PRAISE FOR THE OPERA SISTERS:
“Driven by their convictions and their passion for music, two English sisters provide aid to German Jewish families in Monson's kaleidoscopic historical novel. This story about moral courage in the face of risk stays warm and light. Ida['s] repartee with Louise is loving. In scenes together, they are delightful, and their impact on others is clear. Ordinary women find their inner strength, engaging in determined, clandestine actions to give others hope.” —Foreword Reviews
“The well-documented accounts of life under Nazi rule and the slow dismantling of the Jewish community and way of life are heart-wrenching and eye-opening. Perfect for fans of strong and resilient female characters.” —Booklist
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When Hitler seizes power in 1933, he begins passing laws that restrict the rights and lives of German Jews.
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EXCERPT OF THE OPERA SISTERS:
Excerpt 1
SENSIBLE
LONDON, SUMMER 1934
Ida’s lace-up Oxfords echoed on the long tile hallway as she fell into step behind others leaving the Foreign Office at workday’s close. She concentrated on a woman’s reasonable black pumps progressing in an orderly fashion ahead of her and forced herself to slow down. Steady, Ida chastised, as she gripped her purse tighter in frustration. Be sensible. She drew a deep, calming breath, fighting against the urge to leap all the way down the hall.
You’re nearly thirty years old now and should be able to contain yourself, the mature part of her brain lectured, but the secret beating its way through her brain wanted nothing of restraint. Forcing her steps to slow once more, she told herself to be calmer. More practical—more like her sister.
Ida made her way outside, down the steps, and around the corner, to the meeting spot where her sister waited. With a rounder face, smooth hair, and wider eyes, her older sister had always been considered the prettier one, and Ida thought Louise looked a picture wearing a tweed polo overcoat and pintucked gray gloves as she leaned slightly against the limestone base of the Lord Robert Clive statue.
In the last twenty meters, Ida could hold back no more and practically skittered across the walkway.
Louise looked up in surprise. “You all right?”
Ida clutched her arm. “Louise,” she said. “Take a deep breath. Prepare yourself. You may be unable to control yourself at this news.”
Louise laughed. “Rather doubtful, that. You’re the one who has a difficult time containing yourself. Whatever is it?”
Ida inhaled with the pleasure of anticipation. “Over lunch, I walked by Albert Hall. They had just posted the concerts for the new season.”
Louise raised her eyebrows, piqued. “And?”
“On her London debut, Amelita Galli-Curci is coming to sing in concert.” Ida paused to let the news sink in. “Galli-Curci is coming here!”
A smile broke over Louise’s face, her stiff posture melting momentarily in the face of her sister’s enthusiasm. “That’s rubbish!”
“Three performances. Oh, Louise! I’m chuffed to bits! It’s still months off, but do you think if we scrimp on lunches—do you think we can buy tickets—to them all?”
“We must!” Louise pronounced, and Ida was thrilled at her sister’s decisive response, because she knew that if Louise said a thing, it was as good as done.
Ida threaded her arm through her sister’s, and they turned to walk up King Charles Street, toward Whitehall, as Big Ben clanged out the time in the distance. How often had they listened to Galli- Curci’s record in the past year? Over and over again they’d played it, until their mother, father, and younger brothers insisted on anything other than that. The mere thought of hearing Galli-Curci’s voice in person, of seeing in real life the singer whose image they’d admired upon the record label, sent Ida into a paroxysm of anticipation.
“Oh!” Ida stopped mid-stride on the pavement. “Whatever will we wear?”
Louise laughed. “We’ve heaps of time to figure it out, Ides.”
Six months previous, Louise had blown through the back door, rain and wind gusting in with her, removed her hat, and announced to the kitchen at large: “I simply must have a gramophone.”
She’d wandered into a lecture by Sir Walford Davies over lunch, she explained. With his gramophone beside him, he’d discoursed on the beauty of music and the modern possibility of enjoying concerts in one’s very own parlor.
“They’re no longer only for the wealthy,” Louise said, quoting from the lecture.
Ida laughed. “I doubt very much Sir Walford was speaking of civil servants earning three pounds fifty a week.”
“Nevertheless,” Louise replied. “I must have a gramophone. I’ve just received a cost-of-living alteration I can use for the deposit.”
Ida had never known the likes of Louise for obstinacy, but she didn’t see how even she might manage it. Still, she wasn’t going to miss seeing the marvel, so she went with her sister to a showroom full of H. M. V. gramophones.
When the shop assistant dropped the needle down upon a record, violins and cellos filled the shop with sound. “Oh!” Ida exclaimed, touching the polished walnut case and hand crank. “Suppose I chip in my cost-of-living increase too? We can share it and some records to boot.”
“Ten records are on offer right now,” the assistant said, pleased by their reaction.
“We ought to have some Beethoven and Mozart, I’d think,” said Louise. “And Bartok and Stravinsky, according to Sir Walford.”
“I would suggest vocal records as well,” said the assistant. “Rosa Ponselle’s La Forza del Destino is one I think you might enjoy. And there’s a new Amelita Galli-Curci record out.”
They exchanged blank looks.
He held up the Galli-Curci record, and they both studied the proud woman on the cover, swathed in embroidered fabrics.
“Ida,” Louise asked coyly as the attendant moved away. “What does her outfit remind you of?”
Ida blushed. “I know what you’re thinking of, but I doubt she’s wearing draperies nicked from her secondary school.”
“Are you certain?”
Ida rolled her eyes. “Do you remember that Christina Rosetti poem that says, ‘There is no friend like a sister’?”
“Of course.”
“I doubt very much she ever had one.”
Louise laughed. “We’ll take the records,” she told the assistant when he returned.
They left the shop that day clutching ten records, with the gramophone promised to follow in a few days’ time.
When the lovely creation was unpacked in the front parlor beside the Chesterfield, Mum, Dad, and their brother Bill gathered round for the occasion and waited as Louise drew a record from its packaging, laid it carefully upon the spin table, and dropped the needle upon the lined surface of the disk.
Louise had chosen the Ponselle record at random, and the flat filled with the soaring tones of an incomparably beautiful voice. In response, Ida sank down upon the hard floor in stunned silence. “Oh, Louise!” she managed. “You’ve cut open a hole to heaven and let it drain directly into our parlor!”
“Imagine that,” their father said, stroking his chin and fiddling with the handle on the gramophone, pretending to understand how it worked. “Imagine that. It’s a concert hall in our front room.”
“Shall we walk and save the bus fare for concert tickets, then?” Louise asked, bringing Ida back to the streets of Westminster.
Ida nodded. “We can bring bits from home to eat for dinner and save on that as well.”
Since the day the gramophone had arrived, it had been much easier for Ida to ignore the lack of interest she felt as she set off for the good-and-solid-job-with-a-pension she knew she ought to feel grateful for, especially in the middle of an economic depression.
The twenty-three pounds had been paid off now; and somehow, the music made it easier to forget that many of their grade school friends had found love and had babies of their own now, though plenty remained single given the shortage of men their age alive after the Great War. Like so many others, Louise had fallen in love in her teenage years with a boy who fell on the battlefield. And though Ida loved dreaming of all the ways she might find romance, she had not met anyone whose reality could contend with the fantasies her mind could conjure or the plots of the romance novels she hid under her bed.
Both their brothers, Jim and Bill, would soon be married to women Ida and Louise deemed nearly worthy of them, and more and more they were gone from home. Day after day, Ida returned to her copy typist desk, taking dictation and typing careful notes, though her eyes often strayed to the window where the rays of a westering sun turned the clouds pink along the edges.
Perhaps, she sometimes thought, perhaps reality would be easier to accept if only her mind didn’t insist on inventing so many stories of all the other impossible ways it could go.
Excerpt 2
“NOT FOR LONG”
Salzburg was like something out of a dream. Church spires and palaces reflected on the smooth channel of the Salzach River. The white walls of Hohensalzburg Fortress looked down from a rocky outcropping over the city. Behind all the castles and palaces, loomed the grandeur of the Alps.
And the music! Ida and Louise soon found that to walk the streets of Salzburg in the morning was to encounter music as commonplace as wind. Through an open window came an aria from a singer warming up, the fluttering notes of a piano sonata, or a choir rehearsing in any of the baroque churches. Musical pilgrims flocked to concerts in Mirabell Palace, haunted the chambers where Mozart had first played the harpsichord, and marveled after Elisabeth Rethberg and Bruno Walter the way Americans trailed after actresses in Hollywood: starstruck, adazzle, mouths slightly agape.
They wore the new evening gowns Ida had sewn and written about in her article: a scarlet, satin crepe for Louise, and a pink and silver taffeta for herself, with crushed velvet capes trimmed in rabbit fur to complete the ensembles. They sat beside the handsome Peter Bailey at a Mozart serenade at the Residenz and Le Nozze di Figaro, conducted by Clemens Krauss, at the Festspielhaus. Lost in Peter’s smile, Ida couldn’t help but wonder if her own romance story might finally be beginning.
Ezio Pinza had brought his family to the festival, and they met in passing in the central square, where he generously insisted they join him for dinner after the performance of Don Giovanni.
Mr. Pinza’s smooth, sonorous voice and startling good looks made him a perfect Don Giovanni. It took little imagination to believe him a consummate heartbreaker as he praised wine and women as the “support and glory of mankind.”
On stage, in that great, final moment of catastrophe, a statue of the dead commendatore appeared at the top of a double, curving flight of stairs. “Don Giovanni!” the marble appeared to shriek. “You invited me to dine with you!”
Giovanni pressed his back against a massive pillar as though, confronted by this horror, he needed something solid behind him. In a desperate attempt to escape, he threw himself down the steps, but flames sprang up, blocking his way. The pillar collapsed, the solidity of the world giving way, and Giovanni was consumed, dragged down to hell for all his sins. “Such is the end of the evildoer,” the ensemble sang reassuringly. “The death of a sinner always reflects his life.”
When the lights came up, Ida was rather shocked to see Peter Bailey looking more than a little spellbound by a blond Austrian woman across the auditorium. The woman laughed and touched his arm.
Louise followed Ida’s eyes. “Oh dear,” she said a touch too loudly. Then, “Come away, love. There’s no reason to watch.”
Ida let Louise lead her out of the concert hall, a little numb, trying to hold on to the magic of the performance that had truly been one of the best they’d ever seen.
“Never mind him,” Louise told Ida sternly. “He clearly doesn’t deserve you.”
“Oh,” Ida said, trying to control her lower lip that did insist on shaking. “I thought . . .”
“I know, my love,” Louise said, taking her arm and squeezing it in an uncharacteristically affectionate way. “I hoped too, but really, what could I possibly do without you? You may not have a handsome man beside you, but you do have a sister who loves you desperately.”
Ida’s eyes spilled over. “Oh, Louise! Sometimes I think my brain has become addled by too many romance novels.”
“No,” her sister insisted. “You have good, solid brains and you have me, Ides. You will have me forever.”
Ida dashed her tears away and squeezed Louise’s arm as they entered the elegant hotel restaurant Ezio had reserved. It was easy enough in that space to recapture their glow from the magnificent performance and ignore the ache in her heart. “What artistry!” Ida gushed to their host.
“What drama, Mr. Pinza!” Louise murmured in agreement.
“Oh please,” said Ezio, leaning toward them, not looking a bit like he wanted them to stop.
Suddenly the door was flung open, and Clemens Krauss called into the room: “Don Giovanni! You invited me to dine with you!”
“So, I did,” Ezio laughed. He rose to introduce his daughter, his wife, Augusta, and Ida and Louise.
In turn, Clemens Krauss presented his wife, Romanian opera singer Viorica Ursuleac, who had played the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro. With dramatic sideburns and a dark shaft of hair swept back to the right, Clemens Krauss had piercing eyes that looked down the length of his not insubstantial nose as if he could ferret out shoddy musicality and vanquish it with a flourish of his baton. Viorica Ursuleac’s golden curls were pinned neatly into place; a curtain of pearls she might have worn onstage adorned her commanding neck.
Clemens settled beside Ezio, and the two began debating whether Mozart had intended Don Giovanni to be read as a hero or a villain, while Viorica and Augusta seated themselves beside Ida and Louise. Neither woman spoke English well, though Viorica was more comfortable than Augusta.
“Your portrayal of the Countess was flawless,” Ida said, a bit awed. She wondered for the dozenth time how she and Louise had become lucky enough to now count such glittering illuminati as acquaintances and friends. Just like she’d first felt upon meeting Lita, it was invigorating to be around people pursuing their life’s passions so unapologetically.
“Thank you, dear,” Viorica said graciously.
“So much power,” agreed Louise. “Particularly in your upper registers. I believe it must become one of your signature roles.”
“Are you ever terrified to get up on stage in front of everyone?” Ida asked.
Viorica smiled. “I was, at first. But I’ve realized, this was my own work to do in this world. You understand? So, I put up my hair, go out onto the stage, and do it.”
Ida nodded, her admiration for the woman growing even greater.
“We should ask the Cooks,” Ezio said a short time later, pausing his conversation. “They’re astute students of the art form, and I value their opinions.” The sisters looked in his direction.
“Ladies, all of you, please, what is your reading of the character
of Don Giovanni?” “Any man who enjoys violent conquests of women is a consummate villain through and through,” Viorica said, and there were nods of agreement.
“Yet we still feel empathy for the man,” Louise offered. “We’re still drawn by his passion and charisma, which drive the work as a whole. Otherwise, we would not mourn his destruction. It is the mastery of Mozart that allows this ambiguity, don’t you think?”
Bored by the adult conversation, young Claudia sidled close to Ida and pointed to her wrist. “I like your little time,” she whispered.
Louise laughed at the darling phrase. “My watch?” Ida asked.
The girl nodded shyly. “Next week is my birthday. I hope to have one for a gift.”
“I hope she isn’t bothering you,” Augusta said.
“Oh no, she couldn’t,” said Ida.
“Ten minutes more, Claudia,” Augusta said, “then ze bed for you.”
Mr. Pinza perked up at her words. “Oh, let her stay, Augusta; she isn’t harming anyone,” he called down the table, his voice flush with a few cups of wine.
His wife’s brows lowered, and her words came out with more anger in them than Ida and Louise had expected: “Ezio, I tell you, you’ll spoil ze girl. You let her do however she pleases.”
The sisters exchanged awkward glances, neither of them wanting to be present for a domestic argument. But before Ezio could spit back a response, Viorica leaned toward Claudia, her eyes bright and shining for the child’s sake: “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” she sang, her sumptuous voice no less exquisite than when she was on stage.
The song was a popular one, and Claudia’s face lit up at the familiar tune. Mr. Pinza joined in, and suddenly the pair was singing a striking duet, notes twining around each other.
Tension eased from the air, and Claudia joined in at “tra la la la la . . .”
Music fixes everything, Ida marveled. Perhaps, it could even fix a broken heart.
Excerpt 3
JUSTITIA
As the train pulled into the bahnhof at Frankfurt, Ida and Louise scanned the crowd for Mitia’s daughter, Else. “I’ll be wearing a pink hat,” she had written.
And there she was, sitting on a bench in the station, with a pink velvet hat perched on top of her silky brown curls.
Her brown eyes shone as she talked about her studies at the Frankfurt conservatoire and led them across R.merberg square. The plaza of angled medieval buildings was decorated with Nazi banners. In the center of the square stood an elegant fountain with a statue of the goddess Justitia, scales hanging askew.
“You’re nearly as knowledgeable about opera and music as your mother,” Louise said, admiringly.
With none of her gloominess, Ida thought but did not say, loving the girl immediately.
They passed a store window plastered with notices, and though they could not read the German, they could guess one word—Jude—clearly enough. Ida averted her eyes, embarrassed, and followed Else’s pink hat over the cobblestones.
A block off the main square, Else led them up to a luxurious flat. “My family has been here for four generations,” she explained as she led them inside.
“What a music room!” Ida exclaimed, admiring the elegant grand piano and carved bookcases filled with books on musical theory.
“Hello again, and welcome,” said Mitia, embracing them. She turned to the tall man beside her. “This is my husband, Paul.”
“Thank you,” Louise replied. “You have such a lovely home.”
“You can’t possibly still plan to leave this place?” asked Ida, gesturing about. From all she’d seen of Frankfurt so far, it was nothing but a beautiful, thriving city.
Mitia laid a finger to her mouth. “We’ll talk of it later.”
****
The next day, Paul motored the Mayer-Lismanns—including Mitia’s older brother Carl—and the Cook sisters through verdant stretches of green that meandered along the Main River to Offenbach, a hamlet ten kilometers from Frankfurt. The Mercedes turned up a wide, circular drive in front of an impressive villa and stopped beneath a stone porte cochere. Ida and Louise climbed from the car, mouths agape.
It was clear from the greeting with Frau Elfriede Basch that the two families were dear friends. Frau Basch ushered their guests into a large oak-paneled library where the grand furnishings dazzled them both.
“What a splendid estate!” Ida exclaimed, but Elfriede waved off her compliments.
“You should have joined us in happier years when we used to hold musical soirees here with ever so many glittering guests. Isn’t that right, Mitia?”
Mitia nodded. “Shall we show them the music room? They will appreciate it.”
Elfriede led them into the hallway, past a massive Venetian mirror Louise paused to admire. The upper landing, where an elegant divided stairway met, was adorned with matching glass cabinets. The cases held a decorative glass collection that included delicate handpainted vases, a Roman-era rainbow patina cruet, and glass filigree decanters from Murano, Italy.
The walls of the music room were ornamented with heavy framed Dutch paintings; a grand piano inlaid with palisander, lemon, and boxwood details took up one corner of the room.
Ida and Louise looked about in awe, and Ida wondered if she should have worn something other than her six-and-eleven-penny satin jumper.
“Let’s have tea, such as we have, and music,” said Elfriede, looking toward Else. “Did you know our darling Else will be the last Jewish student to graduate from the Frankfurt Conservatoire?” Else took the cue and sat down before the pianoforte. They clapped for her melodies, which were genuinely superb.
“The fact remains,” Else was insisting to Louise a short time later, “all the characters in The Magic Flute must face the prospect of their own death.”
Ida talked with Mitia and Carl, who was such a sweet man that he had both her and Louise calling him Uncle Carl in no time. Mitia looked more relaxed than they’d ever seen her, and the fire they’d once glimpsed on the stage flashed once more at the corner of her eyes.
But after the empty teacups had been stacked upon the sideboard, Elfriede said, “There. It’s best we truly talk. Else’s English is better than mine, so she will explain things.”
Ida and Louise looked up in surprise.
“Miss Cooks,” Else began, “I’m afraid we must leave Germany . . .”
“All of you?” Ida asked, looking round the circle at each of the refined faces, so clearly rooted in this world. “Are you certain?”
“Very certain,” came Else’s answer, and heads shook in unison.
“And—you’ll leave all this behind?” Louise asked. It seemed too incredible. This house represented centuries of accumulated wealth beyond anything the sisters had ever imagined. Just a few moments before, they’d been singing parts from their favorite operas.
Frau Basch flew off in rapid German, and Else nodded. “Da, da. Her husband, Felix, has been taken,” Else explained.
“Taken where?” Louise asked.
“To Dachau, a work camp,” Paul interjected. “Accused of being a communist.”
“Gracious,” said Louise. “Do you think things will get worse than they already are?”
Ida chimed in. “Wouldn’t you want to try to wait? My father says—”
Uncle Carl, his skin creased like parchment, spoke up in English with a heavy German accent. “It is becoming difficult for us now to buy even food. Things could get much worse, liebling. Much worse.”
Ida realized with a strange awakening that it didn’t matter much what her father said, for her father had never been here, had never spoken with these people. The newspapers at home, written by a correspondent from a comfortable armchair behind a British desk weighing strategy and politics could not possibly understand the reality these families lived with. For the first time, she felt a branching of reality and sensed that beneath the grandeur of this mansion, beneath the tea and music and elegant furnishings, simmered a rising wave of dread she could not comprehend. To consider leaving this behind—they must be facing impossible circumstances.
“If you aren’t allowed to buy food, what do you eat?” Louise asked practically.
“Fortunately for us, our neighbors are farmers. For this time, they allow us to barter. We trade them a rare book, a piece of family silver, in return for sacks of potatoes and a chicken.”
The way Mitia and Paul were nodding at each word told Ida things were even more difficult for the Mayer-Lismann family. She felt a wash of shame for judging Mitia for being gloomy of all things. The crude and harrowing signs from the streets of Frankfurt rose to
her mind: Jude. An awkward silence followed, and she cleared her throat. “Frau Basch, can we help somehow?”
The woman’s face, as regal as a queen’s, warmed to kindness at Ida’s words. “Else believes there may be a way.”
“Going to England is probably the best choice for us,” Else explained. “My mother and Elfriede can apply to receive visas as ‘domestics.’” Ida and Louise exchanged a glance. The very idea of women such as these pretending to be domestic servants. Wholly unbelievable.
Else continued, “I can apply for a student visa. It’s my father and Uncle Carl who are most at risk, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t fuss about me! I’m old!” lectured Uncle Carl. They’d clearly had the conversation before.
Else continued, “They’re both liable to be rounded up and taken at any time, especially if they are not employed, which they can’t be thanks to new laws. Guarantees are what we need. British citizens must sign documents agreeing to be financially responsible for us as long as we remain in Britain—or until we receive permission to go to the States.”
Ida and Louise exchanged nervous looks again. A hefty promise. Their family certainly didn’t have the resources, and yet, as Ida watched the fire flash in Mitia’s eyes, she knew they must do everything in their power to help these two families. Finally, she understood the full weight of Viorica’s words: “There, now you will be all right.” Viorica had, perhaps, trusted them to help beyond a train journey.
“I’m afraid we know nothing about the immigration process,” Ida confessed, feeling guilty that she’d thought of little besides romance stories of late. “I feel foolish that we haven’t paid more attention. The newspapers in London have covered the political situation, of course, but not the impact on . . . real people like yourself.”
“On Jews,” Mitia said directly.
Ida nodded helplessly.
“We will look into it,” Louise promised. “We will help if there’s any way we can. Our family is quite ordinary, I’m afraid. I’m not sure we’d qualify to give a guarantee.”
Else explained it all back in German, and there were more nods around the circle. “We have one more request of you.” Else’s pretty face flushed. “It may be quite dangerous, and we understand if you choose not to.”
“What is it?” Ida asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“Have you heard that Jewish houses and all their belongings must be registered with the Nazi government?”
Ida shook her head; they hadn’t known. There was so much they hadn’t known.
“Everything above five thousand reichsmarks must be registered. We believe they intend to confiscate it all. Without money, no foreign government will allow us entry, and we will be unable to leave Germany.”
Elfriede moved to the buffet, where a velvet box sat upon the polished surface. She brought it back to the circle and withdrew something. Ida noticed for the first time how prominent the older woman’s veins were, tracing up both sides of her hands like vines lacing up the sides of a tree.
“You asked to help,” she said. “If you can help us get these to England, they will make the difference.” She uncurled her hands to reveal a gorgeous ruby brooch surrounded by glittering diamonds. Nestled beside it was an ornately carved emerald ring.
“Oh!” Ida started. “They’re like something from the Queen’s jewels!”
“Ida,” said Louise, nudging her.
The two exchanged a long, tortured glance. There was a name for this. Smuggling. Smuggling jewels legally required to be registered with Nazi officials. They’d had no idea of the real situation in Germany. What else didn’t they know? And if they were caught. . . ? A flash of fear struck Ida’s heart—fear of never being able to get home, of being trapped in a twisted carnival mirror with a deep sea rising.
Dachau. Elfriede’s husband had been sent there. A fierce homesickness
swept over her.
Ida picked up the ring—a dazzling rectangle as large as the knuckle on her ring finger. Light from the windows passed through the gem, reflecting shimmering emerald shafts deep within the faceted stone. What if it had once belonged to a Bavarian princess? What if it contained secret powers? If any ring did, it would look just like this one.
“It’s exquisite,” Ida said. “I’ve never seen anything like it—outside of a museum.”
“Perhaps,” Louise suggested. “Perhaps. If we wear them openly?”
Ida was amazed that her sedate and practical sister who had never done anything even slightly dishonest was considering it.
Louise held the ruby brooch against her sister’s satin jumper. “If we wore them with our simple clothing, they might be taken for Woolworth’s paste.”
“Do you think so?” Ida stammered.
The Basches, Uncle Carl, Mitia, Else, and Paul watched them try on jewels, debating, as if the jewelry were costumes one could simply slip in and out of, rather than a family’s inheritance, the last remnant of an entire estate, a faint and final hope.
“Da, da,” Elfriede said.
“Can we possibly?” Ida whispered to her sister, the emerald ring luminous in the palm of her hand.
“How can we not try?” Louise replied with tortured eyes, and Ida marveled at the strength and goodness of her older sister.
So they nodded their agreement to Elfriede, and it was done. Gratitude. Relief. Laughter. Else returned to the pianoforte to play. What a solace the music was; clearly one of the few things of light and beauty still there for them, exactly as it had been in times before.
Excerpt 4
As they neared the Dutch border, Ida and Louise tried to push down their nervousness, to wear the jewels casually, as if they’d always been their own. As the train rocked their private compartment, a memory she’d not thought of in ages came into Ida’s mind.
“Louise, do you remember that game I used to play when we were little? When I would hunt round the garden digging in the dirt and peering under things, looking for lost diamonds?”
Louise laughed. “We had a row about it a few times, remember?”
“Because you said if I found one, I must give it back to its rightful owner and it would be wrong to expect a reward simply for doing what’s right.” Ida smiled at the memory and looked down at the exquisite ruby brooch circled with diamonds. “This is just as gorgeous and sparkly as the jewels I hunted for as a child.”
“Am I to suppose you’ve matured since then, and you’re planning to give them back?”
“You had an unusually sensitive conscience for a child, Louie,” Ida said, using her childhood endearment for her sister. “And yes, I shall give this treasure back when our friends come to claim it.” The train slowed as they reached the border, and the smiles slipped from their faces as they left the train and joined others in queue.
Ahead, stood a stern official, SS guards and a chained dog by his side.
Ida squeezed her sister’s hand.
“And what was the purpose of your trip?” a German official inquired.
“Opera,” said Louise, adjusting the white gloves that covered Frau Basch’s emerald ring, as Ida flourished a Rienzi playbill.
His eyes momentarily rested on Ida’s brooch, but as he took in the rest of her outfit, he appeared to dismiss it. Nothing about them looked like gentry.
“Next,” said the official, and he waved them through. They turned away.
“Halt!” called the guard behind them. Shaking, they turned around. He took Louise’s passport and began arguing with another soldier in rapid-fire German.
Another man, just behind them, was pulled from line and dragged away. The soldier returned with Louise’s passport and reluctantly handed it back to them. The guard dog growled as they fled back to the train.
A few hours later, they boarded the ferry that plied the route between Rotterdam and Harwich, and, as the hammered water receded, the sisters relaxed at last, melting into the ship’s railing as each minute increased their distance from Germany.
“What a relief,” Ida said, looking over the ever increasing water. Louise stiffened, looked about, and turned Ida to face the sea. “We don’t know who may still be watching.”
Ida nodded.
By that evening, they were back in the parlor at 24 Morella Road, which looked just like they had left it; they embraced their parents just as they’d done so many times before. But how different everything felt. No longer could they wave off news about Germany. Suddenly the political climate had become arresting in a way no newspaper could manage. Ida thought of how she’d planned to use her new earnings to buy clothes and opera tickets. The memory made her a little sick. Back in their shared bedroom, Ida gingerly placed the emerald ring beside the brooch, wondering what to do with the lot. “I suppose we need a safe deposit box for them,” said Ida.
They settled into their beds and turned off the lights, a silence stretching between them.
“We must get those dear people out,” Louise said at last. “All of them.”
Ida nodded into the darkness, surrounded and lifted by the safety and protection of home. “Tomorrow, we begin.”
DOLPHIN SQUARE
The morning after their return from Munich, Louise began organizing tasks with the cool aplomb of a general. “Now then,” she said briskly. “There are several things we must do: screen out those who are in the most desperate circumstances and decide who has the best chances of being rescued. We have to either find guarantors for them or go back and smuggle out their belongings so they have valuables waiting to convince the British government. It’s simple, really, but Ida, we must organise and coordinate. One
mistake and . . .”
“And they’re trapped,” Ida finished, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. “I’ll work on it. It will be easier for me since my job is less strenuous than yours.”
Mum and Dad listened to their daughters’ explanation of the people they’d met in Germany and tried their best to understand. Though Father viewed the political situation differently, ultimately they recognized real people needed help and Ida and Louise were
determined to give it with the same determination they’d first given to opera. “Those dear people,” Mum said. “You girls let us know how we can help.”
By midmorning, Ida had realized Else was correct about the visas: she could get a student visa easily enough, and Mitia and Frau Basch might be passed off as domestics, but the men presented a much more challenging task, while also living with the greatest risk of being captured. Finding a guarantee would be the easiest way to get around the problem, but the guarantor had to assume full financial responsibility for as long as the refugees remained in England, and possibly for the rest of their lives.
Ida sighed and scrutinized the paperwork over her dinner break. So much bureaucracy, so many rules spelled out in exhausting legalese— with none of it matching the fervor and importance of Elfriede and the others trapped in a villa in Germany, bartering off their family’s possessions in exchange for potatoes.
By the following afternoon, she was able to telegraph Else’s student visa to Frankfurt. The family would have to travel separately and reunite in London, she wrote to Mitia. There was no other way.
Putting the papers aside, she climbed the narrow stairs to the attic and began working feverishly on the latest installment of Wife of Christopher, grateful to escape to a story she could control. As she typed her way through the dramatic scenes, they carried a new weight, the lightness of the romantic serial belied by the people now relying on its success.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Photo Credit: Nathan Burton
MARIANNE MONSON received her MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and primarily writes on topics related to women’s history.
She has taught English and Creative Writing at the community college and university levels and is the author of twelve books for children and adults, including the novel Her Quiet Revolution and her nonfiction works Frontier Grit and Women of the Blue and Gray.
She is the founder of The Writer’s Guild, a literary nonprofit, and writes from a 100-year-old house in Astoria, Oregon.
Visit her at mariannemonson.com
For author interview requests, please contact Callie Hansen at chansen@shadowmountain.com
PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS:
Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women
Women of the Blue and Gray: True Civil War Stories of Mothers, Medics, Soldiers, and Spies
Her Quiet Revolution: A Novel of Martha Hughes Cannon; Frontier Doctor and First Female State Senator
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PURCHASE LINKS:
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