A Song for Summer

Two doors down Ellen leant out of her window, looking out at the soft, expectant night. Below her the half-heard, half-felt murmur of the lake came as a counterpoint to her thoughts as she went back over the day.

After the service, Marek had taken them to the inn for coffee and cakes and then excused himself; he was going to meet Professor Steiner. Leaving the children to wander round the village, she had slipped back to the church. There was something she wanted to look at more carefully; the triptych in which Aniella was

depicted holding a bunch of alpine flowers.

She was still examining the painting when she became aware of someone in a side chapel. A man who had put a coin in the offertory box and now lit a tall white candle which he placed with the other votive candles beneath the altar. For a moment he stood with bent head over the flame. Then he looked up, saw her--and came over, quite unembarrassed, to her side.

"Look," she said, "I think I've found them."

Following her pointing finger, Marek saw the tiny black fists of the orchids among the brilliant colours of primulas and saxifrage and gentians.

"Kohlr@oserl?"'

"Yes." She was glad he had remembered. "So they were there then, up on the alp."

"Which means that they might be there now. And if they are, then we can find them."

It was absurd how pleased she had been by that "we". But the happiness she had felt there in the church was shot through now with something else: puzzlement, anxiety ...

For whom had this strong and self-sufficient man needed to light a candle? For what person--or what enterprise--did he need to evoke the gods?

Meierwitz, had he been present in the church, might have been surprised, but pleased nonetheless. No more than Marek would he seriously imagine that a minor Austrian saint of uncertain provenance (for Aniella's sanctity had been disputed) would concern herself with one small Jew without a home or country

... and one who didn't even attend his own synagogue let alone a church.

But candles are ... candles. They are not confined to countries or religions; their living flame reaches upwards to places where disputation has long since ceased. Neither Krishna, nor Jehovah, nor Jesus Christ would claim to be the sole recipient of the hope and faith that goes into the act of candle-lighting, in the attics of unbelievers, in schools, on birthday cakes and trees ...

Marek, lighting his candle, had uttered no specific prayer, yet it might be considered that the unuttered prayer was heard. For two days

later, Isaac Meierwitz found the courage to leave the farm in which he had lain hidden for months and set off under cover of darkness for the place near the border where he was to meet his contacts. He had been too much afraid to leave the familiar shelter until then, and he was still afraid ... but he had gone.

In the third week of term, FitzAllan arrived from England to direct the end of term play.

Owing to Hallendorf's emphasis on drama, the summer term was extended by nearly three weeks so that the play could not only be seen by parents and other visitors, but could serve as the opening of the Summer School which ran through August and the first part of September.

The play chosen was thus of a special importance, and differed from other performances throughout the year in that staff and pupils acted in it together, and the design, the music and the lighting were a joint effort between adults and children.

Bennet's decision to bring in an outsider to direct this year was a bold one. FitzAllan had demanded a substantial fee and fees--whether substantial or otherwise--came not out of the depleted coffers of the school but out of Bennet's own pocket. But Derek FitzAllan was not only a specialist in the Stanislavsky technique and a man who had studied under Meyerhold in Russia and Piscator in the Weimar Republic--

he had produced a coup which Bennet could not afford to turn down.

He had apparently persuaded Bertolt Brecht, now in exile from Germany, to let the school put on a translation of his unperformed play, Saint Johanna of the Stockyards.

Not only to put it on but to make the necessary alterations which would make it easy to perform in a school. Bennet, amazed that the playwright had shown himself so generous, accepted FitzAllan's offer, and reproached himself for a slight weariness, a faint longing for something with more colour and life affirmation than this Marxist drama seemed likely to provide.

So now, driving with Tamara to meet the director from the train, he did his best to feel encouraged.

FitzAllan had long silver hair, a relatively young, tanned face and was dressed entirely in black. He was also, as he told Bennet immediately, a strict and undeviating vegan and asked that the information should be conveyed at once to the cook.

"My goodness, what is that?"' asked Lieselotte when Ellen brought the news to the kitchen.

"It's someone who doesn't eat anything that comes from animals," said Ellen. "No meat, no eggs, no milk, no cheese ..."