A Song for Summer (18 page)

"Next time, then!" cried the Chomskys, kissing her fervently on both cheeks, and Madame Chomsky followed Ellen in the corridor to give her a last bulletin about her youngest son.

"It may be necessary to take him away to some spa to make a full recovery," she said. "But I think he just needs to rest quietly till this dreadful play is over. Please tell Mr Bennet he can be sure that Laszlo will not desert him; he will return."

Ellen smiled, detecting behind the effusive warmth of Cliomsky's mother, a flicker of anxiety lest her Laszlo might be returned permanently to the fold, and promised that she would set the headmaster's mind at rest.

"I have put a few little things in, also, for the children," said Madame Chomsky as Ellen picked up the case, which certainly seemed to contain more than a passport and a few documents. "You will not be offended?"'

Ellen shook her head, kissed everybody yet again and was escorted to the bus station by Farkas, still complaining because she would not dine with them.

She had missed the bus which would have taken her past the castle and was compelled to walk from the village. On an impulse she decided to walk along the eastern shore of the lake, along the road which led her past Professor Steiner's house.

It was a foolish impulse, delaying her by nearly half an hour and pointlessly, for no light showed in the windows; the van was nowhere to be seen. It was time to face the fact that they had gone for good; that there would be no chance now to put things right between herself and Marek.

All the same, she paused for a moment by the path

that led to the house--and as she did so she saw someone moving in the bushes. A man, furtive and silent in the dark. Not Marek--this man was smaller, and who could imagine Marek looking furtive?

She hesitated, then began to walk down the path.

"Is there anyone there?"' she called. If it was a burglar maybe her voice would scare him off.

The man had vanished. Stupidly fearless, as she later realised, she made her way towards the door.

Then a hand come round behind her and she was pulled backwards on to the grass.

It began like all the other journeys they had made. Marek drove the van to the checkpoint and the guards examined their papers only perfunctorily.

"Got any good tunes?"' Anton joked, and they played him a bit of the old lady singing "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" and he waved them through.

After twenty kilometres they turned north west towards the German border and presently Marek left the van and Steiner drove down a rutted lane and parked in a clearing. There was no hope of recording anything here; they had been here too often. He could only wait and pray while Marek plunged into the densest part of the forest to meet his contact and--if their luck held--the man for whom they had searched so long. And the waiting today was going to be harder than ever. The news that Meierwitz had broken cover and was on his way at last had come with another piece of news that they had been half expecting.

The line of rescuers was breaking up: one man had been arrested and shot; the Sudeten Nazis had joined the Germans in patrolling the no man's land between the borders.

But when Marek had reached the meeting place, the man they knew only as Johann was there--and with him someone whom at first he did not recognise. Meierwitz had been a portly person, fond of his food, with an engaging tuft of reddish hair and bright black eyes. This man was thin and hunched and he shivered in the summer night.

Afraid to shine his torch or speak, Marek

only put out his hand--but Isaac knew in an instant.

"You!" he whispered incredulously. "My God, Marek--you!"

He managed to hold his emotion in check as they made their way towards the van but then, wrapped in a blanket, given coffee from a Thermos, the tears he had managed to control through his years of flight and danger and imprisonment could be held back no longer.

"You," was all that he could say, over and over again. "My God, Marek--you."

Then Steiner came out of the driving seat and embraced his former colleague, and for Isaac there was another shock as he saw that this eminent and venerable scholar had involved himself in his rescue.

They set off then; Steiner drove and Marek sat in the back with his friend. There were several hours of relative safety before the next hazard, the crossing of the border into Poland. Marek took care to make light of his search, his obsessive determination to set Meierwitz free, but Isaac guessed, and it was a while before he could speak calmly of what had happened in Berlin after the Nazis came to power.

"I was determined to play your concerto, and I told them so; I suppose I threw my weight about a bit; there was so much fear everywhere I didn't want to add to it, and I was damned if I was going to leave the country till I'd played your piece. Even so I was surprised when they agreed. It was a trick, of course; it was quite a shock to them when they turned round and found there was hardly a decent musician left in the country. Then when they were sure of you, they came to arrest me."

"He'd spent nearly a year in the concentration camp and then been transferred and managed to escape.

A woman I'd never set eyes on hid me on her farm. She wasn't Jewish, she wasn't musical ..." He shook his head. "It's knowing you're endangering people that drives you mad."

He wanted to know about the concerto. "Who gave the premiere?"'

"No one. You're giving the premiere and that's the end of the matter."

"No, Marek. Don't be obstinate. I shan't play again professionally. It's been more than two years; that's too long to get my

technique back, and in the camp my hands ..." He broke off, biting his lip. "You must get someone else."

"Well I won't, so let's hear no more about it. What happened to your Stradivarius?"'

"I left it with my landlady in Berlin. Do you remember her--the one that went off into a faint whenever there was a thunderstorm?"'

They spoke then of the unimportant things they remembered: the duck they had found wandering down the Kurfurstendamm and adopted; a girl called Millie who had stood on her head on the table at the Lord Mayor's banquet; the trombone player who'd got his girlfriend's shoe button stuck up his nostril before the first night of Tristan.

"And you're not married yet?"' Isaac asked.

"No."

"Your standards are probably too high," said Isaac, "with those parents of yours. What about Brigitta?"'

Marek shrugged. "I haven't seen her for ages. Stallenbach is looking after her, I believe."

They had driven for three hours before Isaac, knowing that his respite in the warm dark van was nearly over, said: "And what comes next?"'

"Well firstly," said Marek, "I want you to dress up as a Jew. A proper one."

Isaac stared at him. "Are you mad?"' "No. There's a dark hat there, and a long coat."

"We're going to try to get into Poland with me dressed as an orthodox Jew?"'

"Exactly so." Marek grinned; it had taken him months to fix up a suitable escape route for Meierwitz, who had no ambitions to join the Polish Air Force or become a partisan in the resistance, and he was a little proud of the route he had devised. "Have you ever heard of the River Rats?"'

Isaac frowned. "Wait a minute ... aren't they those Jews that make their living poling timber down the rivers? Weird people--very religious--who live on rafts and don't talk to anyone much?"'

"That's right. People always think Jews are entirely urban, but these people are skilled woodsmen, amazingly so. I got to know them when

I went round on business with my father. They take logs vast distances down the Niemen and the Vistula and along the waterways, sometimes as far as the Baltic. They're expecting you."

"My God!"

"It's as safe as anything can be. They exist outside frontiers--no one bothers them; they're too poor.

When you get to K@onigsberg they'll put you on a Swedish cargo boat; there'll be papers waiting for you.

It's all fixed up."

Isaac was silent, thinking of the long journey travelling through the dark, inhospitable waterways of Poland with these uncouth and pious strangers.

"Why?"' he asked under his breath. "Why will they take me?"'

But he knew. He himself had scarcely set foot in a synagogue; his mother had been baptised, but Hitler had created a new kind of Jew--someone who existed to be hunted and killed --and these unknown men had accepted him as a brother.

Some ten kilometres inside the border they stopped. This was where they said goodbye to Steiner and continued on foot.

"I don't know what to say,

Professor," said Isaac. "The words

"Thank you" hardly seem to cover it." Steiner shook his hand. "Nonsense. And remember you will always be welcome in Hallendorf. I'm on my way back now.

My house is small as you know, but there will be room for you and you won't have to sleep on the verandah like you did when you came with the quartet. Austria is still free, so who knows?"'

Isaac nodded. Austria was still free, that was true, but without a permit to stay he would be a fugitive once more, at best put into prison, at worst deported back into the Third Reich.

They had been driving through thick mist. Now it began to rain--steady grey sheets obscuring everything.

Only Marek could have made any sense of the terrain in which they found themselves.

"Keep close," he said.

He had given Isaac a compass, pepper to head off pursuing dogs, money--but in this Stygian world of dripping trees and cloud it would be a nightmare for him to try and find his way alone. They had just two hours of darkness still to find Franz and ford the river into Poland.

The barbed wire had been cut; everything seemed

to be in order, but Marek could not shake off the feeling of unease that had been with him since the beginning of the journey.

They had reached the river. Nothing now except to wait for the cry of an owl repeated three times. The rain was relentless: the ground, the sky, the river merged in a sheet of greyness.

Then it came ... once ... twice ... and they saw Franz's shadowy figure on the far bank.

But the third cry did not come. What came instead was the sound of a shot--and they saw Franz throw up his arms and fall.

"Go back, Isaac," hissed Marek. "Quickly. Run."

"I won't go without you."

"You'll do as I say. Try to get back to Steiner and warn him. I'll follow but I've got to see if there's anything I can do for Franz. He may not be dead."

He disappeared in the direction of the river bank.

The sound of a second shot came minutes later.

Leon had made good his boast to direct a film and give Sophie a leading part. The leading part turned out to be the only part, because even his devoted parents had balked at sending a new cine camera and the one they had found was turning out to be more complicated to handle than he had expected. There was moreover no sound equipment, so the role he had created for Sophie--that of Terrified Girl reacting to a Nameless Thing-- was silent.

Sophie had written to both her parents begging them to come and see Abattoir. Even without her tambourine she felt that her role as a Salvation Army girl, largely hidden by a poke bonnet and surrounded by twelve others, would make it possible for her not to disgrace herself--and if they both came then perhaps--just perhaps--they would find that they still cared for each other and buy a house which would always be there and they would move into it, all together like a proper family.

For once the answers to her letters had come quite quickly; her mother was certain she couldn't come because she was still filming in Ireland, and the next day

Czernowitz had written to say that her father was extremely sorry but he was delaying his return from America.

Her disappointment had brought the usual stricken look to her eyes. What if no one came ever again, what if the school emptied and she was forgotten? But Ellen had not been interested in this train of thought. "If the school empties and you're forgotten I'll take you to Gowan Terrace and we'll go to the zoo and see lots of Charlie Chaplin films and make fudge."

"I don't know why you want them to come," said Leon. "It's an awful play."

But he too had responded to Sophie's distress, extending the role he had written for her so that in addition to being terrified in her hovel she was allowed to walk slowly into the lake, like Ludwig of Bavaria, and drown.

He was setting up this tricky shot during a gap in Abattoir rehearsals when Sophie, wading through the bulrushes, stopped suddenly and said: "Goodness! Here comes Cleopatra in her barge!"

The children who had been resting in the grass sat up. The boat making its way in a stately manner towards them did indeed have something regal about it, though it was only a motor boat hired from the village. The woman who lay back against the cushions was amply built, dressed in a flowing, flowery garment with matching turban, and held a fringed parasol in a gloved hand. Behind her, wearing black, sat some kind of lesser person, probably a maid, hanging on to the collar of a small and excited dog.

"She doesn't look like a parent," said Flix--and this was true.

Parents coming to see how their children were faring at the school seldom approached with that air of grandeur and self-assurance. They were usually thin people in corduroy or ethnic skirts and looked apprehensive.

As they drew close to the castle, Brigitta's hopes rose. Too vain to wear the spectacles she needed, she could make out only the beauty of the pink building and a number of children moving about in the grounds. Altenburg's devotion to children, his conviction that they could be taught to sing or play from infancy, had irritated her in Vienna, but made it more than likely that he should be lying low in a place like this. She had left Staub and Benny in the villa that Stallenbach had procured for them, wanting to be alone when she ran her old lover to ground. Now, as the boat slowed down by the landing stage, she promised herself that she would utter no word of reproach when she came face to face with Marcus. She would beg his help in the matter of the gala and he would not deny her, she was sure.