Vienna Prelude (66 page)

Elisa looked as though she might slap him. He had ruined their pleasant evening. “They wouldn’t
dare
march after that!” she snapped.

“Maybe.” Murphy would not argue. He shrugged, a gesture that let her know that she could think whatever she wanted but that she was foolish to think a few words would stop Hitler.

Shimon was more troubled by his words. “Our visas—,” he began. “We cannot leave until May.”

“I hope we all have until May,” Murphy said quietly.

“Stop it!” Elisa stood up and glared at Murphy. “No one asked you here.”

“I asked him, Elisa,” Leah said firmly, evidently startled by her friend’s fierceness and an anger, unlike any she’d seen before from Elisa. “He has helped us.”

“Helped us?” she scoffed. “He has helped himself, you mean!”

Murphy stood to leave. His presence was not a damper but a flame-thrower on the group. He shouldn’t have come. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed.” He searched for his hat. He was dressed in Shimon’s baggy clothes, but he would deal with such things later. Now he only wanted out of the apartment and out of Elisa’s way.

“This is our home!” Elisa shouted. “Can’t we hope? Can’t you at least give us one night of hope! Do you know how long it’s been?” She started to cry.

Leah took her by the shoulders. “Elisa! Elisa, please!” She shook her.

“I saw it! I saw Rudy and Dachau and the faces of their mothers when their children had to be taken away!” Elisa was sobbing, still shouting at Murphy. “Can’t you leave us one night to be happy? One evening to believe that it can’t happen here? It can’t happen here! It
can’t
! God, don’t let it.” She sank down onto the sofa and wept with her face in her hands as if she would break with the unhappiness of it all. “Only one night,” she said again and again.

Leah patted her gently. She looked at Murphy. “I’m sorry,” Leah said to him. “I . . .” Leah was embarrassed for Elisa and for Murphy.

“No.” Murphy took his hat in his hand and stood staring at Elisa as she cried silently and held tightly to Leah. He had done this to her. She had been through so much already, and he had stolen away what might have been a short rest. There was nothing left to say. He shook hands with Shimon and slipped out into the corridor of the apartment.

He was halfway down the stairs when the door behind him opened and Shimon called him. “Please, Murphy. Just a moment.”

Murphy wished he could have gotten away. He was humiliated and somehow ashamed. “It’s raining all over,” he said, trying to shrug off the scene.

“She’ll be all right.” Shimon rolled his eyes. “You know these women when they are in love. Leah has had a few of these crying fits. These days I think all women should live in Vienna and go see Dr. Freud,
ja
? No wonder he has such good business!”

Murphy had not heard a word Shimon had said after “ . . .
when they are in love.
” So Elisa really was in love with someone! “I shouldn’t have come, I guess. I just wanted to see that she was all right.”

Shimon waved his hand to dismiss the concern. “There is something else we must talk about now, out of hearing of the ladies. You think tonight . . . the speech . . . is meaningless?”

“It depends on Hitler. Hitler won’t want the actual vote to take place; that is certain. I think we are in for a storm, Shimon. Be careful. That’s what I was trying to say in there. The Nazis are out of jail now. Steer clear of the Judenplatz. Stay here tonight, maybe until after the vote.”

“Yes, of course. And if you hear anything, will you come tell us? We will be here.”

Murphy lowered his voice. “I hope I’m wrong.”

“So do I. But it pays to be careful.”

“They’ll hit the railroads first if they come, you know. Have you got a car?”

“I can’t drive.” Shimon looked embarrassed.

“Are there still German children placed around Vienna?”

“Only four. Elisa was going to take them to Kitzbühel on Monday.”

Murphy scratched his head. His mind was spinning. Four Jewish-German children would be a drop in the bucket if Hitler marched to Vienna. There would be half a million Jews looking for a way out, and Shimon and Leah would be among them. “I’ll keep my ears open, Shimon. Maybe we’ll get a happy ending out of this thing yet.” He shook the big man’s hand again and left him standing on the stairs. Murphy guessed that he would stay out of the apartment for a while until Elisa settled down. As for himself, he would be glad to get back to the smoke-filled hotel room and the griping, snarling, pessimistic pack of realists who could look at things with some clarity.

***

As Chancellor Schuschnigg returned from Innsbruck to Vienna, Leah and Shimon returned to their little home in the Judenplatz. Before the sun was up, Leah and Elisa had determined that Murphy was simply an incorrigible doubter.

Thursday, March 10, seemed to prove them right. The inner city was filled with joyful shouts of Austrian patriotism. “Heil Schuschnigg!”

“Heil liberty!”

And all voices joined together in the cry of “Heil Austria!”

Trucks of happy political demonstrators trundled around the Ringstrasse waving placards that proclaimed:
Sunday is polling day! We vote YES!
A rehearsal was called for the symphony to celebrate the victorious vote even before it had been cast, and Elisa made her way through the throngs on Kärtnerstrasse toward the opera house. The roar of Austrian planes thrummed above the city, and pamphlets fluttered down on the crowds like leaves on a fall day in the Vienna woods.

“Heil liberty!” Elisa shouted along with the rest. “Heil Austria!” She had forgotten her anger and found hope once again. She wished that she could see Murphy and tell him how wrong he had been! There had not been even a peep from Hitler in Germany, and the Austrian Nazis had all seemed to disappear from Vienna. There were a few scattered incidents around the country where Nazis had paraded and protested, but all in all, it seemed as though the chancellor had made a correct decision. Even the new Nazi Cabinet member, Seyss-Inquart, seemed to be in agreement with the plebiscite.

That morning, the orchestra played patriotic songs of the Austrian homeland with a resounding joy. As they rehearsed, Leah and Elisa glanced at one another from opposite sides of the stage, grinning as they had in old times. Things would work out. Vienna will always be Vienna! Austrians had fought the Germans in 1866 when they were threatened; they would fight again if they had to. The Legions of Hitler would not march here!

Outside on every corner, music played. The little nation so torn between the right and the left was at last united to defy a greater threat.

The afternoon was spent over a long and happy meal. Elisa and Leah giggled like schoolgirls over everything and nothing. Murphy might have robbed Elisa of her one night of hope, but she would have this day. This last day of joy in Vienna.

***

The next dawn did not bring rejoicing with it, but the blackest of all Fridays in Vienna’s long history.

Murphy was still lying in his red velvet canopy bed at the Sacher Hotel when fists slammed frantically against his door and the frightened voice of Timmons called out, “Murphy! If you’re in there, let me in! Murphy! Murphy!”

Murphy sat bolt upright. He had been dreaming about Elisa and he resented the intrusion. “What?” he shouted back, stumbling to the door as Timmons continued to pound.

Timmons fell into the room as if he had been pushing on the door. “They’ve closed the frontier!” he said without any explanation. He looked disheveled and was out of breath as if he had run all the way to the hotel. “We’ve been trying to get you.” He glanced toward the phone. “Off the hook! At a time like this!”

Murphy scratched his head and straightened his rumpled pajamas, trying to figure out what . . . suddenly it came to him. “Tell me!” He was instantly awake.

“I was on the last train through from Germany!” Timmons was sweating. “There are troops! All along the border.
Thousands!
Tanks and trucks; they’ve closed off the frontier. Shut down the railroads. I just heard that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have closed their borders to Austria as well. Every Jew in Vienna is going to be trying to get out!” He grabbed Murphy by the shirt front. “Do you hear me, Murph? Hitler is marching in!”

Murphy dressed quickly and left the room without bothering to shave. The International News Service was in turmoil. Murphy read the latest dispatch. “Hitler has sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg. Says if Schuschnigg will cancel the plebiscite, the Germans stay put!”

The deadline for the Austrian decision was twelve noon—half an hour away.

At noon Schuschnigg was defiant in his determination to continue with his plans. He even ordered the police and the Vienna Front Militia to their posts. Security guards of the railway were issued arms. The oil company of Austria was asked to supply extra fuel for possible troop movements.

Hope rose briefly in the newsroom, and the ultimatum was extended until two pm. Skies ran in with the news that an emergency meeting had been called, and the new Nazi cabinet member had brought further word from the Führer: “Cancel or else. Cancel immediately. No time left for discussion.”

A newspaper from Munich made the rounds. The front page declared that the Russian flag was flying in Vienna and that violent mobs were swarming the streets with shouts of “Heil Moscow! Heil Schuschnigg!” The Nazi propaganda machine was grinding out the stuff that wars are made of when reality is in short supply.

At two-thirty, it was publicly announced that the chancellor had decided to call off the plebiscite and bow to the ultimatum of Hitler.

***

A new and horrible tension permeated the halls of the hospital. Doctors and nurses checked Theo’s condition with barely a word of acknowledgement. Faces were grim and hard-set. Words were curt and almost angry, even between the workers.

Theo had eaten a meal of sausage and potatoes and two slices of fresh bread with butter. He lay back on his pillow and stared at the rainy sky. What was beyond the glass pane? he wondered. When they finally came for him, could he throw himself through the window and free himself?

At the approach of footsteps, he stared at the blank wall. It would not do to let them see that he was thinking. There could be no expression on his face.

A tall dark-haired doctor entered the room and glanced at the clipboard on the foot of the bed.

“Except for undernourishment, you are well. Almost well, anyway. You would like to go home, Herr Stern?”

Theo did not respond. For days they had taken this approach, hoping to get him to talk. He would not. Anna and Elisa were safe. He would not offer them up as sacrifice to his captors’ tricks.

“You have no one.” The doctor let the clipboard fall. “No place to go. And now they are coming to take you again, Herr Stern. It is inevitable. We have nursed you back to life, and yet you will die. They will take you from here, and you will die.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

Theo had heard the compassion in the doctor’s voice. Or was it simply the sadness of a man who had fixed a broken machine, only to know that it would be smashed again? It did not matter. The regrets of the doctor could not save Theo.
They
were coming. The doctor had said as much. Theo’s reprieve was over.

For an instant, Theo wanted to scream, “
I’ll tell you everything, only don’t send me back!
” Was this not the worst kind of hell—to give a man some taste of cleanliness and life and then send him back to filth and starvation?

Theo squeezed his eyes tight and tried not to see the vision of brutality that reared up before him. He prayed, asking God to give him the strength to bear what must surely lie ahead for him. The thought of the wire across the forbidden zone and the body of his friend still and lifeless returned. This time it came as a temptation—how he had envied the professor his final freedom! How easy it would be now that Theo’s mind was strong again and his body well nourished to simply step across the wire and be done. A quick end while he still was unbeaten and unhungry.

Then one word came to his lips—an answer he knew came from another voice deep within him. “No!” A thousand thoughts flooded his mind. If indeed the Gestapo were coming for him now, why should he wait passively to be taken? If he was certain of his own death, why not die trying to escape? Here in the hospital he had more chance than behind the cruel barbed wire of Dachau!

Theo stared at the one patch of blue between the gray clouds. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Holding on to the bed rails for support, he stood. He felt weak, but he drew his shoulders back as he walked the six steps to the window. What did it matter if someone looked up and saw him standing there? They were coming anyway.

He leaned heavily against the window ledge and disappointment descended on him like a cloud that passed suddenly over the sun. His room was on the fifth floor and faced inward toward a small courtyard. There was no way down the face of the bricks, and the little garden area below was surrounded on all four sides by the building. Even if he could have gotten out through the window, the courtyard below was yet another prison to escape.

Back in his bed, Theo flexed the muscles of his hands and bony arms. These were hands that had swung a hammer to break rocks. His arms had found the strength to lift heavy stone up the quarry slopes for two men. These hands and arms were still strong enough to fight. But he must plan his attack. He must think. He remembered the hammer in his hands and the crash of steel against stone.

45

Black Friday

Bill Jordan was an INS correspondent whom Murphy knew only slightly. He was based in Paris, yet somehow found himself in Vienna during the worst of all possible days.

Bill Jordan was Jewish. His wife, a young, pretty brunette from Germany, was also Jewish, and from long and frightening experience had learned what ultimatums from Hitler meant. Bill had already purchased plane tickets out of the Austrian capital for that very afternoon.