We present an extract from The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, the new novel by by Sam Taylor.
A house fire, Vienna, 1933: thirteen-year-old Max is orphaned, disfigured and adopted by an Aryan family who change his identity - and his prospects. A house fire, Vienna, 1933: thirteen-year-old Max saves his parents and escapes unharmed, to face life as a Jew in 1930s Austria. In one unforgettable night, Max Spiegelman's life splits in two. As war looms and Nazism continues to rise, Max is forced into choices that place him and his alter ego on opposing sides of a divided world. Tethered by their dreams, the boys watch helplessly, haunted by visions of what could have been. But in each parallel universe, they share a magnetic bond with an enchanting, grey-eyed girl...
Afterwards, when he thought back to that evening, the last he would ever spend in the apartment on Prinzenstrasse, Max Spiegelman couldn't be sure if what he remembered was real or a dream. Half of him felt certain it had truly happened; the other half suspected it was something his imagination had woven from the tangled threads of sadness, loss and desire.
It was late afternoon: sun disappearing behind rooftops, the first hint of chill in the air. Max and his best friend Josef Müller were walking home after a game of football in the Augarten. Max had to yell to make himself heard over the drone of traffic and the thump of the scuffed leather ball that Josef was bouncing against the concrete; he was reminiscing about the goal he’d scored to win the game that afternoon. Josef said nothing in reply, just stared glassyeyed at the ball. He’d been strangely quiet all afternoon.
The sweat on the back of Max’s neck was starting to cool. On the other side of the street his father’s musical instruments shop glimmered red and gold. Max’s parents lived in the apartment above the shop, and Josef’s in the flat above theirs, so the two boys always walked home together. They waited for a tram to pass then ran across the road. A car horn honked, a man shouted. When they reached the opposite pavement, Max noticed a girl sitting at the Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano that dominated the shopfront. He couldn’t hear the music she was playing but by watching her hands he could tell it was a simple piece. He found himself staring at the tendons in her neck as they fluttered beneath her skin.
Max was thirteen years old. He’d always liked girls but in the past year he’d begun to be troubled, even haunted by them. The girl in the window had long dark hair tied in a ponytail, and a few stray hairs curled over her exposed nape. Her ears were pretty, Max thought. He felt as if he were breathing underwater. He stepped closer and saw his own reflection, half-obliterated by the colours of dusk, and that was when he noticed that Josef was no longer beside him. Max looked around but his friend had vanished. He wondered vaguely if Josef was angry with him. Then he looked back at the girl and realised he could hear the jaunty, repetitive, half-familiar melody coming faintly through the glass. What was that song?
He was close to remembering when his concentration was broken by the sound of raised voices. He turned and saw three boys, older than him, in matching beige shirts, running in his direction. He couldn’t tell if they were laughing or hostile, if they were shouting to one another or at him, but some instinct propelled him towards the arched passageway between SPIEGELMAN MUSIKINSTRUMENTE and SCHNEIDER APOTHEKE. He walked quickly through the cobbled shade and the sound of the boys’ yelling died away, along with the other city noises.
From the inner courtyard Max climbed the exterior iron staircase that led to his parents’ apartment. He walked inside, dropped his school bag on the floor, kicked off his shoes. The yellow walls of the living room glowed a flickering orange in the sunset. The air smelled sweet, almost edible. His mother must be baking a dessert. As he walked through the living room, he ran his hand along the smooth lid of her piano. The comforts of home.
Frau Spiegelman was in the kitchen, wearing an apron, muttering to herself as she looked at a recipe book. Flour on her hands, red circles on her cheeks. This was not Max’s favourite version of his mother; he preferred her when she was playing music or getting ready to go out because there was a serene precision to her gestures then. Cooking brought out her nervous side.
'Mmm, apple strudel,’ Max said. ‘Is it a special occasion?’
She looked up at him distractedly. ‘Oh Max, there you are. Yes, we have guests tonight. I told you yesterday, remember? The Schattens will be coming, with—’
‘Ugh, not the Schattens!’
‘Don’t be rude,’ said his mother mechanically. ‘And they may be bringing Karl, so you’ll have to entertain him.’
In his mind’s eye Max saw Karl Schatten’s massive body and square head, his small cold eyes and sneering lips, those fists the size of cannonballs. He felt a lurch of dread.
‘Karl doesn’t like me.’
‘Have some compassion, Max! He was there when it happened. After everything he’s been through, of course he’s going to act out a little bit . . .’
It was true that Karl’s younger brother Oskar had been killed the year before, and that Karl had witnessed the accident, but Max had once heard Karl making a sick joke about his brother’s death, so he did not believe for a second that the school bully was grief-stricken. But there was no point trying to tell his mother that.
She was washing her hands now and her words came in little bursts from between tensed lips. ‘Anyway . . . he might not come . . . Apparently he has a Scout meeting on Wednesdays . . .’ She dried her hands on a tea towel and looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘Goodness, is that the time? Max, go downstairs and tell your father he needs to get changed! He should have closed the shop twenty minutes ago . . .’
There was a trapdoor in the floor of the kitchen. Max opened it and descended the wooden stairs to his father’s office. It was the usual mess – desk littered with piles of paperwork, instrument cases strewn across the floor – but Max liked it here. In many ways he preferred it to the shop. To Max, each room was like a version of Franz Spiegelman: the shop, with its thick carpet and elegantly displayed instruments, its smell of polish and money, was the respectable face that his father presented to the world; the office was the Papa of home, the unshaven man who played the trumpet in his pyjamas and winked reassuringly when Mama was angry.
There were two doors out of the office: the one to the left led to the courtyard outside, the other to the shop. Max opened the door to the right and saw Franz Spiegelman at the far end of the showroom, trying to look interested as he listened to a woman with very short hair speak rapidly in a foreign accent. Max tiptoed towards them, afraid to interrupt, and noticed the woman’s daughter leaning against the wall by the entrance, watching him with a half-smile. There was a book in her hand, but she wasn’t even pretending to read it. He stopped and stared at the carpet, blushing hotly. It was the same girl he’d seen earlier. The one with the pretty ears.
The Two Loves of Sophie Strom is published by Faber & Faber
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