And I wonder again, as I’ve done over the years, how the record of someone’s life can simply disappear.
Anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.
MISHNAH SANHEDRIN (THE TALMUD)
CHAPTER 16
LUZI
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
AUGUST 1938
Luzi lifted her violin to her shoulder and drew her bow across the strings. Largo. The music called for a slow rendition of the piece, but each note she played, whether slow or fast, seemed to cry out in pain. The music, it wanted her to run away like she’d done that night at the Rathaus, flee from this city that had replaced its own music with a seething hatred against many of its musicians. As if the ears of Vienna were being tainted by the notes played through Jewish hands.
Her father was still trying to obtain visas for them, from any country that would take their family, but as the weeks passed, even fewer Jews were able to obtain visas, and those who left weren’t allowed to carry anything of value with them. Certainly not enough money to support themselves when they arrived in their new homes. She felt as if they were trying to sail in a wild gust of wind, no stretch of land in sight.
Now her father wanted Luzi to obtain a visa on her own—some countries were still allowing Jewish students to attend school abroad—but she didn’t think she could bear to leave her family in Austria.
She collapsed into her chair as if she’d been playing for hours upon hours and rested the violin in her lap. Mutti no longer shouted at her to continue playing, for there was no reason for her to practice. No concerts or balls or even a piece to prepare for school. Music symbolized hope, and these days hope was fleeting in their home.
Her mother had locked herself in her room, sedating the plague of her anxiety with the pills Father prescribed. A dark cloud had settled over their apartment and the increasing fragility of her mother’s mind.
On nights like this, Luzi wished she could take a walk along the Danube, smell the flowers in the palace garden at Schönbrunn, clear the threatening clouds in her own mind. The streets of Vienna, at least those in her district, used to beckon pedestrians outside during the summer evening hours to listen to music in the plazas or sip coffee at an outdoor café. But it wasn’t safe to go out at night anymore. Nor would she after what happened with Ernst in May. Things were only worse now with Hitler’s storm troopers patrolling the streets both day and night.
Still she went out in the morning to find food while Father was visiting the consulate. Her mother refused to leave the apartment, and Luzi was glad Mutti didn’t have to see what had happened to their city. Miriam Weiss was a beautiful woman who loved beauty. She should not be exposed to the vile words written on the windows and walls of Jewish businesses. Mutti wasn’t a whore, and while men like Ernst might think otherwise, neither was Luzi.
Their Gentile friends had abandoned them in the past weeks. Even Max, it seemed, had finally given up after her mother refused to let him visit. Luzi had considered going to his house, knocking on his door as he had done with her, but Herr and Frau Dornbach were no longer friendly to her family. Frau Dornbach once referred to Luzi as her niece, but she hadn’t even acknowledged her at the Opera Ball.
Perhaps Max was as afraid as she was about what might happen if they dared to be seen together. Or had he begun to believe that she was nothing but trash as well?
Sometimes she was beginning to believe that she was trash. Someone to be tossed away. Nothing, in the eyes of this new regime, could redeem her and her inferior race.
Luzi locked the violin back into its case and checked the clock. And she pretended that she had a concert to attend tonight. Or school tomorrow. Or that her father, after standing in line today at the consulate, would be able to obtain a visa out of this country for their entire family.
“My God, the soul You have given me is pure. You created it, You formed it, and You breathed it into me.”
She lit a candle near the window and repeated the blessing her grandfather had taught her in Hebrew. Then she said the prayer in German and one more time in the English she’d learned in school.
God had breathed life into her. He had made her and gifted her with a deep love for the music that spilled out of her hands, her heart. What was she supposed to do when it felt as if the very breath He’d breathed into her was being smothered? When she could no longer even play her music?
She switched off the lamp and pressed her hand against the window. Lightning flashed in the distance, and the roll of thunder shook the glass, as if it were announcing its presence. And then she heard something else. The cry of a baby. Her sister had been awakened by the thunder.
Luzi stole out of the library to her parents’ bedroom.
“Mutti,” she called out, twisting the doorknob, but it was locked. The sedatives seemed to deafen her mother’s ears to both the thunder and Marta’s cries. But Frau Dichter would most certainly hear upstairs, and Frau Dichter was an Aryan woman who didn’t care much for children. She’d already complained to the superintendent about the crying, and the super had warned Mutti that she must keep her child quiet if they wanted to remain in this building.
Luzi slipped past the locked door to the nursery. Marta had pulled herself up in her crib, her cries growing louder when she saw her sister. Luzi picked her up, gently rubbed her back, and Marta melted into her like soft butter on toast. Her sister may only have lived ten months, but she was scared, just like the rest of them.
No matter how much Luzi wanted to flee to America to attend Juilliard, she could never leave her parents or her baby sister behind. Together they would run, far away from here.
She paced up and down the corridor, Marta fading back to sleep on her shoulder.
Mutti couldn’t give up now. None of them could. If nothing else, they needed to come together to save Marta. No child, especially a Jewish one, should grow up under the hopelessness of this regime.
Annika knelt by the narrow garden bed with her trowel and began replanting flowers in the blanket of soil that covered her mother’s grave—alpine roses, lilies, and tiny clusters of yellow stars known as edelweiss, each star bursting with white-petaled rays.
She’d carefully transported the flowers from the mountain to this hillside cemetery of wooden crosses, iron lanterns, and colorful pocket gardens. Her mother had loved the flowers that bloomed wild in these Alps and the lakes that flowed wild between the forests and peaks. She’d loved the birds and meadows and the sky that changed by the hour, proving, she’d once said, that God prized artistry.
After the last tender roots were planted, Annika kissed her stained palm and held it against her mother’s name, etched deeply into the wood.
Kathrin Knopf
1902–1934
Made Beautiful in His Time
A shadow stole over the garden, and she turned to look out at the view, at the sun painting pale orange and pink across the canvas of blue, the final spray of light before dusk. On the far side of the lake was Schloss Schwansee, a faint watermark stamped onto a masterpiece.
In her collage of memories, Annika remembered tramping up this hill beside her mother as a girl, delivering flowers to a friend’s grave or lighting a candle in one of the lanterns. This was the closest place, her mother had once said, to stepping into paradise on earth.
She couldn’t bear to think of her beautiful mother trapped under the soil. Mama, she prayed, was in an eternal paradise now, safe and healthy with the Father she loved, her heart following the treasure burnished in her life.
Annika’s father had paid the rent for Kathrin’s body to rest in this soil for another six years. Instead of saving the money to renew this lease, her father drank away most of their income, but somehow Annika would earn enough to keep her mother’s body here, along with the two books she’d snuck into the wooden casket when her father wasn’t looking, as if her mother would have to remember her because she had the stories they’d shared.
Her stomach turned each time she thought
of the caretaker digging up her mother’s bones to transplant them to the Beinhaus for everyone to see. She would do almost anything to keep her mother in this soil, planted like the flowers she loved, even ask Herr Dornbach for the money.
If Herr Dornbach ever came back to the estate.
Last week she heard Vati tell Hermann that the Dornbachs wouldn’t own Schloss Schwansee much longer. It was the strangest thing to say. Frau Dornbach’s family had owned it for generations. Max not returning to the castle—she couldn’t bear to think about it. Her father was wrong, but still she would ask Hermann about the conversation. He would tell her the truth.
The shadows lengthened until they crept into the back edges of the gardens, and she gathered her trowel and pail that carried the lake water needed for the flowers. Then she climbed down the steps to the shore and paddled her wooden boat toward home.
A sliver of moon, curved in an elegant script, lit the span of indigo sky. Night had already settled over the estate; her father was probably preparing to drive to the beer hall in Obertraun if he hadn’t left already.
Max’s cat was waiting near the boathouse to escort Annika to the barn. After Annika milked the goat, she would reward Frederica with a small bowl of her own, and then the cat would snuggle beside her in bed as she read from her mother’s Bible.
Annika secured the boat and hurried toward the barn before the goats started bleating. But when she turned toward the cottage, her heart began to race at the sight of a sedan parked nearby.
Had Max and his family finally returned? Perhaps they were looking for her.
With Frederica at her heels, she hurried across the lane, toward the solitary cottage light that beckoned her, but before she reached the door, the car engine started and the driver backed into the courtyard, rushing past her.
In the dim light, she saw her father’s face in the backseat. He must have seen her standing beside the trees, but the car didn’t stop.
The sound of the car engine faded, but Annika still didn’t move.
Who had taken her father away?
CHAPTER 17
The clock ticks past five in the morning, but sleep continues to play its wicked game of hide-and-seek. Light from the streetlamp carves a channel through my bedroom, trailing across my comforter, settling on the books stacked on my nightstand, but I refuse to surrender my day to sleep deprivation yet.
Flinging the pillow over my head, I roll away from the light, hoping to find rest in this space. But waves, a midnight wash of blue, slip through the darkness of my mind, stirring up the silt on the banks. My thoughts, they won’t let me rest. And the rush of water begins to build, a flood of pictures about to crash against the banks.
A girl dumps something near the edge of a lake—a rope made of gold, like one of the necklaces recorded in her book. Smiling, she is oblivious to the threat streaming toward her.
I open my eyes, afraid of what my imagination might do against my will.
Dr. Nemeth’s face appears in my mind, replacing the girl, his eyes curious about Annika’s list and later appalled at the magic balloon book for children. He emailed when they landed in Salzburg on Monday, but he didn’t have any more information yet about Annika. His team is diving in two other lakes before they travel to Hallstatt.
Did Mrs. Nemeth join her husband in Austria? We would be friends, I think, enjoying tea together while the others are scuba diving. But then again, Mrs. Nemeth probably likes to scuba dive. And travel around the world instead of stay at home.
Dr. Nemeth looked at me as if I were an oddity when I said I’d never been on an airplane. I don’t understand what’s wrong with being content at home, blooming right where I’m planted. Of course, some might argue that while I was planted just fine, I’m not exactly blooming. Some days I might even argue that as well.
The truth is—and I can only confront the truth in these early hours—I’m not as content as I would like Dr. Nemeth and others to believe. I love my apartment, the security of being grounded in this town, but some days I long for the courage to get on an airplane and experience another place outside my books, just for a week or two. Like my sister’s birthday card said so eloquently, to write a chapter or two of my own story.
My passport is unstamped but ready to use, tucked far back in my filing cabinet alongside the receipt for my wedding gown and a brochure from the Quarry Chapel, the place where I’d intended to become Mrs. Faulkner.
Scott planned to take me on a grand excursion to the Cayman Islands for our honeymoon, saying he never wanted me to forget our wedding day or the week following.
I’ll certainly never forget either.
The month before our wedding, I spent a long weekend with Brie in Columbus shopping for shoes and jewelry and flowery summer dresses made for the islands. While I was gone, Scott visited a friend in Fredericktown who introduced him to Kathleen. It must have been quite the introduction because three weeks later, after our rehearsal dinner, Brie saw Scott and Kathleen in his Mustang. Deep in conversation, she said.
Brie confronted him. He called me. And in seconds, everything changed.
Instead of swimming in the Caribbean, I spent the next week balled up on my bed, Charlotte and Brie both heating up bowls of chicken soup as if I had a cold or the flu. Chicken soup, to my knowledge, has never healed a broken heart, but their love for me, poured into that soup—and Charlotte’s steady reminder that God loved me even more—eventually brought me out of my state of shock, back into a new reality. As the months passed, I tried—and continue trying—to embrace God’s love on my own instead of relying on Charlotte to remind me.
Inching up on my mattress, I hug a pillow close to my chest. I don’t want to think about the Cayman Islands or Scott or those days of despair, but this room sometimes sparks the theater of my mind, looping memories in slow motion, pausing on frames I’d rather not see yet again.
Capture every thought, that’s what it says in the second book of Corinthians. Lock the fugitive ones away in captivity.
A new picture begins sketching itself in my head. Thoughts—hundreds of them—going rogue. Bent on destruction. I want to imprison them, but I can’t seem to cram them back into their cell.
The best place to round them up is on my feet, dressed for battle. Or at least dressed to move.
I change quickly into yoga pants and a T-shirt, lace up my bike shoes, and tie back my shoulder-length hair. About a mile from the shop is a paved trail for cyclists and walkers alike, fourteen miles to pedal out my thoughts.
A water bottle in hand, I retrieve my road bike from the storage unit behind the shop, attach my cell phone to the mount between the handlebars, and begin pedaling south and then east on the empty roads, past the manufactured house on Howard Street that was once my home. I’ve only moved four blocks since childhood, but it feels as if I moved a thousand miles away.
In minutes I’m biking along the Kokosing, a much more placid river than the one that plagued my mind. Sunlight flickers through the oak and maple leaves, sprinkling light onto an asphalt path that was once a railroad track. Hope—that’s what I experience every time I take this river trail, basking in the reminder of something old and abandoned re-created into something new. Progress is what they might have called it when the workers first laid the track, but no one calls this trail progress now. More like conservation.
Today is June 6. My thirtieth birthday.
This hits me as I embrace the rhythm of cycling, the pedaling a comfort as it empowers me to fight the thoughts in my head. In my work, the fugitives begin to cower back in their cages, giving me the strength to embrace this new decade of life as well.
The river flows quietly beside me, soothing my mind. The water is going somewhere, sometimes in a rush. Other spots it’s almost still, more of a pool than a forward thrust. On a journey and yet content to be settled in one place at times. Home.
It’s never occurred to me before, the quest of life being one of rapids and quiet pools. The same journey with both hig
hs and lows. Is it possible to be content both in travel and at home, deeply grounded in something far beyond a place?
“On your left,” I call before passing a runner. Someone else, perhaps, who wasn’t able to sleep.
Another image plays in my mind—one of a Bavarian village and mountain water that hides treasures of its own.
What would it be like to use my birthday money for a real adventure? To celebrate, even, by spending a week or two in Austria instead of Hawaii or Paris? I could go to Vienna, finish my research on Felix Salten, and then join Team Nemeth for a few days, inquiring about Annika as they work.
Team—it’s a cozy word to some people, but being part of a team has never been in my comfort zone. Leagues away, actually. I’ve always felt a bit awkward, as if I wasn’t sure of my place inside the boundaries.
It wouldn’t take a crackerjack psychologist to figure out the root of that issue. Most kids, I assume, learn how to find a place in their family first, learning how to work together. My early years were about survival, not teamwork.
I failed miserably to partner with Scott, but I partner with my sister every day. We are a small but mighty team. One built on a mutual history, respect, and hope for the future.
Small teams, perhaps, are my forte.
A white-tailed deer leaps across the asphalt, followed by a fawn. When the deer stops to look at me, the fawn stops as well and waits for his mother’s cue. Danger, in this fawn’s eyes, is only danger if she signals to him. He has complete trust in this doe that cares for him.
Trust, I think, is the greatest gift someone can give.
I cycle past a cornfield, the green stalks already several feet taller than the coveted knee-high by the Fourth of July, and turn left at a cross path that leads into Gambier, an exclusive college town built of clapboard and stone.
Distracted, I’ve taken the wrong turn off the trail; I realize it the moment I see a sandstone chapel beside the road instead of the college buildings. I bicycle often into Gambier, but I haven’t been on this country road, visited this chapel, since Scott and I rehearsed our wedding vows.
Hidden Among the Stars Page 14