Frau Adelle Bund was not home, or did not wish to reply.
All along the street astonished faces appeared at the windows, not knowing what was going on. From across the street the neighbours’ little girl asked them who they were looking for.
“Doesn’t anybody live here?” Paul asked.
“Of course, but…”
The little girl didn’t finish her reply and sped home, probably in order to spread the news about the incredible goings-on that were happening at number 26.
Yet the door had opened at last, although only half-way. On the threshold an old woman dressed in black prevented them from entering with a bitter glare that right from the start said: No! Paul offered her Hagen’s envelope, and she opened it, continuing to oblige them to stay outside, facing the door. From time to time she raised a suspicious glare in their direction, as though she were comparing them with what was written in the letter.
“It would be better if you found somewhere else to sleep,” she said in conclusion, never the less deciding to receive them indoors.
They went forward, entering first an interior courtyard lined with several shuttered windows, then a long, dark corridor. The house felt uninhabited. Neither a noise nor a whisper could be heard anywhere. The woman stopped in front of a door and tried a few keys in the darkness until she succeeded in opening it. It was a small, frozen room with rustic furniture covered in dust. When was the last time they opened the windows in here, Nora wondered.
Frau Adelle Bund seemed to understand the visitor’s thoughts. “I have to air it out and make a fire. I didn’t know you were coming. Nobody comes here.”
The shutters, like the front door, were closed with iron bars.
“We’ll leave our backpacks and go,” Nora said. “If you give us the key to the front door, you won’t have to wait up for us. We’ll be coming back late.”
She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, to find herself outdoors again, on the other side of these chilly walls.
The Black Church was full of light.
“The Grodeck clan is gathering,” Nora said.
She saw them coming in from all corners of the town in family groups, sombre, silent, in heavy fur overcoats, moving with measured strides. They entered without haste and greeted each other without joy, making ceremonious salutations. On arrival they scattered to the left and the right, moving towards seats that must have been theirs, always the same, for years and years.
“Do you think they’ll let us in?”
The man who tore their tickets at the entrance looked a little surprised by their clothes. But there were a few other skiers who had come from Poiana and Timiş. The blue jackets and cloth blouses were soon lost to sight among the frock coats and fur.
The violins were tuning up in the shadow of the great organ, which dominated everything by its silence. The church was filled with the bated-breath hubbub of the orchestra, testing their instruments in the final moments before the concert began. A flute or a horn lifted its voice for a second, then disappeared, covered by that generalized, “Yes,” transmitted like an appeal by the violins and cellos.
Silence fell at last. They felt the sound of the invisible director, who had raised his baton.
First the flute and then the oboe entered timidly into the game, with something questioning in their sound; but after the first notes the violins fell silent and, almost in the same instant, they heard the trumpets — unexpected, triumphant trumpets. The musical phrasing was powerful, self-assured, tightly integrated into a piece that from the beginning announced victory and light. The flute and the oboe ran a subterranean course beneath this line that was barely audible in the moments of breathing space between the dominant motifs. When the violins and brasses fell silent, their silence was protective: only with their indulgence were the fragile flute, the pensive oboe, able to rise again.
The game didn’t last long. The strings, woodwinds and trumpets were covered as the choir burst out: “Jauchzet, frolocket auf, preiset die Tage!”23
The song was simple, but the holiday began with those words. It was a great cry of joy which, in a second, flung the orchestra into the background. The whole choir was but the voice of a single herald. It seemed to lift the vaulted ceiling, to open the windows, to create light.
Nora sought out Paul’s eyes. She wished to know that she wasn’t alone before this annunciation. He placed his hand — his heavy hand — on her shoulder, but did not turn his head. The gesture spoke to her without words: yes, Nora, I’m here, I’ve heard, I’ve understood…
The violins and the brasses, at first overwhelmed, found each other again. The trumpets spread the news announced by the choir. The flutes and oboes hurried on, with their finer sound, between that of the chords and that of the brasses. The solitary organ was neither surprised nor rushed. Its low tones seemed to support the entire oratory like a living cathedral. The violins and the voices grew out of it, as though out of rich earth. The organ bore them on without a smile, without harshness, with a dash of sadness, because it alone knew their destination.
Paul listened with his eyes closed. He was still in the forest, still alone. For him, the organ’s deep voice perpetuated the silences that continued to vibrate in its ever lower chords. The orchestra and the choir, brought together in a single musical phrase, now climbed as one to the final step: the doors of the Oratory were open.
A tenor voice was thrown into relief by the ensuing silence. Without melody, it recounted the departure from Galilee. Simple, slightly monotone scales swung like ivy on the central sound of the organ. The tale was then taken up by a woman’s voice, with the same narrative monotony, until the oboe and the violin persuaded her to sing. The transition from the recitation to the aria was marked, over several chords, by the harpsichord, which seemed to demand that they listen to it. On a few occasions, as though the harpsichord’s sound had been too feeble to maintain the bridge between the choral song and the aria, the whole orchestra came to its assistance.
Never, it seemed to Paul, had he heard such clear violins. Maybe it was because of that evening, which for him was unlike any other from his past. Maybe it was because of the forest through which he had come, the solitude in which he had descended… Never had he heard purer, more effortless, more transparent violins. The symphonic sections of the Oratory did not feel at all liturgical. When the orchestra played together, everything seemed to contract into a luminous ring of intimacy. Even the organ, tamed, fell silent in order to listen.
The second part of the Oratory opened with the symphony, from which, after a brief recitative by the tenor, a choral song, which Nora and Paul received with the same surprised motion, broke out.
“Brich an, du schönes Morgenlicht,
Und lass den Himmel tagen.
Du, Hirtenvolk, erschrecke nicht
Weil dir die Engel sagen…”
The whole choir, the whole orchestra, could not cover the distant sound of Gunther’s voice.
“Do you hear him?” Nora asked in a whisper. In the same moment she looked towards the third window on the right, where young Mrs. Grodeck should have been, smiling at her son. But there wasn’t a single young woman beneath the third window and in the whole Black Church not one person was smiling.