A Song for Summer

"I was determined to play your concerto, and I told them so; I suppose I threw my weight about a bit; there was so much fear everywhere I didn't want to add to it, and I was damned if I was going to leave the country till I'd played your piece. Even so I was surprised when they agreed. It was a trick, of course; it was quite a shock to them when they turned round and found there was hardly a decent musician left in the country. Then when they were sure of you, they came to arrest me."

"He'd spent nearly a year in the concentration camp and then been transferred and managed to escape.

A woman I'd never set eyes on hid me on her farm. She wasn't Jewish, she wasn't musical ..." He shook his head. "It's knowing you're endangering people that drives you mad."

He wanted to know about the concerto. "Who gave the premiere?"'

"No one. You're giving the premiere and that's the end of the matter."

"No, Marek. Don't be obstinate. I shan't play again professionally. It's been more than two years; that's too long to get my

technique back, and in the camp my hands ..." He broke off, biting his lip. "You must get someone else."

"Well I won't, so let's hear no more about it. What happened to your Stradivarius?"'

"I left it with my landlady in Berlin. Do you remember her--the one that went off into a faint whenever there was a thunderstorm?"'

They spoke then of the unimportant things they remembered: the duck they had found wandering down the Kurfurstendamm and adopted; a girl called Millie who had stood on her head on the table at the Lord Mayor's banquet; the trombone player who'd got his girlfriend's shoe button stuck up his nostril before the first night of Tristan.

"And you're not married yet?"' Isaac asked.

"No."

"Your standards are probably too high," said Isaac, "with those parents of yours. What about Brigitta?"'

Marek shrugged. "I haven't seen her for ages. Stallenbach is looking after her, I believe."

They had driven for three hours before Isaac, knowing that his respite in the warm dark van was nearly over, said: "And what comes next?"'

"Well firstly," said Marek, "I want you to dress up as a Jew. A proper one."

Isaac stared at him. "Are you mad?"' "No. There's a dark hat there, and a long coat."

"We're going to try to get into Poland with me dressed as an orthodox Jew?"'

"Exactly so." Marek grinned; it had taken him months to fix up a suitable escape route for Meierwitz, who had no ambitions to join the Polish Air Force or become a partisan in the resistance, and he was a little proud of the route he had devised. "Have you ever heard of the River Rats?"'

Isaac frowned. "Wait a minute ... aren't they those Jews that make their living poling timber down the rivers? Weird people--very religious--who live on rafts and don't talk to anyone much?"'

"That's right. People always think Jews are entirely urban, but these people are skilled woodsmen, amazingly so. I got to know them when

I went round on business with my father. They take logs vast distances down the Niemen and the Vistula and along the waterways, sometimes as far as the Baltic. They're expecting you."

"My God!"

"It's as safe as anything can be. They exist outside frontiers--no one bothers them; they're too poor.

When you get to K@onigsberg they'll put you on a Swedish cargo boat; there'll be papers waiting for you.

It's all fixed up."

Isaac was silent, thinking of the long journey travelling through the dark, inhospitable waterways of Poland with these uncouth and pious strangers.

"Why?"' he asked under his breath. "Why will they take me?"'

But he knew. He himself had scarcely set foot in a synagogue; his mother had been baptised, but Hitler had created a new kind of Jew--someone who existed to be hunted and killed --and these unknown men had accepted him as a brother.

Some ten kilometres inside the border they stopped. This was where they said goodbye to Steiner and continued on foot.

"I don't know what to say,

Professor," said Isaac. "The words

"Thank you" hardly seem to cover it." Steiner shook his hand. "Nonsense. And remember you will always be welcome in Hallendorf. I'm on my way back now.

My house is small as you know, but there will be room for you and you won't have to sleep on the verandah like you did when you came with the quartet. Austria is still free, so who knows?"'

Isaac nodded. Austria was still free, that was true, but without a permit to stay he would be a fugitive once more, at best put into prison, at worst deported back into the Third Reich.

They had been driving through thick mist. Now it began to rain--steady grey sheets obscuring everything.

Only Marek could have made any sense of the terrain in which they found themselves.

"Keep close," he said.

He had given Isaac a compass, pepper to head off pursuing dogs, money--but in this Stygian world of dripping trees and cloud it would be a nightmare for him to try and find his way alone. They had just two hours of darkness still to find Franz and ford the river into Poland.

The barbed wire had been cut; everything seemed