The Holocaust Opera (3 page)

Jeremiah smiled then, but beneath the smile I saw something I couldn’t quite pigeonhole. It could have been fear, or anger, or even relief. I wasn’t sure and I was suddenly quite confused about everything.

“Jeremiah, the human spirit is not capable of existence without hope,” I said. “You’re no exception. It’s part of what makes us human. How do you think the ones that survived that horrific time did it? They never let go of the dream. I may not be very old, or wise, but this much I do know. Whether you want to admit it or not, hope is there in your music, larger than life. Hope is there inside you. It’s the part I’m attracted to.”

Jeremiah’s eyes softened then, and another small smile gently kissed his soft lips. “Where did you come from, Roxanne Templeton? You’re such a bright shining star in my life. Somehow you manage to see good in everything.”

My cheeks heated. “I see good because it is there. I don’t understand all the heartache in your life, Jeremiah. I don’t understand why you’re so bitter. Maybe someday I’ll be able to. Perhaps someday you’ll feel comfortable enough with me to confide totally in me. It’s even possible that I could help you.”

He looked at me fondly, his wet eyes shining like brown jewels. “You
are
helping me,” he said “You believe in me. That’s help enough for right now.”

* * * *

Hope blossomed. For the first time, I felt like I was making progress getting close to that boy, and, for the time being that was enough. It would have to be. We went back to the music. It was, after all, the reason for my being there in the first place. I dared not hope that anything else would ever come of it. The music took precedent over everything else in our lives. Jeremiah was extremely passionate about it. We were at a stage where, if there was going to be an opera—as Jeremiah liked to call it—we would have to start adding other musicians, singers, and actors and Jeremiah would have to start soliciting theatres for rehearsal space.

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, future generations would enjoy his compositions for the textures alone. They would not be reminded of the evil of the Nazi uprising and the subsequent holocaust. This was a personal thing to Jeremiah. I never lost sight of how important it was to him. It was, after all, the very thing that had inspired him in the first place.

Jeremiah and his pain had kindled a spark of curiosity inside me. When I wasn’t working with him or the band I found myself spending a considerable amount of time at the library researching the holocaust. I discovered things that horrified me. I never knew that man had the propensity to be so cruel. Over time, I began to understand a little more about Jeremiah and his anguish.

I rehearsed and performed with Chained City at night, but during the day was Jeremiah’s and my time. He was a patient and forgiving maestro.

We spent a great deal of time together in the months that followed. Spring turned into summer and summer to fall. When we weren’t working, we would walk in central park holding hands like lovers, laughing and talking. We weren’t lovers, though. Not yet, anyway. I began to see changes in Jeremiah. Changes for the good. I was happy.

In late September, the leaves rioted into brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow and in October they fell, a cool wind that held the promise of winter scattering them helter-skelter throughout the park and onto the busy streets of Manhattan.

Jeremiah came out several times and listened to Chained City, although I could tell that it was merely a placating gesture to appease me. He would sit expressionless, sip on a beer, and would never offer a whisper of praise, advice, or criticism to myself or the other members of the band, which, by the way, infuriated them. Later, only after we had left the club, would he comment. His comments were limited pretty much to praise for me alone and on the amazing difference between my two voices; the rock voice of which I made my living, and the sensitive voice I used to convey Jeremiah’s gorgeous melodies.

I never pressed him for blandishments. I could not have cared less. What we were doing together was light years ahead of what I was trying to accomplish with Chained City
,
and I supposed his indifference was his way of conveying his total lack of interest in rock n’ roll and the state of the pop music industry in general.

* * * *

In all of the months since first making Jeremiah’s acquaintance, I began to realize that, as far as I knew, I was his only social life. Rarely did I go to Jeremiah’s without an invitation; never to just socialize. We worked hard, and our work was so exhaustive that on most days I would all but crawl home fatigued, and on nights when I wasn’t working or rehearsing with the band, I stayed in, reading or watching television, usually falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.

One night, feeling depressed, I decided to walk to the market, buy a bottle of wine, and surprise Jeremiah. Yes, I suppose I was feeling a little insecure, and perhaps even a little bit horny. No shame in that. I wondered much about Jeremiah in those days. Although he had casual acquaintances, I realized he had no real friends, and I wondered why a handsome and sensitive young man would live his life in the reclusive manner in which he did.

Mostly I wondered why he had not made a move on me. I knew I was attractive. I had a mirror, for God’s sake, and in the clubs, at night, the men and boys would fall all over themselves trying to impress me.

So why not Jeremiah?

We seemed to have everything else, friendship, and a good working relationship. Why did we not have sex? In my naiveté I decided that he was just a shy boy and that shy boys sometimes needed a little coaxing.

So I decided to dress a little more seductively than usual on that night. First, I showered and powdered, put on my sexiest underwear, topped it off with a frilly white blouse, cut low in front, a pair of tight leather pants and high-heeled boots. I poofed my long, wavy, autumn hair with a blow dryer, gave it a little tease, grabbed my coat, and left the apartment.

After buying the wine, I made my way up Bond Street on foot. Although a cold and biting wind fluted through the brownstone canyons, there seemed to be quite a few people out and about. The holidays were drawing near and the atmosphere was festive. The close proximity of other human beings helped to lift my spirits, and in some odd way comforted me. As I approached Jeremiah’s block, the windswept streets quickly became deserted. I wasn’t surprised. Nor was I alarmed when I began to hear the faint stirrings of music.

As I’d done on the first day I’d met Jeremiah, I decided to spy on him through the basement window before going to the door. Feeling like a naughty voyeur, I got down on my hands and knees. Seeing that the window was moist with condensation, I pulled a Kleenex from my coat pocket and wiped a small circle of glass clean.

I wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted me on the other side. Something was wrong with Jeremiah, and I was immediately captivated by it. He sat at the piano and he seemed to be surrounded by an aura that danced in time with the music he was playing. That was my first impression at least; an aura. It only took a split second for me to revise the impression. What I’d initially thought of as an aura, now looked like something alive, liquid, a shifting bubble that shimmered, waxed, and waned in and around the body of the boy as if he was immersed in it, like a placenta sac filled with dancing fluid. As Jeremiah pounded out the notes to a composition I’d never before heard, the fluid inside the sac became more and more agitated until it was literally speeding around his body, boiling, flowing, squirming in sync with the alien melody that was coming from the piano.

Panic seized my heart and gave it a squeeze.

I scratched my way to my feet and backed away from the window in horror. The sack containing the bottle of wine fell from my hand as my palms involuntarily slapped against my ears. The bottle hit the sidewalk and shattered, but I did not hear it, I could not hear anything but the alien music in that awful moment. My head throbbed with its symphonic pulses as my heart raced, pounding like a kettle drum in my chest. I began to moan in agony, still unable to drown out that terrible sound.

Lyrics to a song I did not know came into my head, but I did not like them so I threw them out. I wanted to scream. I needed to get away from that building. I turned and ran blindly down the sidewalk as tears spilled from my eyes and scoured my cheeks, the cold wind freezing them to my flesh. Fifteen minutes later, I fell against my apartment house door panting harsh rasps of breath. The din in my head had begun to subside, but not by much. I put the key in the lock with a shaking hand and fell into the hallway, struggling to stay conscious as I crawled toward the stairs.

* * * *

I felt unclean.

I did not know why this was so, or why I felt so terribly defiled.

I stood in the shower for a long time, scrubbing at my skin until it felt raw. I could not stop sobbing. The music had gone, but its aftermath lingered in me like a terrible hangover.

The only solution was to sleep.

I dreamed that there was a wide-eyed woman cowering in the corner of my bedroom, naked and bruised, covered in lacerations, her hands, hooked into desperate claws, reaching out plaintively. I felt her pain and her anguish. It was like no other dream I’d ever experienced. I tried to see through the layers of the dream in hopes of identifying her, in hopes of helping her. It was no use. I awoke crying and terrified. Later, I fell back into a deep and troubled slumber and did not awake until the middle of the next afternoon, and only then roused by hunger.

There were three messages from Jeremiah on the answering machine. I ignored them all and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I ate it ravenously, washing it down with two glasses of ice-cold milk.

Later, my bell rang. I knew who it was and dreaded answering it. He was persistent, however, so finally I went over, and buzzed him in.

* * * *

I made a snap decision then—I’m unsure as to why—not to confront Jeremiah with what I’d seen and heard the night before. I was feeling better, and strangely, with the light of day slanting in through the skylights, all of it seemed surreal, as though it had been conjured from out of my troubled sleep. Down deep I knew better, of course, but at the moment, that didn’t matter. I was willing to put my better instincts on hold. What
did
matter was, for the very first time I realized—no, I
admitted
to myself—that I was in love with Jeremiah. That was the emotion that won out over all else.

When he came in through the door, I was prepared for the worst, but when I saw him, an immense sense of relief flooded over me. He was just Jeremiah, of course, the tall and handsome young man with the wide smile and sad eyes that I had come to love.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His tone was that of the perfect gentleman apologizing for some minor indiscretion. He sensed something, or saw something in my eyes, I’m not sure which, but I’m absolutely certain of it now, for rather than grill me about missing the day’s rehearsal, there was something in his eyes that looked like understanding, or perhaps even resignation. He came silently into my arms and held me. Our lips met and we fell into bed.

After making love, we ordered Chinese, had it delivered, and sat in bed eating crab rangoons and pork fried rice while watching old reruns of
Friends
and
Seinfeld.
After eating, we made love again, and then again, each time more desperate and impassioned than the time before, as though our obsessions were dragons and we were attempting to slay them.

Jeremiah and I had become lovers. That was the incontestable truth. At that moment in time, nothing, not even my own common sense, could have swayed me from such a triumph.

* * * *

Change was in the air. Although I’d tried to bury the memory of what I’d seen and heard on that awful night, it did not want to stay dead. It had become a restless corpse. In the days that followed, the headaches became more frequent and persistent, as did the dream of the wide-eyed woman cowering in the corner of my bedroom. I would wake in the night, my head filled with song, my heart full of panic, and I would try to reconcile the dream with what I believed to be reality. As the symphonic rhythms and melodies of Jeremiah’s compositions rang in my psyche like clarions, I realized that the harder I tried, the more the line between the two blurred.

In sort of a half-assed way, I tried to convince myself that my burgeoning problems stemmed from the loud nightclub atmosphere of my work life with Chained City
.
I never really believed that.

I would go home and try to rest, but the songs in my head and the ache in my heart would send me spinning downward into depression, until finally the depression would worsen into something akin to despair. I tried to sort it out, wrestling day in and day out with the problem and its possible solutions and/or consequences. I had always been such a happy camper, never a depressing thought. I was changing, and I did not like what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Furthermore, I did not want to admit that Jeremiah’s music might be at the root of my anguish. Just the same, I felt an intense need to find out more about the death camps and the Nazis. I knew that Jeremiah and his music were connected to all of that in some elemental way, and I was determined to strike the correlation, whatever it might be, whatever effort it might take. Never in a million years did I expect to find what I found.