The Bach Manuscript

PROLOGUE

All four family members were at home when they came.

Monsieur and Madame Silbermann, or Abel and Vidette, were in the salon, relaxing in a pair of matching Louis XV armchairs after a modest but excellent lunch prepared by Eliane, the family housekeeper. Vidette was immersed in one of the romantic novels into which she liked to escape. Abel, meanwhile, was frowning at an article in the collaborationist newspaper Le Temps, in which he was reading of much more serious matters. Things in France were growing worse. Just a little over two years since the crushing might of the German Wehrmacht had rolled virtually unopposed into the country, each day seemed to bring a fresh round of new horrors.

Seated at the piano, framed by the bright, warm afternoon light that flooded in through the French windows, their seventeen-year-old daughter Miriam was working through the most difficult arpeggiated right-hand passage of the musical manuscript in front of her, pausing now and then to peer at the handwritten notes, some of which were hard to read on the faded paper.

Though she played the piano with a fine touch, Miriam’s particular talent lay with the violin, at which she excelled. The real pianist of the family was her little brother. At age twelve, Gabriel Silbermann’s ability on the keys was already outstripping that of his teachers, even that of his father. Abel had been a respected professor of music at the Paris Conservatoire for over twenty years until the venerable institution’s director, Henri Rabaud, had helped the Nazi regime to ‘cleanse’ it of all Jewish employees under the Premier Statut des Juifs law, which had come into effect the previous year, 1941.

Since losing his post, Abel Silbermann had managed to get by teaching privately. Things were not what they had been, but he had always convinced himself that the family money, dwindling as it was, would get them through these difficult times. Abel was also the proud owner of a fine collection of historically important musical instruments, some of which he’d inherited from his father, others that he had picked up over the years at specialist auctions in France, Switzerland, and Germany — all before the war, of course. It had nearly broken Abel’s heart when, six months earlier, he’d been forced to sell the 1698 Stradivarius cello, one of the most prized items from his collection, to help make ends meet. He often worried that he might have to sell others.

But Abel Silbermann had far worse things to fear. He didn’t know it yet, but they were literally just around the corner.

‘Merde, c’est dur,’ Miriam muttered to herself. Complaining how tough the music was to get her fingers around. Gabriel could rattle through the piece with ease. But then, Gabriel was Gabriel.

‘Miriam, language!’ her mother said sharply, jolted from her reading. Her father permitted himself a smile behind his newspaper.

Miriam asked, ‘Father, may I get a pencil and add some fingering notes? I promise I’d do it very lightly, so they could easily be rubbed out afterwards.’

Abel’s smile fell away. ‘Are you mad, girl? That’s an original manuscript, signed by the composer himself. Have you any idea what it’s worth?’

Miriam reddened, realising the foolishness of her idea. ‘Sorry, Father. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘It shouldn’t even be out of its box, let alone being defaced with pencil marks. Please tell your brother to put it back where he found it, in future. These things are precious. This one most of all.’

‘I’m sure Gabriel knows that, Father. He calls it our family treasure.’

‘Indeed it is,’ Abel said, softening. ‘Where is Gabriel, anyway?’

‘In his cubbyhole, I think.’

Things had been hard for Gabriel at school since the Nazis invaded. He hated having to wear the yellow star when he was out of the house. Some of the non-Jewish kids pushed him around and called him names. As a result, he had become a rather solitary child who, when he wasn’t practising his pieces and scales, liked to spend time alone doing his own things. His cubbyhole was the labyrinth of nooks and crawl-spaces that existed behind the panelled walls of the large house, connecting its many rooms in ways that only Gabriel knew. You could sometimes catch him spying from behind a partition through one of his various peepholes, and you’d call out, ‘Oh, Gabriel, stop that nonsense!’ and he’d appear moments later, as if by magic, and disarm everyone with his laughter. Other times he could stay hidden for hours and you’d have no idea where he was. Like a tunnel rat, his father used to say jokingly. Then they’d started hearing the terrible stories coming from Ukraine and Poland, from everywhere, of Jews hiding under floorboards and in sewers while their people were transported away for forced labour, or worse. Abel had stopped talking about tunnel rats.

‘I do wish he’d come out of there,’ Vidette Silbermann said. ‘He spends too much time hiding away like that.’

‘If he’s happy,’ Miriam said with a shrug, ‘what harm can it do? We all need a little bit of happiness in this terrible, cruel world.’

Vidette lowered her book and started going into one of her ‘In my day, children would never have been allowed to do this or that’ diatribes, which they’d all heard a thousand times before. Miriam’s standard response was to humour her mother by ignoring her. She moved away from the piano and picked her violin up from its stand nearby. Her bow flowed like water over the strings and the notes of the Bach piece sang out melodiously.

That was when they heard the growl of approaching vehicles coming up to the house. Brakes grinding, tyres crunching to a halt on the gravel outside, doors slamming. Voices and the trudge of heavy boots.

Miriam stopped playing and looked with wide eyes at her father, who threw down Le Temps and got to his feet just as the loud thumping knocks on the front door resonated all through the house. Vidette sat as though paralysed in her chair. Miriam was the first to voice what they all knew already. ‘Les Boches. They’re here.’

In that moment, whatever shreds of optimism Abel Silbermann had tried to hang onto, his prayers that this day would never come, that everything would be all right, were shattered.

From the window, the dusty column of vehicles seemed to fill the whole courtyard in front of the house. The open-top black Mercedes staff car was flanked by motorcycle outriders, behind them three more heavily armed Wehrmacht sidecar outfits, a pair of Kübelwagens and a transporter truck. Infantry soldiers were pouring from the sides of the truck, clutching rifles, as Abel hurried to the front door. He took a deep breath, then opened it.

You can still talk your way out of this.

The officer in charge stepped from the Mercedes. He was tall and thin, with a chiselled, severe face like a hawk’s. He wore an Iron Cross at his throat, another on his breast. The dreaded double lightning flash insignia was on his right lapel, the sinister Totenkopf death’s head skull badge above the peak of his cap. Just the sight of those was enough to instil terror.

‘Herr Silbermann? I am SS Obersturmbannführer Horst Krebs. You know why I’m here, don’t you?’

Abel tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry croak. When Krebs produced a document from his pocket, a high-pitched ringing began in Abel’s ears. The paper was a long list of many names. It was the nightmare come true. Some Jewish families had fled ahead of the rumoured purges. Abel, choosing to disbelieve that anything quite so abominable could happen in his dear France, had made what he was now realising with a chill was the worst mistake of his life by staying put.

‘You reside here with your wife, Vidette Silbermann, and your children, Gabriel and Miriam Silbermann, correct? I have here an order for your immediate deportation to the Drancy camp. Any resistance, my men are ordered to shoot without hesitation. Understood?’

Drancy was the transit camp six miles north of Paris that the Germans used as a temporary detention centre for Jews awaiting transportation to the death camps. Abel had heard those rumours, too, and refused to believe. Now it was too late. What good would escape have done them, anyway? All fugitives would be picked up long before they reached the Swiss border.

‘Take me. I care little for my own life. But please spare my family.’

‘Please. Do you think I haven’t heard that before?’ Krebs pushed past Abel and strode into the house. His soldiers clustered around the entrance. Abel found himself looking down the muzzles of several rifles. The hallway of his genteel family home was suddenly filling with troops, their boots crashing on the parquet, the smell of their coarse tunics mixed with leather polish and gun oil a harsh and alien presence. The Obersturmbannführer turned to his second-in-command and said sharply, ‘Captain Jundt, seize everyone whose name appears on the list and have them assembled here in the hall. Make it quick.’

The captain snapped his heels. ‘Jawohl, mein Obersturmbannführer!’

Jundt relayed the command and soldiers surged into the salon to seize both Miriam and her mother, who was mute with horror and virtually fainting as they half carried, half dragged her into the hallway. While his men carried out his orders, Horst Krebs strolled around the downstairs of the house and gazed around him with appreciation for the Silbermanns’ good taste. Krebs did not consider himself a barbarian, like some of his peers. He came from Prussian aristocratic stock, spoke several languages and, before the war, had published three volumes of poetry in his name. By chance, he had studied music at the same Halle Conservatory founded by the father of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS chief whom the Czech resistance had assassinated only the previous month. Reprisals there had been harsh and were ongoing. Krebs intended to pursue his own duties here in France with equal zest.

Noticing the piano at the far end of the salon by the French windows, Krebs strolled over to inspect it. It was a very fine instrument indeed, a Pleyel. His keen musician’s eye passed over it, taking in the beauty of such a magnificent object. Maybe he would take it home to Germany as a trophy of war.

Then Krebs’ eye settled on the manuscript that sat on the piano’s music rest. He raised an eyebrow. He picked it up with a black-gloved hand, and peered at it.

Behind him, the hallway echoed with the cries of Madame Silbermann and her husband’s pleas as the soldiers forced them to line up at gunpoint. Captain Jundt was yelling, ‘Wo is das Gör? Où est the gamin?’ Demanding to know the whereabouts of young Gabriel, whose name was on the list. Jackboots thumped on the stairs and shook the floorboards above as more troops were dispatched to search the rest of the house.

Krebs heard none of it. His attention was completely on the manuscript in his hands as he studied it with rapt fascination. The age-yellowed paper. The signature on the front. Could it be the genuine thing? It was amazing.

Handling it as delicately as though it were some ancient scroll that could crumble at the slightest touch, Krebs replaced the precious manuscript on the music rest, then swept back his long coat and took a seat at the piano. The six flats in the manuscript’s key signature showed that the piece was in the difficult key of G flat major. He removed his gloves, laid his fingers on the keys and sight-read the first couple of bars.

Astonishing. If this was the genuine item, he wanted it for himself.

In fact, on consideration, he could think of an even better use for it. He and the now-deceased Heydrich were not the only high-ranking Nazis with a passion for classical music. What an opportunity for Krebs to ingratiate himself at the very highest level.

‘Entschuldigung, mein Obersturmbannführer—’ Jundt’s voice at his ear, breaking in on his thoughts.

‘What is it, Jundt?’

‘We cannot find the boy. Every room has been searched but he is missing.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t find him? How is that possible?’ Krebs was more irritated by the interruption than the news of a missing brat. ‘He must be hiding somewhere.’

‘The parents and sister refuse to say where, mein Obersturmbannführer.’

‘They do, do they? We will see about that.’ Krebs rose from the piano stool and marched towards the hallway. Moments like these called for a little greater authority than the likes of Jundt could summon up. Krebs drew his service automatic from its flap holster.

As Krebs reached the crowded hallway, he heard a sudden sound behind him and turned in surprise to see the young boy who seemed to have appeared from nowhere and was now racing across the salon, heading for the piano.

Jundt shouted, ‘There he is!’ as though his commanding officer were blind.

Miriam Silbermann screamed, ‘Gabriel!’

Krebs realised that the boy must have been hiding behind the wood panels, watching him as he sat at the piano. Running to the instrument, the twelve-year-old snatched the manuscript off its rest, and clutched it tightly. He yelled, ‘Filthy Boches, you won’t take our family treasure!’

His elder sister screamed, ‘Run, Gabriel!’ One of the soldiers silenced her with a harsh blow from his rifle butt.

And Gabriel ran, still grasping the precious manuscript to his chest as though nothing could persuade him to let it go. He made for the French window and slipped through, dashing towards the lawned garden and the fence at the bottom.

Krebs watched him go. Then calmly, unhurriedly, he walked towards the French window. Stepped through it, feeling the sun’s warmth on his face.

The boy was running fast. If Krebs let him run very much further, he would reach the fence and disappear into the trees, and it might take an entire Waffen SS unit all day to scour the surrounding countryside in search of the brat.

Krebs raised his pistol and took careful aim at the running child’s back. It was a long shot, but Krebs was an accomplished marksman.

The gun’s short, sharp report cracked out across the garden. Inside the house, Vidette Silbermann howled in anguish.

The boy stumbled, ran on two more staggering paces, then fell on his face and lay still.

More screams from the house, once again cut short by the soldiers. The Obersturmbannführer walked over to where Gabriel Silbermann lay dead, hooked the toe of his shiny jackboot under his body and rolled him over. A trickle of blood dribbled from the child’s lips. He was still clutching the music manuscript as if he wouldn’t give it up, even in death.

Krebs bent down and removed it from the boy’s fingers. It sickened him to see that there was blood on it, but not because it was the blood of an innocent child he had just killed. Rather, it was like seeing a rip in an old master painting. The manuscript had survived all these years, just to be indelibly stained by the blood of a filthy Jew. Disgusting. Krebs carefully slipped the precious object inside his coat before more harm could come to it. Then walked back towards the house to resume his duties. A pretty much routine day had turned out to be a lucky one for him.

Soon, the rest of the Silbermann family would be taken to their temporary new home at the Drancy internment facility, along with more than thirteen thousand other Jews rounded up by Nazi troops and French police in what was known as ‘Opération Vent Printanier’, or ‘Operation Spring Breeze’. From Drancy, not long afterwards, Abel, Vidette and Miriam would find themselves on the train that would deliver them to their terrible fate.

Only one of them would ever return.