THE ZION COVENANT BOOK 2
PRAGUE COUNTERPOINT
The Zion Covenant Book 2
Bodie & Brock Thoene
www.FamilyAudioLibrary.com
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Copyright © 1989 by Bodie Thoene. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration copyright © 2005 by Cliff Nielsen. All rights reserved.
Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker
Designed by Julie Chen
Published in 1989 as Prague Counterpoint by Bethany House Publishers under ISBN 1-55661-078-5.
First printing by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. in 2005.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Printed in the United States of America
11 10 09 08 07 06 05
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This story is dedicated
to our brothers,
our sisters,
and our children and grandchildren.
Together we remember the well-worn
Bible open to Psalm 91 and the prayers
of our grandmother for us all.
Acknowledgments
When we think of children and cellos and the Bach Suites, we think of Margaret Tait first! What a wonderful dimension her friendship and talent have added to our lives and our craft as writers. We love you, Margaret!
The roster of all those who help in so many ways continues to grow. Our special thanks also to Joseph and Naomi Samuels, who assisted in our research of the city of Prague.
Prologue
Old City Jerusalem
May 20, 1948
It was over. Only thirty of the Jewish defenders of the Old City survived. Not one bullet remained among them when at last they laid down their weapons before Major Abdullah Tell, commander of the Arab forces.
“If we had known what was left of you,” Tell said with respect, “we would have come to fight you with sticks instead of guns!”
All the other Jewish defenders lay dead amid the rubble of the Jewish Quarter. They had held back the thousands of Arab soldiers long enough for the rest of the Jewish Yishuv to arm themselves and prepare to survive the wave after wave of attacks from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and those who had come from Iraq and Iran to fight the Jewish Zionists.
The great Hurva Synagogue, Nissan Bek, and the rest of the places of Jewish worship were being destroyed. Explosions shook the ancient earth, and two thousand years of Jewish residence near the Wailing Wall came to an end.
Shaken and stricken by starvation and grief, the twelve hundred noncombatant residents of the Jewish Quarter emerged from the cellars where they had taken refuge from Arab bullets weeks before. The old ones, the rabbis who had spent their lives in study and worship, wept as they lifted their eyes to watch. Smoke billowed from the Hurva and flames leaped from the windows, enveloping the dome. “In blood and fire Judea had fallen; by blood and fire it would be reborn.” Who among them had not heard the ancient prophecy? And yet, for them this day was the end of all hope.
Prodded by guns, women and children joined the old rabbis in the square. Faces were streaked with soot and tears. Most had lost their husbands in the fighting. Now sons over the age of thirteen were being herded away from them. A few were lucky enough to take with them some cherished object from their homes. The rabbis carried the ancient Torah scrolls, while weeping women clutched photographs to their breasts and cried out the names of men who were now buried beneath the rubble of the Jewish Quarter.
“Where are you taking us?” cried one as they were marched past the victorious Arab Moquades.
“Taking you, old man?” The soldier jeered. “Your people have lived two thousand years as prisoners to these walls! We are liberating you Jews from Jerusalem; that is all!”
The old ones were to be given safe passage into the Jewish district of New York. The remaining defenders, along with a few others who looked capable of fighting, were to be taken east to a prisoner-of-war camp in Jordan.
Yacov Lubetkin supported his grandfather with one arm and held very tightly to the violoncello that had belonged to Leah Feldstein. Tears ran freely from the old man’s eyes and traced the lines of his face like streams on an ancient hillside.
“I will not walk these stones again, Yacov,” the old man said.
“It cannot be forever, Grandfather.” Yacov tried to comfort him, but the old man’s shoulders shook with his sobs. In the course of his lifetime he had lost his family to the Nazis, yet the strength of his soul had been comforted by Holy Jerusalem. Now that, too, was being wrenched from him.
“Not forever, perhaps, Yacov, but not ever again for me.” His eyes caressed the stones of the ancient corridors, then lifted to the black smoke rising above them like the smoke of millions that had risen over Poland and Germany.
“We will come back, Grandfather!” The boy wept aloud. “We must come back!”
A broad-faced Arab clad in the red-checked keffiyeh of the Arab Legion turned his face toward Yacov’s defiant cry. He smiled a gap-toothed smile and narrowed his eyes as he spotted the unwieldy case that contained the cello.
“You! Boy!” he barked and strode toward Yacov. “What do you carry out there?” It was unlike any luggage he had ever seen. He cocked his rifle, and it was evident that he suspected the lad of carrying weapons out of the Old City to be used by the Jews still fighting in the New City.
Yacov stopped. His jaw was set with anger and bitterness against the desecration of the Jewish houses of prayer and study.
Grandfather put a hand on the boy’s arm. “Do not speak harshly,” he warned. “He would kill us for one arrogant look.”
Yacov lowered his eyes as the barrel of the Arab rifle pointed to his forehead. “It is a musical instrument,” he said in a quiet voice. He still was uncertain why he had taken Leah’s cello. Her records had been smashed. The phonograph had been shot to pieces, and the cello seemed to be the only thing left in the room that was still undamaged. He had almost forgotten he had carried it down the stairs as the cry had risen that the city had fallen.
“Open it, dog!” the soldier demanded, poking Yacov with the ominous weapon. “Open the box, or I will shoot it and you and the old man as well.”
Yacov did not question the angry man. He laid the case down on a heap of rubble and, with fumbling fingers, unlatched the locks. He threw back the lid of the case and stepped aside quickly.
The soldier circled the cello as if it were a bomb. He squinted at the instrument, then looked curiously at Yacov. “Take it out of its box!” he demanded. “Play it!” He wanted some proof that it was what Yacov had said it was.
“I cannot play it.” Yacov lifted Leah’s cello with all the care he had seen her use a thousand times as she had played for the children and old people in Tipat Chalev. “It is not mine.” He held it out for the man to see.
“You can’t play it? It isn’t yours?” the soldier mocked. “Then why do you carry this out from the destruction of the city?”
“I don’t know.” Yacov was crying now. “I don’t know!” He hated the tears that came in spite of his attempt to hold them back. “It brought us happiness!” he cried, remembering the splendid nights w
hen Leah had played for them. Vitorio. She had called her violoncello Vitorio. “It came through so much.” He thought of the stories Leah had recited about their escape from Vienna ten years before. “It lived on when she died. Could I let you kill it?” He wasn’t making any sense at all now; the soldier looked at him with amused disgust, shrugged, and then passed on down the line to order an old rabbi to unwrap a Torah scroll for examination.
Lovingly Yacov returned the violoncello to the case and closed it, but not before the ash of the Old City Jerusalem had settled on the richly varnished wood of the instrument.
1
Vienna: Final Sunrise
March 1938
He had lived for thirty-four years and had never noticed how many shades of color streaked the early morning sky. But this would be his last sunrise, and the horizon seemed incredibly detailed and bright.
Walter Kronenberger stood at the window of the shabby hotel room and watched the colors change in the eastern sky. Deep purple blended into a thousand hues of blue and crimson and a lighter shade of pink where the sun would soon appear.
Below him German tanks, emblazoned with the emblem of Hitler’s Reich, rumbled past on the streets of Vienna. Walter did not look at them. He had seen them before. He had left Germany because of such sights and sounds. Like every fool still in Austria, he had stayed because he thought the tanks could never come here.
Behind him he could hear the deep, even breathing of his sons. Lifting the edge of the shade slightly, he let the faint shaft of light fall on the tousled blond heads of the boys.
Suddenly the sunrise lost interest for him. He turned and gazed instead at the two five-year-olds. They were all that remained of his shattered life, all that was left of the love he had shared with Maria. And they were the only things left that made him regret leaving the world.
The pistol he had purchased was loaded and lay beside two plain white envelopes on the table. When the Nazis came for him, as they surely would today, he would not die without a fight. But he was certain he would die today.
He reached out as if to touch little Charles on the forehead, but he held his hand above the child’s head; and in that moment of his greatest agony, he prayed for him instead. Who would love this broken little one now? Who would rock him when he cried in the night from the pain of the earaches that struck him so often? Charles had grown wise through his pain—wise and tender. But who would see this child’s heart past the deformity that marked him as an object of scorn and ridicule?
Walter looked at the gun and then back to Charles. Would it not be kinder? Walter drew back his hand in horror at the thought. He closed his eyes and prayed still more fervently. Tomorrow the sun would rise, Walter knew, and his sons would be fatherless. But they must live!
As if sensing his agony, Charles opened his eyes and blinked drowsily up at his father. Blue eyes, more beautiful than the sunrise, Walter thought. Full of kindness and love. Let someone see his heart, dear God. Walter stroked the boy’s forehead. These must be Your children now.
“Are you hungry, Charles?”
The boy nodded slowly.
“Then come along quietly. We will watch the sunrise together and have some strudel while Louis sleeps, ja?”
***
On such a day it would have been more fitting if the sun had not risen over Austria at all. The woods beyond Vienna should have remained silent and dark. The towering spires of St. Stephan’s Cathedral should have snagged the passing night and held the blackness over the city like a shroud. Flocks of pigeons sleeping among the hideous carved gargoyles of the building should have slept on until they too turned to stone.
But the sun did rise, and with its coming the hearts of men turned to stone in the light. The traitorous bells of St. Stephan’s rang out a greeting to the hordes of Hitler’s army. The gargoyles above the cathedral entrance sprang to life. No longer content simply to watch the folly of men below them, they leaped from the parapets and shouted a victory cry for their master: “Heil Hitler! Heil Deutschland! Deutschland über alles!”
Austria was no more. It had fallen without a single drop of blood being shed in resistance. The Führer had fulfilled his promise. Germany and Austria were one nation, one people, with one Führer.
Red-and-black swastika flags were unfurled from every window, covering the face of the city in such abundance they seemed to have sprouted from the stones like fungi.
In one day the face of the nation had been stripped away and discarded as though it had never been. The voice of Austria joined the clamor of St. Stephan’s bells. The birds swirled upward as though held aloft by the resounding cries: “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil . . . ” The sun should have hid its face and wept behind the clouds at the sight of such treachery. But it did not.
***
Leah Feldstein lay beside her husband and stared out the high window at the patch of blue sky. Shimon still breathed deeply and held her close to him as he slept. She did not move, even though she had been awake since before dawn. As long as they lay peacefully together, she could pretend that things were as they had always been. The events of yesterday and last night were only a dream. They would get up this morning and have breakfast and go together to the Musikverein, just like always.
Two small suitcases were packed and placed beside the door. Leah did not look at them. They were a reminder of everything she wanted to forget. She stared hard at the patch of blue and found some comfort that the color of the sky was bright and unchanged. She would not think about what was below the sky. She would not let her mind wander to the barricades manned by Austrian Nazis who blocked off the Judenplatz. She would not let herself remember the way pink-cheeked boys had proudly worn their Nazi armbands and shouted obscenities at her and Shimon when they tried to get to their friend Elisa’s house last night.
Leah frowned when she looked at the bruise beneath Shimon’s eye. Someone, one of the boys at the barricade, had thrown a bottle at Shimon and hit him in the face. “Stinking Jewish scum!” the boy had shouted. “You’ll see what kind of law Germany will bring for the likes of you!”
There had been a hundred of them—maybe more. Throughout the night they had burned their fires and sung their songs. Leah and Shimon had returned to their home in the Judenplatz to wait and watch in terrified exhaustion until at last a merciful sleep enveloped them.
Somewhere in the distance Leah heard the rumble of a truck engine. The Nazi shouts and threats were silent now. No doubt the young Nazis had fallen asleep at the barricades. Evil needed its rest as well, it seemed, to regain strength for the attacks that would surely come today. Down in the square, the mutilated statue of the Jewish playwright Franz Lessing served as a reminder that the Nazi youth would destroy a living, breathing Jew with as much enthusiasm as they had destroyed the bronze of a Jewish statue.
Leah closed her eyes and held tightly to Shimon’s big hand. She remembered Elisa’s description of the mutilated hands of Rudy Dorbransky. Dear Rudy! How the Nazis had made him suffer! How long until they turned their fury once again to the Judenplatz? There would be no Austrian Schupos now to stop the rampage. The government of Austria was smashed. The Austrian chancellor was under arrest. The laws of Nazi Germany were now in effect in Vienna.
The thought made Leah shudder. She was afraid—for herself, for Shimon, for Elisa. For anyone who would not raise a hand to salute the crooked cross of the Reich’s bloody flag. What would become of them now? The Nazis would be checking the identification papers of every man, woman, and child in the Judenplatz. Arrests had already begun. The Nazis would not want to waste any time in bringing Austria into line with the laws and policies of the Third Reich. What had taken Germany many years to accomplish in the campaign against the Jews would now be accomplished in Austria within days.
Shimon breathed deeply and let his breath out slowly. He cleared his throat and then squeezed Leah’s hand gently. “Awake?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Too awake,” she replied, pressing her
self closer against his warmth. He still had his shoes on. They had not dared undress.
Shimon pulled her closer and buried his face in the nape of her neck. “Did you sleep at all?”
She answered with a question. “Did you hear them? Singing those songs down there?” The words of the song had cut into her like sharp knives as the Nazis had paraded beneath their window by torchlight, singing, “Break the skulls of the Jewish rats.” Their hatred seemed to remain in the air like the stench of an open sewer.
“Did I hear them?” Shimon gave her a quick hug meant to reassure her. “Of course. They were off-key. Such lyrics will not sell well here in Vienna. Not against competition like Mozart and Strauss.” He waited for her to reply, but she did not. He squeezed her again, then sat up. “Then again, Nazi music might do well if all the musicians leave Vienna, eh?”
“Shimon?” Her voice trembled. “What will we do?”
“We have our visas for Palestine.”