Eva Ibbotson: The Morning Gift

No, not emptiness after all. In a distant room someone was playing the piano. Hardly playing, though, for one phrase was repeated again and again: an incongruous, chirruping phrase like the song of a bird.

He was in the rooms facing the courtyard now, opening more doors. And now a last door, and the source of the sound. A girl, her head cradled in the curve of her arm as it lay on the piano, the other hand touching the keys. In the moment before she noticed him, he saw how weary she was, how bereft of hope. Then she lifted her head and as she looked at him he remembered, suddenly, her name.

‘You must be Professor Berger’s daughter. You must be Ruth.’

It was a certain triumph, his recognition, for much had happened to the pretty, prattling child with her flaxen pigtail. A kind of Rapunzel situation had developed with her hair; still blonde, but loose to below her shoulders and shot through with colours that were hard to name… ash… bronze… a sort of greenish gold that was almost khaki. Inside its mass as she waited, perhaps, for a prince to ascend its tresses, was a pale triangular face with dark smudged eyes.

‘What were you playing?’ he asked.

She looked down at the keys. ‘It’s the theme of the last movement of the G Major Piano Concerto by Mozart. It’s supposed to be based on the song of a starling that —’ Her voice broke and she bent her head to vanish, for a moment, into the privacy accorded by her tumbled hair. But now she, too, recalled the past. ‘Of course! You’re Professor Somerville! I remember when you came before and we were so disappointed. You were supposed to have sunburnt knees and a voice like Richard the Lionheart’s.’

‘What sort of a voice did he have?’

‘Oh, loud! Horses used to kneel at his shout, didn’t you know?’

Quin shook his head, but he was amazed, for she had pushed back her hair and smiled at him — and in an instant the beleaguered captive in her tower vanished and it was summertime on an alp with cows. It was not the eyes one noticed now, but the snub nose, the wide mouth, the freckles. ‘Of course, it was the degree ceremony today, wasn’t it? My father tried to contact you while he was still allowed to telephone. Did it go all right?’

Quin shrugged. ‘Where is your father?’

‘He’s in England. In London. My mother too, and my aunt… and Uncle Mishak. They went a week ago. And Heini as well — he’s gone to Budapest to pick up his visa and then he’s joining them.’

‘And left you behind?’

It didn’t seem possible. He remembered her as, if anything, over-protected, too much indulged.

She shook her head. ‘They sent me ahead. But it all went wrong.’ It was over now, the pastoral time on the alp with cows. Her eyes filled with tears; one hand clenched itself into a fist which she pressed against her cheek as though to hold in grief. ‘It went completely wrong. And I’m trapped here now. There is nobody left.’

‘Tell me,’ said Quin. ‘I’ve plenty of time. Tell me exactly what happened. And come away from the piano so that we can be comfortable.’ For he had understood that the piano was some special source of grief.

‘No.’ She was still the good university child who knew the ritual. ‘It’s the Chancellor’s Banquet. There’s always a dinner after the honorary degrees. You’ll be expected.’

‘You can’t imagine I would dine with those people,’ he said quietly. ‘Now start.’

Her father had begun even before the Anschluss, trying to get her a student visa.

‘We still hoped the Austrians would stand out against Hitler, but he’d always wanted me to study in England — that’s why he sent me to the English School here after my governess left. I was in my second year, reading Natural Sciences. I was going to help my father till Heini and I could…’

‘Who’s Heini?’

‘He’s my cousin. Well, sort of… He and I…’

Sentences about Heini did not seem to be the kind she finished. But Quin now had recalled the prodigy in his wooden hut. He could attach no face to Heini, only the endless sound of the piano, but now there came the image of the pigtailed child carrying wild strawberries in her cupped hands to where he played. It had lasted then, her love for the gifted boy.

‘Go on.’

‘It wasn’t too difficult. If you don’t want to emigrate for good, the British don’t mind. I didn’t even have to have a J on my passport because I’m only partly Jewish. The Quakers were marvellous. They arranged for me to go on a student transport from Graz.’

As soon as her departure was settled, her parents had sent her to Graz to wait.

‘They wanted me out of the way because I’d kicked a Brown Shirt and —’

‘Good God!’

She made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Anyway, after I went, my father was suddenly arrested. They took him to that hell hole by the Danube Canal — the Gestapo House. He was held there for days and no one told me. Then they released him and told him he had to leave the country within a week with his family or be taken to a camp. They were allowed to take just one suitcase each and ten German marks — you can’t live for a day on that, but of course nothing mattered as long as they could get away. I’d gone ahead on the student transport two days before.’

‘So what happened?’

‘We got to the border and then a whole lot of SS people got on. They were looking for our Certificates of Harmlessness.’

‘Your what?’

She passed a hand over her forehead and he thought he’d never seen anyone so young look so tired. ‘It’s some new piece of paper — they invent them all the time. It’s to show you haven’t been politically active. They don’t want to send people abroad who are going to make trouble for the regime.’

‘And you hadn’t got one?’

She shook her head. ‘At the university there was a boy who’d been to Russia. I’d read Dostoevsky, of course, and I thought one should be on the side of the proletariat and go to Siberia with people in exile and all that. I’d always worried because we seemed to have so much. I mean, it can’t be right that some people should have everything and others nothing.’

‘No, it can’t be right. But what to do about it isn’t always simple.’

‘Anyway, I didn’t become a Communist like he was because they kept on calling each other “Comrade” and then quarrelling, but I joined the Social Democrats and we marched in processions and had fights with the Brown Shirts. It seems childish now — we thought we were so fierce. And, of course, all the time the authorities had me down as a dangerous radical!’

‘So by the time they took you off the student train your parents had gone?’

‘No, they hadn’t actually. I phoned a friend of theirs because they’d cut off our telephone and she said they were off the next day. I knew that if they realized I was still in Austria they wouldn’t go, so I went to stay with our old cook in Grinzing till they left.’

‘That was brave,’ said Quin quietly.

She shrugged. ‘It was very difficult, I must say. The most difficult thing I’ve ever done.’

‘And with luck the most difficult thing you’ll ever have to do.’

She shook her head. ‘I think not.’ The words were almost inaudible. ‘I think that for my people, night has come.’

‘Nonsense.’ He spoke with deliberate briskness. ‘There’ll be a way of helping you. I’ll go to the British Consulate in the morning.’

Again that shake of the head, sending the blonde, absurdly abundant hair swinging on her shoulders. ‘I’ve tried everything. There’s a man called Eichmann who runs something called the Department of Emigration. He’s supposed to help people to leave, but what he really does is make sure they’re stripped of everything they own. You don’t know what it’s like — people weeping and shouting…’