"Everything chimerical that I have heard from a distance has become real, tangible, and so close.--And yet, still so distant. Imponderable. Immaterial. That is music. The heartbeat that nurtures us in our mothers' wombs. The sounds of birth and death."
- Timo, page 136
Synopsis of The Artisan
The Artisan presents itself as a fictional memoir written in the early 1990s by Timo Tomic to his American son, who has just joined Doctors Without Borders to assist during the conflict in Yugoslavia.
Timo, a master carpenter drafted into the Royal Yugoslav Army in May 1940, is taken prisoner when Yugoslavia collapses. Transported to Germany, he longs to return to his family farm, where his partially disabled father, mother, wife and new daughter must struggle to manage without him.
Only by accepting work--helping to build Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, painting a bread factory and loading cannon shells onto train cars in a munitions factory--can he hope to get enough food to survive. When he is severely injured, his prospects don't look good, but after his recovery, a fellow countryman who does translation work for the Germans is able to secure him a place working on a Lomnitz village farm. The townspeople come to respect him for his excellence in carpentry, as well as for his kindheartedness.
While rebuilding the village church's bell tower, Timo falls in love with the voice of the young teacher, Hanna Gottfried, a former opera star married to an SS colonel serving on the Eastern Front. Surrounded by violence, atrocities and war crimes, mutual feelings of respect and admiration begin to flourish between the two young people. When Timo learns that his daughter has died and his wife has run away, he and Hanna take the risk of falling in love despite the danger.
Throughout the region, Timo continues to gain recognition for his skill. When the Hanover Opera offers Hanna the role of Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, she arranges for Timo to do repairs on the opera house during her run. But the city is bombed a few hours after her first performance, and they return to Lomnitz.
When the Germans surrender and their prisoners are released, Russian and Polish POWs take revenge on everything German. Timo learns that Lomnitz' women and children have taken shelter in the schoolhouse, so he gathers four other Serbian POW farm laborers, and they go to defend the school. He is shot, the other POWs are killed, and Hanna and the other women are raped, with many murdered. Upon recovering in a US field hospital, Timo sets out to find Hanna. After four years of fruitless searching, he learns that she, still in shock, has returned to Hanover. He rushes to join her, only to find that she has disappeared again without a trace.
Now considered a traitor by Yugoslavia, Timo decides to give up his search for Hanna and to go to America. When--just before his departure--Germany awards him the Knights of the First Order for his defense of Lomnitz, Hanna sees his picture in the newspaper and rushes to find him before he leaves. She gets a letter to him on his ship, and he finally sees her on the dock as his boat pulls away. After trying in vain to stop the ship, he jumps over the rail and swims to shore, where Hanna runs into his open arms. They fall back into the sea together, washing away a war-torn past and emerging--whole at last--in a brave new world.
