And After the Fire Read online

  Later, after Miriam went home, Susanna put together a salad for dinner. Her kitchen was newly renovated, with granite countertops and lighting under the cabinets, but Susanna didn’t feel inspired to cook. She and Alan had enjoyed experimenting with unusual recipes. Nowadays Susanna kept her meals simple.

  She took the salad to the dining table in the living room. The apartment was sparsely furnished. Apart from her books, clothes, and other personal items, she’d left everything behind when she moved out of the home she’d shared with Alan. She’d started afresh, going to Room & Board to purchase the necessities. On the wall behind the dining table, she’d placed a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshi Yoshida that she’d found at last year’s print fair at the Armory. It was a scene of a boat on a lake, the air turning pink after a rainstorm. Its serene mood soothed her.

  After dinner, she washed the dishes. Then she sat at her desk by the window, intending to respond to several work-related e-mails and get a head start on the coming week. She opened her laptop.

  Miriam had said, There are so many websites . . .

  A familiar sense of menace began to creep into her. She felt compelled to fight it, at least this once. She typed Holocaust database into Google. Nearly a million links came up. She scrolled through the first few pages of results. She didn’t know where to begin. She returned to the top and clicked on the first link. This was for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center in Israel.

  A page came up, with a form requesting information. A photo on the left side of the page showed a family: a nattily dressed man in a suit and tie, a woman wearing a stylish, pleated dress, and a child held up between them, a girl of about four dressed in white, her arms around both her parents, uniting them. The family was standing on a boat. If you clicked on the photo, the website indicated, you could learn about the people. Susanna clicked. The family was from Hungary. The little girl died at Auschwitz. The caption did not include information about the girl’s parents.

  Susanna returned to the previous page, with its form requesting information. Family name/maiden name, first name, location.

  She summoned her memories. Family name. When Susanna was eleven or twelve, she’d stumbled upon a document relating to her mother . . . she couldn’t remember exactly what it was, possibly Evelyn’s birth certificate. Susanna had been looking through her mother’s desk when Evelyn was at the supermarket and she was supposed to be doing homework. The document asked for mother’s maiden name—that is, the maiden name of Evelyn and Henry’s mother, Susanna’s grandmother. According to Susanna’s recollection, the name written into this space on the document was Altschuler.

  Susanna typed it into the online form. She had nothing to write into the space for First Name.

  Location. She tried to remember a long-ago conversation, overheard. Someone had asked Henry how he came to be fluent enough in German to be an Army translator. He’d replied that his father was from East Prussia and his mother was from the Sudetenland. She typed.

  When she clicked on the search button, a wave of nausea swept over her, for what she might learn.

  We’re sorry, but we can’t find any results that fit your query.

  She pressed the BACK button, returning to the initial page with its request for information. A different photo came up on the left. A man in a suit, sitting and reading with his young son. The boy wore a velvet tunic. Susanna tried to ignore their image, even though it tugged at her. She wanted to focus on her own family, not the families of others.

  She thought about the Location line. Maybe she needed an actual town. She googled “towns in the Sudetenland.” Leitmeritz, to use the German name, Litoměřice in Czech, was a good-sized town. She returned to the Yad Vashem form and entered Leitmeritz into the Location field and pressed the search button.

  A family name appeared: Altucher, with a list of individuals. But Abraham, Isak, and Henie Altucher of Leitmeritz were not her family. Or were they? She tried using the Czech name, Litoměřice, and the same individuals appeared.

  Back. This time, the photo on the left showed a wide-eyed young woman of about seventeen or eighteen, her hair in braids. The young woman smiled for the photograph.

  Susanna tried another town. Komotau had become Chomutov. She tried both.

  Altschueler. Berta, Elsa. Not Susanna’s family. Or were they?

  Maybe she needed a bigger place. Back. The photo on the left was of a man with thick glasses, shirt sleeves rolled up, tossing a giggling baby in the air. Because of the baby, Susanna couldn’t help herself: she clicked on the photo. Mother, father, baby . . . murdered at Treblinka in 1942.

  Susanna tried Aussig, now called Ústí nad Labem. This seemed to be the biggest town in the region.

  Altschul, Max. Was this the name she was looking for? Or had the family name been changed when Susanna’s grandmother entered America? An hour ago, the family name had seemed like a concrete fact. Now it had turned elusive.

  She tried a dozen more towns. Incredibly, she found no one by the name of Altschuler.

  Please bear in mind that the Central Database only has about half of the Jews who died in the Shoah, the Yad Vashem website cautioned. And the website did not include survivors. Could it be that her family had survived? If so, where were they now?

  Back. The photo on the left showed a dark-haired young woman holding a baby. Susanna clicked on it. The woman had been rounded up and shot in Poland at the age of thirty-seven. The fate of the baby was unknown.

  Back. A boy in a sailor suit, looking into the distance with expectation. This boy was murdered when he was four years old.

  Susanna experienced a kind of hypnotic trance. Click on a picture, read the story of an individual who was murdered.

  A severe-looking woman with her two children, a stiffly posed boy in a suit and tie, and a girl who wore a large bow in her light-colored hair.

  Susanna felt like a voyeur. But she couldn’t stop. Click and read. Click and read.

  A beautiful young woman with stylish, wavy hair, leaning her head on the shoulder of her handsome husband. The young woman was taken from her home in 1941 and shot.

  A middle-aged couple, bourgeois, from Frankfurt. They died at Theresienstadt.

  Couples dressed formally in clothes provided, perhaps, by the photographer, posing for portraits marking their engagements. Couples on their wedding day. Parents showing off their children. Children photographed alone, in close-up. Photos made to be sent to family living far away, even as far away as America.

  A little girl with ribbons in her hair.

  Each story was different, and yet each was the same. The search became a compulsion, these strangers replacing Susanna’s own murdered family, and merging with the family in Weimar that had owned the cantata.

  An elderly couple sitting side by side on straight-backed chairs.

  Susanna possessed a knowledge of these individuals that they didn’t have at the moment of their weddings, engagements, and dressing up their children for photographs. Susanna knew their fates.

  Gradually the individuals shown in the photos began to look eerily familiar, especially the young women. With their curly hair, deep eyes, and dark eyebrows, with their expressions of hope—of looking into a future that Susanna knew they wouldn’t live to experience—they began to remind her of someone.

  They began to remind her of herself.

  Chapter 12

  PALAIS LEVY

  HINTER DEM NEUEN PACKHOF 3

  BERLIN, PRUSSIA

  June 1796

  This afternoon, Herr Ludwig van Beethoven was to perform in a private concert at Sara Levy’s musical salon.

  As Sara looked around the room, she felt an intoxicating mixture of pleasure and anxiety. Family, friends, and acquaintances crowded the reception room. Activity near the entryway drew her attention.

  The butler announced Jakob and Amalia Beer. Sara went to greet them. Amalia was a close friend. Jakob joined Samuel, and Amalia pulled Sara off to the side, grasping her hands.
r />   “How lovely you look,” Amalia said.

  Amalia, with her porcelain skin, striking figure, and large brown eyes, was among the great beauties of Berlin. Sara knew that she herself was most definitely not among the great beauties of Berlin, but she appreciated Amalia’s kindness.

  “Thank you. You’re looking lovely, too,” Sara said.

  “Thank you. What a crowd this is.”

  “Yes.”

  A frisson of expectation and excitement filled the air. Each time the butler entered the reception room to announce a newcomer, the guests paused, wondering if he had arrived.

  “And what a gorgeous day.”

  The French doors were thrown open. Guests made their way onto the terrace and to the garden.

  “Have you practiced?” Amalia asked, teasing, knowing full well that Sara had been practicing for weeks.

  “I’ve practiced too much.” The concert would begin with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Concerto in D Major for flute and strings, which her teacher had given her upon her marriage. Sara would play the fortepiano, Samuel the flute, and other friends would take the string parts. To Sara’s regret, she and Samuel had never been able to perform this piece for Monsieur Bach. He had died by the time they returned to Berlin after their wedding journey.

  “You know the concerto so well, you can simply let the notes flow through you.”

  “I do hope so.”

  After the concerto, Herr Beethoven would perform from his newly published op. 2 piano sonatas, and he’d also promised to treat them to an improvisation.

  The voice of Sara’s older sister Fanny Arnstein, Viennese hostess extraordinaire—as Fanny would be the first to tell you—reached them from the far side of the room. “Oh, yes, I know Herr Beethoven well. He’s lived in my home . . .” Fanny held the rapt attention of a circle of young men. She was visiting from Vienna for this concert and staying for a month. Not with Sara, luckily. Fanny projected a Viennese sophistication, curls surrounding her face, the rest of her hair pulled tightly back. Her pearls shone with a pink hue that suited her pale skin and dark hair. Berlin was nothing but a backwater compared with Vienna, cultural center of the world. Mozart, too, had lived at her opulent home.

  “I heard some dreadful gossip,” Amalia said.

  Sara absolutely did not approve of gossip, but she was always happy to hear it.

  “I heard that in Vienna, Fanny is considered hopelessly Prussian.”

  Sara turned away to conceal her smile. How well Amalia understood Sara’s charged kinship with her glamorous older sister.

  “I’d best say hello to her.”

  “Yes, you should.”

  Amalia crossed the room to greet Fanny, who made a fuss over her. Amalia’s father was among the richest men in Berlin (rumor held that he was wealthier even than Sara’s father). Amalia’s husband was also among the richest men in Berlin. People often made a fuss over Amalia. To her credit, Amalia had no illusions about the reasons for her wide appeal.

  “Madame Levy.” Prince Anton Heinrich Radziwill presented himself with a sharp bow. He was married to Princess Louise of Prussia, who was a niece of Frederick the Great and a cousin of the current king, Frederick William II, who’d ruled for a decade. Radziwill, in his early twenties, cut a handsome, modern figure, his hair worn shoulder-length and miraculously windswept despite the lack of a breeze in the reception room. Although his features were boyish, his eyes were astute. Music was among his special interests. He wore civilian clothes, with an extravagant bow tied around his neck.

  “Bonjour, mon prince, you honor me with your presence.” Privately Sara thought Prince Radziwill was a bit too confident of both his good looks and his position, but his presence bestowed the highest aristocratic validation on the afternoon.

  “The honor is mine, as always.”

  They were joined by Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, a nephew of Frederick the Great and a talented musician. Louis Ferdinand bestowed an equal if not surpassing imprimatur as that of Radziwill, who was his brother-in-law. “Madame, my respects and gratitude.” Louis Ferdinand wore a military dress uniform, its red collar accentuating his blond hair, which was pulled back into a style called a soldier’s queue. With his brown eyes and blond hair, he, too, was a striking figure.

  “The gratitude is mine,” Sara said.

  Guests crowded around the two princes and their entourage. Sara was pleased to see the princes politely ignore the admiring throng and instead join her aging father, who’d seated himself near the windows. Sara’s older sister Babette kept him company. Daniel Itzig was still an influential banker, and Sara appreciated the recognition the princes accorded her father on account of his many labors for Prussia.

  Other members of the nobility arrived. Samuel was the banker for several of the Prussian noblemen here today. A half dozen of Sara and Samuel’s nieces swarmed around the aristocrats. Wealthy young Jewish women were increasingly converting in order to marry impoverished Christian noblemen, exchanging money and religion for a title, a regrettable development Sara didn’t like to see abetted in her own home.

  “Tante!” Her niece Lea was beside her.

  “Lea, I’m so glad you could join us.”

  “Thank you for including me.”

  Lea, Babette’s daughter, was nineteen. With her oval face and big eyes, she was innocently lovely. She had multiple gifts, for music, drawing, and languages, including even classical Greek, commonly considered too taxing for the female temperament. Lea was utterly unaware that her many accomplishments made her exceptional.

  “I’ve been practicing The Well-Tempered Clavier from the copy you lent me. I’ll play it for you. On a quieter day,” she added mischievously.

  “That would make me happy.”

  “Madame Levy, such a pleasure.” Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, philosopher and statesman, bowed before her. Lea left them. Long and jowly, Humboldt’s face was most unattractive, but his high, smooth forehead had inspired a universal belief that he was a genius. On this issue, Sara was willing to give Wilhelm von Humboldt the benefit of the doubt.

  “The pleasure is mine.” Such a refined game of courtesy they played.

  Count Carl Gustav von Brinkmann, the Swedish diplomat, slipped to their sides. He was a hearty, amiable man. White hair and thick, dark eyebrows defined his round face. “Good to see you, Madame Levy. You, too, Humboldt. Such an intriguing crowd today. Even by your standards, Madame Levy.” Brinkmann was the kindest man Sara knew.

  “If that is true, then you yourself are responsible, because of the many fascinating guests that you have brought here over the years.”

  “My friends are always impressed with the music and the company chez Levy.”

  A group of French aristocrats, exiled by the French Revolution and the Terror, entered the room. They exuded the oversophistication and heavy condescension they used as weapons against their diminished (if not vanished) status. Duc, Marquis, Marquise, noses literally held high, cheeks painted. Sara really did try to remember their names, and all they had lost, but frankly they annoyed her with their pompous airs. No one in Berlin knew what to make of them, with their perfumes and powder, their gaudy clothing and headgear that became shabbier by the month.

  “Do excuse me,” Brinkmann said. “The French contingent has arrived. I must do my diplomatic duty.”

  “Herr Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller,” the butler announced.

  Could it be? Receiving Schiller—philosopher, playwright, poet—was almost the equivalent of receiving Goethe.

  Samuel reached him first. “Welcome, Herr Schiller.”

  Samuel was superb. As others greeted Schiller, Samuel caught Sara’s eye. They shared a secret smile in satisfaction at the arrival of their esteemed guest, as well as a harkening to what would happen between them later, in private.

  “Napoleon?” someone said behind Sara. “I don’t believe it, not even of Napoleon.”

  “Goethe said . . .” began another man, in a different group.


  “Kant wrote to me . . .”

  The literary, the political, the philosophical group. Sara circulated to make certain everyone felt welcomed.

  “Judaism must continue to reform itself . . .” David Friedlander, banker, philosopher, and Sara’s brother-in-law, waxed eloquent upon his favorite topic to a small group that included the Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who kept his eyes upon the sole woman standing with them: beautiful Henriette Herz, one of Sara’s childhood friends, her face drawn into a frown of concentration. Schleiermacher was rumored to be in love with Henriette.

  “Ignore anything you hear to the contrary: Herr Beethoven is a true gentleman . . .” Fanny described to a different collection of eager young men the solicitous, domestic Beethoven whom only she understood. “Mozart lived at my home for several months also . . .”

  Ah, Fanny.

  “Haydn, too, has graced us with his presence,” Fanny continued.

  Sara would have much to discuss with Amalia later, even though Fanny was only speaking the truth: Sara had met both Haydn and Mozart during her visits to Fanny’s home in Vienna.

  Sara stepped to the side of the reception room, toward the French doors that opened onto the terrace, the garden, and the river. The moment had come when everything clicked into place and nothing more remained for Sara to do. Her guests mingled effortlessly. The staff served drinks and canapés in a flowing dance. Even if Sara departed, all would be well. She observed her visitors. Young, old. Christian, Jew. Nobility and commoner. Wealthy and middle class. A generation ago, this would have been impossible in Berlin. Now it was a way of life, not simply at her home, but at a half-dozen salons across the city. In the new Germany, everyone lived together in a spirit of mutual respect.

  She went into the performance room. The chairs were lined up in perfect order. For the third time today, she checked the music on the stands . . . Samuel’s flute part. The continuo part. The music for the violins, viola, and violone. All was ready.

  She stepped through the French doors and onto the veranda. She loved this house, with its veranda on three sides. Sara’s younger nieces and nephews strolled and cavorted in the garden. The boys skimmed rocks into the river. The girls chatted in tight groupings, their hair flowing loose down their backs, catching the sun. Lea was among them, although at nineteen Lea was becoming too old for such pursuits. Better this, however, than hovering around the Prussian nobility in the reception room. Sara hoped the music would lure the young back to the veranda. She knew the music would lure Lea, who was already a virtuoso at the keyboard and reminded Sara of—well, of Sara herself.