The Ragged Edge of Night(30)

“I do hope you’ll play something,” Emil says. “You are most welcome. I would love to hear this old dame sing again. I imagine she needs tuning, or fixing—whatever is done with an organ when it hasn’t been touched in years, except to clean the dust off now and then.”

Anton takes the bench; it creaks beneath him, an aged and rusty whisper. Tentative, shy, he feels with his feet; the pedals push back against his toes with ready pressure. From this angle, the pipes tower overhead when he cranes back his head to look. They seem tall as St. Kolumban’s bell tower, and delicate as the arches of a cathedral. Humbly, conscious of his shortcomings, Anton begins to play. The music fills the church first, occupying the nave with its bright, sudden leap into being. A heartbeat later, it fills him—a simple chord to test the sound, but it shakes his bones like a roar, like a peal of the sweetest thunder. He holds the note. It goes on and on, around him, in him; his heart wells with the sound, with the feel of music, and then, when the glad weight in his chest is more than he can bear, his hands begin to move of their own accord. He reaches for the notes with instinctive confidence and lapses into the first musical thought that comes to him: “Gro?er Gott, wir loben dich.”

The organ needs tuning, but still the sound is delicious, palliative. Music eases every pain we don’t know we carry. It banishes the fear that is so commonplace now, we have grown inured to its shadow and chill. Anton gives himself over to the simple pleasure of unrestrained worship.

Hark! The loud celestial hymn

Angel choirs above are raising,

Cherubim and seraphim,

In unceasing chorus praising;

Fill the heavens with sweet accord:

Holy, holy, holy Lord.

The chords lift him higher, raising his spirit above the brass spires of the organ pipes, beyond the arches of St. Kolumban into the peace of a still blue Heaven. The Earth, with its man-made sorrows, seems to dwindle below.

Spare the people, Lord, we pray,

By a thousand snares surrounded:

Keep us without sin today,

Never let us be confounded.

Lo, I put my trust in Thee;

Never, Lord, abandon me.

He doesn’t realize he has sung aloud until he reaches the end. As the last chord echoes in the nave, he hears the song’s final words coming from his throat, thin below the confident harmonies of the organ. He falls silent and takes his hands reluctantly from the keys. He waits on the bench, humble and still, but filled with a satisfying ecstasy, an unexpected nearness to God.

When silence fills the church again, Emil says, “You sing beautifully.”

“Thank you.” Anton’s face is hot; he has seldom sung in front of anyone, except to guide his students to the correct notes on their horns, and that hardly counts as singing.

“And you play as if you were born to it.”

He laughs, self-deprecating. “I was not born to it, I can tell you that. But the priest of my church—I mean, the one my family attended when I was a child—he let me experiment until I learned how it was done, more or less.”

“More or less?” Emil says wryly. Then, “I’ll pay you ten reichsmarks a week, if you’ll play at service. It’s not much, I know—and on weeks when the collection is small, I’ll be forced to pay you even less. It’s the best I can offer for now. But if you will do it, Herr Starzmann, I know the whole village will be grateful. We need to hear the sound of our own music again.”

“I’ll be glad to,” he says. “And please, call me Anton.”

Emil brushes his hands together, a businesslike gesture. “As for your music lessons—there are two families in Unterboihingen who own pianos.”

“So many? Here?” Who would think to find such luxuries as pianos in this quaint old village?

“It seems unlikely, I know, but the Schneider and Abt families are well off. They always have been. They’re blessed with—what is the phrase?—Altgelt.” Old money. “It seems the war has hardly touched them, lucky souls. I must say, they have been unfailingly generous to everyone around them, and have shared their good fortune with those in need. I can’t fault them one inch. A priest can ask nothing more of his parish than kindness and generosity.”

“And you think they’ll pay for music lessons?”

“It’s worth asking. Both families do seem to place a certain emphasis on culturing their little ones. To tell you the truth, I wonder that they never moved to Munich or Berlin, generations ago. But perhaps they simply feel Unterboihingen is too pretty to leave.”

It is a lovely place. With his newfound prospect of a little pay, Anton likes the village even better. “I’ll speak to them,” he says eagerly. “I’ll pay a visit to both families today, unless you think I had better wait.”

Father Emil squeezes Anton’s shoulder. “Let me find a pencil and some scrap of paper. I’ll give you their addresses. But if you’ll come and play at tomorrow’s service, you can impress them with a display of your skills firsthand.”

Anton spends the remainder of his Saturday inside the body of the organ, among old shadows that smell of ancient wood and dark grease. He tunes, adjusts, tests the notes until the sound is perfect and clear, until it slips down the length of St. Kolumban smooth as a silk ribbon pulled through your fingers.

The next day, when he enters the church beside his family, he pats Elisabeth on the hand—she glances at him, surprised by his affection—and says, “Excuse me, please.”