Against the Wind (7 page)

Murphy spoke quietly in my ear, “That boy’s lived through something…look at him.”

Tomas overheard Murphy’s remark. “My brother can’t talk well. Not since we were strafed on the road in France. Our mother was killed. Our father is in America. We will go there. We have been practicing American songs. Learning to sing like Americans.”

An enormous concussion shook the foundations. Instinctively, we covered our heads. Murphy held me tightly.

Peter cried out.

Tomas consoled Peter in the Czech tongue. I understood a bit. “Don’t worry, brother. The RAF will knock them out of the sky. You’ll see. It’s ours, not theirs. Peter? Peter! I think we have just felt a Dornier crash. We will come up and see we have knocked a Dornier right out of the sky. Peter? You understand, Peter?”

But Peter did not answer. He crouched. His wide, terrified eyes were fixed on the ceiling as he waited for the blocks to come crashing down on us.

Tomas said to Connor, “He’s so scared. He dreams about the bombs. About our mother and our sister in the ditch. He relives what happened in France. He thinks now is then…every time.”

Connor covered his teapot ears with his hands as the next stick of bombs made the floor tremble beneath our feet. Then, as if by some miracle, Connor raised his face, smiled slightly, and pulled out a tin penny whistle from beneath his robe. He raised it to his lips and began to play an introduction as sweet as the trill of a nightingale.

In awe, Murphy said to me, “He’s playing ‘Shenandoah’!”

Tomas began to sing along in a perfect bell-like soprano,
“Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you…”

John and a dozen others joined in:
“A-way, you rolling river…”

Peter raised his eyes and stood erect. I saw his lips move. “America!” Then he opened his mouth and began to sing the tune so full of longing for the New World. The melody overcame the roar of explosions that ripped through the earth so close to us.

“Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you…

Away, I’m bound away,

’Cross the wide Missouri.”
⁴

For more than an hour the battle raged far above us, but the boys of the Abbey sang song after song while Connor accompanied them on the tin whistle. The terrible hours passed without terror. Music sustained us.

It was deep night when, at last, the all-clear sounded. We bade one another farewell and promised to meet again at Evensong tomorrow. We emerged from the crypt to a sight both terrible and beautiful. The night was as bright as day. Smoke and ash from the great city stung our eyes and filled our nostrils.

All of London was ablaze.

You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations…. Awake! Why are You sleeping, O Lord? Rouse Yourself! Do not reject us forever!
P
SALM
44:11, 23
ESV

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

DECEMBER 1937

I wonder sometimes if God is asleep. Why has He been silent? Why do my prayers go unanswered? It is the Christmas season again, and “Silent Night” has taken on a new meaning for me. A year since Papa disappeared. Still no word of his fate. Nor any further word from John Murphy or Eben Golah about Papa.

The year 1937 is a terrible one for the world. The Spanish Civil War still rages. Franco’s nationalists are backed by Nazi warplanes. Some people say what is happening in Spain is the rehearsal for what will come. Germany is practicing in Spain, perfecting the art of death.

I hear John Murphy is reporting from Spain.

Mama and my brothers remain in Prague. She has taken a house. Since Prague was Papa’s last destination, perhaps she feels closer to him there. She may move to London in the spring.

The orchestra is readying another round of holiday concerts, but all of us have an edge of uneasiness. So many of us with German-Jewish heritage. In Germany it grows worse each day. I remember what happened in Berlin. Now signs like I saw there are appearing in Vienna:
Juden Verboten
.

After the German airship
Hindenberg
crashes, we go to the cinema and see a newsreel about it. Leah is recognized as Jewish by the doorman at the cinema and refused entry! I almost slap him, and I do tell him to go back to Germany and stay there.

Leah and her Shimon save their money and wait for visas to British Palestine.

I tell them not to worry—that Austria is not Germany. Everything will still turn out all right. I don’t want them to go.

Shimon looks sad. He tells me Hitler is sending more and more Nazis into Austria, and he points to the J
EWS
F
ORBIDDEN
sign across the street as proof. He says, with or without visas, they are going to Eretz-Israel. I think he means it.

I show Leah a copy of the
Berliner Zeitung
newspaper, the one with a picture of Hitler standing next to his friend, the Muslim Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. “Vows to banish Jews from Holy City forever,” the caption reads.

See? I demand. Why do you think it’s safer there?

Because it’s our homeland, Leah says.

I house Jewish children passing through Vienna on their way to France and then to Palestine. I see the forged papers they carry. For Leah and Shimon and me to be caught helping is to risk prison.

If not for John Murphy’s help on the train, I would be in prison already. Still, he is an American. It was no risk for him at all.

What will 1938 bring?

³
Psalm 91:7
ESV

⁴
“Oh Shenandoah” or simply “Shenandoah,” a traditional American folk song of uncertain origin, dating at least to the early nineteenth century

LONDON BLITZ
SUMMER 1940

Our masquerade as three Hollywood stars on Oxford Street became an act suddenly in demand. As performers we were called on to “do our bit” for the morale of our adopted country, so Mariah, Raquel, and I performed our routine on the BBC. One day after, we were recruited to join an organization called Entertainments National Service Association, or ENSA for short. Our troupe was made up of professionals, as well as well-meaning amateurs, and was such a mixed bag that among the public the ENSA show was also known as “Every Night Something Awful”

We patriotically entertained as Hedy, Carmen, and Maureen impersonators for hospitals, home-front factories, and for the armed forces. We were first introduced to our fellow ENSA artistes in a dusty little theatre on Drury Lane. The manager was a wiry fellow named Nobby, who wore a brown-and-yellow plaid suit. He never removed his hat for anyone, and this was the only signal he was Jewish. It was rumored Nobby had once managed strippers in a Bronx burlesque theatre. We lined up on the stage and he paced before us, explaining that he alone had been charged with putting together entertainment troupes to keep the morale of England high. His was the grave and daunting responsibility to send us forth between broadcasts to lift the spirits of an entire nation. How was he to accomplish this? It would take a miracle, because many of England’s finest actors and performers had left for the States before the war and would not be returning.

“You’d think Hollywood could have picked an American actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind.
Eh? You’d think they could, but no. The Hollywood big shots gotta raid England’s treasures. Vivien Leigh’s gotta learn to talk like a Southern belle! London burns, and the whole rage in the London cinema is watching Scarlett O’Hara flee as Atlanta burns. Okay, so we’ve got to make it good, ladies and gentlemen. You’re what’s left of British talent after the American raid on the West End.”

Nobby sighed, closing his eyes dramatically. When he opened them again, he was staring at Raquel. He appraised her in a this-is-strictly-business way. “So, girlie, great gams. Aside from impersonatin’ Carmen Miranda, and singin’ South American torch songs on the BBC, what’s your story? You’re the one from Spain? Right?”

From the end of the row, the famed classical concert guitarist Pablo Garcia leaned forward and gaped furiously at Nobby in disbelief at what he was hearing. “Sir, please! You are addressing the premiere flamenco dancer of Spain—Raquel Esperanza!”

Nobby was unimpressed. “Is that supposed to mean somethin’ to the ordinary chap in a munitions factory, I ask you? I gotta put a show together here!” Hands on his hips, he asked, “So. How’d you get here, Miss Esperanza? Lemme hear your story, because the common people will want to know.”

Raquel smiled at Nobby with her Mona Lisa smile. He was the only one in the room who did not know who she was.

Her reply was dignified and without emotion. “I was a professional flamenco dancer before the war in Spain. The German Fascists practiced for bombing London by first bombing Madrid. I lost my husband and my child. God sent to me three young girls—two Jewish sisters and a gypsy girl like me—orphaned on the same day my family was killed. We fled from the Fascists to Paris. There I danced in the opera
Carmen
. The Nazis conquered France. A million refugees on the roads. We managed to escape on a fishing vessel out of Calais. I have friends here in the opera in London. They remembered when I danced the
Segurilla
the night my family died. They helped me and my girls. I also have friends in American opera. I hope to go to New York and dance again at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Carmen
.”

Nobby nodded and rubbed his chin. “Lemme see what you’ve got.” He inclined his head toward the guitarist. “Can you give her a hand?”

Pablo unsheathed his guitar like a sword and began to play the ancient
cante jondo
, awakening the suffering soul of Raquel. As he played and sang, she became again the woman among the dead and dying of her homeland.

“I climbed the wall;

The wind cried to me:

‘Why these sighs,

When there is no remedy?’

I wept, the breeze,

To see wounds so deep,

Deep, deep in my heart.”

Raquel danced the dance of mourning. Our cast line, touched by the fierce breeze of her dance, stepped back and gave her room. Dust rose up from the dormant boards.

“I’ve no fear of rowing,

If I want to I will.

I fear only the breeze

From your bay blowing still.”
⁵

The tapping of her feet on stage transformed those mediocre planks into the bloody cobblestones of Madrid where her husband and child lay dead.

When at last the guitar fell silent, we were silent too. Then all of us who understood the meaning of Raquel’s dance began to cheer and applaud.

Nobby stood with his head bowed and his arms crossed. At last he raised his eyes and declared, “Well, that was bloody depressing. None of that. None of that in this troupe, girlie. You’ll stick to the Carmen Miranda material or we can’t use you to tour, see? We’re meant to
lift
up the spirits…you get it?”

Pablo looked as if he might strangle Nobby. Raquel simply smiled sadly, bowed slightly, and resumed her place in the lineup.

Each of us was made to audition. Top billing went to a young girl with a big voice. Miss Julie Andrews sang the most popular tunes of the day, such as “You Are My Sunshine.”

We put together a show that opened with a medley of American tunes. Nobby bashed away at the honky-tonk piano. A trumpeter belted out old familiar vaudeville tunes. Our performances made a great noise in factory lunchrooms as hundreds of knives and forks clattered. Nobby’s experience as the manager of a burlesque house paid off as our performances both entertained and lifted morale. I continued to be introduced onstage as a blond Hedy Lamarr. I waited stage right with my violin as Nobby and Pablo performed a comedy routine:

Nobby: Anything I can do for you while you’re visiting England?

Pablo: I hear Hedy Lamarr is here, and I’d love to meet her.

Nobby: Hedy Lamarr, eh? Okay. Get on a train.

Pablo: A train? Why?

Nobby: ’Cause the line forms in Scotland!

I came out onstage to thunderous applause and laughter. Mariah sang Gershwin tunes, I played my violin, and Raquel tap-danced.

The highest compliment we could receive was when Nobby declared, “Well, girlies, you wowed ’em again!”