Butterfly and the Violin (9781401690601) Page 9

  “The SS guards would have selections when new convoy trains arrived at the camp. In Auschwitz, those deemed able to work were herded to the right. Those who were doomed to the crematorium were often sent straight to the gas chambers, which were in the holding area on the left.”

  “Unbelievable,” he said, still clicking forward through the pictures.

  “Stop—right there.” Sera brushed her hand over his to stop him. Surprised at her own comfort level, she pulled her hand away and dropped it back into her lap. “That’s the orchestra. It’s debated by some historians, but many believe they were forced to play during the selections. Adele would have been with them.”

  “They played, knowing people were being sent to their deaths?”

  Sera could hardly believe it herself. But yes, it was true.

  She nodded.

  “They were forced to play cheerful music—German marches or Hungarian folk music—to keep the prisoners upbeat as they marched out to work and returned to the barracks each day. Can you imagine? Day in and day out, as thousands of people walked past them. Mothers. Unsuspecting families. Children . . .” Sera’s voice trailed off as she tried to envision what it must have felt like to be forced into such a horrific situation. “It was the worst in 1944 through 1945. That’s when the Germans began transporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands of them went straight to the gas chambers upon arrival. And the orchestra played through it all. It’s said that the musicians had some of the highest suicide rates of any prisoners in the camps. I wonder how they could even go on.”

  “Now I understand the depth of the sadness.” William turned and looked at her. “In the painting? Adele’s eyes look as though they go deeper than the back of the canvas. It’s because of what she saw, because of all the people who walked by her and she was powerless to stop it.”

  “We can’t know the full extent as to what actually happened. And she was there for almost two years before our record of her goes cold.”

  William shook his head. “So she was a Jew? That’s why she was sent there?”

  “No. That’s just one layer of the mystery.” Sera sailed into action, feeling the rush of energy that came with the unraveling of the story a piece of art could tell. “Look at this.”

  She opened another file folder and dropped it into his hands. His eyebrows arched up the instant she presented him with a picture of the uniformed man.

  “Who is he?”

  Sera pointed to the name at the bottom of the photo. “Fredrich Von Bron.”

  “Her father was a member of the Third Reich?”

  “Austrian. A general,” Sera confirmed, nodding. “And because of his position, we know that whatever happened must have been severe. It was kept quiet too. We haven’t been able to find any news reports about it. Adele was sent away as a reeducation prisoner. That meant she would have been a labor worker as punishment for some sort of offense. She was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau early in 1943—that was well within the time frame that prisoners were tattooed as a means of cataloging them. Those who were sent straight to the gas chambers weren’t registered or tattooed, but another group that wasn’t tattooed was the reeducation prisoners.”

  “But she was tattooed anyway.”

  “Exactly.”

  William leaned back in the chair and folded his hands behind his head. “There’s a lot here that doesn’t add up.”

  “Right,” Sera agreed. “The rank of her father and her notoriety alone should have assured that someone like her would never have been sent to the camp. She was known in Vienna—all over Austria. She was a concert violinist, beautiful, talented, with her whole life ahead of her. So how in the world did she end up there?”

  He looked at her curiously and dropped the photo back on the file folder.

  It was his close inspection of her face that started tying her stomach into knots. Maybe he was feeling a familiarity, same as she?

  “What?” She grabbed the pencil that had been tucked behind her ear to jot down a date on the back of one of the photos.

  “I just realized something,” he said, leaning in close to her as he dropped his voice down to a whisper. “This is about more than money for you too, isn’t it?”

  Sera noted how softly those blue eyes smiled at her, with enough of a hint of openness that she couldn’t turn away. And she found that she didn’t need to answer him; somehow he could read the words that weren’t yet on her lips.

  “Why?” he asked so easily, so openly this time. “Why does all of this matter so much to you? Because I can see that it does.”

  Sera dropped the pencil and, trying to cover the nervousness, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

  The truth was, she’d taken the case of Adele’s painting out of pure necessity. She’d been broken and needed an escape. With her heart shattered, she needed something—anything else to focus on. She’d felt the sting of hurt, and though she was a Christian, her faith had been shaken. Her fiancé was a Christian man. He’d promised to love and honor her. But instead, he walked out on their life and left her holding her broken heart in her hands.

  The mystery of the painting had been the perfect diversion.

  “I suppose it’s the great history of it all . . . to see that a piece of human expression is still alive in something that’s been left behind for us . . .” She shrugged. “Most people would think I’m crazy, that it’s just paint on canvas. But . . . it speaks to me. It’s a living, breathing record of the lives that have gone before us.”

  She ran her fingertips over the edge of a photograph, this one of Adele and several other musicians from the orchestra. “Look at this,” she said, and handed the photo to him. “It was taken in the spring of 1942, for the college newspaper. Look at how happy she is here. So different from the painting.”

  William nodded. “So that’s why you’re doing this? For her?” He paused, then said, “Or is it for you?”

  Funny how this man, who was still a virtual stranger, could pinpoint the one thing Sera didn’t want to admit. His ability to read her thoughts was unnerving. It had her desperate to hold back. She couldn’t tell him that she’d seen the painting once before. The memory was far too personal.

  “Let’s find out about Adele first,” she said and took the photo back from him. She looked for something to do to distract her. Tidying up the stacks of photos around them seemed an appropriate task. “I’ll work on myself later.”

  “After you’ve found the painting.”

  The statement was simply put. It was so simple, in fact, that it drew her eyes to his. He took a last drink of his coffee and then set the cup off to one of the side tables.

  “Let’s get started then,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “Put me to work.”

  “Well, I’ve pretty much told you what we know, and where the snags are. I was actually hoping that by coming here, we could find out what your grandfather has to do with this. Anything would help.”

  “Well, I confess that when I learned what the will stipulations were, I went looking for any connection to the painting. I’m embarrassed to say that I came up without much to go on.” He cocked an eyebrow and continued. “That is, until I received a call from your assistant and you came into the picture.”

  Sera nodded. “And we’d hit a dead end ourselves. I can still share what we do have. I know it’s a long shot, but maybe we should check these photos to be sure there’s not a young Edward Hanover in there somewhere. You said your grandfather traveled quite a bit in his younger years.”

  “He did.” William continued looking through the photographs without looking up. “But that’s not what I’m looking for.”

  His words piqued her interest. “What?”

  He’d begun lining up several pictures in a row. They were all photos of Adele, of course, the same ones she’d seen before. “There.” He lined up the last photo and then glanced back at her. “Notice anything?”

  Sera leaned in to take a closer look.

  A
dele was in each photo, smiling and looking happy as she always did in the photos with the other musicians from the Vienna Philharmonic. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Just a sea of smiling faces. If there was something there, she wasn’t seeing it.

  William took his finger and pointed at one of the young men in the first picture. Then he pointed to the same man in the next picture. And another. Another after that. On and on down the line, until he’d found the same man repeated in every one.

  A shiver ran the length of her spine.

  William held up the last photo in the line and pointed to the young man’s face. “Who is that?”

  Sera couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before. But now that the photos were laid side by side, it was as clear as day. The young man with the cello and the dashing smile was in every picture.

  “I don’t know who he is.” Sera finished his thought without missing a beat. “But he seems to be in almost every picture that she is.”

  “Right. But why?”

  Sera’s breath caught in her lungs when she realized exactly what they were looking at. Bravo to the real estate financier for finding it. William was busily going through another stack of photos.

  “This guy—he’s in all the photos, but not always right next to her. Maybe that’s why I never noticed it before, because we were always looking at her.”

  He nodded. “So maybe we need to stop trying to uncover something in the dead end and instead try digging from a new angle.”

  “Track down who this man was, and see if the trail leads to Adele. Do you think he could still be alive?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  William was lost in another stack of photos and computer printouts from a nearby folder when she saw it. The evidence was tiny to be sure, and overlooked unless someone was on the hunt for it. But now that they were, what she was seeing fairly took her breath away.

  Sera dove into her computer bag and tore through each pocket until she found the magnifying glass she kept there. Putting the glass to the image made her one hundred percent certain. They’d been looking in the wrong place.

  With a manicured fingertip, she slid the photo across the tabletop until it was right in front of him.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the miniscule evidence in the picture. “It’s small but you can still see it. Look by the folds of her skirt. She’s trying to hide it but it’s there, plain as day.”

  William looked and almost immediately took in a sharp breath.

  “She’s holding his hand.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  March 12, 1943

  Surely the snow held memories.

  Adele didn’t question it anymore. Not after she’d been loaded on the train to the work camp—she knew it to be truth now.

  She stood huddled against the inside of the cattle car, the wood agonizingly rough and splintered even through the thick wool of her coat. But leaning against it was the only way she could endure standing for so long. All of the people were packed in so tight around her. One couldn’t have thought to sit. Or think. Or even breathe in the stagnating stench of the car. They’d been herded in like animals with no food or water and no heat to protect them against the elements.

  That was an agonizing two days ago.

  Adele’s old reality was gone. The scratching pain of the wood and the falling snow outside were the only remaining links to the former world she’d known. Everything else was a terrifying dream. A frightening new reality that had been whisked in around her.

  The Germans had assigned her to the labor detail, though she didn’t know exactly what that meant. They’d been benevolent enough to give her a trial, one not attended by her parents or anyone else she knew. She knew in her heart the conviction was certain before it had begun—a mere formality. A courtesy, perhaps, because of her family name and father’s military rank. Although she’d forever shamed her family, the name still held some value. The assignment of reeducation in a work camp, however, was a foregone conclusion. Adele’s offense had been serious enough to carry a death sentence and she knew it.

  Her sentence had been eight weeks of labor in one of the Germans’ camps. Eight weeks and she’d be released back to her parents. But it seemed odd that she’d been ushered so far from Austria to Poland for only two months of work. Why would they take the trouble to ship her so far, with the obvious cost associated with transport, when she could have been made to work not far from her home?

  Around her, some people cried. Others were strangely quiet. A child would occasionally ask, “Where are we going, Papa?” or “When will we get there?” Some spoke in languages she didn’t understand. She heard praying, mumbling, muffled sobbing on the long journey that the bumpy train took through Poland’s bitter landscape.

  Adele was close to a window, if it could even be called one, and at least she could feel the air. The iron bars marring the view did little to give comfort. They revealed nothing but an endless sea of frozen fields and the occasional tree, always looking like a predictor of death with its bony trunk, stark, leafless limbs, and backdrop of gray sky. It was as haunting outside the train as it was inside, and for that, the nearness of the window made her feel unlucky.

  Adele’s hands shook as she gripped the bars. For though she kept a tight hold on the window, she’d not be able to grasp the night outside. She could no longer feel freedom, and that, combined with the deathly, frozen silence, terrified her all the more.

  Silence.

  That was the ever-present companion for them all—a stony silence that was pierced only by the occasional wail of someone on the other side of the car. Buried in sorrows, one couldn’t have thought ill of the person for crying out, but it was too much to endure. Some of the others silenced the wailing man, whether through coaxing or threat, and the rest of the journey once again became a path void of any sound.

  God?

  The word left her lips on a shuddering, frozen breath. And then a muffled sob. Adele summoned courage from somewhere deep inside. Then the cycle began again. Each time she tried to pray, the same cycle of terrified breathing started, over and over again, until all she could do was say His name and nothing else. She muttered the words, whispered them . . .

  “Abba . . .”

  “Where is my son?” A stuttering old woman with no teeth and frightened eyes had asked her the same question over and over for the past day. She was pitiful. Terrified. Shocked and unable to cope with reality. “My son. Do you know where he is?”

  Adele shook her head for what felt like the hundredth time.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t know your son.”

  She’d mumbled his name too many times for Adele to have forgotten it now. But she said it again anyway, tears rolling from her eyes as the last flicker of hope faded from them.

  “Viktor. That is his name.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The whispered response was all she could offer.

  She’d tried holding the woman’s hand earlier in the night and had patted it so as to offer comfort, but it only served to further the woman’s regression into mania. She was soon clinging so that Adele thought she would suffocate. She’d peeled the woman’s hands from her own some time ago and had shrugged her side up against the painfully rough wood of the cattle car wall instead, trying not to cry out of guilt.

  Mothers. Lost sons. Violinists who had no concept of the real world before that moment. Daughters. Frightened families. So many strangers. They were all packed in together, young and old, never having met but oddly connected by their crossed paths on this terrible, frightening journey.

  All starving. Craving water. Or the awakening from a dream.

  “I see something,” someone yelled.

  The strange turning of all heads in unison precipitated the electric jolting of her heart. Adele saw smoke through the bars on the tiny window. It was off in the distance—nowhere near the tracks on which the car rode. Someone screamed when they saw it. Another wailed. Ad
ele heard a man crying next to her, his wretched sobbing more terrifying to her than the open shrieks of women and children.

  The car slowed. She gripped the iron bars for support and, with her other hand, hugged the violin case ever so tightly to her chest.

  A high-pitched whistle of the brakes predicated the slowing of the train wheels upon the tracks. Dogs barking? She hadn’t expected that. And the smell of sulfur on fire, cutting through the air with a sickening ferocity, filling every crack in the frozen walls of the car with a putrid stench that turned her stomach. One or two coughs. Someone was weeping again and others told them to hush. A baby cried out—from hunger? Its cries fought with the dogs’ barks, both demanding nervous attention from the captives packed in all around her.

  And they finally came to a stop.

  The smothering existence in the cattle car was over and they’d soon find a new reality.

  The doors flew open and on the gust of air that came with it, all she sensed was a maddening flurry of activity. More dogs. Yelling. Someone shoving her from behind. Guards with guns. Another wail from the person in the back of the car. Dawn having passed some time ago. The puttering woman in front of her asking the guards where her son was.

  “Out!” The order was shouted. Faithless and cold were the voices that offered their greeting. “Out! Out!”

  Adele was yanked from the car. She nearly turned her ankle as it twisted down on the cold mud by the tracks. She was shoved from behind again. She turned to find a sea of ruddy brown or gray wool coats with yellow stars and miserably pale faces looking back at her. Weak, empty faces, emotionless as fate called them to march forward, moving with an anguished ebb and flow that was faster than she’d have imagined for the swarming masses of people all around her.