What the Night Sings Read online

  I feel a hand on my shoulder as I’m leaving the choir room.

  “Gerta,” says Maria, “I want to talk to you, please.”

  I feel my heart drop. “Yes, Maestra,” I say, turning around. I use her title, not Maria, as I usually call her. She’s always strict with me at choir rehearsal, without a trace of the affection she and I share at home. There will be no hint of favoritism here. She gestures toward a chair next to her desk. My sight-reading was terrible today, and I cannot bear to be scolded.

  “Now that you are almost thirteen, Gerta, I would like you to attempt a solo. I know you’re trying to hold back, but your voice carries so clearly above your section, and I think we should capitalize on that strength—let you sing out as your voice wants to do. Am I right?”

  My stomach seizes. This is what I had always wanted, of course, as I sang into the mirror every night and vocalized my school lessons, knowing I could sing better than any of the usual soloists if given the chance. But now that it comes to it, the thought of all eyes on me—

  “I can see you are nervous, Gerta,” the maestra says. “I know. To be chosen to stand apart from your peers is a strange feeling at first. But I will work with you. I have already spoken to your father. You will come on Tuesdays to study with me formally. I will teach you operatic technique. It is still quite early, I know. I would normally be scorned for pushing your voice too soon…but I don’t want to wait. If we do it right, I believe you have the makings of a dramatischer Koloratursopran, like me.” She raises her eyebrows, awaiting my assent.

  “I’m honored, Maestra Büchner, of course. Thank you. But may I ask…when?”

  “We will give it some time. You must feel ready, of course. My hope is—”

  This time next year, I imagine her saying. Good. I’ll have time to get used to it.

  “—two months.”

  My eyes snap open. Why the rush? How will I overcome my dread in only two months? I see through her trick—this is exactly when rehearsals are to begin for the winter concert. This will be impossible.

  I’m ready in three weeks.

  A feeling of rightness settles into my bones, like slipping into a warm bath. I was born for this.

  I am just past fourteen when my voice changes.

  We are in our last week of preparations for the spring expositions, and the maestra has given me a song from the aria book, a song of courage and passion: “Vittoria, mio core” by Carissimi. I’ve fallen in love with performing. I’ve thrown my heart all the way in. Music pours out of me, through my face and hands, all of the sorrow or ecstasy in every lyric:

  Vittoria, vittoria, mio core!

  Non lagrimar più!

  È sciolta d’Amore la vil servitù!

  Victory, victory, my heart!

  Don’t weep anymore!

  The humiliating shackles of love are loosened!

  Oh! The pangs of yearning—my heart squeezes as though I have conquered this insurmountable loss myself. For several nights now, I have dreamed of Papa’s student Rudolf. Rudolf—my obsession, the object of my desire.

  Well, anyway, he’s a know-it-all and he walks on his toes, but he’s the only boy around. He will have to do.

  But Carissimi. Carrrrrisssimi, “dearest of darlings.” Of course this aria would be written by someone with this name, the very utterance of which slays me—the trilled rr and knife-blade-between-the-teeth ss in his name. He is—I can almost see him—beckoning me from the piano. It’s not old Herr Sauer accompanying rehearsal, but Carissimi himself, composing and swooning, almost fainting with desire, for me. He rests his head on my shoulder, a healing balm for his broken heart. Come to me, Carrrrrisssimi. Non lagrimar più! Let me soothe your heart’s wounds. Yes, yes, I will be your muse, darling! We will be poor, but we are artists, rich in love!

  But rehearsal comes to a halt—I can’t reach that high F-sharp. I feel an elastic band inside my throat, stretched as tight as nature will allow, no farther. Herr Sauer plays more scales, but what I reached easily yesterday is strained and nasal today.

  For the entire week, I stretch and roll my neck, I pull on my tongue from the back of my throat, I do scales up into the angelic register, but I never again sing the high F-sharp with any clarity. I forfeit the solo to Anna Müller—whom Carissimi could never love—and am moved into the altos. I feel the bitter defeat of Maria’s dream for me. I can barely stay on pitch now; my voice is all over the place. I cry through the Easter holiday. She assures me that this is not the end of my life—mezzos can have fun, too. Because, of course, there is Carmen.

  It is so unexpected, then, when the angel comes to my bed that night. My eyes open to a blue light hovering above my Adam’s apple, and the light moves down to my sternum and melts like a glacier, over and into my ribs, warm and salty. I feel a loosening of my throat, and somehow a new voice emerges, as deep and rich as chocolate. Somehow I know this voice, better than the soprano, which now feels like someone else’s too-small dress.

  My eyes close again in a deep enfolding of heavy blue blankets.

  The next morning, I come into the dining room bleary-eyed. Maria is pouring tea into Papa’s cup. She wishes me a good morning with the customary sleep-related questions, to which I mumble partial answers. I am hungrier than usual and devour three pieces of toast and drink two cups of tea without sitting down, wandering around the room. My stomach twinges and I am sure it’s nervousness about practice that afternoon. Papa and Maria are talking in code. They have a way of hiding the true content of their conversations, thinking it’s going above my head. Sometimes I try to listen in, but most of the time I’m beyond caring.

  I lean over the windowsill and watch a policeman pushing an elderly woman off the sidewalk. She has a yellow star on her coat sleeve. I wonder what she must have done to deserve to be pushed like that.

  Right after Maria began my training, constellations of yellow-starred people filed out of town—men, women and children carrying bundles of clothes, blankets, books tied together in stacks, weaving through the streets to the train station. I knew they were Jews, but it wasn’t discussed. Not around me, anyway. I thought they were leaving by choice, just going to a safer place to wait out the war. It never bothered me that we hardly went out. I liked being home. I had Papa. I had the maestra. We had song, constant song. But on those days, we stayed inside with the lights off and the doors locked.

  * * *

  —

  Maria lets out a small gasp.

  “Gerta, may I speak with you a moment?” she says suddenly, her eyes round, as she positions her body between Papa and me, practically herding me into the washroom. She is the maestra for a moment, not my stepmother. She closes the door behind us and speaks in a whisper.

  “Gerta, look down at your nightgown. No, no, in the back.”

  I pull the back of my nightgown around to the front. There is blood. Come to think of it, I feel soaked. I’m frightened. What is happening? I feel faint—am I dying?

  “I’m so sorry, my dear. How could I have been so thoughtless? I should have told you to expect this. Don’t be afraid. This is— Well, darling, welcome to womanhood.”

  Maria thus begins my training in earnest, not just in opera, but in the feminine life. And just as with singing, I’m all in.

  “Let me hear the E-flat étude again, Gerta. You keep missing the A-natural in measure seven.” Papa is pacing the sitting room, chewing on his pipe more than smoking it. I hear it clicking against his teeth. He’s somewhere else, not really listening to my scales. I start the horrid étude again. The one drawback to being a musician’s daughter—you inherit the family business.

  “I’m sorry, I meant the second one on that page, Number Forty-Three. Just that measure, ten times, please. That will get it solidly in your fingers.” I hate that piece. Sixteenth notes kill me. On the other hand, if I could just sing it…

  “Again.”

  “Again, please.”

  “Again.”

  He stands to the side of t
he window as though he doesn’t want to be seen.

  The sunset casts a pink-gold veil over everything. The music on the stand in front of me is illuminated, and I fall in love with the light, the alto clef curlicuing around the cloudy patterns from Papa’s pipe. I may have to suffer through these lessons before I can go off and practice my arias, but I never get tired of being with him.

  There is shouting in the street. There’s always shouting. Men sound just like their frenzied dogs. There are five gunshots, and my bow bounces on the strings as I flinch.

  Papa, almost imperceptibly, closes the curtains, staying behind them. He turns to me with something like panic in his eyes, though he is smiling.

  “Gerta, why don’t you try it again on my viola instead.” Mine is just the French practice instrument Papa himself learned to play on as a child. He takes it from me and lays the priceless Guarneri on the table. I pick up the precious viola and play the étude again, watching him rummage through cabinets and drawers. He has a handful of packages of rosin, all that he can find, and he packs them into the compartment in the good case, along with a few envelopes of extra strings and a spare tuning peg, as though he were trying to cram every bit of viola paraphernalia into that one case. He removes it all again, repacks it, again, again.

  “Papa?” I have stopped my scales and am just staring at him, the bow and viola hanging at my side. The pipe is trembling in his mouth. He looks at me quickly, in the middle of re-coiling a D string. He stands up straight and draws a slow breath.

  “We can stop for tonight, Liebchen. You did well.” He takes the instrument from me and places it in the case. Through a sliver in the curtains, I see that the sunset has faded now to purple, and the first star appears in the sky.

  Maria comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She withdraws her big emerald ring from the apron pocket and puts it on her middle finger. She glances at the stuffed case, exchanges a look with my father that I cannot read—worry? Are they angry with me? Were my scales that bad?

  “Come with me, Gertalein,” she says, and I follow her into her bedroom, which smells of powdery roses and that musky smell grown-ups give off when they sleep. She rifles through her closet: the turquoise silk blouse with red buttons, the pale pink flowered dress with a ruffled hem.

  “What do you like in here, darling?”

  “What do you mean? I like everything!” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “I mean, I’d like to give you something pretty. I was going to donate some clothes to the war effort and thought I’d give you the first choice before I do.”

  I have always coveted Maria’s clothes. There was one night when she and Papa were away—she’ll never know about it—I had my own private fashion show in her room. I tried on everything, including every single shade of lipstick. I felt guilty about that for weeks. And now she is offering me anything I want.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, whatever you’d like.”

  I run my hand over the soft silks and cashmeres, and choose a pink blouse with red roses, and a grass-colored cardigan to go over it.

  Maria pulls out a gown the same color as her green eyes, with tiny crystals on the bodice. It is just like the dress I used to picture as a little girl, when I imagined myself a famous singer.

  “Gerta, how about this one? For your debut.”

  “To keep?” My eyes are so wide, they forget how to blink.

  “Yes, of course! You have to start as you mean to go on, dear. You have a long life of concert gowns ahead of you.”

  “Oh, Maria. Thank you. I won’t let anything happen to it.”

  “Just wear it in good health, my love. Here, let’s hang it up in your room.” She hangs the gown on my closet door, and I lay the blouse and sweater over my desk chair. Then she hugs me—not an average good-night pat, but a complete and total embrace.

  Everyone is obsessed with blood, with who your parents are, your grandparents—fractions of fractions. Surveys are taken in schools, but since I’m tutored at home, we don’t have to deal with such things. People everywhere wear yellow stars on their coat sleeves, even on their best dresses. We don’t, of course, because we’re Germans.

  Maria does all of the errands. Papa has some private students but only plays in the orchestra if someone’s sick. He has moved from first to last chair in his section. I think he takes his boredom out on me—my viola lessons grow more intense. Still, I’m just a passable player—but I’m going to sing every moment I can. I even hum the viola parts as I glide the bow across the strings. Though I only practice with the children’s choir once a month now, Maria still speaks enthusiastically of my debut, which is to be at the midsummer festival.

  It is the seventeenth of June; my alarm clock ticks 2:00, 2:30 a.m. Tomorrow is an important rehearsal of the St. Matthew Passion. I finally fall asleep and dream of the Greek Titans in my school lesson, battling to a backdrop of thundering bass in “Da qual tremore insolito” from Don Giovanni. In reality, the pounding is of fists on the front door, and I bolt awake. There are soldiers inside the apartment, turning over chairs, ransacking drawers. Maria is waxing indignant about the intrusion and demanding that they leave. Papa rushes into my room and tells me to dress quickly and pack a bag. His is already packed. He must have been expecting this; he is even wearing his hat.

  I open my nightstand drawer and grab a stack of photographs, the Wohlfahrt études and the music for my debut and put them in Papa’s viola case. I shove Maria’s pink blouse and some other clothes into my weekend bag and throw on the green sweater. Something tells me to bring my snack stash as well. We are hurried down the stairs and marched down Hofstrasse toward the Residenz square. I carry the viola case, and Papa carries both of our bags. Maria stands in the doorway in her robe, holding her shawl across her mouth, saying nothing in protest. Why doesn’t she run after us? Why isn’t she coming, too?

  The orange trees lining the square are in full fragrance, almost sickly sweet in the balmy night air, which is sticky with the barking of the SS.

  “You Jews are no longer…safe…here in Würzburg. We are taking you into protective custody and moving you to the east, where you will be resettled.”

  What? Who are they talking about? Am I still dreaming?

  People start shouting out questions to the soldiers. “What about my house? I didn’t have time to get the deed out of the safe.” “I need to tell my tenants where to send their rent.” “I need to go to the bank, to my safe-deposit box, to my—”

  The head officer’s voice becomes a little softer when he realizes that he is losing order.

  “Now, now, there’s nothing to worry about. Why don’t you each write down your concerns on a little slip of paper, and we will make sure to hand them over to the proper channels. We are simply escorting you to the station. Stay close together, now. Parents, mind your children. Look at the poor dears, so sleepy. You’ll be able to ask your questions when we get there. Not to worry.”

  Papa grasps my hand. I look in his eyes. I don’t like what I see there. He obviously wants to tell me something but dares not.

  This is not a mistake after all, is it?

  On the fifteen-minute walk to the Würzburg station, the young soldiers can’t decide whether to treat us like humans or dogs. The tone changes from minute to minute. Würzburg isn’t a big town; somehow they must remember that we’re their neighbors. The baker whose pillowy, plummy Buchtel rolls were voted Bavaria’s best. The only honest mechanic in town. Papa’s friend, the novelist who lives above the tavern. That soldier by the Residenz gate is the one we’ve passed every day for years. But as quickly as the recognition registers, a steel door slides over the soldiers’ faces and we are…a herd of goats.

  Thirty minutes before, I was in my soft bed, dreaming in music. My debut aria, “Erbarme dich,” is still in my throat, caught there just at the surface like ice in water. There’s still sleep dust in my eyes, the crease of the pillowcase on my skin. I clutch the handle of the viola
case with one hand, and Papa’s hand with the other. We are hoisted up into a train car—not one for people, with padded seats and windows and a view of the passing countryside. This is the kind cattle are transported in—a dark wooden crate with the barest slits for ventilation, the cars linked so long that I can’t see the engine or the caboose. They shove us in. It takes everything within the parents’ control to keep hold of their children and babies.

  The promised opportunity to ask our questions is denied. Men and women wave their little slips of paper in the soldiers’ faces until the wind snatches them, fluttering the requests away like a summer snow. Once we are in the train, there are no more words between soldiers and passengers. There are only one-way petitions: “Where are we going?” “I want to talk to my lawyer! This can’t be legal!” “When are we coming back?” “Can’t I get a message to my neighbor to check in on the cat? I’ll just be a minute!” “My daughter, she’s at a friend’s in Frankfurt and won’t know I’m gone—” “But I don’t want to leave. I live here.”

  * * *

  —

  Once the train starts to roll, my father tells me everything.

  “Gertalein,” he whispers, “what do you remember about your mother?”

  “Little things,” I whisper back, perplexed. I don’t think of her much, and I feel terrible for that. I was old enough to remember her more than I do. But for some reason, there’s a brick wall whenever I try to call up a memory of my mother.

  “What kinds of things?”

  “She painted little watercolors. She had dark blond hair.”

  He purses his lips, nods slowly, looks off into an invisible space. “Do you remember when we left Köln?”

  “Yes, Papa. I remember leaving in the night, in the car. There was fire everywhere.”

  “Yes, Gerta. That was a terrible night. We called it the Night of Broken Glass. To tell you the truth, I was glad to leave. To me, Köln will always be the place I lost your mother.”