Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

Ellen waited till the theatre was empty and dark before she made her way back stage.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You can come out now. She’s been gone for ages.”

The ox carcass in its muslin wrapping swayed; the papier-mâché stump representing its severed neck was lifted.

“Goodness, you do look green! There’s no need to be afraid; she’s miles away.”

“It isn’t fear, it’s seasickness,” said Isaac Meierwitz, and climbed out of the bag.

By day Isaac could forget the terror in the forest; the moment when Marek had disappeared in the direction of the river, the second shot. He could forget the hours he had stumbled through the mist, trying to find Steiner’s van, the baying of the guard dogs which had sent him crawling under barbed wire, to find himself in Austria… the long journey, footsore and starving, to Hallendorf, hoping against hope that Steiner and Marek were there.

But at night he played back the nightmare again and again, and then there was nothing to do except get up and go outside and sit on the steps of the little temple, looking out across the lake to Steiner’s house, praying that a light would show in the windows… that the men who had risked their lives for him were safely back.

There Ellen found him the night after Brigitta’s visit, wearing a coat over her nightdress, and bringing a blanket for him, for the night was cool.

“You should sleep, Ellen; you work so hard.” “Flix woke me,” she said. “She had a dream about the Judas sheep.”

She sat down beside him, wrapping the blanket round them both, and her closeness gave him a stab of something he did not recognise at first because it had become so unfamiliar. Happiness? thought Isaac-is that possible still? And answered himself: Where she is, it is possible.

The moment of panic by Steiner’s door when he had tried to pull the intruder down on to the grass had not lasted long. The softness of her body, the way she crumpled in his arms and then stiffened, ready to fight, had overwhelmed him. He let her go, and then the dizziness he had been fighting overcame him, and he lost consciousness.

When he came round again his victim was kneeling beside him, opening a suitcase. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you a balanced diet,” she had said, shining a pocket torch on to a salami in a lattice of gold, a packet of Karlsbad plums, a cluster of grapes. “You must eat very slowly,” she had instructed him in her gentle voice, with its very slight English accent, “otherwise you’ll be sick.”

He was famished, but he reached out not for the strange foods she was proffering from her magic suitcase but for her hair, touching it once where it clustered on the nape of her neck. She existed then; she was real.

“There seems to be a bottle of Tokay here also,” she said, lifting a flagon wrapped in straw out of its wooden box. “But you mustn’t drink that; not yet. There’s a tap at the back of the house; I’ll get you some water.”

Isaac had shaken himself out of his trance then. Ashamed of his weakness, he stretched out his hand for the bottle. “Water is for the feet,” he said.

She’d looked up quickly as if what he had said was a password. “You’re Marek’s friend,” she’d stated, “so I shall help you.”

He tried to argue. He had no papers; if he was questioned he would be transported back over the border or imprisoned. “Anyone who helps me could be in trouble.”

“No one will question you. You’re my new assistant. You were visiting Chomsky and I offered you a job for a while. Unpd, of course!”

He had continued to protest but she took no notice; already then he was aware of her strange mixture of softness and steel. She’d returned with some of Chomsky’s clothes, and so far she’d been right. In a school where Russian ballerinas came from Workington and Costa Rican revolutionaries were employed as groundsmen, no one questioned Isaac’s presence as a trainee chef. Isaac slept in Chomsky’s room, and did his best to make himself useful. It seemed to him that the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages which had given sanctuary to the hunted were as nothing compared to the Hallendorf kitchens: the warmth, the cleanliness, the rich and fragrant smells, the funny, kindly children-and Ellen, whom he could scarcely bear to let out of his sight.

But at night, Isaac kept watch. He had not told Ellen about that second shot but he knew that she too waited for the light in the window which never came.

Now, though, she wanted to know about Brigitta. “Why did she come, Isaac, do you know? What did she want from Marek?”’

He shrugged. “I’ve been away for so long — but there was some rumour that she was commissioning an opera. Or it could be any crisis in her career. She’s been trying to get him back ever since she sent him away.”

“But she must be quite old. Forty at least.” “M. But music can build bridges between the most unlikely people. She’s an awful woman but she sings Marek’s music like no one else. I recorded the Songs for Summer with her in Berlin. She made scenes, she was impossible, but the finished result was superb. Mind you, women have been pursuing Marek ever since he was a boy in that forest of his.”

“Have you been there? To Pettelsdorf?”’ Isaac shook his head. “He only asks people who really matter to him. It’s his sanctuary.”

“You matter to him. Surely he’s shown that.”

“Perhaps. He did say that after the premiere he’d take me. I don’t think he likes to mix his different lives. When he’s at Pettelsdorf I think he somehow hopes his music will go away.”

“But it won’t?”’

“No, Ellen. Not ever. You can be sure of that.”

She nodded. She had understood in any case that no one who knew as little about music as she did could ever seriously matter to him, but she asked a feminine and foolish question.

“Has Brigitta been there?”’

Isaac smiled. “I don’t think so. No, I’m sure. But it isn’t for want of trying.”

A breeze was rising, ruffling the dark water. “You should go in, Isaac, it’s getting cold.”

But Isaac was in the grip of his devils.

“If anything’s happened to him, Ellen…”

“It won’t have. He’ll be back. He’ll bring Steiner and you’ll get away to safety. I told you about the candle-it burnt straight and true.”

“Ah yes, the saint with the salamanders. You think she will concern herself with the rescue of one unimportant Jew?”’

“If she can save salamanders she can save Jews-and you don’t even have spots.”

Isaac shook his head. “I said I’d haunt him till his dying day if he didn’t let me play his concerto and sometimes I think I’ve done just that. He’s wasted years trying to find me, getting people out… It’s an amazing piece, the concerto… the slow movement… God! If I had known what he was going to do in Berlin-he practically killed the director. In Germany he’s excoriated or worshipped — and he wants neither.”

“When you’re safely away he’ll go back to music, won’t he?”’

He turned to smile at her, thanking her for the “when”. “He must do. The Americans didn’t want to let him go. He should go back there till all this blows over.”

“Yes.” Ellen bent her head. America was… far.

“He has this gift not only of writing fine music but making it happen. In Berlin, in Vienna too, wherever a dozen people came together, Marek had them doing something; he could get music out of three tram conductors and a road sweeper. He never saw it as something for professionals only, though he was so dedicated about his own work- his scores used to look like Egyptian palimpsests-he wrote and rewrote again. But when he was with ordinary people music was just something everyone could do.”