‘We’ll do it again, won’t we?’ they’d promised each other after the pageant: Frau Becker and Jean-Pierre, the butcher and Freya and the old woman who said it would rain. ‘This won’t be the last time,’ they’d said; Chomsky arm in arm with the greengrocer, the reporters photographing Lieselotte, and everywhere the happiness, the triumph.
And they did do it again, but many things had to happen first. The end of the war, defeat for Austria and years of occupation and hardship when the country was policed by the Allied Powers.
But in May 1955 the State Treaty was signed, giving Austria full independence once again, and soon afterwards the bombed opera house, sumptuously rebuilt, opened with a gala performance of Fidelio. For those who could not get tickets, the music was relayed by a public address system, and as they stood outside, many of them in tears, Brigitta Seefeld in the auditorium was obliging enough to cause the kind of scandal so necessary to this kind of occasion by flouncing out before curtain rise because she was expected to share a box with a rival she detested.
And in that year too the people of Hallendorf once more celebrated the name day of Aniella. Lieselotte, now a matron with children of her own, had coached her niece Steffi to play the saint but the greengrocer and the butcher still portrayed the wicked knights, though Chomsky, now a paterfamilias in Budapest and somewhat henpecked, was only allowed to be part of the audience.
There were heartbreaking absences: Bruno, who had been killed on the Russian front, and Jean-Pierre, betrayed and shot while working in the resistance. But Isaac was there with the young wife he had found when he came to give a concert in liberated Belsen – a cellist who had survived by playing in the camp orchestra and who even now could scarcely bear to let him out of her sight. Bennet and Margaret were there, their obvious contentment in each other’s company a joy to behold, and Sophie and Leon, returned from their kibbutz in Israel. Leon’s attack of Jewishness had not lasted long: it was Sophie who had enjoyed the companionship and friendliness of communal life. They were back in London now, and married, and planning to join Ursula in Wounded Knee to make a film about her Indians.
Even more people came than had come the first time, and when it was over – when Steffi had soared up to her apotheosis and Marek had once again made it clear to the agents and impresarios who had flocked to attend that his music was a gift to the people of Hallendorf, and would remain so – there was the kind of joy in the village that they had forgotten in those grim years of war.
‘And it’s because of you,’ they said, surrounding Marek and Ellen and their nine-year-old son, Lucas. ‘We know how busy and important you are,’ they said to Marek, ‘but you came all the way from Canada to help us.’
It was not till the next morning that Ellen could slip away with Lieselotte and row across the lake. The castle had been a convalescent home during the war and now stood empty once again. As they tied the boat to the jetty and made their way up the steps, Ellen’s memories of her first day were as vivid as if it were yesterday. The scent of verbena and jasmine, the sight of the skimming swallows, all were as she had remembered them. Here was the patch of reeds from which the dripping Chomsky had risen, here was the door from which Sophie, the first of the ‘wild’ children, had come running towards her – and here was the patch of grass which the sunbathing Tamara had flattened, ruining poor Langley’s frit fly experiment. But thoughts of the Little Cabbage, who had seen off Patricia Frobisher (the camel notwithstanding) within a month of her return from Kenya, now brought nothing but amusement.
‘Here he is,’ said Lieselotte, pointing to a wooden cross beneath the cypress tree. ‘He died in our house but the children thought he’d like to be buried in the castle.’
Ellen bent down to read the inscription, carefully painted in gothic script by Lieselotte’s eldest daughter.
HERE LIES ACHILLES
A TORTOISE WHO LIVED LONG AND WELL
R.I.P.
Oh God, how right I was, she thought; how unbelievably and absolutely right. As soon as I saw what he did for the tortoise I knew that he would help me – and she felt such gratitude and joy that she leant for a moment against the sun-warmed balustrade and closed her eyes.
But it was not to see a grave that Lieselotte had brought her friend. She forged ahead, across the courtyard with the well and the catalpa tree.
‘Oh, I hope they’re there,’ she said. Then she nodded with relief and stepped aside to let Ellen see.
And there indeed they were – the strange medieval birds standing sentinel on the monstrously overbuilt nest they had made on Marek’s wheel.
‘They came the very week we decided to do the pageant again! You said they blessed a place, didn’t you? I think things are going to be good for us once more.’
‘I know they are,’ said Ellen quietly.
As she stood looking up at the birds, so outré yet so universally loved, she heard footsteps and turned to find Marek, his hand on the shoulder of their son, coming over the cobbles towards them.
‘Well, you did it,’ said Marek as Lieselotte tactfully melted away.
She shook her head. ‘It was your wheel.’
‘But your vision.’
They stood with the boy between them to pay their respects to the birds, which, for a while at least, would have to be the sole keepers of the castle. Perhaps they’re your storks, Ellen wanted to say, perhaps they’re the ones from Pettelsdorf, but did not. The peace and freedom which the Czechs had so richly earned had been theirs for only three years before the communists, under Moscow’s direction, had once again turned the country into a police state. Pettelsdorf had been confiscated as being the property of a capitalist oppressor; Marek had not been back since the war. He had tried to explain to his son that there had been a demesne, now lost, which should have been his, but Lucas had not been interested.
‘I didn’t think anyone owned trees,’ he said, looking at the miles of virgin forest behind their house.
Now – though continuing to gaze respectfully at the storks – he said: ‘Do you think we could go home soon?’
Ellen and Marek exchanged glances. Both of them had been so lost in the past that they were for a moment at a loss. Did he mean home to the little house which Steiner, dying peacefully a year after the war, had left to them and where they were staying? Or had he picked up their thoughts about Pettelsdorf . . . or was he referring to Gowan Terrace, where he had been ludicrously spoilt on the way over?
But of course he meant none of those things. He meant home to the light-filled house on Vancouver Island with its big windows overlooking the Pacific. He meant home to his Newfoundland puppy and his sailing dinghy and his young sister, who was frequently a nuisance but had many uses. For to Lucas, the castle and its storks, the lost domain in the Forest of Bohemia, the palace they had shown him in London where lived a king and queen, belonged to the stuff of fairy tales. He liked the stories but what he yearned for now was his real and proper life.
‘Maybe even tomorrow?’ he suggested, his head on one side.
Marek and Ellen looked at each other. Then: ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Marek, and the three of them linked hands and went to find the boat.