Warsaw, early 1940s
Inevitably, the day came when the Trust issued Yan with a definite directive to close the Chopin Library. Any musicians or staff who might still be in the city were to be politely dismissed, and the building made as secure as possible. If any kind of check could be kept on the Library – if anyone trustworthy was still in the area and could perhaps go in sometimes – that would be greatly appreciated, but it was acknowledged that it might be impossible.
Yan had no choice but to comply. Going about the necessary and deeply depressing tasks, he wondered what the future held for this place – whether the Ivory Salon would ever be lit to glowing life and filled with music again. He wondered, as well, if Warsaw itself would ever be the same. It was tearing at his heart to see the once-beautiful city being ruthlessly partitioned by the Nazis, and to hear about the creation of ghettos for anyone with Jewish connections. People did not exactly hide in their homes – Yan hoped it would never come to that point – but they certainly kept off the streets as much as possible. It was starting to seem as if no one was truly safe any longer. People who could leave – and who had families or friends to go to – left. Those who remained locked their doors every night, shuttering their windows and turning the gas jets low so as not to attract attention.
But there were some who remained. One of these was Anatol, who had been the Library’s chef. He had found tiny dining rooms near to the Street of Music, and had actually been able to open a small restaurant.
‘I refuse to leave my city,’ he told Yan. ‘For where would I go? I will stay here, and I will preserve my family’s tradition of providing good food. Always providing there is food for me to cook,’ he added, pragmatically.
Of Tanwen there was no trace. Yan had called at her lodgings, but the thin, dark-haired woman who owned the house said that Miss Malek had left. She was sorry that she did not have any address, but if she were to get in touch, a message could be sent to Mr Orzek. Yan gave her the address of his rooms, then, as an afterthought, said he and a couple of the remaining musicians frequently ate at Anatol’s restaurant, and that he could usually be found there. This seemed to interest her, and she looked at him carefully for a moment. Probably it was only curiosity about people who were attempting to scrape out a life in the city though.
His memory of the night with Tanwen in the Ivory Salon was still confused. At times her face blurred into the features of his lost Romanov. Several times, in his own rooms, he unwrapped the miniature stolen from Ipatiev House all those years ago, and sat for a long time studying the gaze of the girl whose name he had never known. The painted features were as clear as they had ever been, and the memory was as clear, too.
Bruno, and rather unexpectedly, Alicja, had both remained in the city.
‘Only because I haven’t anywhere else to go’ said Bruno, cheerfully, and Alicja observed, sadly, that you did not abandon a place in its death throes. ‘Warsaw is doomed – it will become a lost, dead world,’ she said. ‘But I shall compose a requiem to it.’
‘It’s not dead yet,’ said Yan, angrily.
Other things were dead, though. Links with his own past were being snapped cruelly off. And among them was one link that Yan had desperately hoped would never break.
He had just finished a solitary supper at Anatol’s, when Anatol came over to his table, his face sombre. ‘Yan, there is someone you must come with me to see.’
‘Now? Who is it?’ Yan instantly thought: Tanwen? And was aware again of the familiar clash of emotion and confusion.
But as they went together through several of the side streets, skirting the Library’s own square, he recognized the area.
‘I know where you’re taking me,’ he said to Anatol.
‘Yes. You come here often, I know. I, also.’
The room was at the very top of the house, and there were views across the city. How many times had Yan sat in this room, looking out of that window as night stole over the city, seeing the silhouettes of the buildings dark against the sky? Talking, reminiscing, speculating. Playing music …
The evening light filtered into the room, and from the bed, a soft voice said, ‘Yan. My dear, exceptional boy.’
Yan said, ‘Father Gregory.’
He went forward, and as he took the thin hand with the skin that was now almost transparent, Father Gregory said, ‘I’m dying.’
The thing Yan did not believe he would ever understand was that there was no sadness in Gregory and no fear. His life was ending, and he would be grateful to hold on to the hands of his two dear friends, Yan and Anatol, until those other Hands took over from them. But there was no fear.
Yan said he would bring a doctor, but Gregory tapped the left side of his chest and shook his head.
‘I’m beyond doctors.’ His hand, lying loosely in Yan’s, tightened, and he said, ‘But there is something … The music … Yan, you must put my mind at rest – please give me your word that you destroyed it?’
The dark eyes, still filled with intelligence and such compassion, were fixed very directly on Yan. The moment stretched out, then Yan said, ‘Yes, Father. I destroyed it.’
‘Ah.’ Gregory seemed to relax against the pillows. ‘An old man’s obsession,’ he said, as if apologizing. ‘But it’s been in my mind so much these last days …’ He looked at Anatol, who was sitting near the window, listening. ‘Anatol knows how much,’ he said.
‘We have talked of the music,’ said Anatol. ‘I understand about it – or as much as anyone can understand about it. I know it’s recognized as the “Traitor’s Music”, and as such should never be written down, because if it were to be found—’
‘Especially in these times,’ said Father Gregory. ‘If the oppressors were to find it—’
‘Would it be of any interest to them, though?’ said Yan. ‘What use could they make of it?’
‘They will make use of anything they think they can turn against us,’ said Anatol. ‘Music that is written down – music with a sinister history – is a tangible thing for them to seize on. They would find a way of making it into a weapon against us. But if the music is only in the mind, in the memory, then they cannot reach it.’
Yan’s eyes went to the small, rather battered piano in the corner. He and Father Gregory had seen it in the corner of a dim old shop near to the Street of Music. Even dull and unpolished as it had been then, it had attracted their attention. Yan knew that was largely because of its music stand. It was the most unusual and the most beautiful music stand he had ever seen on a piano. It was carved into the shape of a bird – a smooth and lovely bird, positioned as if it had alighted for a brief moment to clasp the music, and as if, once that music had been played, it would take flight again.
Gregory, staring at it, had said, very softly, ‘It’s a firebird. The creature that survived when the world was destroyed by fire and flood, but that revived and lived again.’
Yan said, ‘Allegories in all places.’
Gregory smiled, but only said, ‘In some cultures the firebird is recognized as the phoenix – even as a representation of divine power. The Jews teach that the phoenix was the only creature in the Garden of Eden not to taste the forbidden fruit. For that, it was rewarded with immortality.’
Yan’s mind had gone back to his childhood – to Katya telling him of the firebird legend, but he only said, ‘Stravinsky’s music for The Firebird ballet is very beautiful.’
He had known that no matter its cost, he must get the instrument for Gregory, and he had done so that same day, brushing aside the Father’s protests, not caring if the purchase completely drained his small bank balance. Gregory had polished the scarred wood until the firebird music stand glowed and looked almost golden, and Yan had found a piano tuner who had said the instrument had a beautiful mellow tone, that it was a sin and a scandal that it had been left to rot somewhere, and Yan had done a splendid thing in rescuing it.
Now, looking at the piano, Yan understood that Father Gregory must have played the ‘Dark Cadence’ for Anatol on it. An old man’s memory of the past, or a shrewd man wanting to preserve a strange music legend? It did not matter. What mattered was that, facing death, he had wanted Yan’s assurance that the tangible evidence of the legend – the score given by Vadim all those years ago – no longer existed. Yan was glad he had been able to meet Gregory’s look straight, and tell him the music score no longer existed.
He and Anatol sat quietly by the bed as darkness stole over the city. Once, Anatol went down to the tiny kitchen to warm some milk, to which he added a spoonful of brandy.
‘Shall I meet my God slightly inebriated?’ said Gregory, the gentle, ironic smile showing briefly.
‘God wouldn’t mind,’ said Anatol.
Beyond the windows the darkness hung over the city, but at last a faint, hopeful dawn began to streak the sky. At first there were only slender threads of light, but, as Yan watched, the threads became swirls and streaks, rose and gold. It was then that Father Gregory gave a small sigh, and took his hand away from Yan’s clasp. With a gesture that Yan would never forget, Gregory’s hand seemed to reach up.
In echo of Yan’s earlier thoughts, Anatol said very softly, ‘He’s reaching up for the other Hands that are taking him.’ And then, as Gregory’s hand fell back on the coverlet, Anatol said, ‘It’s over, Yan. He’s gone.’
Walking back to his rooms, Yan thought, and now the last link has gone. Now there’s no one who knows what happened in Ipatiev House all those years ago.
And then a tiny disturbing voice in his mind said: but there is. There’s Tanwen. She knows. That night, when past and present seemed to fuse, when you were no longer sure where you were, you talked about Katya. You said, ‘I murdered her.’
How much had that meant to Tanwen? It was impossible to know. As well as calling at the lodging house, Yan had written to her, but she had not answered, and no one seemed to know where she was. And surely, in the midst of such turmoil in Poland and in the world beyond Poland, Tanwen would not remember those words with any real attention.
Despite the turmoil and the fear and devastation, there were tiny threads of hope in Warsaw. Very quietly, people were seeking ways to fight the Nazi oppression, and many of them had stayed on, determinedly clinging to a semblance of normality. Some shops were still trading, although supplies were erratic, but a number of small cafés and coffee shops were open for an hour or two in the evenings. Anatol’s little restaurant was one of these. It opened several times a week, and there was a regular clientele. The electricity supply frequently failed, so that candles had to be lit, but Anatol insisted this did not matter.
‘Except,’ he once said, indignantly, ‘if you are in the middle of preparing kielbasa. I cannot served you with half-cooked sausage, my friends, so tonight there will be only bread and cheese, but there is also pickled cucumber and some of my own pickled cabbage with apples.’
In fact the food was nearly always excellent. Yan suspected a great deal of it came from Anatol’s cousin, who had a smallholding near the Kampinos Forest, although it was anybody’s guess how it was smuggled into the city. There was almost always wine available, although the wine’s provenance was even more dubious. But at least twice, from the window of his own rooms, Yan had seen Anatol’s portly figure together with one of his helpers, furtively carrying large crates through the streets at one and two o’clock in the morning. He guessed that Anatol was discreetly liberating it from the Chopin Library, a crate at a time, but he would not have dreamed of telling Anatol he knew this, and he was glad that Anatol’s customers could enjoy the wine.
Between them, Yan and Bruno had managed to wrestle the firebird piano down the stairs from Father Gregory’s rooms and install it in the restaurant. Often one of them would play for the customers – anything from Mozart to Chopin to modern pieces. Several times Bruno gave them an evening of jazz and ragtime, and on other nights there were songs from the repertoire of the American crooner, Sinatra, and music from the light operas of the English composers, Gilbert and Sullivan. Hardly anyone knew any of the English words of these, but nobody cared, because the music was wonderful and it made for a happy, lively night, and if the Germans wanted to come stomping in and break things up, by ten o’clock of an evening most people had drunk so much of Anatol’s contraband wine that they were prepared to take on the entire Third Reich.
By contrast, Yan played the much-loved folk songs of the country. ‘Plynie Wisla’ – ‘The River Flows’ and ‘Hej Sokoły’ – ‘Hey Falcon’, which had been sung by soldiers for decades.
Anatol was delighted; he said singing had always been a strong part of Polish life, and some of the old ballads had accompanied the most dramatic moments of the country’s history.
When one night Yan played ‘Nie Daj Sie’ – ‘Don’t Give Up/Don’t Let Go’, the women in the restaurant sobbed openly, and Anatol climbed on to a table, and delivered a speech saying they would not give up and they would never let go, they would resist the sweeping evil of the Nazis while there was breath in their bodies. He drank two more glasses of wine, mopped his eyes unashamedly, and repeated the sentiment, while one of the helpers went to look out of the door to make sure no one was outside, because you could not trust the Nazis not to come marching down the street and carry you off for sedition or incitement when all you were doing was singing.
But often, walking back to his rooms, Yan felt as if the world had become distorted – as if it had been dislodged from its axis. Or was it more as if the Earth’s rotation had altered and its people had not altered their pace to match it? Once, he tried to explain these feelings to Bruno, but Bruno said he did not give a tinker’s toss if the world was off its axis or slowing down or racing ahead, or whether it was performing somersaults across the universe. Whatever it was doing, it wasn’t likely to make any difference. Better to concentrate on not sinking into the Slough of Despond and not letting the Nazis crush them once and for all.
‘You don’t seem to fall into the Slough of Despond very often,’ remarked Yan.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Bruno, suddenly serious. ‘I have a dark side. But then who doesn’t?’
It was early evening, and shadows were spreading thickly across the ground, turned to a mosaic of crimson and gold by the sinking sun, so that it was like walking across one of the Persian carpets out of the old legends.
‘It’s a beautiful city,’ said Yan, in sudden anger. ‘And it’s our city. Yet here we are tiptoeing through the streets, constantly looking over our shoulder. There’s a line of poetry from somewhere – I don’t know the author’s name, and I’m not sure if I ever did, but I think it was an English poet. One of the eighteenth-century Romantics. Something about a man tiptoeing down a lonesome road in fear and dread … “And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread … ” That’s us, my friend.’
‘Well personally, maestro, I’m inclined to think we’re more like characters in one of those French farces,’ said Bruno. ‘Trying not to be caught in the wrong bedroom. Not that I’d necessarily object to that, because at least you’d have the promise of a lively night ahead of you.’
But he frowned, and Yan felt, as he sometimes did, Bruno’s mood change. I have a dark side, Bruno had said. What might that dark side hold? After a moment, Bruno said, ‘All we can do in these times is trust to God’s mercy – or the devil’s, if the Prince of Darkness is likely to be more kindly disposed to us – that the Nazis don’t find out what’s happening in quiet corners of Warsaw.’ They looked at one another. ‘We both know what I mean, don’t we?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. And don’t you think that those things – those quiet activities, are gaining strength?’ said Yan. ‘You can almost feel it happening. Like a storm that gathers strength as it gets closer.’
‘A storm,’ said Bruno. And then, very softly, ‘Or a Tempest.’
He did not say any more, but he did not need to. Yan knew that Bruno was referring to the embryo organization first conceived in southeastern Poland, started by the Polish Home Army, and intended to culminate in an uprising in Central Poland that would drive out the Nazis.
The Resistance movement that had been given the name of Burza. Tempest.
It had been Anatol, and – rather astonishingly – the thin dark woman, Irina, from Tanwen’s old lodging house, who drew Yan and Bruno into the Tempest movement.
Irina was often in Anatol’s restaurant, and somehow – Yan was not sure how – she had got into the way of coming to sit for a while with himself and Bruno – also Alicja on the nights she was there.
Alicja thought Irina might be one of Anatol’s casual waitresses – there were several who came and went – but Bruno said it was more than that.
‘I think she’s here to pick scraps of useful gossip,’ he said.
‘You mean she’s a Nazi spy?’ This did not sound as far-fetched or dramatic as once it would have done.
‘I think we ought to keep the possibility in mind. She’s an odd, secretive woman.’
‘Of course she is secretive,’ said Anatol, when this was put to him. ‘She had a sister who was married to a Jewish man – a respectable, hard-working bookseller. A very nice family. But the Nazis burned his shop and took his entire family to one of the camps.’ A plump shrug. ‘I do not know which one, and I don’t think Irina knows. But for that reason alone she would never work for the Germans. Against them – oh, yes, she would definitely work against them.’ He glanced to where Irina was sitting. ‘You may be approached by her,’ he said, very softly, under cover of the piano that was being played in a corner by one of the customers.
‘To help in her – um – work?’
‘Yes.’
Anatol was right. The approach came two nights later.
‘Radio transmissions,’ she said, seated at the table with Yan and Bruno, her thin face intent, her dark eyes glowing, but her expression as bland as if she were discussing with them which dish to choose from the menu.
‘Radio?’
‘It could be a way of sending messages without being seen or heard. And I believe, Bruno, that you have knowledge of such things.’
‘A very little,’ said Bruno.
‘But enough. The equipment can be got, but there’s the question of where it can be set up.’
Anatol, who was hovering with a wine flagon, sat down. ‘If I could set it up here, I would do it,’ he said. ‘I would throw my entire restaurant open for such a purpose, but it is quite small, and the oppressors can walk in and out at their will.’
‘A warehouse or offices would be best,’ said Irina. ‘There are plenty of empty buildings. But it must be somewhere that wouldn’t be noticed very much. A place where we could come and go without comment.’
Yan and Bruno looked at one another, and Yan knew the same thought was in their minds. But Bruno did not speak, and at last, Yan said slowly, ‘There might be somewhere.’