THE STOLEN CODA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 851, 20 December 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE STOLEN CODA

rSTCOy~D PRIZE)

By

C. R. ALLEN

■ SCAR SCHWARTZ surveyed h.s confederate from under shaggy eyebrows. Fritz Himmel appeared to be just the sort of young man who would most readily subscribe to the Nietzschean formula. It is usually the invertebrate who would live dangerously, if they dared. Himmel had so dared, after Heldar’s death. Hence the transference of his allegiance from Maeterlinck to Nietzsche. He had joined the fraternity because it did not seem to matter greatly whether he lived or died. When that body decided upon the removal of Carl Tischendorf, the name of Schwartz had been on the lips of every brother. Schwartz, according to his own testimony, had killed his man, and they glady ceded him the right to add Tischendorf to his collection. So when he had drawn one of the marked papers at the ballot, it had seemed to all that Fate was acting stage manager uncommonly well. But in the matter of Himmel there had been no such consensus of opinion. Himmel was a poet, and an indifferent one at that. From Villon downwards, they argued, an efficient killer had never been a bad poet. There was a vagueness about Himmel’s verse which a certain sort of Intellectual professed to admire. It was said of him that he always burst into tears on hearing the

Serenade of Schubert in the mistaken belief that he was saluting the Funeral March of Chopin. This argued a faulty ear. Persons who looked upon poetry as the tidy and accurate business it ought to be, had little patience for the meanderings of Himmel. Schwartz had little patience with poetry of any sort. Music sublimated that part of him that was not given over to intrigue. In mattegs gastronomic, as well as musical, he displayed the na'ivdtd of a child. It was dissonant ■with his acuteness in other directions. As he surveyed his brother in crime, he betrayed something of that uncompromising disrelish which he would have bestowed upon a bad dish or a bad tune. However, Himmel had drawn the other marked paper, and there they were. The room where the two men had met was on an upper floor in a thoroughfare off the Taunus Strasse. The other apartments in the building were let out as studios. Schwartz himself was ostensibly a teacher of music. His pupils consisted entirely of the fraternity. When they wished to meet in conclave, Schwartz would give a pupils’ party. The overthrow of the Republic had been planned to the strains of a Balkan musical comedy. Someone had been playing Mendelssohn’s setting to the famous words of Heine when Tischendorf had been marked down for destruction. Tischendorf was both a poet and a musician. He was a patriot too, of a sort, but the wrong sort, in the eyes of the fraternity. It was needful that he should die for the people, and the lot had fallen upon Schwartz and Himmel to see that he died. Thus is was that they found themselves tete-a-tete upon a summer evening in the Rhineland town of Wiesbaden, which promised shortly to be free of the English Army of occupation. A multitude of sounds floated in through the open window. Somewhere in th§ distance a military band was playing selections from “Bitter Sweet,” the latest success from over the water. A tramway gong importuned along the Taunus Strasse. In the adjoining room a piano was being played intermittently. Schwartz was subconsciously irritated by the sporadic nature of this performance.

“Why doesn’t the fool get on with it?” he ask'ed himself. Then he remembered there was something he had to get on with. In any case the piano was more tolerable than the woman who sang ballads in the street below. In a voice that belonged to yesteryear, she sang the popular success of last season. Himmel rubbed his

hands down the sides of his trousers, for he sweated at the palms, after the manner of his kind. “The Neroberg, then, at half past eight.” said Schwartz. "The day after tomorrow,” said Himmel, “Will there be a moon?” “A little one,” said Schwartz. Their eyes reflected. Had they read Captain' Marryat, they might have thought of the baby in the story. It had been such a little one, like th> moon. Of course the smallness of the moon did not minimise the crime, but Himmel was vaguely comforted. He shot, a glance at the space of evening sky. framed by the window. “How can we be sure of finding him at home?” he asked presently. “We cannot be sure,” replied Schwartz. “If he be not at home, then it must be the Neroberg Hill upon the following evening, and so on.” “If we meet there every night,” suggested Himmel, “we may cause comment.” Schwartz laughed.

“There may be half a dozen stations among those winding paths,” he said “We may find ourselves at the Greek Chapel before we're finished.”

“I hope not,” said Himmel. Mention of the Greek Chapel recalled to him

a day that belonged to the era before he had decided to live dangerously. He had been walking the wood with Heldar, and they had been led on to the point where the sun had flashed upon the gilded minarets of the memorial chapel. They had emerged ultimately, Heldar and he, upon the open platform that is forever dedicated to a princess who died young. She whose cenotaph was to be seen within, was one whom the gods had loved. So it must be with Heldar, it had seemed to Fritz. So it had been. Maeterlinck must have had Heldar in mind when he wrote of the Predestined. She had almost told Frits of her destiny upon that forenoon when they had passed from the sunlight into the cool gloom of the chapel. “How sad,” was all she had said, and the muted voice of the town below them had reiterated: “How sad.” Yet how comfortably distant that sadness had seemed. For Himmel it had never been so with regard to Heldar. The pain of it was so recent that the ballad the woman sang in the street sounded archaic by comparison. Yes, Fritz hoped it would not he the Greek Chapel. He prayed that Carl Tischendorf would be found at home upon the first evening. Schwartz was hoping so, too. It would be tiresome to r«arrange the elaborate machinery for making good their escape. This had been perfected a 3 far as possible. He was considering how perfection could be made more perfect when an obvious omission occured to him. He had not arranged a common call. “We have yet much to learn from the beast; that perish.” he said to Himmel. “The dove calls to its mate. The lion has a tune for its cubs' dam. There must be some motif, some air. which has never been whistled before. By this we may know each other.” Himmel agreed, though he was the one member of the fraternity who had the greatest, difficulty in passing himself off as a pupil of Schwartz the musician. To teach Himmel a tune would be as hard a matter as to make a musician read Himmel's vers More. In the upper room that evening, there was reenacted the scene between Alan Breck and David Balfour, but with what a difference! Instead of the debonair Alan, supine upon the heather, whistling over the nass tune, there stood Schwartz, with one podgy finger upon a piano

note. In the room of David Balfour, afire with hero worship and excitement, there stood Fritz Himmel. who was finding the Life Perilous a greasy business. At last he had the motif, after many repetitions, not by note, on the piano. Out in the street once more, he made toward the light and the noise of the Taunus Strasse. The street singer paused momentarily at his passing, as such singers will do. Fritz was revolted to find how accurately the ballad expressed his feelings about Helda:. He made his way toward the Kurgarten, determined upon this the last night but tne before his adventure, he would live otherwise than dangerously. He was not altogether so ill-looking that there lacked others who would have helped him in his quest, with a little encouragement. The memory of Heldar, however, withheld him from any w'hite hands that might have been waiting for him. The Kurgarten orchestra hinted mellifluously of such a consolation.

On the next evening but one, he was at his post. A warm rain pattered through the expectant trees. The smell of wet leaves and loam filled him with a sudden nostalgia for the days when Heldar and he had read their Maeterlinck

together. The events of the last weeks, of the last years, seemed as remote as a Maeterlinck background itself, then actuality closed in about him suddenly, like a trap. It seemed that, for the first time, he came to a real knowledge of the thing toward which he had drifted. Even so it may have been with Brutus, as he tossed upon his bed within hearing of the faithful Portia. It had been essential for the Cause that Caesar should die. It was essential for the Cause that Tischendorf should perish. Tischendorf, the scholar and philanthropist, who had befriended Himmel, even as Caesar had befriended Brutus. The trap had almost closed about him. He was suddenly overcome by a panic instinct to put himself without its confines, to rush madly down toward the town, and lose himself in the crowd about the Opera House or the Kursaal. Then the trap snapped. From the path above him came the sound of the motif he had learned so well the night before last. Schwartz was coming.

He pulled his raincoat about him. There was something theatrical in the action which awoke a moribund sense of humour. So men will smile at themselves in some overwhelming crisis. He aw-alted Schwartz in the shadow of a great, dripping tree. The rain had ceased to fall, and a few stars were shining faintly, Hesper among them, the tender star of eve, of which Heldar had sometimes sung. "Heldar had occasionally affected a man’s song. The whistling figure approached. Himmel stepped from his ambush, and was confronted by Carl Tischendorf. The two men recoiled from an impact that was not physical. Tischendorf had not encountered Himmel since a day anterior to the death ot Heldar. He had cherished great hopes of the boy, but they had been parted by a violent quarrel on some negligible matter of

literary taste. Men of genius have been known to quarrel over a carpet. Himmel had gone off in a dudgeon, but not before Tischendorf had fired the Parthian shot. It was a shock for Carl to see the face of the boy he had thus condemned, suddenly thrust in front of his. Himmel’s pallor was engendered of another motive. The plot v.as discovered. \V'hat did Tischendorf know? "Himmel,” said Tischendorf, with a fine economy of speech. Fritz said nothing. If he were to run away, who could say what hornet’s nest awaited him at the turn of that winding path? Then he felt Tischendorf's hand in his. "This must have cost you something, Fritz,” he said. "You were waiting for me? I’ve often thought of tracking you down myself, and offering an olive branch, but a devil of pride restrained me.” “What has cost me something?” Himmel asked in stupefaction. "Let’s get down into the town,” said Tischendorf. "We’ll go and hear some music.” Himmel could have wished that Tischendorf would strike at once. This diabolical suavity was so foreign to the man, as he had conceived of him. He found himself walking in step with him, propelled by the gentlest possible pressure on the elbow. As he went he reasoned. If Tischendorf were playing a part. Fritz must not betray his knowledge that this was so. He must play

a part too. He, Fritz, according to the comedy, had done that most difficult thing. He had sought an end to an old quarrel. The sociability of the town mocked them as they found themselves in the peopled street. "There is so much that we might say, Fritz,” said Tischendorf. "I think that music was sent for the succour of men with too much to say. Do you still read your Maeterlinck?” "One’s tastes change,” mumbled Fritz. “I was thinking of that essay upon silence,” Tischendorf went on. "Do you remember how he writes of men who have dared to be silent together?”

Fritz wilted. This was the very refinement of cruelty. It would have been more magnanimous on the part of Tischendorf to strike him on the mouth.

“It shall not be the Kursaal, Fritz,” said Tischendorf. “1 was on my way to hear a sonata that comes hot from the composer's brain. I heard it for the first time last night. He is a little fellow called Ulrich, a Bavarian. I doubt if he ha 3 ever seen the inside of our Kursaal. He has had neither the time nor the money. If I know my man, he will not lack the latter commodity when his sonata is known. He came to my house last right, and this evening I am paying a return visit. He will welcome any friend ot mine. How odd you should have chosen this evening for the rapprochement.” He chatted on about other matters. Surely Tischendorf was a consummate actor. Presently, they were in the Taunus Strasse. Tischendorf’s hold upon Himmei’s arm continued as light and caressing as that of a child. Fritz wondered into what sort of vice that hold would change if he were to be visited by another such panic as had beset him on the Neroberg path. They came in due course, to the thoroughfare where stood the building that included the so-called studio of Schwartz.

"This way,” said Tischendorf. Himmel went on the indicated route like a man who goes drugged, to his doom. He wished only that Tischendorf would cease to worry him. So would a cat worry a mouse. They stayed before the familiar staircase.

“This way,” purred Tischendorf. Himmel wondered if he would find Schwartz and the rest of them rounded neatly up in the studio under surveillance. He turned mechanically toward the ..door at the end of the first flight, but Tischendorf propelled him to au adjoining door. He knocked. A girl with flaxen hair answered his summons. In that tense moment Himmel had time to notice that it shone as Heldar’s had shone. "Good evening, Eraulein,” spoke Tischendorf, 'Vve brought a friend. This Is Fritz Himmel.” "Himmel,” said the girl, and laughed. It was a contralto laugh. Though it had no note of Heldar In It, It was still the laugh of a woman. “He is welcome,” she continued. Her eyes differed from Heldar’s, and her idiom of speech. There was little that was sinister about her, but Himmel’s nerves were in shreds. A little man with quick grey eyes advanced to meet them. He wore a loose grey jacket, and list slippers. His movements had an almost feline grace. “What horrible parody was this they were playing?” The perspiration stood upon Himmel’s forehead.

“You are fatigued," said the little man, "Let me charm your fatigue away.” He went to the piano that stood against the southern wall. On the other side of that wall, Fritz calculated, stood the piano of Oscar Schwartz. The Fraternity knew little of Us neighbours. It was Ulrich’s piano then, that had been playing in that indeterminate fashion upon the evening before last. Himmel sat and listened in a kind of weary amazement at his own folly, at the folly ot Schwartz and the rest of them. He had little ear i'or music at any time. He noted that the girl with Heldar’s hair had plump arms. She differed from Heldar in other ways than in Idiom of speech. She had, it seemed to Fritz, another idiom of soul. He wondered how one could be so

fair and so terrible at the same time. So might Gretchen have appeared to Faust. He was awakened from his furtive contemplation of the girl by something that happened at the piano. Ulrich was playing the call tune that Schwartz had taught Fritz. He played it thrice. Then came three clashing chords, and he sat back, laughing. Tischendorf applauded. "I like your coda,” he said. “You do?” said Ulrich, with a shrug. "I stole it." “You stole it?” echoed Tischendorf. "Yes. Some fellow picked it out on his piano on the other side of the wall. I incorporated it. Perhaps that is a happier phrase.” "Good God,” said Tischendorf. “Whatever you may be in life, Ulrich, I gave you a credit for a conscience In art. I’ve been whistling it ever since I heard it last night.” Himmel joined in the laugh. It was painful to hear him, for he laughed the laugh of the reprieved. Tischendorf, then, knew absolutely nothing of the plot to put him out of the way. He had not been acting a part. It will never be known what caused Oscar Schwartz to be five minutes late for his appointment that evening. Himmel put himself out of reach of the Fraternity by boarding a North German liner for America. Maybe he will find a market for his verse there. The Americans have eclectic tastes. Tischendorf is still at large, and so, for that matter, is Schwartz. I cannot say whether Ulrich made peace with h'is conscience, and eliminated the stolen coda from his sonata. In the jargon of our day. he has not yet made good. The girl with the flaxen hair has married a dealer in sausage skins.