Of Exile and Music , livre ebook

O F E XILE AND M USIC
O F E XILE AND M USIC
A T WENTIETH C ENTURY L IFE
BY
E VA M AYER S CHAY
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright 2010 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schay, Eva Mayer, 1931-
Of exile and music : a twentieth century life / by Eva Mayer Schay.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-55753-541-2
1. Schay, Eva Mayer, 1931- 2. Exiles--South Africa--Biography. 3. Exiles--Great Britain--Biography. 4. Exiles--Germany--Biography. 5. Women violinists--Biography. 6. Violinists--Biography. 7. English National Opera--Biography. I. Title.
CT788.S33A3 2010
787.2092--dc22
[B]
2009008126
Dedicated to the memory of my mother, whose courage, determination, and devotion made all things possible; and to my husband, who brought my years of exile to an end.
Contents
Introduction
Part One—Europe
Chapter One A Childhood Idyll—Mallorca, 1933 to 1936
Chapter Two Return to Germany—August 1936
Chapter Three Milan—August to October 1936
Part Two—South Africa
Chapter Four South Africa, the Early Years—October 1936 to September 1939
Chapter Five Wartime—from September 1939, aged eight
Chapter Six Music Lessons—1940 onward
Chapter Seven The Later War Years—up to May 1945
Chapter Eight My Father’s Death—August 24, 1945
Chapter Nine The Aftermath—after August 1945
Chapter Ten Ruth—1941 to 1953
Chapter Eleven Growing Up—1947 to 1949
Part Three—Student Years
Chapter Twelve Student Life—Wits, March 1950 to December 1952
Chapter Thirteen London, Winter and Spring 1953—Music
Chapter Fourteen London, Winter and Spring 1953—People and Places
Chapter Fifteen England—Summer 1953
Chapter Sixteen New Perspectives—1954
Chapter Seventeen Strobl am Wolfgangsee—August 1954
Chapter Eighteen Interlude with My Mother—Spring 1955
Chapter Nineteen Love Story—Summer 1955 to September 1956
Chapter Twenty Return Journey—September 1956
Part Four—Work, Politics
Chapter Twenty-One Johannesburg—October 1956 to mid-1958
Chapter Twenty-Two Johannesburg, a New Turn of Events—mid- to end of 1958
Chapter Twenty-Three A Newcomer in Durban—1959
Chapter Twenty-Four Nancy, Politics, and the Murder of Figaro—1959 and 1960
Chapter Twenty-Five The Royal Ballet in South Africa—1960
Chapter Twenty-Six Last Months in Durban—late 1960 to February 1961
Part Five—England
Chapter Twenty-Seven Farewell to Africa—February to March 1961
Chapter Twenty-Eight Third Immigration—March 1961 to December 1962
Chapter Twenty-Nine A Change of Course—1962 to 1965
Chapter Thirty A New Beginning—1965 to 1967
Chapter Thirty-One My Years with ENO—1968 to 1998
Chapter Thirty-Two Life with Henry
Epilogue Revisiting Mallorca, South Africa, and Germany
Acknowledgments
I should like to express thanks to my mentor, Sonia Ribeiro, creative writing tutor at The East Finchley Institute for Further Education, who set me on this path, and without whose guidance this book would not have been written; to the Irish author Brian Gallagher, whose encouragement at a crucial time enabled me to finish writing it; to Professor Joseph Haberer of Purdue University for his faith in it and his unfailing support; to retired publisher Barry Shaw for his unstinting, hugely appreciated help; and to my friends Sidney Buckland, Martha Baker, Edwina Leapman, and Margaret Musset for their invaluable feedback.
Introduction
In 1924 my Uncle Rudi, a left-wing journalist, interviewed Adolf Hitler, at the time a prisoner in Landsberg gaol. Nine years later, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. As political editor of the Dortmunder General-Anzeiger, Rudi wrote a scathing article about the Nazi party and was hounded out of the country. He managed to send his family to Paris the day the Reichstag burnt down and followed some time later. At the border he was severely beaten up by a group of Hitler’s Brownshirts. In 1935 he left Paris for Manila on the invitation of his uncle Emmanuel Haberer, who had already assisted his twin cousins Fritz and Joachim Haberer to emigrate to the Philippine Islands, where they had begun to make a life for themselves.
My father too was hounded out of Germany, though in a less dramatic way. He had written a textbook on income tax, which was widely used in Germany but was banned as soon as the Nazis came into power. He was falsely accused of fraud at a bank he worked for in Cologne, but at the trial the evidence was clearly in his favour—still possible then—and he was exonerated. In July 1933 he received an official letter debarring him from practicing his profession as tax consultant, on the grounds that he was not of “Aryan” descent.
Unlike so many of their contemporaries, my parents were in no mood to wait in the hope that things would change for the better, and in no mood to put up with the daily indignities to which Jews were subjected. They decided to leave Germany.
Wondering where to go, they spread out the map of Europe on their living room floor. Spain, which had expelled the Jews centuries earlier, was now eagerly inviting them to return. The island of Mallorca, untouched by war for a hundred years, was known as the Island of Peace. That was where they decided to emigrate with their baby girl, to build a new life in safety. But first they spent a few months in Paris, where Rudi was slowly recovering from his wounds, before the two brothers went their separate ways, never to meet again.
In the intervening years before World War II, my mother’s elder sister, her brothers and cousins, and my father’s half sister all emigrated either to Palestine or the United States, thus joining the mass exodus from Germany and beginning their hard years of exile. And so the family was dispersed, as were so many other Jewish families, and joined the ranks of “rootless cosmopolitans” so despised by Stalin.
But the fate of those left behind was worse than the worst imaginings.

Official letter debarring my father from his work, 1933.
I was too young to remember Germany, to feel the pain of separation from my homeland, or the disillusion that my parents felt about a country that had so cruelly disowned them. I had no feeling of connectedness at all with Cologne, the city of my birth. My exile was from somewhere quite different.

Two little Mallorcans, Eva and friend.
Throughout my childhood I would look back with longing to those early years in Mallorca: my lost Paradise, my home, where life and friendships had been simple, and where I had been truly happy.
For many years I felt a stranger in South Africa, our adopted homeland, and yet just at a time when I had at last begun to put down roots and feel at home, it became a moral necessity for me to go into exile once again.
Part One
E UROPE
Chapter One
A C HILDHOOD I DYLL —M ALLORCA , 1933 TO 1936
“Mamma! Why are you throwing water at Pepita?”
I was about three years old, upset and bewildered by the scene I had just stumbled upon. Pepita, my mother’s devoted maid, lay writhing and screaming on the kitchen floor, maddened with jealousy because my mother had engaged a second maid, Maria, to help with the workload. “Cold water will bring her to her senses,” said my harassed mother. As far as I know this therapy worked, and Pepita never held it against her.
Yet for all their rivalry and devotion to my mother, neither Pepita nor Maria was prepared to venture out in the midday sun if some last-minute cooking ingredient was missing, and she would simply have to go out and buy it herself. Every now and then I would hear screams from the kitchen: my mother had once again burnt herself. Sometimes she could scarcely cope with this little girl around her knees. Yet I do not recollect being much affected by the various domestic crises, immersed as I was in the many impressions of my own little life.

Pension Schay .
High above the sea, we lived in a white, elegant, and modern villa, just below the woods surrounding the Castell de Bellver in Palma de Mallorca. A short flight of steps with a banister led up to the front door. There was a large balcony on the first floor and a flat roof above the second. The garden was hedged in by mauve, purple and or-ange bougainvillea, oleander, and prickly pears. It had an almond tree, fig trees, and hibiscus. Geraniums and masses of nasturtiums lined the pathway to the front steps. I followed my father around as he tended the garden. On one occasion when watering the flowers, he gently turned the watering can on me, declaring I was a flower too.

My father’s residence permit Mallorca, 1934.
At the time he was attempting to earn a living as photographer. He took good photographs, but most people were unwilling to pay for them. Having practiced as a chartered accountant in Germany, he eventually decided to study Spanish accountancy law on the mainland, in Barcelona, coming home to Palma during the holidays.
For my parents, Mallorca was a haven. For me, it was simply home, where my friends were, and where life was happy and uncomplicated. My mother ran a Pension. We had guests of all nationalities, including a retired British army major who wrote novels and said he had put my mother in one of them; a Chinese gentleman who taught her how to cook rice; and a Frenchwoman with her little Spanish-named daughter Conchita, of whose father we knew nothing.
Conchita was my dearest companion. We played, slept, bathed together, and never tired of each other. For six months each year, Conchita and her mother disappeared to Monte Carlo, where her mother mysteriously earned enough money to keep them for the rest of the year. I would feel desolate when they left, longing for their return, but each time they came back to Mallorca, Conchita had forgotten every word of Spanish.
One evening after their most recent return from Monte Carlo, her mother was bathing us both. Suddenly she called out, “Madame Schay, Madame, venez vite!” an