Against the Wind (11 page)

The voice of Vienna’s concertmaster is forever stilled. Rudy Dorbransky is dead. Murdered by Nazis.

Rudy had called to ask me to come to the Seventh District, the worst part of Vienna—the district of cheap cabarets and brothels. His voice frightened me. His breathing was hoarse and halting.

When I located the address—Number 6, Flat D—the room behind the thin wooden door with the rusted knob was icy cold and stank. Rudy lay on a bare mattress. His face was battered almost beyond recognition, eyes swollen shut, teeth broken.

But there was something worse…much worse.

His left hand, the hand that caressed the beautiful notes of music which his right hand drew forth with the bow, was smashed and mangled. The first two fingers were severed, and blood oozed from the stubs.

He had been assaulted by the Nazis for secretly transporting false passports for Jews in his violin case. My mind leapt back over the months to when Rudy had pressed me to keep the Guarnerius for him, had urged me to take it to Germany with me. Even that had been a smuggling operation.

Rudy had insisted I retrieve the violin from its hiding place, of which he told me, and take it to Leah.

Through rattling breaths that produced fainter and fainter puffs in the freezing chamber, Rudy told me my own father had been part of the passport plot. That was why he had been arrested in Germany.

And then Rudy piled another shock on top of the rest. He told me my father is still alive! Imprisoned, nameless, in Dachau.

Then Rudy collapsed into merciful unconsciousness.

I left him there to die. There was nothing else I could do.

All this, and it happened one year after I overheard Eben Golah at my parents’ home in Berlin, saying that all Jews must get out of the Reich…that horrors were coming. One year!

9

LONDON, EUSTON RAIL STATION
FIRST DAY OF AUTUMN 1940

T
he distance from London to the port city of Liverpool on the Irish Sea was 175 miles, but the Grand Arch marking the entrance to Euston Rail station was already awash in salt water. The tears of ninety evacuee children, their parents, siblings, and other relatives threatened to flood the capital with sorrow. Murphy and I had made our farewell in private at the Savoy. Words choked off in his throat as he shut the door of the black cab and sent me on my way. I had been told it was important for me to show nothing but good cheer and a positive outlook in front of my assigned girls. Weeping on my husband’s shoulder, Miss Pike informed me bluntly, would be frowned upon. I left him standing, desolate, outside the hotel as the cab drove away.

I consulted the official CORB information sheet for the twentieth time. It assigned me and my little brood of children to Platform 7, Car 12, Compartment 3.

Squaring my shoulders and hopefully my emotions, I strode into a great hall the size and shape of Noah’s ark. Founded over a hundred years before as the first intercity station in Central London, Euston’s train shed was sixty feet high and several city blocks in length.

Apparently Miss Pike’s admonition to keep a stiff upper lip had not received wide acceptance. Arriving at Platform 7 was like witnessing the unveiling of a tableaux entitled “Grief, More Grief, and Still More Grief.” Little knots of parents and children mingled with previously unknown families. They now shared the prospect of thousands of miles and untold months of separation.

Amid the throng were handfuls that were not grief-stricken. I spotted Raquel shepherding her trio of orphans. Fair skinned, with wild curls, the Jewish sisters, seven-year-old Yael and nine-year-old Simcha, looked wide-eyed but comfortably secure, tucked beneath Raquel’s arms. The eleven-year-old gypsy, Angelique, dark-eyed, serene, and beautiful, drank in the scene as a poet or an artist might absorb the emotions of others to be brought out later in a truthful depiction of this moment of human longing.

Mariah likewise managed her brood without tears. Mariah’s petite, plain-featured sister, Patsy, fumbled with her ticket, dropped it, stooped to retrieve it, and in the process dumped the contents of her handbag. Mariah placed her sister against a stone pillar. Patiently, she attached three-year-old Michael to one of Patsy’s hands and five-year-old Moira to the other. Then Mariah regathered all the fluttering papers and rolling coins. In the midst of this cheerful, pragmatic care-giving, Mariah managed to catch my eye and smile.
America!
she mouthed and I bobbed my head in return.

Guitarist Pablo, tall and darkly handsome, was surrounded by his admiring choirboy charges. James and John were locked in an embrace with their parents. Tomas and Peter appeared excited. I reflected that where most of the others were leaving loved ones behind, the two Jewish-Czech brothers were going to rejoin their father.

Someone at my elbow cleared her throat with the sound of a watchdog barking. “Missus Murphy,” observed Miss Pike sourly, “you’re late. Where are your girls?”

“I’m looking for them now,” I said.

“Follow me.” She added something that sounded like “unreliable foreigners,” but a train’s scream obscured her words.

I did not ask her to repeat them.

Beneath a sign reading Car 12 I located my assigned covey. Miss Pike favored me with a withering glance designed to make sure I did not move another inch, then departed without waiting to hear my thanks.

I was fortunate that my duty involved children who were from outside London. They had already said their good-byes before traveling to Euston Station with a temporary escort, so I was spared their ordeal of separation.

The girls who would be my responsibility from here to New York stood beneath the placard like a shipment of school uniform dressmakers’ models. Each wore sensible shoes, a heavy fabric skirt, a jacket over a plain blouse, and each carried a single small suitcase. I wondered if the ship’s manifest would read:
Style: Preteen English Schoolgirl. Quantity: Five.

It was hard to dispel this image of goods in transit because each child had a tag affixed to her buttonhole giving her name and age.
Nan, 11 yrs. Margaret, 12 yrs. Alice, 12 yrs. Lindy, 11 yrs. Betsy, 9 yrs.

I read each badge aloud, then introduced myself. “I’m Elisa Murphy. I’m your chaperone for our trip.”

“We know all about you,” Alice erupted. “You’re a famous violinist, and you escaped from the Nazis. You’re going to Hollywood because everyone thinks you’re a ringer for Hedy Lamarr, but I think you’re much prettier, really, I do.”

“Alice!” Nan snapped. “Don’t gush so. It’s embarrassing.”

Sensible Nan with her bobbed hair and black-rimmed glasses. Just when I was enjoying the unexpected notoriety too.

Though all five girls had previously known each other, of my temporary wards, only Betsy and Lindy were related. Cousins from East Sussex, Betsy was two years younger, spoke when Lindy spoke, and nodded when her cousin nodded. Lindy had bright blue, darting eyes. She missed nothing while taking in everything.

“Look,” Lindy said, pointing at a small boy being led by the hand toward the first-class carriages. “There’s Robin Hood again.”

The reference was not hard to identify. Against the drab browns and blacks worn by most of the evacuee children, the lad in question had a forest-green cloak topped with a pointed hood. Amid the departing leaves of England’s autumn, he looked like a moment of spring or a living illustration from a work by J. M. Barrie.

“Robin Hood?” I asked.

“Robert Snow,” Lindy explained. “American.”

“American,” Betsy chirped.

Young Robert was accompanied by an attendant uniformed as a nurse, but a few paces ahead walked his parents: Gerald Snow, the MGM executive, and his blond, fur-collared wife.

“We all call him Robin Hood,” Margaret insisted.

“Don’t be rude,” Nan said.

Lindy’s brow wrinkled. “Poor little boy.”

“Poor?” Alice retorted. “They’re Americans. They’re all rich as Midas.”

“No,” Lindy observed, “I don’t mean that. Look how he’s staring at his father. He wishes his father would hold his hand, instead of leaving him to the nurse. Can’t you tell?”

I instantly liked Lindy and was certain that, though she was not the oldest of my group, she was the brightest. I could depend on her to help the others. “Are you all from the same town?” I asked.

“Three of us are from Hastings,” Alice asserted. “Lindy and Betsy are from Lewes. That’s with an
e
, isn’t it, Lindy?” she asked. “Lewes. Oh, I suppose I mean, two
e
’s.”

But Lindy’s attention was fixed elsewhere. “Can’t you just feel what they’re feeling?”

“Who, dear?” I inquired.

“That boy, there.”

I recognized my friend Connor Turner of the choristers. His Irish whistle poked out of his coat pocket like a sword. The face of the woman who knelt to Connor’s height was streaked with tears. She hugged the boy fiercely.

“Alone,” Lindy said. “Either his father is off at the war, or…”

Connor patted his mother’s back and smiled for her.
Don’t worry
, I saw him say. From his inside jacket pocket the child produced and offered a handkerchief. Connor’s mother dabbed her cheeks and made an effort to echo the smile.

“Liverpool. The train standing at Platform 7 is for Liverpool,” the public address system announced, and the tableaux began to break apart: half to board the waiting transport and half to remain behind, nursing their sorrow.

Miss Pike hustled down the length of the platform, demanding compliance with the announcement.

“Come on, Lindy,” Betsy urged.

“Wait one moment more.” Lindy gazed openly at Connor and his mother.

I stood beside the girl to witness the conclusion of Connor’s farewell. The boy’s mother pressed the scrap of fabric to her lips, then tucked it back inside his coat pocket. Kissing Connor on the forehead, she shook Pablo’s hand, then hurried away. Guitarist chaperone and five choirboys entered the coach next ahead of ours.

“Wasn’t that just too painful?” Lindy said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “And sometime when Miss Pike isn’t watching, you and I will let ourselves have a good cry for him and for all the good-byes.”

Lindy nodded, taking me seriously. “It’ll be our secret,” she confided. “I’m keeping a notebook, you see. Poems and such. I’m going to write them for Mum and send her letters because she has no one but me. Perhaps one day I’ll write a book. Share all my memories, lest they be forgotten.”

I decided I liked this eleven-year-old poet very much. I prayed that our journey together would be a happy memory she could record to comfort her grieving mother.

Lindy touched my violin case. “I do hope you will play for us each night before we sleep. Mum and I have heard you perform on the BBC. Before Hitler, you played in Vienna. And last week, a Mozart violin concerto. Which one?”

“‘Concerto #3 in G major.’ He wrote it when he was only nineteen.”

“Very beautiful,” Lindy said soberly.

“You like music, then? Do you play an instrument?”

“Piano. A bit. But I can sing.”

“We all sing,” Nan declared confidently.

Lindy clasped Betsy’s lapel, pulling her along. “We should have a talent night.”

Young Betsy echoed her cousin. “A talent night!”

“Like an Andy Hardy movie!” Alice was ecstatic at the prospect of Life imitating Art.

“No sad songs allowed,” Margaret concluded. “We must keep morale high!”

Plans for shipboard entertainment were already underway as we boarded, scrambling to take our seats. Songs were selected for the performance even before the locomotive whistle shrieked and the train to Liverpool lurched into motion.

It was pitch-black when, thirteen hours after departing London, we reached a vacant boarding school in Liverpool. Lindy and little Betsy had become my shadows. Lindy, with her notebook open, jotted notes about her companions and our adventure.

It was almost 10 p.m. when we staggered into the girls’ dormitory. Fifty iron cots were jammed into a space meant to house no more than twenty-five children. Most of the evacuees fell onto their beds and were asleep before they had time to think of home.

I shared a room with Mariah and Raquel. Patsy and her two little ones roomed with another mother of young children. Exhausted, we were ready to turn out the light when I heard a small knock on our door.

Raquel was already unconscious.

Mariah moaned and turned over, covering her head. “Wake me when it’s over.”

“Miss Elisa?” I recognized Lindy’s voice.

Opening the door, I saw that Lindy and Betsy had now been joined by the gypsy girl, Angelique.

“What are you girls doing? Still awake?”

Lindy extended her notebook and pencil to me. “Angelique belongs to your friend Raquel. She told me about the last time she saw her mother. She told me that I should write my mother a letter and mail it before the ship sails. Because we’ll be in the Atlantic after tomorrow and who knows how long it will be before my mum gets a letter from me.”