In the Claws of the Eagle

by Aubrey Flegg

  Izaac looked towards the conductor, his smile confident. Madame Stronski could have told Louise that the one thing Izaac needed at this moment was a sharp slap on the backside and a reminder to place his feet correctly. But just now Louise was not on duty. He raised his bow, the conductor’s baton fell, and the music from the orchestra swept over him.

  There is probably no greater moment for a violin player than to experience for the first time the full strength and power of a seventy-piece orchestra surging in behind. Izaac felt himself being lifted up and thrust forward, like the bowsprit of a ship under full sail, reaching far out over the waves. The playing of the orchestra had the power of the wind behind it. No matter which way the ship turned, he would be there.

  This was the moment at which Izaac must abandon all flights of fancy. Now he must enter his own private tunnel of sound where there was nothing to distract him but the remembered pages of music sliding before his eyes, and the strange designs and shapes that represented harmony and rhythm to him. But suddenly something infinitely sweet and alluring was pouring into him, lifting him headily higher. He had no idea where it was coming from but it manifested itself as a bright line of sound which danced about his playing, illusive, disarming, passionate but yet infinitely sad. It flooded him, drove him, intoxicated him. His ship was riding on the crest of a wave. Had he been a sailor he’d have known to fear for his life.

  Louise realised, far too late, that something was seriously wrong. It was only when Izaac’s body started to weave to the music that she realised that he needed her help.

  ‘Come down Izaac, come down,’ she pleaded, but he was gone beyond her call. She had no access to him now. He was playing with a brilliance that he surely could never sustain. The opening passages of the first movement were passing, but at this pitch there was no room for error, nothing to stand between him and musical disaster. Louise closed her eyes and prayed.

  Izaac never heard Louise’s call to ‘come down’ but he noticed when the intoxicating harmony began to fade. His mind groped desperately for other indulgences to buoy him up. He became conscious of himself, of his good looks, of his technical skills, of his musicianship. He reminded himself how brilliantly he was playing. In Madame Stronski’s language, he was beginning to swell, and Louise saw it all.

  ‘Oh, where are you, Izaac?’ she whimpered in anxiety. That wasn’t him on the platform; it was the dreadful Master Abrahams. ‘Stop. Stop,’ she pleaded, echoing Madame Stronski’s cry, but Izaac couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. Seventy musicians, eyes lifting from their music to the conductor and back, were dependent on him, and he loved it.

  At last the movement came to an end. Louise sank back in her seat, exhausted. He’d made it! Let him come down to earth now while the conductor was mopping his brow and while people coughed. He would be mentally turning the page in preparation for the next movement. But what in fact Izaac was doing was writing a rave review of his own performance.

  The conductor glanced down, a courtesy glance to see if his young performer was comfortable, a smile of reassurance perhaps? He felt a slight prickle of apprehension. Those glazed eyes could just mean that the boy was preparing himself. On the other hand …

  Izaac was called back from faraway by that glance. Ah yes, the third movement. But no, it couldn’t be, there’d been no pause yet. Doubt flickered across his mind like a black-winged bat. This must be the second movement, surely. But the page he was seeing in his mind belonged to the third! Panic spread through him like a fever; he began to sweat. He would have to ask the conductor for a look at his score. He had heard of this happening, but he’d also heard that performers who did this were seldom seen again. ‘Louise, help me!’ He didn’t deserve it, but he needed her now as never before.

  Louise felt his call with a mixture of guilt and alarm. While they worked together she would watch the musical score through his eyes, one sheet sliding down over the other as the first was played. Most of the time the notes would appear as a comfortable blur, a sufficient reminder of the shape of the passage. When he was approaching a difficult section, however, she would know because here the notes would be crisp and clear. Now she realised that she hadn’t been paying attention. She closed her eyes to concentrate, and her heart sank; what she was seeing through his eyes now was chaos. A page would appear, and then be snatched away. She could feel his panic mounting. She gripped her seat and tried to concentrate.

  The conductor, realising that time was up, tapped his leg with his baton. What could have gone wrong? What should he be showing her? Surely the beginning of the second movem… She sat up. Of course! In the Dvorak violin concerto the first and second movements are always played as one continuous piece without a break. The mutt had forgotten; they had always practised the first two movements separately. He had let the orchestra carry him clean through into the second movement without thinking, and was now looking for the beginning of the wrong movement.

  ‘Izaac, listen! You have played the second movement; it’s the THIRD: Laa laa la la lee laa la la la lee la … ’

  A look of enlightenment crossed Izaac’s face. He turned to the conductor with an apologetic smile; he was ready.

  After that Louise never left him for a second, thinking ahead for reminders and associations should he need them, but Izaac was safe now; she had saved him. The applause poured over her, but she was too drained even to clap. Izaac looked down and saw her hunched in the vacant seat, invisible to all but him.

  The following morning Madame Stronski called to congratulate Izaac on his performance. He was exhausted and deflated, a condition that she knew from her own career, so she postponed her enquiries about what had happened at the end of the second movement until she was about to leave.

  ‘Well, what happened at number three? I thought Maestro Herzfeld was going to run you through with his baton. I would have done!’ Izaac hung his head and explained to the carpet that he had forgotten where he was in the score. ‘What? With that lovely tune to remember? Oh Izaac!’

  ‘I was playing so well in the first two movements, too.’

  ‘No you weren’t. It was bloody Mr Abrahams who was playing, wasn’t it?’

  ‘How can I explain, Madame Helena? I heard another line, a harmony like nothing I have ever heard before, it was so beautiful, but so sad. It just lifted me up and up.’

  ‘Pah! I’d put that down to a bad case of inflated ego!’ Madame Stronski snorted.

  Louise sighed with relief. Ever since the concert she had been wondering if what had happened had anything to do with the feelings she had directed at Izaac.

  Madame Helena wasn’t interested in his excuses. There were new challenges ahead, she warned him. She wanted him to study some more modern composers, saying darkly that these would be brutes to learn.

  CHAPTER 10

  Night in Vienna Woods

  Erich woke from a dream of family picnics, but the campfire smell persisted. He sniffed, and turned on his bedside light. A thin haze circled the shade. He let his eyes follow his nose upwards towards the skylight. Smoke was gently cascading into the room. He threw back his sheet, jumped for the ledge of the skylight and pulled himself up. He was twelve and lithe and active. Resting his chin on his hands, he peered down into the garden.

  The smell wasn’t from Grandpa Veit’s bonfire. He looked left and saw a sudden flicker of red light illuminate the underside of a rising column of smoke. His arms went rigid; he hung for a second longer to be sure of his bearings, and then dropped back into the room, pulled on his shorts, grabbed a shirt and ran barefoot down the stairs.

  ‘Fire! Papa … fire; the sawmill is on fire!’ The doors to the two bedrooms opened together. Grandpa Veit in his nightshirt, bleared and confused, started shouting loudly for water. Father, more practically, was pulling on his trousers. He reached into his pocket, took out some groschen and pressed the small coins into Erich’s hand. Against the rising volume of Grandpa Veit’s military-style commands, he shouted to Erich.

  �
��To the telephone, Erich. First the Fire Brigade, that’s free, then Herr Solomons. The operator will know his number. Run! I’ll follow.’

  At that moment Erich felt a surge of pride in his father so strong that he wanted to give him a hug. Instead he pelted down the road to the public telephone, and wound the handle until it nearly came off in his hand. At first the operator was reluctant to take orders from a boy, but when he said, ‘Well, you tell Herr Solomons then!’ she realized it wasn’t a hoax.

  Erich arrived at the fire almost as soon as his father.

  ‘Papa!’ he said. ‘They’re coming.’ Already they could hear the clang of the bell in the distance. The fire glowed ominously, outlining the buildings facing on to the road. Father had keys to the iron gates of the yard and was opening them in anticipation.

  ‘Erich,’ he said. ‘Run to Herr Bookmann, the yard supervisor. He knows where all the men live. Do as he says.’

  For the next half hour Erich ran and ran … and ran again, knocking on doors, throwing stones at windows, and shouting through letterboxes.

  ‘The sawmill’s on fire, come and help!’

  He didn’t wait to explain; the glow against the sky told the startled men all they needed to know. When he arrived back at the sawmill it was like a scene out of hell. The fire engine was pumping curved jets of water in through the windows of Father’s office and dousing the sawing-sheds behind. Erich noticed that someone had painted a yellow star on the door. As he looked, and wondered what it meant, flames burst through the cracks and flickered around the new paint. A line of men had formed a chain, passing buckets of water to douse the fire as it tried to encroach on the piles of new-sawn timber. Erich could see his father, his face ruddy in the fire’s glow, directing operations, picking up fallen buckets, filling gaps in the chain at need.

  ‘You take it easy, sir … leave it to us,’ one of the workers cautioned him, but Father appeared not to hear. A motorcar had arrived; Herr Solomons was there. Erich ran towards him; ‘Father’s over there!’ Erich wanted everyone to see – Father was saving the yard!

  At that moment everything seemed to stop. The chain of buckets faltered and the fire gave a great gasp as part of the roof fell in. Erich turned to see the men dropping their buckets and running towards Father, hands reaching out too late to catch his fall. They closed around him. Erich ran and beat his way through the encircling men. One of them had a torch, and as Erich watched, he turned its pale beam on Father’s face, robbing it of the fire’s glow. Father’s face was blue, just as he had seen it for a moment in Mother’s painting. The crowd was parting to let Herr Solomons through.

  ‘Franz!’ He said anxiously, using Mr Hoffman’s first name for the first time. ‘We will get you a doctor!’

  Father shook his head. ‘The fire sir, the fire!’, he murmured.

  ‘Don’t you worry, my friend. You have done a hero’s work, and what is insurance for?’ He promptly organised for Father to be carried home. Later, when the fire was under control, he came and stayed until the doctor had declared Father to be out of danger.

  Erich watched the movements of the adults through the open door of sitting room. He felt detached, in a misery that was all his own. They were like actors entering a set, saying their lines, and then leaving it again. Mother, tousled but beautiful, still in her dressing gown, emerged with the doctor. Herr Solomons, holding his hat, waited anxiously for the prognosis. Grandpa Veit, now partly dressed, appeared, saw Herr Solomons, and retreated into his room again, aiming a stage grimace towards Erich. Eventually the doctor left, with reassurances to them that Father would be all right with a little rest.

  Herr Solomons was the last to leave. At the door he turned and said, ‘Anything, Frau Hoffman, anything, you just have to ask.’ The door closed behind him. As if on cue, Grandpa Veit appeared from his room, shaking with apparent rage, and confronted Mother.

  ‘Why did you let him go?’ he snapped.

  ‘Who? The doctor?’

  ‘No, you stupid woman. Franz. You know he’s not fit. You could have killed him.’

  ‘Well, who should I have sent? Erich?’

  ‘No, me. I’d have sorted out that bloody Jew.’

  ‘You! If I remember rightly, you were standing here in your nightshirt shouting for water! Go back to bed, old man, and stop blaming me. I have Franz to tend to.’ At that Sabine went into their bedroom and all but slammed the door.

  Erich closed his eyes and held his breath, willing his grandfather to turn about and go back into his room, but Veit had been stood up to, he had not had the last word, and he didn’t like it. Erich heard the shuffle of his coming.

  ‘It was your mother’s fault. She’s responsible, you know.’

  Erich kept his eyes closed. This wasn’t the first time Grandpa had blamed Mother when Father had one of his attacks. What did he mean about Mother being responsible? Responsible for what?

  Veit, pleased with his ambiguity, now turned his attention to the consequences of the fire. ‘So the timber yard is gone? That will be the end of your father’s job. She’ll have to go out to work now; no more messing about with paints.’

  Oh, go back to bed, old man, Erich thought. But Veit wasn’t finished.

  ‘Solomons did it on purpose, you know – the fire. It’s all part of their conspiracy to bring the country, and our civilisation, to its knees.’

  ‘But why would he burn his own sawmills?’ Erich queried.

  Viet bent down and his voice sounded hot in Erich’s ear. ‘Insurance, boy. Destroy the industry, make twenty honest men jobless, collect the insurance, and laugh all the way to the bank.’

  Erich liked Herr Solomons, and he just didn’t want to know about this. Herr Solomons’s words to Father had been said out of kindness, he was sure. He remembered the yellow paint on the door: the Star of David, that’s what it was. He had heard how it had been painted on other buildings when they were wrecked by the right-wing mobs that were becoming commonplace.

  ‘But Grandpa,’ he said. ‘Somebody had painted a yellow star on the door like they do when they attack Jewish premises. I saw it myself.’

  ‘Oh no! Don’t you be fooled by that, lad. They do it themselves; just to make it look like it was sabotage. They don’t want to be charged with firing their own premises, do they?’

  Erich was in bed, but he wasn’t dreaming this time. His nightmare was live: a rollercoaster that had no sooner completed one terrifying cycle than it would start all over again. Father would be out of a job; Mother would have to go out to work instead; he would deliver papers like Hans in school. Herr Solomons was kind – Mother liked him; Herr Solomons was evil – Grandpa said so. What had Mother done to make Father sick? He hated Grandpa with all his heart, but … there were Mother’s pictures – surely art was supposed to be beautiful, not terrifying. Herr Solomons liked her pictures; he had started the fire. If he hadn’t, who had? And he would be back for another stomach-churning round.

  Erich sat up in bed. He had to do something to quiet the turmoil in his mind. Action, that’s what he needed. Something, anything to stop worrying about uncertainties, to hone himself for some great endeavour. His vision stopped short of shining armour, but only just. He kicked the sheet off and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He dressed quickly, choosing a dark top. He pulled his lederhosen up by their braces, and tied a pair of black rubber-soled shoes about his neck. He turned the key in the door of his bedroom so that they’d think he was asleep if they came up, walked to where he could stand directly under the skylight and jumped.

  He stood for a moment beside the garden shed, listening. Nothing moved, no lights in the house, the neighbour’s dog hadn’t barked. He knew the path through the garden well enough, the only obstacle turned out to be his grandfather’s wheelbarrow. He rubbed his thigh and cursed the old man quietly. A well-used path led up beside the vineyard. If he looked at it directly, it wasn’t there, but if he looked a little to one side he found he could see it, a lighter density in the black abo
ut him. His night vision was improving and as it did so the darkness began to reveal other dimensions. It was as if objects in the dark carried an almost tactile aura about them. He flinched away from a branch that overhung the path; he hadn’t seen it, but yet had known it was there. He reached a stile and crossed it, stepping onto a wider path, one of the numerous Wander Wege or wanderer’s paths that lace the Vienna Woods.

  This was familiar territory. He had walked all these paths a hundred times: as an explorer (intrepid), as an Indian (swift and silent), as a cowboy (easy in his saddle, finger on trigger). Tonight however was for real. He put his feet down as silently as possible; if he met someone he wanted to be the first to know. When a leaf rustled, he froze, pulse racing. It was so silent that he could hear the hiss of his own blood in his ears. Snakes, they said, would lie on the paths enjoying the lingering warmth of day. It was amazing how easily the mind turned even the most modest stick into a silent menace. He decided to put on his shoes.

  He could see the path clearly now. As he leaned into the slope, climbing above the reek of the still smouldering timber yard, he noticed the air freshening. Erich was aiming for the old ruins from where he could get a view over the town below. The trees were thinning about him now and the high cloud was breaking up, allowing scatters of stars to shine through. The path widened here, this was a popular place and there was a circle of stones where someone had lit a fire. It had been carefully banked over. He laid a hand on the top stone; it was still warm. He looked about. Whoever had been here had gone. He walked over to the edge of the clearing and looked out over the lights of the town, pallid in contrast to the ruby glow from the embers of the timber yard. Far to his left the sky was lit from underneath by the lights of Vienna itself. A string of bright beads extending towards him picked out the towns and villages at the foot of the wooded hills.