The maestro had rehearsed and conducted the concert, under the gaze of the cameras and of the entire world, with the full understanding that immediately afterwards he would lead the men in his charge to their deaths. In dismissing Lajos from the performance, Ančerl knowingly and deliberately saved his young life.
Twenty years later, Ančerl toured the United States and Harkályi, by then a professor of music in Philadelphia, though not yet internationally recognized, attempted to arrange a reunion. His letter to Ančerl was returned unopened by the management of the Czech Philharmonic, and he never spoke with the maestro again, not even after he emigrated to Canada.
“Goddamn Karel Ančerl,” he had said back then, in Terezín. It was the first instance in his life that his prayers would be answered.
Lajos was left behind to rot, so he believed, while all of the other musicians and composers gained their freedom in Western Europe and elsewhere. He grew embittered, but also productive. With the sudden shortage of competent performers, the homesick guards approached him with commissions. They grew tired of hearing the same few marches, so they sent to Leipzig and Berlin and even Paris for new music — tangos and csárdás, arias from the latest operettas — which Lajos had to transcribe for a rotating cast of musicians and whatever instruments were on hand. The living could fill out the chords of the dead. He assigned all of the parts to all or to almost all of the musicians simultaneously, with only slight variations in form or timbre, so it didn’t matter if he only had three violins or if his oboist had been shot, or even if there were no cello strings to be found within fifty miles. His inner ear grew accustomed to awkward variations in pitch, which he learned to incorporate into the music he composed based upon the Volkslieder the weeping officers sang drunkenly to him. The rapid turnover of musicians made it difficult to orchestrate precise melodies, so Harkályi taught himself a unique compositional style, a style that eventually gained him a vast, international following and brought him back here to Budapest after all of these years.
14.
They were sealed in a windowless, unadorned stone room in which two metal chairs had been placed before a table of colorful catered food. Sturdy padlocks prevented entry into the closets, where the priests hung their civilian clothes while saying mass. A sentry stood guard in the hallway, the personal bodyguard of the prime minister of the republic of Hungary, of Magyarország, who was said to be interned in an adjoining backstage cell. Magda picked at a strawberry, then at a misshapen cube of melon, while Harkályi paced in small, waltz-like circles.
“This melody you will hear at the very end, in the final string quartet — it is the lullaby that your grandparents sang to us.”
“I remember. Papa would sing it too, but his voice was awful!”
“Perhaps not ‘awful,’ but what he lacked in talent he compensated for with volume.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely true.” Magda’s smile electrified him. “It’s funny that your parents sang in Hungarian.”
“They learned to sing before they learned how to speak. That was how they accumulated a vocabulary — one folk song at a time. It’s such a tragedy. They believed they would be safe in Budapest.”
“Papa didn’t really talk about the war, but I heard him tell my mother once, when she was sick, that his parents — your parents — wouldn’t have been safe anywhere. They were ‘too vocal.’ That was the term he used. That the best they hoped for was his safety and yours.”
“Tibor was fearless, even as a boy, as strong as a bull.”
“He always cried when he sang it.”
“Yes, that is understandable, certainly. It was very painful for me to transcribe, and perhaps it was a mistake to do so.”
“I can’t wait to hear it.”
“I cannot wait for this concert to … listen.”
The orchestra had started to warm up, to arrive at a shared tuning. To Harkályi, the cacophony was gorgeous, like a summer meteor shower dripping from the heavens. There were sounds, often from the reeds and winds, that some listeners would consider unappealing, but in reality no awful voices truly existed — not even his brother’s. The pre-musical chaos contained something honest, even truer than the manicured tones that would follow; it was music in the raw, free of false order, of linearity, and for that reason was ignored by the audience as if it were white noise. It was his favorite part of every concert. Colors and patterns of sound swirled forth from the altar, but were muted by the heavy wooden door.
His career as a composer was born, in a concentration camp, from hideous necessity. And it was in a concentration camp, now, that his beloved niece had gained employment. It was enough to make him weep. So like her grandmother, and so very and incalculably different. He wanted now to be alone, to fall to his knees and cry.
During the following weekend, the production of The Golden Lotus would be transferred across the river to the opera house, but Harkályi would not remain in Hungary long enough to witness the transition, or even to see for himself the Oriental-looking sets they constructed. He needed to return to his studio, to the empty staves that awaited him. Someday soon he would take on more composition students, when he felt confident that he had something to teach them. He would impart upon them the necessity of embracing the variety of willful ignorance that saw him through the greatest horrors that humanity can bestow, and which were responsible for this absurd celebrity. He will teach them to avoid the mistakes he had made. He will teach them to compose what they did not yet know and wished to understand.
There was silence, and then a faint knocking on the door. A young priest entered, without invitation, and gestured for them. “Tessék,” he said. Harkályi stood before Magda, before the radiant image of his own mother. She brushed lint from the shoulders of his coat. The stone he carried felt weightless. It released him from its servitude. He lifted it into the fluorescent light of the small room. “Put this in your purse, Magda. It once belonged to your father. One day I hope you will understand what it is.”
She took the stone from his hand, then smiled, though only faintly this time, confused, and kissed him on both cheeks. He was glad to be free of it.
“We should not keep them waiting any longer,” Harkályi said.
The door was opened. In a single moment, no more than that, he would enter the swelling concert hall, the heart of this cold church, to accept the adulation of a thousand strange, howling faces, their teeth bared. Only then will he feel that he has arrived safely at what he might call home.
BROOKING THE DEVIL
1.
Brutus waited in the mess-hall line for twenty minutes, collected his grub, and sat facing the windows. He often went for days without speaking voluntarily to another soldier.
The men and women behind him, organized by race into table-sized ghettos, laughed and belched. He ate much too quickly and returned to his room. In the lull after breakfast the barracks remained more or less still while everyone shaved and shat or masturbated, if they could. The Army was putting something in the food. The huddled masses of soldiers and spies and torturers dissipated every morning at this time, quieting the hubbub almost to the point of nonexistence. Sparky was out, so Brutus had the room to himself. His bunkmate was a former seminarian from Massachusetts, and a punk. It came up on oh eight hundred and the sun still had not shown its ass. Five U.S. Marines were visiting from Budapest, and Brutus had to go fraternize, even though it was his only free day that whole week. But he had a few minutes, so he turned on the radio.