One Last Summer (2007) (38 page)
I watched him sign a few more books, then I walked away. I did not look back at him again.
Laura jumped, startled when the alarm clock on the bedside table rang. She realized that she had spent the whole night reading her grandmother’s diary, and she had told Marius that she and her grandmother would be ready at ten so he could drive them to Grunwaldsee for lunch.
She pulled back the drapes, opened the door and walked out on to the balcony. The sun was strong, the concrete warm beneath her bare feet. She looked over the wall. Charlotte was sitting close to the wall in a narrow strip of shade, a smile on her face, a cup of coffee in front of her.
‘Good morning, Oma.’ Laura sat on the wall and swung her legs over to Charlotte’s side. ‘Did you have a good dinner last night?’
‘Very good,’ Charlotte smiled.
‘Marius was very excited when I told him that Irena von Datski would be visiting Grunwaldsee today. He said she was your brother’s wife.’
‘She was, and she is looking forward to meeting you and telling you all about your second cousins. She and her husband Helmut will be joining us at the house after lunch.’
‘Have you been awake for long?’
‘Not long. Isn’t it a beautiful morning?’
Laura looked at the lake. ‘It is.’ She turned back to Charlotte. ‘I read your diary.’
‘All of it?’
‘All of it,’ Laura confirmed.
‘Then you couldn’t have slept.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You must be exhausted.’
‘No, I’m not. And now I understand why you made the decisions you did. Especially why you left grandfather and my father.’
‘That decision wasn’t easy, Laura. But Claus needed me more than they did.’
‘Mischa told me last night that his grandfather wrote
One Last Summer
.’ Uneasy when Charlotte remained silent, Laura added, ‘He’s always making jokes, I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him.’
‘I’ve suspected it.’
‘Then Mischa’s grandfather is your Sascha?’
‘No. That much I do know.’ Charlotte trembled as she rose from her chair.
‘We don’t have to go to Grunwaldsee this morning.’
‘Yes, we do,’ Charlotte contradicted. ‘I want to meet Mischa’s grandfather again, yet I am terrified of facing the truth: that the one great love of my life was a one-sided pretence. That Sascha saw I was vulnerable and naive, and used me to save his life and those of his men. And despite everything he did for me, including saving my life in the forest, I never meant as much to him as he did to me.’
‘The diary …’
‘Was written by a lonely, unhappily-married young woman, who saw only what she wanted to.’
Unable to offer comfort, or comment on Charlotte’s fear, Laura said, ‘I also understand now why Aunt Greta hates all Russians. Uncle Erich told me once what they did when they invaded East Prussia. The rape, the murder, the brutality …’
‘What I wrote in my diary was the truth, Laura.’ Charlotte broke in. ‘But the Russians behaved no differently from the Germans who invaded Russia in nineteen forty-one. And, unfortunately, no differently from the way armies are behaving in half-a-dozen countries in the world right now.’ She looked her granddaughter in the eye. ‘Given the choice, all most people want to do is live quietly and peacefully, surrounded by their families and loved ones. Preferably out of poverty and want, in order to bring up their children decently so they can look forward to a future worth living.’
‘If only everyone could do that.’
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful? But that’s enough philosophising for one morning.’
‘I am so dreadfully sorry, Oma.’
‘You can’t be sorry, not for things that happened before you were born. And, on the whole, I have had a very good life. Much longer and better than most people on this earth. Now, go and get changed out of those Mickey Mouse pyjamas, or Marius will think you’re a refugee from Disneyland.’
An old man ran down the steps of the main house the minute Marius drove past the main gates of Grunwaldsee. Tall and slim, his age was only apparent when he walked into the direct sunlight that streamed into the yard. Walking a few steps behind him was Mischa.
He opened the front passenger door as soon as Marius stopped the car.
Charlotte stepped out, stood in front of him and stared, before hugging him.
Sensing that neither of them was wanted, Mischa escorted Laura into the main house.
‘You have quite a grandson, Leon.’ Charlotte laid her hand on top of the car in an effort to steady herself. ‘I should have known at once. Tall, thin, black hair …’
‘It’s been a long time since I had a full head of hair.’ He ran his fingers over his thinning grey scalp. ‘I keep warning Mischa that this is what he has to look forward to in old age.’ He held out his arm. ‘Would it demean you to walk with an old man who first came to Grunwaldsee as a subhuman Russian prisoner of war, Grafin von Letteberg?’
‘I never thought of you or any of your fellow soldiers as subhuman, Leon.’
‘Sorry, that was a bad joke,’ he apologized. ‘I owe you my life.’
‘What little I did was the least one fellow human being could do for another.’
‘You gave us food, soap, clothes and saw that we were kept warm in winter, and you risked your life and the lives of your family to do so. People were shot for less.’
She faltered when they reached the first step. Suddenly faint and breathless, she leaned heavily on his arm.
‘I think you need to sit down.’
‘It’s the heat.’
‘Or the shock of seeing Russians moving their furniture into Grunwaldsee,’ he commented, as a man walked past them carrying a stack of chairs.
‘I’ve seen the downstairs rooms. I don’t think many von Datskis would disapprove of your renovations.’
‘When I was finally released from the camps and given a general amnesty, I found myself an extremely wealthy man. My London and American agents had opened bank accounts for me. I looked at all that money and knew that I could never take it for myself. I talked it over with Mischa, and it was his idea to use it to set up the Pyotr Borodin foundation to fund an academy for young musicians. A place where pupils could come with their teachers and play with others, with a view to making a truly international orchestra. It seemed like a good idea. Music is an international language. And it was music that first brought you and Sascha together in Russia.’
‘I read the interview you gave
Time
magazine when you set up the foundation, but I had no idea that Grunwaldsee was to be the site of the academy.’
‘Neither did I – then. But I knew you approved of the idea of the academy because of the generous donation you made to the trust fund. And I’ve seen the details of the bequest you’ve made to the trust in your will.’
‘You saw my will?’
‘I’m treasurer of the trust.’
‘It’s a wonderful idea, especially the scholarships for refugee children who don’t have a country. I can’t think of a better way to combat the kind of prejudices that flourished during the war or a better use for Grunwaldsee.’
‘When I made a pilgrimage here shortly after my release and discovered it was for sale, it seemed like fate. But there is still a lot of work to do.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the old cottages that she, Laura and even Marius had assumed were being turned into hotel rooms. ‘We won’t be operational until we have a place for the children to sleep. Has Mischa told you that he is a gifted musician?’
‘No.’
‘We have appointed a director to run the academy, but Mischa will be one of his assistants, and as soon as the dormitory block is finished the first classes will arrive. Hopefully, by the end of the month. Also, we have asked UNICEF to nominate suitable candidates for the refugee places.’
‘It would be wonderful if there could be a day when the world no longer has any refugees.’
‘I doubt if it will dawn until you and I are long gone.’ He led her into the drawing room, empty no longer, but filled with comfortably upholstered chairs and small tables. ‘Would you like coffee or a glass of wine? Mischa has a couple of bottles here that he has been saving for a special occasion, and I can’t think of anything more special than this.’
‘Wine would be lovely, thank you.’ She sat in a chair and looked around. Understandably, the furniture had been chosen more for its strength and durability than its appearance, but nothing could destroy the peaceful atmosphere of the beautiful room. For the first time she looked to the future of her old home instead of the past, seeing the room crowded with students, discussing music, art, politics, poetry – setting the world to rights, just as every generation did in its turn, and hopefully making a better job of it than their predecessors.
‘We were only given permission to house the academy here eight weeks ago.’
‘And if it had been refused?’ she asked.
‘We would have had to grease more pockets.’
‘Sascha used to say you’d joke with Satan at the gates of hell.’
‘Who’s joking?’ He opened the bottle. ‘Now that most of the details have been finalized, I confidently predict that every bed in this place will be filled as soon as it is ready. At the last count, Mischa has managed to offer places to two hundred children from fifteen countries during the coming year. Not a bad start.’ He filled her glass and laid it on the table beside her. ‘What do you think of our Mischa?’
‘He has very familiar blue eyes.’
‘You noticed.’ He lifted his glass. ‘To your very good health and happiness, Grafin von Letteberg.’
Charlotte held back. ‘I’d rather toast Sascha, Leon.’
He touched his glass to hers. ‘To Sascha.’
‘Can we talk about him?’ she asked quietly after they both drank.
He took the chair next to hers. ‘Where would you like me to begin?’
‘The clearing in the woods. I don’t understand why they didn’t shoot you all then and there.’
‘None of us did at the time. Later we heard that Stalin’s son had been a POW in Germany. Hoping to use him as barter for high-ranking German prisoners, the Germans had given him whatever he wanted: food, drink, women. As a result, when he was liberated, he told his father that no Russian soldier who had been in German hands could be trusted. So they sent us to Siberia for “political re-education” and hard labour.’
‘I heard a shot as I was running away,’ Charlotte said.
‘The officer who was holding a gun to Sascha’s head saw one of the German women move. He fired at her.’
‘Marius said they marched you back to Grunwaldsee?’
‘Yes, at the time we were simply glad that we weren’t lying in the snow alongside your mother and her maid.’ Leon’s eyes clouded with the pain of remembering.
‘You were all sent to prison camps?’
‘Yes. They didn’t bother with trials. We’d been caught behind enemy lines, it was obvious we’d been prisoners, and, thanks to you, we didn’t look as though we’d been ill-treated or starved.’
‘How long were your sentences?’
‘Don’t you know the old joke about the prisoner who complained he’d been sentenced to five years in Siberia for nothing, only to be told that he had to be mistaken? The sentence for “nothing” was ten years. Sascha and I were given a lot longer.’
Charlotte covered her mouth with her hand.
‘All we wanted to do was to go home and see our families, but every one of us was given a one-way ticket east.’
‘After all you suffered …’
‘There was nothing to do but accept the inevitable. Summon the legendary streak of fatalism in the Russian soul. But you have read
One Last Summer
, Charlotte. You know what happened.’
Charlotte forced herself to return to that snow-filled day in January 1945. Once again Sascha’s shouts rang in her ears as she ran for her life, away from the corpse-strewn, blood-stained clearing in the woods.
‘I’ve never forgotten the last time I saw Sascha.’ She looked inward and conjured the final image she had of her lover. ‘He was kneeling in the snow, an officer was holding a gun to his head, but he never stopped shouting for me to run … and I ran because it was what Sascha wanted me to do … but I’ve regretted it ever since, Leon.’ She turned to him. ‘If I had stayed in that clearing we could have been shot together.’
‘Sascha wouldn’t have been shot, but you would have been and you were carrying his child,’ Leon reminded her. ‘That would have been one hell of a burden for Sascha to carry into Siberia.’
‘He died anyway.’
‘Not for some years, and his nights, when he was in his dream world with you, were good nights.’
‘I heard that shot when I was out of sight of the clearing and I was so sure that the officer had killed Sascha. I believed he had died there, until I heard about a book called
One Last Summer
that had been smuggled out of the Russian gulag into the West. I bought a copy as soon as it was published, years before you came to New York on that publicity tour. And, when I read it, I began to hope.’
‘Sascha and I never spoke of the journey to Siberia once we reached the camp. It was simply something to be endured, which was why I didn’t mention it in the foreword to the book.’
‘It must have been horrific.’
‘A journey to the worst Catholic hell could not be as terrible, although it might have been warmer. There were hardly any trains because they were needed elsewhere, so we spent days and sometimes weeks in transit camps. There were never any buildings to house us. On good days we had only one meal of watery soup; on the bad days, nothing. There were more bad days than good and without shelter it is hard to survive a Russian winter. By the time we reached the logging camp which was our final destination, only four of us were alive out of the twelve who’d left Grunwaldsee.’
‘I’m so sorry, Leon.’
‘There were times in the camp when I thought the ones who had died had been lucky. As punishment for shooting a superior officer and helping an enemy to escape, Sascha was sentenced to political re-education and hard labour for life. As his lieutenant I was given forty years.’
‘It was my fault!’ Charlotte cried out.
‘Nothing our countrymen did to Sascha after we last saw you was your fault, Charlotte. I expected you to ask me about him that day you bought
One Last Summer
in New York. Why didn’t you?’
‘Because neither of us could talk for crying at the time, and I didn’t want to make a scene. I had nursed a small slim hope that Sascha still lived since the day I first heard about
One Last Summer
. After I read it, I was sure that he had written it. When I heard that Pyotr Borodin was touring the States I decided to contact him through the publisher. But before I posted the letter I wrote, I saw an interview you gave on television, and I knew that Sascha was dead and that you, not he, had written the book …’
‘Charlotte –’
‘Please, Leon, let me finish. When I saw you sitting in that bookstore I knew I wasn’t strong enough to hear how Sascha had died. Just the idea of his suffering …’
Leon reached out and took her hand in his.
She looked up into his eyes. ‘In my heart I knew that Sascha had died a long time before then. I had a breakdown in February 1947. I had Erich to care for but I didn’t want to live, not even for him. And, looking back, I think it was connected in some way to Sascha. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I knew even then that I would never see him again.’
‘February …’ Leon fell quiet for moment. ‘Sascha went to sleep as usual on the night of Saturday, the twenty-third of February in 1947, and never woke up. I like to think he simply stayed in that other life he dreamed of every night and spoke to me about in such detail. He would have written the book himself if he’d been allowed pencil and paper. Instead we spoke of it every night and he made me commit it to memory. Even when I said I was too tired to listen he talked. It was almost as though he knew that I would survive and he wouldn’t.’
‘Then
One Last Summer
–’
‘I’ve just told you, Sascha wrote every single word,’ Leon said firmly. ‘It was his story, his and yours. I simply held the pen that put his words on paper. And I swear that, wherever he is, he looked over my shoulder when I wrote that book. If I deviated by as much as one word, he’d snap at me, forcing me to remember those long Siberian winter nights when he made me listen to him and repeat his words, over and over again, although all I wanted to do was sleep. That is why I couldn’t keep any of the royalties. They weren’t mine. They were his – and yours.’
‘The book really was his?’
‘I swear it. Not on a Bible because, like Sascha, I am an old Communist and atheist, but I’ll swear on
Das Kapital
if you like.’
‘I believe you, Leon,’ she smiled.
‘When I was pardoned I wanted to tell the world that Sascha had written it, but my publishers wouldn’t let me. A live author can talk, excite interest and media attention. A dead one will warrant one article at best. The book was a success in the West, it was about to be published in Russia. Everyone wanted to meet a survivor of the infamous gulags. Mischa had seen the royalty statements and persuaded me to keep up the pretence for the sake of the Pyotr Borodin foundation. The name on the book was neither mine nor Sascha’s, but, as Mischa said, the story belonged to every Russian soldier who had been held prisoner first by the Germans then their own countrymen. What mattered was the use the royalties were put to. He was most persuasive.’
‘I think Sascha would have approved of what you did with the money.’
‘Your donation meant a great deal to me. Not because of the money but because I knew that you had given the idea behind the foundation your blessing. Did you know that I went looking for you before you came to that signing?’
‘No.’
‘I saw you.’
‘Where? When?’ Her hand began to shake.
‘In New York.’ He took the wine glass gently from her and set it on the table in front of them. ‘It was at an art exhibition; you were with a young boy. He looked so like your husband, I wondered if he had been frozen in time.’
‘You saw my grandson Claus. He looks exactly like my husband, but he is nothing like him in character. He is a carpenter.’
‘A carpenter is a better occupation than a soldier,’ Leon observed.
‘You should have spoken to me.’
‘You looked so busy, so happy with your friends, I didn’t like to interrupt.’
‘You haven’t said anything about your wife. Did you go back to her after you left the camp?’
‘Ludmilla?’ Leon laughed. ‘She would sooner move in with the devil than me. Did Sascha tell you that he and I had been friends since we were three years old?’
‘Yes.’ Memories came flooding back of sitting in the tack room, listening as Sascha talked about his life before the war.
‘Sascha and I did everything together – school, music college, even marrying our girlfriends on the day we received our call-up papers; one or the other of us thought we should have someone to come back to when we returned as heroes. Not a bright idea, but war is the cause of many mistakes big and small. Sascha and I both enjoyed a week’s honeymoon and marched away. I didn’t see Ludmilla again for forty years. Sascha never saw Zoya again.’
‘If you never went back to your wife, was there someone else?’
‘Dozens,’ Leon laughed again. ‘But there was never one special person. Not like you and Sascha. And Ludmilla wasn’t the sort to sit around and wait. She wasted no time in making a life for herself even before the war ended, and believe me, that one knows how to live. But after
One Last Summer
was published legally in the Soviet Union, she looked after the royalties, and well. She also looked after our son and, after Zoya died of starvation during the war, Sascha’s daughter. Zoya called her Alexandra after Sascha, and she and my son Alexei grew up together. In Russia children who had been born during the war, and grew up during the Cold War, learned to live for the moment. The memory of what the Germans had done to Russia and the Russians in the war hung over the whole country. We all expected to be turned into clumps of radioactive dust any moment by an atomic bomb lobbed at us from America. Perhaps it was different for Westerners.’
‘Not different at all,’ Charlotte said seriously. ‘We were just as afraid of you as you were of us.’
‘Sascha’s daughter started drinking. Ludmilla tried to stop her but it proved impossible. My worthless son Alexei didn’t help. Even before Alexandra drank he saw no reason why he shouldn’t go from one woman to another. He has had so many wives and lovers I have lost count. But one good thing did come out of the short time they spent together. Mischa is Sascha’s grandson as well as mine. But you knew that from his eyes. It’s quite extraordinary how some things can skip a generation. Alexandra didn’t look at all like Sascha and her eyes were grey.’
‘Ludmilla brought up Mischa?’
‘We may not get on and she may not want me around, but she is a good woman. She saw the way Alexandra lived – endless men, drinking parties, sometimes disappearing for days at a time – and took Mischa to live with her when he was two years old. Sometimes Alexandra came and took him away, but Mischa always found his way back to Ludmilla. It was no wonder; she was the only one who fed and clothed him and kept him clean. Alexandra died when Mischa was six, Ludmilla sent him to school and, when his teachers discovered he was musical, she badgered them until they sent him to a conservatory. We both went to his graduation. At twenty-five he became the youngest professor ever appointed to the conservatory. They will be sorry to lose him, but, as I said, the idea to turn Grunwaldsee into an international academy was his, and I would have been tempted to ask him to work here even if he wasn’t my grandson. He really is gifted, not just as a musician but a teacher.’
‘Does he know about Sascha and me?’
‘Yes. I told him the story behind
One Last Summer
.’
Charlotte’s eyes darkened in pain. ‘Was Sascha buried in a common grave in Siberia?’
‘The winters are long and hard in Siberia, and, as I said, he died in February. We had to wait for the spring thaw to bury him. I managed to get assigned to the burial detail and dug a separate grave for him away from the common pit. I marked the spot so I would be able to find it again.’
Picking up her glass, she left her chair and walked to the window that overlooked the woods around the lake. ‘Thank you, Leon.’
‘For buying your old home?’
‘For saving it from dereliction,’ she contradicted.
‘And for telling you how Sascha died when you had already guessed?’
‘For telling me what I wanted to hear. That the only man I ever loved truly loved me. And that our love was as unselfish as I always believed it was.’
‘I find it difficult to believe that you could ever doubt it, Charlotte. You and Sascha had something few people ever find in life. I envied you every time I saw you together. One look across the yard at Grunwaldsee between you two was like ten hours of conversation between most people. And it was memories of you that kept him alive through all the horror and misery of the gulag.’
‘Until he gave up.’
‘No, until he was able to go into that other world he dreamed of every night.’ He left his chair and joined her at the window. ‘I’ll drive you down to the summerhouse.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll see when you reach there. I’ll bring the other bottle of wine. Then we can sit there and toast his memory – and you. I fell a little in love with you, too, you know.’
‘Leon –’
‘But don’t flatter yourself. You were the only presentable woman of my own age I came close to in almost forty years.’
Leon stopped the car in the lane outside the summerhouse. He opened the door for Charlotte and offered her his arm, but didn’t lead her inside. Instead they walked down to the bank of the lake, to a spot screened by trees and bushes, where you couldn’t be seen except by someone swimming or boating or standing on the opposite bank.
A concrete bench had been set there and Charlotte sank down on it. It was only then that she saw the stone at her feet:
Alexander (Sascha) Beletsky
1921 – 1947
who will for ever be Pyotr Borodin to all who read
One Last Summer
and now these three remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.
‘After the amnesty I applied for permission to return to Siberia,’ Leon said. ‘I didn’t ask for permission to bring him here. I was afraid that I wouldn’t get it. I’d made his coffin myself so I knew it would stand the test of a few years. I had it unearthed it late at night, put it in a packing case, and bribed the guard to take it as freight on a train back to Moscow and from Moscow to here. Mischa, Marius and I buried him here at night. We didn’t ask permission from the authorities to bury him here either, in case it was refused. The stone came from the mason who worked on the von Datski tomb. I know the text is Biblical, from Corinthians …’
‘Communists now read the Bible?’ Charlotte smiled.
‘It was the only book available in the camp. The Christians who had been sent for re-education always managed to smuggle in copies. Sascha and I were both ardent Communists before the war, but we both stopped believing in man-made creeds long before we reached the camp. It’s hard to believe in an ideology that’s destroyed your life. And we were both too cynical to believe in an omnipotent, all-caring Christian God after living through the war. But no other words seemed as appropriate as these for Sascha. I know that for him the greatest thing was love. And there is his symbol of regeneration and life after death.’ He pointed to a sapling planted next to the grave.
‘A weeping willow.’ Charlotte gazed at the branches that brushed the surface of the lake.
‘I thought it appropriate.’ Charlotte turned back to the stone.