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- Herausgeber: editrice GDS
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 1955 Monika, an acclaimed Jew pianist from Berlin who had survived imprisonment in a concentration camp, is called by the police to identify a former Nazi officer whose quarters she was appointed to wash as a child. Monika doesn’t want to reveal the secrets of her past and the absolutely unusual relationship between her and the war criminal, due to the fact that he loved piano music and she could play. The story of the pianist slowly emerges through a series of flashbacks, from her childhood scarred by her father’s abuses, to the lager and then to her success, until it reaches an unexpected and moving conclusion.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Daniela Di Benedetto
THE LAGER PIANO
DIRITTI
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Editing by ANNARITA GUARNIERI.
Vienna, February 1955- Musikverein Theater
She was performing Rachmaninov's sublime Concerto Op. 18, and in spite of the technical difficulties she was able to think about something else while she was playing: she was thinking about the encore. Surely, they were going to ask for one because of the passion she infused her music with, and she hadn't chosen between the Prelude in C-sharp minor and the one in G minor yet. It would certainly be another Rachmaninov piece, of course, but both those Preludes had the power to sweep the crowd away, and Monika always had trouble deciding for one at the expense of the other, which was why she used to rely on the inspiration of the moment, during the applause...
She could hear it... the roaring applause, the ovation, her teary-eyed audience shouting: encore, encore!
The pianist gave in with a graceful nod of her head that made her blond braid swing, then sat at the piano as the room fell silent again around her.
Which prelude?... She let her hands decide. Her left hand went to the bass A key but immediately went back to G: fate was choosing the G minor prelude. Not many people were familiar with it… after all, Rachmaninov had died in America just 12 years earlier, and only recently European audiences had come to appreciate him, especially in Vienna, a city accustomed to quite a different kind of music. Aggressive but with a poignant middle section, that piece left her audience breathless for a moment before applause rained down again.
Monika loved to stand in the spotlight, but after such an effort she just wanted to rest. She was not the kind of person who liked to have dinner with her friends at the end of the concert. All she needed was to tear off her evening dress, throw her shoes in a corner, and lie down on her bed. She couldn't wait to do so and her fiancé Otto Schmidt, who knew her habits well, welcomed her with open arms in the backstage. His smile, however, was clouded by a shadow.
"Monika… honey… there's a little unforeseen problem. A police inspector wants to talk to you."
"The Vienna police?" she asked, amazed.
"No, he came from Berlin with one of his agents to tell you something with the utmost urgency."
"And what have I ever done?" grumbled Monika.
"They even wanted to talk to you before the encore, but I dissuaded them" Otto replied.
She smoothed her velvet dress with a self-confident expression on her beautiful face. "Well, let them talk and be done with it, because in an hour I want to be at my hotel in my nightgown."
*********
Fat and bald, Inspector Mark Rawitz had an imposing appearance that did not intimidate Monika in the least. "What do you want?" she asked him in the same tone she generally reserved for nuisances.
"Are you Monika Solomon, born in Berlin on October 10th, 1924?"
"Yes."
"Imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp on November 11th, 1938 and then reported missing?"
"What do you mean with missing?"
"Obviously that your name is not on the list of the dead, but it doesn’t appear on the list of survivors and women transferred to Ravensbruck either. When did you leave Dachau?"
"In 1939."
"In what month?"
"I don't have a clear memory of it."
"And how did you leave?"
"I don't have a clear memory of that either. There was a moment of chaos – it might have been an explosion – so I took the opportunity to escape and found myself in the woods."
The inspector looked disappointed. "No one could escape from Dachau," he asserted.
"If the farmers who took me in are still alive, you can question them."
Rawitz nodded. "The records kept in the concentration camp," he continued, "say that you arrived on November 11th, 1938, and were assigned to clean the officers' quarters. Is that correct?"
"That's right."
"Did you also clean Commander Fritz Guttenberg's quarters?"
"Yes "she replied, barely raising an eyebrow.
"So if you saw that man today, you would recognize him?"
"Maybe."
"That's what we are here for, Ms. Solomon."
"I don't understand."
"We have reason to believe that a 67-year-old Victor Maisler living in Berlin is actually Fritz Guttenberg, and we want you to see him. You can do that through a glass, if it upsets you to get close to that monster."
Monika blinked for a moment, then resumed her unperturbed appearance. "There was no need to come looking for me here in Vienna," she said, "since I’ll be back in Berlin in eight days."
"That's exactly the point. We can't wait eight days; we need to know right away whether Maisler should be arrested or not. If he is a war criminal, he is at large."
Incredibly, what could be read now on the pianist's face was only anger. "Do you mean that a judge ordered that I was to be picked up now and taken away?"
"No, miss" replied Rawitz." I’m asking you to do it because I’m the one conducting the investigation on Maisler."
"Then you will have to wait. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Dresden, where I’m scheduled for a concert, and from there l’lI go to Leipzig. I'm on a tour."
"Miss Solomon, I’m asking you to interrupt your tour for state reasons."
"What state? The same one that allowed the extermination of my race?"
The inspector gaped at her because no one had ever dared to answer him in that tone.
"Miss, you know quite well that we are no longer in the days of Nazism, and I am not asking you for any favors, since you should be happy to see your tormentor in jail as soon as possible!"
"I will come and see all the war criminals you want to show me, but I must first finish my tour. If there is no warrant from a judge, I’m not taking any orders from you."
Rawitz turned purple. "Your attitude is unconceivable..." he began, but she cut him off.
"I’ll be back in Berlin in eight days,” she retorted, “Feel free to contact my manager even now for an appointment. Otto, take me back to the hotel, I have nothing more to say to these gentlemen."
************
