Kaplon wedged the violin under his jaw and began to play. It started out slow and soft, like the overtures of a hesitant lover. There was a searching quality to the melody, an exploration of sound. Then it turned low, and the silence in the café seemed to grow deeper as I, and the rest of the patrons, strained our ears to pick out every note. Sadness and grief were what those notes inspired, and no one in that room would have had to look hard to find ample cause for both. Through it all, Yosef Kaplon stood with his lower body rigid and his torso shifting to accompany his bow movements. He kept his eyes closed throughout the piece. His expression changed continuously, though, shifting from a smooth-faced tranquility to a rough-looking grimace.
It was only when he had finished the piece that I realized that my heart was hammering in my ears and that I had held my breath toward the conclusion. Some of the other patrons, women and men both, were dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs, and one middle-aged man was weeping openly. I had never been a connoisseur of music, but Kaplon's playing was masterful. It had the transformative quality of great art—it took you for a short while to another place and time.
This was but the opening piece, and over the next hour or so, Kaplon played many more. Some were cheerful, others morose, and all were beautiful.
When he had finished, people lined up to shake his hand, and I saw a few of the patrons slip money into it. He was shaking hands with his right hand, wiping sweat off his forehead with his left, and beaming.
Afterward he came to the bar. Milosh had set a glass of pálinka brandy for him, which Kaplon downed in three great sips before asking for another.
I complimented him on his performance. He waved a dismissive hand, but I could tell he was pleased.
"So now you know how I survived."
I told him I didn't.
"It was the music, Adam. It was the music."
"Do you remember the day you arrived at the camp?" Kaplon asked.
I winced.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Do you prefer not to talk about it?"
"With you, it's all right."
"But not with everyone?"
"They weren't there. They wouldn't understand. It would be pointless to try to explain."
He nodded, took the brandy bottle Milosh had set on the bar at his elbow, and poured himself another glass. It was his fourth, but apart from a flush in his cheeks, he was showing no signs of the liquor. I was done drinking for the night, but I had gone through a similar number of cigarettes. Most of the patrons had already left the café, and Milosh was conversing with a couple of stragglers by the door.
"You're probably right," Kaplon said. "I was there and I don't understand it myself. But do you remember the day you arrived, the moment you got off that awful train, that there was band music on the platform? There were barking dogs and barking men in green uniforms, and I couldn't tell you which scared me more, but amid all the pandemonium and utter dread, there was also music. Do you remember?"
I did and told him so.
"The Germans had this idea: If they had some music playing when a new shipment of Jews arrived, the prisoners would think they'd arrived at a nice place and would be passive, easy to control. Did it work on you? Did the music fool you when you arrived at Auschwitz?"
"No," I said. "Not for a moment."
"It didn't fool me either, though I was just shy of seventeen. A mere boy. But that place…it was…I'm not sure I have the words for it. Even the blind and deaf would have sensed the wrongness of it. Still, who could have imagined what they had in store for us? That the people of Bach, Strauss, and Brahms could resort to such savagery."
I didn't tell him what I had already figured out for myself, that it was only a people as cultured and advanced as the Germans who could have done such a thing. A less advanced people would not have had the planning and organizational skills required to create the death industry the Germans had erected, with the gas chambers, the slave camps, the efficient transportation of prisoners to the camps, their swift elimination within, and the disposal of nearly all trace of their existence. Savages, at least in the way Europeans used the word, would have been much less methodical and efficient. And fewer Jews would have been murdered at their hands.
He peered into his glass, downed its contents, and refilled it. He took another sip and said, "Did you come to Auschwitz alone?"
"No." I didn't elaborate. What would be the point? They were all dead. I was the only one of my family left.
"I came with my mother," he said. "I was an only child. She had me after five miscarriages. The doctors told her it would be risky for her to be pregnant, but she wanted a child, so she kept trying until I was born. My father died when I was two, so my mother raised me by herself. It wasn't hard—she came from a well-to-do family, had inherited money from her parents. I had a comfortable childhood."
His eyes were wet, glistening. He took a quick gulp from his glass and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
"It was my mother who got me to play the violin," he went on. "Made me play it, is more accurate. It was part of being a cultured man, she said. I hated it. Didn't want to practice. But she got her way. She had that ability. Forced me to practice every day. Eventually, I got good. Not stellar but pretty good."
"You sounded stellar tonight," I said, and meant it.
He looked around at the few people who lingered in the café, then back at me. "These people, they are starving. Not just for the food and other goods that are now rationed. That is merely a physical hunger. They're also starving for their lost families, for their memories, for some taste of culture and art and music. I sound so good to them, and to you as well, just as an average flower would look magnificent in a desert. No, I know what I'm worth. I'm no Jascha Heifetz or Isaac Stern. I'm not and would never be a top violinist, however much I want to be. But I was good enough for the Germans, good enough for Auschwitz."
Kaplon told me the rest of his story. He told me how one day, a German guard came and took him from his work detail. He was sure that he was being taken to his death; instead the guard led him to another barracks, one housing musicians from one of the camp orchestras. One of the violinists had caught typhoid and died. Another violinist in the group had been one of Kaplon's teachers back in Hungary. He had spotted Kaplon in the camp one day and told the guards that he was a worthy replacement for the dead violinist. And so Kaplon was conscripted.
"We had all sorts of duties in the orchestra," Kaplon said. "We played marching music in the mornings when the other prisoners were led to their work details. Do you remember that, Adam?"
I thought back. "I do, but only vaguely. I was so tired and hungry and cold that I only heard it as noise, not real music."
"We also played during executions. That was hard. I don't know what the purpose of that was. Just one of the many perversions of Auschwitz. One more insanity in a world of them. Perhaps it was one more way to humiliate us."
Kaplon fell into a momentary, pensive silence. Then he said, "The guards and the SS would sometimes have us perform for them. They would have dinner parties in their barracks or houses. This was another world, in close proximity to the prison camp, but it might have been on another planet. They had food there. Rich food and plenty of it. Things we only dreamed of. And wine and beer. Enough to drive you crazy. They would eat and we would play merry music. I remember how my stomach used to grumble during those parties; I was certain they would hear it over the music." His face twisted in revulsion. "Sometimes they would have women there. Local Polish women. The guards were animals, even the cultured ones. I hated performing before those pigs, but each party was a godsend. I would often be able to filch some food, slipping it under my shirt for later. It helped tremendously. This was dangerous, of course. Had I been caught, I would have been shot. But it was worth the risk."