A Change of Skin (49 page)

“I promise you that you will find the evening pleasant,” said the Commandant.

When the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia was assassinated, it was decreed that the lives of three thousand Jews must be given in exchange for his. Heinrich came to Theresienstadt to organize their transport to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Treblinka. As always he was very confident and very lucid. He and Franz walked through the square of the ghetto town with their thumbs hooked in their belts and Heinrich laughed recalling that fight years ago at the students' party Herr Urs, the dwarf, had crashed wrapped in a pillowcase and refrigerator frost. Franz laughed too, and Heinrich, winking, said that Franz might yet find himself in some difficulties because of the costume Ulrich had worn that night. They walked side by side and laughed a great deal and Heinrich said that no matter how the war turned out it could never be denied that at last German life had been reduced to rationality and exalted to greatness. What they were inflicting on others they risked having inflicted upon themselves, and if that should happen, they would accept it without protest. For in the end human existence is a lonely and bitter footrace which does not go to the fleet or to the daring or even to the patient but to those who have a vision of their own possible grandeur and the courage to live up to their vision. The secret of Germany was that each individual German had such a vision of himself, alone, solitary. It was the accomplishment of the Third Reich to have organized those secret and hidden visions of solitude into a common national purpose, exalted and sufficient. They all had that sense of exaltation. Because of it, if they were defeated, they would be able to accept not only defeat, not only death, but even humiliation. In a few days Heinrich finished his mission. The Attentat auf Heydrich transport was efficiently organized and the three thousand Jews departed from the Theresienstadt ghetto, never, Heinrich assured Franz, to be seen again.

“And what if some day you find yourself in the hands of the Americans or the Russians?” Franz asked, smiling, as Heinrich boarded his truck.

Heinrich threw his hand to his visored cap in mockery of an American salute.

“Then I'll become an American or a Russian,” he laughed. “I'll turn traitor, I'll sell secrets, I'll swap parties. Treu bis zum Tod!”

The truck pulled off and Franz laughed too and swung his arm up to return the salute.

Huic ergo pace, Deus:

Pie Jesus Domine:

Dona eis requiem. Amen.

“The Jews,” said the Commandant casually, picking a tooth and covering his mouth with the other hand, “are going to perform Verdi's
Requiem.
”

Eichmann lifted an eyebrow. All the officers at the long table stopped their conversations. The Commandant went on picking his tooth in the frozen silence. Finally Eichmann began to laugh. He slapped his open palm on the tablecloth and laughed, and they all imitated him, slapped the table, each other's shoulders, and laughed. The whole room laughed, those sitting far away not sure of the joke, merely doing what those who were nearer did. Eichmann wiped tears from his eyes.

And she, if she had ever talked with Franz, could have told him that for months Raphael Schachter had no basso. Just when he was becoming desperate, one day as he was walking the streets of the ghetto thanks to the freedom granted him and his artists he heard a diabolic voice floating over his head. She was with Schachter, and when he asked her if she heard the same thing, she nodded and smiled. They walked from one end of the street to the other, searching, listening, becoming more certain and elated all the time. Finally they climbed wooden stairs in a house where children were playing in the halls and walked through empty bedrooms. The voice sounded closer and closer, and Schachter climbed out a tall window on to the roof and she followed and they saw a lean man dressed in black bent over a chimney, singing. He looked at them. He moved away from the chimney and wiped a hand across his soot-blackened face. They had found the basso for the
Requiem.

You laughed, Pussycat, lying with your soft protecting arms around Franz in your room in the hotel in Cholula. But afterward you would tell yourself that that night he had talked without knowing what he was saying to you, sometimes breaking into tears as they all break into tears when they go back at last, when they come at last to the end of the time of waiting and return to their towns and cities and discover that no one has waited for them.

And she understood everything when the general rehearsal was held and there was no spirit, no life, no enthusiasm. Schachter believed that he had failed. They had not responded to him, they had not understood his purposes. She took his arm, moving with difficulty because of her stomach, and told him no, they were not indifferent or resentful. It was simply shock, astonishment, astonishment.

“So the Jews are going to sing their own death chant!” said Eichmann, and everyone laughed and went on laughing as they made their way to the enormous improvised concert hall beneath the roof of the building that had been a hospital, and took their places, the ranking officers in the first row of chairs and the others and the enlisted guards crowded in behind and Franz in one of the last seats of all. And on the other side of the curtain the soloists and the chorus and the orchestra were ready and waiting and Epstein was telling Schachter once again that he was dubious, very dubious of everything, he feared that it could well be construed as a capitulation. A messenger came from the Commandant with an order: the performance must last no longer than one hour. Schachter clenched his teeth and in a whisper told them, “We shall begin with the line ‘Confutatis maledictis.'” Then the curtain opened and in front of them were the officers newly decorated with the KVK cross, smiling.

Confutatis maledictis,

Flammis acribus addictis,

Voca me cum benedictis.

Beneath the silent vault rose the voice of the basso chimney sweep. When the damned are confounded and cast into the living flames, call me to join the blessed. Franz saw her. She was seated on the conductor's right, playing first violin. The voice of the chorus, loud yet hesitant in the “Dies Irae.” He could not see her clearly, nor could he see Eichmann's eyebrow and smile and the Commandant's air of complacent satisfaction. There was no conviction in the chorus: the day of wrath would come and the world would dissolve in ashes … perhaps. Franz leaned forward and twisted his head to see the girl playing the violin, to see her and ask her to remember a different Requiem, a German Requiem: grant us rest, Lord; would she remember? Two groups of cellos, separated by somber violas. The chorus at its softest, in lamentation. But the human voice, simply because it is human, creates a certain joy that moves in front of the sadness of the instruments. Schachter had his back to them. He had closed his eyes. Now the officers and the SS men knew that he had been defeated, that his people had been defeated; and the reason for their defeat, whether it was fear or indifference or astonishment, was of no importance. The girl playing the violin kept her eyes fixed on Schachter. She compelled him to look at her. She played exactly as he wanted, with the intensity and purpose he was asking of her. But now her face was resigned. Eichmann, listening intently, smiled. But at that instant, as if he had understood the full meaning of the resignation on the face of the girl, his smile changed from dry amusement to a gentler expression almost of forgiveness. And Franz, far back in the hall, remembered their nights in the Wallenstein Gardens in Prague, remembered a face that resembled the face of the girl playing the violin, and wanted to re-create that other Requiem, the Requiem of Brahms, to hear it rather than this one. The voices of the women repeated what the voices of the men had said. They attempt to recapture life. Memory tries to find its way, its path down the honed edge of the blade between life and death. But life, death, and memory fuse. The chorus is silent for a moment while Schachter's arms move and the four soloists stand. Bietya, the soprano, softly begins the “Domine Jesu Christe, Rex Gloriae,” and Franz wants to reject those words as he murmurs the words of the German Requiem,
Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg, Tod, wo ist dein Stachel!
and the sound of the instruments is overcome by the words: in that other orchestra, the horn gives life to the march, the violins and violas walk beside the mourners, and the organ stops everything. But he could not remember it. The Latin voices, almost unaccompanied, voices alone, slow voices, less solid than echoes, prevented memory. The tenor:

Hostias et preces tibi, Domine, laudis offerimus,

joined immediately by the basso, the soprano, the mezzo-soprano,

Faceas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam.

Franz looked at the face of the girl playing the violin and silently asked her: Hanna, are these simple voices, humble, ordinary, naked, almost archaic, more powerful than the Brahms? Is this ancient, this dead litany more powerful than all of Brahms's instruments and brilliance? Schachter closed his eyes and smiled. But the girl did not relax the tension that was sustaining her. Receive us as we pass into death. Receive us as we pass:

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis.

Yes, he believed that she had seen him in the pause between the “Sanctus” and the “Agnus Dei.” Eichmann stirred in his chair. The Commandant remained rigid and glanced at his watch. Now the “Agnus,” placating, humble, humiliated, charitable, poor, merciful, fearful. The officers tried to smile. But Franz, looking around him, saw their eyes dampening as they listened to the purest part of the Requiem:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem.

“Forgive me, Isabel. You don't know how sentimental we can be.”

“I know, Franz. I saw you drinking beer and singing today.”

Schachter hesitated, feeling the emotion in the hall at his back. The girl playing the violin stopped for an instant and Schachter looked toward her questioningly, and Franz, far back in the hall, was asking her to remember those long-ago evenings and their first meeting and their walk across the Karlsbrücke and the afternoons in Maher's studio and the lonely summer when the city smelled of chestnuts and the banks of the river were alive with grass and flowers and the women who lived in her boarding house went walking in the country and they were left alone and ran up and down the stairs and halls and cooked their meal and told each other what had to be said, I love you, promise not to ask me for anything, when you come back from Germany I'll be a great soloist and won't even notice you, I don't want to go away, it will only be for a few years, it won't change anything, and I'll come back, Hanna, wait for me, Hanna, no, Franz, no, wait, not yet, not this way, I swear I'll wait and you will be the first, alone in the boarding house on a summer Sunday afternoon, the protruding bones of her face illuminated by the slanting light, her green eyes submissive, proud, her dark hair touched by the last sun as they sat beside the open window and ate their meal and looked out across the black stones of Prague's Jewish cemetery.

They all sensed the change. It wasn't in the music. It was physical, as if everyone on the improvised stage had stepped forward, Schachter, the soloists, the chorus, the orchestra, as if they had all moved forward one long stride. No longer was it Verdi's
Requiem,
that sweet southern requiem from the cities of the sun. It was a circus act now. It was music-hall jazz: three short beats cracking with anger, then the long defiant beat. Bitter voices, agonized and infuriated at once, suddenly awakened, far from the patience of the “Agnus,” heedless of the music, challenging, all in unison shouting:

Libera me! Libera me!

The three violent short beats, then the long drawn one,

Li-be-ra meeeee!

Free me, Lord, from eternal death on the day of overwhelming wrath when heaven and earth shall be shaken! When You shall come to judge with fire! I tremble, fearing that moment of judgment and wrath. When heaven and earth will tremble also. The day of calamity and sorrow, a great and bitter day, the day of wrath. And grant them eternal rest, Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them. They knocked over our chairs and drawing table, Isabel. They threw our books and drawings and tracings out the window and grabbed Ulrich and stomped on his glasses and kicked him in the kidneys and dragged him away down the stairs. For Ulrich had said no. No. I never saw him again.
Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna.

The chorus and orchestra were silent. Schachter turned and faced his audience for the first time. He did not bow. Everyone waited for Eichmann to give the cue, to set the example. Presently the Oberscharführer began to clap, alone, the sound of his hands the only sound in the hall. He applauded with a dry, forced smile.

Franz left the hall and went down the maze of stone stairs and waited in the street. He concealed himself behind an arch when the guards and officers came out in silence. His comrades. Then the others, the Jewish artists. She was leaning on the arm of the chimney-sweep basso. Schachter went to her and said something Franz could not hear. She took Schachter's arm and went with him, walking as if walking were difficult, her feet dragging over the stones of the narrow street. At a gate where the paint had faded they stopped and Schachter kissed her hand and said goodbye and she went in. As soon as Schachter was out of sight, Franz followed her. He heard her heavy step moving up the dark stairs. He heard her stop, panting, to rest. Heard her go on. The creaking of hinges. He ran up and saw her pass through the door. For a moment he waited.
Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna.
He stood on the rotted topmost stair with his hand on the worn banister, his head down, his eyes staring into unanswering darkness. Everything will pass. Be reconciled, be consoled. For man will remain. Will labor. Will love. We will be again what we were before. As always. What we have been, not what we have wanted to be. We will toil. We will raise again the burned and fallen walls. We will sing again rapping our mugs on the table. We will weep, thinking of our sorrows and the sorrows of others. We will love our parents, our wives, our children. And we will wait. Yes, we will wait. We deserve to be pitied.