He grinned. ‘Oh, exactly like Mozart.’
‘I mean he was supposed to write anywhere and not mind being disturbed.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s not so mysterious, you know, composing. If you were writing a letter and I came in, you wouldn’t fuss.’ He pulled out a chair for her. ‘You look charming. Where did you get that delightful dress?’
‘I made it; the material comes from an old sari; it’s a Gujarati design.’
Marek raised his eyebrows. The workmanship of the short blue silk jacket, the swirling skirt with its stylised design of roses and stars and tiny birds, was remarkable. ‘I’m afraid you’re unsettling the old gentlemen. I can hear the crunch of vertebrae as they try to turn their heads.’
‘Perhaps it’s you they’re looking at because you’re healthy and can get in and out of your dinner jacket by yourself. It makes one feel guilty, doesn’t it?’
‘Our turn will come,’ said Marek. ‘And Isaac? Is he on his way?’
She shook her head. ‘He got ambushed by the masseuses. I think the excitement of having someone with an otorhinolaryngological complaint went to their heads. They’re giving him a special supper in his room and weighing him and God knows what. I tried to persuade him to come down but he saw two people he thought were policemen in the corridor. I’m sure they were only fire engine inspectors, but I think the thought of tomorrow is making things hard. It must be so awful to start running again.’
‘He’ll be all right, you’ll see. Let me pour you some champagne. The wine list was not encouraging but this is Dom Perignon, and it makes a very acceptable aperitif.’
They clinked glasses. ‘Water is for the feet,’ she said obediently. And then: ‘Where does it come from, that toast?’
‘I got it from Stravinsky. He always says he conducts best with a couple of glasses of cognac inside him. Mind you, I could show you a place where water isn’t for the feet.’
‘At Pettelsdorf.’ It was not a question.
‘Yes. There’s a well in a field behind the orchard – it has the clearest and coldest water in Bohemia. The village girls go there after their wedding and draw a glass of it to take to their new husbands. It’s supposed to ensure a long and faithful marriage.’
Not only the village girls, he thought. Lenitschka had told him of his mother, making her way between the apple trees, shielding her glass, when the Captain brought her as a newlywed from Prague.
But their waiter had now managed to reach their table. He seemed to be in his early eighties; his grey face suffused with anxiety as he set down their plates of soup. Beneath the circles of congealing grease, they could make out a posse of liver dumplings, like the drowned heads of ancient ghouls.
‘At least one doesn’t feel that Isaac is missing anything,’ said Ellen. ‘I promised I’d go up later and see that he’s all right. A nurse shouldn’t abscond to the dining room like this.’
‘I’m glad she has. I shouldn’t like to dine in this place alone.’
‘I just want you to know that if Isaac can get himself to England my mother and my aunts will put him up till he finds his feet. Or sponsor him. I’ve written to them.’
‘And they’ve agreed?’
‘I haven’t heard yet – I only wrote a few days ago. But you can rely on it.’
‘A compliment – that you can speak for them so certainly.’
‘Well, I can. It’s not being in need that’s the problem in Gowan Terrace. It’s not being in need.’ She bent her head, frowning momentarily. She had still not answered Kendrick’s letter begging her to come to Vienna. And because Gowan Terrace made her think of her brave mother’s insistence on facing facts, she said: ‘Have you booked your passage yet?’
‘There’s a boat sailing from Genoa on the tenth. I’m trying to get a berth on that.’ And then: ‘I’m running away.’
‘That isn’t a thing you usually do, I imagine.’
‘No. But the Americans were very good to me; there’s an orchestra there that I shall enjoy licking into shape – and once I’m there I can put pressure on my parents to join me.’
They had been talking German throughout the journey on account of Isaac, and without thinking he had continued to do so though they were alone. Now he thought how sweet and funny it sounded, this intelligent girl speaking so softly and fluently but with a trace of an accent that seemed to come less from England than from some Austrian country province that he could not place.
‘You know, your German is amazing. You can’t have learnt it at college?’
‘No. I learnt it from my grandfather’s housekeeper. I wanted her to be my grandmother – she had to be. Talking to her was like entering another country, a country I needed.’
He nodded, remembering suddenly the words of a pedantic professor in Berlin. ‘Love is a matter of linguistics,’ the old man had said. ‘It is completely different in French or German or Spanish . . . even in the dark, even when no words are spoken.’
She had been struggling valiantly with the soup, not wanting to hurt the feelings of the waiter, but now she laid down her spoon. ‘It makes one wonder if Fräulein Waaltraut has a sister working in the kitchens.’
The waiter, sad but unsurprised, removed their plates and tottered back with two helpings of gristly grey beef surrounded by a mass of self-adhesive noodles.
‘Perhaps we should have had your piece?’ said Ellen, looking down at the staves of music Marek had written between the mythical alternatives to their entrée.
‘I think perhaps the answer is another bottle of champagne.’
He was right, thought Ellen, as he so often was. Champagne might not be the natural choice to go with what they were eating, but it was beginning to put a barrier between her and the knowledge that this was the last time she would see Marek. When they parted now she would be casual – she would be British – and that was what all along she had been aiming for.
‘Perhaps we’d better skip the dessert,’ said Marek. ‘Just have coffee?’
But the waiter, when they suggested this, was desperate. He had, he announced, a special treat for Mademoiselle, his own speciality, perfected when he spent a year in France as a young man. He wished – indeed he implored her – to let him make a crêpe suzette.
‘I don’t know if he should be doing that,’ said Ellen worriedly. ‘It’s quite tricky.’
But they could not resist his entreaties, and when at last he reappeared pushing the trolley with its copper pan of folded crêpes, its spirit lamp, its small bottle of orange liqueur and large bottle of brandy, his look of pride was such that they could only be glad they had relented.
With a shaking hand, he poured a measure of orange liqueur on to the crêpes and then a measure – indeed a very large measure – of brandy.
Then, with what he clearly intended as a flourish, he lit a match and put it to the contents of the pan. There was a whooshing noise of surprising loudness – a sheet of flame shot upwards – and Ellen lifted her head with a small and startled cry.
Marek’s response was so instantaneous that those watching could have sworn that there was no gap between the moment when the girl’s hair caught fire and the moment when he picked up the champagne bottle and hurled its contents at her head. Then he pulled the tablecloth away, and as the glasses and lamps and cutlery crashed to the floor, he wrapped the damask tightly round her head, pulling her towards him to pat out the last possible smouldering embers.
They were surrounded now by people: the panic-stricken waiter, flapping his napkin; a maid trying to pull the fire extinguisher from the wall; one of the diners hobbling towards them on crutches.
‘Go away!’ commanded Marek. ‘Everyone. Now.’
‘But –’
‘Go!’
He bent over her, unwrapped her . . . and saw a drenched girl missing a number of curls . . . a girl with startled eyes – but without the burns he had dreaded.
‘Thank God! Come on – let’s get out of here. You need some air.’
; He put his arm round her and led her out through the hall and into the deserted garden. It was growing dark, but he found a bench under an acacia tree lit by a single lantern and made her sit down while he examined her face more carefully, pushing the hair back off her forehead. There was only the smallest of red marks, but as he searched, one imperilled curl came off in his hand, and he put it in his pocket.
‘You’re soaked,’ he said, and took off his jacket and wrapped it round her shoulders.
‘I’m all right, honestly. It’s the waiter I’m worried about. I don’t want to get him into trouble.’
‘Interceding for that old fool comes later,’ said Marek, sitting down beside her. ‘Quite a lot later.’
She put up a hand to her hair, let it fall. ‘It’s best not to think how I look.’
‘I’ll tell you how you look,’ he said gently. ‘Flambéed . . . asymmetrical . . . and like Madame Malmaison in the rain.’
‘Madame Malmaison?’
‘My mother’s favourite rose. Very tousled, very fragrant. She sheds petals as you shed curls but there are always plenty more.’
He had spoken in a voice she had not heard him use before and it seemed to her that she must now be as silent and unmoving as she had ever been. That she must accept obediently what the next moments brought and that this uncomplaining acceptance was the most important thing she had ever had to do.
But it was not necessary. He did not move away or make a brisk remark. What she had to accept was different: it was the touch of his hands as he turned her face towards his . . . and then the homecoming, the moment that was out of time, yet contained the whole of time. What she had to accept was his kiss.
They had walked for a day and part of a night and now were on their way again: two Jews in long dark coats wearing wide-brimmed hats, with pedlars’ packs on their backs.
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 Königsberg; 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.
Uri went to a ramshackle cupboard and took out a grimy vodka bottle and three glasses which he filled almost to the brim.
‘Lechaim!’ he said, and they raised their glasses and repeated the age-old Hebrew toast: ‘To Life!’
The men came up later when they had washed and said their prayers. Marek had brought what he could carry: smoked sausage, tobacco, a few small gifts . . . Another bottle of vodka was produced; they drank it neat with pepper. When they talked it was in Yiddish with a smattering of Polish, a few words of German, but they did not talk much; they ate and drank and watched their protégé and the man who had brought him.
But when the level in the bottle had sunk almost to nothing, Uri rose and went to the shelf at the back and fetched something wrapped in a piece of coloured cloth.
‘Do you play?’ he asked Isaac, carefully unwrapping the violin.
Marek watched with narrowed eyes. He had told the old man nothing about Isaac; only that he was a Jew and a fugitive.
Isaac pushed back his chair, trying to distance himself from the object on the table.
‘No,’ he said violently. ‘No, I do not play.’
There was a murmur of disappointment. Uri spread out his fingers, bent with rheumatism, to show why he could no longer make music.
And suddenly Marek was filled with rage.
He got up, towering over Isaac, and the words he spoke were spat at him as to an enemy.
‘How dare you!’ he said to the man who was his dearest friend. ‘How dare you be so arrogant – so mean and ungiving. They’re risking their lives for you and you’re too small-minded to play for them.’
Isaac was dumbfounded, cringing in his chair.
‘I told you . . . I can’t . . . my hands . . .’
‘I’m not interested in your hands. No one is interested in them. Dear God, I’m not asking you to give a concert performance. These people are tired – they want a fiddler. A fiddler on the roof as your people have always had – but I suppose you’re too grand for that.’
Isaac had grown white with shock. Marek’s contempt had never been turned against him before. The men were silent, not understanding.
‘Oh go to hell,’ said Marek, turning away.
But Isaac had picked up the violin . . . the bow . . . he was testing the strings. An old country fiddle, but lovingly cared for. He put it to his chin; began to tune it.
Then again he lost heart, put it down. But now it was too late; the men were watching him; he saw the hunger in their eyes. He could not speak to them, he knew nothing of their religion.
But he knew their music.
He did not even know that he knew it till he began. What grandmother, what ancient retainer in some shetl had hummed the lullaby he played now? Where did it come from, the lilting wedding song that followed? Isaac’s fingers found the old dances, the old serenades . . . they found the music that the Zigeuners had borrowed from the Jews, and altered, and given back again . . . and the melodies crooned beside the wagons that made their way west across the steppes, fleeing from pogroms . . .
His fingers were stiff but it didn’t matter; the vodka had helped, and Marek’s rage.
When he stopped at last they didn’t thank him or clap. They blinked themselves back into the world and sighed – and one man, toothless and scarred, leant forward and touched him for a moment on the arm.