Chapter 6

6.
“Allegro de Concierto: Enrique Granados”

As a young girl Hanna Olazar had asked her parents for piano lessons. They were more than willing to comply, as it was a very good thing indeed to have a daughter who was capable of such things. How proper they thought, how refined. The teacher they found was a handsome Spaniard named Silvio, who got along famously with Herr Olazar. They put him to work right away teaching Hanna her scales, but much to his disappointment, Hanna was not at all gifted on the ivories. She had trouble isolating the movements of one hand in relation to the other, and could never keep track of which note corresponded with which key. The girl was altogether hopeless, and Silvio, out of respect for the Olazars, decided to be honest with her instead of wasting everyone’s time, even for the handsome hourly wage.

“Hanna,” he said as gently as possible, “it is my opinion as your teacher that your talents lie elsewhere, and not with the piano.”

“But I love the piano,” the girl replied. She clearly hadn’t yet learned that loving something does not necessarily insure that it will love you back.

“I know you love the piano, but--”

Hanna clarified. “No, I love the piano.”

Silvio was about to give up, to agree with her and get back to the girl’s unbalanced scales, when she asked him a question.

“Do you love music?”

“Of course,” he replied truthfully.

“Then play me your favorite song.”

Silvio was taken aback. No student had ever requested such a thing, and since the alternative was auditory torture, he played her his favorite piece, the Allegro de Concierto, by Enrique Granados. He didn’t play it well, he didn’t even play it all, but he played it with feeling and Hanna was delighted.

Thus it was decided. Their lessons would continue with him playing for her, and since most of the music that he played, as Hanna duly noted, “didn’t have any words,” she would be poetic lyricist and tell stories to accompany his playing.

Three weeks later, they had their first recital. Herr Olazar was so proud of his daughter that he invited all his friends over to watch. Her mother Esther spent all day on the finger sandwiches, even her little brother Isaac helped by arranging the chairs in the drawing room for the big show.

It was always at this point in the story that Joshua started to laugh. Imagine everyone’s surprise when Silvio sat at the piano. Hanna entered in a flowing blue gown for the Allegro de Concierto. She decided to tell the story, in Spanish, of Granados’ death. Silvio had filled her in on the major plot points, how he had drowned in a shipwreck while trying to save his wife, but it was Hanna who made it interesting. She isolated the various changes within the piece and suited her words to the emotions they evoked. Enrique’s struggle, versus his wife’s acceptance of death, his long time fear of water, and the irony of his inner monologue--she may not have been able to play a lick, but the girl had an exceptional ear. When she finished, the crowd was on its feet and everyone wanted to know the name of the Olazars’ brilliant acting teacher.

Joshua could just see her. Once in a while he would force her to do the routine while he played the Allegro. She never wanted to but would always agree after he threatened to shave off his beard. He touched his face with his right hand as his left rolled over the keys in the section that, to Hanna, signified the “anguished rolling of the waves,” he’d lost a lot of his leverage to Judit’s scissors.

“Don’t stop, Josh,” Ingrid Hoppe stood in the archway watching him, “play while Rome burns.”

“Where are they, Ingrid?” It got dark so early in November. It was nearing five o’clock and the sky was as black as could be. Joshua was playing to distract himself from the fact that Hanna and Max had not yet arrived. “They should have been here by now.”

Ingrid was a chubby little thing with blond hair that she always wore in braids. But other than that, and the fact that she was female, she and Isaac could have been identical twins. They were a matching set of yard mascots, the kind at home around oversized produce.

Ingrid sat beside Joshua on the piano bench. “Let’s give it another little while, then Isaac will go.” She rubbed his spidery hand with her pudgy one. And while Joshua appreciated her motherly concern, he didn’t want to give it another little while. It had been almost three hours, why in the world hadn’t they arrived yet? Maybe they didn’t see the note, but if that were the case, wouldn’t they have returned to the house? Isaac had called numerous times and there was no answer. Why wasn’t Helga answering the phone?

The Oper didn’t know anything either. Dieter was gone, probably arrested thanks to him. The man who answered the phone told Isaac that everyone had been sent home until further notice. The whole thing was a nightmare, and to top it all off, Isaac had gotten word that rioting had broken out near Zoo Station.

“We’re both going, now. Before things get worse.”

Isaac stood in the hallway and held his tongue. He was doing his best not to barrage his brother-in-law with a series of well deserved, I told you so’s, but it was hard not to hate him just a little as he barked orders like someone who didn’t, only yesterday, have his kopf up his esel. Isaac had heard enough. He took the reins in a sneak attack bursting into the room with the authority of a one eyed-man in a city of the blind. “We’ll wait until six, then I’ll go. Alone. You Joshua, will do as you are told for once in your life.”

“She’s my wife. I’ll go if I want to go.” Joshua scoffed and turned back to the piano. He continued playing the Allegro de Concierto from where he left off. It was a sure fire way to rile Isaac to the brink of madness. He could hear him through the music.
“You pompous, self-important, unmitigated fool, how could you be so obtuse, so…” But Isaac trailed off. The song, it was familiar to him. It was Hanna’s song. The one she had recited to as a child. Joshua may have been an ass, but he loved Hanna beyond all bounds of husbandly duty. He knew he had been bested, so he gave in. “Joshua,” and louder, “Joshua!”

“What?” He stopped playing, banging the keys with open palms.

“At six we’ll both go.”

But it was a wasted argument, because it was at that moment that the doorbell rang. Ingrid rose. “Both of you get in the bedroom and close the door.” Silently they obeyed her, tiptoeing down the hall as quickly as they could. Ingrid composed herself and went to the door. “Wer ist es?” She asked before opening it.

“Fraulein Hoppe? It’s Max Schmied,” called a weak, scratchy voice from beyond the door. Slowly she opened it, keeping the chain lock fastened till she was sure it was he.

“Max? What happened?” The boy looked as if he was about to fall over. His eyes were so puffy she assumed he had been in a fight. Ingrid let him in and Max collapsed in her arms.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

Joshua was halfway under the bed when he heard Max’s voice and paused. Isaac insisted he hide under there. Joshua thought the idea was preposterous but was going along with it anyway since he was too anxious to protest. He heard Max speak again.

“Are they here? Is Maestro here?”

It’s a peculiar thing, the unfolding of a catastrophe; it tends to put one in a state of pronounced lucidity. Like the curtains of the soul being thrown open wide for all to see. The world takes on, not only a new intensity, but also a new glow. That’s how it was for Joshua. A dormant primal part of him, perhaps only accessed prior to that moment in the throes of love or music, flipped itself off of its back and sprang to its feet. The shadows had dissipated. He was able to see things for the first time as they really were, in detailed slow motion. It was like playing a new piece for the very first time.

Look at the page. Is it in major or minor? Minor, without a doubt. The opening chords, his footsteps on the rug, the turning of the doorknob, the image of Max embracing the lady gnome, he didn’t like it but he continued to play--there was no retreating--the melody had not yet been revealed. Play on. His experience told him there would be no modulation from the minor to the major. There would be no flute above stormy bass to rescue him from the cacophony. This was a Requiem; all the signs were there. His Stainer on floor, his apprentice reclined in a tear-drenched rendition of the Pieta, his pockets overflowing with cheap costume jewelry. Joshua approached the scene, and cued the saddest of violins with nothing more than a tilt of the head. It was a four-note solo.

“Maestro, I’m so sorry.”

“Where is she?” He countered.

“The house,” He croaked.

And all fear was gone, forever.

“How does the night air feel on your skin, Joshua?” The wind seemed to sing to him. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, because he’d felt nothing before this night, not really. Oh, he was overjoyed to see the buildings burn. He wanted the whole city to burn, everything and everyone in it.

The icy wind whipped his face as he walked like a shadowy, half-living, vendetta in the straightest of lines, because he knew that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and didn’t want to waste any time. The mobs had started breaking glass. Packs of men that would have frightened the Joshua of seven minutes ago, took no notice of him now. Maybe it was the fearlessness with which he walked or the rage in his eye. They thought he was one of them, maybe even a corporal or a general, and they left him alone.

“Erhalten Sie die gute Arbeit, Männer aufrecht!” He shouted as he passed a group of boys destroying a Jewish bakery. Keep up the good work. Flames licked the horizon, orange and purple smoke hung on the sky like a bruise. Joshua marched, stone faced over a blanket of shimmering broken glass towards his wife and unborn child.
What a show the fates had prepared for him! Riots, explosions, even his most grandiose paranoid fantasies couldn’t touch this wicked reality. He felt like a murderer who had finally been caught after years of evading the authorities, only in his case the authority must have been God. He was impressed! “I’ve got you, Streng,” The wind seemed to say, “my name is Fate, and you’ve tempted me for far too long.”

His street was quiet. Even the wind had died down by the time he got there. It felt deserted, abandoned. He assumed that was what they were going for, his neighbors, cowering under their beds. His house was dark and someone had opened all of the curtains. They’ve been watching me all along. That was Joshua’s first impression. Whoever had been there, had left him this message. It dawned on him that they might still be there, waiting, and he didn’t care. He went in.

“Hanna? Buddha squirrel?” His voice echoed through the hall just as it would have on any other night. Once he turned the light on, things were fine. For a moment it seemed as if the events of the afternoon were all part of some elaborate prank that was over now. He was home and things could go back to normal. Soon Max would start wresting with Rachmaninov, Helga would prepare dinner, and Hanna would rise from a nap smelling like bed, and talc, and lavender oil.

But upon further inspection he realized this wasn’t the case. He switched on the hall light and saw Helga sitting in the doorway. Her head was covered with a jacket, probably Max’s, and the rest of her was sort of slumped over as if she were drunk or napping. It was her hands that caught his eye, though. They were palm up in her lap as if she were holding them out for something. Joshua couldn’t remember if he had paid her yet that week. The thought triggered a sob that forced its way to the surface nearly choking him as he stepped over her lifeless body into the kitchen.

“Hanna?” He needed to say her name. He needed to imagine for one instant longer that she might actually reply. He needed to let his eyes take in the print of the fabric of her dress and picture her moving within it before reality set in. He switched the kitchen light on.

“Hanna?”

She had fallen forward onto the counter first, when the shot was delivered, but gravity and the weight of her midsection, pulled her to the ground. Her long legs were bent, and her torso was flat on its back, her arms spread wide, one slightly bent and gripping a jar of paprika. As he looked at her, Joshua couldn’t understand why they had decided to take her face. It wasn’t something he was able to comprehend, as if it had been deliberately stolen. This couldn’t have been the work of the Socialists, there was no way; this was the work of God. He didn’t even believe in God. Yet only God was a concept large enough to explain it. The only force he could think of capable of such sudden violent depravation, leaving behind no small conciliation like her face, for him to look on one last time. No, this was an act of retribution, calculated, fierce, and specific. This was the culmination of everything he ever suspected, everything he ever feared. It was not a random act. It was the cosmic Richter scale, shaking everything back into balance.

He sat beside her on the floor and rested his head atop Igor. He thought of his child, confused and scared, suffocating inside his mother. Even if Hanna died instantly it would have been a few moments at least before-

And that--that thought--was officially as much as he could stand. Joshua picked up a rolling pin from the floor and smashed each and every pane of glass that made up the French doors. He smashed the window above the sink. Abandoning the rolling pin he flew into the living room and took up the fireplace poker. He smashed all the living room windows and destroyed every lamp and trinket that wasn’t nailed down. In the dining room he ridded the world of the remainder of his wedding china and the case it lived in. He swung violently at the chandelier, pulling it down with his bare hands, and hurling it through the picture window into the front garden. The upstairs glass met with a similar fate as he smashed and shattered everything that was in the least bit fragile, the least bit vulnerable, and the slightest bit beautiful.

Bleeding and exhausted, Joshua had ceased to think. All reason left him. Destroying his home was the only thing that seemed to make sense, and he’d done a good job of it too. After an hour or so he was having trouble finding new things to break. He sat at his piano and sobbed. It was the only thing he didn’t have the heart to touch, maybe because he knew Hanna wouldn’t have wanted him to.

Joshua put her to bed, he didn’t know what else to do. He would have moved Helga, but he was exhausted. Then he poured himself a large brandy, sat back down at the piano and waited for the SS to come and take him away. He planned to resist and would hopefully be killed in the struggle.

It didn’t take him long to decide on exit music. The Hungarian Rhapsody, he felt would lend a touch of irony to his death. He played in hopes that they would hear him.
Two streets over a couple of looters were wrapping up a multiple homicide and still didn’t feel as satisfied as they hoped they would. The music was like a divining rod to more trouble, so they followed it.

“This way,” one said to the other, as they jumped over rail and hedge to find the music’s source, each still clutching one-half of a set of bloody candlesticks.

“No, it’s coming from down here!” A trio of older men, armed with pipes and hammers, met the pair. Like bloodhounds they pealed their ears, tearing through the street just parallel to the Strengs’. But suddenly, the breadcrumb trail ended and the lead went cold.

“What happened to the music?” one of the men asked.

“Somebody probably got to it before us.” And the small gang split in half again, going their separate ways.

Max held Maestro’s bloodied hands in his.

“Let them come for me, let them kill me,” he muttered. He was cut up pretty badly. The white keys of the piano had become a bloody visual representation of the HR2. “I want them to find me. Maxala, please, let them find me.”

But he was weak and couldn’t struggle. Max lifted Joshua to his feet and led the shattered man quietly out of the shattered house.

Neither of them would ever return.

Allegro de Concierto, “The Happiness Concerto.” And while she supposed parts of it could be seen as happy, it never felt that way to Hanna, not completely. It filled her with a sense of longing, a yearning, she could hardly understand; and when she sat down at the age of ten to put it to words, she found herself wanting to tell a sad story, something that carved a hole in her heart the same way the music did. In her mother’s blue evening gown and high heals she composed her recitation in front of the mirror, stopping periodically to write it down as Silvio played along.

“Enrique Granados se ahogó.” Enrique Granados drowned. “El barco en el que él estaba fue torpedeado por un submarino alemán.” The ship he was on got torpedoed by a German submarine. “Él saltó de su lancha de socorro en una tentativa de rescatar a su esposa.” He jumped out of his lifeboat in an attempt to rescue his wife. “Pero él no podía nadar.” But he couldn’t swim.

Silvio had played the Allegro for her seventeen times so far that afternoon and was feeling progressively less happy. “Hanna,” he asked, a cigarette dangling from his lip, “why don’t you give the story a happy ending? You can you know, you’re the writer.”

His young charge screwed up her pretty face at this request and thought carefully before answering, “No,” she said with a far away look in her dark eyes, “I like sad endings better.