A Song for Summer (11 page)

But if there was a claque of villagers, it was Lieselotte who was allowed to be the spokesman, for in Hallendorf church there was a star, a local celebrity, a saint to whom the church was consecrated but of whom they spoke as of any girl who had lived among them and in her own way done extremely well.

"Her name was Aniella," said

Lieselotte. "And look; here are the pictures which show you her life."

She pointed to a row of oil paintings hanging on the chancel wall.

"This is one of her with her family; she lived up on the alp underneath the Kugelspitze quite close to here.

You can see all the animals she cared for too."

The painting contained all the loving detail with which eighteenth-century artists depicted simple things.

Aniella's house had window boxes of petunias and French marigolds; a morning glory climbed the wall.

She herself was sitting on a bench and bending down to an injured creature who had placed his head in her lap--not a lamb; there were lambs as in all holy paintings, but further away in the meadow. No, Aniella was tending the broken leg of a St Bernard dog--one could see the keg of brandy around his neck. He was holding his paw up trustingly and beside him, jostling for a place, was a goat with a broken horn.

Surrounding the girl, with her calm face and long dark hair, was a host of other animals: some were wounded--a cat with a bandaged ear, a calf with a sore on its flank--but there were others who seemed to be there more for company: a salamander walking over her foot; a grass snake curled up around a stone.

It was a place where Marek's tortoise would have been very much at home.

"She was a healer," said Lieselotte.

"She healed everything; she didn't mind what it was. Cripples and grass snakes and people, and she never harmed a creature in her life."

"Are those her children?"' asked Sophie. "No, she was very young, only eighteen.

They're her brothers and sisters. They were orphans; their parents died and she looked after them even though she wasn't much older herself."

The little peasant children in their dirndls and kerchiefs might have been Lieselotte's own siblings, they looked so wholesome and so good. They were helping, trained to work as peasant children are: a small boy with yellow hair was tending goats higher up on the mountain; another, a girl, sat close to Aniella, stirring something in a wooden bowl; two more were forking hay into a barn and one--a frail child with long hair--leant adoringly over Aniella's shoulder.

"Look, there's her garden," said Lieselotte. "These are the herbs she grew and the flowers. She knew exactly what to use for healing."

Aniella's garden, painted like a tea tray on the side of the mountain, was a miracle of husbandry. Rows of curly cabbages flecked in bright green paint, raspberry canes, small bushes which Lieselotte's mother named for them. "Rosemary, fennel, St John's Wort

..."

"But she loved the wild flowers too," Lieselotte went on. "There's a picture of her over there in the triptych holding a bunch of gentians and marguerites and edelweiss."

But Sophie was already worried. No one became a saint for loving flowers and being good to their family.

What dreadful fate lay in wait for this appealing girl? They had only to turn to the next painting to see. A vile knight on horseback, his face set in a conquering sneer, rode with his henchmen towards the mountain. You could almost hear the clattering of hoofs, the clash of lances.

"That's Count Alexei von Hohenstift," said Lieselotte. "He was a truly wicked knight and so were his followers, but when he saw Aniella he fell passionately in love with her and said she had to marry him.

She wept and implored and begged him to leave her, but he said if she refused to be his bride he would kill every man and woman and child in the village and set it on fire."

"Oh how awful," said Sophie. "What did she do?"'

"Prayed, of course," said Leon.

His irony was lost on these uncomplicated people.

"That's right," said Lieselotte.

"She went into that little grotto there; you can see it in the inset. It's still there, halfway up the hill behind the castle. And an angel appeared to her and said she must prepare for her wedding and trust in God."

In the next painting they could see that Aniella had obeyed. Helped by her brothers and sisters, down whose small faces there ran rows of perfectly painted tears, she was trying on her wedding dress while her friends put out trestle tables and food for the wedding feast--and even the salamander seemed to mourn.

"This is the one I like best though," said Lieselotte, moving down the row.

The picture showed a flotilla of boats crossing the lake towards the church. In one boat were the musicians with their instruments, in another the guilds, in a third the school children in the care of nuns.

And in the centre of the flotilla, in a boat beautifully draped and swagged, sat Aniella in her wedding dress with her brothers and sisters, carrying a bouquet of the alpine flowers she loved so well and not looking at all as though she was going to her doom.

"Because she trusted in God, you see," said Lieselotte.

Sophie, who could not bear unhappy endings, who was waiting for the dismemberment, the breaking on the wheel, was biting her lip. "What happened?"'

"You can see. Aniella reached the church and as she stood at the altar the vile count tried to ride into the church with his henchmen--but the horse reared, it wouldn't commit sacrilege--so he strode up the aisle and just as the priest started on the service Alexei stared at his bride and--"' Lieselotte paused dramatically.

"Look!"

They leant over her shoulder. Aniella still stood there in her white dress with her bunch of flowers; but her face had become the hideous, wrinkled face of an old hag.

"God had made her into a dreadful old witch," said Lieselotte. "Just in an instant. And the count screamed and drew out his sword and thrust it into Aniella's heart--if you come closer you can see the blood."

They could indeed see it. It streamed over Aniella's dress as she fell to the ground, and over the children bending in anguish over their sister; it

dripped from the count's sword as he ran in terror from the church and spotted the carpet on the aisle.

"So she did die," said Sophie. It was only what she had expected.

"No, it was all right. Because as soon as the count had gone she became young and beautiful again and she rose up and up and God took her to him and flowers came down from everywhere."

The last picture showed Aniella, floating over the roof of the Hallendorf church, radiant and lovely, and the angels leaning out of heaven to take her in.

"She went to God," said Lieselotte, and such was her satisfaction that Sophie had to be content.

"It's a lovely story, Lieselotte," said Ellen.

"It isn't a story," said Lieselotte. "It's true."

"What was it like?"' asked Ursula that night. "It was nice," said Sophie. "We heard about this saint--she was very horticultural and good. Like a cross between Heidi and Saint Francis of Assisi. Or a bit like a chicken ... you know, those hens that hold out their wings and protect their chicks?"' Sitting up in bed, Sophie stretched out her skinny arms. "She was a sheltering person."

"Like Ellen," said Janey.

"Yes," said Sophie, "exactly like Ellen."

"What happened to her?"' asked Ursula. "She got killed."

Ursula nodded. All the best people got killed: her mother and father, Geronimo ... and Sitting Bull who had been betrayed and assassinated at Standing Rock.

Two doors down Ellen leant out of her window, looking out at the soft, expectant night. Below her the half-heard, half-felt murmur of the lake came as a counterpoint to her thoughts as she went back over the day.

After the service, Marek had taken them to the inn for coffee and cakes and then excused himself; he was going to meet Professor Steiner. Leaving the children to wander round the village, she had slipped back to the church. There was something she wanted to look at more carefully; the triptych in which Aniella was

depicted holding a bunch of alpine flowers.

She was still examining the painting when she became aware of someone in a side chapel. A man who had put a coin in the offertory box and now lit a tall white candle which he placed with the other votive candles beneath the altar. For a moment he stood with bent head over the flame. Then he looked up, saw her--and came over, quite unembarrassed, to her side.

"Look," she said, "I think I've found them."

Following her pointing finger, Marek saw the tiny black fists of the orchids among the brilliant colours of primulas and saxifrage and gentians.

"Kohlr@oserl?"'

"Yes." She was glad he had remembered. "So they were there then, up on the alp."

"Which means that they might be there now. And if they are, then we can find them."

It was absurd how pleased she had been by that "we". But the happiness she had felt there in the church was shot through now with something else: puzzlement, anxiety ...

For whom had this strong and self-sufficient man needed to light a candle? For what person--or what enterprise--did he need to evoke the gods?

Meierwitz, had he been present in the church, might have been surprised, but pleased nonetheless. No more than Marek would he seriously imagine that a minor Austrian saint of uncertain provenance (for Aniella's sanctity had been disputed) would concern herself with one small Jew without a home or country

... and one who didn't even attend his own synagogue let alone a church.

But candles are ... candles. They are not confined to countries or religions; their living flame reaches upwards to places where disputation has long since ceased. Neither Krishna, nor Jehovah, nor Jesus Christ would claim to be the sole recipient of the hope and faith that goes into the act of candle-lighting, in the attics of unbelievers, in schools, on birthday cakes and trees ...

Marek, lighting his candle, had uttered no specific prayer, yet it might be considered that the unuttered prayer was heard. For two days

later, Isaac Meierwitz found the courage to leave the farm in which he had lain hidden for months and set off under cover of darkness for the place near the border where he was to meet his contacts. He had been too much afraid to leave the familiar shelter until then, and he was still afraid ... but he had gone.

In the third week of term, FitzAllan arrived from England to direct the end of term play.

Owing to Hallendorf's emphasis on drama, the summer term was extended by nearly three weeks so that the play could not only be seen by parents and other visitors, but could serve as the opening of the Summer School which ran through August and the first part of September.

The play chosen was thus of a special importance, and differed from other performances throughout the year in that staff and pupils acted in it together, and the design, the music and the lighting were a joint effort between adults and children.

Bennet's decision to bring in an outsider to direct this year was a bold one. FitzAllan had demanded a substantial fee and fees--whether substantial or otherwise--came not out of the depleted coffers of the school but out of Bennet's own pocket. But Derek FitzAllan was not only a specialist in the Stanislavsky technique and a man who had studied under Meyerhold in Russia and Piscator in the Weimar Republic--

he had produced a coup which Bennet could not afford to turn down.

He had apparently persuaded Bertolt Brecht, now in exile from Germany, to let the school put on a translation of his unperformed play, Saint Johanna of the Stockyards.

Not only to put it on but to make the necessary alterations which would make it easy to perform in a school. Bennet, amazed that the playwright had shown himself so generous, accepted FitzAllan's offer, and reproached himself for a slight weariness, a faint longing for something with more colour and life affirmation than this Marxist drama seemed likely to provide.

So now, driving with Tamara to meet the director from the train, he did his best to feel encouraged.

FitzAllan had long silver hair, a relatively young, tanned face and was dressed entirely in black. He was also, as he told Bennet immediately, a strict and undeviating vegan and asked that the information should be conveyed at once to the cook.

"My goodness, what is that?"' asked Lieselotte when Ellen brought the news to the kitchen.

"It's someone who doesn't eat anything that comes from animals," said Ellen. "No meat, no eggs, no milk, no cheese ..."

"But what does he eat then?"' asked poor Lieselotte.

"Nuts," said Ellen, curling her lip.

The director had already handed her his soiled underpants and socks to wash.

Ellen had made clear her determination not to go to meetings about plays. But the gathering that FitzAllan had convened in the Great Hall as soon as he arrived, came at the end of a difficult day. Sophie had still not heard from her parents, Freya had had a rejective postcard from her Mats in Lapland, and Bruno had written "Shred the Little Cabbage" in red paint on an outhouse door. There was also the question of Hermine Ritter. It had not been Ellen's intention to get fond of Dr Ritter. Her flourishing moustache, her voice--with which one could have drilled a regiment of uhlans--and her complete inability to organise the life of her baby were not in themselves endearing.

But in her own way, Hermine cared deeply about her work. Unlike Tamara, whose apparent concern for the children was really directed at her own aggrandisement, Hermine spared herself no effort, and when she asked Ellen to come to the meeting, Ellen found herself weakening. She knew that it was Hermine who had directed the previous productions and realised that it would not be easy for her to submit to the authority of an outsider.

"I thought I might watch Andromeda for you," she said.

But Hermine said she would take Andromeda and they could share her.

So Ellen was present when FitzAllan, introduced by Bennet, leapt boyishly on to the platform and began to summarise the plot.