Unspeakable Things (11 page)

“No!” said Olga, Gudrun, Ludmilla, and Inge with one voice.

“Fine,” said the chief officer. “Take only the little finger, then. Just do it.” He wanted to get it over quickly. “Just do it now.”

“But why?” asked Herbert. “Why the little finger?”

“Well, you see,” explained the first violinist. “The little finger, it is the revolutionary one. It is the one that stretches, that produces the most difficult sounds.”

“The pinkie,” explained the cellist, “whose reach exceeds the grasp.”

“The little one, he tries the hardest,” added the viola player. “He is the risk taker. He strives.”

“It is the little finger that played the high notes that drove them mad,” said the first violinist. “All this music, it cannot exist without him. When they took the little finger, they took the music, you see. They wanted to make sure we would never play such music again.” The men seemed in agreement about that.

Afterward, the men were—through the intervention of perhaps the wives, or was it the Ministry?—driven to the station, where, with instruments in hand, they were banished from Vienna forever while a military band played “Hänschen Klein” repetitively, out of tune. The four officers stood at attention as the train carrying the musicians pulled out of the main station. “Oompah, Oompah-pah,” went the gleaming tubas, thrusting the little song forward loudly, mockingly. At the last moment, the four wives ran out from behind the military guard, babushkas hastily tied around their curls, fur coats thrown in a panic about their bosoms. But they were thrust back again behind the watching crowd.

The members of the Tolstoi Quartet raised their bandaged left hands toward the women in a last, sad farewell gesture. The tubas yowled their sardonic notes as the train pulled out, carrying the men away forever.

Now the afternoon was darkening, and the Automat was empty after lunch save for a few lone men sitting morosely in the front, their hands cupped around warm mugs. A chill wind blew in the air.

“Ach.” Herbert sighed, pushing his chair from the table. He was preparing to leave.

“And so, our dear Herr Doktor, we come now to you.” The Quartet looked at him with mad, beseeching eyes. “To find our fingers.” The fingers, the Quartet knew, were still there somewhere, waiting for them in a dark box, waiting to be rejoined with their owners.

Herbert tightened his lips. His beaky shoulders hunched nearer the floor. The Quartet waited, but Herbert did not speak. He looked down at his own outspread fingers, which were resting quietly upon the table; his hands, gnarled, liver-spotted, stumpy. “Ah, my friends,” he said, as if half to himself. “Ah…”

“Please, Herr Professor, Herr Doktor. We implore you,” breathed the four men in counterpoint, and the instruments shivered next to them. Herbert could visualize the scene at the police station: the generals, the musicians’ wives, their sudden cry, and then the fingers. Those fingers, caught: did they still exist? Where?

“Gentlemen, forgive me. But I can do nothing for you.” Exhausted, Herbert longed to prepare his getaway.

“Aah Oh Eee Uuu.”
The high ululating voice of a soprano practicing somewhere pierced the air. Did he imagine it or hear it? The voice rose and fell, wailing and climbing the scale, note by note, then rose another octave.
“Aaa Eee Ooo Iiii Yyyy Uuuu.”
It climbed upward confidently.

Herbert pushed his chair away. Already he was putting the Quartet’s story behind him, moving on to the next and then the next impossible plea.

Herbert listened as from the tombstone street a piano accompaniment began under the soprano’s voice. Somewhere roses opened in a sunny garden. A woman came to a balcony, watering pot in hand. The soprano voice rose and fell with pleasure. Herbert shivered. The notes of the piano anchored the voice firmly. “Aaahhhh…” The strains of a quartet tuning up before a performance could be heard. Adeline was putting on her best dress, and downstairs, maids were laying white linen upon the long table in preparation for the reception to follow.

Adeline! Herbert closed his eyes, vanishing instantly in his mind from the Automat. He was somewhere else, in his own home. All was in readiness. The rented chairs were set in proper rows for the concert, and his friends were slowly coming up the stairs into the house and handing their coats to the old maid, then walking into the main salon, where Adeline, radiant in mauve silk, greeted them. At the front of the room, under the curved bay windows that looked out into the garden, the grand piano waited, dark and mysterious, like a lover looking into the moonlight. Outside, the roses preened their last as dusk tinged them and their scent unfolded like the open arms of women toward the windows.

There was a rustling in the room, hushed as the Tolstoi Quartet entered, carrying their instruments aloft. They smiled at Adeline, who seated herself at the grand piano. Herbert’s heart swelled; he would ache with pride and pleasure. As the first notes of the Schubert piano quintet laid themselves on the waiting air, Herbert felt the tears startle forth from his eyes. There was not a sound during the playing, not a sound afterward.

Adeline came up to him and took his hand. She led Herbert to the front of the salon, where, held in the loving gaze of his wife and his friends, he watched as the Tolstoi Quartet led the room in applause for his presence.

“My dear Herbert,” Adeline said, holding out her arms to him for all the world to see. “Thank you, Herr Professor,” whispered the Tolstoi Quartet. The instruments shone under the soft light in Herbert’s house. His friends had never looked so beautiful. The dinner, the white drapery, the silver, his guests—all gleamed with a beauty of a still life now held in his memory.

“Your dear wife…,” murmured the leader of the Tolstoi Quartet reverently. “Tonight, she played like…like an angel….” Yes, that had been true….Herbert’s gift to himself. To her…That she should play one piece with the Tolstoi Quartet in his home. His birthday gift to her. And she had thanked him for that night. Yes.

Herbert thought of Adeline now, a strange feral creature, crazed with what she had and had not been forced to witness, stretched out in bed, in an asylum, a stranger almost even to him. And the Quartet, how sad they looked. Where was their music now? Their mutilated hands?

Herbert gathered his scratchy coat about him. “My friends,” he said softly. “Do not grieve any longer. We will find your fingers.” As he said this, Herbert, who had not the slightest idea of whether this was possible, felt a lightening, a resolve. “With God’s help, gentlemen, we shall find those fingers. And the Tolstoi Quartet will play again together.” Giddy inspiration entered Herbert. He wanted to be done with the whole thing. “I promise you. You shall play again together. In New York. Our new home.” Herbert’s ears stuck out from his gilded head. He poked his chin forward. “You shall play again. In Carnegie Hall.”

The four men looked at one another as if confirming their faith in Herbert’s magical powers. One last swoop of daring and hope entered Herbert’s heart. “And you shall play once more the Schubert piano quintet. With my dear Adeline,” he added.

“With the gracious Frau Professor Doktor?” the men exclaimed. “In Carnegie Hall?” The Quartet sprang to its feet, almost alarmed at such presumption. “We shall play again with Frau Professor Doktor? The Schubert? In Carnegie Hall?” They peered intently into Herbert’s face. “You will find our fingers?” they queried anxiously, as if not believing that their mad request would so foolhardily be met. “You are sure? You are sure, Herr Doktor?”

N
ow Herbert was in a hurry. He was flying through the air, rising up on the tails of his oversized tweed overcoat, bounding over the poisonous streets in a great whoosh of dark intention. Automobiles stopped, and passersby gaped, their mouths open, making large gray O’s of wonder as he flew over their heads, pursued by the beast of the night. Propelled by relief, a desire to escape his own recklessness, he gulped the cold air and hailed a taxi. He would make it to the hospital before the end of visiting hours.

The hospital doors flapped open and shut behind him. Herbert dropped his shoulders, forcing himself to appear relaxed as he entered the ladies’ ward. “My darling.”

Adeline lay in bed, unmoving, but she pushed herself to a half-sitting position when he entered. Her face was dirty with tears, her unkempt hair tangled. Thin strands of it lay upon the pillow, where the invalid had pulled it out.

“My little flower!” Herbert cried when he saw her. “But what has happened?” Seeing her, even like this, made his heart dance, and he floated past his own dread and put himself gently next to her. “Tell me.”

“Oh, Herbert!” Adeline cried suddenly. Throwing her arms around his neck, a gesture unusual for her, Adeline clutched him to her. Her breast heaved. Herbert felt her racked body as if it were his own. He patted her ineffectually, pushing back her tangled hair from her hot forehead.

“Herbert,” Adeline cried, “they took him. My Michael.” She could not speak further; her hands twisted around him, clutching first her hair, then his neck.

Herbert cradled his wife. “Our children.”

The wraith of Michael stood in the corner of the ward and watched them both. He tried to suck some breath of life from their wheezing presences. There were ashes in the air. White-boned, Michael stood, glowing as he watched his parents’ grief, then faded into a small, thin ash of himself.

“And what of David, who saw his brother taken?” Herbert did not permit himself to think about it. David was married now, and had the children. His precious grandchildren. Herbert was weary.

“Adeline, listen to me.” Herbert wanted to get away, but he took her face in his. Fearful, his wife regarded him. “Listen,” said Herbert. “I have seen the Tolstoi Quartet.”

“The Tolstoi?” Adeline suddenly stopped crying.

“Yes, my darling,” said Herbert. “They are here in New York.”

“Can it be true? Here?” Adeline made a convulsive movement, as if to throw Herbert off.

“They asked for you,” added Herbert.

“Ah, I am nothing!” she hissed. “Herbert, look at me,” She indicated her ravaged face. “I used to be something. Now I am nothing.” Her voice rose.

“Shh.” Herbert held her thrashing body. “Listen to me. You must, my dearest.” Adeline twitched, but less strongly now. Herbert continued to talk, although she twisted her face away from him. “They want you to play with them.” Adeline gestured angrily with her head, her mouth curling. “Yes,” said Herbert, not knowing whether he was lying. “In Carnegie Hall.” He sounded desperate, even to himself.

“Carnegie Hall?” Adeline’s mouth gaped.

Herbert continued more bravely now. The inspiration of a liar was oiling his tongue. “They want you to play the Schubert. Yes, my darling, the Schubert. In Carnegie Hall. They wait for you.”

“When?” asked Adeline.

“When you are ready,” replied Herbert, stroking her hair. Adeline started to sob again. As she continued to cry, Herbert tried not to laugh, so relieved was he at finding something to placate her. Boldly, he added, “The concert is planned for the end of the year.”
Planned
—he heard the word echoing after he said it. Casting a quick glance into the corner of the large room, where he assumed the spirit of Michael still watched, he tightened his arms around Adeline. “Planned already,” he repeated defiantly.

“But darling, you are mad. I am sure of it.” Adeline said.

“No, my little flower,” her husband answered. “Hurry and get better now. The Tolstoi Quartet is waiting for you.”

“Herbert,” protested Adeline in her normal preemptory voice. She sat up abruptly, removing his arms from her body. “How is this possible? I haven’t played for years.”

“Never mind,” said Herbert bravely. “It is too late to think of things like that. The concert is already advertised.”

Adeline was silent, thinking this over. “But…,” she began again.

“Shh,” commanded Herbert, holding her. She was calmer now. The steam pipes hissed in the corners, but they were only steam pipes after all.

After a silence, Adeline said softly, “Herbert?”

“Yes, my darling?” He stroked her hair into a semblance of smoothness.

“Herbert?” She plucked at his sleeve questioningly. “What shall I wear?”

“Why, your best silk dress,” said Herbert practically. “You know the one I mean.”

H
erbert’s elder son, David, was absent from this story and perhaps from all stories. He was a cipher, working in a Washington basement, trying to decipher other ciphers. Because of his job as a war decoder for the U.S. government, his eyes were swollen, red, and scratchy, almost granular. But he could sleep on trains, and on the night train to New York, he let himself sink into the smoke-imbued night. He slept, and sleep renewed him. The weather changed along the way and the sky lightened gently. He would arrive before anyone in the family was awake, as he did one weekend a month.

The first signs of spring had come to New York. They came suddenly, stealing into the city and breathing their soft breath against the cheeks of sleepers, as if to remind them that they were here. Fists of magnolia blossoms opened furtively in the dark, revealing their pink centers. The frothy cherry trees, the soft green of leaves stirring, the fingertips of trees along the avenues: remember me?

David noted their outlines. Perhaps this had been happening in Washington, too, but he had been too long underground, immersed in papers, to notice. Spring had returned. He crossed New York on foot, his nose and skin picking up the fresh odor, the stirring wind. The sounds of the city had become more muted, baffled by the petals that appeared everywhere.

David entered the building, passing the sleeping elevator’s cage. At the top of the stairs, he took out his key and entered the room furtively, silently. He sighed, letting his coat fall off him in a heap. The curtains stirred in welcome.

At that moment, spring entered the room also and woke his wife, Ilse, kissing her eyelids. She stirred and moved her dampened thighs, half-aware of her body’s surge. A dream perhaps? What had she dreamed? Her husband stood beside her awakening form, standing there as if waiting for something.

Ilse sat up suddenly, pushing the blankets aside, only her nightdress sheltering her body. “Shh,” said the figure.

“David?” cried Ilse sharply, questioning in a whisper.

“Shh,” he said, and sat carefully on the couch where she slept.

“David,” she whispered. No one else in the room stirred. Herbert’s snores fell rhythmically from his corner.

“My darling girl.” David slid under the sheets beside her, pulling up the bedclothes. “I’m here.” He took off her nightdress gently as she raised her arms to him.

Suddenly, they were together, warm, naked. Ilse’s body opened in many little mouths, soft velvet lips. She was ready for him. She arched her body toward his caresses as if feeding. His hands glided over her silky skin and smoothed it. It became fluid, as water, as transparent chiffon, silvery in the spring dawn. Ilse parted her legs. For one moment, she felt as if pierced, and he slid inside. His hotness rose in her; she could feel herself swelling in bloom to meet him, an answering opening and response. “David,” she gasped. They held their breath together and lay fused, as if one. Ilse’s body trembled with involuntary spasms as she pressed deeper, further against his. He moved slowly, more deeply inside her, but at the same time, he waited, growing larger. And opening her legs, she grasped and accommodated him, an answering opening as he moved deeper, coming to rest somewhere in the region of her heart, or so she imagined. They lay together in the soft spring air. And in that moment, merged, they were complete.

“David,” Ilse whispered, wrapping her legs more tightly around him and drawing him in even deeper. Their bodies trembled, and streams of spasms ran through them, involuntary, hardly noticed, so deep was their fusing.

Spring wrapped her gauzy curtain around them both as they lay together, a curtain that obscured them from the others. Ilse’s eyes were closed in ecstasy, and for once she was not aware of the little family that had become her responsibility. There was only that large, delicious darkness penetrating her body, the swelling warmth.

“David?” Ilse half opened her eyes and saw his eyes looking deeply into hers. She closed her eyes again, feeling their bodies’ slow, liquid acceptance of each other. They rocked as they lay together, answering shiver to shiver till finally breaking in a long crescendo, almost regretful, a soft, strong, dark good-bye, as the largest wave took them both.

“Just one moment longer. I’m only here for a little while,” muttered David against Ilse’s dark hair. “I can’t stay. Just till tonight. I need you so.” A surge of despair, even then. He sighed.

“I know,” whispered Ilse, raising her breasts to him. He kissed them, as if wanting to nurse, to be comforted by their round, soft beauty.

“No one knows I’m here,” he said. “I had to see you. You and Father.” In his mind, he was already going back to Washington.

“My darling,” she answered softly, “we’ll be together soon.”

“When the War ends. For it must end someday.”

This they thought, they hoped, but didn’t say aloud. There was so much to say; yet so little really mattered. Each turned a bit; David hastily regrouped, becoming his shabby, buttoned-down self again.

“I must go now,” David whispered to his wife, feeling for his spectacles. “Tell Father I’ll be waiting for him. The usual place. I have news.” Ilse moved away, loosening her hold.

“Yes, of course,” she whispered, already half-asleep. David left hurriedly, leaving the door half-closed behind him. The whoosh of spring air caught it, slammed it shut.

Ilse slept until the morning light woke her. The room looked as usual, small, dark, and drab, but something had changed.

At first light, Herbert woke. A moment to register that dawn had a slightly lighter look than before. He dressed quickly.

“Father, David’s here,” Ilse whispered to him as she served his tea.

“David?”

“Yes, he has news.” Herbert appeared to be his deliberate self, but there was alacrity as he put on his coat. Ilse brushed the lapels for him, and he was gone.

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” played itself through his head as he hurried down the stoop and out into the streets. New York had been transformed overnight. The first leafy fronds of tree branches, delicate fingers, arched toward the sky. They thrummed to an imaginary Pastoral Symphony. “David, my darling boy!” Herbert thought, skimming the sidewalks quickly, floating without interruption across intersections. No taxis honked impatiently this morning; no crowds barred his way. Effortlessly, he entered the Automat. “Be quick, old man!” he told himself. An expectant joy. “David, my love, my life.” Herbert remembered his two little boys, one dark, one fair, as they stood on the stairs of his house, watching the musicians in the parlor. One of Adeline’s soirees—they all merged—and the two little boys were delighted to be allowed to watch from the outside. The men and women festively dressed. The music. The Tolstoi Quartet at its prime in those days. And Adeline, how her eyes had glittered as if with fever, as if with delight.

Herbert sighed. His boys. Michael—but instinctively his mind recoiled from the memory. Best not to think—but he was the one I loved best. No, how can I say that? Don’t even think that. My David—whom I love best—can I forgive him for living? Can he forgive himself? The story of Abraham and Isaac came to the old man’s mind. The pain almost stopped him in his tracks.

From the dark corner of the Automat, already metallic with morning sounds and smells, David rose. “Father?”

Herbert looked with wonder at this stooped, balding man, his son. David’s skin was faded with living and weariness. David took off his glasses, rubbing his reddened lids. His eyes were permanently tired and strained from looking endlessly at old German newspapers and microfilm. For a moment, Herbert did not recognize his small, shining son in this stooped and tattered man. “My David,” he said, for he knew something was expected from him. The two men took care not to embrace.

“Please, Father.” David gestured to a chair.

Herbert longed, as did David, to run to the other, pressing him forever in his arms, stroking his thinning hair, his strained, suffering face. But next to them both stood the specter of Michael, a wraith in a wreath of smoke. “Think of me always,” insisted Michael with his sad gaze. “I will not permit you to think of anything else.” Michael was as prevalent as air molecules around them.

“My son,” said Herbert, not knowing exactly which one he was addressing, “I am so happy to see you.”

“Father,” said David. Michael stood by his side, breathing his dead breath into David’s living one. “I was at home earlier. But I wanted to see you here.”

“Of course,” Herbert replied, approving.

David got to the point without preliminaries. “I have perhaps some news, Father,” he said. “I have brought copies. No one else knows.”

“Did anyone see you come here?” asked Herbert.

“No. No one has followed me here.” David stopped, then asked in a lower voice, “And Anna? How is she?”

“Fine,” replied Herbert.

“Good.”

The two men sipped the watery Automat coffee for a moment in silence, no hurry, as if over their own breakfast table at home in Vienna.

“Father,” said David, putting down his cup. “I think we have found a link. I have seen ads in the German papers—and for a long time I could not understand them. But now I think I do.” David paused, and Herbert settled back. He knew it would be better not to ask questions; that if he did, in any case David was constrained not to tell him the answers. The less he knew the better, Herbert supposed. He and David, by implicit agreement, never shared anything they did not absolutely have to.

“Look at this, Father,” said David. He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and took out the small bits of film. In the darkened restaurant, Herbert could not make out anything but brownish rectangles.

David produced a small pocket light. “I came across this the other day in the
Berliner Morgenpost.
” He had been scanning the Classifieds section of the newspaper.

“Develop Your Tonality Potential,” it read. “Have you ever wanted to be more intelligent, more creative, more musical?” The ad went on to promise success. “For only a small price, Perfect Pitch can be yours,” it concluded. Underneath was an address in Germany to be called to the attention of a certain unnamed “Herr Professor Doktor.”

Herbert put down the little piece of film. “So it is true.”

“No question, this is it.” David pocketed the envelope.

“The Tolstoi Quartet?” asked Herbert. “Do you think…”

“Yes,” replied David, “quite possibly.”

Herbert looked down quietly at his own intact hands. Their five stubby fingers functioned perfectly. He took a long moment. “And Michael? Do you think that perhaps Michael…”

David looked away. “Father, I don’t know,” he said.

“You’re a good boy,” Herbert said mildly.

David looked at him gratefully. “Father.” He seized his father’s hand and pressed it to his lips, feeling the cold metal bite of the large ring. David kissed his father’s ring respectfully.

“No, my boy,” said Herbert firmly, trying to avoid his son’s display of emotion. “This does not do.”

David looked away. He had already put himself and perhaps his family in danger. “We shall say nothing,” he reminded Herbert. He reached across the table, grasping the older man’s wrist for emphasis. “I have already made some inquiries. We think the link to all of this is in New York.”

“New York? But how can it be possible?”

“I don’t know for sure,” said David. “I have friends, you know. Or rather, we have friends. Old friends, Father.” He saw that Herbert wanted to speak. “Don’t say anything. I cannot tell you, and don’t ask.” Herbert stopped his thoughts. “They know of us, of—Michael.”

The air sprang back, shocked at having heard that name uttered aloud, and rapidly David continued, as if to cover up the fact that he had spoken his brother’s name. “Never mind, Father, friends of yours and—Mother’s—”

There was impassive silence; the atmosphere shuddered just a little this time. Herbert showed no emotion. “But you are not to worry about that,” David continued rapidly. “Let us just say that we have friends helping us. And that we know for a fact that the link to all of this is in New York.” David leaned forward, still grasping his father’s wrist, and dragged the older man into a half-leaning posture across the table. “Father”—David looked down at the brown Formica table, avoiding his father’s eyes—“we have reason to believe that he may be one of us.”

Herbert’s heart thudded wildly for a second, then lapsed back into its ho-hum rhythm. Surprise! But yes, why not? Of course, it was obvious.

David got to his feet. “I must catch the train back. I do not want the Archives to know that I have been away.” David was due back in Washington the next morning. “Tell Ilse and the children good-bye for me,” he said. “Tell them I love them.”

“David, one thing…,” Herbert said, faltering toward the departing body of his son.

“Father. What is it?”

“David?” Herbert did not want to seem to be begging. “Your mother…”

David’s face assumed a sharp, impatient outline. “Yes, Father?” he asked, but his voice was brusque.

“David,” pleaded Herbert, “she is longing to see you. Will you go and see her before you leave?”

David’s face turned into a mask of despair and irritation. “Don’t ask that of me,” he snapped.

“But David…” Herbert’s eyes watered, the eyes of an old man.

“No, Father,” said David sharply. He could not bear to see his father plead, and he hardened himself against this state. “Don’t ask that of me. You know it is impossible!” Abruptly, David turned from his father and walked quickly, almost running, toward the door. “I am sorry,” he muttered, “but I just can’t.”

Spring reached David, embraced him as he parted the door and entered the light, gauzy streets. “You selfish bastard,” David thought, reproaching himself, even as he ran toward the train station. David saw no beauty as he ran, only the bitterness in his heart, the veiled, dark gaze of his father, his mother’s madness, and, through it all, his own guilt at still being alive.

“It’s all right, I forgive you,” whispered a ghost, wafting beside his brother as he ran for the train. But David, hot dark liquid rising in his throat, heard nothing.