What the Night Sings: Part II

"Oh—the angel sang it to me," I say nonchalantly.

"The angel!" he says, feigning shock.

It's a cool morning, and even though I'm twelve now, I don't have a choice—it's cod-liver oil and Latin recitation and the endless, tedious Wohlfahrt viola etudes.

It's a cool morning, and even though I'm twelve now, I don't have a choice—it's cod-liver oil and Latin recitation and the endless, tedious Wohlfahrt viola etudes.

Past the SS guards standing sentry, Papa and I walked through the scrolling iron gates, stopping at every place where a bulb pushed its new leaves through the warming ground.

She raises her eyebrows, awaiting my assent.

We are in our last week of preparations for the spring expositions, and the maestra has given me a song from the aria book, a song of courage and passion: "Vittoria, mio core" by Carissimi.

We are in our last week of preparations for the spring expositions, and the maestra has given me a song from the aria book, a song of courage and passion: "Vittoria, mio core" by Carissimi.

Of course this aria would be written by someone with this name, the very utterance of which slays me—the trilled rr and knife-blade-between-the-teeth ss in his name.

It's not old Herr Sauer accompanying rehearsal, but Carissimi himself, composing and swooning, almost fainting with desire, for me.

Yes, yes, I will be your muse, darling! We will be poor, but we are artists, rich in love!

Papa, almost imperceptibly, closes the curtains, staying behind them.

He has a handful of packages of rosin, all that he can find, and he packs them into the compartment in the good case, along with a few envelopes of extra strings and a spare tuning peg, as though he were trying to cram every bit of viola paraphernalia into that one case.

I have always coveted Maria's clothes.

Maria pulls out a gown the same color as her green eyes, with tiny crystals on the bodice.

The orange trees lining the square are in full fragrance, almost sickly sweet in the balmy night air, which is sticky with the barking of the SS.

He tilts his head back and fishes for a deep breath of the stagnant air above our heads.

The interminable length of train cars carries a miserably bowed drone across the rhythm of the tracks.

"Like you," he says. "Though I would not call you an anointed player."

There's a little girl next to me, bobbed mousy brown hair, strawberries on her dress collar.

"Ah yes, the Würzburg transport. A real music town, isn't it? Theresienstadt's the place for you, then. Lots of uppity artists."

"From now on, pay in bread," says the guard pragmatically.

"Musicians' building for him, girls' building L410 for her," the guard tells the registrar while lighting a cigarette.

He's shuffled away with a huge cohort of men, and I am separated from Papa for the first time in my life.

The sun has gone down over the rampart walls, and the guards manning them turn into silhouettes.

I'm bumbling through the street, stunned.

After our paltry breakfast, I'm called with the other newcomers to a table where the old woman gives us work assignments.

I have a vested interest in getting things right; the image of the girl being shot keeps flashing through my mind.

We teenagers are given extra camp money to spend in the store on makeup and clean, if threadbare, dresses.

"The Red Cross is coming to pay us a visit," says the commandant in a tone dripping with innuendo.

"The Red Cross is coming to pay us a visit," says the commandant in a tone dripping with innuendo.

The Mayweather is still cool outside, but inside this train car it is stifling.

They are playing Mozart, but with a weird, dissonant arrangement of mandolins, accordions and a snare drum.

"Thank you very much, ma'am," I say compliantly.

Something feels different: I hear none of the usual post-performance chatter, nothing about botched notes or particularly sublime passages.

Blood coagulates on the ground, and to the side I see about eight or ten inmates hauling bodies into the back of a truck.

I've watched his death daily, as the Women's Orchestra provides an artifice of calm and succor to the passengers being unloaded and sorted.

I've watched his death daily, as the Women's Orchestra provides an artifice of calm and succor to the passengers being unloaded and sorted.

As exhausted, hungry families disembark from the trains, I silence the why of my complicity.

We do some pieces from our repertoire and, now that we're alone, some forbidden composers, too.