The Butterfly and the Violin (26 page)

“I know.”

“Then why?” She chanced keeping her eyes connected with his. It didn’t matter now. They glossed over anyway. “I thought we were friends. Maybe I was wrong.”

“I was trying to keep distance between us.” He sighed and
raked his fingers through his hair. “Adele, more is going on here than you realize.”

“Fine. Then help me understand what it is.”

Vladimir shook his head. “I can’t tell you. Not now.”

“That’s not an answer. Especially not when you show up, unannounced, while I just happen to be on a trip to Munich. That’s a bit odd. I think you owe me an explanation.”

She notched her chin a bit higher in the air, and though she knew her voice had quivered ever so slightly, she waited for an answer. Instead, he turned his gaze to a point out over the skyline beyond her. She wondered what could have lost him in thought at such a moment but kept silent.

“Do you remember that night at the dance hall, Adele?”

How could she possibly forget her birthday? She still had the gift of the butterfly clip tucked away. He may not have asked her to dance, but for the walk home, it was worth it.

“Of course. It changed everything for Austria, didn’t it?” And for her. She’d hoped that maybe it had changed things for him too.

He shook his head. “No. Not the start of the war. I’m referring to when I held you in confidence that night. Do you remember what I told you about my friends? The shopkeepers’ sons I’d grown up with and what was happening to Jews in the city?”

She nodded.

“Well, that’s why I’m here.”

“Vladimir, you’re not making any sense.”

He breathed in deep. “Can I trust you, Adele? My friend. Can I really trust you?”

Her heart wanted to scream
Yes!
Of course he could trust her. But with what?

“Your father can never hear about this. If he did—”

“You can trust me,” she whispered and gave what she hoped would be a confident nod. “With anything. I won’t judge you.”

“There are Jews left in the city and”—he looked shrouded in vulnerability as he shoved his hands in his pants pockets and gave her a wary look—“I’m helping them to get out.”

Adele’s heart skipped a beat.

No matter how badly she wanted to, she couldn’t find words. Never in a million years had she suspected that Vladimir would be involved in something so dangerous.

When she didn’t break the silence between them, he continued. “I kept away so you wouldn’t be implicated. I was protecting you.” Vladimir kicked at a pebble on the ground. “Please. Say something.”

“I . . . I suppose I understand what you’re telling me.” Adele shook her head. Every other man she knew would have been proud about such an admission. It held the note of courage, to say the least. But Vladimir? He was humble about it. Always quiet and unpretentious and able to get straight into her protected heart. “But you do realize what the penalty is if you’re caught?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

Rumors were flying all over the city. If anyone was to hide or help a Jew, the penalty was severe, up to and including death.

“I know what’s happening,” Adele assured him, “what the world is saying about Germany and Austria. Winston Churchill gave a speech this week. He asked the people of Britain to stay strong. To have courage in the face of the Nazi regime. He said it would be their finest hour. Do you think that’s true?”

“How do you know what Churchill said?”

“My friends at the university,” she said, feeling sorrow weighing down her shoulders. “Everyone was talking about it. I think I was the only one who didn’t favor bombs falling on London. I don’t think war is the answer for anything.”

“Maybe not, but we have to respond when something is unjust, Adele. We can’t be content to watch at the same time we
condemn. To condemn is to stand up in the face of a wrong and fight it. We must pick a side.”

“I want to pick a side. More than anything. And my parents don’t know it, but I’m questioning things myself.” She reached down in her handbag and pulled out a swatch of red fabric. “I refuse to wear it.”

She tossed the armband without care and watched as it floated down to the dirt at their feet. It landed with the Nazi symbol staring back up at them.

She lifted her chin up in the air. “I’m not as weak as you might think.”

“Ah, Butterfly.” He moved forward, one heartbeat at a time, and stood with the tips of his shoes touching hers. He brushed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “That’s the last thing you could be in my eyes.”

Even in the summer heat, she shivered.

“So, why are you in Munich then?”

“We’re helping a family escape. They emigrated from Vienna to hide in Germany some time ago, hoping they could make it through to Switzerland.”

“So you mean . . . there are others doing this with you?”

“Yes.”

He’d just confessed an act of treason that was punishable by death if the Germans found out. It was shocking, but somehow it made her love him all the more.

They’d talked of God. They’d talked of faith and the Christian life they both wanted to lead. But this? Vladimir’s actions spoke of someone who actually lived it rather than talked of a life’s journey dedicated to Christ.

She paused, now wondering if she could trust him with her life too.

“And the only reason you’re here is to see them out of the city?”

“Not the only reason.” He shook his head, his eyes probing hers, sending chills down her spine. He pulled her into an embrace and she allowed her cheek to feel the warmth of his heartbeat.

He pulled back and whispered, his mouth warming her forehead with a kiss. “I can’t see you anywhere but onstage anymore.” He brushed curled fingertips across the apple of her cheek. “I came to hear my Butterfly play her sweet violin.”

She swallowed hard, hoping beyond hope that he meant it and had traveled to Germany to keep a distant eye on her as well. To sit in the audience of the concert hall and want only to be near to her. The sentiment was staggering.

“If that’s true, then I have something to confess to you too.”

He seemed taken aback but stood before her, waiting for her to spill whatever it was she felt compelled to say. “Okay.”

“I know of some Jews left in Vienna, and I want to help them.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

August 14, 1943

A
dele remembered how it had all started that night in Munich, how she’d given up everything to follow her heart. And now, as she trudged back along the dusty road to the music block, she could think of nothing else but how her world had changed.

By autumn, the musical troupe in Auschwitz-Birkenau had become a full-fledged orchestra. It was a world away from her youthful playing with the college troupe in Munich. Here the rehearsal schedule was much more stringent, the absolutism and demand for perfection the only line drawn against death. The one solace was that the orchestra was no longer required to work in Canada during the day. Instead, they were afforded the practice time whenever they were not playing for the laborers marching out in the morning and those returning at night—or for the arrival of trains.

The Nazis had begun to transport a steady influx of Hungarian Jews in late spring. Whether or not taxed resources had anything to do with it, it was known that by summer the overwhelming majority of these people were sent straight to the gas chambers. Adele watched this with a numbing horror—the systematic parting of people to the right or left, those deemed able
to work versus those deemed unable. Her soul hurt, being forced to watch families ripped apart, to see the trudging steps the doomed took toward their fate and only be able to let her violin weep with them through it all.

She’d cried during every selection. She’d prayed too, pouring out to God in words not spoken but rather sent up from her wailing violin. But for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, the deaths continued day after agonizing day. This warm August morning was no exception. She had but moments to fix her violin and run back to the platform to play for another transport.

“Omara, I snapped a string.” Adele burst into the block, expecting to find her friend ready to step out and join them at the gate. What she didn’t anticipate was to find someone else in the block with her. Omara stood huddled at a plank bed with another woman, their heads bent over the straw mattress together.

They both stirred uncomfortably when she entered.

“I’m sorry but I snapped a string and—” Adele noticed that the women made an effort to quickly tuck something out of sight.

“You won’t have time to change a string now. You know where the replacement instruments are, Adele. Go and fetch what you need.” Omara stood with her back to the bed, blocking the view of whatever they’d been doing.

Adele felt uncomfortable about what looked like secrecy, but turned toward their cache of instruments as instructed without questioning.

“Then I’ll just leave my violin and take the extra.” She placed her violin in its box and tucked it under her bed.

Omara nodded. “Good. We can re-string yours when we return for midday rehearsals.”

“We’re playing at the platform again this morning . . . ,” Adele said, the finality of the task hanging on the end of the trailed-off sentence. She grabbed the case and, knowing that her feet should be swift, hurried toward the door. The guards had been irritated
that she had to return anyway. It certainly wouldn’t do to dawdle in her return.

“Does Alma know where you are?”

Adele nodded. Their new conductor, Alma Rosé, was the one who had sent her back. “Yes. She expects me to return with you.”

She looked at the other woman there in the block with Omara, her eyes appearing purposeful in diverting Adele’s glance in her direction. She looked the same as any prisoner, with head shaved and a uniform splashed with an unforgiving layer of dirt. But if Adele had to guess, she thought she recognized Helene, one of the women who worked at Crematorium IV. What she was doing in the music block on this particular day was anybody’s guess.

“I will be along shortly, Adele.”

She paused, unsure if she should return alone. Was it safe? Would the guards think Omara was sick and quarantine them all, or worse?

“But what do I tell Alma? If I don’t return with you, the guards could take out the punishment on us both.”

“I will be right behind you.”

Omara seemed to grow impatient with the questioning. “Hurry now, Adele. I won’t be responsible for the beating they’ll issue if you’re late. It’s risky enough to come back because of a snapped string.”

Adele did as she was told and tucked the violin under her arm. With a swift glance back, she met the eyes of her friend for a split second before the door closed between them.

Marta was the first to notice that she’d returned alone. Adele shot her a look as she slid into her seat and began readying her violin for the next song.

Always the consummate professional, Alma was strict about starting on time. In spite of an uncontrollable circumstance like a snapped string, she required that every musician be on time.
Knowing this, Adele looked around, watching for Omara’s form to appear over the hill and hurry to the train platform.

“Psst! Adele!” Marta was trying to get her attention from a row away. Adele turned to see her mouth the words “
Where’s
Omara?
”

Adele shook her head. Marta shifted in her chair and looked over at Fränze, who was clutching her flute a few seats away. Several of the other girls noticed too but said nothing. One of the other bass players picked up the cello and sat in the chair in the back, preparing to take Omara’s usual notes as her own. And so it seemed nothing else remained to be said.

The conductor raised her hand, calling them to attention.

As always, Adele’s eyes sailed over to the back row. With a habitual glance to the seat Vladimir would have occupied had they been playing a concert in Vienna, she set about her duty. She played as an automaton would, with no depth of feeling, no love for the music. There were only fingers that pressed strings, a bow that soared over the instrument.

God.
She breathed the prayers out as she always did, through gritted teeth.
God? How can I be forced to play like this? Please don’t
hate me for doing it.

Adele swallowed hard, relief covering her when she saw Omara’s form appear over the hill and hurry in their direction.

Please forgive us, Lord . . . for playing for them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO