A Time To Dance A Time To Run

It was always startling to watch from a distance as the trains would leave the hillside and seem to float through the middle of Wuppertal between the buildings. They were suspended from the trestle built above the Wupper River and followed the river’s course through the city. The trains were so punctual that Maria and her mother, Anna, could set their watches by their passing, which were punctuated by the sound of their whistles as they drifted through their open window.

Maria and her mother lived in the suburb of Wuppertal called Eberfeld in an apartment that sat part of the way up a hill.  It looked over the city and the valley.  Many of the opera singers and ballet dancers from the theater lived in this part of the city - many of them in the same building.   The pastoral view appealed to their artistic sensibilities.  The houses and other buildings on the hills sparkled like colorful gems on the green velvet meadows.  At dusk, the enchanting yet orderly lights of the city gradually dispersed into random specks of light on the hillsides surrounding the valley.  It was difficult to discern where the mountains ended and the black bespeckeled sky began.

One warm spring evening after dinner, Maria and her mother were looking out their window at the serene valley.   Anna was knitting while Maria was lost in her thoughts about Spectre de la Rose, the ballet she was working on.  The smell of warm bread from the bakery a few buildings down the street mingled with the sweet fragrance of spring buds that drifted through the windowsill on a light breeze.  Through the din of the city, they heard the yelps of playing children.  An anonymous trolley clanked along the street urged on by the occasional honk of a horn.  The lazy clop of horses’ hooves would start and stop as some delivery wagon made its way through the neighborhood. Maria thought it was wonderful to sit and think as the city was putting itself to bed.  The familiar sounds of the city rekindled her longing for Frankfurt and her brothers.

Suddenly, the tranquillity was interrupted by the distinct hum of bombers in the distance.  Simultaneously, the frightful wail of the air-raid sirens wrapped itself around the city and pierced into the darkness like a dagger made of sound.   The bombers had been arriving at about this time in the evening for about a week or so.  The people had been informed that they were relatively safe in Wuppertal during many of the routine practice air-raid drills; they were told that the pilots used Wuppertal as a landmark to turn south and head for Cologne.

Maria’s mother was immediately snapped out of her daydreaming.  She and her mother knew the war was raging, but these flights were a jarring harsh reminder of how lucky they were to live in Wuppertal.  For some reason, this city was being spared.  It had never been bombed.  It was rumored that it was being saved to serve as a center for the occupation troops of the American plutocrats if that time would ever come.  In fact, the Germans had a saying about the Americans.  "Wiesbaden und Wuppertal das wollen wir verschonen fur die Plutocraten drin zu wohnen."   Translated, that meant that Wiesbaden and Wuppertal were being spared as a place for the plutocrats to live.  Aside from participating