Two men on bicycles passed her, stopped and turned around to ask where she was headed, and Anna was embarrassed for a moment. After all, it seemed so very far. They came back.
“How are you going to get home? You’ll never make it before curfew,” said one. “Tell you what. Sit on the rat trap behind me, hold on to my jacket, and come back with us. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what to do.” Anna hesitated.
“Oh, forgive me. We haven’t introduced ourselves. This is Herbert Bender, Cello, and I’m Markus Kleiber. I play the piano. We promise to be perfect gentlemen. What’s your name?”
Yes, they were. They were perfect, if slightly dusty gentlemen, and Anna decided to trust them. She sat on the rat trap, held on to Markus Kleiber’s shoulders and enjoyed a wiggly, bumpy, but safe ride along Masurenallee, and eventually turned into the driveway of a lavish villa, set well back in a large park. They pushed the bikes to the back of the house, carried them down into the basement, and led Anna up a narrow staircase into a cosy kitchen at the rear. There they set down some treasures that Herbert Bender had transported on his bicycle, vegetables mostly, but also a bottle of something noble, by the way it was wrapped and treated.
“This isn’t our house,” said Markus Kleiber, “though I wouldn’t refuse it if someone insisted on giving it away. We’re the janitors, so to speak. It belongs to one of the leading Opera stars, who left to be with her mother in Swabia and asked us to look after the place, since we insisted on staying here in Berlin. She’s very generous, left us a lot of supplies, and we’re not doing so poorly, seeing that the damage we sustained is reasonably manageable.” Anna hadn’t noticed any damage so far.
“Would you like a tour of the house? Mind you, a lot of her art and some of the really valuable furniture has been evacuated, but still—”
They went into the music room, four times the size of that at Anna’s house, and she gazed at a magnificent grand piano, with a bronze bust of someone significant in one corner of the room, looking at a life-sized painting of a brilliantly beautiful, elegant if slightly forlorn looking young woman.
“That’s her, of course,” said Bender, “you have heard of her, I expect?”
“Yes, I have,” said Anna truthfully, “but the only operas I’ve been to so far are ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and she wasn’t in those.”
“No, she wouldn’t have been. This painting she left behind, not sure why.”
The high ceilings made the house seem immense. The fine work on the ceilings of the master bedroom and the library and dining room reminded Anna of theatres built around the turn of the century, with rosettes, cornice moldings and the curlicues of the Art Nouveau. Nevertheless, the rooms seemed cold and empty. On the upstairs landing, Markus Kleiber rushed ahead and closed the door to a lived-in looking small room. Anna admired the hand-made tiles lining the bathroom walls.
Then they showed her a large walk-in dressing room with a fold-down bed and adjoining washroom, and said she could comfortably sleep there.
Anna went and washed up in the little ‘facility’, using water from a bucket next to the sink, scraped some jelly-like substance from her running suit, combed her hair and sprayed a bit of eau de cologne on it, thoughtfully supplied, and promptly felt hugely improved.
The friendly service apartment on the top floor was empty now, the couple having fled west when their Mistress did.
No one knew where the husband was, he the artist whose painting was left on the wall of the music room.
“Shall we go back to the kitchen? I would like us to make something to eat,” said Markus Kleiber, “before it gets too dark. Later it’s strictly candle light, as you know.”
“Let me help,” said Anna and looked around for the drawer with knives and a cutting board, “I don’t have much to contribute, but I do have a can of herring in tomato sauce, donated by nurses in Beelitz Heilstätten today.” And she rummaged around for a can opener.
“Don’t worry. Maybe you should save that for tomorrow,” said Herbert Bender, “we’re still quite well supplied. And we have enough for the three of us. If you would like to set the table later, glasses are in there, in the dining room.” And the men went into the pantry and found some cooked potatoes, which Anna turned into a magnificent salad, with cucumber pickles and first chives from the kitchen garden.
“So which one of you gets to wash the windows?” Anna teased.
“We fight over that one,” said Markus, “naturally, but seeing we have worked together for fifteen years in the orchestra, we’ve learned to deal with those little jealousies.”
“Fifteen years?” said Anna, wondering if it would be rude to take another slice of the ham, and in the meantime fishing for a piece of bread, and, “yes, almost sixteen,” said Herbert Bender, placing a second slice of ham on each of their plates, “we were hired the same season, right after graduation.”
“What is that like?” asked Anna. “Being married to the Opera, living with music and for music? Do you feel lucky? It just sounds lucky to me.”
“Yes! Yes, of course, it’s lucky. If you can say honestly that you don’t know what you’d rather do — and that’s me — then that’s an incredibly lucky life,” said Markus. “You, Herbert? Of course, you might say — I’ll let you answer that.”
“No, I agree with Markus. I’m actually married to Irene, not the opera. She and the kids have been evacuated. But yes, it’s a wonderful profession, and when we have put all this incredible horror behind us, it will be even better. Just sometimes I would like to find more time to compose.”
“Herbert, I have an idea. How would it be if we gave a little private concert for Anna here, after dinner. We’ll bring the lady’s chair into the music room for her. Would you like that, Anna?”
“I would LOVE IT,” said Anna, and then she wondered whether to ask if they had a viola da gamba, or a recorder, so she might even join them, but she quickly dismissed the idea. These generous friends wanted to do this for her, it was their event, their turn for a little candle light and their right to be praised, to be thanked, not hers to elbow in.
From another bucket of water in the kitchen she took enough water to rinse the dishes, but saved the glasses for wine later.
Then they moved into the music room and a candelabra was brought in, with just four candles, but festive all the same.
She sat on the comfortable lady’s chair and waited for Markus and Herbert to get ready the cello, and settle down at the piano. They didn’t use sheet music, she noticed.
“Now you have to use your imagination,” said Herbert, “we can’t supply the wood winds, we have just arranged our own version with what we have here, but you’ll recognize some of these melodies.”
And Anna did. These two had to be soloists. She thought she had never heard such superb interpretations of the familiar pieces from famous operas. The cello, always secretly coveted by her for its more powerful sound than the gamba could render, was a golden instrument, she thought. And Herbert played it as though it were part of his body. Markus played with his eyes closed, his fingers racing along the keys one moment, and almost coaxing the sound from them the next.
Anna could have sat and listened all night. Last, Markus asked if Herbert wanted to do an inaugural performance of the little piece he said he had composed the day before? Herbert wasn’t sure at first, but then felt why not.
At first she was puzzled because he began with ‘Abends wenn ich schlafen geh…’ but then went on to a most dreamy, gentle and playful interpretation of the piece, switching tempi, finally returning to the original.
Anna felt tears running down her cheeks, happy tears.
Next they repaired to the kitchen, candelabra raised above their heads, and pouring a round of fine cognac, taught Anna to play “Skat”.
“That’s the secret reason why Markus picked you up,” Herbert winked, “we needed a third man for Skat.”
It turned out to be a labour of love since they first had to teach her the very basics of playing cards, as in, ‘this is a jack, the lowest of the picture cards.’ And so on. Yet, when midnight approached, they were shrieking and giggling and Anna threatened to win, when there was a loud banging at the back door. Anna put down her hand and sprinted up the stairs, but Herbert called after her not to worry, it would be just Mady, another member of the opera company and a Berlin hold-out.
“So guys, it’s all over, the city has surrendered,” she announced, shaking a big red mane, “I have it on impeccable authority. The ceasefire’s on and holding.” There followed a moment of total silence. Anna and the two musicians had spent the evening in a world of make-believe, had shut out the dirt, the smell, the worries and immense uncertainties of tomorrow, and it had worked. Six magical hours had been theirs, shared in a spirit of wonder and generosity and enjoyed immensely by them all.
It was 1.00 a.m. on May 2, 1945, but in Moscow Stalin had announced that May Day had been the great day of victory, except that the war wasn’t going to be over for another five days.