Dr. Barker’s absence was like a vacation. McVain, Rufus, and Josef played to near exhaustion, taking breaks only when Wolfgang demanded, which was every thirty minutes. But as soon as Wolfgang walked away, they’d start up again. One night Josef fell asleep in a chair next to McVain’s bed and Susannah left him there.
Extra medical duties had fallen in Wolfgang’s lap and he’d shared them with Susannah. Whenever Barker was gone, Susannah was used as an extra doctor. This time he allowed her to assist on a nerve crush, and she’d been by his side when he’d removed two rib bones from a woman who’d been a patient at Waverly for seven months when her lungs stopped functioning properly. They kept so busy they rarely had time to join the ensemble, but the music carried on. Patients on every solarium remarked to Wolfgang about the music, and the days passed quickly. Bouts of snowfall graced the sanatorium every day.
Mary Sue began to pace up and down the solarium porch with little Fred in tow. She was getting stronger. Wolfgang had wheeled them both up to visit Frederick, but only for a few minutes. Mary Sue held the baby in the doorway and Frederick smiled from his bed across the room. He’d managed one word: “Beautiful.” And then they’d left him alone to rest.
Mary Sue was an avid fan of the fourth-floor trio, and she insisted on listening up close every time they played. She wasn’t the only one. The audience swelled. The trio played Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, Baroque and Classical, Renaissance and Romantic, and by the fourth day of Dr. Barker’s absence, they’d begun to dabble with their own original pieces. No longer restricted to playing at night, the trio flourished. Three instruments became one. Their minds fused. Josef’s wife, Steffi, visited and brought chocolate-chip cookies. They played for her, and between pieces, she told them stories of Josef’s past—about his clumsiness in the war, his inability to fire a gun the first time he’d tried, his violin performances in Austria, his concerts on stage in front of hundreds, embarrassing moments in their fifteen happily married years, and their immigration to the United States.
The Great War had crippled Germany’s economy. Josef’s music store in Berlin had gone out of business. Propaganda began to circulate through the cities, some of it blaming the German Jews for losing the war and for the state of the country afterward. They’d fled the growing anti-Semitism and came to a new life in America in the summer of 1925. On the boat trip across the Atlantic, Steffi told them with a smile, Josef had thrown up seventeen times!
McVain listened intently. He laughed along with them. He no longer appeared disgusted around Josef and had been quite cordial to Josef’s wife.
And no new threats had come from Rufus’s daily presence in the sanatorium. “Wonder if it was Barker in those robes,” Lincoln joked to Wolfgang.
Wolfgang was amused but didn’t drop his guard.
Every night he worked on the requiem, collaborating with Rufus and Josef, for both proved valuable as well. But McVain was the catalyst. Whatever may have happened to his fingers had not touched his mind, and every comment he made, every note he gave showed Wolfgang that when it came to music, he was just the student. McVain was clearly the teacher.
Once the piece gained momentum again, Wolfgang found himself unable to push it aside. His wine consumption increased. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to separate music from work. On the fifth night of Dr. Barker’s absence, he paced the floor of his cottage, his hands moving to the sound of music in his head—violins and violas, flutes and clarinets, double bass and piano, woodwinds, strings, and brasses together. Just as his mind had nearly become lost in a violin solo, a knock interrupted.
“Who is it?”
“Open up, it’s freezing out here.” It was Susannah.
Wolfgang opened the door. He had escorted her to the dormitory less than an hour before. Why was she dropping by after midnight and waving a newspaper in his face?
“What is it?”
“Hello to you, too.” She pushed the paper into his hands, pointing at an advertisement. “New Steinite radio. Thought you might want to take a look.”
“A hundred and eighteen dollars. I can’t afford this.”
Susannah snatched it back. “Start saving.” She pointed to the small table beside the fireplace where his phonograph rested like the fossil it had become. “It would look great in place of that monstrosity.” She sat down on the couch. “Think how it would sound.”
“Rose loved that phonograph.”
“Of course she did.”
Wolfgang sat beside her on the couch. “Susannah, what are you doing here?”
“You want me to go?”
“No, no, I just mean…it’s late.”
She clapped his shoulder and stood. “You stay up all hours of the night working and studying those theology books. It’s not late for you and I’m not tired.”
“Have you been drinking?”
She rolled her eyes and spotted the open bottle of wine on the floor. “No, but I see that you have.”
Wolfgang walked to the window and leaned against the sill. A cool draft blew over his hands. “Did anyone see you?”
“What does it matter? This is just an innocent night with a friend.”
“Exactly.” Wolfgang nodded in agreement. “This is as harmless as if Lincoln visited me in the middle of the night.”
Susannah pretended to look deeply offended for a second, and then her smile returned. “What were you working on? Rose’s requiem? Can I hear some of it?”
Wolfgang hesitated before grabbing his father’s
P
violin that rested on the stone hearth of the fireplace. His eyes drifted to the swell of her breasts beneath her red dress, and then he focused again on the violin. He fit it between his shoulder and neck and lifted the bow. “I’m not terribly good at the violin.”
“You play it for the patients every day, Wolf. Just play.”
He played. It sounded much better in his mind than what resonated from the instrument’s F-holes, but it was a work in progress. He stood in the middle of the floor, lightly tapping the toes of his right foot against the floor while maintaining his balance on his left leg. He focused on the fingers of his left hand as they danced over the strings. He concentrated on his right arm, making sure the bow slid across the strings at the correct angle on every touch. Susannah didn’t seem to mind his awkwardness on the violin, wincing only once when he hit the wrong note. What stole Wolfgang’s attention, five minutes into his playing, was when Susannah closed her eyes, leaned back on the couch, and began to hum. Her humming turned into soft singing. Her voice was lovely. He pulled the violin from his shoulder.
She opened her eyes. “I like it.”
“I didn’t know you had such a nice voice, Susannah.”
“Sorry, it just came out.”
“I had no idea you could sing.”
She sat up straight. “I can dance too. And cook. And sew.”
And then it hit him. His eyes widened nearly as much as his smile.
“What is it, Wolf?”
He sat next to her on the couch, not completely unaware that their legs were touching. She didn’t move away. “I write for the piano and violin and flute,” said Wolfgang, “but in my head I always hear a soprano singing too. What’s a requiem without a choir?”
He looked at her. “But forget the requiem.” He pointed out the window, toward the main building. “Our little ensemble up there, it needs a choir, a chorus.”
She leaned away from him playfully. “Doctor. Priest. Conductor. And now choirmaster?” She laughed. “Just where will you find a choir, Wolfgang?”
“From the patients, of course.”
January 23rd, 1929
Dear Friar Christian,
I hope all is well at the abbey. Though our letters have grown less frequent over the years, I hope you have not lost faith in me, for my faith in God remains strong, as is my intention to return. But the patients at Waverly Hills continue to arrive, and my duties have come to involve much more than medicine. God has blessed me with a surge of music on this hillside, and in that way I see Him and sometimes I can even see my Rose again.
But I do carry a burden that is growing more troublesome. We are without clergy at Waverly. Even though it was not my intention, the patients have claimed me as their source of spiritual light. Some even call me “Father,” which at first seemed a harmless comfort, but I fear that in their eyes it has been accepted as truth. I try to deceive no one, but when men and women are on their deathbed and they need to confess their sins, I simply can’t turn them away.
And so I remain, as ever—
Yours in Christ,
Dr. Wolfgang Pike
Waverly Hills
It was the sixth day of Dr. Barker’s absence, and the mood was optimistic on the hillside—the perfect atmosphere for recruitment. Snow covered the grounds with an inch of accumulation, a wet snow that clung to the top of every tree branch and rested in the pockets of every bough, pretty enough to engage smiles in even the sickest of patients. Wolfgang and Susannah, along with Lincoln, spoke to every patient and staff member, searching for people who were willing to sing and still had the lungs to belt out a tune. Rumor grew throughout the day until talk of a choir was on everyone’s lips.
By nighttime they’d collected twenty-seven volunteers, two of whom Big Fifteen and Rufus recruited from down the hill—a man and a woman. Abel, to their delight, surprised them by grabbing five eager kids from the children’s pavilion. The turnout was better than Wolfgang had expected. They gathered on the fourth-floor solarium around nine o’clock that evening. Several neighboring patients, including an ailing Mr. Weaver, had volunteered to scoot their beds aside to make room for everyone. Susannah arranged them in groups—men, women, and children—and positioned them to the right side of McVain’s piano. Josef and Rufus stood to the left of the piano while Wolfgang took a position in the center so that all eyes could follow his conducting; he knew most would not have a clue what each movement of his arms meant. He needed to teach them.
Susannah situated a ten-year-old girl next to Abel in the front row and then bounced over toward Wolfgang. “They’re ready. A few have really lovely voices.”
“Then let’s get started,” he said.
Susannah spun away to join the women’s section on the right side of the choir. The men stood to the left. Wolfgang faced them all and spoke over the bitter wind that fought the screen windows. “I admire everyone’s courage on this cold winter night.” They stood silent, focused on every word. “Don’t be shy with your voices. I understand that some of you simply want to be involved and admit not to be the best of singers, but that doesn’t matter to me. The fact that you’re here is all that counts.”
The patients stared back at him with haunted faces. Some had sunburned cheeks, others were deathly pale. A few scattered coughs filtered through the choir, but something new now burned in their tired eyes.
Wolfgang raised his arms. “We’ll start with the
Cantate
Domino
of Hans Leo Hassler.” They continued to stare at him, even Susannah. McVain rolled his eyes. Josef, without hesitation, gripped his bow and readied himself. “I’m kidding,” said Wolfgang. “We’ll get to that eventually. We’ll begin by warming up our voices with some simple scales.” He nodded to McVain, who began playing the scales on the piano, apparently bored by the simplicity. He sat like a hunchbacked troll. “Women first,” Wolfgang shouted. “Open up your voices. If the other floors hear, it could get us more recruits.”
The thirteen women opened their mouths to sing. They started slowly, reluctantly, struggling to vocalize in the freezing weather, but after a few minutes their voices grew stronger, despite weakened lungs, and became warm and lyrical. Clouds of steam puffed like smoke from every opened mouth. After the women, the men sang, and finally the children. When Wolfgang had them all sing together and began to tinker with different ranges, experimenting with different combinations of voices, the choir’s confidence grew. Specific roles were defined. He divided the women into sopranos and contraltos, and the men into tenors, countertenors, and a couple of baritones. They lacked that one deep bass that would have made it perfect. Nevertheless, after only forty-five minutes of practice, the choir had already passed Wolfgang’s expectations and showed an eagerness to learn more. He’d handed out sheet music for those who knew how to read it. The rest learned by following the movements of Wolfgang’s arms and by listening. They caught on quickly.
Just before ten o’clock, when Wolfgang was ready to rehearse a short section of a Mozart Mass, Lincoln, who had been busy in the chute during most of the rehearsal, hurried by his side. “Barker,” he said, breathing heavily. “He’s back early.”
It took a second for the words to register, but when they did, Wolfgang moved frantically, motioning for the patients to return to their rooms. But it was too late. Dr. Barker’s voice boomed from somewhere on the solarium. The crowd of spectators parted like the Red Sea, and Moses walked on through.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Dr. Barker stood a few feet away from Rufus and Josef, who quickly stepped aside.
Wolfgang nodded toward Susannah and the choir. With Susannah directing them, they began to return to their beds and floors. Dr. Barker stared at him with contempt. But he was silent, letting everyone clear out, all except McVain, who simply stood from the piano, shuffled to his bed, and pulled up the covers. Finally, Dr. Barker—who was puffing so hard, Wolfgang thought a fire smoldered inside his head—said, “I want the piano taken down.”
“It’s too heavy,” Wolfgang said. “And we recently had it tuned.”
Dr. Barker looked baffled. “Sick patients standing out in the cold? In the heart of the winter?”
“They’d be lying in their beds in this same cold air. At least the singing keeps them warm.”
“The standing puts strain on them.”
“We’ll get them chairs.”
“And what about those children? This is a school night.”
“Do you think these children worry about school, Dr. Barker?” Wolfgang pointed to where the children stood moments before. “They’re here because they’re sick. They care more about figuring out how not to die on this hillside. The children are the strongest we have.”
Dr. Barker stepped closer. “Our city fears this place like a leper colony. Yet it’s the most sought-after TB hospital in the country, and not because of our”—he practically spat—“
music
program
. I won’t have you damaging our reputation. Or our patients. Prove to me that music can cure TB.”
“Prove to me that it can’t.”
“Dr. Pike, I studied at Johns Hopkins—”
“Did you see their faces?”
Dr. Barker clenched his jaw. “They’re tired.”
“Did you see their faces?” Wolfgang asked. “You can’t deny them—”
“How dare you speak to me this way.” He glared at the cassock visible beneath Wolfgang’s lab coat.
“We have a patient here. She asks me every day, ‘Where do the bodies go?’ I lie. I change the subject. I don’t tell her about Lincoln’s Death Tunnel.”
“Lower your voice, Wolfgang.” Dr. Barker looked around at the patients, many of whom had been listening to their quarrel. “They need rest and fresh air.”
“That’s what we tell them, but they’re still dying. At times it’s at the rate of one an hour.” Wolfgang stepped forward, daring Dr. Barker to shove him, both of them too irate to stop this public argument. “My only cure is to make them happy. Make them look forward to opening their eyes the next morning. That is my mission now.”
Suddenly, McVain’s voice came from his bed. “Shut us down and you’ll regret it.”
Dr. Barker spun to face him. “Are you threatening me?”
McVain sat up in bed, resting his weight on his elbows. “I’ve done much worse things in my life than threaten someone. But if I have to, I will.”
Wolfgang didn’t give Dr. Barker time to muster a retort. “Do you realize the talent we’ve stumbled across here? This is no coincidence. This is fate.” A notion hit Wolfgang, an ally whom Dr. Barker couldn’t touch. “God has put these people here. The music is from God. The choir has a calling from Him.”
“Don’t hide behind your cloth.” Dr. Barker shook his head. “That’s sacrilege.”
“You can tell me what to do as a doctor, but not with the Lord.”
Dr. Barker started to turn and then stopped. “I’ll go above you. To the diocese.”
“On what grounds?”
“Prohibition keeps you from buying your wine in stores.” Dr. Barker pointed to his chest. “I track every order that comes into this place,
Father
. And I know about the extra stuff you get from Lincoln. But it seems the consumption of sacramental wine has risen quite substantially since you’ve been here. Yet the church attendance is falling off.”
He stormed off without another word.
***
Wolfgang stayed on the fourth floor that night and played softly. He played for the patients. He played for Rose. Could she hear him? He played for McVain, who appeared restless, tossing and turning, the mattress springs groaning with every shift of his weight. Every ten minutes McVain would punch his right fist into the center of his pillow and then plop his head inside the dent. Nothing seemed to work.
When Wolfgang’s fingers ached, he stood. He walked the requiem over to McVain’s bed and locked the manuscript in its black case.
McVain’s eyes were open. “You really believe this is fate?”
Wolfgang flinched. “I thought you were asleep.”
“It’s twenty-five degrees out here and you expect me to sleep? I asked you a question.”
Wolfgang dropped down on the cold folding chair beside the bed. “What do you think?”
“Coincidence,” said McVain. “There’s no other explanation. You believe in God because it makes you feel better about where you’re going after you die.” He looked Wolfgang in the eyes. “We’re going nowhere except the ground we’re buried in.”
“You don’t believe in God?”
McVain laughed. “Do you? I mean really?”
“Of course.”
“Then why the look in your eyes?”
“What look?”
McVain sighed and laughed a soft, cynical laugh. “Why are you convinced that joining the priesthood is the right answer to your wife’s death?”
“It’s a calling from God.”
“You say that as if you rehearsed it.” McVain’s breathing was labored, pushed out in shallow bursts followed by bouts of calm. “So why all the nonsense?”
“What nonsense?”
“If it were a calling from God, then you wouldn’t be here. You’d be there. You can’t have it both ways.”
“I’m here because…I’m needed here. Look around,” he nodded to all the other patients. “And this music is God’s work too.”
McVain chuckled. “What about heaven and hell? Do they exist?”
Wolfgang paused and stared down the solarium. “There is a heaven, McVain, and one day I’ll see Rose in it.”
“With the angels, huh? Floating around above the clouds in pure bliss with wings and shit?”
Wolfgang stood. “Good night, McVain.”
McVain held his head upward, his voice strained. “Do you really think there’s a hell?” His head settled on his pillow again. “A place of fire where the sinners go? Like me. Or was it concocted to keep people straight? Be a more dangerous world without the fear of consequence, wouldn’t it?”
“What have you done that’s so bad that you belong in hell?”
“Maybe one day I’ll pour my confession out to you. But what would it matter?”
“It would empty the bitterness in your heart.”
“Don’t you have bitterness?”
Wolfgang opened his mouth to speak as thoughts of his mother consumed him, but nothing came out.
McVain smiled. “The bitterness keeps me going. I wouldn’t know what to do without it.” Wolfgang started to leave, but again McVain stopped him with another question. “Would God keep a moral man from heaven’s gates?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Even if he doesn’t believe in God anymore?”
Where was this heading? thought Wolfgang.
McVain said, “There was a time when I thought I’d been blessed by God.”
“When did you lose this belief?”
McVain held up his left hand and wiggled his pinkie and thumb. “Was it coincidence that sent me to European soil? Or was it fate?”
“I don’t have all the answers, McVain.”
McVain’s jaw tightened. “I made a decision while I was over there. I lost these fingers as a result of it. If it was a punishment from God, then I hate him for it.”
“God doesn’t punish—”
“It’s easier just not to believe,” he said. “What kind of God would give something like this and then take it away?”
Wolfgang immediately thought of Rose. “Good night, McVain. I’ll pray for your answers tonight.”
He turned away, unable to shake the vision of Rose from his mind—how she looked, how she talked, how she breathed when she slept, how she smelled, how she tasted, the feel of her skin…