She was still copying music two days later and the Frenchman was once again working on the roof. She heard the tap at the window and looked over to see his head pop down and pop up again almost as quickly. She turned to see what he had seen: the door opening and the Sturmbannführer who had rescued her on the ramp coming in, flakes of fresh snow gleaming on his greatcoat and cap. He took off both. Knocked them free of snow, scarcely glancing at her.
She clasped her hands in front of her the way Magda habitually did. It spoke piety. Or if not piety, obedience. It told the right lie. He noticed.
He looked from her to the cello propped on its stand.
“Does it play?”
“It does, sir.”
“Then prove me right.”
It was a momentary déjà vu. He was older and far superior in rank to the Hauptsturmführer who had put her on the train, but his manner was almost identically lackadaisical. As though all this was nothing much to do with him—just a job like any other—and that he’d been happier and more purposeful in some university or other before the war, teaching theology or art history, and if he stuck you on a train to Auschwitz or put a gun to your head it was all a bit of a bore and he might just as well have signed up for a folk song society as the National Socialist Workers’ Party.
She cradled the cello and played him the Kodaly she had first played for Viktor Rosen the day they had met. It was miserable, and she felt he deserved misery.
When she had finished he said, “You cannot be happy with the tone, surely?”
Happy—now there was a word devoid of all meaning in the present context.
She told him what she had told Alma Rosé. “At home I had a far finer cello, a Mattio Goffriler.”
“And where is it now?”
“I suppose it might well be where I left it. In my parents’ apartment.”
“And you are from where? Vienna?”
“Yes sir, Vienna.”
“And your name?”
“Méret Voytek.”
She dearly wanted him to ask why she was where she was—a chance to explain herself and the mistake they had made. But she knew she could not plead and had to be asked.
He didn’t ask. He stood up and slipped his arms through the sleeves of his greatcoat.
“I am Sturmbannführer Graf Galen Furst von Schönbeck. Be ready at seven on Friday evening, wear your uniform, and this time play something German.”