The Devil's Harmony, page 24
Arabella said, softly, ‘Heinrich Himmler’s infamous award. A silver ring with a skull’s head and runic symbols engraved in it. Given for special services to the Third Reich.’
‘But only given to high-ranking Nazi officers,’ said Thaisa. ‘Which begs the question as to why my father had it.’
Helena reached for Lucek’s hand, and said something to him. He nodded, then said, ‘Helena would like to explain more of what she remembers since hearing the music and seeing the photograph,’ said Lucek, after a moment. ‘She thinks it might add to what’s already known – that it might help Thaisa.’ He said, a bit awkwardly, ‘She thinks she knew from the first that there was a link with Thaisa.’
‘We both knew,’ said Thaisa, at once. ‘As soon as we saw each other—’
Lucek smiled at her. He said, ‘And so if Nina will translate as she speaks—’
‘Of course I will. Helena …’
Helena appeared to have followed a good deal of this without anyone having to translate for her. She curved her hands around the photograph, and although she was looking down at it, Thaisa had the feeling that she was looking beyond it, as if into some long-ago world.
Then she began to speak.
For Phin, listening to Nina translating Helena’s words was a curious experience. Even though it was Nina’s voice they listened to, he was intensely aware that they were hearing the memories and emotions of the no-longer-young lady with high cheekbones and dark eyes. This was the voice of that long-ago child, whose terror in a ravaged city had marred her life.
But it was not the ghosts of devastated buildings and ruined streets that were crowding into the quiet room; it was the ghosts of the people that the child had seen and known, recounted with a curious blend of the child’s perceptions and the older woman’s understanding. And central to all the ghosts was the figure of the child’s mother – a mother who had been the focus of the child’s life. A lady who had looked exactly like the smiling dark-haired girl in the photograph.
‘I mustn’t ever call her Mamma, because nobody had to know who I was. But she was so beautiful and so clever that I used to follow her when she went out, just so I could look at her.
‘Sometimes she went to a big old house – a white stone house in a square. It was the most beautiful house in the world. There were boards across the windows, because of the secrets. The men with clawed boots mustn’t find out about them—’
A pause. The professor looked across at Phin and framed the word, Nazis, and Phin nodded.
‘You mustn’t ever let them see you, those men. I knew that – people in the dining room said it. It was always Irina who took me there. I liked it. There was a man with fat cheeks who cooked for people.’
Irina, thought Phin, reaching for his notebook to write down the name. And a man with fat cheeks who cooked – Anatol? Is this all coming together?
‘People drank wine there, and laughed and talked. There were two men who played music – one of them read stories to me about magic worlds and kings and princesses. I sat on his knee and he showed me how to pick out the music on the piano.’
‘The firebird piano,’ said Professor Liripine, very softly.
‘Sometimes, when people went to the white house, I followed them. It was like being part of an adventure – like the children in the stories. Nobody knew I was there – I was good at not letting people see me—’
Eerily, there was the impression of a child’s innocent glee at fooling the grown-ups.
‘But one day when I went to the house it stopped being an adventure. One day the nightmare came.’
She broke off and wrapped her arms around her as if for warmth. Phin said, ‘Nina, ask her if she’s all right to go on.’
‘If she is remembering, she will want to talk,’ said Lucek, eagerly. ‘It is – um … What is that word you used, doctor? Healing. Letting the demons shrivel up in the light.’
Phin thought Nina relayed the gist of this to Helena, who nodded and looked at them gratefully.
‘My mamma and the man had to do something important in the house that day. I followed them – I thought it was still the adventure, but it wasn’t. The terror had got into the house. And then I couldn’t get out – somebody had locked the door, and there were boards over the windows …’ A pause, as if she might be struggling to reach the memories.
‘Somebody was in the house with me – saying I would be safe. But there was something very bad in the house … We went down steps to a dark room, and there was something cold down there in the dark …’
‘Nina – ask her what happened.’
But Helena shook her head at the question. ‘She can’t reach the memory,’ said Nina. ‘All she can remember is a coldness and a dark old room, and then someone carrying her through that house – and telling her she would be all right.’
Phin said, ‘She’s looking back at the memory now, isn’t she? She’s stepped out of it and she’s looking back at it. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.’
‘There was smoke and the sound of a fire crackling … And then there was just fear, and I was frightened, because I thought the fire was going to burn us up …
‘Then suddenly the fire had gone away and I wasn’t frightened any more. I was outside the house, only I couldn’t remember how I got there. But the fire had stopped, and people had come to help – I remember sitting on the ground for a long time watching them. They were trying to clear the rubble, and a woman saw me and carried me to her house. She said something about me being an orphan of the war and I would be looked after.’ Helena made a brief gesture with one hand. ‘I think that was the first time I had heard that word, orphan.’ She reached for Lucek’s hand, and said something, and before Nina could translate, Lucek smiled and said something to her in Polish. Then, for the benefit of the others, he said, ‘It was my great-grandmother who found her.’
‘But the music had been there … I had heard it – it was being played through the fire. It was quite close to me. I never forgot it. And then today Professor Liripine played it and I knew it was the same.’ She stopped speaking, but Nina kept hold of her hand.
Phin said softly, ‘The “Dark Cadence”.’
‘Yes,’ said the professor.
‘The links are being forged, aren’t they?’ said Phin. ‘Anatol heard the “Cadence” that night, as well.’
‘And Anatol has got to be the man with fat cheeks who served food in the dining room,’ put in Arabella.
‘The dining room where someone played the firebird piano.’ This was Dr Purslove.
‘And Thaisa’s parents knew – and feared – the “Cadence”,’ said Professor Liripine. ‘But who was it who tried to save Helena from the fire?’
‘And who played the “Cadence” while the Library burned?’ said Dr Purslove. ‘Was it the same person? Because whoever it was, was inside the place – Anatol was clear about that.’
‘And my parents talked about it being a bad way to die,’ said Thaisa.
Phin frowned, then said, ‘Nina – how much of the scrapbook is left to translate?’
TWENTY-FOUR
Warsaw, mid-1940s
To Yan, one of the most dreadful things, in all the dreadful things that were happening, was the way in which they were all becoming used to the ravaged streets of Warsaw. It was no longer so shocking to find that a once-imposing building had been reduced to rubble overnight, or that some lovely old square had vanished.
Normal life had certainly vanished. The Luftwaffe were bombing the city relentlessly now, and people who did venture out did so warily and in secrecy. Most people knew that there were defiant meetings of small groups behind locked doors and shuttered windows, but hardly anyone knew about the meetings below the Chopin Library. Its windows were boarded up and the rooms empty.
‘But one day it could be rebuilt,’ Yan said to Bruno. ‘If we could send these cruel brutes back, Warsaw could be reclaimed.’
‘It’d be a massive task, maestro.’
‘I wouldn’t care how massive. I’d lay bricks and dig trenches with my own hands. I’d do anything to get back even a part of what’s been lost in this city.’
Yan or Bruno went into the Library once a week, doing so openly during daylight.
‘To the soldiers’ eyes,’ said Bruno, ‘we’re merely checking that the place is secure and no one’s living there – no one they’d want to haul off to one of the camps, I mean. If we’re seen and questioned, I think that will be credible. Thank God most of the Street of Music is still intact.’
‘The word is that the German armies are in retreat on the Eastern Front,’ said Yan. ‘This can’t go on much longer.’
But there was a rumour that Himmler had given an order that Warsaw’s inhabitants were all to be killed, and that the city was to be what he called ‘levelled’, as an example to the rest of Europe.
‘He won’t do it,’ said Bruno, but Yan heard, for the first time, a note of uncertainty in Bruno’s voice.
Yan and Bruno – often with Irina and Anatol and the former printer – worked and plotted in the deep old scullery below the Library. Alicja was often with them, as well.
‘I, too, can fight,’ she said, and for the first time there was anger in her voice.
Several times they managed transmissions to and from the main Resistance – always very brief transmissions to minimize the risk of the Germans picking them up, but exchanging information about meetings and about the approach of the Red Army. The Russian soldiers were encountering appalling hardships, but they were coming doggedly and determinedly forwards. People in Anatol’s wept with emotion and hope at hearing this, telling one another they would eventually be liberated – if they could only cling to their city a little longer, they would be saved.
It was good to be able to still gather in Anatol’s café. It was necessary to keep a wary listen for the approach of the patrols, of course, but there was strength and comfort to be derived from the company. The few children who were still in the city were brought with the adults. It was appalling that such small children had to be part of the bleakness and to sense the fear, but most people thought it would be too dangerous to try to take them elsewhere now. It was difficult and risky enough to get a couple of adults through the blockades – how could you expose children to such terror and uncertainty?
The children had never really known any other way of life, though, and they liked being in the grown-up world of Anatol’s. They loved listening to Yan playing, as well. One of them, a dark-haired, dark-eyed little creature, came to sit on his knee when he stopped, and laughed with delight when he showed her how to pick out tunes. She was usually brought by Irina – Yan had no idea if Irina was the child’s mother, and these days it was better not to ask who was related to whom. Once, Irina had said something about having originally intended to send the child to Anatol’s cousins in the Kampinos Forest.
‘But since the mass executions there, it’s much too dangerous,’ she said. ‘You knew about that?’
‘Yes.’ Yan had been sickened by the stories that had filtered back. The victims had been people whom the Gestapo said were fomenting rebellion – people they called Polish elite – political, cultural, and social elite, they said. There had been doctors, writers, politicians, artists, lawyers. The Gestapo had ordered the cutting down of trees in the beautiful, ancient valley in order to dig ditches, and the bodies had been flung into mass graves.
Certainly that was no place to send a child, and when Irina said she could keep the child safe (‘I know the tricks for dodging the oppressors’), Yan thought she was probably right.
One day he looked at a couple of the books brought from Ipatiev House, and took them to Anatol’s, where he read the stories to the children, translating them from Russian to Polish as he read. His dark-eyed girl sat on the floor, listening, utterly enrapt.
Irina said, ‘She will remember this, Yan. Hopefully not the terror and the secrecy, but the music and the stories. You’re giving her a good memory to take from all this horror.’
Yan was absurdly pleased by Irina’s words. Several times he thought if there was ever a chance of getting any of the children out of Warsaw to safety, he would make sure that this little one was with them.
It had not occurred to Yan that Tanwen would reappear in Warsaw after so long, so he was totally unprepared to see her walk with apparent unconcern into Anatol’s early one evening.
After the initial shock, his first reaction was that she had changed – that something had happened to alter her in some deep, intrinsic way. His second reaction was very different – it was fear. Because although this was the woman with whom he had shared that astonishing passion, it was also the woman to whom, afterwards, he had confessed to committing murder. But surely it was ridiculous to feel so apprehensive? How many years was it since that night – since he had believed for that short time that his Romanov girl had come back? Tanwen would not have waited this long to bring some sort of challenge or to wreak revenge on him.
He was relieved to find that he was able to greet her with reasonable normality, asking how she was, and listening to her talking of how she had been with her parents. It had been a splendid time, she said; it was a very lively part of the country, and there had been all kinds of entertainments and musical evenings which she had been part of. But more recently, of course, she had wanted to be at the centre – she had wanted to come back to Warsaw to help, she said, adopting an air of solemnity. Irina still had her old rooms free, so she was staying there again, although it all felt a bit strange, and as if she had stepped back in time.
Yan, listening, murmuring suitable rejoinders, suddenly saw the younger Tanwen who wanted to impress, and who was probably embroidering the truth. She still had the same habit of tilting her head, but he thought her eyes were wary and watchful. She wore her hair differently, but the autumn glints were still visible.
Turning back to the children, he could not help thinking that there was more to it than feeling needed in the city. Tanwen was here for some purpose of her own. A lover? But he thought it was unlikely that Tanwen – that anyone – would come to this ravaged city purely to be with a lover. What, then, had brought her here?
He stayed late at the restaurant, helping Irina and the printer with the leaflets they were preparing which would call the members of their small group together in a week’s time.
‘We can meet here at Anatol’s,’ said Irina. ‘We haven’t used his cellar for a while, and I don’t think it’s being watched very particularly. I’m sketching the firebird piano in each one – everyone will know that means to come here.’
The printer bewailed the fact that he could no longer use his printing press. ‘But if the oppressors see this leaflet,’ he said, ‘they will think it’s a draft for a concert programme cover.’
‘Even though they’ll know we couldn’t possibly stage a concert in these circumstances?’ said Yan.
‘I’m not putting a date on it. And I’ll smudge it a bit. They’ll think it’s an old draft.’
Yan did not say that he was beginning to wonder how much longer this could go on. It was all good and fine to tell people that the Red Army were making their dogged way from the east, but how long would it take them? And would they be able to drive back Hitler’s armies anyway? It had been all very well to tell Bruno that one day they would reclaim their city, rebuild what had been destroyed, but would that ever really be possible?
As they were preparing to leave, Irina suddenly said to him, ‘Yan, I didn’t know Tanwen was coming back to Warsaw.’
‘Why did she?’
‘I don’t know, but whatever her reasons, I think we should be careful not to let her know what we’re doing. Only the people we’re absolutely certain we can trust can know.’
‘You don’t trust Tanwen?’ said Yan.
He thought Irina’s eyes slid away, but then she said, ‘Not entirely. But then I don’t trust anyone any more.’
It was after midnight when Yan walked back to his rooms. He had the book of Russian fairytales with him – the children had listened to two stories that night. Tanwen had listened, as well, quietly sitting in a corner, watching everything. Irina doesn’t trust you, thought Yan, remembering. I don’t think I do, either. But is that simply because of that night we had together? Or is it because Irina’s suspicious? Whatever it is, there’s something …
Putting the book away, he looked at the folded piece of silk that lay at the very bottom of the box. Inside was the miniature of his sunset-haired girl, but also inside the silk was the music that Vadim – his father – had given to him. Yan had promised Vadim that he would destroy it, but he had known he could never do so, and he never had. But now – with danger everywhere – with Tanwen back in Warsaw …?
He took out the score and with it came the remembered feeling of someone writing this down a long time ago – doing so in fearful secrecy because no one must know what this was …
No one must know … But tonight, someone had reappeared in his life who did know. I murdered Katya, he had said to Tanwen that night. Could any connection ever be seen between the ‘Cadence’ music and Katerinburg? Between Katya’s death and Yan himself?
He reached into the cupboard for some blank music scores. With the feeling that he was repeating an action that had happened several times over the centuries, he made sure his door was locked, then by the light of a single candle he began, very painstakingly, to copy the music on to the blank score. He made two copies – he would not trust one copy not to be lost or damaged or destroyed. One could stay here with the miniature, and the other could be kept in the safe in his office at the Chopin Library. And then the music Vadim had given him could be burned. He looked at it for a moment, then lit a fire in the small grate in his room in preparation. He sat down at his desk with the ‘Cadence’ and the blank score.
The copying did not take very long. It was not a very long piece of music. I’ve disguised you, he thought, at length, sitting back. You’re no longer the ‘Temnaya Kadentsiya’ – the ‘Traitor’s Music’. But what name can I give you that won’t alert suspicion? He frowned, and then his brow cleared, because of course there was only one piece of music he could use in this deception.
