The Star of Kazan

Annika knew exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to take everybody on the Giant Wheel in the Prater for a celebratory lunch high above the city.

And there was something she wanted to do when she got up there, but she didn’t mention this to anyone in case it didn’t work, or people thought she was silly, or both.

Everyone was to come who had been to see the Lipizzaners the year before, and of course Zed. The treat needed a lot of preparation because they had to rent the special carriage used for wedding parties, which was bright red and had a crown painted on the outside. Unlike the other carriages, which only had wooden benches and sealed windows, the wedding carriage was furnished with a long table screwed to the floor, benches covered in velvet, and velvet curtains – and it had one window, high up, which could be opened.

By paying extra – by paying quite a lot of extra – the carriage could be stopped at the highest point – sometimes for a few moments, sometimes for much longer. If the full price was paid it would stay suspended at the highest point for a whole hour, and the other passengers had to wait down below. Stefan’s father had arranged everything for them.

Annika and Ellie and Sigrid were up at dawn on the day, packing cold pheasant in aspic and ham strudels and salads of cucumber and radish. They piled chocolate mousse and vanilla puffs into boxes, and made lemonade, and wedged the professors’ champagne into a silver bucket filled with ice.

And Annika bought two big bunches of summer flowers from the old flower seller in the square, because there could be no proper celebration without flowers on the table, and found two heavy vases that would not fall over as the wheel went up into the sky.

They piled into three hansom cabs and drove to the Prater, and Stefan and Zed unloaded the hampers and then Annika and Ellie and Sigrid set the long table with a white damask cloth and put the flowers in the vases and slowly, very slowly, in regular jerks, the famous wheel rose up, and then up again, and up once more.

The food on the table held steady, the professors walked from side to side pointing out places that mattered to them, and Annika remembered the last time she had been on the wheel by herself, and thought how fortunate she was to grow up in this place.

At the highest point the carriage stopped with a little click and they hung suspended in space.

Ellie, however, did not permit long sightseeing sessions.

‘The meal is ready,’ she said firmly, and at these important words the professors left the window and everybody seated themselves at the long table – and ate.

But after the last of the chocolate mousse had been scraped from the dishes, and the last sip of wine had disappeared down the professors’ throats, Annika got to her feet.

‘There’s something I wanted to do when I was up here last time,’ she said. ‘Only I couldn’t. So I’m going to do it now. Would you please pass me the vases – both of them?’

So Professor Gertrude pushed down the vase opposite her, and Zed pushed over the one which was next to him – and everybody watched as she took all the flowers out of both vases and patted the stems dry with her napkin.

Then she gathered up the blooms and walked over to the side of the carriage with the one small, high-up window which could be opened – and asked Stefan to open it.

‘I think I can reach.’ she said. ‘Yes. Just. Could you hand me the flowers one by one please? I don’t want to knock anybody out.’

So they passed her the flowers they had brought, and Annika stood on tiptoe and strewed them – the blue irises, the pink tulips, the marigolds and larkspur and zinnias, the delphiniums and the sweet-scented stock . . . strewed them and scattered them over the golden city which was her home once more.

The wind had dropped; the flowers fell gently. Some swirled away on air currents to the city’s edge, but most fell down over the roofs and booths of the funfair, and the people who saw them looked up for a moment and then went back to their work as though this kind of thing was no more than they deserved. And one – a large red tulip – fell on the turf path of the Prater where Rocco had reared up to save the life of a small fat boy in a sailor suit.

And it so happened that Fritzi, in the same sailor suit, was walking with his mother and his sister in her pram, as he walked each afternoon along the path that he had walked along that day, when a large red tulip descended and fell at his feet.

Fritzi had learned not to let go of his mother, but he picked the tulip up with his free hand and examined it.

‘Mine,’ he said – as he had said that day when he found the big red ball.

But this time no thief came running towards him to deprive him of his spoils.

Fritzi was pleased. There is a lot you can do with a tulip – fill the flower cup with sand, hold it aloft by the stem like a sword, put it over your shoulder like a rifle . . .