Sometimes Ernst was like all the rest, dropping hints that soon there’d be no place for Jews like Daniel in chamber orchestras or anywhere else. But not always. He could be funny—though usually when making fun of someone. He could be brilliant at the violin—but that, too, was often an effort to show up Liesl, to compete for her seat. Daniel didn’t care. He was smitten, and Ernst paid him attention from time to time, not all of it bad. Daniel had so much to learn.

And so he burned the ships, not even realizing the torch that was in his hands.

It was after a performance at the Youth Activities Hall, the sort of casual venue that people like Daniel weren’t yet barred from. Their quartet had woven flawlessly together into the flow of Chopin, sweat dripping from their noses as they played, their breathing aligning into a single lung, in and out. Daniel had never felt closer to his quartet mates—never felt closer to a greater power. If they could play this well at the championship, the prize was surely theirs.

He was confident. It made him reckless and foolish.

At the beer hall afterward, he drank three beers, four; Liesl’s cheeks burned bright red, and Ernst’s voice carried with a resonance Daniel felt in his bones. He leaned into Ernst’s words like they were a warm spring breeze. Liesl and Rudolf left to dance, and suddenly it was only Ernst and Daniel, facing each other, an unspoken vastness heavy and present between them.

“So,” Ernst said. A smile played at his lips.

Daniel took a step toward him.

The corner was dark, shielded from everyone. Ernst’s hand reached out, caught Daniel’s elbow. When their eyes locked, Daniel saw—later he would swear he saw—Ernst had been waiting for this, too.

When they first kissed, it was with an exhalation of air. Then another. Ernst moaned—Daniel was certain of it. Leaned back, inviting Daniel closer.

But then Ernst was shoving him away and shouting and cursing, calling him every filthy name he’d ever heard, for Jews, for homosexuals, for soft boys with too much music in their hearts to wield a butcher’s knife the way their fathers hoped. And of course Liesl and Rudolf manifested from out of nowhere at the commotion, they heard Ernst’s furious shouts as he described Daniel’s “attack,” and in that moment, that look, that moan, Daniel lost everything. His love, his quartet, his songs.

In the end it didn’t matter. They’d already taken his citizenship; next they forbade him from concert halls. The stormtroopers marched through the streets and shattered windows and dragged his neighbors away. The Eisenbergs abandoned their shop for Luxembourg. But because he hadn’t been careful with his trust, because he hadn’t fully grasped the world and all its dangers—he’d only made things worse.