Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

She had been struggling valiantly with the soup, not wanting to hurt the feelings of the waiter, but now she laid down her spoon. “It makes one wonder if Fräulein Waaltraut has a sister working in the kitchens.”

The waiter, sad but unsurprised, removed their plates and tottered back with two helpings of gristly grey beef surrounded by a mass of self-adhesive noodles.

“Perhaps we should have had your piece?”’ said Ellen, looking down at the staves of music Marek had written between the mythical alternatives to their entrée.

“I think perhaps the answer is another bottle of champagne.”

He was right, thought Ellen, as he so often was. Champagne might not be the natural choice to go with what they were eating, but it was beginning to put a barrier between her and the knowledge that this was the last time she would see Marek. When they parted now she would be casual-she would be British-and that was what all along she had been aiming for.

“Perhaps we’d better skip the dessert,” said Marek. “Just have coffee?”’

But the waiter, when they suggested this, was desperate. He had, he announced, a special treat for Mademoiselle, his own speciality, perfected when he spent a year in France as a young man. He wished-indeed he implored her-to let him make a crêpe suzette.

“I don’t know if he should be doing that,” said Ellen worriedly. “It’s quite tricky.”

But they could not resist his entreaties, and when at last he reappeared pushing the trolley with its copper pan of folded crepes, its spirit lamp, its small bottle of orange liqueur and large bottle of brandy, his look of pride was such that they could only be glad they had relented.

With a shaking hand, he poured a measure of orange liqueur on to the crepes and then a measure-indeed a very large measure-of brandy.

Then, with what he clearly intended as a flourish, he lit a match and put it to the contents of the pan. There was a whooshing noise of surprising loudness-a sheet of flame shot upwards-and Ellen lifted her head with a small and startled cry.

Marek’s response was so instantaneous that those watching could have sworn that there was no gap between the moment when the girl’s hair caught fire and the moment when he picked up the champagne bottle and hurled its contents at her head. Then he pulled the tablecloth away, and as the glasses and lamps and cutlery crashed to the floor, he wrapped the damask tightly round her head, pulling her towards him to pat out the last possible smouldering embers.

They were surrounded now by people: the panic-stricken waiter, flapping his napkin; a maid trying to pull the fire extinguisher from the wall; one of the diners hobbling towards them on crutches.

“Go away!” commanded Marek. “Everyone. Now.”

“But—”’

“Go!”

He bent over her, unwrapped her… and saw a drenched girl missing a number of curls… a girl with startled eyes-but without the burns he had dreaded.

“Thank God! Come on-let’s get out of here. You need some air.”

He put his arm round her and led her out through the hall and into the deserted garden. It was growing dark, but he found a bench under an acacia tree lit by a single lantern and made her sit down while he examined her face more carefully, pushing the hair back off her forehead. There was only the smallest of red marks, but as he searched, one imperilled curl came off in his hand, and he put it in his pocket.

“You’re soaked,” he said, and took off his jacket and wrapped it round her shoulders.

“I’m all right, honestly. It’s the waiter I’m worried about. I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

“Interceding for that old fool comes later,” said Marek sitting down beside her. “Quite a lot later.”

She put up a hand to her hair, let it fall. “It’s best not to think how I look.”

“I’ll tell you how you look,” he said gently. “Flambéed… asymmetrical… and like Madame Malmaison in the rain.”

“Madame Malmaison?”’

“My mother’s favourite rose. Very tousled, very fragrant. She sheds petals as you shed curls but there are always plenty more.”

He had spoken in a voice she had not heard him use before and it seemed to her that she must now be as silent and unmoving as she had ever been. That she must accept obediently what the next moments brought and that this uncomplaining acceptance was the most important thing she had ever had to do.

But it was not necessary. He did not move away or make a brisk remark. What she had to accept was different: it was the touch of his hands as he turned her face towards his… and then the homecoming, the moment that was out of time, yet contained the whole of time. What she had to accept was his kiss.

They had walked for a day and part of a night and now were on their way again: two Jews in long dark coats wearing wide-brimmed hats, with pedlar’s packs on their backs.

No one stopped them or asked their business; they were too poor. The Polish forest had seen wanderers and fugitives and pilgrims since the dawn of time. This was the Urwald with the bisons that Marek had craved as a boy, angry that they were not to be found as far west as Pettelsdorf. Once some children in a village threw stones at them, but when the taller of the “Jews” turned round they stopped and ran away.

“It’s not Jews they are stoning,” Marek had said quietly, seeing Isaac’s face.

“It’s strangers.”

In their packs they had bread, pepper to turn away dogs, trinkets and prayer shawls. Marek’s staff was sharpened to a lethal point but he carried no gun. They had spent the night in a brushwood shelter. Scooping up dry leaves and ferns to make a bed, they found something metallic and round which glinted in the moonlight: the greatcoat button of a Russian soldier from the Battle of Tannenberg. It could as easily have belonged to one of Napoleon’s fusiliers or a marauding Turk. The whole history of Eastern Europe could be unearthed here beneath the leaf mould and pine needles of these woods.

On the afternoon of the second day they came to the river. It was already wide here; a silent silver highway which would join the tributaries of the Vistula and the great lakes, on its journey to the sea. Here and there swathes had been cut in the dark phalanx of the trees and the logs trundled down the ramps. They were not far now from the men they had come to find.

Marek was looking with pleasure at the herons fishing in the shallows, the trout jumping for flies, but Isaac saw only the dreaded journey in appalling conditions with men of whose skills and traditions he knew nothing-and at the end uncertainty again, and danger.

“Listen, Marek… my violin is in Berlin with my landlady. The Stradivarius, I mean-the others I gave to the Institute.”

“With your grandmother’s pigtail still safe inside, I hope?”’

“Yes.” But Isaac was in a serious mood. “If anything happens to me and you can get it out, I want Ellen to have it.”

“Ellen? But she doesn’t play, does she?”’

“She doesn’t need to; she is music,” said Isaac, and Marek frowned at the uncharacteristically high-flown language. It was serious, then, Isaac’s passion; in Ellen lay this tormented man’s hope for the future.

“Very well, I’ll see to it. But you will get out. You’ll get to Königsberg; you’ll get on to the boat; you’ll get your papers and in no time at all you’ll be parading about in your tails on a concert platform.”

Isaac shook his head. “It’s over, Marek, I’ve told you. I shan’t play again. But if I could have her… If she would…” He stopped and turned to look up at his friend. “I’ve never minded in the past, not really. I always understood why they preferred you. But this time, Marek, please…”