Forgotten Songs Inclusive

[preface: please read Come Alive, The Eighty-Eighth Key, NightSide/Asynchronous Mud, The Boo Angel and Beware of Darkness before reading this 250 pages of scorching mayhem (cough cough, right). Read TimeShadow if you want to see where this is heading. Enjoy.

Forgotten Songs From An Imaginary Life

Part I: When The Sky Falls

Chapter 1

Copenhagen, Denmark 28 March 1939

The physician looked out his office window and scowled, his fingers moving about in nervous circles, and to a casual observer it might have looked like he was writing in the air. He was a young man, just thirty four years old, yet his sandy blond hair was already streaked with gray. He was tall, well over six feet, anyway, and quite thin. He dressed well yet always wore a gray flannel suit, even in summer, and his white shirts were always topped with a red bow tie.

Now, as he slipped out of his white lab coat, he called out to his secretary: "It is snowing already, Mette. I will need my overcoat and boots!"

"But you have another patient, Doctor. Am I to reschedule her for the morning?"

"Is it a new patient?"

"Yes. Something Baumgarten?"

"Something? Her name is Something?" Dr. Anders Sorensen scoffed. "Seriously?"

"No, of course not, I just don't have the file in front of me right just now."

"What is the issue?"

"Stomach pain, fatigue, blood in her stool."

Sorensen growled as he turned and put his lab coat back on, then he put his stethoscope where he always put it -- in his coat's lower right pocket -- before he walked into the nurses room to look over this new patient's file. He pulled his reading glasses out of a vest pocket and slipped them onto his nose, then he quietly studied the information the woman's family physician had sent ahead, along with her x-rays, and then, before he had even seen the patient, he asked his nurse to check on the availability of an operating room for tomorrow morning.

"How long a procedure?" she asked. She knew the tone, and the look on the professor's face. This was a serious case, and she didn't know how he stood up to the strain day after day.

"Four hours, and I will require two assistants. Preferably at least one of my residents."

"Yes, Professor."

Sorensen walked out into the clinic's waiting room and looked around until he found the likeliest looking person, a frail looking middle-aged woman with gray skin turning yellow under sallow jowls. "Ina?" he said to the frail looking, ashen-faced woman sitting with, he guessed, her husband. "Shall we talk now?"

The woman had trouble standing and he rushed over to help her husband, and she leaned on them both a bit as she got steady on her feet.

"Are you feeling dizzy just now? A little light-headed, perhaps?"

"Yes, Doctor. Very much so."

He took her left wrist in hand and felt her pulse, then he checked her right wrist. "Can you walk now?"

"I think so, yes."

He helped the woman to his exam room and then left her with his nurse to get into a gown, and he went out to talk to her husband.

"How long has your wife been feeling ill?" Sorensen asked after he confirmed the scared looking man was indeed her husband.

"It is months now, Doctor, yet she would go to our doctor but for the winter."

Sorensen nodded. "Have you noticed blood in her stool?"

The man nodded. His hands we shaking and Sorensen could see the vessels in his neck beating heavily.

"Has she been vomiting?"

Again the old man nodded.

"And there is blood in the fluid?"

"Yes, doctor, though much more this last week."

Sorensen put his hand on the man's shoulder. "I will go and speak to Ina now, but you must be prepared for a hospital stay. Is there someone you can stay with here in the city?"

"Yes, Doctor. My son teaches engineering here at the university."

"Fine, fine, that is good. I will come and speak with you when I am finished." Sorensen returned to his exam room and looked over the patient's vitals, including an orthostatic pressure check, then he took his opthalmascope and peered into the old woman's eyes and nodded.

"I am going to help you lay back now, and I want you to point to where you feel pain when I do."

She immediately indicated the upper central region of her abdomen and Sorensen gently palpated the area she indicated, then he felt around the rest of her belly. "How is your appetite, Ina?"

She shook her head. "Not good. I have not been hungry for weeks."

"What about red meat?"

"No, no...the idea makes me ill -- even just to hear the words."

"Trouble swallowing, even when drinking water?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

He smiled. "Ina, I think we must go get a new x-ray just now, but I also think it very likely that you have something in your stomach that needs to be removed." Sorensen was careful not to say 'cancer' -- as he did not want to unduly scare her. "First we need to see if the this growth has spread, and if it hasn't then we will need to operate as soon as possible."

"And if it has spread, then what?"

"We will discuss that after we look at the images. For now, I want you to keep thinking only of good things, about your happiest memories. Can you do this for me?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Now we go to the x-ray machine."

"Does this x-ray thing hurt, Doctor? The other one hurt."

"No, no, it should all be quite painless. You won't feel a thing, but let me know if it does."

+++++

The snow was ankle deep and falling wet and heavy by the time he left the clinic; Sorensen pulled his coat's heavy fur collar up to keep the slushy snow from running down his back, because he disliked the sudden chill of the intrusion. He looked at all the people walking home then he put on his hat, then his fur-lined gloves went on before he stepped out into the blue light of evening. His house was nearby, just two blocks away, but the walk was just long enough to be bothersome on nights like this, and he tried to think of something, anything, other than this Baumgarten's tumor. He would know more once he was inside, of course, but malignant spread was obvious on her x-rays -- yet her liver might not be involved yet so maybe there was still some hope of a decent outcome.

He stepped out into traffic and almost immediately a taxi honked its horn and slid to a stop on the slick surface, in the process spattering his legs with slushy snow. 'That was too close for comfort,' Sorensen sighed as he shook his head by way of an apology, then, as he stepped back up onto the sidewalk, he nervously pulled his scarf tight -- just as an errant stream of water puddled on his neck -- before running down his back.

He shivered once then tried to concentrate again -- on the traffic around him and on the slushy piles forming on the sidewalk -- until he made it home, but when he entered he was surprised by the silence that greeted him. No servants to take his coat? And...while the house smelled of fresh cut flowers -- there was no dinner ready? So, where were the cooks?

"What is going on here?" he said to the silence, and when no-one spoke to his question he turned and took off his overcoat and hung it in the hall closet, then he shook off his hat and put it away, too, on a rack to dry. His gloves and scarf came off next, but just then he heard scurrying footsteps on the floor above, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

He turned and ran for the staircase, made it up to the next floor in a mad dash, only to find his wife sweeping up the remnants of a mirror that had, apparently, just fallen off the back of a closet door.

"Are you alright!?" Anders cried as he ran into the bedroom. "I heard glass break and no-one is in the kitchen! What is going on here?"

His wife, Tilda, shook her head and smiled. "Must I tie ribbons around your fingers? We are going out tonight, in case you have forgotten. So I gave everyone the evening off!"

"Out? Tonight? You didn't...oh wait, yes, yes you did."

"Yes, I did."

"The recital? Or is it a concert this time?"

"She is only the daughter of your best friend in all the world, and already he forgets! Anders! You are hopeless!"

Sorensen shook his head, scolding himself. "Ah, yes. Imogen, the new concerto, at the concert hall."

"You have had a bad day?"

"A bad afternoon. A bad case."

"How early must you go in?"

"Four thirty in the morning. It was the only opening."

"It always it," she sighed. "So. Then we will make a brief appearance at the reception after. We must get you home and to bed."

"I hate to mention it, but what about dinner? Do we have plans?"

Tilda shook her head. "I thought we would go to Hugo's tonight. There is time enough."

He pulled the pocket-watch from his waistcoat and looked at the time. "Barely. We will need to hurry."

"Then let us hurry...but you'd better call for a taxi."

"I should tell you, in case you have forgotten, that you are the most beautiful woman in the world and that I love you immensely."

She smiled as she walked by, pausing only slightly and kissing him gently on her way to the stairs. He looked at her and smiled, because even now, after ten years, the sight of her thrilled him. So, perhaps you could say he was blind to the dangers coiling around his life, perhaps even blinded by his wife's eternal beauty. But do those things ever really matter?

Or is beauty, and the love it inspires, the only thing that ever really matters?

Copenhagen, Denmark 2 September 1939

Anders Sorensen put on his reading glasses and looked over the patient's chart, then up at the surgical residents standing around the patient's bed. He seemed to all who looked at him very agitated this morning, perhaps even a little angry, and in the experience of his residents this was most unusual. Sorensen was usually the calm, steady hand, and he had never, in their experience, appeared fearful. But today?

Yes, something was amiss. Indeed, something was very, very wrong.

"Pers," Sorensen said as he consulted the chart once again, "the patient is two days post-op and now has a temperature. His abdomen is tender where?"

"Right upper quadrant, Doctor."

"Which makes us think what, Matilde?"

"That there is the possibility of another stone, Doctor, perhaps in the hepatic duct?"

"And so we should do what, Stefan?"

"An x-ray with contrast medium should be our next procedure, Doctor Sorensen."

Sorensen hooked the chart onto the end of the patient's bed and nodded. "Let me know when you have the results," he said as he turned and strode back to his office without so much as a word.

"Have we done something wrong?" one of the residents asked. "He seems offended by our very presence today."

Stefan Jensen looked at the group then at Sorensen's retreating form. He knew what was bothering Sorensen but now was not the time to talk about such things, not around all these loose-lipped, clueless residents.

Indeed, all Denmark was on edge today. The Germans had rolled into Poland just the day before and already it appeared that both England and France would declare war of the Germans within hours, and this morning there were reports that German units were gathering along Denmark's border. And both Jensen and Sorensen were, like many students and faculty here at the medical school, Jews.

So yes, of course Sorensen was agitated. Everyone of his residents had seen the dozens of photographs of German Jews forced to wear armbands, being beaten and harassed as they walked down the Unter den Linden in Berlin. And of course by then they'd all heard the horror stories of homes and businesses being confiscated from German Jews -- before some of these people mysteriously disappeared. Hitler's views, as well as those of all his myriad acolytes, were by now more than well known in Denmark and the Sudetenland, and so now, with Poland about to fall, the thinking was that when the Germans inevitably rolled into Denmark it wouldn't be all that difficult to figure out what would happen to people like Anders Sorensen and the other Jews.

And, as was the instant case, to Stefan Jensen, but, then again, Jensen's family had no intention of staying in Copenhagen and waiting for the inevitable noose to tighten. Even now his father was making arrangements to move the family to Canada by way of Sweden, and just last night his father had tasked Stefan with finding out if Professor Sorensen might not care to make the journey with them. He'd penned a letter to that effect, charging his eldest son with delivering it to the professor as soon as possible.

And so, when Sorensen walked off towards his office, Jensen made up his mind right then and followed him.

But he hadn't counted on having to deal with the Professor's secretary-nurse, a ferocious creature who jealously guarded Sorensen's privacy as well as his time.

"I need to speak with Professor Sorensen," Stefan said as he came sliding breathlessly into the anteroom. "It is most important!"

"What's this about, Jensen?" Anders said, as he had not yet made it all the way into his office.

"A personal matter, Doctor. A letter from my father, for you, sir."

"Well. come in, come in. I have a few minutes..."

"Thank you, Doctor."

"How is your mother? I have heard she was feeling ill?"

"Ah, better. Thank you for asking."

"Now, what's this all about? A letter, you say?"

"Yessir, from my father. About, well, Poland."

"Poland? My, my. Well, you'd better let me have a go at it, don't you think?"

"Yessir," Stefan said as he pulled the envelope from his lab coat and handed it to his mentor.

"Do you know what this is all about?" Sorensen said as he took the letter from his young resident.

"Not the specifics, sir."

Sorensen opened the envelope and read through the letter twice, taking a deep breath once then rubbing the bridge off his nose, trying to chase away too many hours without sleep with one futile pinch. Then he walked over to his office window and pulled it open, letting waves of fresh air wash through his stuffy little office.

"I love the smell of this city," Anders said as he put his hands on the sill and leaned out into the air. "The sea, the market stalls, the streets here around the university...life...I smell life...intoxicating life everywhere I turn."

"I think my father smells death, Doctor. Fear and death."

"And there are few people in the world I respect more than your father. You know that, don't you?"

"I do, sir."

"What about you, Stefan? You have your medical degree now but your training will be incomplete, so what do you think of all this commotion? Such a departure will make for many difficult choices, and for us all, yet for you this decision may be more than a simple inconvenience."

"I have heard that a German branch of the Gestapo has already formed here in the city, and that there are collaborators in all levels of the government and that who are ready to deal with the Germans."

"Yes, I have heard this too. And lists will be made, knocks on doors will come in the middle of the night, as surely as the night follows day. Synagogues will burn, too -- yet always under mysterious circumstances, of course -- but by then all the Jews in Denmark will have disappeared. Stefan, I fear this new animal, this new kind of superman. And yet, I think I fear for our world most of all. We are not prepared to deal with such Hate."

"It makes sense to leave now, does it not, Professor? Before such a decision becomes too difficult, if not impossible. We risk much of course, that I do know, but do we not risk the end of our families, and not only our lives? We will endure if we leave, will we not. We will survive another season of man."

"So, we must teach the horse to sing after all? Is that what you are saying, Stefan?"

"Yes, Professor. But what about the Schwarzwald's? Do you think you can convince the professor to join us?"

"Professor Schwarzwald? No. Never. He will never leave Copenhagen, and he has told us so many times."

"But, what about Imogen?"

Sorensen backed out of the freshening breeze and stepped back into his office, and then he turned to face Stefan, a scowl creasing his lean face. "That will depend on Avi Rosenthal, of course..."

"I do not trust that -- bastard," Jensen said, almost spitting out that last word.

"She is not well, Stefan."

"Imogen? I did not know this..."

Sorensen pointed to his head and shook his head. "Her father fears she is fast becoming schizophrenic. Apparently she is visited by an old man who whispers to her in the night."

Jensen shook his head then. "She is such a talent, such a brilliant physicist. Her mind must be at war with itself."

"You have known her since..."

"Yes, Professor, since forever. Since before we started school together."

"So...you know Avi well enough to..."

"I do. He is a prick who would sell out his mother..."

Sorensen held out his hand. "Enough. His father was a dear friend, as you well know."

"I understand. What should I tell my father?"

"Tell your father...that all in all I would prefer Quebec over Toronto, but then again I would rather resettle in California over any other place. San Francisco above all."

Jensen beamed. "Really? Well, this is excellent news!"

"Yes, go tell your father. Now, I have to talk to my wife about all this. It will come as rather a surprise, I should think. And before you run home, might I suggest you see to your patients, Doctor Jensen?"

+++++

Everything was arranged quite hastily, with travel under the guise of attending a surgical symposium in Philadelphia deceptively employed. And then almost immediately the Jensens and the Sorensens traveled to Gothenburg to board to the Svenska Amerika Linien's MS Kungsholm, leaving for New York City in early October, 1939. By the time the party arrived at the old red brick Stigbergskajen quay in Gothenburg, word was already circulating among the people gathered on the docks that this would likely be the last passenger crossing from Sweden, and Anders Jensen thanked his lucky stars that he had acted as precipitously as he had.

Because of the fourteen hundred and fifty two people gathered on the pier that crisp autumn morning, most were Jews, and most were by now quite frantic. Frantic -- because all the Jews gathered that morning feared that something might prevent their boarding the ship -- and so prevent their escape to America. Already the Gestapo was monitoring air traffic within Europe, already they were plucking prominent Jews from aircraft bound for Lisbon, where the last Pan Am Clippers were departing mainland Europe for Miami and New York. Because, in a very real sense, these fleeing Jews were like desperately unwitting fish being forced into waiting nets, and this crossing on the Kungsholm appeared to be the last best way off the continent -- simply because the Gestapo had yet to find a way of operating effectively within neutral Sweden.

So by the time Anders and Tilda Sorensen cleared immigration and walked across the boarding ramp and into the ship they each felt a palpable sense of release. Walking up the grand staircase to the reception area they felt an ongoing cascade of conflicting emotion: regret and sorrow for leaving the only life they had ever known -- then tumbling down the very real slopes of fleeing a deadly, ominous and incomprehensible force bent on their destruction. By the time they settled in their stateroom Tilda was a quivering wreck, so distraught she could hardly walk; Anders, however, pulled a prized old Meerschaum from his vest pocket then stepped out onto the promenade and slowly filled the bowl, watching the liner pull away from the quay as he lit the tobacco -- a quieting ritual he had stumbled upon when he had been a surgical resident some years before.

When he was able, when his own hands had steadied, he returned to his stateroom and helped Tilda get out of her traveling clothes and into something more appropriate to walking through the ship for lunch, then he took her out to the promenade for an easy stroll in the freshening breeze. He put his arm around her and once again he marveled at the way they seemed to have been made to fit one another. Everything about her felt so right, and it always had...from their very first moments together to this very instant.