“I asked you a question.”
“You’re traveling on behalf of the orchestra. It wasn’t that difficult to find out where the group was going after your performance.”
“You followed me.”
“Adele, your parents may not want their daughter to be seen with a merchant’s son, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean they’d rather see her traipsing around Munich with that trollop friend of yours in there.”
She yanked her elbow out of his grip.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”
So he thought to usher her back across the roof like a disobedient schoolgirl? If that was his intention, Vladimir Nicolai’s arrogance had grown in spades since the last time they’d seen each other. She had no intention of going quietly.
“You’re going back to your hotel.”
“Oh, am I? And how do you propose to make me go?” Adele stood against him, toe-to-toe, though he was quite a bit taller and more intimidating when he wanted to be. Surprise, surprise. But he’d never met the real Adele Von Bron. She wasn’t easily frightened, especially when she was upset.
He shrugged and reached for her. “I’ll carry you if I have to.”
She slapped his hands back.
“What is the matter with you? You haven’t spoken to me in weeks.” She chucked the hat back at him, uncaring that the lovely white felt would be soiled when it rebounded and fell to the ground. “And now you show up here in Munich, shocking me out of my shoes and then issuing orders that I am supposed to follow? How dare you!”
He raised his voice too, frustration mounting. “Adele, have you forgotten? I’m not allowed to talk to you. The nice visit I received from your father after I walked you home from the dance hall assured that well enough. I’m only staying away on the general’s orders. You can’t fault me for honoring his wishes.”
“But you met me in the garden before each performance after that night,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Except for recently. Tell me why I waited for more than an hour before each performance this month and you never showed.” She looked down at the ground, vulnerability suddenly washing over her as she stared at a pile of potting soil at their feet. “You left me there alone, Vladimir. I think I deserve to know why.”
She chanced a look up at him then, meeting the stony resolve of his eyes.
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I know you don’t understand—” When his hand reached out to touch her arm, she recoiled sharply.
In the car ride around the city, she’d imagined every officer Margie pointed out to have Vladimir’s face. At the time she’d felt only wonder and sadness that he’d not reached out to see her in weeks. But now? That emotion turned to anger.
How dare he drop out of her life with such indifference!
“Adele, I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am, but I just can’t see you right now.”
“You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.” She tapped her spectator heel on the paved rooftop floor, waiting for an answer. “Checking up on me, hmm? You don’t want to see me but you don’t want me to be in the company of anyone else either, is that it? Well, you needn’t bother with the protective act. There are plenty of young men down there who asked me to dance.”
“I know,” he whispered then, the words hinged on a half-hidden smile. “I saw them.”
Adele didn’t understand a single thing he was saying. So he’d been there the whole time, watching her?
Vladimir bent down to pick up her hat a second time. This time he brushed it off with his sleeve and, taking a few precautionary steps up to her, gently angled the hat on her head. He tipped the brim of the fedora just down to her right brow before taking a step back again.
“You saw me in the club?”
“Yes. And I saw the officers. I wanted to punch every single one of them, just like that night at the dance hall.”
She felt the anger ease from her shoulders and melt down her arms.
“Vladimir.” She shook her head and continued looking back in his eyes. “I don’t understand. I know my parents won’t allow us to see each other, but I would have waited.” She stopped, afraid she’d get weepy before him. “I waited before each performance and you never came. You can’t have it both ways.”
“I know.”
“Then why?” She chanced keeping her eyes connected with his. It didn’t matter now. They glossed over anyway. “I thought we were friends. Maybe I was wrong.”
“I was trying to keep distance between us.” He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Adele, more is going on here than you realize.”
“Fine. Then help me understand what it is.”
Vladimir shook his head. “I can’t tell you. Not now.”
“That’s not an answer. Especially not when you show up, unannounced, while I just happen to be on a trip to Munich. That’s a bit odd. I think you owe me an explanation.”
She notched her chin a bit higher in the air, and though she knew her voice had quivered ever so slightly, she waited for an answer. Instead, he turned his gaze to a point out over the skyline beyond her. She wondered what could have lost him in thought at such a moment but kept silent.
“Do you remember that night at the dance hall, Adele?”
How could she possibly forget her birthday? She still had the gift of the butterfly clip tucked away. He may not have asked her to dance, but for the walk home, it was worth it.
“Of course. It changed everything for Austria, didn’t it?” And for her. She’d hoped that maybe it had changed things for him too.
He shook his head. “No. Not the start of the war. I’m referring to when I held you in confidence that night. Do you remember what I told you about my friends? The shopkeepers’ sons I’d grown up with and what was happening to Jews in the city?”
She nodded.
“Well, that’s why I’m here.”
“Vladimir, you’re not making any sense.”
He breathed in deep. “Can I trust you, Adele? My friend. Can I really trust you?”
Her heart wanted to scream Yes! Of course he could trust her. But with what?
“Your father can never hear about this. If he did—”
“You can trust me,” she whispered and gave what she hoped would be a confident nod. “With anything. I won’t judge you.”
“There are Jews left in the city and”—he looked shrouded in vulnerability as he shoved his hands in his pants pockets and gave her a wary look—“I’m helping them to get out.”
Adele’s heart skipped a beat.
No matter how badly she wanted to, she couldn’t find words. Never in a million years had she suspected that Vladimir would be involved in something so dangerous.
When she didn’t break the silence between them, he continued. “I kept away so you wouldn’t be implicated. I was protecting you.” Vladimir kicked at a pebble on the ground. “Please. Say something.”
“I . . . I suppose I understand what you’re telling me.” Adele shook her head. Every other man she knew would have been proud about such an admission. It held the note of courage, to say the least. But Vladimir? He was humble about it. Always quiet and unpretentious and able to get straight into her protected heart. “But you do realize what the penalty is if you’re caught?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
Rumors were flying all over the city. If anyone was to hide or help a Jew, the penalty was severe, up to and including death.
“I know what’s happening,” Adele assured him, “what the world is saying about Germany and Austria. Winston Churchill gave a speech this week. He asked the people of Britain to stay strong. To have courage in the face of the Nazi regime. He said it would be their finest hour. Do you think that’s true?”
“How do you know what Churchill said?”
“My friends at the university,” she said, feeling sorrow weighing down her shoulders. “Everyone was talking about it. I think I wa
s the only one who didn’t favor bombs falling on London. I don’t think war is the answer for anything.”
“Maybe not, but we have to respond when something is unjust, Adele. We can’t be content to watch at the same time we condemn. To condemn is to stand up in the face of a wrong and fight it. We must pick a side.”
“I want to pick a side. More than anything. And my parents don’t know it, but I’m questioning things myself.” She reached down in her handbag and pulled out a swatch of red fabric. “I refuse to wear it.”
She tossed the armband without care and watched as it floated down to the dirt at their feet. It landed with the Nazi symbol staring back up at them.
She lifted her chin up in the air. “I’m not as weak as you might think.”
“Ah, Butterfly.” He moved forward, one heartbeat at a time, and stood with the tips of his shoes touching hers. He brushed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “That’s the last thing you could be in my eyes.”
Even in the summer heat, she shivered.
“So, why are you in Munich then?”
“We’re helping a family escape. They emigrated from Vienna to hide in Germany some time ago, hoping they could make it through to Switzerland.”
“So you mean . . . there are others doing this with you?”
“Yes.”
He’d just confessed an act of treason that was punishable by death if the Germans found out. It was shocking, but somehow it made her love him all the more.
They’d talked of God. They’d talked of faith and the Christian life they both wanted to lead. But this? Vladimir’s actions spoke of someone who actually lived it rather than talked of a life’s journey dedicated to Christ.
She paused, now wondering if she could trust him with her life too.
“And the only reason you’re here is to see them out of the city?”
“Not the only reason.” He shook his head, his eyes probing hers, sending chills down her spine. He pulled her into an embrace and she allowed her cheek to feel the warmth of his heartbeat.
He pulled back and whispered, his mouth warming her forehead with a kiss. “I can’t see you anywhere but onstage anymore.” He brushed curled fingertips across the apple of her cheek. “I came to hear my Butterfly play her sweet violin.”
She swallowed hard, hoping beyond hope that he meant it and had traveled to Germany to keep a distant eye on her as well. To sit in the audience of the concert hall and want only to be near to her. The sentiment was staggering.
“If that’s true, then I have something to confess to you too.”
He seemed taken aback but stood before her, waiting for her to spill whatever it was she felt compelled to say. “Okay.”
“I know of some Jews left in Vienna, and I want to help them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
August 14, 1943
Adele remembered how it had all started that night in Munich, how she’d given up everything to follow her heart. And now, as she trudged back along the dusty road to the music block, she could think of nothing else but how her world had changed.
By autumn, the musical troupe in Auschwitz-Birkenau had become a full-fledged orchestra. It was a world away from her youthful playing with the college troupe in Munich. Here the rehearsal schedule was much more stringent, the absolutism and demand for perfection the only line drawn against death. The one solace was that the orchestra was no longer required to work in Canada during the day. Instead, they were afforded the practice time whenever they were not playing for the laborers marching out in the morning and those returning at night—or for the arrival of trains.
The Nazis had begun to transport a steady influx of Hungarian Jews in late spring. Whether or not taxed resources had anything to do with it, it was known that by summer the overwhelming majority of these people were sent straight to the gas chambers. Adele watched this with a numbing horror—the systematic parting of people to the right or left, those deemed able to work versus those deemed unable. Her soul hurt, being forced to watch families ripped apart, to see the trudging steps the doomed took toward their fate and only be able to let her violin weep with them through it all.
She’d cried during every selection. She’d prayed too, pouring out to God in words not spoken but rather sent up from her wailing violin. But for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, the deaths continued day after agonizing day. This warm August morning was no exception. She had but moments to fix her violin and run back to the platform to play for another transport.
“Omara, I snapped a string.” Adele burst into the block, expecting to find her friend ready to step out and join them at the gate. What she didn’t anticipate was to find someone else in the block with her. Omara stood huddled at a plank bed with another woman, their heads bent over the straw mattress together.
They both stirred uncomfortably when she entered.
“I’m sorry but I snapped a string and—” Adele noticed that the women made an effort to quickly tuck something out of sight.
“You won’t have time to change a string now. You know where the replacement instruments are, Adele. Go and fetch what you need.” Omara stood with her back to the bed, blocking the view of whatever they’d been doing.
Adele felt uncomfortable about what looked like secrecy, but turned toward their cache of instruments as instructed without questioning.
“Then I’ll just leave my violin and take the extra.” She placed her violin in its box and tucked it under her bed.
Omara nodded. “Good. We can re-string yours when we return for midday rehearsals.”
“We’re playing at the platform again this morning . . . ,” Adele said, the finality of the task hanging on the end of the trailed-off sentence. She grabbed the case and, knowing that her feet should be swift, hurried toward the door. The guards had been irritated that she had to return anyway. It certainly wouldn’t do to dawdle in her return.
“Does Alma know where you are?”
Adele nodded. Their new conductor, Alma Rosé, was the one who had sent her back. “Yes. She expects me to return with you.”
She looked at the other woman there in the block with Omara, her eyes appearing purposeful in diverting Adele’s glance in her direction. She looked the same as any prisoner, with head shaved and a uniform splashed with an unforgiving layer of dirt. But if Adele had to guess, she thought she recognized Helene, one of the women who worked at Crematorium IV. What she was doing in the music block on this particular day was anybody’s guess.
“I will be along shortly, Adele.”
She paused, unsure if she should return alone. Was it safe? Would the guards think Omara was sick and quarantine them all, or worse?
“But what do I tell Alma? If I don’t return with you, the guards could take out the punishment on us both.”
“I will be right behind you.”
Omara seemed to grow impatient with the questioning. “Hurry now, Adele. I won’t be responsible for the beating they’ll issue if you’re late. It’s risky enough to come back because of a snapped string.”
Adele did as she was told and tucked the violin under her arm. With a swift glance back, she met the eyes of her friend for a split second before the door closed between them.
Marta was the first to notice that she’d returned alone. Adele shot her a look as she slid into her seat and began readying her violin for the next song.
Always the consummate professional, Alma was strict about starting on time. In spite of an uncontrollable circumstance like a snapped string, she required that every musician be on time. Knowing this, Adele looked around, watching for Omara’s form to appear over the hill and hurry to the train platform.
“Psst! Adele!” Marta was trying to get her attention from a row away. Adele turned to see her mouth the words “Where’s Omara?”
Adele shook her head. Marta shifted in her chair and looked over at Fränze, who was clutching her flute a few seats away. Several of the other girls noticed too but said nothing. One of the other bass pl
ayers picked up the cello and sat in the chair in the back, preparing to take Omara’s usual notes as her own. And so it seemed nothing else remained to be said.
The conductor raised her hand, calling them to attention.
As always, Adele’s eyes sailed over to the back row. With a habitual glance to the seat Vladimir would have occupied had they been playing a concert in Vienna, she set about her duty. She played as an automaton would, with no depth of feeling, no love for the music. There were only fingers that pressed strings, a bow that soared over the instrument.
God. She breathed the prayers out as she always did, through gritted teeth. God? How can I be forced to play like this? Please don’t hate me for doing it.
Adele swallowed hard, relief covering her when she saw Omara’s form appear over the hill and hurry in their direction.
Please forgive us, Lord . . . for playing for them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Well, I’ve got to hand it to you New Yorkers,” William said on a contented sigh, and tossed a piece of pizza crust back in the cardboard box on the worktable. “You make a mean pizza.”
Sera cocked an eyebrow as she brushed the crumbs from her hands. “Oh yeah? So I’ve finally convinced you that New York–style crust is better.”
“Miss James.” He leaned in and placed his hand over hers casually, as if he’d had the liberty to do so for years. “I may never find the owner of the painting, but at least I can say I’ve been well fed for one of the best weeks out of my life.”
She smiled at the warmth of his hand and welcomed it, but felt nerves kicking in. William had cleared his calendar and after their dinner the first night had become something of a fixture in her gallery. They’d talked. Researched the painting. Laughed plenty. And had walked through the spring evenings along the sidewalks of Manhattan, hand in hand, not looking or thinking past tomorrow.
But now, tomorrow was before them. Saturday night had rolled around. It stared them in the face—he was leaving the next day. Sera felt his eyes on her and popped up from her chair. She’d welcome anything other than talking about what they were both trying so hard to ignore.
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