This is My Song Read online

  I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,

  I want to unfold.

  One day my father received a letter from a Frenchman named Dubois, a paint-maker who, as a way of establishing his reputation, claimed friendship with Picasso and Braque. Dubois went on to say that he had met and befriended Rilke during the poet’s visit to Paris in 1925. The letter continued:

  Poor Rainer rented my second room from June until August, after which he returned to Switzerland. He wrote feverishly during this time. I did not realise that he had stored pages in a cabinet which I never used or even opened. They were found by the man to whom I recently sold the cabinet and promptly returned to me.

  Sir, inquiries have led me to understand that you are an expert on Rilke’s work. I would appreciate it if you could examine the pages with a view to …

  My father was very excited. Within weeks he had persuaded Dubois to post him the pages – as Jews, it was now impossible for us to travel outside of Prague – which turned out to be a bona fide collection of fifty-two poems written in a mix of German and French. My father sent Dubois some money, in order to ‘lease’ the pages. He then christened the untitled anthology ‘Love and Sorrow’ because, he said, every poem that had ever been written was about love, or sorrow, or both.

  ‘My greatest work,’ he said, ‘will be the translation of “Love and Sorrow”. The world will swoon –’

  ‘You do not speak French,’ noted my mother.

  ‘I will learn,’ he claimed, nose in the air.

  ‘Why not ask Bezdek?’ This was the professor who specialised in French Literature.

  ‘And share this treasure? With that ignoramus? Definitely not!’

  ‘Love and Sorrow’ quickly dominated our family’s lives, to the point of suffocation. Finding that book also marked the beginning of my father’s descent into madness.

  In 1940, after I had turned eleven, I met the Old Man.

  Despite the obvious risks, I had taken to the streets during the daylight hours. My father was either at university or locked in a room with his Rilke manuscript while my mother was praying for a better future, trying to enrich the soup that we now had to eat every day, or creeping downstairs with other tenants to listen to the illegal radio set that Mr Kozel had built in the cellar. Marika spent most of her time whispering with her two friends Gretel and Agnes, who lived across the street. Without school or family, I was lonely and bored.

  The onset of Nazi occupation had meant flat-helmeted soldiers marching about, barking orders, checking papers and brandishing their guns menacingly. However, even though I was tall for my age, I still felt insignificant. I thought, if anyone challenges me I can squeeze like a worm between those bricks or slide into that crack in the pavement. I also knew the streets well enough to plan escape routes: a gap beneath a fence to slither through, steps and handholds over there. If all else fails, I said to myself wildly, I’ll snatch a gun from one of the soldiers and shoot them all in their icy hearts, bang bang! Naïve, but I was young and had not yet fully experienced the grim realities.

  One day I was slithering about the Old Town, quite a distance from the river. I had never been there before. The streets were narrow, with collars of damp moss on the bricks. The air was heavy with the grim smell of past ages. This did not seem to be a place in which beauty would thrive and yet … near the end of a dimly lit street was a shop. Seated within the front alcove of the shop was an Old Man holding a strange object that he was polishing with a rag.

  Entranced, I watched for a moment before creeping closer. The gleam of the golden object was so bright, it dispelled the dullness of the day. I looked beyond the Old Man’s hands and saw that the base of the object was shaped like a bell. There were ivory buttons on the body that dared me to touch them and a long elegant neck that made me think of the summer swans that floated on top of Vltava’s currents. It was a glorious construction. I stood on the cobblestones and stared for a long time.

  Eventually the Old Man noticed me. He said, ‘Hey, boy. Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied (Mama had taught me politeness in all situations).

  ‘I thought as much. Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘A saxophone,’ he said, slowing his pronunciation of the word so I could copy the syllables. ‘It makes music.’

  Music? I knew of violins and cellos, the piano of course, the harp, cymbals and drums. But this yellow bird, this curved glory –

  The Old Man looked around. Apart from us, the street was deserted. He said, ‘Would you like to hear?’

  ‘Yes, please!’

  He beckoned me to come inside. This I did, without thinking. These were dangerous times. Strangers were not to be trusted. The Old Man could have been a kidnapper or even a murderer – but I was young and excited; I was my foolish father’s foolish son.

  The shop was tiny and dusty. There was a door at the back, a counter and two shelves stacked with a few small boxes.

  ‘This used to be a music shop,’ said the Old Man. ‘Actually, it still is. But I don’t stock much any more. Just some reeds and ligatures, spare strings, a few books of songs.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No point,’ said the Old Man. ‘The thing is, there aren’t many musicians left in Prague. Or rather, there aren’t many people who will admit to being musicians.’

  He clasped the saxophone carefully in his long narrow hands, like a parent with a baby.

  ‘My last instrument,’ he said wistfully before calling, ‘Michal! Customer!’

  The back door opened almost immediately.

  My child, unless you choose to consciously guard against them, there are moments in any life when you meet people and fall instantly within their spell. Good spell or bad, it does not matter. The point is, you fall – unimpeded, unstoppable.

  You know me as one who is guarded. You see a man who has placed a sentry at the gateway to his heart. That sentry is a cold, unflinching fellow. I am certain that you believe this to be a fault in my character. I am remote, I am without feeling, I am perhaps loveless. On the outside this is true, but please understand I made myself that way – part of the reason being my great love for Michal Laks.

  Love? A powerful word but correct. In any world, any life, love is desirable, no doubt, but it is also dangerous because it magnifies. If you are struck by love, then that strike will make you wobble and reel more than you have ever wobbled and reeled. Your newfound affection will be without limits! Correspondingly, if you are hurt by the one whom you love – or even if you do the hurting – then you will experience the deepest, most intense wound imaginable. For love may turn small into mighty or mighty into small; it may change happiness to bliss or sadness to misery.

  Such power!

  Michal, several years older than I, smiled. He came forward and took the saxophone from the Old Man – his uncle, as I later discovered – then motioned that I should follow him. We went through the back door and descended a spiral of metal steps into a basement, better lit than the shop itself.

  I felt no fear, instead watching with great curiosity as Michal checked the reed, wet it with his tongue, placed the mouthpiece between his lips, laid his fingers gently upon the keys – and transported me.

  Oh, he could play! The notes swooned and soared; they seemed to carry me as the breeze carries the light. I closed my eyes and felt the music ripple my skin and swim into my blood. My pulse became the accompanying percussion; breath tripped from my lungs in crotchets and quavers and semi-breves. When I could bear to watch as well as listen I realised that Michal was a physical manifest of the instrument. As he dipped and swayed, he too was golden and concave and melodic and marvellous.

  To this day, I cannot remember the tune that he played. But it did not and does not matter.

  I was transported to a new understanding: as a body carries the true gift of life, so does a tune carry its own true gift, that of the earth’s music.

  Of course, I wanted t
o learn. And Michal Laks wanted to teach me – but I had no instrument and no way of hiring or buying such a valuable item.

  ‘Uncle,’ said Michal, already – to my mind – my greatest friend, ‘there must be a way.’

  The Old Man thought for a moment. He said, ‘This is my only saxophone. They are rare and I cannot afford to give it away –’

  My heart sank –

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I do see your need. The music lies deep within you. You may not have known –’

  ‘Sir, I did not –’

  ‘So. You listen to pretty songs on the radio? Bah! No truth there.’ He grinned widely and said, ‘Young man, I am willing for you to come here and be tutored by my rascal nephew, who is already a fine player despite his laziness with practice. Come here, learn to play – and one day, when this madness is over, you may perhaps purchase the saxophone from me and use it to become the world’s greatest musician.’

  I was dumbstruck at my good fortune. The Old Man leaned on his walking stick and gazed at me.

  ‘Well, young man? What do you say?’

  Of course, I agreed. Who would not?

  Our lessons took place in that same basement, below the cold roads and stomping armies. At the time this seemed natural enough, a private place to practise, but I found out later that the style of music preferred by Michal and encouraged by the saxophone was hated by the Nazis. We were risking punishment or worse by our actions – but the basement walls were densely bricked and the Old Man kept watch from his shopfront. If soldiers were in the vicinity, he would go to the back door and use his walking stick to tap hard.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Uncle. He wants us to take a break.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘It’s okay, Rafi. Music is tiring. We’ll relax for a moment or two. Have you ever smoked a cigarette?’

  During our lessons Michal showed me how to correctly assemble the instrument, how to hold it – left hand at the top, right hand below, fingers poised over the correct keys – and then the most difficult part, the embouchure.

  ‘Rafi, not so tight! It’s a saxophone, not a straw!’

  I compressed or relaxed too much, blew hard or not at all, squeaked and squawked and growled and groaned – and finally found the base note, a C-sharp.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You see? Now you are a musician.’

  My tutor had the gift of making each tiny achievement seem as grand as the dawn.

  I learned to play the upper level and, with time, the lower level. I experimented with the octave key and began to tentatively step my way through scales. Each time I clutched the saxophone to my body and began to play I felt cleansed, as if there was no clatter of boots in the streets or spit in my hair, no vile echoes in my ears. I forgot about my father throwing open his door and yelling, ‘Of course! Not valley but abyss! Abyss! Why didn’t you tell me that?’ before slamming the door shut again. I stopped thinking about my mother’s perpetually wet eyes and the thinning of her face and the fact that she no longer prayed silently to God but begged Him aloud. I no longer worried about recalling the Torah because my father didn’t seem to care any more; he had not visited the synagogue in months, and although Shabbat was still observed it was in a more cursory manner, much to my mother’s distress. I forgot about being hungry and uncertain and too scared to sleep. I just played. And all the time Michal Laks was alongside me, encouraging – ‘I think you are ready for some Jelly Roll, Rafi,’ – and demonstrating – ‘from your diaphragm, it must arise like a dragon from the deep,’ – and praising – ‘Rafi, son of a poet, you are the second-best player in this room!’

  ‘There are only two of us!’

  ‘No! Look around, open your eyes. There is Ježek. Behind him, Duke Ellington, come all the way from America to hear you. And there is Adolphe Sax himself, the founder of our beauty. To be second-best among such company –’

  ‘Who is first-best?’

  ‘Rafi! Need you ask?’

  I lived for these moments, even more so because of the hardships of our regular lives. My father, like most of his kind, had been retrenched from the university. While he saw this as a positive – more time to ‘enrol in the raptures of life’ by working on the Rilke manuscript – the reality was that we had little money, our food was scant and our clothes were in constant need of repair. My mother tried to keep us well nourished and respectable, but it was near impossible. She took in sewing and stitching to make enough money for food, and I believe she might even have demeaned herself by asking her cold, uncaring parents for a loan – one that was never supplied.

  Marika said to me, ‘Rafi, where do you go?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You disappear, all day, every day. Where do you go?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re not real. Imaginary Rafi. How strange. All these years, I thought I had a brother –’

  So I told her about Michal and the Old Man, learning the saxophone.

  ‘We’re going to start a band.’

  ‘A band.’

  ‘As soon as we can. We’ll go to America and play in all the big clubs.’

  ‘Rafi, do you even know what a club is? Do you know anything about America?’

  I admitted that my knowledge was sketchy – ‘but I can learn!’

  Not surprisingly, she was scornful. I chewed my lip and wondered when and why Marika had become so adult and responsible.

  As much as I tried to deny it through the agency of music, the darkening world was never far away. Two terrible incidents taught me how black were the forces that had risen against us.

  One day I walked with my father to Panská. He wanted to visit the house where Rilke had lived as a child with his mother Phia and her wealthy parents. I was reluctant to go on this trip but my mother insisted.

  ‘He cannot be alone,’ she whispered. ‘Who knows what he will say, or do?’ I did not see that my presence would make much difference, but Mama had made the request and my love for her – and yes, for my father, still – meant that I had little choice.

  I remember the day as being clear and warm. It was late summer, perhaps early autumn, and the city basked, the spires reaching like eager explorers into the pale blue. We found the house easily enough. My father gazed through the locked gates, ummed and aahed, wrote copiously on his notepad and commented on the mysticism of the garden which, to me, looked raggedy, weed-infested and clearly abandoned.

  On the way home, he decided that we should walk through Staroměstské, the Square. He had been mumbling about eating trdelnik, even though the vendors who made and sold these delicious sugary pastries had long gone. I didn’t have the heart to dispute him.

  We should have veered away when we heard the commotion but we didn’t. It was a demonstration, a hundred or more people chanting, singing, shouting. The absence of signs, banners or flags suggested that this gathering had occurred in an impromptu manner. Regardless, the air was gravy-rich with violent possibility.

  My father became instantly excited. ‘The people speak!’ he cried. ‘Long live the people!’

  Before I could stop him he had pushed into the crowd – and that was when I realised what the demonstration was about.

  Židi zrádci! Židi zrádci! Jewish traitors.

  I worked out much later that this was our people, the Czechs, protesting against Jews who had aligned themselves with the now-hated German culture rather than Czech culture. People like my father, in other words.

  Židi zrádci! I had to get him out of there. I knew that he’d be recognised: there were plenty who had been taught by him, had heard him on chairs or stages in the cafés loudly proclaiming the virtues of Goethe, Heine and Schiller, among others.

  But I was too late.

  ‘Ullmann?’

  ‘Josef Ullmann, the lecturer?’

  ‘The sympathiser!’

  First the low growl, as if from a cornered animal, but there was a group of them, dark-browed, beaten-looking. I heard
my father blithely confirm his identity and begin, whoever knew why, to recite Rilke – this beautiful summer, the soft caress of the wind drifting across golden fields – each phrase spoken with the wonderment of the pure-hearted child.

  The growl arose like the grinding of gears in an old truck. The first push came, then another, another, my father like a ball being batted back and forth. I saw one of the taller men reach over and poke my father’s eye with his knuckles. Josef cried out, perhaps finally aware of the danger, then a different man slapped him twice. Others took the cue, grasped his slender body and held him open and high as if pinioned by nails while a short stocky man went to the front and aimed a powerful gut punch.

  ‘Stop! Please!’

  They did not hear me, would not have cared anyway. I was tall but weak and lacking in courage. Incredibly, despite the ferocious blow, my father was still reciting. The short man was quickly replaced by the tall man, who flexed his fists then casually chopped my father in the throat, mouth and nose. Blood sprayed and finally he was silent. The others cheered before releasing him with a collective, satisfied grunt, allowing him to flop to the stones and writhe like a landed fish. They kicked him a few times before closing ranks, hunching down and sidling spider-like to the other side of the square.

  Somehow I got him home. A man helped me; I never knew his name and to this day cannot recall his features. But he was strong enough to lift my father’s inert form and carry him like a sack of flour to our apartment block while I beetled along behind, muttering my gratitude and feeling light-headed with confusion and shame.

  My mother wept and blamed herself for allowing him to leave the apartment, our long-suffering neighbours were appalled and saddened, but it was Marika who took charge, gently tending my father’s wounds and insisting, despite all the different treatment theories, that he do no more than sip water and rest. He had not spoken since his fall onto the cobblestones and I recall being worried by this more than anything. My father’s words had always been a gas leak: thoughts shared without censor, experiences recast as the poetry of existence, phrases tasted and re-tasted like his father’s bonbons, metaphors tossed into the briny air like multi-coloured bubbles, each one bobbing about with wide-eyed uncertainty as it waited to be loved forever or burst by the wind. The silence was unnerving.