A few days later, as she was going back to the restaurant on foot, she heard shouts: “Out of the way! Militia!” She had no time to move aside and was knocked down by three men armed with clubs who were chasing a tall, lanky man. They caught up with him and beat him. He fell to the ground, curling up his long, thin limbs to protect himself, but they kept hitting him on the head and the back.
“Stop!” cried Helen, paralyzed by horror as the unfortunate man huddled there while the brutes went on attacking him. “Stop it! You’ll kill him!”
She realized that everyone around her was running away except for a young man, who had turned his collar well up to hide his face.
“Bastards! You’ll pay for this!” he shouted in his own turn, and then he too ran for it. He was obviously counting on his burst of speed to escape the militiamen, and he was right. One of them chased him a hundred yards and then gave up.
“I’ve seen your face!” the young man taunted the militiaman, turning around one last time. “I’ve seen all your faces, and believe me, I’ll know you again!”
The militiaman hurled insults at him and went back to his companions. Helen hadn’t moved from the spot.
“Got a problem, miss?” he spat as he passed her. “No? Then you better get out of here.”
No doubt it was because of this incident that she didn’t feel like walking alone next day and asked Milena to go with her. “You could live without Bart just for an afternoon!”
“It’s not Bart I spend the afternoons with.”
“Oh? Who is it, then?”
Milena hesitated. “Well, if you promise you won’t breathe a word to anyone . . .”
“I promise.”
“Come on, then. After all, it would be a good thing for you to know.”
They set off along the uphill roads leading to the Old Town. Black ice made the sidewalks shine, and they held on to each other to avoid slipping. Milena was laughing to herself, impatient now to share her secret. Helen had never seen her looking so happy and radiant before. It made her a little more aware of her own loneliness and distress. A lump came into her throat. Milena noticed her friend stiffening slightly and understood at once. She stopped and put her arms around Helen. “Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. You have a right to be happy! I’m not jealous.”
A sad look came into Milena’s eyes. “Don’t think I’m happy, Helen. I can never be really happy again now I know what they did to my mother. I could easily be inconsolable, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling content sometimes. So there it is; I’m content today. Content to have Bart, content to be with you, content to go where I’m going at this moment.”
When Helen only nodded, Milena stood back from her and took her hands. “Helen?”
“Yes.”
“Milos is definitely alive. I can’t keep it from you any longer.”
Helen trembled. “How do you know?”
“From Bart and Mr. Jahn. They’re sure of it.”
“How do they know?”
“They’ll explain. And what’s more, Bart says that if Milos is alive and has one chance in fifty of getting out of trouble, he will. He knows Milos very well. So don’t despair.”
“I only had to get there with Dr. Josef an hour earlier!” said Helen angrily, shaking her head. “Just an hour earlier and I’d have saved him! I suspect I’m going to be inconsolable too.”
“You did the impossible. Come on, we’ll be late.”
They set off again. A little farther up the road, when they met two women coming the other way, Milena took care to draw the hood of her coat well over her face. “Or they may go thinking I’m a ghost again!”
“So they may. Are you really so like your mother? Do you have any photos of her?”
“Yes.”
“And are you?”
“Well, yes, the photos show me with clothes and a hairstyle twenty-five years out of date! Dora even gave me one with myself as a baby in her arms. I’ll show it to you. And as you’ll see, she was very beautiful.”
The apartment building with its peeling facade stood on the corner of two streets in the most out-of-the-way part of the Old Town. It had an old-fashioned entrance hall. The girls went in and climbed a narrow staircase smelling of beeswax.
“Where are you taking me?” asked Helen as they reached the fifth and last story.
Without replying, Milena knocked on a door that had no name on it, and a smiling Dora let them in. “My goodness, have you brought us an audience?”
“Isn’t that all right?”
“Of course it is. Good idea! Come in, Helen, you’re very welcome. Put your coats over there on the bed.”
It was like being in a doll’s house without the doll. The space was tiny, the furniture plain, and the walls were bare except for a musical score pinned over the wallpaper in the living room.
“It’s a Schubert manuscript,” said Dora, following Helen’s eyes.
“A reproduction?”
“No, an original, in his own hand. You can look at it.”
Helen went closer and stared at the modest sheet of paper, slightly yellowed now, with notes written on the music as if in haste in the composer’s beautiful hand.
“The ink . . . it looks as if it’s only just dried. I can’t believe it! It must be a rare document, surely.”
“Very rare,” Dora said, laughing.
“But you . . . I mean, it’s valuable. . . .”
“If I sold that score, I could buy the whole building. And the one next door.”
“And . . . and you don’t sell it?”
“No. I’m stupid, aren’t I? What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Helen, impressed.
“It’s always been there. And the piano too. A Steinway! You wonder how it ever got up here. The stairs are too narrow, and so are the windows. It’s a mystery. I like that; I like to imagine that they took the roof off to bring it in.”
“Have you always lived here, Dora?”
“Oh, no. This is where my piano teacher used to live. She was a brilliant, crazy, impossible old woman who made herself infusions of cloves to inhale and used to throw her shoes at my back when I played wrong notes. When she died, I bought her apartment. That was when I was making money from playing the piano. I thought that was only natural. I didn’t realize it was paradise. You discover what paradise means when you lose it, and what your nest means when you fall out of it. Come on, I’ll make tea and then we’ll get down to work.”
Helen took her shoes off, sat down in an armchair, folded her knees up against her chest, and waited, motionless. Dora sat down on the piano stool, pushed up her sleeves, and shook her dark curls. Milena remained standing, one hand on the side of the keyboard, concentrating as if about to give a recital. Her ruffled blond hair contrasted with the angelic beauty of her face and enhanced it.
“Let’s start, Milena. We’ll go back to D. 547.”
“Right, I’m ready.”
Dora delicately played the first chords, and when Milena opened her mouth, the nature of the air and everything else around her seemed to change, as always when she sang. Helen was shivering.
“Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,
Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
Hast du mein Herz . . .”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Dora interrupted her. “You’re too far ahead on ‘Hast du.’ Go back to the beginning, please.”
As far as Helen could tell, Milena was neither ahead of the piano nor behind it, but perfect. All the same, Milena obediently went back to the beginning. Once she was past that passage, Dora nodded her approval. “Good, that’s it.” She smiled. She knew she wouldn’t have to repeat herself ten times with Milena. Helen felt that special pride you get when a brother or sister whose gifts you have known for a long time finally reveals them to the world. She remembered the school yard where Milena used to sing for her. It seemed so far away now. And she remembered Paula, her large consoler, asking with amusement, “How’s your friend Milena? Do you admire her as much as ever?” At that moment she admired Milena more than ever.