Quartet for the End of Time (55 page)

Food for thought, yes, the clarinetist replied. But I cannot promise what you ask.

Henri, you are a Jew! exclaimed Pasquier.

The clarinetist hit his hand on his head as though this were something he had quite honestly forgotten.

Seriously, said the composer gravely. It is better you are here with us, a French soldier, than on your own, a Jew.

Well, there is plenty of time now to worry about all of this, the clarinetist said, grinning at the composer—now that you are alive again. Honestly, we were so worried! Then, after a little pause, he continued in a more thoughtful tone. I cannot say why I would wish life upon anyone anymore, but there is something in me that will not give it up—the idea, I mean, that to be alive in the world is, in itself, good.

Because, said the composer, it is so.

No one else spoke, and after that the darkness seemed to settle in around them more completely—interrupted only periodically by the searchlight as it swung its wide beam around the yard in a steady rhythm, like the beat of a slow heart. How could anything, the composer may have wondered (as, that night, I wondered myself—and ever after), ever be revealed by that light? Given the fact that it came so briefly, and that even when it did, it did not interrogate the darkness, but only, for a single moment, obliterated it entirely before allowing everything to fall back into darkness again?

T
HE NEXT DAY
,
THE
clarinetist received word that his father had been arrested and deported from Paris. They had no address for him, his sister
wrote, and from what they heard now, it was unlikely he would be returning anytime soon.

The stubborn fool! the clarinetist said when he read the news. He didn't believe it when he was told to go south, to the unoccupied regions! He said: I am a veteran of the Great War! A Frenchman! They cannot possibly touch me!

So now you know it is serious, Pasquier said.

The clarinetist shook his head. My father is an old man, he replied.

The risk he took was not a risk at all. It was simply to be an old man. To be fixed in his mind. To refuse to see that things had changed so drastically from the way that he imagined.

That is a mistake it is possible for all of us to make, said Pasquier.

The composer said nothing. He only nodded, looking on.

S
HORTLY AFTER THAT
,
THE
violinist Jean Le Boulaire arrived. He was assigned the bunk above the composer, which had for some time been left empty.

Within minutes of arriving, he spotted Henri's clarinet, where it lay on the lower bunk, opposite him.

I lost my violin in Dunkirk, he informed us.

You play? asked the composer, sitting up.

Le Boulaire nodded.

Ah! the composer said. A clarinetist, a violinist, a pianist, and a cellist. All we need now are a violin, a cello, and a piano! We've got the clarinet. You, he said—pointing to me—you can write our first review!

Everyone laughed but the composer. And indeed, as the weeks wore on, the composer slowly began to realize what had seemed to us, at first, only an impossible dream—thanks always to the help of the sympathetic German guard, Brüll. Brüll had already arranged for the composer to be excused from the drudgery of camp chores and afforded the privilege of working each day on his
Quartet
instead—undisturbed, in the lavatory. Yes—the lavatory. And what a privilege, indeed! It was the one place in the camp a man could hope to steal even a moment alone.

Brüll's parents—as one day he confided in the composer—had been Catholics, and he himself had always been drawn to the music of the church. Because of this, he hated to think of the composer—a Catholic and a musician—as a prisoner. But after all (he admitted), there was very little of the war he understood.

So it is natural, the composer had replied, that we come together through music. Music is the one thing that everyone understands.

But not everyone, the German said shyly, understands your music. I have heard it called dissonant. He paused. Even ugly. I do not find it so myself, of course, he added quickly. But it just goes to show you that we do not always agree—even about the simplest things.

T
HEN ONE DAY
,
IN
early October, a violin appeared during our absence on Le Boulaire's bed.

It is a miracle, the composer said, his eyes dancing. But we knew, of course, it was not providence alone we had to thank.

T
HE NEXT TIME
I saw Brüll, however, several days after the appearance of the violin, he looked anything but the benevolent miracle-maker the composer now fully believed him to be. I was on my way with Pasquier to the mess hall when he approached, his face flushed with anger.

What are you thinking? he hissed at us.

What do you mean? Pasquier asked.

You know what, Brüll said. He glared at Pasquier. I suggest you find those missing spoons, he said. They are becoming suspicious, you know—and their suspicions always lead somewhere. I would hate it if it led them to you. Or, worse—to the composer.

Pasquier nodded. I could tell, then—the way his face went suddenly pale—that he was not as innocent as he had first appeared.

What was that? I asked, after Brüll had gone. Pasquier shook his head. Then he picked up his pace so that by the time we arrived at the mess hall I was several steps behind, and we did not share a table during the meal.

My heart raced, attempting to make sense of what I had heard. I felt
torn between, on the one hand, concern for Henri and Pasquier, and anger, on the other, that I had not been let in on any escape plan—if that was what this was about.

Did they think I was like the composer? That I lived only in my head? Did they think I enjoyed living as we did, cooped up, more like animals than men?

They could not possibly think that! But as soon as I concluded this to myself, and resolved that I was just as prepared as any other man to risk my life for my own freedom and for what I believed, I felt a cold chill in my belly, and I knew that I was glad I was ignorant of this or any otherplan.

A
FTER THAT
, I
BEGAN
to notice the dirt under Henri's fingernails, and then I didn't know how I had failed to notice before. Or the way he disappeared at night. How, I wondered, had I ever slept so soundly so as not to notice that he slipped away after the first guard duty returned, only to arrive back just before dawn?

It was not long after Brüll's warning that the composer confronted the young musician.

Henri, he said one evening, do you realize that Paris is fourteen hundred kilometers away?

Yes, answered the clarinetist, without hesitation—but Switzerland is a mere nine hundred.

The composer smiled sadly. I only pray for you, he said, that you will be delivered to safety—but in my heart, I have to admit, I grieve a little. Who will play the clarinet?

E
VERY MORNING
,
THE CLARINETIST
was back in his bunk before dawn, and over the next few weeks, the sound of the clarinet and the violin became as familiar as the sounds of the feet of the guards or the clattering of the engines of the trucks as they rolled past the prison gates. Then—by another miracle—toward the end of October, Pasquier was given permission to drive into Görlitz, accompanied by Brüll.

They returned with a cello. A chair was dragged out of the mess hall
and placed in the middle of the exercise yard, where Pasquier was invited to play. He played for nearly an hour: Saint-Saëns's “The Swan” from
The Carnival of the Animals
, Bach's suites for solo cello, and Schubert's
Ave Maria.
When finally he laid down his bow, there was a strange stillness in the air and some of the men hid their faces on account of the tears, which had sprung, unbidden, to their eyes.

N
OW ALL THAT WAS
missing was a piano. The composer worked more and more furiously—in the lavatory during “working hours,” of course, but at every other time of day, too. He would stay up late into the night, reading and rereading his score by the dull glow of a candle (another gift from Brüll), sometimes long after the clarinetist had slipped away. Because, just as furiously as the composer worked, the clarinetist worked as well.

The German guards were no less busy. They crawled around underneath the barracks looking for signs of the digging. We would hear them at night below us, and we knew it was them and not our own men, because they made so much noise and didn't care who heard.

B
Y THEN THE COMPOSER
had been giving inspired lectures in the theater barracks for more than three weeks. These were attended not only by French, Polish, and Czech prisoners, but sometimes even by the German guards. Brüll, of course, was always in attendance as the composer instructed us on nonretrogradeable rhythms, melismas, and Wagner's leitmotifs. We listened, every one of us, entranced not so much by the words, but by the reverence with which the composer spoke.

Imagine, if you will, he said one day, that the universe once comprised a single beat. And before that: eternity. And after it? Again, eternity. Before and after, the composer said—to conceive of that is to conceive of the beginning of time. So now close your eyes. Imagine a second beat. Almost immediately following the first, which was the single beat of the universe. This second beat, prolonged by the silence that follows it, will be longer than the first. A new number, a new duration.
This, the composer said, is the beginning of rhythm. It does not arise from the division of time, but rather can be considered … an
extension,
a duration
in
time. And what is the space of this extension or duration— but life itself?

Just at this moment, Pasquier burst into the room.

Olivier! he cried. Come quickly!

The composer followed Pasquier out to the yard—his devoted students, myself among them, were not far behind. There, just beyond the prison gates, we were greeted by a third miracle: a piano was being unloaded from the back of an army truck by two German guards.

Truly, God is great, said the composer.

B
UT THE NEXT MORNING,
when dawn arrived, the clarinetist did not. At roll call, when his name was pronounced by the German guard on duty, no answer came.

We were careful not to look at one another, and I tried not even to think because every thought tended toward the clarinetist, and resolved itself either in envy (imagine! I thought. At that very moment the clarinetist was a free man!) or despair (in my heart, I could not believe that it was so).

It was not. Less than a week later we heard that Henri had been captured. A few days after that he was returned to his bunk. He had been badly beaten. Now he slept solidly through the night—interrupted only briefly by the shouts of Le Boulaire. Since his arrival, Le Boulaire had suffered from recurrent nightmares, waking himself—as well as the rest of us—sometimes several times each night. The composer would speak: Jean, Jean, it is only a dream, it is only a dream, and the violinist would shudder and go back to sleep, but often the rest of us would not—disquieted by the anguish and fear we had heard in the shouts of Le Boulaire, who we knew otherwise as a calm and peaceful man.

What do you dream? the composer asked him one day.

Le Boulaire shook his head.

I don't know any longer what I dream and what I remember, or, of what I remember, what memories are my own. When I was a child in the
Great War, I lived for many years at the orphanage because my father could not take care of me and my mother had died. I remember that before my father returned I watched the men come home from the front—their faces disfigured, their bodies torn. I would have nightmares that my own father returned and I didn't recognize him. Then one day he did return. Of course I recognized him right away—but he did not recognize me, for he was blind. He had the most vivid memories of the war, though, and when, on Sundays, I was permitted to visit him, he would tell me stories that would make my blood run cold, and always in the most colorful detail. Now when I dream, I see those same images— those same details and vibrant colors.

F
OR SOME REASON
,
AFTER
the return of the clarinetist, Le Boulaire's nightmares got worse.

Shhhh … shhhh … it is only a dream, the composer would warn. Do not wake Henri, he needs his rest.

But it was not long before Henri was his usual self again—stronger than all of us. He even delighted in recounting the tale of his escape.

In the day we hid, he said, and at night we walked. Over five hundred and fifty kilometers—in the sleet and snow. Imagine! We were only twenty kilometers from the Czech border when we were captured. That close!

O
NE NIGHT, THE VIOLINIST
had a particularly violent dream. When finally we managed to drag him from sleep, he appeared confused, as though he didn't know us.

Everything is all right. You are here, safe, among friends, the composer said.

Later that same night we were woken by a siren and ordered into the driving rain. A radio had been found in one of the barracks and the Germans were eager to punish all of us for the offense. After a while I could no longer feel my feet, they were so numb with cold, and I thought I would fall in the mud. Somehow, I remained standing. Then, at the first light of dawn, we heard five shots ring out in the Czech and Polish
camps. You French, said a German officer strolling between our lines as the rain continued to beat down, have been cooperative so far, and we appreciate that. But, he said—and gestured into the distance, in the direction from which the shots had come—the same is in store for you, if that should change.

Finally we were allowed back inside, where we massaged our feet and legs until the feeling returned to them. As usual, it was painful at first, and during that time I always wished they might have instead remained numb.