From Sand and Ash(15)

“You never used to observe Shabbat,” Angelo said, not because he cared, but because he needed to change the subject.

“Yes. I know . . . funny, isn’t it? I never really thought about being Jewish until I started to be persecuted for it. Babbo’s always celebrated learning above everything else, but we decided that we’d better see what all the fuss is about. We’re becoming devout.” She winked at Angelo and shrugged.

She had grown up in the last year. She still kept a few men on a string, but the string was getting longer, the dates fewer and further between. When she wasn’t teaching violin lessons to Jewish children for little or no money, she was at home, practicing. Her life had narrowed dramatically to her music, her family, and a few Jewish friends who were as watchful and reticent as the Rossellis had become.

“And what have you learned?” he asked, sounding like Father Sebastian. He smirked to soften the effect.

“A great deal. But I haven’t learned the most important thing.”

“No? And what would that be?” he asked.

“Why do people hate us so much?”



“They’ve taken my father,” Felix cried. “He’s been arrested.”

“How do you know?” Camillo asked, his face pale, his hands extended toward Felix.

Felix held up the letter. His hand was trembling like he was stricken with a disease, the paper flapping like he was shaking the terrible truth from it.

“The maid. It is illegal for her to work for a Jew, but the German commander living in my father’s apartment needed a housekeeper, so he hired her to cook and clean for him. She cared about my father, and I think she’s watched out for him as best she could. She said she would have called me, but she was nervous about speaking freely. There are always listening ears on the phone lines. But she thought I should know. When she arrived at the apartment on the fourteenth—two weeks ago!—my father was gone. When she asked the Kommandant where he was, he told her ‘it was his turn.’”

“Where have they taken him?” Camillo pressed.

“She doesn’t know for certain. She writes that the whole building was cleared. There are no Jews left. The officer told her soon there would be no more Jews in Vienna.”

“I read that some of them are just being relocated to Jewish ghettos.” Camillo started pacing, trying to remain positive, his thoughts scrambling for solutions.

“The maid thinks he will be sent to a work camp. Her brother works at the train station, and he told her that every day the trains leave early, before the sun rises, so the people of Vienna won’t see them leave. He says they are loaded with Jews. He says the trains have been going to a place called Mauthausen, near Linz.”

“But Linz is not too far from Vienna. This is good!”

“This is not good, Camillo! None of this is good. He will die.” The certainty in Felix Adler’s voice made Eva wince and Camillo collapse onto a chair. He looked completely defeated.

“They wouldn’t let him bring his violin. The German officer was looking at it when the maid arrived for work. He told her he’s going to send it to his son in Berlin. He’s going to send my father’s violin to his son,” Felix repeated, suddenly enraged, and he swept his arm across the table, upending the lamp and the radio they weren’t supposed to own.



“What are you playing, Eva?” Felix Adler sighed from the window overlooking the garden. “I don’t recognize that. It sounds a little like Chopin, but it’s not.”

“It’s Chopin mixed with Rosselli, sprinkled with Adler, and doused with anger,” Eva murmured, her eyes closed, her chin gripping her violin.

She expected him to scold her, to tell her to “play what is written!” But he was silent. She continued playing, but she opened her eyes, watching him as she let her bow flit over the strings like a bee flirting with a flower. His hands were clasped behind his back, his feet together. It was the way he stood when he was deep in thought or when he was listening.

She and Uncle Felix had had a love/hate relationship since he’d arrived in Italy in 1926, two years after her mother’s death. She had been only six years old and was not prepared for the maestro that was Felix Adler. He had come to Italy with the express purpose of molding her into an Adler violinist, and he had come to Italy out of love for his sister, which he reminded Eva of frequently. It was her dying wish. He’d acquired other students, and he’d played with the Orchestra della Toscana, but his focus had been Eva.

Eva had challenged him at every turn. She was willful and distracted, easily bored, and known to disappear when it was time for lessons. But she had a gift. She had a remarkable ear, and what she lacked in discipline, she made up for in musicality. She loved the violin, she loved to play, and Felix had eventually learned to forgive her for the rest, though it was forgiveness bestowed grudgingly.

It had taken him a while to realize that she wasn’t really reading the music he put in front of her. She was listening and copying. If she didn’t understand something, she would ask Felix to show her. After a few demonstrations she could play bar after bar from memory.

Teaching her to read music had been torture for both of them. She’d hated it, he’d hated it, and they’d hated each other half the time. He made her do everything she despised and rarely let her do what she loved. Long notes and scales and sight-reading, day after day.