Chapter 17

17.
Piano Trio No.1, in D Minor, Op.49, I. Molto Allegro e Agitato: Mendelssohn

Years later, when asked, BaiLan would say that she fell in love with Joshua the very first moment she saw him playing his violin at Jin’s. But Joshua would tell a different tale. He didn’t push love’s pin into life’s timeline until years later. In jokes to friends down the road, he would say that BaiLan finally hit him like a Kamikaze suicide plane. He even remembered the date. It was a Sunday in early December, the seventh to be exact, the year was 1941.

They had taken to walking with each other. After BaiLan mastered Mendelssohn, after he put her in the orchestra and they’re eyes would flirt as she played her solos.
BaiLan had immense amounts of talent and it became Joshua’s obsession to reveal it to her, inch by inch. He would search tirelessly for the keys that would open her emotionally, sensually, and artistically.

For the first year of their lessons, he remained detached taskmaster, forcing her to play things wrong, to improvise daily—a concept that terrified her. He had Max instruct her on the piano and teach her German at the same time. He was enthralled with her, as worthy an apprentice as Max, though he saw BaiLan ever so differently. He had taken to calling her meine Blume, my flower, for that’s exactly how he saw her, fragile and beautiful, a biological mystery.

For months they plodded along through the piano trio #1, and it was frustrating to be sure, but never more so then the end of the process when they would be mere notes from finishing and Joshua would stop them with a breath and a simple sigh of, “Wieder.”
Max nearly lost it on several occasions. He would over turn the piano bench and stomp out cursing in any number of languages.

“The piano is the chaperone, Maxala, we need you or we might misbehave,” Joshua would laugh.

And Max, as angry as a hornet would yell back as he tromped down the stairs, “so fuck then! I don’t give a damn! I’m too good for this shit!”

“Can you believe I taught him everything he knows?” Joshua would joke with BaiLan who had grown used to the screaming. Secretly she liked it when Max left, she got to be alone with Maestro, his attention focused only on her.

Once Max was gone, and not having flinched, Joshua would nod at BaiLan, “wieder,” he would whisper, and the two would play alone with a metronome.

Or sometimes he would talk to her while she listened. Her small form draped around the body of her cello as if it was her lover and they had momentarily forgotten all discretion.

“When we play Mendelssohn we are exploring the true meaning of what it means to be human, for Mendelssohn was a master of earthly beauty. When you hear Mozart, for example, it is as if God, or what ever you want to call it, is playing through him, an ethereal sort of beauty. And Beethoven, Beethoven was forever trying to be God, to reach God, to get God’s attention, a devilish sort of beauty. But not Mendelssohn. He’s not interested in the pettiness of invisible idols. He’s like you meine Blume, a tangible wonder.”

He touched her knee when he said the word tangible. It was the first time he touched her other than to shake her hand in the many months that he had known her. It took them both by surprise so they did the sensible thing and ignored it playing the piece through for the eight-thousandth time.

Joshua had found another key that night. He’d stumbled upon it accidentally, for after touching BaiLan’s knee something in the lower half of her body relaxed into itself and she played with him more so than ever before, she wasn’t simply in the same room playing her part, she got below him and held him up, she locked into him, sonically of course, with such veracity and so abruptly that it was Joshua who backed away, stopping them and saying that they had done enough for one night.

The next day Max was back at the piano and they played through the entire piece without stopping. According to Joshua they had played it perfect, exactly, he imagined, as Mendelssohn would have intended. BaiLan and Max were so dumbfounded upon reaching the final note that they both had tears in their eyes and couldn’t stop laughing.

Joshua just sat in his chair with the Lion still humming in his lap trying not to gaze too long at Miss Bai and how her whole being had opened up in the few months since she sailed her cello to his door. He felt like he could stare at her contradictions forever, so when she asked him to walk with her, he was relieved. He could watch the road in front of him, the trees, the city, anything but her, because no matter how lovely she was, she was not and never would be Hanna.

Two winters had come by then and their walks had a kind of ease about them that dissolved into wordlessness. If they did talk, BaiLan would discuss music, her family and her engagement to HongWei. Joshua would talk of Max and his troubles, his ever-increasing anger and sensitivity toward matters of the world. They would lovingly joke about Frau Schmetterling and her idiosyncrasies as a way to skirt the sadness surrounding the reality of her persistent dementia.

In many ways, their time together away from the concert hall and rehearsal room was the only time that mattered, the only time that was in any way sane and grounded. Feeling her next to him, Joshua had regained a lot of the life force that Berlin had taken from him. Getting up in the morning was easy when he knew that he and Miss Bai had a walk scheduled, even if it was only a short one from the Conservatory to the flat or back again. Just predicting how she would wear her hair was a pleasure, if he was wrong or right. The day she started wearing her black fur-lined coat when the weather changed and it was no longer balmy but chilly, gave him a silent thrill. And when spring came around and she shed it; that was a thrill too. The way she had mastered the German language in under a year, a smile would form on his lips when she used a new complicated word but he wouldn’t let her see. He would look at the pavement, for he didn’t want to embarrass her. She was still easily embarrassed, but only in conversation. In music she had become a free and violent force to be reckoned with. Watching her play made him blush, even more so because he had done it to her. He was her catalyst. It was almost lewd, the way she became one with the floor below her and took hold of her instrument as if she were wrestling a tiger or attempting to contain a power that only she understood.

On Sunday the seventh of December 1941, it was too cold for a long walk so BaiLan and Joshua, half frozen, entered a teahouse that they frequented and took their usual table in the rear. It had a little window that looked out onto the snow-dusted harbor. The day was every possible shad of gray.

“It’s like watching a movie,” BaiLan warmed her fingers on the sides of her tea cup, gently touching then pulling away when they got too hot. She did this in a rhythmic motion while staring out the window. “It’s colorless out.”

“On the Banks of the Hong Kew River,” Joshua joked, “it’s a very boring movie.”

“Are you certain it’s a window and not a movie screen?”

“I am almost certain,” Joshua played along when BaiLan experimented with poetic concepts, a habit she had only recently acquired. “If it were a film, my hand would make a shadow.” Joshua held his hand up.

“And if it’s being projected from the back?”

“I will prove it to you.”

As he left the café in his red scarf, he was vaguely aware of the flirtation that had developed between himself and BaiLan. He had a spring in his step as he shuffled out onto the pavement and around the small building to wave to her from the street, to prove to her that what she watched through the small window was not a movie at all, but dream that they were both having at the very same time.

He was smiling when he took off his scarf and waived it in the air like a flag. BaiLan smiled and waved back at him. He could see, but not hear her laughter. He was so caught up in her, in their moment that he hardly noticed the fog of doom that had drifted in over the river.

As he walked back to the café, the news came to him on the wind, via the chatter of schoolchildren.

“The Americans have entered the war… A Japanese attack… A military base… in Hawaii…”
Inside, the warm air of the café enveloped Joshua but he remained cold. It seemed this war was determined to follow him wherever he went, to stalk him with the persistence of the reaper, for he was chilled to the bone by the news. Hearing the schoolchildren talk brought it all rushing back, loss, on top of loss, on top of loss. And he knew in his heart it wasn’t finished--there would be more loss still.

He shuffled to the back of the café like a condemned man and looked at her. She was still manically warming her hands on her teacup. Touch, release, touch, release. Mein Blume. This mad, brilliant, beautiful, and fragile flower how would she weather the storm to come? How dare it even think about touching her? Well not this time. This time he would lay down his life to protect her. He would be a knight to BaiLan. He owed her that. He owed Hanna that.

He sat down and gazed into BaiLan’s eyes, his face looked as if all the color had been drained out of it, or if he himself were a projection, flickering in black and white.

“Maestro? Are you all right?”

Joshua put his hands on top of hers pressing them against the warm sides of the teacup, there was no danger as the tea had cooled down. BaiLan wondered how Joshua knew this, or if he cared. Something in his face had shifted and he held her hands tighter and her gaze longer than he ever had in the two years she had known him.

“The Americans have entered the war.”

“What now?”

“Walk with me.”

They paid their bill and walked silently through the gray and snowy streets. So little had changed in the moments since the news reached his ears, but Joshua could feel himself falling on the inside. His stomach was a knot and the fear filled his ears like cotton. He held to a sturdy BaiLan for strength. She probably thought he was a coward, and he didn’t blame her. It’s easy to be brave in the face of tragedy when you have never experienced tragedy first hand. All that was sustaining him was his hand brushing the soft wool of her coat. He felt her arm curved beneath it, and his strength began a slow return.

They turned a corner, still in silence, and saw a long black car parked in front of the Japanese Affairs Office. Joshua stopped dead in his tracks jerking BaiLan back with him.

“What?”

“They’re here.”

“Who?”

“Look.”

From out of the car a shiny black boot, so pristine, it looked as if it had never touched the ground. And a moment later the monster to whom it belonged. All in black, sheltered from the cold within a long trench coat complete with the telltale armband in black, red and white. From behind him two others appeared, lesser in rank, but just as monstrous. Joshua held tightly to BaiLan’s arm, so tightly she had to wriggle it from his grasp.

“Who are those men?” BaiLan asked.

But Joshua didn’t want them to hear her. He didn’t want to alert the roaches to his presence, so he took her by the arm and practically dragged her down the nearest alley. She tried to keep up, she could sense his fear, and finally they took solace in a synagogue, one Joshua had never noticed before, but on this night its open door seemed to reach out catch him mid-fall.

Once they were safe inside the darkened entryway, Joshua collapsed into BaiLan’s arms and wept the same way he did on the night he discovered Hanna’s body--and for the first time since.

BaiLan just held him as the soft sounds of prayer echoed in the room before them. And when he quieted, he stood tall.

“Those were the men who killed my wife, mein Blume. And now they’re here to take the rest of me. They’re here to take Max, The Butterfly, my music, and you, mein Blume. They’re here to take you. But I won’t let them this time. I won’t let them take you.”

He placed her little gloved hand in his large calloused one and led her into the temple where they found themselves the uninvited guests of a candlelit wedding ceremony being conducted in Hebrew. The canopy covering the bride and groom fell like a gossamer angel and flowers adorned every surface.

BaiLan let out a small gasp. Joshua held her tighter, his arm around her small shoulders. He imagined her playing the cello with these shoulders and felt an old but familiar pang that nearly weakened him in the knees. It was fear; a fear of losing her. A fear so strong that he knew it had to be love.

As the bride and groom kissed on the alter, so did the uninvited couple in the back. It was a wonder to them both that the whole congregation didn’t turn and applaud for them instead, since in their minds, there had never been a more passionate kiss before or since.

The crunch of breaking glass broke the spell and a cry of Mazel-tov filled the synagogue. BaiLan and Joshua were lost in an embrace.

“Does this mean we’re married now?” BaiLan asked his chest where she burrowed, half in jest.

But before Joshua could answer the doors swung opened and a small unit of Japanese soldiers marched in and lined up along the back of the room with machine guns pressed firmly to their chests. The squat, pasty-faced, leader turned the lights on diluting the romance of the candlelight and exposing an unwelcome reality.

“Attention, please. To meet the new military requirements concerning foreigners, any person in Shanghai with no legal nationality, including stateless refugees, will be confined from today on to the following places. From Gongping Road in the west to Tongbei Road in the east; from Huiming Road in the south to ZhouJiaZui in the north within the Public Concession. You are deprived of your freedom because of the national emergency. So, you must abide by all the rules and get along with each other. Anyone who disobeys will be severely punished.” The man put his notice away and led his troops out of the temple.

As the congregation chattered, trying to make sense of what had just happened, Joshua took BaiLan firmly by the hands.

“None of that means anything. I will protect you. I vow it, here, in this holy place.”

On their way out Joshua turned the lights off once again shrouding the room in candlelight, then he turned and addressed the room with a resounding, “Mazel-tov” before slipping back out into the cold, unpredictable night.