Exile Music Page 15

  I closed my eyes to block out the squawking bird and absorbed the sounds of the market. The rustle of skirts, the voices of vendors, the clop of hooves, the wind. The Spanish! I could not get enough of its melody. Those lilting words; I wanted them all for my own.

  Before abandoning the market, Miguel stopped at one last stall that sold half-moons of pastry baked until they turned gold. “Salteñas,” he said, offering one to my mother and dropping the other into my palm. It burned my skin and I waved it in the air until it was cool enough to bite. The crust was sweeter than I expected, and it was so juicy inside that broth ran down my chin. “It’s like stew in a strudel,” I said to my mother, who was eyeing her pastry with deep skepticism. “I think it’s beef inside? And potatoes. Spicy!”

  Miguel smiled. “Ají,” he said. “It’s a kind of chili.”

  My mother took a cautious nibble. And then another. I watched her lick the juice from her fingers and I smiled.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER WE HAD LEFT the market and were walking the mile or so downhill (at last) to our rooms, a herd of furry, long-necked animals rounded the corner in front of us, heading our way. There were dozens of them, with matted and dusty coats. I’d seem them before from the windows of our train, but not up close. I grabbed my mother’s hand, unsure whether they were dangerous. We stared at the creatures. They didn’t look hostile. In fact, on closer inspection they looked almost cuddly. Miguel laughed to see the expressions on our faces. “They are not dangerous,” he assured us. “They’re llamas.”

  My mother looked pale. “In—in the city?” For my mother, the city had been an escape from village life. A place far more refined and cultured. Herds of filthy animals did not wander down the Ringstrasse.

  “They are going to market,” Miguel said. “They are delicious.”

  While I felt sorry for the llamas, I was also curious. I wondered what llama meat tasted like. I wondered if we were allowed to eat it, or if it was forbidden, like pork. (Although we didn’t keep kosher, we never ate pork.)

  I reached out a hand to touch one of the animals as it went by, and it turned its head, drew back its lips, and spat at me. Shocked, I looked down at my blouse, where a glob of greenish llama spit hung from a button. Unprepared for this visceral reminder of home, I started to cry. I hadn’t shed a tear since we left Genoa—not for Austria, not for Willi, not for Anneliese—but that llama spitting at me shoved me over a precipice I had not known I was approaching.

  “Oh, Orly. You shouldn’t have tried to touch one!” My mother looked vaguely repulsed.

  Miguel gently pulled me to the side of the street. “We have a saying: If you kiss the llama it won’t spit at you.”

  Kissing a llama didn’t sound that much more attractive to me than being spit on by one.

  I had expected Miguel to laugh at me, or to chastise me. But instead he used a sleeve of his shirt to carefully wipe the spit off my blouse. “The alpacas are much nicer. They don’t spit as much,” he said. “And they make nicer yarn. The vicuñas, too, but their wool is very expensive.”

  “Is it warm?” My mother was always cold here, so her interest in alpaca yarn was not mere politeness. After taking a trembling breath, I translated for Miguel, who confirmed that yes, it was warm, and that he knew someone who could knit us sweaters.

  Talking with Miguel steadied me the way talking with Willi once had. I was embarrassed for crying in front of him. For crying about something as stupid as llama spit when Willi was still missing. When we began walking again, I muttered a quick prayer under my breath—to whom I am not sure—promising that I would bathe in llama spit if it would bring Willi to us.

  * * *

  • • •

  SO MUCH OF BEING in this new place was observation. I didn’t know how anything in this world worked; I had to watch how Bolivians moved and talked and played so I could relearn everything. My mother and father and I were like children again, not understanding how to buy food, what it should cost, how to greet a stranger, or where to find soap. Here, my Austrian impulses were wrong. Every day I found myself in a culturally coded world without the key. While this could be overwhelming and confusing, it was also terribly exciting. Having to focus so much energy on navigating our new home distracted us from the fathomless fear and grief at our heels.

  A few blocks from the market, Miguel took my hand. “Come. I have something to show you.” With my silent mother struggling to keep up with us, we picked our way through the crowded streets to a woman sitting against a brick building, bunches of flowers arranged in clay vases in front of her on the ground. There were white roses, flame-colored begonias, and bunches of flowers I had never seen. After greeting the woman, Miguel reached his hand to a single bloom, a tubular flower that flared out at the end like a Spanish skirt. “Mira.” Stroking the underside, he showed me how its color turned from yellow to orange to red. “Like your hair.” He lifted one of my braids and held it close to the flower. “It’s our national flower. It’s called kantuta.”

  * * *

  • • •

  ON THE WAY HOME we stopped in one of the many small Bolivian shops that sold powdered milk, matches, and other odds and ends. “I want to buy a peli,” Miguel explained. He showed me the slender bits of film containing frames from movies that you could see if you held them up to the sun. He and his friends collected them. “I love the cinema.”

  I touched the fragile scrap Miguel gave me, held it up to the sky. “I see a boy in a funny hat. And—is that an elephant?”

  “That’s from Elephant Boy. Have you seen it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen The Tale of the Fox,” I offered. Willi had taken me and Anneliese one Saturday afternoon, had made us laugh imitating the animals.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s German. It had animation.”

  Interest flickered in his eyes. “I’ve only ever seen one animated film. I saw Snow White. Do you know it?”

  “Everyone knows it!”

  “Not everyone here.” A defensiveness had crept into his voice.

  “My brother took me to see that one too.” I said it to change the subject, to keep Miguel from being mad at me.

  “You have a brother?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  He shook his head. Shame spread through me like hot poison. I could not have forgotten my brother. I could never forget my brother. I glanced at my mother, who was speaking quietly with Mathilde, whom she’d met in the shop. I was thankful she could not understand us. “My brother, Willi. He’s still in Europe, in Switzerland. He’s coming here.”

  “When? Why didn’t he come with you?”

  I shook my head and looked up the street. “Soon. He’s coming soon.”

  Twenty-eight

  When will grandma and grandpa come?” I asked my mother one bright afternoon as we stood on the steps of the post office. “And Aunt Thekla? When will Klara and Felix be here?” My mother was studying a thin page of cramped writing with a hand over her eyes to protect them from the sun. The family members we had left behind were still trying to find a way out. Visas had dried up and the few letters we received were steeped in panic. My mother wrote to Bolivian officials, to Austrian officials, to distant relatives in other countries. She received no replies.

  Today’s letter was from my Viennese grandmother, who had been moved with my grandfather into yet another communal apartment.

  “Felix is still missing. Thekla won’t leave without him.” My mother shook her head over the letter, her hand crushing the edge of the paper before handing it to my father. “There’s going to be war. There’s going to be war and then how will they get out?”

  My father frowned over the paper. “I should have gotten them the agricultural visas. What a fool I am.”

  “You’re not a fool, Vati.”

  “We are all fool
s, Orlita. Letting them walk right in.” He slipped the letter into his pocket and stared grimly out at the mountains.

  I fell silent. I thought about my aunts and uncles and my grandparents. I thought about Willi. “Is Klara still there? And Aunt Klothilde?”

  My mother took my hand. “Everyone’s alive, we think. But I doubt their situation is going to get better.”

  “And if there’s war?”

  “If there’s war,” said my father, “we’ll know even less.”

  * * *

  • • •

  OVER THE FIRST FEW WEEKS of our new life in La Paz, we pieced together a home from three straw mattresses, donated dishes, borrowed books, and a table and chairs crafted from packing crates. As soon as these set pieces were in place, my father sat down on a crate after dinner one night and took out his viola for the first time. He hadn’t opened the case since we arrived, although he had often played with other musicians on the ship. Now, he ran his fingers over the instrument like he was relearning its surfaces. He tightened his bow and drew it across the D string. We both winced. But half an hour later, as I lay on the floor reading at his feet, a stroke of his arm drew forth the flight of notes that began Fantasia Cromatica.

  My heart leapt after those notes, following them like butterflies up a path it knew well. It didn’t matter that his fingers were stiff and weak, that they faltered at that speed. Listening to him play reminded me of times when I didn’t know I was thirsty until I started drinking and then the whole glass went down. Home had been with us all along; it lived in the air shimmering around my father’s strings.

  “Well. There it is.” He lifted his eyes from the viola and smiled a real smile, the first I could remember seeing since the Philharmonic expelled him. “So. What shall I play for you?”

  I closed the book of fairy tales on my lap that I had borrowed from the Grubers. “Schumann’s Märchenbilder! The fairy tale songs.”

  “Nothing simpler? I don’t want to start panting and faint in the middle of it.”

  “You just did Fantasia Cromatica!” I sighed. “All right. A waltz, then: Strauss.” I glanced over at my mother lying on a mattress, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She did not stir.

  My father pulled the viola from his chin and rested it on his knee. “No waltzes,” he said. “I think I am finished with waltzes.”

  “Well, don’t ask me then,” I said irritably, turning back to my book. “Play whatever you like.” I couldn’t see the harm in playing a waltz. Hadn’t we already given up enough of Austria? We had to give up Strauss now too?

  A mild amusement tugged at my father’s mouth. “Which Märchenbilder piece, then? I suppose you want ‘Lebhaft’?”

  “Lebhaft”—lively or spirited—was my favorite of the four. But I thought about how fast my father’s fingers would have to move on the strings and how he had struggled with the Fantasia. “No, I’m in the mood for ‘Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck’ tonight.” This piece, “Slowly with a melancholy expression,” was one he had played me in the evenings before bed, its gentle rhythms drawing me irresistibly into dreams. It seemed to describe the undercurrent of our life in La Paz, the way my mother drifted up and down its streets. Slowly, with melancholy expression.

  “A wise choice, kleiner Hase.”

  Tucking the viola back under his chin, my father lifted his bow and played me “Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck.” Within the first six notes, I was in Vienna. I was in my own bed, soft sheets drawn to my chin, Lebkuchen tucked in my arms. I had forgotten how swiftly music could transport me.

  His fingers were still clumsy on the strings—even I could see it—and his rhythm staggered, but he played it all the way through. Then he started again.

  Scooting across the floor to lean against one of the crates, I closed my eyes. As the vibrations of his strings stirred the air around me, the small muscles along my spine spasmed and then unclenched. My stomach relaxed into roundness. My hands fell to my lap. Fear that had secreted itself in my body crept away. I let the sounds move over me like warm hands. When I heard my father play, I began to believe in our life here.

  * * *

  • • •

  A SIREN STARTLED ME one morning while I was outside kicking a football with Miguel. At first I thought it must be a fire truck, but I’d never seen a fire truck in La Paz. A few seconds later, Mathilde came hurrying from the house, pulling on her jacket as she came down the steps. “That means news!” she called as she passed us.

  I kicked the ball to Miguel and ran after her. “What does?”

  “Orlita!” Miguel sounded cross.

  “I’ll come back!”

  “The siren, it’s from the newspaper.” Mathilde explained that whenever something important happened, the siren summoned people to the latest headlines scrawled on the blackboard in the windows of the newspaper office. “That way you don’t have to wait for the paper.” I remembered then Mathilde had been a journalist, one of the few women writing about politics in Berlin. I wondered if she wished she were still in Europe, covering the biggest story of our lives. But of course a Jew would not be allowed to interview anyone. Not now. She was here for a reason. Mathilde had become the story.

  As we neared the street where the offices were, we saw other refugees hurrying in the same direction, their faces tight with fear. Had Hitler expanded his reach yet again? I felt an impulse to take Mathilde’s hand, but resisted it.

  Breathless by the time we reached the small crowd gathering in front of the window, we threaded our way to the front. The message written on the chalkboard in the window was brief:

  More than 900 refugees aboard SS St. Louis forced to return to Europe after denied entry by Cuba, the U.S., and Canada. Dozens threatened suicide.

  I translated the Spanish for Mathilde. The language had made itself comfortable on my tongue. I was just young enough to absorb the whole of it, structure and vocabulary at once, without book study. Miguel and his many siblings were better than any book.

  “Returned to Europe?” Mathilde repeated.

  “Did you know anyone on it?”

  Mathilde didn’t answer. She just stood there with her arms hanging limply at her sides. “There’s nowhere left,” she said. “There’s really nowhere left.”

  Twenty-nine

  While my mother was resolute in her decision to abandon singing, my father could not stop playing once he had begun again. Some days I felt it was an inconvenience for him to eat or to talk to us. He played as if, by drawing his bow across the strings enough times, he could erase history. As if he could lure his wife back to her voice and play his son home. As if he could erase everything but sound, and we could all live in that.

  The following week he began to take on students. There was no La Paz Philharmonic. There was no opera house or ballet. If you wanted to make a living as a musician, you taught. Eager students are a reliable constant; music, it seems, is a universal craving.

  At first he taught only the children of other refugee families, families that had been in La Paz long enough to start a business and save a little money. But unable to turn anyone away, he also taught recent arrivals for free. As word got around, a few of the Paceña families with money—the palest descendants of the Spanish invaders—asked if he would teach their children too. He began to earn a little, traveling from home to home or teaching from our bedroom. But it wasn’t enough. We needed pots and pans, shoes, spoons, a comfortable chair. I was tired of balancing on crates and boxes during meals. We wanted to save something for a real apartment, a proper kitchen table.

  I wanted to go to school, but my parents said I would have to work until we had enough money to survive on our own. Besides, we hadn’t yet found a school. I wanted to go to the local Bolivian school with Miguel, but it was Catholic, and my parents said it wouldn’t teach me enough; they wanted me to have classes in German or English as well as in Spanish.
This did not alleviate the despondency I felt when Miguel abandoned our early morning games to head to school. He had other friends there, friends who didn’t sound so stupid speaking Spanish.

  The Grubers hired me to look after their toddlers some mornings. In the afternoons, I often tended to the children of other refugees. Thus I was able to contribute a few bolivianos each week to our coffers. I didn’t mind the work itself—there was something relaxing about being with smaller children, concerned with simple things like food and finding places to play—but I hated feeling I was falling behind in my studies.

  My parents had never been especially good with money, their attention caught up in the perfection of sound rather than in the more pragmatic aspects of life. In Austria, their families had helped them when they ran into trouble. In particular, my Vienna grandfather had worried about our money. Here, we all had to.

  Many Jewish entrepreneurs didn’t do badly in Bolivia. They were able to start import businesses, textile companies, or restaurants. But my parents didn’t have the right skills or minds. Nor had they any talent for self-promotion. Their talents had to sell themselves or go unused.

  Once my father had enough students for us to pay for potatoes, onions, and the occasional pat of butter, he began meeting with three other refugee musicians in the evening to play Baroque music. Rarely had my father ever played the viola alone; he had always been a part of something larger. He was an arm severed from the body of the Vienna Philharmonic. He wanted to be grafted onto something else, anything else. He was, I realized only later, lonely, without even my mother’s voice to accompany him. All my life, my parents’ relationship had consisted of music. They sang phrases to each other, talked through their difficulties at work, hummed pieces of symphonies, sat down together by the piano. They inhabited the same world. Now, only my father lived in that world. My mother was still beside us, making us meals and reminding us to wash our faces, but there was no nightingale anywhere.