Winter's End

If she hadn’t been missing Milos and feeling constantly anxious, Helen’s time in the capital city might have felt like the best days of her life. She had never known such a delicious sense of freedom before. Having a place of her own, her name on a door that she could lock and unlock with her own key, going out when she liked, getting on the first tram to come along and losing herself in unknown streets: she relished these small pleasures day after day. They never faded. Mr. Jahn had given her half her first month’s pay in advance so that she could get herself what she needed. She bought an alarm clock, a brightly colored hat, a pair of woolen gloves, a scarf, and a pair of boots. The coat that Dr. Jose f ’ s wife had given her, although a little old-fashioned, was warm and comfortable and she decided to keep it. She also unearthed a dozen novels going cheap in an old bookshop near the restaurant, and lined them up on the shelf in her room. “My library,” she told Milena proudly.

She came back quite dazed from her solitary walks in the city. She loved mingling with the anonymous crowd swarming over the sidewalks at rush hour. If you could see all these people, Milos! Racing about, bumping into you without even noticing you’re there. You feel like an ant among millions of other ants. If you were with me, we’d have to hold hands to not get separated. I go into shops, boutiques, hardware stores, choosing what I’ll buy when I have more money. If only you were here too, my love. . . .

But what she liked even more was walking at random, going farther and farther afield, delighted to discover a new bridge, a pretty square, a little church. She walked fast, wrapped in her warm coat, until her legs began to tire. Then she would catch a tram or a bus going back toward the city center.

Dora was right: people here weren’t very good-tempered. Or rather, it was as if they didn’t trust one another. You heard little laughter and few cheerful conversations. The fact was that the people of the capital seemed depressed. Sometimes Helen met a glance from a pair of friendly eyes, but they turned away at once. She soon learned to spot the Phalangist security police and the agents on night duty: men with wary faces, often hidden behind newspapers like something in a bad thriller, but you could easily guess that their ears were working harder than their eyes.

When she got off the tram one afternoon, she found that someone had slipped an invitation to a meeting into her coat pocket, and she thought the wording suggested that it was for people opposed to the Phalange. She thought of the young man who had been sitting beside her; it must have been him who’d given it to her. He had looked attractive and rather nice. “A trap!” cried Dora. “Whatever you do, don’t go!” And she advised Helen never to talk freely to strangers, however friendly they seemed. “New friends, whoever they are, must be introduced to you by someone safe, or it’s better not to trust them.”

A few days later, as she was going back to the restaurant on foot, she heard shouts: “Out of the way! Militia!” She had no time to move aside and was knocked down by three men armed with clubs who were chasing a tall, lanky man. They caught up with him and beat him. He fell to the ground, curling up his long, thin limbs to protect himself, but they kept hitting him on the head and the back.

“Stop!” cried Helen, paralyzed by horror as the unfortunate man huddled there while the brutes went on attacking him. “Stop it! You’ll kill him!”

She realized that everyone around her was running away except for a young man, who had turned his collar well up to hide his face.

“Bastards! You’ll pay for this!” he shouted in his own turn, and then he too ran for it. He was obviously counting on his burst of speed to escape the militiamen, and he was right. One of them chased him a hundred yards and then gave up.

“I’ve seen your face!” the young man taunted the militiaman, turning around one last time. “I’ve seen all your faces, and believe me, I’ll know you again!”

The militiaman hurled insults at him and went back to his companions. Helen hadn’t moved from the spot.

“Got a problem, miss?” he spat as he passed her. “No? Then you better get out of here.”

No doubt it was because of this incident that she didn’t feel like walking alone next day and asked Milena to go with her. “You could live without Bart just for an afternoon!”

“It’s not Bart I spend the afternoons with.”

“Oh? Who is it, then?”

Milena hesitated. “Well, if you promise you won’t breathe a word to anyone . . .”

“I promise.”

“Come on, then. After all, it would be a good thing for you to know.”

They set off along the uphill roads leading to the Old Town. Black ice made the sidewalks shine, and they held on to each other to avoid slipping. Milena was laughing to herself, impatient now to share her secret. Helen had never seen her looking so happy and radiant before. It made her a little more aware of her own loneliness and distress. A lump came into her throat. Milena noticed her friend stiffening slightly and understood at once. She stopped and put her arms around Helen. “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. You have a right to be happy! I’m not jealous.”

A sad look came into Milena’s eyes. “Don’t think I’m happy, Helen. I can never be really happy again now I know what they did to my mother. I could easily be inconsolable, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling content sometimes. So there it is; I’m content today. Content to have Bart, content to be with you, content to go where I’m going at this moment.”

When Helen only nodded, Milena stood back from her and took her hands. “Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Milos is definitely alive. I can’t keep it from you any longer.”

Helen trembled. “How do you know?”

“From Bart and Mr. Jahn. They’re sure of it.”

“How do they know?”

“They’ll explain. And what’s more, Bart says that if Milos is alive and has one chance in fifty of getting out of trouble, he will. He knows Milos very well. So don’t despair.”

“I only had to get there with Dr. Josef an hour earlier!” said Helen angrily, shaking her head. “Just an hour earlier and I’d have saved him! I suspect I’m going to be inconsolable too.”

“You did the impossible. Come on, we’ll be late.”

They set off again. A little farther up the road, when they met two women coming the other way, Milena took care to draw the hood of her coat well over her face. “Or they may go thinking I’m a ghost again!”

“So they may. Are you really so like your mother? Do you have any photos of her?”

“Yes.”

“And are you?”

“Well, yes, the photos show me with clothes and a hairstyle twenty-five years out of date! Dora even gave me one with myself as a baby in her arms. I’ll show it to you. And as you’ll see, she was very beautiful.”

The apartment building with its peeling facade stood on the corner of two streets in the most out-of-the-way part of the Old Town. It had an old-fashioned entrance hall. The girls went in and climbed a narrow staircase smelling of beeswax.

“Where are you taking me?” asked Helen as they reached the fifth and last story.

Without replying, Milena knocked on a door that had no name on it, and a smiling Dora let them in. “My goodness, have you brought us an audience?”

“Isn’t that all right?”

“Of course it is. Good idea! Come in, Helen, you’re very welcome. Put your coats over there on the bed.”

It was like being in a doll’s house without the doll. The space was tiny, the furniture plain, and the walls were bare except for a musical score pinned over the wallpaper in the living room.

“It’s a Schubert manuscript,” said Dora, following Helen’s eyes.

“A reproduction?”

“No, an original, in his own hand. You can look at it.”

Helen went closer and stared at the modest sheet of paper, slightly yellowed now, with notes written on the music as if in haste in the composer’s beautiful hand.

“The ink . . . it looks as if it’s only just dried. I can’t believe it! It must be a rare document, surely.”

“Very rare,” Dora said, laughing.

“But you . . . I mean, it’s valuable. . . .”

“If I sold that score, I could buy the whole building. And the one next door.”

“And . . . and you don’t sell it?”

“No. I’m stupid, aren’t I? What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Helen, impressed.

“It’s always been there. And the piano too. A Steinway! You wonder how it ever got up here. The stairs are too narrow, and so are the windows. It’s a mystery. I like that; I like to imagine that they took the roof off to bring it in.”

“Have you always lived here, Dora?”

“Oh, no. This is where my piano teacher used to live. She was a brilliant, crazy, impossible old woman who made herself infusions of cloves to inhale and used to throw her shoes at my back when I played wrong notes. When she died, I bought her apartment. That was when I was making money from playing the piano. I thought that was only natural. I didn’t realize it was paradise. You discover what paradise means when you lose it, and what your nest means when you fall out of it. Come on, I’ll make tea and then we’ll get down to work.”

Helen took her shoes off, sat down in an armchair, folded her knees up against her chest, and waited, motionless. Dora sat down on the piano stool, pushed up her sleeves, and shook her dark curls. Milena remained standing, one hand on the side of the keyboard, concentrating as if about to give a recital. Her ruffled blond hair contrasted with the angelic beauty of her face and enhanced it.

“Let’s start, Milena. We’ll go back to D. 547.”

“Right, I’m ready.”

Dora delicately played the first chords, and when Milena opened her mouth, the nature of the air and everything else around her seemed to change, as always when she sang. Helen was shivering.

“Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,

Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,

Hast du mein Herz . . .”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Dora interrupted her. “You’re too far ahead on ‘Hast du.’ Go back to the beginning, please.”

As far as Helen could tell, Milena was neither ahead of the piano nor behind it, but perfect. All the same, Milena obediently went back to the beginning. Once she was past that passage, Dora nodded her approval. “Good, that’s it.” She smiled. She knew she wouldn’t have to repeat herself ten times with Milena. Helen felt that special pride you get when a brother or sister whose gifts you have known for a long time finally reveals them to the world. She remembered the school yard where Milena used to sing for her. It seemed so far away now. And she remembered Paula, her large consoler, asking with amusement, “How’s your friend Milena? Do you admire her as much as ever?” At that moment she admired Milena more than ever.

Helen was equally fascinated to see Dora’s mutilated right hand running lightly over the ivory keys. Sometimes she had to rest it for a moment and massage her aching wrist.

“I have difficulty spreading my fingers beyond a fifth these days and it’s no use even trying thumb passages!”

She might as well be talking Hebrew, thought Helen. “I’d never have noticed anything,” she said, intending to comfort Dora. “I think you play incredibly well.”

“That just shows you don’t know anything about it!” cried Dora, bursting into laughter and holding up her damaged hand. “Myself, I feel as if I’m playing with my foot!”

Helen thought her laughter was just a little too cheerful. “Are there any records of Eva-Maria Bach?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes. I have one here, but Milena doesn’t want to listen to it.”

“Dora’s right,” Milena agreed. “The idea scares me. But with Helen here today I think I could summon up the courage.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Dora disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a black vinyl record in its sleeve. She held it out to Milena.

“There, this is all I have, and the few photos I’ve shown you. My treasures. I’d hidden them in a suitcase and given it to a friend for safekeeping before I left the capital. I was right to take precautions, too. They ransacked the apartment and took everything away. Everything. Except the piano, because it was too big. And guess what else those idiots left, Helen?”

“The Schubert manuscript?”

“Exactly! It was just where you see it today, pinned to the wall in full view. It’s the one thing they’d have been bound to take if they hadn’t been such ignoramuses! I think I’ll be laughing over that for the rest of my life!”

Milena turned the record sleeve over in her fingers. It had a simple design of a bunch of pale mauve flowers on it. She read out loud, in a low voice, “High-quality recording . . . symphony orchestra . . . contralto: Miss Eva-Maria Bach . . . They called her ‘miss’?”

“Yes, she wasn’t twenty-five yet, remember. And unmarried.”

“But she already had me, didn’t she?”

“Yes. I think you were two at the time. You had chubby cheeks, and you —”

“I don’t know if I will have the courage, after all. I’m all right with the photos, not so sure about the voice.”

It was Helen who took the record and put it on the gramophone. Dora had lifted the heavy varnished wood lid. The “high-quality recording” crackled badly. Dora turned the volume down very low. “My neighbors are safe,” she said, “but you never know; they might have visitors.”

The extract began with several bars played on the violin, and waiting was almost unbearable for the two girls. It was as if Eva-Maria Bach might suddenly open the door and walk in. At last the voice rose, distant and peaceful:

“What is life to me without thee?

What is left if you are dead?”

Overwhelmed, Milena hid her face in her hands and kept them there until the end of the aria. Helen listened, entranced by the fullness and balance of the low contralto voice. She realized how young her friend still was by comparison. Dora was smiling, her eyes bright with emotion.

“What is life, life without thee?

What is life without my love?”

“That’s enough for today,” murmured Milena, as the aria reached its last note. “I’ll listen to the rest of the record another time.”

All three wiped away tears, laughing as they brought out their tissues at exactly the same time.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Dora when she had put the record back in its sleeve.

“I think I still have a lot of work to do.”

“You’re right. So let’s get on with it!”

“Let’s do that.”

When Helen and Milena left the Old Town, the streetlights had already come on. They took the shortest way they could along little, sloping streets and down flights of stone steps. When they reached the square where Jahn’s Restaurant stood, they met Bartolomeo, returning at just the same moment with a huge black scarf wound around his neck.

“Bart,” called Milena, “Helen would like you to tell her what you know about Milos.”

“Come on, then, Helen,” he said. “Let’s walk on a little way, just the two of us, and I’ll explain.”

They left Milena behind, went toward the river, and walked along the bank. Without knowing it, they stopped at the same bench where Two-and-a-Half had been sitting before Mitten hit him on the head with his exhaust pipe. The quiet murmur of the ripples accompanied their voices.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Bart began. “I just couldn’t make up my mind.”

“Is it that tricky?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. Well, first you have to know that Mr. Jahn has always been sure that Milos is alive.”

“How could he be sure?”

“He knows the Phalangists and the way their minds work. If they took Milos away on their sleigh in such a hurry, that means he wasn’t dead or they’d have dug a hole quite close and thrown him into it. They’re not the sort to bother about an enemy’s corpse.”

Helen had always thought the same, deep in her heart. And above all, over and beyond all reason, she had an utter conviction that her lover was alive. It had taken firm hold of her mind. She felt it in every fiber of her being. If not, how could she talk to him silently as often as she did, by night, by day, telling him her secrets, telling him about her difficulties and her moments of happiness?

“Since then,” Bart went on, “Mr. Jahn’s had confirmation through the network. Milos is alive. Only what comes next is rather more worrying. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”

“I’m listening,” said Helen, but a shudder ran through her.

“Well, if they spared his life,” Bart went on, “it was with one idea in mind.”

“What idea?”

“Look, I’ll repeat what Mr. Jahn said, shall I? That’ll be easier. The Phalange despises weaklings and losers. They eliminate them without any scruples, just like putting down the sick animals in a litter. But they respect the strong. As they see it, Milos is strong, and he proved it by killing Pastor. What’s more, they found out that he was a wrestler. So they had him looked after, and now they’re going to use him in their fights.”

“Fights?” asked Helen, feeling as if the blood were draining out of her.

How could Bart explain gently about the barbarity of the arena and the savage shows it mounted? He did his best, but in spite of all his efforts he could only tell her unbearable things. No, no one can avoid fighting. Yes, one of the two must die. No, no mercy is ever shown.

“The winter fights begin next month,” he finished, determined to tell the truth to the end. “And Milos will be . . .”

For a moment he hoped Helen would slap his face to punish him for the horrors he was revealing. He’d have welcomed it; he hated himself so much for having to tell her.

“What can we do?” she asked at last, in a faint voice.

“I don’t know,” Bart replied. “Of course we’ve thought of getting him out of there, but even approaching the place is impossible. The army guards the camps.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done?” Helen was crying now.

“Yes, there is. Mr. Jahn says we mustn’t give up hope. He says things are moving.”

“Things are moving?”

“Yes. The network’s been in turmoil for some months now. I’m supposed to keep it a secret. I shouldn’t tell you, but the hell with that.”

“What do you mean? Is there going to be an uprising? When? Before the winter fights? Tell me, Bart! Tell me!”

“I know almost nothing, Helen. They give me a few scraps of information because my name is Casal and I’m my father’s son, but I’m only seventeen, not sixty, like Jahn! If I learn anything at all, I’ll tell you. Promise!”

“Promise!” He had fired the word at her, like Milos had, without meaning to. Helen leaned her forehead into the hollow of his shoulder. He was so tall. He gently stroked her head.

“We mustn’t give up hope, Helen. I’m told that when things were going very badly, my father used to comfort everyone by saying, ‘Never fear: the river’s on our side.’ ”

They turned and looked at the dark, quiet waters, the sparkling eddies glinting here and there. Far away, on Royal Bridge, cars glided through the silence as night fell.