A Song for Summer

No one stopped them or asked their business; they were too poor. The Polish forest had seen wanderers and fugitives and pilgrims since the dawn of time. This was the Urwald with the bisons that Marek had craved as a boy, angry that they were not to be found as far west as Pettelsdorf. Once some children in a village threw stones at them, but when the taller of the "Jews" turned round they stopped and ran away.

"It's not Jews they are stoning," Marek had said quietly, seeing Isaac's face.

"It's strangers."

In their packs they had bread, pepper to turn away dogs, trinkets and prayer shawls. Marek's staff was sharpened to a lethal point but he carried no gun. They had spent the night in a brushwood shelter.

Scooping up dry leaves and ferns to make a bed, they found something metallic and round which glinted in the moonlight: the greatcoat button of a Russian soldier from the Battle of Tannenberg. It could as easily have belonged to one of Napoleon's fusiliers or a marauding Turk. The whole history of Eastern Europe could be unearthed here beneath the leaf mould and

pine needles of these woods.

On the afternoon of the second day they came to the river. It was already wide here; a silent silver highway which would join the tributaries of the Vistula and the great lakes, on its journey to the sea. Here and there swathes had been cut in the dark phalanx of the trees and the logs trundled down the ramps.

They were not far now from the men they had come to find.

Marek was looking with pleasure at the herons fishing in the shallows, the trout jumping for flies, but Isaac saw only the dreaded journey in appalling conditions with men of whose skills and traditions he knew nothing--and at the end uncertainty again, and danger.

"Listen, Marek ... my violin is in Berlin with my landlady. The Stradivarius, I mean--the others I gave to the Institute."

"With your grandmother's pigtail still safe inside, I hope?"'

"Yes." But Isaac was in a serious mood. "If anything happens to me and you can get it out, I want Ellen to have it."

"Ellen? But she doesn't play, does she?"'

"She doesn't need to; she is music," said Isaac, and Marek frowned at the uncharacteristically high-flown language. It was serious, then, Isaac's passion; in Ellen lay this tormented man's hope for the future.

"Very well, I'll see to it. But you will get out. You'll get to K@onigsberg; you'll get on to the boat; you'll get your papers and in no time at all you'll be parading about in your tails on a concert platform."

Isaac shook his head. "It's over,

Marek, I've told you. I shan't play again. But if I could have her ... If she would ..." He stopped and turned to look up at his friend. "I've never minded in the past, not really. I always understood why they preferred you. But this time, Marek, please ..."

He broke off, ashamed. They walked on for another hour and came to a clearing. Piles of felled timber were being pushed down a wooden chute towards the water, steadied by men in dark hats and sideburns wielding their long spiked poles. More men, calling to each other in Yiddish, were balancing on the logs already in the river, getting ready to surround the floating island with a ring of chains. A raft with an open-sided lean-to on the deck was moored by the pontoon bridge; inside they could see piles of sacking and a crate of chickens.

"That's where you'll sleep," said Marek, grinning. "But don't worry--the chickens won't trouble you for long; they're the larder."

On a slight rise, commanding a view of the river in both directions was a neat wooden hut surrounded by a fence, the only permanent structure in this floating world. Uri, the overseer, was old and had laid claim to a piece of Polish earth. There were sunflowers in the tiny garden and a plot of vegetables. He had been married once and came here between journeys.

He was waiting, sitting on a wooden bench. Marek's greeting was in Polish--neither he nor Isaac spoke more than a few words of Yiddish.

"I thought you wouldn't come," said Uri. "There were troubles," said Marek.

"Yes. There are always troubles. So this is the man."

"Yes."

Uri nodded. He had blue eyes, unexpected in the dark bearded face. Isaac stood before him with bowed head. Alienated, grateful and apprehensive, he said: "I have only the ordinary words. Thank you."

He spoke in German but Uri understood. "It is enough." He pointed down to the bustle of the river. "We leave in the morning; there's another load coming down, still."

"You've a fine team," said Marek, looking with admiration at the men freeing a log jam that had built up round the end of the raft. To make the journey which so appalled Isaac had been Marek's dream since childhood.

"Yes. They'll be knocking off soon; the light's going."

He led them into the hut; there was a table spread with newspaper, a few chairs, a bunk bed. On the walls were hooks for coats, lanterns; on a shelf, lay something wrapped in a shawl from which Isaac averted his eyes.