A Song for Summer

  Under these circumstances, Ellen found herself more and more grateful for Marek’s quiet world of trees and water and plants. For Sophie was right, Marek did show you things – and the showing was like getting presents. Marek found a stickleback nest in the reeds, he led her to a place where the emerging demozel dragonflies flew up into the light, and when a small barn owl was blown off course and sat like a bewildered powder puff under a fir tree, he fetched her from the kitchen so that she could help him feed it with strips of raw liver. After a short time with him out of doors, Ellen could return to her work and to the comforting of her children with renewed energy.

  ‘Is it possible that someone like FitzAllan could after all produce something good?’ she asked Marek as the director’s strident voice came from the rehearsal room.

  ‘Unlikely. But does it really matter?’

  ‘I’d like it to work for Bennet. He’s been writing “Toscanini’s Aunt” letters all day – you know, letters to important people who he thinks might be interested in coming to the play. And Margaret says he’s paying for FitzAllan out of his pocket.’

  Marek leant for a moment on his spade.

  ‘Yes, he’s a good man. But –’

  He was about to say to her what he had said at the well. That time was running out. Not only was there no money for the school, but the school was threatened from the outside. For how much longer could it exist, this confused Eden with its unfashionable belief in freedom, its multi-lingual staff? Austria was leaning more and more towards the Third Reich; the Brownshirts strutted unashamedly in Vienna’s streets, and even here in Hallendorf . . .

  But she knew, of course. He remembered what she had said when she’d asked him for storks. ‘They’ll still be here even if we are gone.’ It was because time was short that she cared so much about the play.

  ‘It may work out,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen men behave worse than FitzAllan and it was all right on the day.’

  To Ellen, watching him as he went about his work, it seemed that Marek was not quite so relaxed as he had been; she sensed that some part of him was alert, was waiting for something which had nothing to do with his life in the school.

  The impression was strengthened two days later when she saw him come out of the post office in the village. He was putting something into his pocket – a telegram, she thought – and for a moment he stared out across the sunlit square, unseeing. Then the blank gaze disappeared, his usual observant look returned, and he greeted her.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming over. I’d have given you a lift. I’ve got the van.’

  ‘I had some bills to pay and people to see.’

  They began to stroll together towards the lake. The butcher, a little mild man, waved from his shop; the greengrocer sent his boy after her with a bunch of cornflowers, and the old lady who had hissed at her on the steamer rose from a bench and said Ellen must come to her house next time and try her raspberry wine.

  ‘You’ve made a lot of friends in a month,’ said Marek.

  ‘It’s mostly Lieselotte,’ she said. ‘But I love this village, don’t you?’

  They reached the fountain and she paused to take a stale roll from her basket and crumble it into the water for the carp. By the gate to the churchyard, they came to Aniella’s shrine: a little wooden house on stilts like a bird table.

  ‘Does she get fed too?’ he asked as Ellen stopped once more.

  She shook her head. ‘Just on cornflowers.’ She took a single flower from her bunch and laid it among the offerings the villagers had brought. ‘She’s such a sensible person – and her candles burn straight and true,’ she said quietly.

  Marek looked at her sharply, but she had turned away. ‘I must go for the steamer,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll take you back. I’ve finished with that old devil in the woodyard. But we’ll have some coffee first at the Krone. The landlord’s in a splendid mood because he’s landed an entire conference of dentists for his new annexe. His wife thought he’d never fill it and lo, twenty-three dentists are descending in July!’

  ‘Oh I am glad! They work so hard, those two.’

  They found a table under the chestnuts, and Marek ordered coffee and Streuselkuchen. Ellen’s coffee came with a glass of clear cold water, but Marek’s, by courtesy of the landlord, was accompanied by a full measure of schnapps.

  ‘Goodness, can you drink that so early in the morning?’

  ‘Most certainly,’ said Marek, raising his glass. ‘Water is for the feet!’

  She had collected a posse of sparrows and pigeons with whom she was sharing her cake.

  ‘Everything isn’t hungry, you know,’ he pointed out. ‘Those carp, for example.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Perhaps not. But everybody likes to eat.’

  He watched her as she skilfully distributed the food so that even the bluetits at the back were not upstaged by the pigeons, and remembered her each night in the dining room, assessing, portioning out the food fairly, keeping order without ever raising her voice.

  ‘You remind me of my grandmother,’ he said. ‘She was English too.’

  ‘Goodness! I didn’t know any part of you was English. Is that why you speak it so well?’

  ‘Perhaps. I spent a year in an English school. A horrible place, I must say.’

  ‘Is she still alive – your grandmother?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  She waited, her head tilted so that a handful of curls fell over one shoulder. It was not a passive waiting and presently Marek conceded defeat and began.

  ‘Her name was Nora Coutts,’ he said, stirring his coffee. ‘And when she was twenty years old she went to Russia to look after the three little daughters of a general in the army of the Tsar. Only of course being British she used to go for long walks by herself in the forest; even in the winter, even in the rain.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Ellen.

  ‘And one day she found a woodcutter sitting in front of his brazier under a clump of trees. Only he didn’t seem to be an ordinary woodcutter. For one thing his brazier wasn’t burning properly and for another he was reading a book.’

  ‘What was the book?’

  ‘The Brothers Karamazov. So my grandmother smelt a rat, and quite rightly, for it turned out that the young man was an anarchist who belonged to a freedom movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Tsar. He had been told to keep watch on the general and tell his superiors when it would be a good time to blow him up without blowing up his wife and children. They minded about blowing up women and children in those days,’ said Marek, ‘which shows you how old-fashioned they were.

  ‘Needless to say, my grandmother thought this was not a good idea, and by this time the young man had fallen in love with her because she had red hair and freckles and was exceedingly nice. But of course by refusing to blow up the general, he was in danger from the anarchists, so he and my grandmother ran away together and when they got to Prague they stopped running and settled in a pink house so small you could heat it with matchsticks, and gave birth to a daughter who grew up to write poetry and be my mother . . . And who, if you met her, you would probably like a lot.’

  She waited to make sure he had finished. Then: ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that was a lovely story. I liked it a lot.’

  Marek leant back in his chair, pierced by a sudden regret. His time here was almost over; he was going to miss this untroubling and selfless girl.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  He led her back across the square and up a narrow street which sloped up towards the pastures. At the last house, with its lace curtains and pots of geraniums, he stopped and knocked.

  A frail, elderly man with a limp came to the door and Marek said: ‘I’ve brought Fräulein Ellen to see your animals. Is it convenient?’

  The man nodded and led them through the front room into the kitchen with an extension built over the garden. On a large table were a number of wooden trays lined with layers of greaseproo
f paper.

  ‘Herr Fischer makes them to sell in Klagenfurt but I thought you’d like to see them.’

  But Ellen could scarcely speak; she was spellbound. The trays were full of rows and rows of little creatures made from marzipan. There were lions with wavy manes, and hedgehogs, each bristle as distinct as pins. There were squirrels crouching in the curve of their tails, and a dachshund, and piebald cows with tufts of grass held in their mouths. There was a frog with a golden chin and dark brown splodges, and a penguin, and a mouse with outsize whiskers . . .

  ‘Oh!’ Ellen turned to Herr Fischer. ‘I can’t believe it! The colours . . . the detail . . . You must be so proud. I would give anything to be able to make those.’

  He flushed with pleasure, then shrugged. ‘It’s just a question of time, Fräulein; patience and time.’

  ‘No it isn’t. It’s a skill. It’s art.’ She shook her head. ‘Is it the usual recipe – almond paste and egg white?’

  ‘Yes, but a softer mixture – and of course the colours are the difficulty. A good green dye . . .’

  ‘Oh yes – green is so difficult!’

  Marek listened, amused, as they became technical.

  As Ellen turned back for a last look at the trays, he saw on her face an expression he had known in a number of women: a degree of longing that could only be described as lust. He had seen it on Brigitta Seefeld’s face as she peered at a sable coat in a window in the Kärntnerstrasse, and on the face of the little Greek actress he had known in New York for a diamond brooch at Tiffany’s. Now he saw it on Ellen’s face as she gazed at Herr Fischer’s handiwork.

  ‘They’re not for sale, I’m afraid,’ said Marek. ‘They all go to the patisserie in Klagenfurt.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said the old man. ‘But I can spare one for the Fräulein. Not to buy, of course; a gift.’ He stepped aside to let Marek see clearly. ‘If Herr Tarnowsky will pick one out.’

  Marek moved forward. For a full minute he stood in silence. His hand hovered over a dementedly woolly lamb . . . rested momentarily above a blond snail with sky-blue eyes . . . and then came down with assured finality.

  ‘This one, please,’ he said, and Herr Fischer nodded, for even before he caught Ellen’s intake of breath he had known that she would want the smallest, the most unassuming, yet somehow the brightest of all the little creatures on the tray.

  ‘When are you going to eat it?’ teased Marek as they came out into the street.

  ‘Eat it! Eat it!’ said Ellen, outraged. ‘I’d rather die!’

  Back in her room that evening she took her gift out of its fluted twist of paper and stood holding it in her hand. She had always loved ladybirds especially: the guardians of roses, heroes of children’s ditties and songs. If one flew up from your hand you could have a wish.

  It had been a happy day. When she first came to Hallendorf she had been sure that Marek would help her and she had been right. He had helped her most truly and she was proud to have him for a friend.

  These warming and uplifting sentiments ceased abruptly two days later when he threw one of her children into the lake.

  It began with Leon’s gramophone. Along with the other expensive presents with which Leon was showered, he had a blue portable gramophone which had arrived by special carrier at the beginning of term. New records packed in corrugated cardboard were added by his doting mother almost weekly. Half of them arrived broken, but enough of them survived to turn Leon into something of a hazard as he played them over and over again and was moved on from the steps of the terrace, the common room and the bedroom he shared with Bruno and a French boy called Daniel.

  During the week in which FitzAllan came to direct Abattoir Leon received another batch of records, among which was a group of songs by a composer of whom Ursula instantly disapproved because he was still alive.

  ‘People who are alive can never write tunes,’ she said.

  And it was true that the Songs for Summer were unusual and strange. If they depicted summer it was not the voluptuousness of droning bees and heavy scents, but rather the disembodied season of clarity and light. The tunes carried by the solo violin which rose above the orchestra, and the silvery soprano voice, seemed to Ellen to be ‘almost tunes’ – they appeared, stole into her ear and vanished before she could grasp them.

  But after a few hearings, she began to follow the piece with interest and then slowly with a pleasure that was the greater for not having been instantaneous.

  Leon, however, being Leon, could not leave well alone. He played the Songs for Summer inside the castle and outside it. He took his gramophone into the rowing boat, and he was winding up the gramophone yet again, sitting on the steps of the jetty, when Marek came past, carrying a hoe, and told him to stop.

  Leon looked up, his thin face set in a look of obstinacy.

  ‘I don’t want to stop it. I like it. It’s beautiful and the man who plays the violin obligato is fantastic. His name is Isaac Meierwitz and –’

  Marek’s hand came down and removed the needle.

  In the ensuing silence, the boy got to his feet. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t be horrid to me, because I’m Jewish. You may not care what happens to the Jews but –’

  Watching Marek one would have seen only a slight tightening of the muscles round his mouth, but Janik and Stepan, the woodsmen whose job it had been to carry the infant Marek out into the fields until his devastating temper attacks had spent themselves, would have recognised the signs at once.

  Then he put down his hoe, moved slowly forward and pitched Leon out into the lake.

  Sophie and Ursula, running excitedly upstairs, brought the news to Ellen.

  ‘It serves him right,’ said Ursula. ‘He was following Marek about again – and he was playing his beastly gramophone right by the jetty.’

  ‘But Marek waited to see if he came up again. He wouldn’t have let him drown.’ Sophie was torn between pity for Leon and concern for her hero, Marek, who had certainly behaved oddly.

  Leon himself, wrapped in a towel and shivering theatrically, now arrived escorted by Freya, who had been closest to the scene of the accident.

  ‘He’s had a shock, of course, but I don’t think any harm’s been done.’ Her kind face was as puzzled and troubled as Sophie’s. ‘I don’t know why . . .’

  Ellen put her arms around Leon. ‘Go and run a hot bath, Sophie,’ she ordered. ‘And Ursula, go and ask Lieselotte to bring up a hot-water bottle.’

  ‘At least he didn’t defenestrate me,’ said Leon as she stripped off his wet clothes. ‘That’s what he usually does.’

  ‘What do you mean, Leon?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Still sniffing and gulping down tears, Leon turned his head away. ‘I don’t mean anything.’

  When she had dried him and put on clean pyjamas she found Lieselotte by his bed, plumping up his pillows.

  ‘Could you stay with him a minute, Lieselotte? I won’t be long.’

  Ellen had no recollection of how she got to the door of Marek’s room in the stable block. The rage she had suppressed while helping Leon now consumed her utterly.

  ‘How dare you!’ she shouted, before she was even across the threshold. ‘How dare you use violence on any of my children?’

  Marek looked up briefly from the drawer he was emptying into a battered pigskin case, then resumed his packing.

  ‘No child here gets physically assaulted. It is the law of the school and it is my law.’

  He took absolutely no notice. He had begun to take documents from a wooden chest – among them sheaves of manuscript paper.

  His indifference incensed her to fever point. ‘I have spent the whole term trying to calm Leon and now you have undone any good anyone might have done. If he gets pneumonia and dies –’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Marek indifferently.

  ‘You must be completely mad! It’s all very well for you to amuse yourself here pretending to wear spectacles you don’t need and parting your hair in a way that anyone can see
it doesn’t go. But when it causes you to brutalise the children –’

  But she could not get him to react. She had the feeling that he was already somewhere where she and Hallendorf did not exist.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘As you see.’

  ‘Good!’ Leon’s pinched face, his running nose and shivering, scrawny limbs kept her anger at burning point. ‘You can’t go too soon for any of us.’

  He did look at her then. For a moment she remembered what she had felt when she first saw him by the well: that she had been, for a moment, completely understood. This look was its opposite: she was obliterated; a nothing.

  But her rage sustained her, and she turned and left him, slamming the door like a child.

  When she got back she found Leon dozing, his colour restored. Lieselotte had remade his bed. Bending down to make sure he was tucked in properly, Ellen saw the corner of a white folder protruding from under the mattress and drew it out.

  ‘I only borrowed it,’ muttered Leon. ‘I was going to give it back.’

  ‘That’s all right, Leon. Go to sleep.’

  Examining what she held in her hand she found it was a concert programme – and pinned to it a number of sheets of paper covered in Kendrick’s handwriting.

  An hour later, Marek knocked at the door of Leon’s room. The children and Ellen were in the dining room; the boy, as he’d expected, was alone.

  ‘Now then, Leon,’ he said, sitting down on the bed beside him, ‘what exactly is it that you want?’

  The tears started to flow again then; the twitchy face screwed itself into a grimace. ‘I just want you to help me,’ he sobbed. ‘That’s all I want. I want you to help.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know anything . . . I can’t work out the fingering of my Beethoven sonata and I don’t know if the quartet I’ve written is any good. My parents want me to be a musician – my mother’s desperate for it, and my sisters too. They help me and help me, but I want someone to tell me if I’ve got any talent.’

  ‘No one else can tell you that.’

  ‘But how does one know if it’s worth going on? I don’t know whether I have any true creativity or –’