Exile Music Read online

  “Julia, why must you punish yourself? It was not music that did this. Not the sound of your voice. How can you let them take that too?” My father was confused, did not know how anyone lived in a world without music, least of all his wife. His wife who turned away from him, who did not answer.

  After near-silent dinners, my father would come to life when one of the other musicians knocked on our door. “Julia, do you know,” he said excitedly as he rose to let them in, “I am falling in love with music all over again. I can experiment now. I do not have to play the same repertoire year after year. I am free!”

  My mother stacked plates and carried them to the washing basin. “Free? Yes, you are free—from the Philharmonic, from our parents, from your son. Me, I could live without such freedoms.”

  “Julia—”

  But then Gregor was in the house, changing everything. “Frau Zingel! Guten Abend! So kind of you to tolerate us once more.” He swiveled on his heels. “Jakob, an honor, as always.”

  I liked Gregor, a violinist, the best. He was the happiest, dancing as he played, his body bouncing forward and backward, rocking left to right, sometimes rising up on his toes as his eyebrows shot toward his hairline at a particularly emotional juncture. He came from Salzburg and was only twenty. Like my father, he took in students, but he also worked in a textile factory during the week. There were three textile factories in Bolivia, where workers spun cotton or wool into thread, dyed it, and wove it into cloth. Gregor was a dyer, and his hands were always stained with color. I liked to watch his sunset-streaked fingers dance across his strings.

  The two of them were eventually joined by a Czech cellist and a German violinist, both Jews. One evening, Miguel and I were drawing with chalk in the street when they began playing, the notes cascading from our windows. Miguel stopped, squatting back on his heels. “Is that your parents?”

  “My father. And his friends. My mother is a singer but she doesn’t sing anymore.”

  He listened for a few minutes more, rapt. “This is what he did when you were in Austria?”

  “It’s what he does everywhere. What he has always done.”

  Miguel looked at me, the smooth skin of his forehead crinkling. “And they threw him out?”

  Thirty

  Our social life in La Paz was far more casual than it had been in Vienna. None of us had telephones at first, so we had to venture out to find each other at home or meet up in Plaza Murillo, in the heart of the city. In the mornings, I liked to climb the mile or so up to the plaza with my mother and Mathilde, even though they always needed to stop and rest a dozen times along the way. In those early days we traveled regularly to the SOPRO offices on calle Junin, near the plaza, mostly to connect with each other, but also to pick up emergency cash, trade books, or offer to help a newer refugee with paperwork or a meal. When one of us had a few coins, we rode the Tranvías de La Paz electric trams all the way downhill to the pastoral neighborhood of Obrajes and back. The red streetcars had the nicest seats, but mostly we rode the yellow and green cars because they were cheaper. There wasn’t much to Obrajes back then; it was countryside. But the descent was thrilling. I couldn’t stop myself from the delicious torment of imagining a failure of brakes that would send us all sailing into the blue.

  My mother sat with Mathilde or Hanna on the benches (we were allowed to sit on benches again!) across from the grand Presidential Palace and the Cathedral of La Paz, watching the trams disgorge passengers and the salteña vendors ply their juicy pastries while they exchanged news from home. More of us arrived every month, in varying states of shock, confusion, and grief. I chased the pigeons with newly arrived refugee children, careening around the statue of independence fighter Pedro Domingo Murillo and irritating the old women who were scattering corn for them. While I joined in games with the other children, I didn’t make a friend like Anneliese. No one was exactly my age; no one could draw a map of Friedenglückhasenland; no one stroked my arms with tender fingers. I had only ever had one best friend. Besides, now I had Miguel, whose happy company usually felt like enough.

  Once we were settled, it was our turn to host the new families. Like us, they arrived pale, nauseated, and panting for air. We were the experts now, thrusting cups of coca tea into their hands and instructing them to drink. We told the newcomers how long to boil the water and where to find the best textiles. We guided them up the uneven, twisting streets to the markets, to the textile factories, and to the paseo del Prado, a wide, grassy area of avenida 16 de julio, where you could watch couples parade in their fanciest clothes on Sunday afternoons. We took them to the refugee-owned Brückner & Krill, which sold European-style sausages, pastries, and other food they recognized. My mother liked to stop in there, more for the pleasure of running into other refugees and speaking German than to actually buy anything. Mathilde had told us there was a Viennese restaurant somewhere nearby, though we didn’t yet have enough money to go.

  Most of us grasped for the familiar, cooking Austrian and German food and speaking German. Many never became comfortable with Spanish. Many never considered Bolivia a permanent home, but merely a place to wait out the coming war.

  Not everyone adapted. Some stayed ill, some never learned to sleep. But there were limited alternatives. While not all of Bolivia is close to the sky—there are jungles in the lowlands, cities close to sea level—these too had their hazards. As we would learn.

  Some families moved to Cochabamba, a sunny little city closer to sea level, where they opened small hotels and bakeries. But most of the work was in La Paz. Most of our community was in La Paz. Travel was difficult, making it hard to move between cities.

  Eventually, we formed clubs—the Maccabi Sports Club, the Austrian Club, and others—where we had meals, arranged concerts, and played tennis. The Austrian Club was often where we heard news—who had come down with amoebic dysentery, who had died in childbirth, and who had heard from relatives in Vienna. Our mothers exchanged dress patterns and suggestions for coping with altitude or food-borne illnesses.

  On our first Sunday at the Austrian Club I was amazed to suddenly see so many of us, so many German speakers, so many Jews, in one place. It was as if we had abruptly been transported back home. The full name of the club was Federación de Austríacos Libres en Bolivia—Federation of Free Austrians in Bolivia. There, I almost felt like a free Austrian. We ran around playing games we had played in Vienna while our parents heaped their plates with potato salad and Schnitzel, talking not only about home and the coming war, but about books and films. I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard adults talk about anything other than how to stay alive.

  * * *

  • • •

  MY FATHER SUGGESTED I join the troupe of actors at the club. “You’ll learn some Austrian plays. Maybe make a few friends.” He was sitting on the end of my mattress on the floor, his knees poking up nearly as high as his head.

  “I have Miguel.” The other refugee children were not as interesting. Why did I need Austrian friends? No one but Miguel could tell me the names of the fruits and flowers. No refugee kid could tell me that the cholitas’ hats were called borsalinos or that a grain called quinoa was one of the few crops that thrived at altitude. I didn’t understand why so few of the other refugees made Bolivian friends. How else could we learn how to live?

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a girlfriend?”

  A girlfriend. The word sent a dart of longing through my ribcage. Maybe I hadn’t made a girlfriend among the refugee children because the comparisons with Anneliese were too obvious; it would feel too much like betrayal. Yet the idea of performing in a play, of being someone else, was attractive. When my father told me the next play was to be Johann Nestroy’s Der Talisman, a comedy featuring a girl mocked for her red hair, I tried out for the part. Who but me could so naturally utter the line “Whoever has something against the red color knows not what is beautiful”?

  I
got the role.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER THAT, I split my nonworking time between theatrical activities at the Austrian Club and street games with Miguel. While I enjoyed rehearsing and running around with the other German-speaking children, I still found no special friend. The girls in our community already had best friends, or were not interested in things that interested me. None of them were as much fun as Miguel.

  Gradually, my parents allowed Miguel to take me farther and farther from home to explore the city. Given the number of children his mother had to keep track of, she rarely even knew he was gone. Señora Torres was also starting her own business. While she made enough money from the rents we paid her to survive, she had begun designing knitted clothing that she sold in the markets. She worked when most of her children were in school, and after they were in bed. “She doesn’t have to work so much,” Miguel told me. “But she likes to design. Her father—my grandfather—he’s a trader and he still helps us. A lot of tin was hidden in the Bolivian mountains. My abuelo found places to sell it.”

  One Saturday he took me to see the Paris movie theater in Plaza Murillo, walking so swiftly I struggled to keep up even though my legs were longer. Posters outside advertised Union Pacific, but neither of us had money. “This is where I saw Elephant Boy. Also A Day at the Races and Wild West Days.” His face was wistful as we turned away. “I have pelis from all of them.”

  Lacking coins for the tram, we wandered down to the San Francisco church, which sat in San Francisco Plaza at the bottom of calle Sagárnaga. Standing outside, we gazed up at the arched windows, at the bells clamoring in and out of its tall stone tower. Though it was majestic, it couldn’t compete with Illimani.

  “Are you allowed to go in?” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “It’s not your religion.”

  “Jews are allowed to go in anywhere we want.” This was what I wanted to be true.

  Miguel suddenly grinned. “Are you allowed to practice witchcraft?”

  I was caught off guard. “What?”

  “Magia. Like making magical potions with herbs.”

  I considered this. “I don’t know.”

  “Ven.” He set off at a swift pace up the cobblestone street. We seemed always to be walking uphill, whether we were going or coming.

  We left the iglesia de San Francisco and headed up the steep calle Sagárnaga. Several small burros passed us, laden with packages wrapped in striped blankets. I was continually amazed by the vibrancy of color everywhere. A woman in a green, fringed shawl and bowler hat crouched on the street to tie up a bundle more securely. Shopfronts were almost obscured by bright hanging fabrics—children’s dresses, hats, tapestries of animals, and woolly ponchos. Two men in black hats and dark suits stared at me. I tilted my head up, wondering if people lived in the buildings above the shops, with the pretty wrought-iron balconies and red clay roofs. When we reached the narrow calle Linares, we turned right.

  “Mira.” Miguel swept an arm before us. “El Mercado de las Brujas.” The Witches’ Market.

  Turning to examine the shops that lined the cobblestone street, I saw what I first thought were toy animals, hanging in rows of furry bouquets over the fronts of shops and sitting atop tables on the street. Also on the tables were stacks of colorful boxes and tins, polished stones, handfuls of things that looked like bones.

  I wondered if I should be nervous. “Are there really witches here?”

  “Aymara witches. They are called yatiri.”

  I tasted these words, letting them roll around in my mouth. Yatiri sounded like a bird in flight. “What do they do?”

  “They cure people.”

  “Of what?”

  “Sometimes they cure bodies and sometimes they cure souls.”

  “Are they real?”

  “Of course they’re real!” He looked offended. “This is a serious place.”

  Chastened, I bit my lip. As we continued up the street I looked more closely at the animals dangling over our head. They looked dried out. “Are those—what are those?”

  “Those are llama fetuses,” Miguel explained cheerfully. “You have to bury them under every house, or the builders won’t work.”

  I nodded as if this made sense. They kill so many babies? They put them under their houses? He went on. “The fetuses are an offering for Pachamama, Mother Earth. They bring luck and health and they keep the builders safe. Builders are often dying.”

  I stopped walking. “Is there a llama fetus under our building?”

  “Of course! All buildings.”

  “Even though you’re just half Aymara.”

  “Mother Earth is home for all of us, no? Why should we not all make her offerings?”

  I stared at the vacant eyes of the dangling llamas. “Why did your father leave Coroico?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “But you’re here—”

  Miguel kicked at a matted feather stuck to the cobblestones. “Do you want to look at the shops or not?”

  I nodded without speaking, sorry I had upset him.

  He ducked into the closest shop and greeted the woman behind the counter. I followed, careful not to touch anything on the crowded shelves. What if I accidentally set off some kind of spell? Under the watchful eyes of the yatiris, we looked at twigs, herbs, and powders with names that I didn’t understand, presumably to cure various ailments. Miguel pointed out the array of coca teas and creams for altitude sickness and pains in the body, powdered frogs, stone amulets to bring good health or good business, and dozens of compounds for virility and fertility. But I couldn’t stop looking at the little llamas, in widely varying sizes and stages of development. They fascinated me.

  “They must have to kill a lot of baby llamas.”

  “No, they don’t kill them,” said Miguel. “They are born dead. Or their mother dies and she is pregnant.”

  I felt slightly relieved, though I had no way of knowing if this was true. There were an awful lot of fetuses to be accounted for.

  “Do you use these things?”

  He shrugged. “If we need to.”

  “I thought you were Catholic.” I didn’t understand how these witches fit into Miguel’s worldview.

  “We are Catholic. But we also believe in witch doctors. And in kallawayas. Wandering healers. Why pick just one thing?” He did not understand why I found this confusing. “Do you believe in witches?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Do your parents?”

  “No.” But I was uncertain. I didn’t know what my parents believed in, other than music.

  “Maybe we can take them here. Show them.”

  I looked around, trying to imagine my mother’s reaction to the bouquets of dead baby llamas, the strange smells of the powders, the candles shaped like penises. “Maybe not yet.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER EACH OUTING with Miguel, I brought something home for my mother, like a cat presenting its owner with a dead mouse. I picked up a turquoise bead from the street; plucked a rose from a stranger’s abundant garden; cradled a handful of tiny guavas given to me by a cholita at the market. I didn’t know what might make my mother be herself again, so I tried everything. But after our trip to the Witches’ Market, I returned with empty hands.

  * * *

  • • •

  AT DUSK, as my parents rested beside me, I watched Illimani until darkness took it. The snow, it seemed, never melted from its summit. Each hour, each season, the color of the snow slightly altered, flickering from rose to gold in the mornings, fading from lavender to grey in the evenings. I found it difficult to read in our room during the day, with that imposing peak before me. Every time I saw it something in me swung upward. My faith in God might have been shaken in Vienna, but I believed i
n Illimani in her snowy robes. It made sense to me that the Bolivians worshipped Pachamama, surrounded in every direction as they were by the fierce force of her.

  Thirty-one

  My father began going to synagogue at the Círculo Israelita, a community organization founded by eastern European Jews in 1935. “Think of it,” he said the first Saturday he went, trying to convince my mother to go with him. “Do you think there’s a higher synagogue anywhere in the world? Could we get any closer to God?”

  I stared at him. My father had only rarely gone to synagogue in Vienna; he had never been given to talking about God. He reserved his reverential tone for Mahler. It had been my impression that he thought of religion as something for people who couldn’t play an instrument.

  “Was that why God couldn’t hear us in Austria?” my mother asked, looking up from a volume of Rilke’s poetry. “We weren’t high enough?”

  She returned to her reading.

  My father pivoted to me. “Orlita?” While my father’s Spanish remained rudimentary, he had quickly adopted the Bolivian tendency to add a diminutive to the end of every other word.

  “I want to stay with Mutti.” I couldn’t understand my father’s sudden interest in the God who had taken away from him everything he loved. The God that had separated us from Willi.

  He went alone.

  Yet the following Friday evening, I helped him light the candles. We had taken to doing this nearly every week, more often than we ever had in Vienna. No matter what the state of my beliefs, the familiar light of the candles comforted me. We had to be careful to keep them out of drafts; they blew out easily in the thin air. Not enough fuel for the fire. (At least we don’t have to worry about the house burning down, my father had commented after using seven matches to light one slender wick.)