Dead People's Music

by Sarah Laing

  I’ll never find love, I told my grandmother’s cello.

  Never, never, Morrissey echoed.

  CHAPTER 12

  Pohiatua, 1949

  ‘Is this it?’ Klara asked Owen, when they stopped at a train station overshadowed by steep, cloud-bearded hills. Owen had said that he’d grown up in a small rural town, but she could see hardly any houses, and the station consisted of a shack with puddles on the concrete floor.

  ‘No, this is Mangamutu. Pahiatua’s four miles away. Mum and Dad should be here. I wonder what’s holding them up?’

  They sat on their trunks on the platform, the ground lilting beneath them, as it had done since they’d climbed off the ship in Wellington. Next to them was a stockyard, and Klara watched the shuffling dark cattle beasts, pressing her handkerchief to her nose to cut out the stench of manure. They seemed angry, as evidenced by their frowning brows and cries. One of them fixed Klara in the eye as if challenging her. Don’t just sit there, get me out of here. As they were loaded onto the following livestock train, she told herself that their lowing did not sound like human voices, that the dogs were not German shepherds, that farmers were part of the natural order of things. The farmers said ‘Gidday’, tipping their hats as they passed.

  Owen’s parents arrived a flustered half hour late: a blown-out tyre had to be replaced, and now George was grease-stained. Vera clasped Klara’s gloved hand and pecked her on the cheek as George and Owen lifted their trunks into the boot of their big car.

  Owen’s family home was very grand. Georgian, two-storey, it had doric columns and black shutters against a white so bright that Klara had to squint. The long drive swept past a rose garden, a tennis court and an orchard. Owen and George heaved their trunks up to the guest room, with its four-poster bed and dusky pink walls. Klara had time to sponge her neck and her armpits and change her travel-worn dress, before they were summoned to afternoon tea.

  It sat on a trolley, a three-tiered plate of pink and white and cream. When Klara asked what each layer contained, Owen’s mother looked at her in surprise and said, ‘Why, lamingtons, scones, shortbread and cucumber sandwiches, dear.’ She was plumpish and aproned, her brown hair threaded with silver, a string of pearls intersecting a pale blue sweater. ‘Every New Zealand wife needs to have a scone recipe up their sleeve in case of visitors.’ She smiled shrewdly as if she could tell that Klara couldn’t bake, that if she wanted cake she bought it. She handed Klara a cup of milky tea, and watched her as she chewed and swallowed the dry scone.

  ‘Owen told me that he was bringing back a bride, but you aren’t what I expected,’ said Vera. Klara already knew that Vera was unhappy about the union; she had overheard a heated phone call, cut off when Owen’s quarters ran out.

  ‘Really? What did you expect?’

  ‘Someone bouncier, perhaps. Blonde, more American.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Klara, fingering her dark curls, thinking that she might as well explain. It was better it came from her than someone else. And there was the question of her maiden name. ‘I don’t come from America originally. I’m Jewish, from Berlin.’

  She watched Vera’s face ripple with expressions, first horror, then confusion, then maybe compassion.

  ‘Oh. Horrible, horrible, what that Hitler did. He took my only brother. Jewish, did you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Klara, feeling as though she had skinned herself, and was waiting for Vera to sprinkle the salt.

  ‘Mr Blaettner is from Germany, he runs the haberdashery. He grows the funniest cabbages — they’re purple. He gave me one but I couldn’t bring myself to cook it. I fed it to the pigs in the end. He had to report to the police every day during the war. Some of the locals had it in their head that he was sending messages to a submarine off the east coast beyond Pongaroa. Which is awful, to think that he lost most of his family in the hands of the Nazis,’ said Vera.

  ‘I know some Jews,’ said George, his sun-damaged skin furrowing. ‘They buy my wool. Always screwing the price down. There’s some in the meatworks too. They run a tight racket, never give me enough for my cattle beasts.’

  ‘Dad, you’re not going to start onto your banking conspiracy theory, are you?’ Owen shot a pleading look at Klara: I am not like my parents.

  ‘It’s true, they run the banks, and the movie business. They’ve got all the credit lines tied up from England to America, their fingers on all the money.’

  ‘George, that’s enough,’ said Vera warningly. ‘Did you know your father has hired one of the Polish children to help on the farm?’

  ‘He can’t have hired a child, surely a man.’

  ‘He’s only about sixteen. Jan, he says his name is, funny, having a girl’s name — we’ve been calling him Johnny. A bit rough, but a good worker.’ Vera turned to Klara. ‘He’s from the camp for the poor wee Polish kiddies whose cities were destroyed in the war. Of course it’s closed now but lots of them have decided to stay.’ Vera grimaced slightly.

  ‘There was a camp?’ A hundred spiders danced on Klara’s back.

  ‘Very nice conditions, or so I’ve heard. Clean sheets and posies of flowers for when they all arrived.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Klara. But there they were, the shaved-headed cadavers stumbling towards her, and she could feel her heart racing.

  ‘They’re a funny lot. The children seem old beyond their years, hard, and they don’t seem to be making much of an effort to learn English.’

  ‘And you’re not making much of an effort to speak English to them,’ said Owen.

  ‘That’s not true. I speak to Johnny every day when I make him morning tea. He’s Roman Catholic, but I don’t hold that against him, not like some. Of course, we wouldn’t have had to hire Johnny if you had decided to go farming, and your brother was around more. Oh, Owen, you are going to settle down here, aren’t you?’ Vera looked pleading.

  ‘I bought some exciting art works while I was in New York. The artists were very welcoming. I spent quite a bit of time in their studios watching them work, finding out what it was all about. I’m going to open that gallery, Mum, and I think Wellington’s the place to do it. Who’d buy art around here?’

  ‘Oh, Owen,’ said Vera, her face crashing, rushing out of the bright room.

  George looked at Owen sternly. ‘It’s been hard on your mother, very hard. She’d always imagined that she might have a wedding to attend. You’ve been selfish, son.’

  ‘You know Mum would have only been happy if I’d married Sally. And I didn’t want to, Dad, simple as that.’

  ‘And there’s the question of the farm. We’d hoped you’d get that namby-pamby art dealer business out of your head. At least you could stick around and start up an accountancy business. Mr Toops is getting a bit doo-lally, it’s time someone took over the reins.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Dad, I’m going to be an art dealer.’

  ‘Well, don’t expect a penny of help from us. You’re on your own, son.’

  But now it was Klara that was on her own, in this green and mulchy country. Owen had gone to Wellington for the week, to find them a house to rent, leaving her in the reluctant hands of his mother, who had been suggesting that she change her name to Clare, to make things easier. Every morning the birds woke her, a shocking cacophony of magpies making her feel her cello’s absence more keenly. Her cello was still being fumigated, perhaps on Somes Island with the animals, a moth having flitted out of the case when the customs officers had opened it. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about; it was only a little one, but they explained how New Zealand was an agricultural country, whose purity needed preserving. Vera told her that Somes Island had been a prisoner-of-war camp, and she felt as though the customs officers, when they saw her passport, still wanted it to be one.

  Without her cello, they might as well have ripped out her tongue. All those things that she needed to express, but could not do with language, she channelled through her instrument. She had played her cello each night on the boat, as she
had once done the piano. This journey was far longer, and it was better that she practised in the dining room rather than her cabin, where other passengers might complain of the noise. Besides, the cabin was where Owen undressed her, his penis tenting his loose pants as the door closed behind them. She didn’t want to emerge; she wanted Owen to enter her again and again, and her limbs felt permanently swimmy, only able to swoon the bow, to play legato.

  With hours to fill, missing Owen, she wandered around the farm, her city shoes stained with mud. It was the colour she found so strange. She had seen green in New York — Juilliard was only a couple of blocks west of Central Park — but it was the density of the green here, graduating into a blackness that could conceal the underworld. The green advanced upon her, a wedge of bush rising from the valley’s thighs. Behind the house, behind the water tank, vines probed, threatening to curl around her ankles and wrists. The rhododendron was beautiful but out of control, a thousand pink-skirted ballerinas whirling on its branches. Ferns coiled into fists, into the banana passionfruit vines with their watery fruit, the rimu, the totara, the other small-leaved plants whose names she had not yet memorised.

  The orchard made her feel particularly uneasy, filling her with the familiar yet skewed sensation of dreams. It wasn’t so dense, and some of the trees were flowering. There were cherry, apple, plum and pear trees. The petals were delicate, replicas of her childhood memories, and yet it was in a cherry tree, remarkably like this one, that her recurrent nightmare took place. Her parents sat in its boughs, dressed in tennis whites, swinging their legs and laughing. But then a wind blew, and they broke into a million petals that became ash and whirled around her, flying into her mouth and eyes. She’d wake up choking.

  Beyond the orchard was the farm, and Klara sometimes stood at the fence, watching Owen’s father yell at the dogs who snapped at the sheep, watching the Polish man, Jan, chase the ones the dog had missed. Some of the sheep were smaller; they must be lambs. One of them always rubbed itself up against Jan; he had hand-reared it because its mother had died.

  Jan knelt at the sheep’s level and put his fingers into its tight wool, pulling it closer and singing an unfamiliar tune in its ear. ‘Cut that out, Johnny,’ Klara heard George call. And Jan stopped, but not before kissing the sheep on the nose.

  ‘Right, he’s off to the works. Next truck that’ll take him.’

  Klara tried to catch Jan’s eye — he was a displaced person, like her. She wondered how many siblings, parents, uncles and aunts he had lost to end up in this place, beneath the sullen hills that hoarded cloud and spat fat cold rain at them. She wondered what he made of it all, whether he was grateful for this sanctuary. The rain was coming down now; all Klara could do was run to the house, to hide in her room.

  ‘Klara? Dinner time, dear,’ she heard a voice calling up the stairs. She stood slowly, hiding the letters she was writing to Heinrich, Esther and Miranda in her book, and made her way down, the curved golden banister a reminder of her incarcerated cello. She placed her hand on her stomach, feeling queasy at the thought of another meal. So much food here; Owen’s mother cooked for farmers’ appetites, and it was meat three times a day. Large cuts of it, home-killed, and accompanied by potato and boiled vegetables. Sometimes the potato would be mashed, mixed with a yellow vegetable: swede, explained Owen’s mother. Klara didn’t like its texture; buttery and watery at the same time, smooth with an unexpected crunch. How she longed for Tante Dagmar’s matzo ball soup. Maybe when Owen found them a place, she would try to approximate the soup, she knew it needed schmalz. She wasn’t a very good cook, preferring to eat at the neighbourhood diner if she needed a hot meal. Mostly, she ate cold food: rye bread and cheese, packets of Belgian spice cookies, fruit.

  Owen’s parents fed her as if she were welcome, although she heard them whispering in the kitchen. She had heard the word Jew, heard Owen’s mother saying, ‘I don’t know what was wrong with Sally. She’s a lovely girl, so vivacious and capable. She’s heartbroken now, of course.’ She reluctantly entered the dining room, with its heavy curtains and dark mahogany table.

  Klara sat across from Owen’s brother Michael, who had arrived earlier this afternoon. Owen had told her that Michael was fond of the horses, liked to place a bet, and whatever the outcome, he’d stay out drinking and stumble home days after the horses had returned to their stables. Michael looked better than he did when he first arrived: he had shaved and changed his stained clothes. His teeth were straight, muscles evident through the linen of his shirt, his skin and hair burnished by the sun. But he didn’t have Owen’s gentleness, and Klara could sense his anger. From her upstairs window, she had watched him take the rifle out, and later return with two baby rabbits, their fur blood-soaked. He laid them on the bench in the car shed, first gutting them, then working his fingers beneath the skin to peel it back. He chopped off their heads and their feet, which Klara had considered rescuing, to be stowed in her pocket for good luck.

  ‘Rabbit pie for dinner tonight, thank you, Michael,’ said Vera, placing the dish on the middle of the table. Vera had made pastry leaves and a rose to decorate the crust; it was rather beautiful, but Klara felt nauseous. Taking a few deep breaths, she accepted her wedge and picked up her knife and fork.

  George was looking at her, as was Owen’s brother Michael. She put them down again.

  ‘Thank you, heavenly Father,’ began George. Owen was an atheist, but his parents were Anglicans, active in their parish. Klara stared at her dinner plate, and the pie, leaking gravy into her peas and carrots. ‘Amen’, she heard them say, which meant she could begin.

  They were looking at her again. She smiled nervously and took a small bite of the rabbit meat, which tasted of grass and burrows, of baby rabbits sleeping on a bed of half-rotten lettuce leaves. She’d found Owen’s Beatrix Potter books; the pictures were magical. She struggled to chew, then swallow.

  ‘How was the farm today, dear?’ said Vera, always conscientious in her dinnertime conversation.

  ‘Had to shift the stock again. The soil’s a bit waterlogged and the cattle are pugging the paddock,’ said George. ‘On the wagon for a while, Michael? Would be nice to see some more of you since you’ll be inheriting the farm.’

  Michael snorted, shovelling pie into his mouth. He looked at Klara, mouth full, pastry flecking his lips, and said, ‘So don’t you Jews pray?’

  Klara was angry, knowing Michael was deflecting attention. ‘Yes. But we would pray after the meal, not before.’

  ‘Really?’ said Vera. ‘How strange.’

  ‘Not so strange. We show appreciation for what we have eaten. How do you know if the food is good before you have tried it?’

  Vera’s face darkened. ‘We’re just grateful that we have food. It’s not all chocolate and cigarettes like it is in America. We had to make lots of sacrifices during the war, sending our nice butter and lamb off to England.’

  Klara didn’t answer. She couldn’t imagine Vera having to go without, given her grand house, her plump body. But she knew she missed her brother — there was a photo of him on the mantelpiece, too young and anxious for his uniform, that Vera polished every day.

  ‘Good work, getting rid of some of those rabbits,’ said George. ‘Eroding my hills. Now I hope you can help out tomorrow, Michael, I want to start on docking and we’ll need all hands on deck. Don’t think Johnny and I can manage on our own.’

  Michael stood to help himself to a second wedge of pie, bigger than his first. ‘Won some money on the horses yesterday.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to put some of it in a savings account, not squander it all,’ said George.

  Klara fumed on Owen’s behalf; how could gambling money be considered a boon when Owen’s art was seen as a weakness? She didn’t understand his family one bit. She tried taking another bite of the rabbit pie, but oh no, she was going to be sick.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pushing back her chair, running from the room. She made it to the bathroom, but the vomit was spil
ling through her fingers, little bits of chewed carrots, before she got to the toilet. She mopped it up with a piece of toilet paper, then splashed water on her face. She heard a gentle rapping at the door.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ asked Owen’s mother.

  ‘I’m better now,’ said Klara. Through the haze she felt pleased for an excuse to withdraw, to bypass the pudding, the cup of tea, to be able to return to her room and listen to that strange owl they said was calling for pork.

  ‘You’re not — oh, well, we’ll have to look after you.’ Owen’s mother had her arms around Klara’s shoulders and was leading her up to the staircase. ‘So soon — but maybe it’s just an upset. It would be lovely to have a grandchild, even if it was …’ Vera trailed off, looking stricken. ‘I’ll go make some weak tea, dear,’ she said faintly. ‘Helps settle the stomach.’

  Klara climbed the stairs, pausing as the nausea rose again. It was true, she might be pregnant: her period had not arrived a few weeks ago as expected. She had hoped it might be the change in geography that had upset her rhythms; Owen had been withdrawing, but perhaps not quickly enough.

  Owen would be angry; this was not part of their plans. They had already decided that they needed time to establish themselves in Wellington, so that Klara could audition for the orchestra and help with the gallery office work. She hoped it was just the rabbit pie, and the sight of the bunnies, so efficiently butchered.

  CHAPTER 13

  New York, 1949

  The train is the best percussion instrument. I take the Q, listening to the voices, to the rhythm of wheel against track, humming my own melody fragments against them, and wondering how I can stitch them all together. Tunes well up inside me — I’m not sure whether I am remembering other people’s music, or creating my own. My fingers are already curled around a cello neck, anticipating a modulation into the minor key.