Quartet for the End of Time (54 page)

One of the German soldiers spoke French, though with such a heavy accent it was some time before the composer realized the sounds the soldier uttered was a language at all. But then, suddenly, Pasquier was prying the composer's rifle from his hands.

Let go, he hissed. The composer let go. It was only then that he made sense of the command of the German soldier who was speaking to them in his garbled French: Drop your weapons! Hands up. On your helmets! Let's go!

The composer looked around. All three had dropped their weapons by then, but the shouts continued. All three had their hands on their heads.

Finally, the French-speaking soldier approached Henri, who—his hands on his head—still clutched his clarinet.

Drop it! the soldier yelled.

The young clarinetist extended his instrument out as far away from his body and the body of the approaching soldier as possible, but he did not drop it.

This is not a weapon, he said slowly. It is a clarinet.

There was a pause as the approaching soldier examined the instrument now suspended at an oblique angle between himself and the Frenchman, then he turned toward the other soldiers, said something in German, and laughed. Then they collected the rifles from the ground and, without roughness, led the musicians back the way they had come.

So—they were alive. For that brief time—following the German guards across the same field that, just moments ago, they had fled in terror—the composer did not care, because of this simple fact, where he was headed, or with whom. After all, the men who led them away were just ordinary men. He could almost laugh! He felt no pain, and feared nothing.

I
N THE MORNING, THEY
stopped briefly at the German military headquarters and were given a piece of bread. They had not had anything to eat in five days. The composer ate half of what he was given and stuck
the rest in his pocket, but later it was found by a German soldier, who ground it into the dirt at his feet.

Thief, he said. Do you know what we do with thieves? But he did not shoot.

All morning, the composer expected it. He would feel a slight change in the pressure of the air as the wind shifted and think it was a bullet. He became so attuned to the shifts in the quality and pressure of the wind, he hardly heard the commands of the officers or the more ordinary sounds of the men speaking softly to one another, or the crunching of their boots on the gravel as they marched. It was amazing to hear all the sounds that existed below what he ordinarily heard, and he marveled that he had not heard them before and regretted that it was the imminent approach of his own death that had, at last, so finely tuned his ear. He prayed to God that he would survive and made a solemn promise to both himself and to God that if he should survive he would listen even more carefully than he had before. That he would try to hear every sound God had created in this world—or (he corrected himself modestly) as many as God granted that he should.

They marched on.

The composer quickly lost track of the days, and of their direction.

They marched. Past the destroyed villages where the faces of the people stared back at them in contempt and shame. In every face they read the single word, which echoed in their own minds as they passed (though the word itself was left, except once, unspoken). Every face they saw—every burned-out home, every homemade cross, hastily fashioned, on the side of the road—seemed to say it.

Traitor.

It looked as though the countryside they traveled through had survived not only weeks but decades of war. According to one German soldier—it had. After twenty-six years, he said (though he himself could have been barely as old), France has finally fallen. A long war, indeed, but what was destined has finally occurred.

So, the Great War the composer's father had fought was at an end— but there was no victory. It was impossible to imagine any deliverance
from the destruction that surrounded them on every side. The composer looked, but he did not recognize even the earth itself. It was as though they had been overtaken—all of them: the Germans, the French, all of them—by another force altogether, which, being equally distant from every faith and creed he could imagine, he now struggled to understand how it was not equally distant from God.

—

O
NE MORNING THE COMPOSER
refused to rise.

I cannot go on, he said. I am sorry for my wife, for my son, and for myself, because I have grown to love you all, but I can no longer continue.

Don't be ridiculous, said Pasquier. It is not a choice.

See for yourself, said the composer, motioning toward his feet that stretched before him, naked of the rags they were usually wrapped in. They were swollen, black in places. The clarinetist looked and then looked away.

Clean them as best you can and wrap them again, he said. We don't have much time.

When they were ready to march, the composer was standing, supported by the clarinetist, and that was the way—three days later—they finally arrived at the transit camp, which was already overflowing with other French prisoners. When they reached the gates, they could see that the camp spread before them for many miles in every direction—as big as a city, as big as Paris even! They had heard that many soldiers had been captured, but they'd had no idea—until that moment—the extent of their defeat.

A German officer seemed to read the composer's mind as he entered the gates. He spoke French, poorly.

You know how many of you Frenchies we've caught? he asked.

No one said anything.

I'm asking you a question, he said.

Pasquier volunteered. How many?

One million at least, said the officer. Some say nearly two. Either way you cut it—that's a lot of Frenchies. Now, what are we going to do with you?

It did not at first sound like a question but Pasquier was watching the officer's expression and saw after a moment that it was, so he asked hurriedly: Monsieur—what?

Well, that we don't know! the officer said. He began to chuckle. We thought everything through so carefully but that, he said. We hardly expected you to give in so quickly, and all at once like this. Now what are we going to do with you all?

He walked away, still chuckling.

T
HERE WAS NOT ENOUGH
food and water, and soon the stench from the latrines became unbearable. Weeks went by, and though several thousand men were trucked out to their next station, the three musicians remained in the transit camp as the rations continued to dwindle. When the trucks left with men inside, going somewhere—anywhere —else, the three musicians were especially lonesome. But Pasquier warned them: Don't wish too hard. It is no better where those men are going. It certainly isn't home.

There is no home to return to, lamented Henri. Imagine! Nazis goose-stepping along the streets of Paris!

By that time the rumor that Jewish families were being deported from Paris had reached them; the clarinetist had grown increasingly concerned.

But you are French, the composer had said to Henri, when they'd first heard the news.

You think that will save you now? asked the man who had delivered it to them. Look at the rest of us.

T
HE COMPOSER SPENT HIS
time reading his Bible and
The Imitation of Christ
, which he had managed to keep with him, and worked steadily on his composition. Soon he had even finished the solo piece he had promised the clarinetist, and offered it proudly to the young musician.

You, he said, will be the first clarinetist ever to play this new work!

The clarinetist graciously accepted.

Several days later, however, he returned the music to the composer.

I am sorry, he said, but I am never going to get this. I can't play like this—without any time signature, or really any structure at all! I believe it is genius, truly. But I am not the man to do it.

What? said the composer. Genuinely surprised. Where is your invincible revolutionary spirit?

Try it again, said Pasquier. He took the sheet music and held it open in his hands. The clarinetist picked up his instrument again, putting it to his lips.

He began to play. Hesitatingly at first—then with more certainty. The composer beamed with pride. Pasquier's hands, holding the sheet music, shook. After a while, the clarinetist began to feel it, too. He relaxed, and the notes flowed still more surely—they did not even seem to be coming from him after a while, but from somewhere—

Cut out that racket! came a growl nearby.

The clarinetist, startled, stopped playing.

Pasquier, still entranced by what he had just heard, was equally surprised. What? You don't like music? he asked.

Sure I like music, the man who had interrupted said. But that's not music!

Oh, but it
is
, the clarinetist said, laughing. Otherwise, he added— winking at the composer, who was still beaming with pride—how would I be able to play it?

B
UT HE WAS RIGHT,
the composer told me—months later, as we sat together on guard duty one night. It
was
a racket! I got the idea for the piece from the sound of the locomotives that rattle through the camp; from the incessant drone of the vehicles and the
clickety-clack
of the wheels on the rails as they pass. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make the sound align itself to any regular beat or measure—and it was then that I realized. All the things of this world, from which we make music, are not bound by time at all. They are utterly free! It is only we who seek to restrict things into units of measure; we who conceive of the symmetry that is both order and war. Everything—when the ear is trained to hear it—is free; everything is noise, and finally, everything
is music! Even the birds (the composer continued) speak a language they cannot truly utter—a language of which, that is, their voices are only the smallest part. Is that not what makes their music great? It is clear and precise both in its register and voice, and yet—it says nothing! Even we humans—who understand so little—understand that when we truly listen.

T
HEN ONE DAY THE
three musicians found themselves—without knowing where they were bound—on one of the trucks headed out of the transit camp. They arrived first in Nancy; there, they were marched to the rail yard and ordered into cattle cars.

The cars were so full it was impossible for all of the prisoners to lie or even sit down at once. A rotation was soon organized so that they sat and stood according to a fixed schedule overseen by an aging French officer. From time to time (which could not help but be irregular, there being no watches among them and only the smallest glint of sun that streamed into the closed car), the officer would bark out, Switch, and everyone would follow his command.

Before too long, however, the composer was no longer able to rise when the command came, and Pasquier pleaded that he might be allowed to remain seated—an amendment that required someone else give up his turn. After only a moment's hesitation, the clarinetist volunteered, and so the composer remained seated for the duration of the journey.

Even when the car stopped in a switchyard, the prisoners were ordered to remain inside the cars, and were not allowed to relieve themselves or obtain food or water. By that time, the composer was delirious, slipping in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he managed to rouse himself and utter a few unintelligible words, but hardly any sound emerged when he did, and he was forced to lie back down again, exhausted and confused.

F
INALLY
,
THE TRAIN STOPPED
and the door was rolled back. The sun shone in too brightly, temporarily blinding the passengers inside.

What town is this?

Görlitz, said a German soldier. This is home for you boys now.

The composer, confused by the light, tried to stand, but fell. Pasquier caught him in his arms. This man needs a hospital, he said.

He went to speak to the German who had just addressed them and, when he returned, said to the composer: When we get to the prison you will go directly to a hospital.

All right, said the composer. But you needn't worry about me. I know that God is still watching over me—that he is still taking care of me, in his way.

The clarinetist spat. I am glad you and I do not share a God, then, he said.

Oh, but we do, Henri! the composer said dreamily.

Perhaps we do, the clarinetist said. After all, mine is a vengeful God, and this is nothing if not vengeance.

A
LONE IN THE HOSPITAL
, the composer continued to drift in and out of consciousness. He listened to the sound of the train whistles, the church bells, and, of course, the birds. When he grew stronger he read his Bible. Particularly the tenth chapter of the Book of Apocalypse, in which an immense angel stretches a prism of color and light that encircles all things, and says: There shall be no more Time.

What did this mean? the composer wondered.

He prayed for understanding.

—

T
HOUGH WE HAD BEEN ON THE SAME TRANSFER
(
CONTINUED T HE POET
Maurice Bonheur), it was not, on account of his illness, until five weeks later that I first met the composer. By that time, I had already come to know Étienne Pasquier and Henri Akoka—both of whom had been assigned bunks near my own—and so of course I had heard many stories.

Upon his return, the composer was installed on the empty lower bunk beneath me. The clarinetist slept opposite, and Pasquier farther along. That left the bunk directly above the clarinetist empty.

Who sleeps there? the composer had asked on his first night in the barracks.

The clarinetist shrugged. Poor man tried to escape the first night we got here. They gunned him down on the wire.

The composer let out a low whistle. I guess that has given you some food for thought about trying to escape yourself, he said to the clarinetist. I beg you, Henri, promise me you'll never try.