“The Shostakovich. ‘Six Preludes and Fugues.’ It’s difficult to play, but some people say it’s boring to hear.”
“Boring?” Paul still doesn’t look up. “It wasn’t boring, honey. Play it again. I liked it.”
I don’t want to play it again, but I’ve been trained to be dutiful. This time I try to listen as well as play, but one can’t do both at the same time. I recall that Bartok claimed that he found one of Shostakovich’s symphonic themes so silly that he decided to parody it. On a whim, I close the score and try a parody myself: consonance, break, dissonance; consonance, break, dissonance.
“My God,” Paul calls from the other room. “That’s awful. What are you playing?”
“Nothing,” I answer, closing the piano. But I’m oddly satisfied, as if some bothersome question has suddenly been answered.
“Again,” my mother said, and I repeated the intermezzo. I knew it by heart, by rote, and I’d steal looks at her, where she stood clutching the curtain and gazing out toward the canyon. When I finished, I stopped, the silence lifting from the piano to fill the room.
When this silence reached my mother, she would say, “Again.” She never moved, and I played the intermezzo over and over. Dusk fell, and then dark, but we lit no light and my mother never moved, and after a while I started over without her prompt, so that the intermezzo became a rondo, a circular piece that never ends, but only returns to its own beginning, again and again.
I do not recall my mother having friends. Certainly, I have no friends, not of the secret-sharing variety, at any rate. Of course, Los Alamos is the kind of town that seems to preclude friendships of what I imagine to be the usual sort. People are secretive, but they are also self-involved: The percentage of geniuses in Los Alamos is many times the national average.
The percentage of suicides is also disproportionately high. There’s an oft-repeated bit of local folklore that says that when someone decides to throw himself off the gorge bridge, everyone else will go to measure his velocity. I do not know if this is precisely true, but its metaphor is telling.
My best friend in high school, Barbara Stewart, killed herself, but she did not throw herself off the gorge bridge. Her velocity was of a different sort: she stopped eating.
I’d never been much of an eater myself, and so at first I didn’t notice. But Barbara began to demand notice: “Look at my fat fingers,” she’d say, and when I looked I’d see skin hung on bone. “Isn’t she stunning?” she’d say of Twiggy, an emaciated model whose enormous eyes were painted round with eyelashes, and then, “Do I look like her?” She’d cut her hair short and boyish by then, and painted on the same lashes, but where Twiggy had a glow Barbara had a pallor, a blue tinge to her skin that I did not think entirely unattractive.
When her parents finally put her in the hospital, Barbara weighed 74 pounds. She was still strong enough to rip out her IV and then tape it back on so that it looked as if it were connected.
The last time I visited her before she died, she said, “I’m so fat.” She weighed 57 pounds. Her parents had her body cremated, and I have no idea what they did with her ashes, which perhaps weighed little enough that Barbara finally achieved her dream.
The children were so thin that when the SS came, in April, to tell them that they would all be moved to the camp at Theresienstadt, Hana was relieved. It would, after all, be in the Nazis’ best interests to keep their workers well-fed, though it was difficult to imagine what a three-and five-year-old might work at.
Father and Mother Weiss were moved first. Hundreds of trucks arrived in Prague to transport the elderly, along with those the Jewish Council deemed privileged. The latter included doctors, politicians, artisans, and musicians, though, because Hana had not been regularly employed since Pavel was born, she was not among them.
It was raining the morning the trucks came, a hard steady rain that had begun the afternoon before and showed no sign of letting up soon. The trucks had canvas awnings over their beds, but the rain blew in through the sides and backs, and people jostled for positions toward the fronts, where it was a little drier.
Through the conservatory window, Hana watched the soldiers loading old men and women into the transports. The soldiers were young, their faces impassive, but they seemed kind and concerned, often assisting women up the step by holding their elbows. Aside from the soldiers and the people lined up waiting to be loaded, the street was deserted: no children playing; no women rushing toward unknown but important destinations; no men gathered at the corner park’s benches to argue the latest turn of events. Pink blossoms danced in the rain and then fell to the street to be lost in its black gloss. Everything but the blossoms appeared to be monochromatic, a distinction Hana would later recall as the last time she saw color until after the war.
When Hana heard the sounds of Mother Weissova assisting Father Weiss slowly down the stairs, she left her post and went to help. Although it was April, and warm, he was dressed in his overcoat, muffler, and black hat, his hands gloved, his overshoes securely fastened over his polished oxfords. Mother Weissova wore her mink coat and matching hat, elegant black heels, and a simple black dress. She was, Hana suddenly realized, much younger than her husband, 45 to his 65, and this morning she looked even younger still. Her black hair was pinned back into a tidy twist beneath her hat, and she held Petr’s elbow firmly, her gaze focused down the stairs before her.
Hana took Petr’s other elbow and together the three descended to the foyer and then stopped. Petr breathed heavily, but still managed to say what a lucky man he was to be attended by two lovely young women. The women exchanged glances but laughed at the same time.
Heidi and Pavel appeared, and Mother Weissova knelt to straighten collars, to lick her finger and press awkward strands of hair into place, then at last to kiss each cheek and hug each child. “You are the man now,” she told Pavel, who deepened his voice to reply, “Yes, Ma’am,” with such solemnity that all laughed again.
Mother Weissova turned to Hana, and the women embraced and kissed formally, then more intimately. “You will give Anton my love?” Hana said.
“Of course,” Mother answered. “And before too long, we will all be together again.”
Hana turned to Father Weiss, the man she’d grown to cherish above all others these last six months. “Father,” she began, but then could find no words to continue and so embraced him silently, tears starting in her eyes. Father Weiss scolded, “No need to cry, Hana,” and she nodded, though they both knew this was a lie. She wanted to tell him she loved him, that he had been a strength for her and that she would miss him more than she knew how to say, but she could only repeat “Father” once more, before the soldiers were at the door.
Halfway down the front steps, Father Weiss turned. “Some Mozart would be nice, I think. That Sonata in F Major? Perhaps you will open the window, so all can hear.”
“The Mozart,” Hana said. “Yes.” And she rushed to the conservatory and threw the window open wide. Rain blew in, but Hana ignored it, went to the piano and began the sonata. She played it all the way through without once looking out, but she knew when she had finished that the transports had long since gone and that the shiny streets were empty.
Raja came, the following month. It was the middle of the night, and Hana lay, not sleeping, in her bed, when she sensed that someone was there, beside her. Hana knew at once who was there, but, though she longed to reach over and touch her sister, she waited for Raja to speak.
“Shalom,” Raja said, then laughed. “The Zionists teach us Hebrew.”
“My dear, dear sister,” Hana said, turning to face Raja, where she lay on Anton’s pillow although she could not see her clearly in the darkness. “Why are you here? Is it not dangerous?”
Raja laughed and propped herself up on her elbow. “We live for danger,” she said in a voice not her own. “The Zionists teach us that, too. They are Sabras, Hana, from Palestine, Jews unlike any Jews we have ever known, strong and fierce and proud and free. They teach us to h
ide, to outsmart the Germans. They teach us, Hana, to kill.”
“Why are you here, Raja? You do not come without a reason.”
“No, you are right. I am here because you must leave with me. Now. Tonight.”
“And the children?”
“Oh God,” Raja said. “The children.”
“You did not think—”
“I forgot, Hana. Quiet. Now I am thinking.”
“We cannot take the children into the forests.”
Raja leaned back onto the pillow. “This is so comfortable,” she said. “I had forgotten the feeling of a bed, of a feather pillow.”
“Raja—”
“Yes, yes. You are right. The Zionists, though, are smuggling children out. They are sending them to Palestine on ships. I will find out if there is room for Pavel and Heidi.”
“But you said now. Tonight.”
Raja stretched and yawned. “Tomorrow night. I will come for all of you then.” She turned and patted the pillow, then rested her head again. “Oh, for an hour on a pillow,” she said.
Hana reached over and touched Raja’s hair, cut short by a blunt scissors. “Sleep, Raja. I cannot, and I will wake you whenever you say.”
“I cannot stay,” Raja said, her voice already slow with sleep. “An hour. No more.” And she was at once asleep, something, Hana thought, she must have learned from the Zionists also. Hana watched her for an hour and then reluctantly woke her, and Raja stood, slipped to the window, looked out and then turned back to Hana. “Tomorrow, then,” she said. “You and the children. You will be ready, yes?”
“We will be ready,” Hana said.
But in the morning the transports came, and Hana, Pavel, and Heidi followed the others to Theresienstadt.
The Czech name of the town was Terezín, and it had been founded as a garrison in the late 18th century by the Emperor Joseph II and named after his mother, the Empress Maria Theresa. Terezín was designed by Italian military engineers, and its twelve ramparts formed, ironically, the shape of a star. At the peak of its occupancy as a ghetto for European Jews, in September 1942, Terezín’s 126,000 square yards enclosed 53,000 people, among them Anton and Hana Weiss, their two young children, Pavel and Heidi, and Anton’s parents, Petr and Eva.
It was, I thought, a good place to stop thinking about this woman. What did I, a Gentile piano teacher in Los Alamos, know of ghettos, of concentration camps, of the transport of European Jews during World War II? And why should I care?
The Anton I found in Terezín was not the Anton I had married, Hana Weissova’s diary reads. I flipped back and forth through the pages, looking for more, but there was no more to find. And so I turned instead to her notes for the symphony, the one with which she’d never been satisfied. “Terezín,” it was called, and it was comprised of five distinct yet related themes, which were sometimes interwoven though were more often played separately. Were the themes people? Whom would they be: Hana, Anton, Pavel, Heidi—and the fifth? Perhaps they were not people but scenes or events, or perhaps some were people and others were places.
The most often occurring theme was the piano’s, in an unusual cadence of question, question, answer, question. Played in the E-minor favored by Hebrew songs, the melody had their same haunting quality, a tune that lingered in the mind long after the music had ceased. “Dodi Li,” I suddenly realized. Unlike “Dodi Li,” though, this theme ended with its cadence incomplete.
The Los Alamos Public Library was sorry; it had no books on Hebrew songs. It occurred to me to drive to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, but it was Monday afternoon, and Karen Maisel was due in an hour.
Was Maisel a Jewish name? Would Karen Maisel’s mother know something about “Dodi Li”? Most difficult of all, could I ask her?
Difficult, yes. But I knew I was going to try.
In traditional music, a piece is organized around a central tone and a dominant chord, which is built on the fifth of the tonic scale. The motion from the dominant to the tonic chord feels as essential as gravity and provides the listener with a strong sense of conclusion.
In the 20th century, though, composers began experimenting with other kinds of pitch organization. Some compositions are organized around chord relationships other than the dominant-tonic; others use two or more keys at once: polytonality.
Atonality is the total absence of tonality or key, a lack of a basic key to which a phrase can return. Arnold Schoenberg, a pioneer of chromatic composition, went so far as to develop the twelve-tone system, a new technique of pitch organization.
With its lack of resolution, atonality alienates the ear, and compositions based on atonal systems are often incomprehensible, or, at the very least, unpredictable. But think: What is the purpose of music? Stravinsky suggests that its essential aim is “to promote a communion, a union of man with his fellow man and with the Supreme Being.”
There is no resting place in atonal music, and yet it is a resting place that the ear desires and seeks. A music which demands the suspension of reason, a movement to a dimension where our usual ways of making sense of things no longer apply, can be more than unsettling; it can be frightening. It is, after all, antithetic to everything we have been taught to believe.
After her lesson, I poured Karen Maisel a glass of milk and set some Chips Ahoy—her favorite—on a plate on the table. Then I asked her what she felt when she played, where she felt the music coming from.
Karen gave me an odd look. “From the piano,” she said, looking down. But then she looked up. She took a cookie and examined it, took a bite and regarded me over its crescent edge. “That’s not what you mean, is it?”
It would be an exaggeration to say my heart took a little leap, but my breath did catch, if only for a second. “What do you think I mean?” I asked her. I took a cookie, too, though I’ve never cared for them, and took an experimental bite. Sweet sawdust. I got up and put some water on for tea.
Karen had finished her first cookie and picked up a second when I sat down again. “Do you mean how sometimes, when I really know something, it begins to play on its own?” she asked, then immediately looked down.
“That’s exactly what I mean!” I cried, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. Then the doorbell rang and we both looked up as Karen’s mother Joyce came in. “Hello hello,” she said. “How was the lesson? Finish your cookie, honey, we gotta run.” She leaned on the archway between the den and the kitchen, arms folded, purse still hanging from her shoulder.
“Can I ask you something?” I said before my nerve could fail. “Are you Jewish?”
Joyce Maisel’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking?”
“Oh,” I hurried on. “Paul’s Jewish, too.” There. I’d made an assumption. “I’m just looking for something, a piece of music, Jewish music, and I thought if you were, you could tell me where I might find it.”
“Did you ask Paul?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Paul wouldn’t know.”
Joyce laughed, then came over to the table and sat down. “Physicist, right?” I nodded. “God, what a town. What is it you’re looking for?”
“‘Dodi Li,’” I said, then hummed the beginning notes. Joyce joined in on the second phrase, her voice a flat monotone.
“I haven’t heard that in years,” she said. “Such a pretty tune.” She reached for a cookie, frowned at it. “May I?”
“Help yourself,” I said. The kettle whistled, and I leaped up, surprised, then made a pot of tea. “Would you like some?” I asked, turning.
Joyce looked at her watch. “A quick cup. I could ask the Rabbi,” she said. “About the song.”
“There’s a Rabbi here?”
Joyce laughed again. I liked her laugh. It was spontaneous, honest. “In Santa Fe. We’re not real temple-goers, but we belong. That means we get hit up for the building fund, UJA, et cetera, et cetera. Which entitles me to ask the Rabbi a question from time to time.”
“Would you?” I asked. I set the tea pot, two cups, and cr
eam and sugar on a tray and put the tray on the table, then sat down. Joyce took a little cream, no sugar. So did I.
“Mm,” she said, taking a sip. “Good. Kind?”
“Oolong,” I told her. “My mother liked strong Oriental teas. It must be genetic.”
She laughed again. “Or habit.” Habit. It had never occurred to me. “Sure,” Joyce went on, “I’ll ask him. What do you need it for?”
It was my turn to laugh, a rusty sound, I thought, not like Joyce’s natural ripple. “It’s stuck in my head,” I said. “I’ve got to get it out.”
“Yuck. I know the feeling. Except with me it’s missing keys, forgotten phone numbers, appointments I’m late for—” She looked at her watch again and stood. “Like now. Come on, kiddo,” she said to Karen. “Drink up. Hey—” This was to me again. “Nice talking to you. I’ll get you your “‘Dodi Li.’”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” But it wasn’t just the music I was thanking her for.
After Barbara Stewart died, I was afraid to make a new friend. It had taken a long time for Barbara and me to make a connection, and that had only happened because of Barbara’s dog.
The Stewarts lived next door, on the other side of a line of Scotch pine that divided our two properties. Their house was the first in a line of duplexes that marched toward town, house after house of mirrored twins, aluminum-sided, shingle-roofed.
I’d always wanted a dog. I wanted, more specifically, a yellow cocker spaniel, a dog that was featured in the first book I’d ever read by myself, Buffy Takes a Vacation. Buffy the cocker spaniel had liquid brown eyes and a perfect coat that lay in waves like the ocean I’d imagined but never seen. Buffy belonged to a girl named Margaret, and understood her perfectly and loved her devotedly and without reservation.
The real dogs I knew were less perfect. A Doberman behind a chainlink fence on the way to school terrorized me; the barks of the Chihuahua in another neighbor’s house literally hurt my ears. A wandering gang of mongrels—I was uncertain if they were wild or tame—sometimes came and sniffed the hem of my skirt while I convinced myself I was a statue so I could stand very still. I’d never petted a dog, or known anyone who owned a pettable dog. The dogs in my life and the dog in my imagination might as well have been different species, they were so unalike.
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