The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival (2 page)

To illustrate his lessons, Professor Isseles would play recordings for her on his gramophone. He was in awe of Horowitz’s playing of Rachmaninoff, but it was the lyricism of Myra Hess performing Beethoven that he most appreciated.

“Listen to the tone of her legato,” the professor would say with a sigh.

Lisa listened and listened and listened.

For most of the hour Lisa played uninterrupted, as the old man sat in silence, occasionally bringing his hand down to emphasize an accent in the music. Finally, he put down his music and just listened. She looked over and saw a distressed expression on his face. Was she playing that badly?

At the end of the piece, the professor made no comment. Lisa went on to her customary scales and waited anxiously for her assignment. The professor focused on scraping the bowl of his pipe into the ashtray.

“May I do the adagio for next week?” she asked nervously. She loved the second movement and yearned to show him her improving legato.

He looked at her for a long moment, then finally spoke, looking uncomfortable and ashamed: “I am sorry, Miss Jura. But I am required to tell you that I cannot continue to teach you.”

Lisa was stunned and unable to move. The professor walked to his window and opened the curtain. He stared at the people in the street. “There is a new ordinance,” he said slowly. “It is now a crime to teach a Jewish child.” He continued mumbling under his breath, then added in despair, “Can you imagine!”

Lisa felt tears rising.

“I am not a brave man,” he said softly. “I am so sorry.” He came over to the piano, lifted up her slender young hands, and held them in his grip. “You have a remarkable gift, Lisa, never forget that.”

Through her tears, she watched the professor pick up a thin gold chain that lay on top of the piano. It held a tiny charm in the shape of a piano.

“It is not much, but perhaps it will help you to remember the music we shared here,” he said softly, fastening the gold chain around her neck with trembling fingers.

She stared through her tears at the stacks of music, the picture of Liszt on the wall, and tried to memorize every detail. She was afraid she might never see them again. Gathering her composure, she thanked the professor and collected her things, then turned and fled.

The cold November wind sent a deep shiver through Lisa’s slender body as she pulled her coat tight around her and waited for the next streetcar. German SS, storm troopers, were everywhere she looked. Were they all staring at her? She threw her head back and walked defiantly toward the approaching car, climbing onto the landing and grabbing the frozen pole tightly with her woolen mittens. Staring back at the huge building, she memorized the pattern of its beveled glass windows, the size of its portico, and the gleam of the bronze door handle, shining from the polish of thousands of handclasps. The professor waved sadly before disappearing from his window.

Why were Germans telling Austrians what they could or couldn’t do? It wasn’t fair, and why were the Austrians letting them? There must be an answer—there must be someone to blame.

The faces on the streetcar were staring at her with pity. She quickly yanked the hat off her head and covered her face, realizing she had been crying since she’d left the studio. She wouldn’t give these horrible people the satisfaction of watching her.

The ride was endless, its magic gone. She couldn’t wait to get back to Franzensbrückestrasse, where everyone in the old neighborhood knew her—the little girl who played the piano. The neighbors had gossiped at first about her mother, Malka, when she had bought that expensive upright piano from Mr. Minsky’s secondhand store. How could the Juras afford it? Such an extravagant purchase in these tense times.

But five years later, the neighbors had realized their shortsightedness. Malka’s daughter was special. She had a gift. You could hear it in the butcher’s shop, you could hear it in the bakery—the music drifted everywhere. The street itself seemed to smile when the little girl played. People started calling her by that special word: Lisa Jura was a prodigy.

Sometimes Lisa played so loudly that her banging octaves could be heard above the clatter of the trashcans and mixed into the teeming loudness of tenement clatter.

But when she played softly and sweetly, old couples would move to their windows and stop whatever they were doing. Schubert and Mozart would float down the stairs, in and out of apartments, and fill the neighborhood with grace.

The music transported the mind of this precocious teenager into fanciful imaginings. As she played the first bars of a Strauss waltz, she saw herself in a satin ball gown, her hand held high by some count or marquis, being led to the dance floor. The elegant crowd parted as she made her entrance.

From the time she was a little girl, Malka taught Lisa to surrender herself completely to the music by telling her stories and painting fantastic images. For Lisa the music became her whole world: an escape from the dark streets, the rundown flats, shops, and markets that were home to Vienna’s working-class Jews. And now, the most important escape of all, from the Nazis.

As she neared 13 Franzensbrückestrasse, Lisa’s steps were uncharacteristically slow. Her heels barely left the ground; her upright posture sagged. She arrived in her living room and dropped her music on the bench with a gesture that alarmed her mother.

“What is it, Liseleh, what’s wrong?” Malka took her daughter in her arms and stroked her hair. Lisa cried desperately. Malka guessed what must have happened. “Is it Professor Isseles?”

Lisa nodded.

“Don’t worry, I taught you before. I will teach you again.” Lisa tried to smile at her mother’s offer, but they both knew that Lisa had long ago surpassed her mother’s ability.

“Let’s play something now. Let’s begin the day all over again.”

“I can’t play now, Mama. I’m too upset.”

“Oh, Lisa, have you forgotten all I’ve taught you? It’s at times like this that your music is most important.”

Malka went to the cupboard and pulled out the complete preludes by Chopin; after opening the book to the number four in E Minor, she sat at the piano.

“I’ll play the right hand, you play the left,” Malka insisted.

“I can’t.”

“Play what is in your heart.”

Lisa sat beside her, playing the four-four rhythm of the marching, repeating chords. When she’d mastered the left hand, she took over from her mother, blending the plaintive melody of the upper register with the somber chords of the base. The melody reached its final question and found resolution in an exquisite pianissimo.

Outside, an old woman put down her heavy groceries, leaned against the building, and listened.

When she finished the Chopin, Lisa went to her room and lay down, crying as silently as possible into the pillow.

A few minutes later she felt a warm hand on her shoulder, stroking her gently. It was her older sister, Rosie. “Don’t cry, Lisa,” she urged. “Come on. I’ll show you something.”

Lisa finally rolled over and looked up at the smartly dressed twenty-year-old. She was always happy when her older sister made time for her, since Rosie had been spending most of her time these days with her fiancé, Leo.

“Crying won’t help, Lisa. Let me show you something I just learned, come on,” Rosie insisted, taking Lisa by the hand.

Lisa stumbled into the bathroom behind her sister and glimpsed her tearstained face in the mirror. Rosie emptied out the contents of a cloth bag and spread all manner of powder and paints on the bathroom dresser.

“I’ll show you a new way to do your lips—you’ll look just like Marlene Dietrich.”

As they had so many times before, Rosie carefully applied lipstick and eye makeup to Lisa’s face.

“See? A little bit wider than the lip line.”

Her sister should know, Lisa thought. She had been the runner-up in a Miss Vienna contest—two years earlier— when they had still allowed non-Aryan contestants. Without warning, their twelve-year-old sister Sonia burst through the door.

“What are you two doing in here!”

“Look at Lisa, doesn’t she look like a movie star?”

Lisa stared excitedly at her new face in the mirror. She looked five years older! The sound of footsteps approaching stopped them in their tracks.

“Quick! Mama’s coming!”

In a well-rehearsed drill, Lisa scrubbed her face with soap and water and Rosie scrambled to hide the cosmetics, as little Sonia looked on and giggled. Rosie put a protective arm around Lisa, and for a moment the sorrow of Professor Isseles seemed far away. The three sisters joined hands and emerged to greet their mother.

2

L
ISA
!”
MALKA
yelled from the kitchen. “Look out the window for your father.”

Lisa rose reluctantly from the piano bench and went to the window of their second-story apartment, peering into the cobblestone courtyard.

“Do you see him?”

“No, Mama, not yet.” The wind was blowing fiercely; the streetlights rattled. Winter was on its way. Before long, it would be Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, Lisa’s favorite time of year.

“Is he there yet?”

“No, I said I didn’t see him!”

“Where is he!” Malka began making a lot of noise with the pans in the kitchen. It was her way of letting off steam.

“Don’t break anything, Mama!” Lisa said, laughing. She was answered with another crash. “All right, then, get your sisters and we’ll start without him.”

Lisa knew what was making her father late: It was that “gambling” thing her mother got so angry about. He would stay out playing cards with some of the neighborhood men in the storeroom of Mr. Rothbard’s butcher shop. Lisa didn’t understand a thing about cards, but she knew they must be terrible since they made her mother so upset.

Abraham Jura had always called himself “the best tailor in all Vienna.” Her father was a proud, elegant man who wore starched white shirts with tall collars. His customers had been Jews and gentiles alike and came from all over the city to have their suits custom-made. But now Abraham had few sewing jobs, his longtime customers were turning up with less frequency. Gentiles had been forbidden to use Jewish tailors. A sign on his shop read
“Jüdisches Geschäft”: “Jewish Business.”

Sometimes, after she was in bed, there were raised voices coming from her parents’ bedroom. The arguments were about money; that much she could figure out, and it seemed her father was angry at almost everyone these days. Gone were the early evening dinners and the bear hugs when Papa came home from work to greet his family.

She was upset by his wrinkled clothes and frayed cuffs. Fingering the loose buttons, she frowned. “Papa, I’m going to sew your buttons on for you. You must have forgotten how,” she teased him playfully. “Who will come visit a tailor that has a loose button?”

Her father would look at her sadly and say nothing. At those times, when she felt her father changing before her eyes, she would escape to the piano and her fantasies.

Abraham or no Abraham, Malka lit the Shabbat candles. It was Friday sunset and the Sabbath was beginning. She lit two white tapers in the silver holders that had been her own mother’s and turned to her youngest daughter. “Sonia, why don’t you tell us what they mean?”

“One candle is for the Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and rested on the seventh day,” Sonia replied proudly.

“And the second candle, Lisa?”

“We light the second because we observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”

Malka lit four more candles, one for each of her three daughters and one for her mother, Briendla, in Poland. A warm yellow light filled the room. A similar glow was appearing in parlors and dining rooms all across the neighborhood.

Lisa’s mother had a tradition of feeding the poor on the night of the Sabbath, and people would line up in the hallway an hour before sunset. Some came in tattered clothing and unkempt hair, others came with neatly mended patches, temporarily down on their luck. The faces would change, but one remained the same—a tall old man with a straggly white beard, the girls’ favorite, who told them a story every week.

This evening, rather than bringing a plate of hot kosher food, Malka came into the hallway and said sadly, “I am afraid we have nothing to share tonight.”

Lisa was stunned. She watched the hungry people shuffle away and saw the sorrow in her mother’s eyes. The old storyteller stayed behind, staring at the mezuzah hanging in the doorway.

After a long painful moment, he turned to Malka: “God will bless you for all of your past generosity.”

The girls joined their mother inside and began the meal without their father. When they finished, they cleared the table and watched her pull the large mahogany rocking chair to the window. Malka rocked slowly back and forth, reciting her prayers, eyes focused on the street below.

Lisa and Sonia awoke to loud noises—not the usual raised voices that often accompanied her father’s late night homecomings, but ominous noises of distant shouting.

Throwing on their robes, they rushed to her parents’ bedroom. It was empty, so they ran to the living room window and saw the sky was red with the flames of burning buildings. Above the shouting came the piercing sound of shattering glass. It exploded in terrifying crescendos from up and down the streets. Storm troopers were running down the block like a band of outlaws—brown-shirted soldiers were throwing rocks and bricks through windows. They swung clubs recklessly in the air. She wondered if they were drunk. Did they let soldiers drink?

Even though it was late, dozens of neighbors ran out onto the street. Lisa saw Mr. Mendelsohn, the druggist, racing out of his building, and watched in horror as two SS men picked him off the ground, flinging him into the plate-glass window of the pharmacy. She heard his agonized screams, jerked Sonia away from the window, and pulled her little sister back into the bedroom they shared. “Get under the bed and stay there.” Sonia looked up imploringly. “Get under the bed!” Lisa yelled, and ran into the hallway to search for her mother.

“Lisa!” She heard the cry on the stairwell and ran down to find her mother holding her father’s head in her lap. His face was covered with blood; his clothes were torn.