They take his music when they come. They might as well take his life-he considers himself to be nothing without his music. And, even worse, they take his music for no more than a name.
Losing the music is what he thinks of as the worst of the many evils brought on by the name he had inherited. Nominally he supposes he is Jewish, but he had never once set foot in a synagogue. Of course, that hardly matters to them. They just look at his name and his lineage and take his music away. No Jew is allowed to be employed, and he many not even set foot in his beloved concert hall in Vienna.
Roderich Edelstein sits at the piano in the living room of his house and cries.
At least, he thinks, his wife, three months pregnant with their first child, had listened to his urging for her to visit her family in Hungary. He couldn't join her because of the concert season. He sees what happens to women accused of having relations with Jews, and he knows he couldn't bear it anything of the sort happens to his darling Elizabeta.
They had rented out the spare bedroom in their house since they had married, a young couple needing a little extra money, and he has the same argument with their current lodger, a young American scientist, every night.
"Alfred, it isn't safe for you here. You're an American citizen; they will let you go home. Get out while you still can, or at least get away from me. I am a Jew. I will make you a target by association."
Alfred always laughs and shakes his head, much to Roderich's dismay. "My life is my own to live, and my own to risk. I'm staying here."
He has the misfortune to be out one day, yellow star clearly visible against his dark blue coat, when they round up a group of Jews to humiliate, to treat like animals.
He doesn't want to remember it, refuses to file it under memories worth saving. Instead, he focuses on Alfred's laugh and the memory of Elizabeta's long, gently curling brown hair framing her face as she smiled at him. The humiliation has no place in his life-no place in the life of a prim and proper pianist.
Roderich wakes in abject fear every night, reaching for his wife, finding himself both disappointed and relieved to find himself alone in his empty bed.
Then it gets worse, as the persecution starts in earnest. Feliks, the cheerful blond Pole, is arrested just for being Polish, as far as anyone can tell. Gilbert, the man who is alternately Roderich's worst enemy and best friend, can be found tied to a steel rod in the middle of the city, his crime being love. Homosexuality is forbidden by the Nazis who control the lives of everyone in Austria, and Gilbert had fallen in love with a delicate scrap of a man with huge eyes and who looks all too familiar.
That is when Roderich loses Alfred.
"Mattie!" Alfred screams desperately, trying to free the boy who is so clearly his brother from his bonds and his humiliation. But it comes to nothing, nothing more than the broken and bloody body of a man with so much promise.
And so, when they come for Roderich himself, he does not resist. He has lost everything. Elizabeta is still in Hungary and safe (or so he hopes; he knows his chances of ever seeing her again are slim to none), Gilbert has vanished, Alfred is dead.
The following years are a hell of forced labor and too little food and constant pain, and maybe it is only the music in his head that drags him through it all. He lives for the music, dreaming of playing his beloved piano again, playing while Elizabeta perches on the sofa in the music room and holds their child. She had always loved his music.
Roderich refuses to listen to camp rumors of liberation-always the pragmatist, he refuses to get his hopes up for something he didn't believe would happen in his lifetime. He sees so many of the people around him go to their deaths dreaming of freedom, and he does not want to be one of them.
Because of this, when it does happen, he is more surprised than anyone. A Soviet soldier, a bear of a man with a filthy scarf and a childlike face named Ivan, brings him crackers and water and makes sure he doesn't get sick and die from finally getting to eat. Ivan listens to him speak of music and of Elizabeta and helps him recover to get back to the two things that mean the world to him. Once the Austrian is recovered, Ivan helps Roderich get a train ticket to Hungary so that he can look for his wife.
True to form, Roderich gets himself lost more than once, but finally manages to get himself to the tiny village where Elizabeta's entirely family lives.
As he approaches the village, a small child nearly knocks him over. When the child stops to apologize he asks where he can find the family. The boy stares up at him with dark blue eyes, then says his mama would be of more help.
The woman he is led to has long brown hair, and Roderich's heart aches. Then she turns to face him, and his heart stops.
"Lizzie…?" he manages, before the woman-before Elizabeta-throws herself into his arms, tears of joy streaming down her face. She gasps his name between sobs, and he holds her close, hardly believing that she is truly there.
Once she calms down she introduces the boy to Roderich, and he meets his young son for the first time.
Holding his wife and child close, Roderich feels complete for the first time in years. Damn the music. He has all he needs.
Sorry it's so short. I actually wrote this for a story contest (that I didn't win), and had a pretty low word cap. I'm happy with it, for what it's worth.