Chapter 9

9.
“String Quartet No. 12 in E Flat, Op. 127: I. Maestoso – Allegro: Beethoven”

It isn’t abandonment if it’s for his own good. This was the sentiment that Joshua’s father, Matan Streng, spent the latter part of his life trying to convince Joshua’s mother of. He was less than successful. The subject was at its most prevalent during time of family celebration and strife, at holidays, and sometimes even on a sunny afternoon, or a rainy morning, or a foggy night, when Efrat missed her youngest son.

There were two Streng boys, a proud family, since they lived in a time when this was the preferable situation, but Efrat always longed for a girl. Gabriel and Simon, she knew when she carried that they were boys. There was a feeling of reckless invasion when their little bodies twisted inside her. It made her laugh. When she was carrying Gabriel, and Matan asked if she were giving him a son, she would touch his hand and answer, “Yes my love, and he can’t wait to get out of here and begin breaking our things.”

It wasn’t that they had many things, they were a modest family, Matan was a tailor with a small shop attached to the house, and Efrat a seamstress who helped him as much as she could while raising two boys. When she got pregnant for the third time she prayed for a girl and in her mind, her prayers had been answered.

With this baby things were so different. The pregnancy was gentle and easy, the tiny soul inside her slept almost constantly and even when she was awake, she was still, as if observing and listening to the world around her. It made Efrat so happy to know that she would finally have her daughter. Someone to spend time with, someone to share with, someone that Matan would be terrified of, her daughter, Esther, would belong to her.

So when Josh came along she was perplexed at first. He was such a passive spirit it was clear why she thought he was female. He was calm and quiet, he never cried, and when he did it was only enough to get the thing he was after and then he would stop abruptly, content. Matan thought he would become a Rabbi someday and it was a very good guess based on his temperament.

But as Joshua grew, so did Efrat’s concern. There was something distant about the boy, some part of him that refused to connect. He was cold, which when she thought about it, was ridiculous. A baby can’t be cold.

She told Matan about it and he sent her to stay with her sister for an entire week. She was exhausted. That must have been it. But when finally alone with his youngest son, Matan began to understand his wife’s concern. Was it boredom, apathy; was the child deaf, slow?

Gabriel and Simon, at three and five, had their own world that Joshua wasn’t yet part of. They followed their father around the shop like baby ducks, they ran and hid, and they played games, and engaged in normal childlike activities. Joshua’s only game, at two years old, was to collect small scraps of fabric and line them up in mysterious patterns around the house. One morning the family woke to a colorful snakelike path that led from the front door to the back. This troubled Efrat so much that she brought him immediately to the doctor who diagnosed a case of artistic temperament and prescribed paint. “He’s creative, let him express himself.”

So with the little money she had, Efrat Streng purchased her son Joshua a box of pastels and a few pieces of paper to draw on. A few mornings later, the snake path was back, only this time it was courtesy of small torn cubes of paper, each one a different color thanks to the pastels. Efrat turned white when she saw this, and Matan, once again worried for his wife’s well being, decided it was time to take the boy to see Rabbi Goldwasser.

“He makes what?”

“Snake paths. Out of paper and fabric.” Matan was growing more and more humiliated with every word that came out of his mouth. This man had real worries and here he was going on about his child’s odd hobby. The Rabbi paused and studied the backs of his eyelids before continuing.

“These snake paths, where do they lead?”

Matan explained to Rabbi Goldwasser, a man with impressive spatial displacement and a beard that had a life completely independent to that of its master, that the paths usually led from the front door to the back door.

To which Rabbi Goldwasser countered, “Are you sure of that? Who’s to say they don’t lead from the back door to the front door?”

Matan acknowledged his point, for it was true that no one ever really saw Joshua make his paths, that he did them early in the morning before the family woke, then the horrible possibility that he was being mocked crossed his mind and he stopped speaking all together.

“It’s curious, alright,” Goldwasser said after another quick look at his eyelids, “and I wonder, in a small way, if it isn’t mystical?”

This stunned Matan, mystical? Joshua?

At that, the bored toddler wriggled from his father’s grasp and began exploring the room. He had a lot of time in which to do this since Rabbi Goldwasser, known for being longwinded, launched into virtual dissertation on the emergence of prophets throughout history, which Matan was equally flattered and bored by.

Below all this lofty discussion stood Joshua at about 86 centimeters tall, just under a yard, and though the Rabbi’s office was filled with interesting things to look at, few of them existed below the 86-centimeter mark. The floor was free from fabric, which surprised him, the son of a tailor, naturally assuming that all floors if properly searched would eventually yield something woven out of thread. And there was nothing square, or small, or shiny, that he could put in his pocket till later either. It was altogether disappointing.

There was one shape that caught his eye. It was in the corner and it looked a bit like the number eight with a handle on top. It was this thing (not the pastels) that would eventually put his mother’s mind at rest. It was this thing that would explain the inner workings of Joshua to his father and Rabbi Goldwasser. It was this thing that would be instrumental in changing his life and making him who he would become, the pride of Berlin—but not that day. That day, he was told not to touch it, and instead, set his sights on a curious looking paperweight. That day would begin a farcical three-month stewardship in which Joshua would spend every waking moment with Rabbi Goldwasser as he tried to locate the purpose behind the boy’s obvious divinity, an activity so all consuming, that Joshua and his betroved wouldn’t have any time alone together for twelve excruciating weeks of deep spiritual probing. Who was it excruciating for? Well, all of them. But mostly, one can wax romantically, for the lonely unplayed violin in the corner who would have seen in Joshua what the lowliest of poets sees in his muse, a distant, untouchable creature of beauty and grace. A being that could set it free.

The accident that finally brought Joshua and Rabbi Goldwasser’s violin together had nothing whatsoever to do with Rabbi Goldwasser. In fact, he wasn’t even there. He was across town on some sort of spiritual mission that had gotten the better of him, and with his certainty regarding Joshua’s mysticism fading, he didn’t give the boy sitting alone in his office much thought. But that is where Joshua was, and so, fortunately, was the violin.

The problem was, they were strangers. Joshua may have endlessly stared at it, he might have even touched it once or twice, but there had been no formal introduction, no way for the two to get to know each other. Someone must have come into the room at some point and showed Joshua the way to hold a violin, someone must have explained the fundamental concepts that he was exhibiting when Rabbi Goldwasser returned, but that person was never found.

All he saw was the boy standing in the middle of the room with his old fiddle tucked under his chin and the bow resting flatly against the strings. His small hand gripped the neck in a way that wasn’t particularly inspired, but his other hand had figured out what to do, bringing the bow back and fourth to produce the most adorable of foul noises. It could be said, that because of the boy’s genius, he instinctively knew what to do. That it was his destiny. But when asked, Joshua would claim that the violin told him, and he would say it with a straight face.

The Rabbi froze. He couldn’t bring himself to disturb what was happening in front of his eyes. As a man of God, he felt acutely aware of what was hanging in the air that day. The boy was no prophet; he was a prodigy, which in itself was a blessing. This couldn’t be proved of course, but the prospect made the old man laugh, which made the boy drop the violin, which made the boy cry. And that was how Joshua Streng came to be.
His parents were alerted, informed, and his first teacher was located. He too was a religious man, and for the first several years of his training, the quiet, and sometimes frenetic, prayers of his elders surrounded Joshua humming just below the creeks and screeches of his pre-adolescent fumblings.

When he was six years old he was sent to Vienna, much to his mothers chagrin, and didn’t return for years. When he did come home he was someone else, the memories of his youth and the time spent in the temple a faded memory, only ever evoked in glimpses until he found himself a widower at thirty-seven, under the wing of a butterfly on a tin ship to the end of the world.

The Conte-Bain Camano was a floating Petri dish of mayhem. Some of the crew had decided for reasons never established, to stop working, and the refugees were left to fend for themselves. Food was scarce. The water would run some days and others it wouldn’t. Families had begun to panic and horde. The classes began to mingle uncontrollably. Lights went on and off at will. A man no one knew had been thrown over board in the dark of night, but regardless, it was in this climate that Frau Schmetterling planned her concert. She had scheduled a performance of Beethoven’s string quartet number 12, opus 127, in the height of a mid-ship riot. It would coincide with the first night of Chanukah and their passing through the Strait of Malacca. “Things will quiet down by then,” she assured them. Nothing could stop the little woman with her tin box from having her quartet or her guest of honor.

When gala night arrived, Joshua rose from bed. He had an affection for Frau Schmetterling, their late night rendezvous being what they were, and coaxed himself out of his mourning robes long enough to make an appearance purely out of respect. He was additionally grateful for the job she was doing with Max since his was a mind that needed constant stimulation, and in Joshua’s present state, he knew he wasn’t capable. A remote part of him was amused to see Max’s light on till all hours of the morning racing to transpose multiple movements for four instruments. It was just the sort of thing Max was best at, though no doubt he complained endlessly to behind her back. It was a noble distraction for a soul that needed to be needed. What Max needed though, and what he hoped that someday he would be able to resume guiding him towards, was emotional connection. “It means nothing to know everything if you keep it all separate,” was the lesson.

Joshua studied his face in the mirror as he trimmed his beard. He wished above all things that he could separate, that he could shut it all off and forget, even just for a while. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Hanna. He imagined that he heard her answer. He imagined that she wanted him to go see Max play and then got angry with her for not being there. She would have worn something completely inappropriate. Like the time she went to a gala at the Oper in a dress that Joshua said made her look like a Guatemalan handmaiden. He didn’t know why he had said that. She looked beautiful that night. The thought almost sent him back to bed, but Madame Butterfly was ready for such a possibility. She paid a Japanese girl to go to his cabin and escort him to the deck. And that’s how he made his entrance, all in black; led by a dainty, fur clad ship’s stewardess.

He graced the flickering lights of the main deck dining hall as if he were arriving for a guest conductor spot at the Oper. They all looked his way. Fritzi, the group’s nervous cellist expressed a desire to jump overboard when Joshua walked in. He did present an intimidating silhouette--with his sweeping coat and wild hair--even for those who didn’t know who he was, though by then, anyone who was anyone knew that Joshua Streng was in their midst. Even Max felt a flutter of nerves. Though rooming with a distraught Joshua, he hadn’t seen Maestro in a month.

Joshua took a seat at a table with Frau Schmetterling, who on that evening wore royal blue. She whispered something to him that Max couldn’t make out then took the stage.
“Shalom, my friends, Glückliches Hanukka. Tonight we celebrate, not only the Festival of Light, but also our crossing into the Pacific Ocean and the beginning of the end of our journey. The aptly named, Quartett des Pazifiks will present a very special piece in honor of all this, Beethoven’s string quartet number 12, opus 127, led by violinist, Max Schmied.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” Fritzi whispered to Max before beginning, but Max winked at him.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Maestro Streng sleeps through chamber music, look.”

Joshua did indeed have his head bowed and his eyes closed, his preferred listening stance, but it looked like he was sleeping which was enough to calm Fritzi enough so they could start. They played well.

And below the thick sludge of grief resting atop Joshua’s mind and heart, he felt proud of Max. Sure the piece was clipped and metronomic, and Max had completely forgotten their lessons on breathing, but it was lovely in the fact that the Quartett des Pazifiks simply existed at all, like a little sapling making its way to the surface of a salvage heap and more metaphors--about butterflies.

Late that evening, the ship coasted through the Strait of Malacca as the strings sang the final scherzando. Perhaps it was the near brush with civilization that soothed the savage mood of the travelers, or perhaps it was the music or the holiday, but the low roar of ship wide discontent was lulled that night as a ghostly, unfamiliar light from the not so distant land illuminated the horizons on either side.

Frau Schmetterling turned to her guest of honor and smiled. “Things are looking up, I can feel it,” she said and touched his hand.

Joshua forced a grin. It was indeed a beautiful night, icy cold, and crystal clear.
The rumors wouldn’t surface till the next day, but a woman had jumped ship that night in hopes of swimming to land. When Frau Schmetterling heard about it she said, “we must not ever forget who we are.”

To which Joshua replied, “it would seem we are the living.”