Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

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 Königsberg 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.