The Butterfly and the Violin (41 page)

“Of course not,” Adele agreed, and smoothed her hands over her skirt. “Losing the sunlight would only drag this out longer, wouldn’t it?”

With one last wink, she hurried to the door.

“Adele?”

She turned back, her hand fused to the door’s old brass knob. “Yes?”

“Is he ever going to be finished?”

Adele blushed, feeling the warmth spread from her cheeks to her mouth, the smile finding its way onto her lips with an unconscious effort. “Who knows?”

Her blue bicycle was waiting against the front stoop. It was the French kind, with the wide wheels and a woven basket for trips to the flower shop and buying baguettes on Sunday mornings. Adele dropped her satchel and purse in the wicker basket and hopped onto the seat.

She took off in the direction of the River Seine.

Mariette had been right. Adele had been lost in her music, thinking of that train ride she’d taken so long ago. The memories were always the same. She thought of what had changed her. Of Omara and the rest of the girls. Of the long days of playing and the even longer, sound-empty nights in which sleep never seemed to come. She thought of how fragile life is and how different things were now than she’d ever imagined in her charmed, Viennese youth.

Every time her eyes closed on the music, her mind flashed with images of them. All of them. The lost. The brave. The souls whose second chance never came . . . Her heart bled those familiar notes of Auschwitz.

Adele rode along, passing flower shops and her favorite boulangerie as she wheeled the bike past the Champs-Elysees,
thinking about the life that Omara had made her promise she’d live. She remembered that day in the painted room, where Omara had told her that God was everywhere. The sky breathed Him. The sun gave His warmth. The music, haunting now and tied only to her memory of a place called Auschwitz—these things all remained as songs of praise to Him. Why, the very air she inhaled was created and willed by His hand. And as God is everywhere, she couldn’t live but to carry Him in her heart, with the worship of daily life, using the gift of every second bestowed upon her to bring honor and glory to her Savior.

She came to the banks of the river and smiled. A perfect day.

There were people enjoying the sunshine. Children laughed as they chased a red balloon caught up on the lightness of a spring breeze. Lovers walked hand in hand. And artists were everywhere along the banks of the river, lost in their craft, each alive because there was a paint-dipped brush in his or her grip.

She raised her hand up to shield the sun from her eyes.

Her heart thumped when she saw the painter she was looking for. His tall form was there, carving out a steadfast image through the sunlight, stealing away her heart just as he always had.

There he was—her artist.

Adele dropped her bike and trotted down to the river. He was standing with his easel, canvas, and paints, as always when the light was good. He looked up before she said anything, able to tell she was there. A lock of hair fell down to shield the small scar on his forehead.

“There you are,” he said, his heart-stopping smile gleaming with her approach. “I was beginning to worry that I’d be stood up today. Let me guess, Butterfly.” Vladimir brought his hand up to his chin and rested it there, in a mock pensive manner. “Playing again? Lost with your violin instead of coming to see your husband? Or are you trying to pay me back for all of those nights I left you to wait in our garden?”

“I’ll never tell,” she joked, feet adding a little independent spring to her step when they were walking in his direction. He set the brush down on the easel just in time to catch her leap into his arms. Caring not that her poppy red lipstick would be mussed, Adele pressed her lips to his, thankful all over again that they’d not have to hide their affection from anyone.

Adele was the wife of a penniless merchant’s son, and happy for it. Having him by her side was worth far more. She was saddened that her parents never realized that when they could. She looked over at the painting and saw the numbers he’d added to the left forearm of the image. It made her tattoo almost burn with the memory.

“What’s this?” He tipped her chin up so that her eyes could meet his. “I just saw clouds move across your pretty face.”

She rolled her eyes heavenward, lightening the moment. “Old ghosts, I suppose.”

“Then let them pass by,” he instructed, and placed a kiss to her brow. “They’ve no power over us anymore.”

“Mariette was asking me again”—she smiled at the thought of teasing him and continued—“whether you’d ever be finished.”

“With Edward’s painting?” He turned his attention to the canvas and studied it, his eyes moving over the brushstrokes as she watched. “I’m not quite sure. The light is better outside. That’s certain. And it looks right, for the most part—the lovely mouth, gentle hands, curve of the neck. I’d say they all look nearly the same as in Omara’s painting.” He turned back to her. “But I think . . .” He gave a sure nod. “It’s the eyes.”

“My eyes?” Adele raised her eyebrows to show them off. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Nothing. We’ve promised something for our British friend, that’s all, to thank him for what he’s done for us. Edward did help us find each other after the war. And he helped us hide you so we could get married and leave Vienna behind. So we could have
a new life together. Even if I am copying the painting for him, I want it to be perfect. I want it to show the beautiful eyes that blinked back at me onstage that last time.”

“He’s sent us Omara’s painting,” Adele said, and tilted her head while looking at the beautiful brushstrokes. “And you’ve done a fine job of copying it for him.”

“I get the distinct impression that you believe I am stalling.” He walked back over to face the canvas, studying it for a moment before turning back to her. “I think I need another appointment with my muse. Tomorrow at noon.”

“But it’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” she gibed, and cracked an eyelid up at the blazing sun overhead. “Poor light.”

“Then the next day? I’ll buy lunch. Or bribe you with flowers for your pretty wicker basket over there.”

“I have students. Appointments.” Adele began shaking her head and took a few cautious steps backward as he drew nearer. “Oh no, you don’t, Vladimir. We have work to do.”

“This is pretty,” he said as he caught up to her, a hand running over the light chiffon kerchief tied round her head. “It brings out your eyes.”

“You have to finish the painting,” she said, trying to fend him off but failing miserably the moment his shoes bumped hers.

He wasn’t dissuaded. Instead, he reached out a hand for her. “I should have asked you to dance the night of your birthday. Remember?”

How could she forget?

Adele almost laughed about it now, how silly that broken birthday wish seemed now that she could feel the touch of his hand to her face, could feel the brush of his lips against hers without fear that someone might see them.

“Dance with me.”

She looked around, thinking they’d cause a scene. “Here?”

“Yes.”

As if she had to tell Mr. Picasso the obvious. “But there’s no music.”

Vladimir shook his head and pressed a soft smile to his lips, enough that only a whisper could escape them. “You and me? We’ve always had our own music. Haven’t we, Butterfly?” He opened his arms wide.

She accepted the embrace and allowed him to lead her in a dance, their dance, the one they missed all those years ago. She melted when he held her close and brushed his lips against hers, as she’d always hoped to. “I’ll ask you to dance every day for the rest of our lives together. I won’t waste this second chance God has given us, not even if it rains tomorrow and the day after that.”

She felt the graze of his chin against her forehead as he spoke.

And as if playing her violin, Adele was lost in the moment enough that her eyes closed on their own. With each step, each sway, each move of their feet with the silent song of her heart, Adele cherished the moment.

She worshipped God for it. Because of His grace in offering it.

Because they’d survived.

Because she’d kept her promise to Omara.

A soft breeze caressed her cheek. She turned her face up to greet it.

He broke into her thoughts with a barely there whisper. “Every morning, just as I saw dawn break over the skyline, I said a prayer for you. I regretted those times I’d stayed away. Wished like mad that I could take them all back—maybe add the moments up, just so I could exchange them for one chance to see you again.”

She shook her head as if she didn’t know. As if he hadn’t told her dozens of times before.

“You were always with me. I prayed that if you were forced to play music as I was, you’d let it keep you alive. I prayed that you’d use it to come back to me, Butterfly. That God would keep you strong so you could.”

Adele and Vladimir danced along the banks of the River Seine, the loveliness of spring a backdrop all around them. A breeze rustled the blond curls she’d tucked under her kerchief. The strands danced about her face, a grateful, delicate waltz about her cheek. Vladimir caught them, wove them back behind her ear with a delicate touch.

“And I was never without you. Or Him.”

She knew the answer, but asked anyway. She’d never tire of hearing his voice with her ear pressed up against his chest. “Why?”

“Because even in winter, the Auschwitz dawns were warm when I thought of you.”

Adele knew what he meant, that God was there, in the hearts of the lost, in the lives of the men and women and children who had lived for a new beginning. He was there in the painted room. She prayed that the generations to follow would never forget the lost. She prayed that it would be the Auschwitz dawns they would always remember.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

B
etween June 1940 and the autumn of 1944, nearly a million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma (Gypsies), Soviet prisoners of war, religious dissidents, non-Jewish Poles, and other German, Austrian, Czech, French, Lithuanian, and Italian civilians perished at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in Upper Silesia, Poland. On October 7, 1944, as the Red Army continued to bomb German targets mere miles from the electrified fences of Birkenau, a prisoner revolt began. Using handmade weapons and gunpowder smuggled from the ammunitions factory in which they worked, prisoners mounted a heroic resistance against the heavily armed SS military police guarding the camp. The group of prisoners included underground resistance fighters and
Sonderkommando
(Jewish crematoria workers) who learned they were to be killed and replaced by new workers in Crematorium IV. Brave men and women gave their lives to stand up to injustice, as Omara and Adele sought to do.

In advance of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviets in January 1945, members of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz were marched to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Lower Saxony, Northern Germany. There, the remaining fifty-three members of the orchestra survived to be liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. Though many of those left behind at Auschwitz died from disease or starvation, the voices of the lost were not completely silenced. Found in the rubble of partially destroyed warehouses and old barracks of Auschwitz were more than 1,600 pieces of art that survive to this day, each telling a poignant story for the generations to come.

Many of the artists remain unknown.

It’s been more than a decade since I learned of the art of the Holocaust. I remember the feeling of sitting in that college class, moved to reverence as our group of students looked at each slide image. We studied the sketched faces of prisoners, and the landscapes with depictions of hard labor while armed guards looked on from the background. We found ourselves hushed by delicate floating butterflies and cheery watercolor flowers that had no place within the camp’s barbed wire walls. We were moved by the coexistence of evil and sheer beauty, seemingly both allowed to flourish in the same place.

As a student, I was captured by the innate need of humans to create. As a young Christian, I was inexplicably moved by the glimpses of light in the darkness. Even in the most evil of circumstances, the art of human expression was so powerful that it couldn’t be overshadowed, not even by death. In
The Butterfly and the Violin
, I did my best to explore this theme. It’s about worship through God’s creation—our lives.

I am thankful to each of you for reading this book. It is in the generations following ours that the stories of the lost must be kept alive. And it is in the legacy we each leave behind that the love of Jesus Christ will continue to blossom in a fallen world.

ADDITIONAL READING

http://www.ushmm.org/
—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

http://en.auschwitz.org/m/
—Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum

http://lastexpression.northwestern.edu/
—The Last Expression: Art and Auschwitz

http://sfi.usc.edu/about
—USC Shoah Foundation: The Institute for Visual History and Education

Corrie ten Boom, T
he Hiding Place
, 35th anniversary ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Chosen Books, 2006).