A Song for Summer (23 page)

"On the contrary, you clearly know a lot about it--and about most other things," he said, and wondered why he wasn't simply kissing her instead of discussing Chekhov and the Nature of Attachment. "Even though you do look like a rather delectable ham with that ruffle on your head."

"It's not a ruffle; it's a proper nurse's cap," she said crossly. "I thought if I got one that wasn't stodgy it would have a resale value. After all, I bought it with your money and I want to pay you back."

More passengers came past, bound for the last sitting of dinner. "Are you certain you won't come and join me? We'd be back long before we got to the border."

It was hard to refuse; harder than she could have imagined, but she remembered the fear in Isaac's eyes and shook her head. "Tell me what you ate, won't you? In detail?"'

"I promise."

But still he didn't go. Was he waiting for someone?

"Isaac is convinced he won't ever play the violin again because of something they did to his hands in the camp," she said. "But I watched him when he was helping me in the kitchen. I could swear his hands are all right now; he made piped eclairs and you can't do those without good coordination. I wish you'd make him see. He wants us to start a restaurant."

He frowned. "Us? You mean you and him?"' Isaac must be seriously gone in love then, or mad. "Do you want to do that?"' he asked curtly.

She shook her head. She was about to make her way back to her compartment when a woman in a tight red satin skirt, a frilly gold lamè blouse and an outsize feather boa came along the corridor--a blonde of unbelievable vulgarity who smiled unashamedly at Marek.

And whose smile was returned. Marek excused himself and to Ellen's chagrin followed the woman's waggling behind towards the dining car.

One hour, another. The passengers returned from dinner but Marek did not come in with the promised champagne. Then the train slowed down and stopped in the kind of place that was the same all over Europe: custom sheds, army huts in which men sat playing cards, road barriers--and a station at which no one who could help it ever got out.

Ellen opened her nurse's bag, took out a syringe partly filled with a red liquid, and stood by the door. Two border guards got on: a young private and a sergeant. The Poles had been fought over too often: there was nothing casual about these lean-faced, unsmiling men.

Ellen's door slid open. The sergeant went on up the train; the private entered.

"Passports, please."

She handed him hers, then Chomsky's. The soldier motioned her aside. He wanted to see who was in the bed.

Ellen picked up her syringe. Instead of impeding him, she touched the soldier's arm, indicating that she needed more blood from her patient, soliciting his help.

For a moment it looked as though it would work. She had seen so many strong men keel over in a faint at first-aid classes, and the contents of the syringe, mixed in the art room at Hallendorf, were a good imitation of the real thing. But though the soldier made a gesture of distaste, he did not retreat.

"Turn him round," he ordered.

Ellen touched Isaac's shoulder and he groaned.

"Hurry," barked the Pole.

But before she could obey there was the sound of a dreadful and ear-splitting scream from the next compartment. A second scream followed, and the soldier elbowed Ellen aside and went out into the corridor. Seconds later the door was pushed open and a woman hurled herself into the soldier's arms.

Her blonde hair was matted with sweat, her scarlet lipstick was a smear across her trembling mouth--and she was totally and spectacularly naked.

"Help me! Help me!" she yelled. "Protect me! He tried to rape me, the brute!"

Her thin arms closed round the soldier's neck like a vice: the scent of her cheap perfume, her stale deodorant, pervaded the corridor.

The Pole was twenty-one years old and prepared for anything but this.

More doors opened; distressed passengers appeared; an old man and his wife ... the sleeping car attendant. Then the door of the compartment from which the woman had erupted opened once more--to reveal Marek in a loosely knotted bathrobe, his hair on end. The sight of him caused the woman to become even more frenzied. "You must take me with you!" she screamed at the soldier. "You must look after me!" She began to cry, rubbing her face into his, pressing her body against the rough uniform. "I'm afraid!"

Trying to free himself--he dropped the passports.

"She's lying," said Marek. "She said she'd do it for a hundred marks. She's a lying bitch."

More passengers appeared, and the guard ... then the sergeant who was in charge of the young Pole.

Speaking furiously to the soldier, he tried to loosen the woman's hold, but she only clung tighter, babbling and weeping.

The sergeant spat, then pulled her free with a vicious gesture. "Out," he gestured to his underling. "Out!"-

-and picked up the two passports and handed them to Ellen.

Five minutes later, the train was on its way.

Marek had chosen the town of Kalun for an overnight stop before the journey on foot to the River Rats.

Situated on a tributary of the Vistula some two hundred kilometres north of Warsaw, it was an austere and somewhat gloomy place which had survived the wars, sieges and other horrors of the past centuries with its buildings more or less intact.

In the guide books, Kalun advertised itself proudly as a spa, but it was some way from rivalling Baden-Baden with its clientele from the Almanac de Gotha and its Kurpark full of magnificent trees. No royal visitors had come to Kalun incognito and raced pretty girls through the woods in wheelbarrows; the Empress Sissi had not taken the small grape cure there as she had done in Merano--and Goethe, who had spent thirteen summers in Karlsbad, had almost certainly never heard of Kalun, let alone set foot in it.

But the Poles, ever a hopeful race, had dug out a series of springs in the rocks above the little town and sent their sulphurous and evil-smelling water through into the bath houses of the spa hotels. Doctors had been persuaded to come and offer treatments for an impressive list of ailments; wheelchairs plied to and from the pump rooms, and a whole posse of attendants pummelled and immersed and weighed the sick and elderly for a quarter of the fee required in the spas of France and Germany.

Marek had booked three rooms in the Kalun

Spa Hotel, an austere building with endless corridors and cavernous rooms permeated with the smell of hydrogen sulphide. The arrival of Isaac with his nurse in this sepulchral building passed without incident: the passport numbers were registered; the ambulance returned to the garage. Tomorrow a telegram would come necessitating Isaac's return for family reasons, but now he was requested to select the ailment for which he wished to be treated.

Consulting the impressive list on a kind of menu pinned to his door, Isaac unhesitatingly chose otorhinolaryngological disease, something which no one could prove he did not have, and was borne off in a sedan chair by two gleeful male nurses for a course of hydrotherapy and massive immersion in radioactive mud. The disease had been losing ground among clients and his choice had given great pleasure.

Marek had tried to persuade Millie to stay till the morning and travel back part of the way with Ellen; the girls seemed to get on well together. But Millie had an engagement in a Berlin cabaret; she was returning in a few hours on the sleeper. Ellen had suggested she come and rest in her room but though Millie came she was not exactly resting. She was in fact sprawling on Ellen's bed, chain-smoking de Reskes and reminiscing about the days in Berlin when she had known Marcus von Altenburg and his friend.

"They were such fun. You should have seen Isaac in his evening clothes all dolled up for a concert--he always had a white carnation; it had to be white, red wasn't any good--and handmade shoes. You'd think he was a proper little monkey but when he played-- my God, it would make the hair stand up on the nape of your neck. That soulful music and then he'd be out on the town till the small hours, dancing and cracking jokes. It's awful to think what they've done to him."

"Do you ever think of leaving Germany?"'

"I think of it. But I've a mother and a brother --my father pushed off. Working in the cabaret helps ... and sometimes ... you know, I get other work. I can make good money like that." She stretched out her arm and watched the gold bangle on her wrist with pleasure. "He had no call to give me this; he paid me for what I did and I'd have done it for nothing. But Marcus is like that; he'd give anyone the skin off his back. People used to think he was rich, but he wasn't, he just never seemed to count up what he had."

"How long did you know them in Berlin?"' "Oh, most of the time Marcus was there--and I went on seeing Isaac till the Nazis came. They were such friends those two; it did you good to see them. So different ...

Isaac never stopped finding people to help Marcus; it was he that got him a break as a conductor. And they weren't ever jealous of each other like people so often are when they're in the same line of business.

Even over women, though it must have been hard for Isaac."

"What must?"'

"Well, he'd pick up some girl in a nightclub maybe and bring her back to his table, and chat her up--he was always falling for women--and Marcus wouldn't say much; you could see him making himself quiet, sort of trying to be like one of his trees so that Isaac could have her, but by the end of the evening it was Marcus the girl wanted."

"It doesn't seem fair."

"No. But what's fair about life--turning a nice bloke like Isaac into an outcast because he's got a nip in his foreskin." She broke off. "Sorry, don't mind me. But I can tell you, when I met Marcus at the station and he asked me if I'd be willing to make a bit of a diversion if it was needed so as to help Isaac get through, I was as pleased as Punch. And I'll tell you though you haven't asked: no, I didn't do it with Marek, not on the train--not ever, in point of fact, though I'd have done it like a shot. It was strictly business."

Ellen smiled at her, "I wish you'd stay longer, Millie. You'll be so tired travelling back tonight."

But Millie shook her head. "I have to go, Ellen, but if ever you come to Berlin ..."

"Or you to London."

There was a knock at the door and an elderly maid announced the arrival of the taxi for the station.

The girls embraced.

"Take care," said Millie. And at the door: "Are you in love with Isaac?"'

Ellen shook her head. "No. I'm terribly fond of him, but--"'

"Oh that!" Millie waved a dismissive arm. "He's got it badly over you."

"It's just because I found him and sheltered him.

As soon as he's out in the world again he'll forget me."

"Maybe." Millie put on her scarlet beret, adjusted the angle. "What's funny is that I don't see Marek trying to be a tree."

The dining room of the Kalun Spa Hotel was a cavernous room whose heavy swagged curtains, dim chandeliers and dusty Turkish carpets gave off an air of sombre melancholy. It was as though here the authorities had finally given up hope of putting the town on the map of Great Spas of Europe, had accepted the fact that Queen Marie of Rumania or Alfonso of Spain would never now drink the evil waters of the pump room. The few diners already assembled were in the last stages of disintegration, sitting in wheelchairs or precariously propped on cushions with their walking frames beside them; the smell of hydrogen sulphide blotted out the odour of frying onions from the kitchens and the waiters were as ancient and arthritic as the guests.

Entering the dining room, Ellen saw Marek at a table by the window scribbling something in the large menu, bound in maroon leather, provided by the management. As she reached him, and he got to his feet, she realised that what he had been writing, between the announcements of liver broth with dumplings, boiled beef with noodles and other delights-- was music; and for a moment she felt as though a door had been opened on his other life; a life from which she must always be excluded whatever he wrote on menus.

"Please don't let me disturb you," she said.

He shook his head, put away his propelling pencil. "It's of no importance. I'll finish later."

"Like Mozart," she said.

He grinned. "Oh, exactly like

Mozart."

"I mean he was supposed to write anywhere and not mind being disturbed."

He shrugged. "It's not so mysterious, you know, composing. If you were writing a letter and I came in, you wouldn't fuss." He pulled out a chair for her. "You look charming. Where did you get that delightful dress?"'

"I made it; the material comes from an old

sari; it's a Gujerati design."

Marek raised his eyebrows. The workmanship of the short blue silk jacket, the swirling skirt with its stylised design of roses and stars and tiny birds, was remarkable. "I'm afraid you're unsettling the old gentlemen. I can hear the crunch of vertebrae as they try to turn their heads."

"Perhaps it's you they're looking at because you're healthy and can get in and out of your dinner jacket by yourself. It makes one feel guilty, doesn't it?"'

"Our turn will come," said Marek. "And Isaac? Is he on his way?"'

She shook her head. "He got ambushed by the masseuses. I think the excitement of having someone with an otorhinolaryngological complaint went to their heads. They're giving him a special supper in his room and weighing him and God knows what. I tried to persuade him to come down but he saw two people he thought were policemen in the corridor. I'm sure they were only fire engine inspectors, but I think the thought of tomorrow is making things hard. It must be so awful to start running again."

"He'll be all right, you'll see. Let me pour you some champagne. The wine list was not encouraging but this is Dom Perignon, and it makes a very acceptable aperitif."

They clinked glasses. "Water is for the feet," she said obediently. And then: "Where does it come from, that toast?"'

"I got it from Stravinsky. He always says he conducts best with a couple of glasses of cognac inside him.