A Song for Summer

Even the man they were hoping to meet today might have passed muster; a former Reichstag councillor, impeccably Aryan, who had spoken out against the Nazis. But what would the old bigot have thought if he'd known that his grandson was plunging into a Bohemian forest on account of a small man with sideburns named Meierwitz? It was Marek's determination to rescue his friend that had made them throw in their lot with the partisans who helped to lead victims of the Nazis across the border. There had been no news yet of Isaac

Meierwitz, who had escaped from a camp and was in hiding, but till he was out of Germany there would be no safety for Marek, and no rest.

The old often welcome adventure, having little to lose. But Marek, thought the Professor, had everything to lose. He took the greatest risk, leading the fugitives east along the hidden pilgrim routes he had known since childhood while Steiner waited with the van. And it was wrong. The world needed what Marek had to offer; needed it desperately.

Yet how could I have stopped him? thought Steiner --and he remembered what Marek's mother had told him once as they walked back from a concert.

"When Marek was three years old I took him to the sea," she'd said. "He'd never been out of the forest before but friends lent us a villa near Trieste. He just stood there looking at all that water and then he said: "Mama, is that the sea?" And when I said yes he turned to me very seriously and he said: "Mama, I'm going to drink it all up. I'm going to drink up every single drop!""

Well, he had not done badly in his twenty-nine years, thought Steiner, looking at Marek's face, set and absorbed now that they were coming close to their destination. He had drunk his fill--but what he was doing now was madness. This man more than any he had known had no right to throw away his life.

Perhaps I'm wrong, thought Steiner. Perhaps he is not what I think he is.

But he knew he was not wrong.

By the end of the first week, Ellen had settled into her work. She had begun with her own room, for she wanted the children to feel that they could come to her whenever they wanted, and this had involved her in some creative "borrowing", for by the time she had disposed of the archaeological remains of previous housemothers she was left with bare boards and a bed.

In refurnishing the room, she called on the help of Margaret Sinclair, the school secretary, to whom she had taken an instant liking. Margaret trotted round the picturesque confusion of Hallendorf in a neat two-piece, lace-up shoes and a crisp white blouse. She had been perfectly happy as a secretary in Sunny Hill School, Brighton, where the girls wore plum-coloured gym slips, addressed the teachers as

"Ma'am" and charged round frozen hockey fields shouting, "Well played, Daphne!"--and she was perfectly happy at Hallendorf. Chomsky's sun-dappled appendix scar troubled her not at all, nor the oaths of the noisier children, and for Lucas Bennet, who had founded, and now carried selflessly the burden of running, this idealistic madhouse, she had a respect which bordered on veneration. That she would have carried the portly little headmaster between her teeth to safety if the school ever caught fire, was the opinion of most members of staff. Certainly Hallendorf would have run into the ground pretty soon without her.

"I should just take anything you find, dear," she'd said to Ellen, in whom she recognised a kindred spirit.

"If anyone comes looking for it, I'll give you warning."

So Ellen borrowed two beaten down mattresses from the gym and made them into floor cushions which she covered with an Indian cotton tablecloth she had found scrunched up in a dressing-up trunk. She took an armchair which had suffered enough from a common room, stripped the covers and polished the arms.

She "borrowed" a kitchen trolley and painted it ... and decided that a small lime tree in an earthenware pot would be in less danger with her than in the courtyard.

But what Sophie saw, after she knocked timidly on the door, was mostly light.

"Oh!" she said. "How did it get like that? What did you do?"'

"It was like that already. So is your room. Rooms tell you what they want, you just have to listen!"

Sophie's life had so far been devoid of certainties. The marriage of her beautiful English mother to an austere scientist in the University of Vienna was a mistake both partners quickly put right. Carla wanted to be an actress, have parties, have fun; Professor Rakassy needed routine, silence and respect for his work. The only thing they had in common was an ego the size of a house and an apparent indifference to the happiness of their little daughter.

They separated and Sophie began her travels across the continent of Europe: on the Train Bleu to Paris, on the Nordwest