier had heard. The crunch of gravel and charred wood underfoot. Someone was just outside their building—perhaps he had already overheard everything they had said! Their hearts began to beat so loudly they nearly drowned out the sound they listened for, but finally they heard the footsteps again— this time in retreat. It was the sound of a man who did not want to draw attention to himself, his movements deliberate and slow. After a stretch of a minute or more Pasquier rose to the small window and peered out.
What do you see? asked the composer, his eyes wide with fear. We’ve got to get out of here, Pasquier said.
They waited until night, and then they moved. Pasquier first, then the composer. The clarinetist took up the rear. They had made it nearly across the field to the cover of the woods—from which point they might have disappeared in any direction—when, behind them, there was the sudden roar of an engine. In no time, a German truck was upon them, its spotlight swinging, and again there was the sound of dogs in the distance.
Oh, dear God, said the composer. What now?
We surrender, Pasquier said. But he was still running, and did not turn as he spoke so the words were difficult to hear.
What? the composer shouted.
We surrender, Pasquier said again.
This time the musician heard—and so did the clarinetist.
What? the clarinetist said, overtaking the composer effortlessly and falling into step with Pasquier. The edge of the woods was only meters away—they could not afford to stop. Still, they could not help wondering: If they were going to be caught, was it better to meet their enemy head-on, or with their backs turned toward him in flight? It certainly seemed better, in any case, to face an enemy head-on. Yet there was nothing any of them could do to stop running.
Well, said Pasquier, can you think of anything else?
No! shouted the clarinetist. But I will not surrender. Don’t you know what Germans do to Jews?
The same thing they do with anyone who doesn’t cooperate, said Pasquier. So where does that leave us?
Death comes for us all, chanted the composer.
Pasquier put his hands to his ears. Enough! he shouted.
Not today, agreed the clarinetist.
Well, then? asked Pasquier.
All right, said the clarinetist, without letting up his pace. I’ll surrender. But I promise that before any one of us knows it—you, me, or the Germans themselves—I will escape.
Yes, said Pasquier, slowing finally, and causing the others to draw up behind. Of course.
The composer drew out his handkerchief from the pocket of his pants. It looked unbearably white as he took it out, neatly unfolded it, and tied it to Pasquier’s bayonet. They all nearly cried at the sight of it. How white it had kept! How perfectly folded it had remained in his pocket, among them, all of that time!
THE GERMANS APPROACHED. THE dogs yanked toward them on their chains, their teeth bared. From time to time, one of the dogs got near enough to snap its teeth on air within inches of the men. The soldiers held torches so their faces were lit by a strange glow. It seemed as though their heads were not even connected to their bodies. Because of this, the composer had the horrible thought that these were the dead men (whose heads, still lodged inside their helmets, had been cleanly disconnected at the throat) they had recently seen on the road. But then the light changed slightly, or it did not. Perhaps it was something else that changed. Perhaps in that moment the composer’s fear, which could not support itself any longer, gave way, and it was because of this that he saw the men differently: they were just, suddenly, men. Boys, really. The clarinetist’s age, or younger. Their eyes twitching with tiredness as they gazed back at them.
One of the German soldiers spoke French, though with such a heavy accent it was some time before the composer realized the sounds the soldier uttered was a language at all. But the
n, suddenly, Pasquier was prying the composer’s rifle from his hands.
Let go, he hissed. The composer let go. It was only then that he made sense of the command of the German soldier who was speaking to them in his garbled French: Drop your weapons! Hands up. On your helmets! Let’s go!
The composer looked around. All three had dropped their weapons by then, but the shouts continued. All three had their hands on their heads.
Finally, the French-speaking soldier approached Henri, who—his hands on his head—still clutched his clarinet.
Drop it! the soldier yelled.
The young clarinetist extended his instrument out as far away from his body and the body of the approaching soldier as possible, but he did not drop it.
This is not a weapon, he said slowly. It is a clarinet.
There was a pause as the approaching soldier examined the instrument now suspended at an oblique angle between himself and the Frenchman, then he turned toward the other soldiers, said something in German, and laughed. Then they collected the rifles from the ground and, without roughness, led the musicians back the way they had come.
So—they were alive. For that brief time—following the German guards across the same field that, just moments ago, they had fled in terror—the composer did not care, because of this simple fact, where he was headed, or with whom. After all, the men who led them away were just ordinary men. He could almost laugh! He felt no pain, and feared nothing.
IN THE MORNING, THEY stopped briefly at the German military headquarters and were given a piece of bread. They had not had anything to eat in five days. The composer ate half of what he was given and stuck the rest in his pocket, but later it was found by a German soldier, who ground it into the dirt at his feet.
Thief, he said. Do you know what we do with thieves? But he did not shoot.
All morning, the composer expected it. He would feel a slight change in the pressure of the air as the wind shifted and think it was a bullet. He became so attuned to the shifts in the quality and pressure of the wind, he hardly heard the commands of the officers or the more ordinary sounds of the men speaking softly to one another, or the crunching of their boots on the gravel as they marched. It was amazing to hear all the sounds that existed below what he ordinarily heard, and he marveled that he had not heard them before and regretted that it was the imminent approach of his own death that had, at last, so finely tuned his ear. He prayed to God that he would survive and made a solemn promise to both himself and to God that if he should survive he would listen even more carefully than he had before. That he would try to hear every sound God had created in this world—or (he corrected himself modestly) as many as God granted that he should.
They marched on.
The composer quickly lost track of the days, and of their direction.
They marched. Past the destroyed villages where the faces of the people stared back at them in contempt and shame. In every face they read the single word, which echoed in their own minds as they passed (though the word itself was left, except once, unspoken). Every face they saw—every burned-out home, every homemade cross, hastily fashioned, on the side of the road—seemed to say it.
Traitor.
It looked as though the countryside they traveled through had survived not only weeks but decades of war. According to one German soldier—it had. After twenty-six years, he said (though he himself could have been barely as old), France has finally fallen. A long war, indeed, but what was destined has finally occurred.
So, the Great War the composer’s father had fought was at an end— but there was no victory. It was impossible to imagine any deliverance from the destruction that surrounded them on every side. The composer looked, but he did not recognize even the earth itself. It was as though they had been overtaken—all of them: the Germans, the French, all of them—by another force altogether, which, being equally distant from every faith and creed he could imagine, he now struggled to understand how it was not equally distant from God.
—
ONE MORNING THE COMPOSER refused to rise.
I cannot go on, he said. I am sorry for my wife, for my son, and for myself, because I have grown to love you all, but I can no longer continue.
Don’t be ridiculous, said Pasquier. It is not a choice.
See for yourself, said the composer, motioning toward his feet that stretched before him, naked of the rags they were usually wrapped in. They were swollen, black in places. The clarinetist looked and then looked away.
Clean them as best you can and wrap them again, he said. We don’t have much time.
When they were ready to march, the composer was standing, supported by the clarinetist, and that was the way—three days later—they finally arrived at the transit camp, which was already overflowing with other French prisoners. When they reached the gates, they could see that the camp spread before them for many miles in every direction—as big as a city, as big as Paris even! They had heard that many soldiers had been captured, but they’d had no idea—until that moment—the extent of their defeat.
A German officer seemed to read the composer’s mind as he entered the gates. He spoke French, poorly.
You know how many of you Frenchies we’ve caught? he asked.
No one said anything.
I’m asking you a question, he said.
Pasquier volunteered. How many?
One million at least, said the officer. Some say nearly two. Either way you cut it—that’s a lot of Frenchies. Now, what are we going to do with you?
It did not at first sound like a question but Pasquier was watching the officer’s expression and saw after a moment that it was, so he asked hurriedly: Monsieur—what?
Well, that we don’t know! the officer said. He began to chuckle. We thought everything through so carefully but that, he said. We hardly expected you to give in so quickly, and all at once like this. Now what are we going to do with you all?
He walked away, still chuckling.
THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH food and water, and soon the stench from the latrines became unbearable. Weeks went by, and though several thousand men were trucked out to their next station, the three musicians remained in the transit camp as the rations continued to dwindle. When the trucks left with men inside, going somewhere—anywhere —else, the three musicians were especially lonesome. But Pasquier warned them: Don’t wish too hard. It is no better where those men are going. It certainly isn’t home.
There is no home to return to, lamented Henri. Imagine! Nazis goose-stepping along the streets of Paris!
By that time the rumor that Jewish families were being deported from Paris had reached them; the clarinetist had grown increasingly concerned.
But you are French, the composer had said to Henri, when they’d first heard the news.
You think that will save you now? asked the man who had delivered it to them. Look at the rest of us.
THE COMPOSER SPENT HIS time reading his Bible and The Imitation of Christ, which he had managed to keep with him, and worked steadily on his composition. Soon he had even finished the solo piece he had promised the clarinetist, and offered it proudly to the young musician.
You, he said, will be the first clarinetist ever to play this new work!
The clarinetist graciously accepted.
Several days later, however, he returned the music to the composer.
I am sorry, he said, but I am never going to get this. I can’t play like this—without any time signature, or really any structure at all! I believe it is genius, truly. But I am not the man to do it.
What? said the composer. Genuinely surprised. Where is your invincible revolutionary spirit?
Try it again, said Pasquier. He took the sheet music and held it open in his hands. The clarinetist picked up his instrument again, putting it to his lips.
He began to play. Hesitatingly at first—then with more certainty. The composer beamed with pride. Pasquier’s hands, holding the sheet music, shook. After a while, the clarinetist bega
n to feel it, too. He relaxed, and the notes flowed still more surely—they did not even seem to be coming from him after a while, but from somewhere—
Cut out that racket! came a growl nearby.
The clarinetist, startled, stopped playing.
Pasquier, still entranced by what he had just heard, was equally surprised. What? You don’t like music? he asked.
Sure I like music, the man who had interrupted said. But that’s not music!
Oh, but it is, the clarinetist said, laughing. Otherwise, he added— winking at the composer, who was still beaming with pride—how would I be able to play it?
BUT HE WAS RIGHT, the composer told me—months later, as we sat together on guard duty one night. It was a racket! I got the idea for the piece from the sound of the locomotives that rattle through the camp; from the incessant drone of the vehicles and the clickety-clack of the wheels on the rails as they pass. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make the sound align itself to any regular beat or measure—and it was then that I realized. All the things of this world, from which we make music, are not bound by time at all. They are utterly free! It is only we who seek to restrict things into units of measure; we who conceive of the symmetry that is both order and war. Everything—when the ear is trained to hear it—is free; everything is noise, and finally, everything is music! Even the birds (the composer continued) speak a language they cannot truly utter—a language of which, that is, their voices are only the smallest part. Is that not what makes their music great? It is clear and precise both in its register and voice, and yet—it says nothing! Even we humans—who understand so little—understand that when we truly listen.
THEN ONE DAY THE three musicians found themselves—without knowing where they were bound—on one of the trucks headed out of the transit camp. They arrived first in Nancy; there, they were marched to the rail yard and ordered into cattle cars.
Quartet for the End of Time Page 39