LeGarde Mysteries Box Set, page 66
part #1 of LeGarde Mystery Series
Still puzzled, I offered to record the story so that Freddie could hear it in person, and Frieda agreed readily as I ran to retrieve the mini-cassette recorder from my briefcase. I’d planned to use it to document stories about Chopin from musicologist colleagues in Paris and Vienna, and I was glad I brought it along.
I set it up and pushed the record button. “Okay. Go ahead, Frieda.”
“Danke.” She straightened and took a deep breath. “I was born in 1914. My mother bore me when she was forty-two; I was her only child. She was born in 1872, and her mother was born in 1832. It was this woman—my great grandmother, Etta Wagner—of whom I wish to speak.”
“Etta was a good woman who ran a small guesthouse in Stuttgart. Her husband was lost in the war several months before this story takes place. After he died, she ran the inn by herself, cooking and cleaning for her guests. It was in 1831 that she met him. He stayed for only a week in his travels from Vienna to Paris, but it was a week filled with heartbreak. Russia had just overtaken Warsaw. The young man went mad with grief during this time. My great-grandmother cared for him, although he was a stranger, just passing through.”
I stared at her and my heartbeat quickened. It couldn’t be. “Who was this young man, Frieda?”
She looked back and forth between Siegfried and me. “I’m talking about Siegfried and Elsbeth’s great, great, great grandfather. I’m talking about a composer named Frederic Chopin.”
My jaw dropped and I tried to process the information; blood pounded in my ears. Before I could collect myself, Frieda motioned for me to open the old wooden chest.
Great, great, great, grandfather? What was the woman talking about? Was she delusional?
“It is essential that this information is kept close to your hearts. The reputation of the master is at stake, as well as the reputation of Etta. She was not a woman of ill repute, mind you. She was a gentle lady who came to the aid of a mentally unstable young man during a crisis in his life. It was a time when he needed love and understanding, something she needed as well, having grieved so recently for her own lost husband.”
I finally found my voice. “My dear Frieda,” I said. “Chopin didn’t have any children. He never married. He lived in relative celibacy his whole life. How could this be?”
“I know what the history books says.” She motioned to the chest. “Look inside, please.” She pointed to several packets of letters tied in faded blue silk ribbons. “Let me see those.”
I picked up the top packet and handed it to her.
She untied the ribbon and fanned the letters on her lap. “These are the letters the master wrote to Etta after he moved to Paris. Although he fell in love with her, it was considered inappropriate for a woman in her situation to take a lover as young as Frederic, particularly so soon after the loss of her husband. He respected her, and moved on with his life, never learning of their child. Frediana was raised as the child of Etta’s deceased husband. Although unaware of the child they shared, Chopin wrote to Etta for many years, recounting amusing stories and anecdotes of his life in Paris.”
“His associates were many—George Sand, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Eugène Delacroix, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner—some of the most creative and artistic geniuses in history.” She motioned to the trunk. “These letters and the gifts he sent over the years are what remain of their relationship. Your children, Professor LeGarde, and now your grandchildren, are Chopin’s legacy. They have the blood of a genius in their veins.”
She flashed a sweet smile at Siegfried. “Before she left Germany, I asked Elsbeth to name her first daughter Frederica. I had no idea she would remember this request, or that she would consider honoring it. Perhaps her mother reminded her. You knew that Elsbeth and Siegfried had an older sister who died, did you not? She was named Freda, of course, after the tradition. Frieda, Frediana, Freda, Frederica, all names that honored the master.”
Siegfried looked at me and nodded as if he did remember an older sibling. I vaguely remembered Elsbeth telling me about the tragedy when we were very young. The child had died of leukemia in East Germany before her family escaped to the United States. They had kept a picture of a pretty, dark-haired girl on the mantle in a silver frame.
Freda.
“Elsbeth was a wonderful pianist,” I said. “She’d planned to tour the world as a concert pianist before we realized she was pregnant with Freddie. Of course, that changed everything.” I smiled at Siegfried, who adored Freddie. “And she was mad about Chopin. She encouraged me to study piano, too, and I’ve always loved Chopin’s music, partially because Elsbeth was so crazy for it.” I sat back and sighed. “What you’ve told us today is just incredible. How did you keep this secret for so many years?”
Frieda gave a sly smile. “We did what we had to, to protect our family name.”
While we absorbed the enormity of what she’d just told us, I thought back to my own studies of Chopin, realizing I started my research project when Elsbeth died as a testimony to her, and as a healing mechanism for my own grief. The biographies I studied always portrayed Chopin as a brilliant, but somewhat neurotic genius, who had dozens of passionate, platonic relationships, but none of a lasting physical nature. His manic bipolar swings pushed him from closeted seclusion with close friends for days at a time to all night parties with the rich and influential artisans and figures of the time. When prodded, he would perform in public, but only did so reluctantly on approximately thirty occasions during his short life.
I reached back into my memory to recall what little I could from his initial trip from Warsaw to Paris when he was twenty-one years old. The stay in Stuttgart had been documented as “several days.” His surviving diary from that period showed a severe mental deterioration bordering on schizophrenic hallucinations after he learned of Russia’s overpowering of Warsaw. While his friends and family stayed behind and fought the intruders, he continued on his journey to the most romantic and creative center of the world. In Paris, he would publish blazing compositions that were far more effective in bolstering Polish patriotism than had he returned to fight against the enemy with his weakened, tuberculosis-ridden lungs.
I leaned toward Frieda. “Please tell us more. What happened in Stuttgart?”
Frieda pointed to the chest. “The diary. Can you pass it to me? Yes, that’s it.”
I handed her a marbleized journal with faded gilt edges.
She opened it carefully, running her hands down the pages with affection. “This is Etta’s diary,” she began. “I will read you some of the passages.”
As she read, Eberhardt continued to translate, and I flipped over the cassette in the recorder.
“A charming young man has come to my inn this evening. He is from Poland, but speaks excellent German, as well as French and Polish. He is well-educated and studies music. I’ve put him in the green room with the piano. He was here no more than ten minutes before he began to play. Such lyrical and lovely melodies are coming from the room, it is hard for me to walk by the door and not stop to listen.”
Frieda flipped forward and ran her finger down the page until she found the next passage.
“My young guest is writing music. His papers are everywhere, very messy, with erasures and scribbles on each page. He says each note must be perfect, or the piece cannot be complete. Yesterday I brought him soup and bread and stayed to listen and talk for four hours. The other guests must be wondering what is wrong with me, but I cannot keep away. There is something very sweet and needful about this young man, and I’m drawn closer to him each time we speak.”
Frieda appeared to be speaking from memory. I wondered how many times she’d read these pages. She flipped ahead in the diary.
“My poor young Chopin is in agony. Today we heard news. The Russians have overtaken his homeland of Warsaw. He is uncontrollable, sobbing and lamenting now for hours. I sit with him as he lays his head on my lap and weeps for his family. Are they safe? Should he return? Fight in the war himself? He is inconsolable. Now he scribbles in his diary as I do mine. His eyes are tortured and brimming with fire. I fear he is going mad, poor boy.”
Frieda looked up from the diary, recounting the tale from memory.
“They spent the next few days and nights together. She consoled him and he played piano as a madman, writing a fiery etude for Poland that completed his series. A tender love evolved in the few short days they spent together. Etta helped him face and deal with his hellish fears. From their tumultuous ardor came a child. A child who was kept hidden as a secret from the poor young man to spare him further worries. My great grandmother, Frediana, was born.”
We leaned forward in our chairs, hanging on each word. Siegfried lay back against his pillows, eyes wide in amazement. Camille squeezed my hand and smiled at Frieda. I gazed at the wonderful old woman and let the story sink in. My doubts evaporated. She seemed so genuine. The letters could easily be authenticated, if one felt the need to do so.
I took another bundle of letters from the chest. Opening the top letter carefully, I scanned the page of fine, swirling penmanship down to the final signature, Frederyk, with the Polish spelling of his name. My heartbeat kicked up a notch when I recognized the authentic signature. I had seen it countless times in my own research.
Could it be true?
“Frieda,” I asked in a daze, “do you want us to take the chest to America? To Freddie?”
Eberhardt translated again and she nodded. “Ja. To America. To Frederica. So she can tell the story to her children.”
“Of course,” I said, still stupefied by the knowledge that hammered through me. “I think we should ship it home. We’ll pack it in a sturdy wooden crate and insure it. When we return in a few weeks we can open it together with Freddie and play the tape for her.”
Frieda smiled at me through tired eyes. “Do you have a photograph of her? I would love to see her.”
Embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it earlier, I reached into my wallet and pulled out the small pack of family photos. The first showed Freddie as a child with her mother. I walked to Frieda’s side and spoke in rudimentary German. “Here are Elsbeth and Freddie. She was eleven years old.”
Frieda looked at the photo and sighed. “Little Elsbeth.”
I brought out another shot of Freddie as an adult, taken at the opening of her veterinary clinic. She sat on the steps of the clinic in her white coat, surrounded by dogs and cats. “Here’s Freddie a few years ago. She’s an animal doctor.”
Frieda looked surprised. “She’s not a pianist?”
I laughed. “Hardly. She took lessons as a child, but was much more interested in science than music. But her son may be interested in piano. He has a fascination for it and is always asking questions about pieces I play for him. I’ll start his lessons in a year or two. His name is Jonathan. We call him Johnny.” I showed her a picture of my impish three-year-old grandson, sitting proudly on the garden tractor with a huge grin.
Lastly, I drew out a picture of my twin granddaughters, Marion and Celeste. Sadly, I realized Freddie might have tried to carry on the tradition of naming one of the girls after Chopin, had she known the truth last fall when they were born. I felt badly that we hadn’t visited Germany to meet Elsbeth’s extended family. We discussed it dozens of times, but for one reason or another, it never happened.
Frieda rose slowly and I hurried to her side to help her with her cane.
Her hand trembled on my arm and fatigue poured from her quavering voice. “I’m sorry, but I will go now. Some days the pain comes suddenly. I must lie down.”
She walked toward Siegfried and reached for his hand. “Brigit’s boy. You have grown so handsome.” She stopped and leaned toward him, resting her hands on his shoulders and locking eyes with him. “I know what you did. I have seen you on the television news now, many times. I saw your anger and your courage. Never forget how they suffered, my dear boy, for evil still lurks and must be stopped. I am very proud of you, as your mother would have been,” she added emphatically. Leaning forward, she kissed his forehead.
Tears streamed down Siegfried’s cheeks. He took her hand and kissed it. “Danke, Oma.”
Frieda shuffled out of the room with Eberhardt at her side, her steps slower than when she’d entered. When the extraordinary woman left us, the room seemed smaller, dimmer. We heard her cane tapping along the stairs and across the ceiling until she reached her bed, and the house grew silent.
Chapter 33
On Saturday morning, Camille and I walked arm in arm through the narrow pathways winding through Denkendorf’s communal gardens. Acres of gardens surrounded the village center, spreading toward the hills and linking with the bicycle and hiking paths that crisscrossed through woods and fields.
We strolled in the warm May sunshine, smiling at fellow passersby who greeted us with the cheerful words “Grüss Gott.” Neat plots of black radishes, turnips, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and potatoes lined the footpath. The crops were at least one month ahead of my gardens at home. Roses, in glorious full bloom, lined hedges and walkways, perfuming the air. Women in black kerchiefs and flowing housedresses bent over their tracts, intent on pulling each tenacious weed from the soil. The gardens—so perfectly aligned, so well prepared—demonstrated a reverence for the soil and a respect for the limited space each household was assigned.
In upstate New York, I was spoiled. I could choose from acres of fields flanking our house. If I wanted a new strawberry patch, I picked the spot and plowed it up. A grape arbor, a swimming pool—I had simply to designate the new location. But here, the residents cherished each tiny plot of property they tended. I almost felt guilty about my acreage.
The houses in Denkendorf were also clustered tightly together, although broad expanses of farmland and woods encircled the town. This strategy, practiced widely in Europe where land was at a premium, provided very little yard space, but allowed multiple adjacent gardens to be tended in the common area outside the town.
According to Eberhardt, most Germans used the pathways for spazierengehen, or “going for a walk.” This popular family tradition often happened on Sunday afternoons and was dutifully attended from the youngest to the oldest family members. Camille and I had enjoyed several walks through the village gardens over the past two days.
I leaned down to inhale the spicy-sweet scent from a cluster of white Asiatic lilies. The flower heads nodded in the spare breeze.
“Hey Gus, wait a minute.” She laughed and stooped to pick a bright yellow buttercup. Holding the flower under my chin, she checked to see if my skin reflected yellow. “You like butter,” she said.
“I do.” Suddenly, my stomach growled. I pictured the creamy butter we’d smeared on fresh rolls at Eberhardt’s table that morning. “You’re making me hungry again, Camille.”
She chuckled. We’d been indulging in such decadent foods since we reached Europe; I wondered how we would ever go back to a healthy diet when we got home.
The buttercup triggered memories of my childhood with Siegfried and Elsbeth. Images flooded my brain. Walking on our tree-lined dirt road, I scuffed along in my worn sneakers and we discussed deep and exotic topics, such as how Mr. Morgan, the gym teacher, kept his toupee from falling off when he demonstrated tumbling.
We’d often stopped to pick thick bundles of buttercups for our mothers, who’d inevitably exclaimed over our offerings as if they were gifts from God. I smiled and remembered holding the bright yellow petals beneath the delicate, pale skin of Elsbeth’s throat. She always tossed back her dark thick curls and said, “Everyone likes butter, Gus!” She’d laugh and trip along the road, finding her own treasures, such as flakes of shiny mica from our favorite boulder in the middle of the creek.
Siegfried, in his pre-trauma, near-genius days, would try to analyze the reflective properties of skin. I recalled a bizarre theory he’d worked up about the angle of observation versus the angle of sunlight. He’d called it his “Buttercup Reflectance Theory.”
I shook myself back to the present, grabbed Camille’s hand, and swung it as we sauntered along the path. We reached a crossroads and chose the path on the left.
An elderly man in a red cap pedaled past us. “Grüss Gott!” he said.
We returned the greeting and waved.
The chrome on his bicycle sparkled in the sunlight, spotlessly clean, as was everything in Germany.
Eberhardt habitually swept the sidewalk in the mornings after he mopped down the stone steps and entryway in his house. A virtuous cleaner, he attended to these tasks religiously each day before he left for his job as a pharmacist at the local drugstore.
Camille tugged on my arm. “Honey? Do you think Siegfried will be ready for us to leave on Monday?”
Siegfried seemed to be healing well and was in excellent spirits. We’d seen no ominous figures trailing us around the village, nor had we observed any skulking terrorists in the neighborhood. I’d started to let down my guard, realizing that it was very unlikely anyone would spot us in this little village.
“I think he’ll be okay, Camille. Somehow I don’t think he’ll mind, as long as he’s with Hilde.”
She began to swing my arm, flashing a conspiratorial glance. “I know what you mean. Have you seen the way he looks at her? I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s absolutely besotted.”
I agreed with her, but felt worried for his tender heart. “He’s in love. Totally infatuated. I don’t know what he’ll do when we have to go back to the States in a few weeks. I think it’s the first time in his life he’s felt this way. He can’t take his eyes off of her, poor guy.”
“I know, Gus. But what about her? Do you think she knows how he feels?”
“How can she not know?” I said. “He’s so obvious. He follows her everywhere with those puppy dog eyes. Has she said anything to you?”
Camille had spent several evenings in conversations with Hilde, discussing common interests and comparing women’s issues in America and Europe.
