Part 34 (1/2)

She made him lie down while she attended to schedules, tickets, berths.

She was gone for two hours. When she returned she found him looking amused, terrified and helpless, all at once, while three men reporters and one woman special writer bombarded him with questions. The woman had brought a staff artist with her, and he was now engaged in making a bungling sketch of Theodore's face, with its ludicrous expression.

f.a.n.n.y sensed the situation and saved it. She hadn't sold goods all these years without learning the value of advertising. She came forward now, graciously (but not too graciously). Theodore looked relieved. Already he had learned that one might lean on this sister who was so capable, so bountifully alive.

”Teddy, you're much too tired to talk. Let me talk for you.”

”My sister, Miss Brandeis,” said Teddy, and waved a rather feeble hand in an inclusive gesture at the interrogatory five.

f.a.n.n.y smiled. ”Do sit down,” she said, ”all of you. Tell me, how did you happen to get on my brother's trail?”

One of the men explained. ”We had a list of s.h.i.+p's pa.s.sengers, of course. And we knew that Mr. Brandeis was a German violinist. And then the story of the s.h.i.+p being chased by a French boat. We just missed him down at the pier--”

”But he isn't a German violinist,” interrupted f.a.n.n.y. ”Please get that straight. He's American. He is THE American violinist--or will be, as soon as his concert tour here is well started. It was Schabelitz himself who discovered my brother, and predicted his brilliant career.

Here”--she had been glancing over the artist's shoulder--”will you let me make a sketch for you--just for the fun of the thing? I do that kind of thing rather decently. Did you see my picture called 'The Marcher,'

in the Star, at the time of the suffrage parade in May? Yes, that was mine. Just because he has what we call a butcher haircut, don't think he's German, because he isn't. You wouldn't call Winnebago, Wisconsin, Germany, would you?”

She was sketching him swiftly, daringly, masterfully. She was bringing out the distinction, the suffering, the boyishness in his face, and toning down the queer little foreign air he had. Toning it, but not omitting it altogether. She was too good a showman for that. As she sketched she talked, and as she talked she drew Theodore into the conversation, deftly, and just when he was needed. She gave them what they had come for--a story. And a good one. She brought in Mizzi and Otti, for color, and she saw to it that they spelled those names as they should be spelled. She managed to gloss over the question of Olga. Ill.

Detained. Last minute. Too brave to sacrifice her husband's American tour. She finished her sketch and gave it to the woman reporter. It was an amazingly compelling little piece of work--and yet, not so amazing, perhaps, when you consider the thing that f.a.n.n.y Brandeis had put into it. Then she sent them away, tactfully. They left, knowing all that f.a.n.n.y Brandeis had wanted them to know; guessing little that she had not wanted them to guess. More than that no human being can accomplish, without the advice of his lawyer.

”Whew!” from f.a.n.n.y, when the door had closed.

”Gott im Himmel!” from Theodore. ”I had forgotten that America was like that.”

”But America IS like that. And Teddy, we're going to make it sit up and take notice.”

At that Theodore drooped again. f.a.n.n.y thought that he looked startlingly as she remembered her father had looked in those days of her childhood, when Brandeis' Bazaar was slithering downhill. The sight of him moved her to a sudden resolve. She crossed swiftly to him, and put one heartening hand on his shoulder.

”Come on, brother. Out with it. Let's have it all now.”

He reached up for her hand and held it, desperately. ”Oh, Fan!” began Theodore, ”Fan, I've been through h.e.l.l.”

f.a.n.n.y said nothing. She only waited, quietly, encouragingly. She had learned when not to talk. Presently he took up his story, plunging directly into it, as though sensing that she had already divined much.

”She married me for a living. You'll think that's a joke, knowing what I was earning there, in Vienna, and how you and mother were denying yourselves everything to keep me. But in a city that circulates a coin valued at a twentieth of a cent, an American dollar looms up big. Besides, two of the other girls had got married. Good for nothing officers. She was jealous, I suppose. I didn't know any of that. I was flattered to think she'd notice me. She was awfully popular. She has a kind of wit. I suppose you'd call it that. The other girls were just coa.r.s.e, and heavy, and--well--animal. You can't know the rottenness of life there in Vienna. Olga could keep a whole supper table laughing all evening. I can see, now, that that isn't difficult when your audience is made up of music hall girls, and stupid, bullet-headed officers, with their d.a.m.ned high collars, and their gold braid, and their silly swords, and their corsets, and their glittering shoes and their miserable petty poverty beneath all the show. I thought I was a lucky boy. I'd have pitied everybody in Winnebago, if I'd ever thought of anybody in Winnebago. I never did, except once in a while of you and mother when I needed money. I kept on with my music. I had sense enough left, for that. Besides, it was a habit, by that time. Well, we were married.”

He laughed, an ugly, abrupt little laugh that ended in a moan, and turned his head and buried his face in f.a.n.n.y's breast. And f.a.n.n.y's arm was there, about his shoulder. ”f.a.n.n.y, you don't--I can't--” He stopped.

Another silence. f.a.n.n.y's arm tightened its hold. She bent and kissed the top of the stubbly head, bowed so low now. ”Fan, do you remember that woman in 'The Three Musketeers'? The h.e.l.lish woman, that all men loved and loathed? Well, Olga's like that. I'm not whining. I'm not exaggerating. I'm just trying to make you understand. And yet I don't want you to understand. Only you don't know what it means to have you to talk to. To have some one who”--he clutched her hand, fearfully--”You do love me, don't you, f.a.n.n.y? You do, don't you, Sis?”

”More than any one in the world,” f.a.n.n.y rea.s.sured him, quietly. ”The way mother would have, if she had lived.”

A sigh escaped him, at that, as though a load had lifted from him. He went on, presently. ”It would have been all right if I could have earned just a little more money.” f.a.n.n.y shrank at that, and shut her eyes for a sick moment. ”But I couldn't. I asked her to be patient. But you don't know the life there. There is no real home life. They live in the cafes.

They go there to keep warm, in the winter, and to meet their friends, and gossip, and drink that eternal coffee, and every coffee house--there are thousands--is a rendezvous. We had two rooms, comfortable ones, for Vienna, and I tried to explain to her that if I could work hard, and get into concert, and keep at the composing, we'd be rich some day, and famous, and happy, and she'd have clothes, and jewels. But she was too stupid, or too bored. Olga is the kind of woman who only believes what she sees. Things got worse all the time. She had a temper. So have I--or I used to have. But when hers was aroused it was--horrible. Words that--that--unspeakable words. And one day she taunted me with being a ----with my race. The first time she called me that I felt that I must kill her. That was my mistake. I should have killed her. And I didn't.”

”Teddy boy! Don't, brother! You're tired. You're excited and worn out.”

”No, I'm not. Just let me talk. I know what I'm saying. There's something clean about killing.” He brooded a moment over that thought.

Then he went on, doggedly, not raising his voice. His hands were clasped loosely. ”You don't know about the intolerance and the anti-Semitism in Prussia, I suppose. All through Germany, for that matter. In Bavaria it's bitter. That's one reason why Olga loathed Munich so. The queer part of it is that all that opposition seemed to fan something in me; something that had been smoldering for a long time.” His voice had lost its dull tone now. It had in it a new timbre. And as he talked he began to interlard his English with bits of German, the language to which his tongue had accustomed itself in the past ten years. His sentences, too, took on a German construction, from time to time. He was plainly excited now. ”My playing began to improve. There would be a ghastly scene with Olga--sickening--degrading. Then I would go to my work, and I would play, but magnificently! I tell you, it would be playing. I know. To fool myself I know better. One morning, after a dreadful quarrel I got the idea for the concerto, and the psalms. Jewish music. As Jewish as the Kol Nidre. I wanted to express the pa.s.sion, and fire, and history of a people. My people. Why was that? Tell me. Selbst, weiss ich nicht.

I felt that if I could put into it just a millionth part of their humiliation, and their glory; their tragedy and their triumph; their sorrow, and their grandeur; their persecution, their weldtschmerz.