A Good Jew
Sol Goldberg
The piano’s always been my ticket to better things. Even when I was a boy, hearing the notes echoing through our apartment would take me and my mind to places I was usually barred from. Listening to music let my imagination fuel itself, it let my imagination take me away from the sad reality of Jewish life in Frankfurt. Music can make you forget the bruises.
Not that we, as a community, were unhappy. My parents especially did all they could to raise us children in an environment richer than any other in this culturally rich city. I loved growing up. The dances, the girls, the boys, meals, festivals, poetry recitals, concerts - all bright under the ascending shadow of the Nazis. When you limped home after a particularly nasty beating you always new there was a warm meal waiting for you and friends to spew rage with at the anti-semitics.
In my case, my piano was always waiting for me. Waiting to take me out of my Jewishness, to make me one of with the people I knew I was separated from by an accident of the blood. It was, as I said, my ticket. It sheltered me through school and it took me to the Hoch Konservatorium on weekends, briefly, before anyone of Jewish blood was banned and even then I would sneak in to play their beautiful Bechstein grand.
Of course, having played since I was four, I was brilliant. That brought me girls, friends, awards, places in orchestras. Such places don’t have passport checks, or they didn’t, and I could hide who I really was. I don’t look like a Jew, see, I don’t have ‘that nose’ or the curly hair. We seem the same as everyone else and when we don’t have to provide it in writing, we really are. It was in the Sinfonietta that I met Hilda.
She said. “Mama. Why is it so quiet in here. Has Uncle Gustav run out of things to say already?”
"It wasn’t just your legs that caught me Hilda. It was your eyes, no your mouth, no… your lovely rounded…
Conversation"
"I was already a good German."
"I can get them away. Once I am… more established. Anya, and mother. I will make arrangements. But they need to go. Somewhere. The Nazis? They have no use for them."
"You three! Wait here. The truck is coming now to collect you. You have to talk to them like idiots, huh!?"
"I didn’t have a long conversation with the Guard room. We’ve been dealing with some 300 extra unexpected burials this morning, thanks to some prisoners being kept out in the driving sleet for 6 hours. She’s pretty. Nice legs, and asking for you. That’s all I know. "
"And no thanks to you. You almost blew everything in there."
Daniel Grimstone (Sol Goldberg): Daniel is a young Lewes based actor-poet currently training on a diploma at Central School of Speech and Drama. This is his first production with Something Underground but his recent work elsewhere includes The Circle (Teddie Luton), As You Like It (Rosalind), My Boy Jack (Bowe) and Crave (B).
We were preparing for a concert, playing the Brahms’ second violin concerto, I was sitting in the stalls, waiting to be needed - we’d had a new first violin come in on a trial especially for this piece. She stood up, put bow to string and the world exploded. It was the music, I know, but it was as if God had opened up a heaven in between my ears and when she was finished - well I would have challenged anyone not to fall in love with her then and there, someone who could play Brahms like that. I had to meet her. So I asked her for a drink, she introduced herself as “Hilda Brandt, Violinist” which I found funny. I laughed. She knocked me out, literally.
Producton shots:
All images Daniel Stevens