A Song for Summer

The Nazis had not wanted to dismiss Professor Steiner. His family was eminent; he was exactly the kind of German, Aryan to his fingertips, they needed to endorse their cause. They gave him chance after chance, cautioned him, arrested him, let him go.

In the end they lost patience. He was stripped of his post and his medals and told to leave the country.

Others in his position went to France or America or Britain. Steiner only went over the border to Austria, still independent and free. His family had long owned a small wooden summer house on the Hallendorfer See. He had lived there for the past three years with his books and his manuscripts, needing almost nothing, looking

with gentle irony across the lake at the antics of the strange school which now occupied the castle.

Then, two months earlier, Marek had suddenly appeared. He had known Marek's parents, but it was not the family connection which years ago had drawn Steiner to the boy. Even before Marek's special gifts had become apparent there was something about him: a wholeness, a strength allied with gentleness which is sometimes found in those who as children have been given much.

"I only want to borrow the van, Professor," Marek had said. "And the equipment. There's no question of involving you. If I'm known to be one of your students and authorised to carry on your work, that's quite enough."

"You can have the van, but I shall come too. I have to say you don't look like the popular image of a folk song collector. You will do better as my driver and assistant."

They had argued and in the end Marek had agreed. It had cost him dear, allowing this frail and saintly man to risk his life, but he knew why Steiner had refused the posts he had been offered abroad and was still in Austria. He too had hostages to fortune in what had been his native land.

The drew to a halt in a clearing. Marek got out and opened the door of the van. It was painted black with the letters INTERNATIONAL ETHNOLOGICAL FOLK SONG PROJECT written on it in white paint. Inside were the microphones, the turntables and wax discs, the piles of manuscript paper which they needed to record the ancient music of the countryside. And other things --food and blankets, because folk song collectors frequently have to venture far off the beaten track, and a loaded rifle, for these woods were part of the great primeval forest which stretched across Eastern Europe as far as Poland and Russia. Bears had been seen here not long ago, and wolves; guns were a necessity, as were spades and sacking for getting the van out of a rut, and a torch ...

"We'd better find something nice for Anton," said Marek. It was not the first time they had crossed the border and the guards were becoming interested in their work.

He put a needle on the turntable and an eerie, querulous wail broke the stillness.

"Why are the wedding songs always so sad?"' asked Marek, remembering the tears streaming down the face of the old man, almost insensible on slivovitz, who had sung to them in a smoke-filled Ruthenian hut.

"I don't know why, but they always are. On the other hand, the funeral songs are always jolly--and the curses too."

"Well, one can understand that," said Marek. "We'd better get on then."

He shoved a driver's cap on to his head and the van moved forward in the gathering dusk.

Both men were silent as they drove towards the place where the map makers, confused by the rise and fall of empires, had allowed the boundaries of Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic to converge. A hundred miles to the east was Marek's home. The men would be coming in from the forest now and from the farm, unhitching the great horses from the wagons, and the westering sun would turn the long windows of the ochre house to gold. The storks on Pettovice's roofs fell silent at this time, weary of their domestic clatter, and the snub-nosed little maid would be lighting the candles in the drawing room.

But it was best not to think of Pettovice, which had once been Pettelsdorf. Marek's home was out of bounds. Czechoslovakia was free still but there was dissent there too, Nazi sympathisers stirring up trouble, and he would not risk harm to those he loved.

Professor Steiner too was thinking of the past: of his formidable grandfather, the Prussian Freiherr in his doeskin breeches and lynx cape who had turned Jewish pedlars from the gates of his home with a string of curses. That they had plucked von Einigen and his friends from their guards and led them to safety might have amused him: highborn hotheads who had tried to blow up Hitler might have been to his taste.