Prague Counterpoint (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  “Did they arrest her, too?” he said sadly. “She was so pretty. People don’t stay pretty anymore when they go to prison.”

  Leah could not bear to think that Elisa had met the same fate as Shimon. She glanced toward the violin case and the small suitcase Elisa had left beside the door. She would not have left Vienna of her own free will without those things. What other explanation could there be besides arrest! Men and women disappeared for no reason at all. Any hint of transgression against the laws of the state meant arrest.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Leah answered truthfully. “But if she can get back to us, she will.”

  “Do you want Charles and me to pray for her, too? Like we pray for you, Aunt Leah?”

  Leah hugged him closer and nodded. Perhaps the fierce Christian God would not listen to her because she was Jewish. Perhaps He would hear the prayers of these little Christian boys instead. “Yes!” she cried. “Pray for her, Louis! Please do!”

  ***

  The bulb above her cot burned night and day, and all sense of time was lost to Elisa. Time was kept by the counting of meals. In the morning a crust of bread and a cup of tasteless brown water were served. Elisa managed to choke it down simply because she remembered the words of her father when he had told of those within the camp who had refused to eat. They had died without a fight. She would not begin this ordeal by giving in so easily. If she was to be imprisoned as her father had been, she would eat, even though the food made her feel nauseated!

  Her cell mates moved around her as if she were not there. They still believed their first impression. Elisa was a spy. She must be, or else why did she still wear a wedding ring? Why had she not been beaten?

  Elisa drew her legs up and sat on her bunk. She closed her eyes and mentally practiced playing a Mozart violin concerto. In her mind she stood before a vast and empty hall. There was a single, bright light above her and beyond that was darkness. For hours she would play, certain that no one but God could hear her. Even without the golden violin she could let her soul sing. Sometimes she would let her thoughts drift back to Murphy in his rented dinner jacket. Row ten, aisle seat. She would play for him and feel his eyes upon her so intensely that she would blush. And then again she would raise bow to strings and look across the stage to see Leah sending silly messages in her smile.

  When her concert was finished and the vile crust had been consumed for supper, she would close her eyes and pretend to sleep with the rest of them. Strange wails and moans would fill the corridors of the women’s prison during those hours. Cries and sobs would make the night tremble. Then Elisa would open her eyes and gaze at the band on her finger. Behind golden leaves the sky shone bright and pure and blue. She would lie in the shelter of the forest and watch as the leaves moved in the breeze. And always, just before she slept, Murphy would come and bend over her to kiss her good night.

  She could not think of Paris then. Or of Leah and the two small boys trapped by Herr Hugel. She could not let herself think of the promised beating or the release and then the next arrest that the women had told her would come. Here, there were only music and prayers and Murphy beneath the blue sky. It did not matter if the others hated her and suspected her. She would eat and dream of better moments, and perhaps she would smell the sweet air of freedom one day again.

  ***

  Leah was grateful for the radio. The music of Peer Gynt covered the sound of Charles as he coughed. Why hadn’t she thought to ask Elisa to lay in a supply of the medicine? One bottle was certainly not enough. Of course, if she had known Elisa would disappear, she would not have let her out of the apartment! Not even to purchase an entire shelf of cough medicine!

  She sighed and shook her head at the uselessness of her own thoughts. What difference did any of that make now? Elisa had vanished, and little Charles grew sicker by the hour.

  Charles followed her every move around the bedroom. His eyes seemed to hold on to her as the music followed some unspoken story that the child could feel, even though the substance of it was a mystery to him. He opened his mouth and gave a muffled cry for her attention.

  “What is it, Charles?” She knew how his ears ached, how inflamed his throat was. The effort of speech caused his eyes to water.

  The boy raised his hand to move an imaginary bow across the strings as the cellos played the prelude to the second act of the play. Louis watched for a moment; then after Charles groaned again in an effort to communicate, Louis said, “He wants you to tell him the story. Is there a story, Aunt Leah? Or only music?”

  How could such a young child know that this was more than just music? Could he see the procession of trolls in the Hall of the Mountain King? Could he understand the sorrow of Ingrid’s song as she was stolen away? She gazed at Charles in astonishment. Never had she seen a child of such perception.

  She smiled and sat beside him, stroking his hair back from his forehead. She had long since ceased to look at the cleft in his lip. The beauty of a clear lake was in his eyes. There was such life and movement just beneath the silent surface. How she had grown to love this little boy!

  “The music is from a record,” Leah began to explain. “There, do you hear the kettledrums? That is my Shimon playing! He is big and strong like an Indian in an American film, yes?”

  Charles nodded, and Louis came to sit beside her. “And you are playing?”

  ”Yes. That is Vitorio and me. Soon you will hear my friends Elisa and Rudy, too.”

  “I thought Elisa had gone away.” Louis could not understand how Elisa could be gone and yet also be playing the violin on the radio. “And why doesn’t your friend Rudy come?”

  Charles put a hand on Louis’ arm to silence him. He wanted to hear the story. He wanted to feel it in the melody. He could sense the celebration of the music.

  “Peer Gynt is a silly fellow. He goes along with the trolls, you see, to a world where cows make the cakes and oxen bring the ale. He wears a tail and swears that a pig is an accomplished musician and cows are as beautiful as women!”

  The boys laughed with delight at the vision of it.

  Leah continued. “This is the world of the trolls, you see, but they are not funny creatures. No, they are the animal version of man. What a man fears he may become. Can you hear it? Poor Peer joins them, and––”

  Again Charles groaned. He raised his finger to trace the Nazi swastika in the air. Louis expressed the thought. “Like Herr Hugel and the Nazis.” He giggled. “They think a pig could play the cello, but they will not let you because you are a Jew. Is that right, Aunt Leah?”

  Leah did not reply. She frowned and looked away. Yes. That is true. She wondered who had taken her place with the orchestra. She wondered who now played her beloved Vitorio. After a moment the music changed to the sad song of Aase’s death. Leah heard herself in the melody. She heard the mellow notes of her violoncello, and somehow it made her laugh. “They think they have gotten rid of me,” she said to no one. “But there I am. And there is Rudy Dorbransky still playing on the radio. Rudy, whom they killed. Shimon, whom they arrested and . . . Elisa!”

  Suddenly she could not laugh any more. Indeed the trolls of Peer Gynt had taken over her world. The Troll King had found his kingdom here. Like Peer Gynt, the people of Vienna now wore tails and raised their hands to swear that a cow is a beautiful woman if the Führer declared it so! Was this what little Charles heard in the music? Or had he known it before Leah turned on the radio?

  37

  Martyr for the Cause

  Otto stared at the map in Himmler’s Gestapo office in Vienna. Colored pins marked the cities of Paris, Prague, and London.

  With a sweep of the hand, the Chief of the Gestapo explained the coming operation to the men he had gathered from the cities of the Reich. Sporer reclined in a chair beside Otto. He seemed at ease and quite confident in the success he was having in the Sudetenland.

  “What are a few lives, more or less, when one considers service to our Führer and the Fatherland?” Himmle
r stood before them now like a meek little schoolmaster teaching his pupils. “What is it that we have learned in Austria and now in Czechoslovakia?” He did not expect an answer from his men. Instead, he answered the question himself. “Every cause needs a martyr! It is, of course, preferable if the man who must die for a cause is better dead than he has been alive. Take, for example our own Horst Wessel, the young fellow who gave us our national anthem. A seedy sort. Son of a prostitute, brawler, drunkard. Yet loyal!” Himmler roared the word and rose up on his toes. “Killed in a battle with the leftists, and––” he snapped his fingers—“we had a lovely martyred hero for our own cause!”

  The room was blue with smoke. Himmler clasped his hands behind his back and paced the length of the room to-and-fro as though he were lost in deep thought. Sporer nudged Otto slightly and rolled his eyes. He and Otto had already guessed the prearranged conclusion of Himmler’s dramatic presentation.

  At last Himmler stopped and stared silently above the heads of the two dozen men crowded into the office. “We have heard from our Führer that perhaps the Reich requires new martyrs to rally the people.” He turned to the map. “In these cities such martyrs have already been chosen. They are men in the service of the Fatherland, and yet I assure you, their loyalty is not to the Führer! They care nothing for the Nazi cause! Gestapo surveillance has proven that these men are traitors to us.”

  A young officer raised his hand slightly. “Then why will we give them the honor of martyrdom, Herr Himmler? Why not simply kill them?”

  Himmler smiled slightly and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “The Führer is more clever than that. These traitors are not known as traitors to the German public. Most are from the old Prussian military order. Their deaths will cause a great outcry. Mass riots! Demonstrations! The Führer says this has come to him in a dream! This is our way of getting rid of the Jews who remain in the Reich once and for all! Who in all the world can blame us for hating the Jews if they kill German citizens and political leaders in the capitals of Europe?” He was smiling now at the simplicity of it all.

  “But how can the people riot against the Jews for this?” Otto asked.

  Himmler laughed at the question. “Here is the beauty of the plan, Herr Wattenbarger!” He gestured for Albert Sporer to take the floor.

  Sporer stood erect, his chin high with the honor he felt at being called on. But it could not have been a surprise since he himself had already begun to implement the plan. “In Prague we have recruited a young German Jew to carry out the Führer’s plan. Imagine! Using a Jew for our purposes!” Sporer chuckled, and the others in the room also laughed as they tried to guess which of the Führer’s unhappy apostates was to be blown up.

  “The plan is much the same in London,” Sporer continued. “But it is in Paris that we will have our greatest demonstration of the vile Jewish plots! Certain members of our underground there have found a young Jew who wanders the streets of Paris without any sort of papers or work permits whatsoever. He hates those who are of Aryan blood and blames us for all his woes. His family remains in Berlin, but he was sent away to Paris some time ago. The young man carries a deep hatred for a fellow who is associated with the Abwehr at the embassy. It took little effort to convince him that the most sensible demonstration on behalf of the poor, downtrodden Jews of Germany would be for him to walk into the embassy and murder the German officer of military intelligence there!”

  A murmur of approval echoed throughout the room. Otto sat in silence with a fixed smile of assent on his face.

  “What then?” Sporer smiled. “Simple. The assassination will take place immediately before our usual celebration of May Day. The beer halls will be filled with Storm Troopers. We have only to light the torches for them and open the doors, Otto. Trucks will be waiting to take the men to towns other than their own. For instance, you will take your fellows to Grinsing from Vienna so they will not be recognized.” Sporer shrugged. “Once there, they may do as they wish. Stores looted. Synagogues burned to the ground. It is all prearranged. We even have a list of the items to be taken out of the Jewish synagogues before we burn them.”

  From the back of the room another question was raised. “And the fellow at the German Embassy in Paris? He is not one of our own men?”

  “A traitor to the core,” Sporer assured them. “And yet on the outside, he seems as pure as the snow on Mont Blanc. He will be given a hero’s burial, and we will give the people yet another reason to despise the Jews. Another reason to demonstrate their hatred.”

  Himmler stepped forward now. “Since this Jewish assassin does not have papers of permission to remain in France, we will be able to extradite him easily back to the Reich. Here we will hang him publicly before masses of Hitler Youth. This is the plan and the wish of the Führer. He says that we must initiate the young ones so they will not forget the taste of Jewish blood!”

  Himmler looked around the room and smiled briefly. “Heil Hitler.”

  ***

  Throughout the long trip back to Europe, Murphy was torn between his desire to return immediately to Elisa in Prague and the order of his new employer to attend British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s press reception in London.

  At each stopover across the United States, Murphy had purchased another newspaper reporting that riots by Germans in faraway Czechoslovakia were escalating. Hitler was foaming at the mouth, declaring that the Sudeten Germans must have their right to self-determination. Would England and France honor their treaty commitments if, in fact, Hitler invaded Czech territory? The question remained unanswered. American publications seemed to address the issue out of a detached sense of curiosity. After all, as the latest Craine editorial stated, what did any of this have to do with the United States?

  This warm May afternoon in London, Murphy sat among the old colleagues in attendance at Chamberlain’s press reception. Amanda Taylor smiled and nodded cordially at Murphy as if their midnight encounter had already been forgotten. Murphy grinned and waved his yellow legal pad in reply as the prime minister began to speak.

  Chamberlain’s owl-like face seemed flushed as he shuffled his papers on the small podium. He looked out over the large group of news correspondents, then down at his prepared statements, then up again, finally clearing his throat nervously. A flurry of questions erupted from the press corps. Chamberlain ignored them all, concentrating on his notes. Tangled sentences about the right of all peoples to determine their own government oozed from his mouth. In the end, Murphy distilled Chamberlain’s hour-long rambling into one off-the-record remark: “Personally, in the interest of peace, I favor turning over the Sudetenland to Germany.”

  “Is that a personal opinion, Mr. Prime Minister?” Amanda Taylor cut in boldly. “Does that mean we will not honor our treaty obligations to the Czechs?”

  Good for you, Amanda, Murphy privately cheered as Chamberlain’s face reddened.

  “In my opinion, neither France nor Russia will honor their treaty commitments to Czechoslovakia if the Germans attack. If that is the case, then Britain will certainly not get herself involved.”

  Strickland raised his hand but did not wait for acknowledgment before he called out his question. “Does that mean that Czechoslovakia will have to face Germany alone on three sides of her border?”

  “It is my contention that this matter can be settled without war. The Germans in the Sudetenland are making certain demands on the government in Prague. Both sides are reasonable, and––”

  “Britain will not honor her treaty with the Czechs to protect her territory?”

  “Czechoslovakia is a patchwork nation, as you well know. The area of the Sudetenland is populated by two and a half million Germans, and therein lies the problem. Those people are demanding a bit of a say in their own destinies.” Chamberlain cleared his throat. “In any case, the Czechs have a well-armed military force of some thirty-five divisions. I doubt that the leader of Germany has forgotten this fact. It seems natural that the Ger
man government should express concern for their racial brethren now living across the border in Czech-Sudetenland, however.”

  Murphy could not decide how much of the question Chamberlain had answered. Did he expect that the Czechs would fight the Germans alone? Did he believe that Hitler would back down in the face of the Czech determination to resist German aggression? If that was the case, then Chamberlain’s bottom line was that he didn’t really care one way or another as long as Britain was not bloodied in the squabble.

  When the press conference ended, more questions had been raised than answered. Chamberlain simply stuffed his notes into a worn attaché case and departed. Reporters were left to draw their own conclusions. The Nazis in Berlin could do likewise. The Czech government had correctly surmised that they were on their own in this matter.

  ***

  An hour after Chamberlain’s comments reached the streets, Hitler summoned his General Staff to a meeting in the war room of his Berlin Chancellery. Triumphantly the Führer explained how the most successful military endeavors began with murder, and then were followed by national chaos. The machinery of a political assassination had already been set in motion in Prague. Soon, Hitler promised, they would all be enjoying their military staff meetings at Hradcany Castle.