A Little Beethoven in the Background
"Schmuckstuck-Schmeckstuck (Garbage-Jewel)" by Deborah Trilling.
A Little Beethoven in the Background
"The Lord waits to be gracious to you." - Isaiah 30:16
Barbara Reisner
For Eva Lesavoy
Germany, 1945. A house
crowded with women
about to be set on fire.
Dark-haired Eva runs outside
and digs in the cold ground.
She prays for the soldier
who points his rifle at her.
--Eli. Eli. God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
He orders her to sing the Ave Maria.
She hears a shot and falls down.
The German, also on the ground,
is killed by a Russian and an American
who hear her singing.
The American newspapers say
she saved a thousand women from burning.
On this second night
of Rosh Hashanah
she holds up the honey-dipped apple,
she invites the Lord's graciousness.
She tells of Moses
who, needing a miracle,
struck the rock in the desert.
Now Eva is in a field
and a young soldier strikes women
in the head. They will be shot
if they talk to the guards,
but Eva remembers the impatience
of Moses and the breaking of stone.
She walks toward the guard
as he eats his lunch.
--How awful for you to eat here
in this miserable field;
how much happier for you at home
with your family, a little Beethoven
in the background.
He stands up and points to her.
Instead of shooting he gives
her a piece of bread and
doesn't hit the women.
Twenty years later Eva
rides into Jerusalem.
--I and not Moses?
Her face, carved from the slain
of the earth, decomposes slowly,
like a millennium thrust
with the will of God.
Gone into the night
her benedictions, watchful,
unseal the unmarked names