LISA SAT nervously at the mirror in the dressing room of the venerable Wigmore Hall, drumming her fingers on the countertop between the bottles of face paint, eyeliner, and rouge, and tried to sit still as her sister applied a bold brown stripe above her eyelashes.
“Ooh, perfect! You look just like Rita Hayworth!” said Rosie, putting on the last dab and returning the brush to the table. Rosie then checked her own makeup in the mirror and wiped a smudge from above her red lips. Life and color had returned to her older sister’s face; she looked as sophisticated as Lisa remembered her.
But it was Lisa who was the knockout tonight. She shimmered in her red gown as she stood up and straightened the dark seams of her silk stockings and tried to calm her wildly beating heart.
Sonia ran into the dressing room from the stage, where she had been peeking out from the wings at the gathering crowd.
“It’s almost full!” she cried excitedly.
“Don’t go out there! They’ll see you.”
“No, they won’t!”
“Yes, they will!” Lisa insisted.
“Relax, the two of you, you’re making me nervous,” said Rosie intervening.
The ornate turn-of-the-century hall, with its red velvet seats, was filling up quickly. Rosie had invited every person she met—people on the street, the butcher at the corner—every last soul in the beauty parlor. She knew instinctively it was important to have a packed concert hall for the full effect of this important night. And of course, the students and faculty of the Royal Academy would also be there.
She had also insisted that Lisa invite the nice French soldier whose address she had come across in Lisa’s night table.
“He’s probably in Paris, for heaven’s sake,” Lisa had said. “You said you’d invite him, so you have to invite him! I’ll pay for the telegram. You never know. People get around these days.”
Lisa knew he would never come, she’d met him almost a year ago, but it didn’t hurt to dream.
Mrs. Cohen had organized an early dinner for everyone at the hostel so they could get to the center of London at seven o’clock sharp. She didn’t want anyone’s stomach growling during the concert. She helped the youngest ones tie their ties and comb their hair, then clucked and scolded them out of the house at five-thirty, just in case the bus was late.
Lisa’s mind raced as she adjusted the straps of her gown. She thought for a moment about how much had changed since her childhood fantasies of playing concerts for Viennese royalty. Instead of those adolescent dreams, she tried to focus on this audience, filled with the good people of England, the working people as well as the rich people, the friends as well as the strangers. There would be no dukes and counts, she chided herself.
But this was just a speech she gave herself to calm down. It wasn’t working, however, and her heart started beating faster and faster. Her sisters wished her well one last time, and she was left alone. The hush was falling; the curtain was rising.
Lisa walked elegantly onto the stage and was greeted by enthusiastic applause, as she sat at the nine-foot Steinway grand. Its ebony finish was polished to perfection; its lid was fully open, reflecting the gleaming inner workings of the strings.
With a subtle adjustment of her posture, she brought a hush over the audience. Once all was silent, Lisa waited a few breaths until the air of expectation was almost unbearable, then took another deep breath and went inside herself. When she felt the audience disappear, she lifted her hands in a graceful arch and began.
Her first chords were somber but eloquent; she was starting, as she had at the audition, with Beethoven’s Pathétique. This time, however, her opening was more confident and mature; she had the courage to start quietly, as her mother had often counseled. She began her story with the pianissimo that recalled the quiet despair of the agonizing separation from her family these past six years. The music deepened into thunderous chords retelling the years spent defiantly warding off the Nazi attacks. Lisa searched within herself and found the colors and shadings to express the depths of her longings and the heights of her triumphs.
As the intensity began to build, she sent her prayer across the footlights into the hearts of the people who had gathered together. The beauty of the music entered their souls, from the refugee to the barrister, from the garment worker to the RAF pilot, from the Resistance hero to the dockworker, and helped to guide them through their deepest, inexpressible emotions.
Mrs. Cohen’s eyes were shining and devout as she allowed herself to remember and mourn her husband and sister, surely lost. Hans listened with a joy that surpassed that of any moment he had spent with Lisa in the cellar, the music bringing warmth to his darkness.
In the simple, dignified melody of the Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Mrs. Canfield faced the loss of her son, John, reliving the images of his infancy and childhood and hearing in the music the heroism of his service as a medic. In Mrs. Canfield’s mind, Lisa imbued the regal tones with her son’s life story, one hand taking over from the other as she made the nostalgic notes evoke his life, lost but quietly remembered.
Gina and Gunter held tightly to one another and felt the excitement of their future in the nocturne’s tender passages, their hearts rejoicing in the passion of Lisa’s playing.
Mrs. McRae, Mr. Dimble, Mrs. Floyd, Mr. Hardesty, all of them in their way shared feelings they could never express in words. Lisa wove their stories through the Chopin and the Rachmaninoff, the music becoming the tale of so many in war-torn London.
She relived her own joys and tragedies, her terrible journey to London, and her passage to adulthood. She mourned her lost parents in the tragic tolling of the bells of the Rachmaninoff prelude; then, from its majestic progression of chords, she built a hymn of gratitude—to her parents’ love, to their wise devotion, and to every mother and father who had the courage to save their child by saying good-bye.
When enough tears had been shed in the audience, Lisa began the final piece, Chopin’s heroic polonaise. This was Lisa’s tour de force, and its thunderous exuberance raised the spirits of all assembled as row after row of shining eyes relived their proudest, bravest moments—their courage under the bombing, their unshakable resolve, their ultimate victory.
There were many seconds of awed silence, then the audience erupted in tumultuous applause. Lisa stood up and the applause redoubled. She looked into the audience and took bow after bow before leaving the stage and the glory of the spotlight.
The scene in the dressing room was utterly chaotic. The press of people included all the hostel children, shaking Lisa’s hand one by one, ten women from the factory, Mr. Hardesty and the staff of the Jewish Refugee Agency, Mrs. Canfield and five Quaker brethren, and, of course, Sonia and Rosie and Leo and Esther.
Then came Mabel Floyd, towing a well-dressed impresario, who congratulated her profusely and spoke loudly to be heard above the din: “Your professor tells me you play a wonderful Grieg piano concerto!”
Hans sat on a chair near Lisa and drank in the sound of the compliments, nodding his head in delight. Next to him stood Gina and Gunter. When Mrs. Cohen had finished escorting the younger children of the hostel through the informal receiving line, she asked them to stay back a minute while she said her own congratulations.
The matron watched the gracious young woman in the red gown thanking the well-wishers for their compliments and pulled out her embroidered handkerchief. The beautiful vision was too much for her.
“When did this happen? You are no longer children!” she exclaimed.
Lisa, Gina, and Gunter took her by the hand. “But we are,” said Lisa. “We will always be the children of Willesden Lane.”
At the stage door, behind another crush of well-wishers, stood a handsome French Resistance soldier wearing a discreet medal on the lapel of his uniform. He was waiting for the crowd to thin and was carrying a rare bottle of Mumm’s champagne and a dozen red roses.
Rosie saw him first and, guessing who he must be, brought him over to her radiant sister. Lisa couldn’t believe her eyes; she had tried to forget the image of this handsome soldier, it seemed so unlikely that they would ever meet again.
He put his hands over his heart, as he had before, to show how much he loved the music, then handed her the red roses with a card that read: “With fervent admiration, Michel Golabek.”
Lisa clasped his hand and brought him into the group of well-wishers forming a tight circle around her. Through eyes brimming with tears, she surveyed the group that meant everything in the world to her, from Gina and Gunter to Hans and Mrs. Cohen, to her beautiful sisters, Sonia and Rosie, with Leo and Esther just behind, and now this handsome stranger who she instinctively felt would be part of her future.
Then, elated by the love and admiration surrounding her, she suddenly sensed an additional presence and was overwhelmed by a feeling of closeness to her mother. It was as if Malka were watching from above. Her heart filled with joy as she realized she had done it. She had fulfilled the promise she had made to her mother. She had held on to her music.
Lisa Jura, 1947.