A Song for Summer (25 page)

And suddenly Marek was filled with rage. He got up, towering over Isaac, and the words he spoke were spat at him as to an enemy.

"How dare you!" he said to the man who was his dearest friend. "How dare you be so arrogant--so mean and ungiving. They're risking their lives for you and you're too small-minded to play for them."

Isaac was dumbfounded, cringing in his chair. "I told you ... I can't ... my hands ..."

"I'm not interested in your hands. No one is interested in them. Dear God, I'm not asking you to give a concert performance. These people are tired--they want a fiddler. A fiddler on the roof as your people have always had--but I suppose you're too grand for that."

Isaac had grown white with shock. Marek's contempt had never been turned against him before. The men were silent, not understanding.

"Oh go to hell," said Marek, turning away.

But Isaac had picked up the violin ... the bow ... he was testing the strings. An old country fiddle, but lovingly cared for. He put it to his

chin; began to tune it.

Then again he lost heart, put it down. But now it was too late; the men were watching him; he saw the hunger in their eyes. He could not speak to them, he knew nothing of their religion.

But he knew their music.

He did not even know that he knew it till he began. What grandmother, what ancient retainer in some shetl had hummed the lullaby he played now? Where did it come from, the lilting wedding song that followed? Isaac's fingers found the old dances, the old serenades ... they found the music that the Zigeuners had borrowed from the Jews, and altered, and given back again ... and the melodies crooned beside the wagons that made their way west across the steppes, fleeing from pogroms ...

His fingers were stiff but it didn't matter; the vodka had helped, and Marek's rage.

When he stopped at last they didn't thank him or clap. They blinked themselves back into the world and sighed--and one man, toothless and scarred, leant forward and touched him for a moment on the arm.

"Wait," said Isaac. "I'll play you one more tune. A new one."

Uri translated; the men settled themselves again. But after he had retuned the fiddle, Isaac didn't start at once. He went to the door and opened it wide to the starry night.

The men were puzzled. They had enough fresh air in their lives; the whine of the mosquitoes, the cry of a forest animal in pain filled the room.

But Isaac wanted the river. He wanted to look out on it as Marek had looked out at the Hudson all that time ago.

Then he began to play.

The villa which Count Stallenbach's cousin had put at Brigitta's disposal was sufficiently comfortable for the diva and her party to spend another week by the W@orthersee even after the search for Marcus had ended in failure.

Now however their return to Vienna could not be put off any longer. Leaning back on the cushions of the first-class compartment, Brigitta surveyed the rehearsals which awaited her with deep foreboding. They had given her the Hamburg beanpole for her Octavian, the r@ep@etiteur was new and inexperienced, and her deadly rival was already spreading slanders about the state of Brigitta's voice.

But the real disaster was Feuerbach. Attempts to get the regular conductor of the Philharmonic to return from his summer engagements abroad had failed, and she was supposed to work with an opinionated upstart who wasn't fit to have charge of a band of superannuated dustmen.

Staub, sitting beside her, was regretting the failure of their quest. He had worked on his libretto solidly ...

had framed the story of burning Troy in the words of the soldier in the wooden horse returning home and trying to get someone to listen to him. A sort of Ancient Mariner whom no one heeded, except one small boy. Altenburg would have loved it, he was sure.

Benny as usual was doing his sums. He would stay for the gala and then leave for the States. Brigitta on her own was no use to him; maybe he could get her a short tour as a Lieder singer next year but that was the extent of it.

"All change next stop. All change at

St Polzen," said the guard, coming down the corridor. Why this obscure town had been chosen as an important railway junction, no one had ever discovered; certainly it wasn't for the facilities it offered to travellers.

"You'd think they could run a direct service to Vienna," grumbled Brigitta, and stood by while the men took down her hat boxes, her make-up case, her furs and portmanteau. Ufra, who travelled third class with the dog, put on her coat.

The train slowed down ... stopped. Ufra opened the carriage door and Puppchen leapt down, gave vent to a frenzy of barking, tugged the lead out of her hand and raced across the platform.

"For goodness sake--can't you control the wretched animal," scolded Brigitta, descending in her turn.

Her maid stood looking after the dog, now leaping up and down in front of a man sitting alone on a wooden bench.

"No," said Ufra. "As a matter of fact, I can't."

Marek had travelled overnight from Warsaw. He had seen Isaac off down river and now had broken the journey at this junction where he had left his father's car when he'd picked up the ambulance. He only had to go across the road,

fetch the car and drive to Pettelsdorf to pick up his things and say goodbye to his family. He had already taken his leave of Steiner --and of Hallendorf.

But he was tired now that the adventure was over, and for a moment he sat down on a bench in the sun.

There was a train to Hallendorf in twenty minutes--he could get on it and in three hours be there. Would she be serving supper at the hatch, her burnt curls hidden under her hygienic hat ... or leading her modest girls into the lake? Closing his eyes, he let the memories come: Ellen garnering gym shoes that first morning ... feeding Aniella on cornflowers ... taking a splinter out of Sabine's foot.

And then he was back in the sulphur-smelling garden at Kalun as she lifted her face for his kiss--and this now was not remembering, it was "being there". During those moments as he held her in his arms he had wondered if at last he need no longer envy his parents; if he too had found the supreme simplicity of a total and committed love. Leading her back to her room afterwards, putting the key in the lock for her, he had begun to speak--and then the neighbouring door had opened and Isaac had appeared, tied up in some ridiculous medical corset, and as Ellen went forward to help him, the moment had passed.

Marek had not answered Isaac's appeal by the river. He did not believe that self-sacrifice was a sound principle on which to base one's life. And yet ... As they had washed in the stream that first morning, Marek had seen the concentration camp mark branded on Isaac's arm. Was something special owed perhaps to such a man?

Ten minutes before the train came back ... he could still go. There was nearly a fortnight before he sailed; much could be sorted out in that time.

But now, on the other platform, a train was drawing in--not the one to Hallendorf, but the one from there.

How absurd that everyone had to change always in this uninteresting little town.

A carriage door opened. Marek heard the fierce yapping of a little dog and then the creature was upon him, leaping up, rolling over, wagging his tail in a paroxysm of welcome.

And after him, of course, came Brigitta, her arms thrown out.

"Marcus! Darling! But this is incredible! We've been looking for you everywhere!"

Staub came forward to shake hands, then Benny, much hampered by the antics of Puppchen, whose sole achievement seemed to be to remember Marcus for remarkable periods of time.

"It's a miracle!" said Briggita. "It's destiny, finding you. A portent. Now I know you'll come to Vienna and--

"'

"I'm sorry, Brigitta, but you're mistaken. I'm going home and then to America."

"But you can't! You can't! You tell him about the gala, Benny. Tell him about Feuerbach."

"It certainly seems to be bedlam there," said Benny. "If you could come even for a few days ..."

"I'm sorry," Marek repeated. Of the group surrounding him, he was the most pleased to see the little dog he had bestowed on Brigitta all those years ago: the dog and Ufra, for whom he had always felt respect.

"Well, at least, darling, come and have some coffee. Please. We've an hour to kill," begged Brigitta, who was convinced that no man could remain even a few minutes in her presence and not be persuaded to do what she wanted.

"All right, Brigitta." There were limits to churlishness. "We'll have a coffee for old times' sake."

As they made their way across the square, he heard the little train for Hallendorf come chugging in.

Fate had spoken and it had spoken rightly. For after all, what bound him was not just loyalty to a friend who had suffered. It was not the mark branded on Isaac's arm; it was the moment when Issac had turned to him in the hut, his face alight for the first time in weeks, and said: "I told you, didn't I? I told you I'd play the premiere!"

He had played only the theme of the slow movement, but was enough.

From this man, whose musicality and dedication had somehow survived through so much hardship, one did not snatch what he believed was his fulfillment and his future.

Two days after Ellen returned from Kalun, Bennet gave an assembly which she found a little disquieting.

It was about a Greek warrier called Philoctetes who was bitten in the foot by a serpent and abandoned by his friends on a lonely island because they couldn't stand the stench from his wound. True, the story ended happily: finding they needed him to fight the Trojan War, his companions returned and after much grovelling persuaded him to sail with them to Troy where he dispatched Paris with his bow and arrow, thus bringing the whole sorry business to an end.

But the somewhat lachrymose way in which the headmaster dwelt on the abandoned hero's wounds and his friends' ingratitude was not at all in Bennet's usual style and Ellen was not surprised, when she spoke to Margaret, to hear that the secretary was getting very worried.

"It's that wretched FitzAllan and his play," she said. "He carries on as though there's nothing else in the world and asks for more and more. Everyone's told him the money just isn't there. And Tamara's chasing after him in the most blatant manner, trying to save her stupid ballet."

"Surely he wouldn't--"'

"Oh no, not him. He's far too selfish to notice anyone else, but really her sunbathing is getting perfectly ridiculous. She went and laid herself down right in the middle of David Langley's fruit fly experiment, even though he labelled it quite clearly."

"I tell you one thing, Margaret, if I ever catch her sunbathing on Kohlr@oserl I won't answer for the consequences," said Ellen.

"I wish Bennet wouldn't worry about the play so much. His own workshop on The Winter's Tale is what they'll come for anyway in the Summer School." She looked admiringly at Ellen. "I must say, your fringe is quite enchanting. What a strange boy Bruno is."

"Yes, indeed."

Coming into her room on the night she got back, Bruno had found Ellen trying to repair the damage done by the cr@epe suzette. He had watched for a moment as she tried to level out the mangled curls and then shaken his head.

"You want to cut more off. A lot more." "What do you mean?"'

Words were not Bruno's coinage. He took the scissors from her and told her to shut her eyes. It was not easy sitting still while this badly behaved boy cut off what felt like large chunks of her hair but she did it, while the other children watched in silence.

But when he had finished and Ellen went to the mirror, she found herself smiling with surprise and pleasure. He had reduced her damaged curls to little half-moons and brought more hair in to make a tousled, tentative fringe which lapped her brows and echoed the gold-brown of her eyes. If she looked like a courtesan who had just got out of bed, she looked like a very expensive one.

Marek would like it, thought Ellen, while the children exclaimed. Except that Marek will never see it, she told herself--but the smile persisted, as though the memory of that kiss in the garden could not be set aside. She could not hear from him till he was back from Poland but after that ... Surely before he sailed he would write to her once, or even come, if only to give her news of Issac. It seemed impossible that the whispered pre-dawn farewell for the three of them could be the last goodbye.

Meanwhile, as always, there was work and the need to console others. Bruno, her hair sorted, retreated into his usual uncooperative state, denying the slightest artistic ability and refusing to help poor Rollo who had been informed by FitzAllan that the masks he had made for the animals were not suitably monolithic and drab.

"If you've ever seen a monolithic and drab piglet I'd like to see it," said Rollo angrily.

Hermine had been told by the director not to feed her baby in the theatre. "I think he does not like my bosom," said Hermine, coming tearfully to Ellen. "And this I understand. I do not like it myself," she said mournfully, looking down at her cleavage, "but I cannot leave Andromeda so far away. Of course I should not have let the Professor overcome me--"' But at this point Ellen changed the subject, for she could not bear Hermine's remorse over her seduction by the Vocal Rehabilitation expert who had drunk too much gentian brandy at the conference in Hinterbruhl.

"I could put ground glass into his nut cutlet?"' suggested Lieselotte, who had taken against the director from the start. She was particularly incensed when she compared the demands FitzAllan was making with the cheeseparing that went on in the village about Aniella's name day celebrations. "Every year we say we will do something really nice for her and every year people are too lazy or too tired or too poor."

FitzAllan had of course rung the slaughterhouse to check about the foot and mouth disease and found out the truth, and what he regarded as Ellen's collusion with Marek in tricking him, and had scarcely spoken to her since.

Fortunately Chomsky, when she visited him, was improving. Not to the extent of returning to school but to the point where there was no longer any question of anyone taking him to a foreign place and asking her for his passport.