The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival (20 page)

Lisa was mesmerized by Scarlett O’Hara and her troubles. Her heart raced as she watched the heroine struggle with hunger and war and desperation. She sobbed into her handkerchief as Scarlett swore that “as God is my witness” she would never let her family go hungry again. At times it was hard to focus on the movie, her mind kept racing back to her family in Vienna, remembering how difficult it had been to get food, imagining how difficult it must be now.

When the film was over, Lisa was weeping so hard that she could hardly get up. But once again she rallied her considerable will. I’m going to make it, she said to herself, echoing the heroine’s words. Just like Scarlett . . . by hook or by crook . . . I’m going to make it through.

18

L
ISA
’
S PERSISTENT
practicing was an inspiration for the others. In the fall, Edith enrolled in a shorthand course, determined as well “to make something of herself.” Gunter begged his boss, Mr. Steinberg, to make good on his statement that he was “crucial to the war effort” and received a promotion to the accounting department. Not to be left out, Hans enrolled in a course to become a physical therapist and brought home pounds and pounds of braille anatomy books to study. And Johnny wrote more and more poetry, declaring that Lisa’s music had convinced him to become a writer after the war.

Only Aaron, it seemed to Lisa, didn’t join in the “hard work brigade.” He showed up late several times a week and had to throw pebbles at the third-floor window so Gunter would come down and let him in. If he was lucky, Mrs. Cohen wouldn’t hear; occasionally she did.

“Mr. Lewin! I’ve told you a dozen times I won’t tolerate another curfew violation,” the matron said harshly, coming out of her room in her dressing gown late one night. “Not only is it dangerous for you, but it’s extremely rude to those of us who need our sleep. This is not a hotel, Mr. Lewin, this is a refugee hostel, and I expect your cooperation or I expect you to find another place to live. Do I make myself understood?” The matron had never made good on her threats, but her patience was wearing thin.

“Yes, Mrs. Cohen, it won’t happen again,” Aaron promised, his mischievous smile replaced by a convenient earnestness. He had made this promise many times before.

“What is that you’re carrying?” she asked.

Aaron had been careful to hide most of the things he had brought home, but this time he was caught in the act. He handed her the package—it was a box of chocolates.

“Mr. Lewin, I would be very disappointed if I thought you were in any way participating in the black market. It would be most ungrateful and unpatriotic; rationing is how we will win the war!”

“I got them as a bonus for staying overtime,” he said smoothly. “I brought them to share with everybody.”

Mrs. Cohen didn’t believe him for a second. “Then I expect you to put them in the kitchen, Mr. Lewin. Good night!” She turned on her heels and slammed her door.

Aaron hid his angry expression from the matron. He was tired of explaining himself all the time; most of all, he was tired of being treated like a child. He heard the muffled sounds of Lisa practicing in the basement and headed down the hall.

She lifted her head and smiled when she heard the door open and saw him on the stairs.

“That’s enough practicing, come on up for a while,” Aaron said.

“I’m not finished yet, I can’t,” she said, shouting above her playing.

“Come on, Lisa! Is music all you can think about?” “Right now, yes! I don’t have much time until the audition. I have to practice.”

“You’ve got months!”

“Aaron! It’s important to me.”

“And I’m not important?” he demanded, frustrated. “Of course you’re important, but not right now!” “Fine, suit yourself,” Aaron answered angrily, and slammed the cellar door.

“Aaron!” she yelled after him, but he had already gone. She returned to the piece she was practicing and pounded the keys with even more fury. When she was totally exhausted, she went up into the living room and found Aaron sulking on the couch. She went and sat next to him, putting her arm around him for the inevitable reconciliation.

Through it all was the constant threat of the bombings. Some weeks were worse than others. The headlines would scream, 1,000
DEAD IN ONE HELLISH NIGHT
! Then the next day, the retaliation,
RAF FLYBOYS BATTER THE RUHR
. Back and forth the destruction went.

When the whine of the air raid sirens began, Lisa no longer had to scurry next door to the convent; she could stay behind in her protected basement and hammer the octaves of the ending of the ballade. The louder the screams of the bombers, the louder she played. Neighbors on Willesden Lane would hear the eerie sound of classical music emanating from the basement and do double takes as they hurried to their shelters.

In the midst of the chaos, Lisa kept to her disciplined schedule, practicing and practicing. Progress wasn’t always guaranteed, however; she was having terrible trouble with the coda of the ballade. She stared at the mass of black notes in front of her and tried to will her fingers to find the right path through the keys. All she had to rely upon were the images her mother had taught her, so she conjured up a scene from the life of Chopin, which her mother had described. She visualized a romantic young Chopin leaving his native Poland behind forever and wept as she saw him in his carriage, fleeing the flames that consumed his beloved Warsaw. She played a somber passage with feeling, but often her fingers couldn’t figure out the intricacies, and she would call out, “Mama! I need your help,” then begin the passage over again.

One evening, Hans noticed that she was going over and over the opening of the piece, then stopping and beginning again. Why do you always stop there?” he asked.

“My mother always said that the opening and closing of a piece were the most important. They’ll forget the middle,” she said confidently.

“That’s ridiculous, they won’t forget the middle if you play it poorly!” Hans shot back. “Come on, play me the whole piece all the way through.”

She looked at him as if he were crazy. “I don’t know all of it yet,” she answered.

“I’ll let you use the music.”

Lisa snarled at him silently, then played through the entire piece. When she looked up at the end, Hans was frowning.

“Now what’s wrong?” she asked, upset, assuming he was going to be impressed by her progress.

“Too many liberties, too much rubato. Keep the rhythm steady,” Hans counseled.

This was the worst criticism Lisa could hear because it was the exact same complaint Professor Isseles had had time and time again.

“I’m not a machine!” she shot back defensively. “The music is passionate. It’s important to let my emotions come through!”

“But you must have a consistent beat. No matter how beautifully you play a melody, you have to have something to hang it on.”

“Since when did you become a music teacher?” she asked, throwing the music on the floor and stamping up the staircase. She ran into Gunter, who was on his way down.

“Don’t tell me the concert is over already,” he said, disappointed.

“Leave me alone!” Lisa said, slamming the door behind her on the way out.

Two days later, Gunter and Hans handed Lisa a box wrapped in newspaper. “It’s from Hans, and me, and the rest of the hostel,” Gunter said.

“What is it?”

“Open it and find out.”

Inside the box was a metronome. She pulled out the pyramid-shaped device and set it on the piano. Gunter, laughing, started it ticking.

“What is this, a conspiracy?” she said, joining them laughing. “I’m sorry, fellows, I promise not to have any more tantrums. You’re right, Hans, I need it. Thank you.”

The next crisis came when Hans asked Aaron to reread the mimeographed sheets from the Royal Academy and double-check the repertoire requirements. Horrified by what Aaron read, he confronted Lisa that night at dinner.

“Lisa, you didn’t read all the requirements!” Hans said. “Of course I did. What are you talking about?”

“You will be tested on sight-reading, solfeggio, and fundamentals of music theory,” Hans said. “Aaron read me the rest of the application.”

“I, ah, didn’t think it really mattered,” she stammered, concentrating on the plateful of noodles before her.

“Of course it matters!”

“I’m terrible at all those things, and I’ll never learn them anyway. I know my only chance is to enchant the judges with my playing,” Lisa said, trying to sound as confident as she could.

Gunter, Aaron, and Hans were silent. They weren’t buying it, which infuriated Lisa further.

“Well?” she continued. “I know what I can do, and I know what I can’t do . . . Besides, solfeggio won’t help my Chopin!”

The boys shook their heads. Lisa kept eating, trying to paste a defiant look on her face.

Hans said finally, “It doesn’t work that way in England. If you fail the fundamentals, they won’t give you the scholarship. That’s all there is to it.”

“I can’t learn all of that so quickly!” Lisa begged.

“Yes, you can,” Gunter said. “You’ve got until February!”

“We’re going to help you,” added Aaron.

“And that’s all there is to it,” Hans said with finality.

The next two months were dedicated to sight-reading and fundamentals. Every night, after a long day at the factory, Lisa would hurry through her afternoon practice and, after a quick dinner, go back to the basement for the dreaded hour of instruction.

Hans was in charge of sight-reading. Since he had memorized every note of his own sheet music, he would instruct Aaron to choose a piece that Lisa hadn’t seen before but which he knew perfectly. Then Hans would set the metronome to a slow and steady beat.

“All right, look at the key signature and think ahead one measure. Ready? Go!” Hans clapped his hands once and off she went. Some nights the sheet music ended up on the floor, other nights on top of the pickle jars.

“Pretty funny, huh? A blind guy teaching you sight-reading!” Hans yelled over the music. “Ouch, that would be F-sharp there, Lisa.”

“At least you’re not deaf!” Lisa shot back, and they laughed until their stomachs hurt.

Music theory was Aaron’s bailiwick. He finally admitted to Lisa that he had studied the violin in Mannheim and had learned the basics of dominants, subdominants, and chord inversions. Science came easily to him, and he patiently digested and explained (from a newly acquired textbook) the principles of harmony.

“I wish I had known that before,” she marveled. “Oh! I get it!” she would say. They would lie together on the couch in the living room, Glenn Miller blaring from the radio, and she would guess her way through the chord changes—“Dominant, tonic, seventh”—as the swing music filled the air.

Solfeggio was a trial for everybody. Lisa’s singing voice wasn’t particularly inspiring, and do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do wasn’t a very pleasing tune. On behalf of the entire hostel, Edith finally insisted that do, re, mi, be a “basement only” activity.

The weather turned cold and damp; winter had come. The Wehrmacht had continued rolling over Europe, taking Kiev and moving toward Moscow.

Coal was severely rationed, and soon the hostel had none left. But Lisa continued playing in the freezing basement no matter what. The audition was in two months and she still had so much to learn. She would come home from work, bundle up warmly, and go to the kitchen to stretch her anxious fingers over the wood-burning stove. She then descended into the cellar, which was so damp that the moisture condensed on the walls and some nights she could see her breath as she exhaled. Sometimes her fingers ached terribly; other times Mrs. Cohen would hear her coughing and beg her to come up to the warmth of the kitchen. Lisa seldom agreed, coming up only every once in a while out of respect for the matron. And when she did, she stayed only for a moment, then rushed back down to her piano.

In spite of the frost of one of the coldest winters on record, Londoners ventured tentatively into parks and onto sidewalks, betting that the bombs would continue to fall only at night.

Sundays, Aaron would convince her to stroll down Oxford Street and look in the windows, as in the old days. Harvey Nichols had strange-looking fashions, and one display had a full rubberized body suit with matching gas mask. Blitz clothing became the new fashion.

One day, unexpectedly, Gina arrived at the hostel. “I’m back!” was all she said in explanation, and took off chatting as much as always. She had managed to get a job as a beautician and was able to give up her posh nanny job in Richmond. Although she found such common work de-meaning, it was worth it to return to her friends at 243 Willesden Lane. They were all glad to see her, especially Gunter, who walked around with a moony grin for days. Gina confided to Lisa that Gunter’s smile made combing strangers’ hair worth the step down in status. In no time, the two girlfriends were back sharing late-night confidences about life and love. Most nights, Gina lay face up on the bed, smiling from ear to ear, while Lisa coiled on her side lamenting Aaron’s ornery streak. His attitude problem had gotten worse.

One evening, the argument between Mrs. Cohen and Aaron was particularly heated. Whether it was the new edict she had received from Bloomsbury about stricter rules for curfew or Aaron’s insolent attitude, her patience had finally run out.

“If you come back after curfew, you’re not to come back at all.”

“Fine, have it your way,” Aaron said, and went into the basement to let off steam. He tried to get Lisa’s sympathy—to no avail.

“Mrs. Cohen is right, you idiot! You’ve got to be more serious. You’re always fooling around,” Lisa lectured.

“You’re sounding awfully high and mighty!” Aaron said, and turned and walked out.

Lisa went back to practicing but after a few minutes found herself filled with regret and ran upstairs to the living room to find Aaron and apologize.

He was nowhere to be found, so she returned to the basement and her Bach.

The next night, Lisa was devastated when Aaron still had not returned. Lisa lay on her bed, contrite and worried. “It’s all my fault,” she moaned.