Goosebumps broke out over Éva’s arms at Patrik’s words. “Secret? What secret of yours could put us in harm’s way?” What was Patrik talking about? With him it was always secrets and lies and more secrets. Had she ever really known him? Could she trust that Zofia had written the note of her own free will and not under duress?
The air raid sirens picked that moment to wail.
“Ignore it.”
“Igen, I will. But I’m not going anywhere or doing anything with you until you answer my question. What secret are you still hiding?”
He faced her, his eyes so familiar. She could still read them, read the pleading, the begging for trust in them. “It doesn’t make a difference in what is going on now. You still have to leave.”
“Not until I have my answer.”
“You will. Soon. I promise. But we need to go. We don’t have a moment to lose.” He swung his gaze to each person in the room, sending each of them wide-eyed glances, unspoken words of urgency tinged with panic.
Anya wiped her hands on her pristine apron. “We have to get downstairs before the planes get here. Hurry now, all of you. We’ll sort the rest out later.”
Éva scurried toward the basement steps. So what if Patrik had told them part of the truth? He was withholding information. He wasn’t trustworthy. How did they know the note was from Zofia? How did they know there weren’t German trucks waiting outside to cart them away to those unspeakable places?
“Stop, everyone. We must leave this moment.”
Patrik’s command pulled her to a halt. She stood breathless on the steps. “If we go outside now, wouldn’t that provide the Nazis you say are after us the perfect opportunity to nab us?” He did say it was the Germans they had to fear, didn’t he? Nem, he didn’t. “They are the ones after us, right?”
“Get a bag packed.” Patrik’s voice was firm and sure. Not commanding but serious.
Éva’s determination faltered. If he was telling the truth about Zofia and the danger they were in, they would be wise to listen. From what he said, their lives were in jeopardy.
But if he was lying, they could be in another kind of danger.
She gazed at Apu and motioned him into the kitchen, dishes that needed to be washed stacked next to the sink, dinner’s leftovers still on the stove. “What do you think? What should we do? Stay or go? How do we know what’s right?”
Apu scrubbed his stubble-covered cheek. “What do you think?”
“Everything in me wants to believe him. But so much of me is scared to. He betrayed me. Could he be betraying me again? He could also be trying to save my life. It’s like trying to play a sonata without the score. How do you know which notes are the right ones?”
With a gentleness that brought back a flood of childhood memories, Apu pulled her close and stroked her hair. Like he had after Károly’s betrayal. “Where does your hope lie, sweetheart?”
She nestled against his chest, a place she had always been safe and secure. If she left with Patrik, would she ever see Apu again? “Hope for what?”
“Your hope for this life and the one to come?”
At his inquiry, the answer to the first catechism question she had memorized as a young child sprang to mind. “That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.”
“You answer without error, but do you know what those words mean and believe them deep inside, in the very core of your soul?”
“Of course.” She’d believed all her life, since she was a little girl. There wasn’t a time when God hadn’t been her heavenly Father.
“Then that is the hope you must rely on.”
“You aren’t answering my question. What do we do?”
“I have given you your answer.” Apu kissed the top of her head and released her. Hand in hand, they strolled to the living room. Ernő wasn’t with Anya.
“He’s gone to pack, foolish boy. He’ll put his own life at risk just to see his wife.” Anya frowned.
So, her brother had decided to take the risk. Why wouldn’t he? It was worth it for one more minute with Zofia.
If Patrik was indeed hiding her, as he said. “How do we know you didn’t force her to write the note?”
Patrik sighed. “Please, get ready to go. There isn’t time to waste. You just have to trust me.”
The sirens screamed their nightly call. Overhead, the rumble of Allied planes intensified.
Anya grasped the wood back of the settee. “They’re coming to this area tonight. We have to get to the basement. Now.”
Patrik shook his head hard. “Not until Éva packs. As soon as the all-clear sounds, we must be on our way. I can’t stress how imperative it is.”
Anya grasped Éva by her upper arm and attempted to drag her to the basement door. “She’s coming downstairs.”
“Nem, I’m not.” The decision solidified in Éva’s mind as she spoke the words. “I’ll go with Patrik. Give me five minutes.” If he wasn’t telling the truth about Zofia, she could always return home. Couldn’t she?
She scurried to her room and yanked her suitcase from underneath her bed. Apu had bought it for her when he took her to Paris to hear clarinetist Louis Cahuzac play. Just the two of them had traveled there. Such a wonderful memory to carry with her. One to cherish, to hold close to her heart.
She flung open the wardrobe doors and pulled out several dresses, some lighter in weight, others heavier. Who knew how long it would take them to get out of the country? And what was Palestine like?
Palestine. The thought of it made her sick at heart. Would she ever come home to Hungary? From this moment on, her future, the one she had planned to the last detail, would be entirely different.
She stashed her underthings and both of her coats in the case and then climbed on the bed to reach the shelf Apu had built above it.
Here sat all her mementos, little snapshots of her life. The awards and ribbons she’d won for her clarinet playing. They couldn’t come. But she grabbed the silver-framed portraits of her parents and of the grandparents she never knew.
A few toiletries filled the small case. Then she glimpsed her clarinet in its black case on the floor, a stack of music beside it.
Walking away from it would be like walking away from a part of her body. Impossible to do. She grabbed it and, after one last look at her cheery pink room, shut the door and made her way down the hall.
Ernő stood ready to go at the door, his suitcase in one hand, his own clarinet in the other. Without their music, neither of them would survive.
Patrik watched her and lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smile. She turned away.
Anya bustled to the door and shoved in front of Ernő. “Now can we go to the shelter?” The drone of planes almost drowned out her words. “They’re on top of us!”
Éva couldn’t hear anything other than the whine of the engines, the vibrations shaking the entire building. “We have to get out of here.”
An ear-splitting, head-splitting whistle.
Silence.
The air sucked from the room.
And a deafening roar.
Zofia sat on the tufted bench at Patrik’s spectacular ebony grand piano. Just sitting here and being this close to the music helped her to relax her shoulders and take a deep breath.
Patrik had been gone for a long while. When he left, he’d said he had important business but didn’t go into details. He didn’t mention how long he’d be gone. These days, you never knew.
The peace and tranquility of the place washed over her. For now, she was safe. Once again she’d come too close to being caught. How long would it be before the Gestapo closed in?
She stroked the lacquered wood, so smooth and soft beneath her hands. Even without her fingers on the keyboard, the music flowed through her body.
She lifted the lid and lost herself in the sensation of the cool ivory keys. Though no sound came from the instrument, in her mind she played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata with its rolling left hand and its singing right hand. The C# minor key resonated in her bones.
Along with her, it wept for the life that once was but was no more.
She switched to “Clair de Lune,” a softer, quieter tune. One she and Ernő might dance to. A calm lake to float in.
The wailing of the air raid sirens outside interrupted the serenity of the piece and sent Zofia crashing back to the here and now.
Since she wasn’t supposed to be here, she couldn’t go to the shelter with the building’s other residents. She had no other choice but to remain in the flat. Overhead came the all-too-familiar rumble of Russian planes.
First the Germans claimed her country, then the Russians stood on the eastern door. She gave free rein to her fingers to fly just above the keyboard, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies swirling in her brain, the music deep and dark and so very eastern European.
Perfect.
The roar of plane engines advanced, soaring above this neighborhood tonight. For many weeks, they’d been spared the wrath of Soviet bombs. Tonight it appeared they wouldn’t be.
A barrage of whistles broke off her concentration, and the music in her head halted. Heart in her throat, she dove under the piano for all the protection it would provide.
The vibrations from the explosions shook the Baroque-style building. Though it had stood for a hundred years, it might not survive the night.
She covered her ears, willing the songs to come to mind again. They refused. Even with her ears plugged, the kabooms were loud enough to hurt.
Then one bone-splitting whistle. A moment of silence. A terrible, jarring boom-bang.
The floor beneath Zofia shuddered. The building swayed. Time hung suspended. She braced herself to fall to the cellar.
The lights flickered and extinguished.
The dwelling stilled. Time restarted.
In a rush, she expelled the breath she’d been holding.
Where had that bomb landed? Very nearby. She crawled from underneath the piano, stretched out her stiff legs, then staggered to the window.
With no electricity, she could open the blackout shades without the worry of spilling light into the street for the bombers to find her. She pressed herself against the length of glass. Blazes ringed her. The clang of responding fire trucks rang in the darkness.
She turned in the direction of the Bognárs’ home. Her home. Flames shot from the buildings in that section of the city, just blocks from Patrik’s flat.
Had they been bombed? She had to know if they had come to any harm. If any of them had been injured. Or …
Ernő, Ernő. She raked her fingers down the glass. If only she could know what had happened to him. Had their home been hit? Judging by the crimson sky above, it might well have been.
She turned from the window without bothering to draw the drapes and padded across the living room in her stocking feet, not caring when she tread on a squeaky floorboard.
God, give me a sign. Something to let me know he’s not injured. Or worse.
She rubbed her expanding belly. “Oh, little one, why did you pick such a time as this to be born into a world gone mad?” Her child may never meet his father. Her child might never live to draw a breath.
Nem, nem. She couldn’t allow that to happen. She had to do everything in her power to ensure her child’s safety.
And let his father know of his existence.
Patrik was wrong. Staying hidden, away from Ernő, wasn’t protecting anyone. They’d both been in the hands of the Nazis. Ernő had suffered brutality while in their custody.
When she and Ernő had married, they promised to support each other in good times and bad. Sickness and health. Though the vows said nothing about war and peace, it applied.
She had been wrong to leave her husband, wrong not to be at his side, fighting this oppression together.
Before she could change her mind, she grabbed her still-packed valise and slipped on her sensible lace-up oxfords. The all-clear siren blasted as she stepped from the flat. Everyone would be coming from the basement now. She slid back into the apartment and waited an agonizing fifteen minutes. The flickering light from nearby blazes illuminated the minute hand on her watch.
She had to know. Now. She slipped from the building.
Chaos reigned on the street. Rescue workers, the injured, the survivors, all clamored about. She raced down the road, dodging the litter of broken glass, crumbled bricks, and other things too horrible to think about.
On the Bognárs’ street, just a few blocks from where she started, the destruction was much worse. The bombs had blown the facades from many buildings, exposing living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms. Naked lives on display for the world to see. Through her splintered neighborhood she sprinted, until … nem, nem!
She slid to a stop in front of her residence.
What was left of it.
Zofia dropped to her knees, covered her face, and sobbed.