Vienna Prelude (34 page)

Rudy bowed majestically. “Of course. I am flattered. But first, you must answer the question we have all been waiting to hear.”

“Sure.”

“Why did Elisa Linder, our lovely violinist with the red face, slap you? Especially when we all know how valuable Americans are in these uncertain times.”

Murphy gave a sideways grin and glanced toward the object of their interest. Elisa sat rigid, waiting in horror for him to reveal that he had said something about her underclothes. “Well, I . . . I said something ungallant, I’m afraid.”

Silence descended over the orchestra as everyone paused to hear his explanation. “Well?” Rudy demanded. “You can’t have an interview for something as brief as that. I am always being slapped, and I know the implications.”

“I can’t say more,” Murphy said. Elisa glanced at him almost gratefully. “Unless she refuses to go out with me after tonight’s performance. If she refuses, of course I will tell.”

Her eyes flashed a furious response. “Blackmail!” she hissed.

“I knew I liked him!” Shimon laughed.

“Bravo, John Murphy!” Leah clapped her hands in approval.

“You are all traitors,” Elisa pouted.

“Not really, Elisa,” Rudy said in a patronizing voice. “We all simply do not want to see you spend your nights stagnating in your little flat. This slap is encouraging!”

By now, more members of the orchestra had joined in the game.

“So?” Shimon asked Elisa. “Do you accept his offer to go out with him tonight? Or does he tell us all what happened and get the interview with Rudy?”

“
Blackmail!
I accept under duress. And he won’t enjoy it either!”

Rudy shook his head thoughtfully at her angry reply. “You are not getting a bargain here, Herr . . . Murphy, is it? She must go out with you for at least three nights, or you can tell us why she hit you. Our orchestra is like a little family here, you see.” He inhaled deeply. “You see? Smell the coffee brewing? We even have breakfast together and we
love
gossip. Elisa should be nice to you.”

“It’s too late.” Elisa stood up. “I will never be nice to him.”

“In that case”—Murphy was still smiling—“three nights after performance. Coffee at Hotel Sacher . . . or I tell.”

“Then . . .
yes
!
You are a cad. A stage-door Jäger! The love of decency does not abide in you!” Elisa stormed off.

Rudy extended his hand to Murphy. “Very good, Herr Murphy. I have never seen Elisa so . . . roused up, you might say. If you are all those terrible things, as I suppose most American journalists are, then I congratulate you! And you may have the interview gratis. You are a man after my own heart. As a matter of fact”—Rudy patted Murphy on the head—“we even look to be about the same size. You should wear proper attire tonight, I think. I have a fencing mask at home. Shall I bring it?”

Laughter rippled through the group. Elisa was the only one not backstage. She had taken refuge in the bathroom until the instant rehearsal was scheduled to begin, and then she slipped out to her chair, not daring to look up at any of her smirking friends.

***

Murphy had rented a tuxedo for the night’s occasion. As he took his place on the aisle of row ten, he felt confident that he matched the splendor of those in the audience around him. As the members of the orchestra filed in, Murphy noted with amusement that with only one exception, they all glanced toward him and indicated their approval of his presence with a barely perceptible nod or smile. He nodded back, raising his hand with a slight wave until those seated around him whispered their conjecture about who the handsome young man in the audience must be.

“Certainly someone important.”

“Then, why isn’t he in a private box?”

“Probably royalty.”

“Yes. The aristocracy are all impoverished. That explains it.”

So Murphy had become a duke or a prince for the duration of the performance. People bowed in deference to him during intermission. He did not speak to anyone for fear of blowing his cover. Throughout the night, only one person ignored his presence completely. Even though he knew he was in the clear line of Elisa’s vision, she did not acknowledge him once. As a matter of fact, she looked
everywhere
but at him. Occasionally Leah glanced his way, however, approval radiating from her eyes. He liked her a lot. She might prove to be a valuable ally as the season progressed, and he was quite sure that Leah liked him too.

The evening’s program was the Mozart violin concertos. The full orchestra was not performing, and Murphy noticed that there was no need at all for Shimon’s drums. He assumed that the big man was probably back home in bed. Rudy Dorbransky, however, soloed with a mastery of his violin that defied his claims to be little more than Vienna’s greatest cad.

Rudy had granted the interview that afternoon, and he had begun the conversation by claiming that nothing was more important to him than wine, women—and his violin. Then Murphy asked questions, and he had discovered that there was much more to the virtuoso performer than temperament. He was, off the record, deeply committed to an independent Austrian state.

“Without it,” Rudy said solemnly, “you will see us no more in Vienna. You will no longer hear our music. Vienna is a melting pot. Tonight you will hear the sweet melodies of Wolfgang Mozart. The Nazis will claim his music is only theirs. But he was not a German. He was Austrian—a part of the great nation of Austro-Hungary ruled by Franz Josef. Listen, Herr Murphy, there is beauty and love and acceptance in the music. Austria gives birth to Mozart, and the Germans compose the ‘Horst Wessel’ song,
ja
? And ‘
Deutschland
Über
Alles
—Germany Over All.’” He stretched out his strong hands. “That is one tune my fiddle does not know. If such terrible songs come to Austria, then I will leave. Like the rest, I will run! In the meantime I will not step down from the stage because some madman shoots his pistol from the gallery. You ask me if I am afraid? I play the music of my Austria; he plays something else. As long as there is Austria, I am not afraid.”

Murphy had wanted to tell him to get his passport in order, that the end of Austria seemed to be approaching, but he did not. He only listened with admiration to the words of Rudy Dorbransky, as now he listened with awe to the music he played so beautifully. In the end Rudy had asked him not to print his brave words. “They are for my heart alone to know, and certainly there are those in Vienna who would kill me more readily for what I have told you. There is no use stirring the kettle to boil. Let them think I am a mindless, harmless Jewish violinist. It is much safer that way for me.”

As Murphy listened to the depth of emotion expressed in Rudy’s playing, he wondered how anyone could think the man was mindless. And with that realization, Murphy shuddered at the thought that there was indeed a mindlessness that would silence such great talent because the definition of beauty had somehow become linked with race and blood and Aryan culture. Rudy’s self-made image of “man-about-town” may have protected him on some levels, but it could not protect him from what was coming. Not even the profundity of his talent would protect him from the brutality of those who defined beauty as German-Aryan.

Murphy had never actually intended to write an interview with Rudy Dorbransky for publication. He had only used that as an excuse for his presence at the hall that morning. He had come to see Elisa. Now, as he watched the young man in the spotlight, then turned his eyes on Elisa, he was struck again by the madness of German rhetoric. Rudy was openly Jewish in a culture threatened by the insanity of
Mein Kampf
. Elisa carried her mixed race with the confusion and secrecy of one who had already seen the vision of fire and yet could not believe that the flames were even now licking at her heels. Rudy had already decided when he would leave. Elisa refused to acknowledge that she would ever leave. This made Rudy more sensible than Elisa in a thousand ways.

This morning’s barter had been a game; but the truth was, even as Murphy sat through the performance, he was calculating how he might best persuade Elisa that Hitler’s fire was about to leap over the Alps and consume the varied beauty of Austria, whose citizens, for the most part, believed that
differences
made life more interesting. It certainly kept after-dinner conversation lively and coffeehouses open and flourishing until all hours. Unhappily, these very differences threatened to destroy Austria. The radical left and the violent right had, in their fanaticism, caught the vast, reasonable center in a terrible cross fire. Chancellor Schuschnigg shuttled back and forth between the two extremes, trying to bring reconciliation to them all, even as Hitler’s secret vassals, the wolves of the Reich, gnawed away the foundations of reason.

Reason!
Yes. That is the word. And how can I make her listen to reason? If Theo Lindheim had survived, she would be out of here by now. She adored her father. She would have listened to him. What can I say to her? What?

In the soft light, Elisa’s skin took on an almost ethereal glow. She drew her bow across the strings in counterpoint to the strong melody that Rudy played. The beauty of the woman and the music seemed to be united, and Murphy held his breath in awe at the sight of her. An ache, so profound that he had to shut his eyes, filled him nearly to overflowing with tears. He caught himself, controlling his emotions. It had been so long since he had experienced anyone or anything so beautiful. For a year he had been witness to Nazi disregard for innocence and beauty in Spain. Spain was only a practice bombing run for Hitler and Mussolini.

Vienna was certainly their next target.
How can I tell her so that she will believe me?
It was the Nazis’ goal to crush anything that varied from their stunted perspective of the Aryan ideal.
How can I convince her? Rudy, Leah, Shimon—her friends . . . family, really. The fire is coming. The fire is already here. It consumes everything that is not forged in its own furnace of hatred. It feeds on people like you, Elisa. And talent like yours, Rudy Dorbransky. Your lives will be sacrificed to feed its flames. This moment is only a memory even as it happens; the only reality left to us is the coming fire.

He had seen it in Madrid. He had glimpsed a frightening vision in London. Now he looked upward as redolent melody swirled into the highest reaches of the hall. In one horrible instant, he saw the stars winking down through charred and gaping holes in the roof.
Yes. The molten rain will fall here too. Terrible, terrible, scorching rain
.

24

Elisa Awakens

Elisa and Murphy were seated at the same table where Murphy had spent his loneliest Christmas a year before. It was ten-thirty, but the busy waiters of the Sacher Café were still serving late dinners. Elisa smiled and waved at the omnipresent string quartet in the corner. They recognized her, of course, and Murphy wondered if there was anywhere in Vienna where a cup of coffee could be served without being accompanied by music. They began to play as Murphy ordered Tafelspitz, the boiled beef and dumplings that had been a favorite of Emperor Franz Josef. It seemed the only logical choice with the portrait of the emperor watching over them.

Elisa continued to look at the musicians; then, for the first time since they had left the concert hall, she spoke to Murphy. “Do you like the music?” she asked in English.

He was startled, both by her use of his own language and by the question. “Beautiful,” he answered, feeling like the musical ignoramus he was.

“Do they play this often in America?”

“Well . . . I don’t know. Probably.” He wished she knew something about the jazz of Scatman Caruthers.

“But you like Dvořák, personally?”

“Personally . . . ” He hedged. Personally, he had never heard of the guy.

“And this?”

“This?” He had the feeling that he was being set up. Was she trying to pinpoint just how much he lacked in the way of musical education—that they really had nothing in common beyond one terrible night on the train from Berlin? Maybe she was right. “I’ll be honest, Elisa,” he confessed, hoping his honesty would stop her subtle attack. “I don’t know anything about music. Nothing. Except that I find it beautiful. As beautiful and stirring to listen to as you are to be with.” He reached across the table to touch her hand, but she pulled it away.

She quickly looked back toward the quartet as though she had not heard him. “This is the
Amerikanisches
. . . the American composition of Dvořák. I thought perhaps you listened to it often in America since he wrote it there.”

“He is an American?”

She laughed nervously. “No. Czech. From Prague. But the happiest time of his life was in America. A place called Spillville, I-Owa.”

Murphy brightened. “Iowa!” he exclaimed. “Spillville, huh?”

“You have been there?” Elisa seemed interested in his response.

“Lots of farms in Iowa.”

“Yes.” She looked dreamy. “I can hear that in his music. Do you hear it, Herr Murphy?”

“Just Murphy,” he corrected gently. And yes, he did seem to hear the sound of horses and buggy wheels on dusty roads—and maybe the sound of crickets on a summer night when a fella sat in the porch swing with his girl. “Yes, it sounds a lot like home. In the summertime.”

“He wrote it in the summer, 1893. The only happy time in his life. He wrote it in only three days, and when he finished, he said, ‘Thanks to the Lord God. I am satisfied. It went quickly.’” She turned her eyes on Murphy as though she were no longer angry—in fact, never had been. “America must be a beautiful place if it sounds like this.”

Murphy took her hand and did not let go, even though she tried to pull away for an instant. Then she let her fingers rest in his palm—warm and soft like a little bird. How he
loved
her hands! “Would you like to go there, Elisa? Would you like to see America? I’ll take you to Iowa if you want to go; I can take you there!”