A Song for Summer

"Because they breed and breed and people who own them are compelled to collect the fledglings in washing baskets and try to give them to their friends," said Marek bitterly, recalling his mother's early and unsuccessful efforts to bestow her surplus on the landlords of Bohemia. "They are permanently in season," he said, making his point clear.

"Like Tamara," said Ellen--and put her hand to her mouth, for she had sworn not to speak ill of the Little Cabbage who had suffered so much.

The reopening of Hallendorf's dining room turned out to be unexpectedly dramatic, indeed there were children who remembered it long after they had forgotten the expressionist plays and dance dramas in which they had taken part.

For two days before, the dining room had been closed and they were served alfresco meals. Then on the third day a notice appeared in the hall asking everyone to assemble outside the dining room five minutes before the evening meal.

Needless to say this created considerable anticipation and even Rollo, who preferred to go to the village for beer and pretzels, and Chomsky, whose constitution was delicate, were waiting.

At six-thirty, Bruno, who had been guarding the door, threw it open and everyone flocked in to find a transformation scene. Gone was the oil cloth with its institutional smell, gone the uncurtained windows, the crockery jumbled up in

metal baskets. The pine tables shone with beeswax; on the centre of each was a posy of wild flowers in a blue and white pottery jar; the places were carefully set.

And the serving hatch, in which Fr@aulein Waaltraut usually stood with her ladle, was shut. Next to it stood four children with napkins on their arms, ready to serve their peers.

When everyone was seated, Sophie, standing at a side table, picked up a bell and rang it. It was a cow bell, sweet-toned and mellow, and reminded those children whose parents had managed to get together long enough to celebrate Christmas, of reindeers and presents and candles on a tree.

At this signal the door of the hatch opened. There, instead of Fr@aulein Waaltraut looking harassed, stood Ellen. She wore a white overall, and a white coif concealed her hair so that she looked like a devout and dedicated nun.

But when she spoke, her words were not nun-like in the least.

"As you see," said Ellen--and her voice carried without difficulty to all corners of the hall, "we have tried to make the dining room more inviting--and we hope and intend to serve up more inviting food. You all know that the school is on a budget so we can't perform miracles, but we will do everything we can to see that what you get to eat is fresh and well cooked, even if sometimes it has to be plain. But there is one thing I want to make absolutely clear and it concerns the proletariat." She paused, surveying her audience, who seemed to be suitably cowed.

"I have heard a lot about the proletariat and the downtrodden workers of the world since I came here, and I think that to care about them is right and honourable and good. But I want to make it absolutely clear that the proletariat doesn't only happen in far off places. Not only in the sweatshops of Hong Kong or the factories of the American Midwest. The proletariat is also here in this kitchen. Lieselotte, who got up at five in the morning to bake the rolls you are about to eat, is the proletariat. Frau Tauber, who washes up for you, is the proletariat when she stands by the sink for hours on her aching, swollen legs. I am the proletariat," said Ellen, waving her ladle. "When you throw a piece of bread across the room you are destroying what a man spent the night making even though his back ached, even though his wife was ill. When you jostle and shove and spill the milk, you are belittling a man who gets up on a freezing morning and blows on his hands and goes into his shed to milk the cows while you are sleeping in your beds. And if you understand this, then I and all of us in the kitchen will do everything to serve good food, but if you can't then I swear it's back to fishbone risotto and mango shards because that's all you deserve!"

A stunned silence followed this. Then from the back of the room a deep voice called "Bravo!" Marek's lead was one that was always followed. It was to an ovation that Ellen picked up her ladle and began to serve.

"You know, I almost wish I hadn't made it so clear that I didn't want her to get involved with the plays in any way," said Bennet later that night. "She seems to have a real flair for presentation."

"That's true," agreed Margaret

Sinclair, who had come to his study with some letters for him to sign. "But mind you, I don't know how much effect the speech would have had by itself. I think that it was the food she produced afterwards that did the trick. That sauce on the W@urstl and that delicious Kaiserschmarren."