Cut and Come Again (22 page)

It was a wretched situation. Again Karl tried to make it easier:

‘Wait till to-morrow. We'll all go then. We'll all go on to Berlin in the morning.'

‘We're going to Paris,' said the Williams fervently.

‘Wherever you're going there's no train till four o'clock.'

They condescended to wait, sitting on their bags by the doorstep in the sunshine, so that every peasant going in or out of the house had to step over them. The atmosphere grew more tense and wretched.

Karl had vanished. But suddenly, ten minutes later, he came running back into the courtyard:

‘A bath!' he was shouting. ‘A bath! We can have a bath.'

The Williams tried to look uninterested.

‘Schmidt, the richest farmer in the village, invites us all to his house to-night,' said Karl, ‘to have a bath.'

‘All of us?'

‘All of us. It's a new bath. It's never been used. He's invited us over to use it for the first time. He's the only man for fifty miles round who has a bath. It's a great honour.'

We were at once excited. The mosquitoes had been devilish, the heat and sweat of the days very trying, and for a long time we had ached for a bath. Moreover, the news seemed suddenly to dispel the air of suspicion created by the quarrel. Everyone began to act more freely. Only the Williams continued to sit on their suitcases in the courtyard, dismally waiting for the time when they should depart.

But at eight o'clock that evening, when we set off towards the house of Herr Schmidt, for the bath, together with all the girls and women who were
Karl's sisters or aunts or cousins, and all their fat husbands or sweethearts, we noticed that the Williams were still with us. They walked a little sheepishly, behind us or apart from us, and the peasants never spoke to them.

The bath of Herr Schmidt was already a legend. Karl translated for us the peasants' ecstasies, and now and then a man would stop and throw out his fat arms to indicate the size of the bath of Herr Schmidt, the colossal wonder of the countryside. Karl's sister Maria was very fat, and once her father paused and urged us to look upon her.

‘So!' There was great laughter. ‘So!' he said again, as though to indicate that even Maria would be lost when she sat in that bath. Even Herr Schmidt, too, would be lost. Even Herr Schmidt! There was still great laughter.

When we arrived at Herr Schmidt's house, a big farmhouse set in a spacious courtyard just as the summer dust was falling, Herr Schmidt himself stood in the doorway, waiting to receive us. Seeing him, we saw at once the reason for the peasants' laughter and the bath's immensity. Herr Schmidt stood on his threshold like the traditional innkeeper in a German opera, so fat that he could scarcely waddle forward to greet us, his laughter so rich and powerful that it rumbled like operatic thunder.

He was in a state of great excitement, greeting us with a thousand explosive invitations to enter the house, laughing mightily whenever he spoke, waving his arms, bowing, shaking our hands with his immense obese paws until we were pained and weary.

‘Ender. Pliz go in!' he shouted delightedly. ‘Ender!'

We all followed him into the house and he bowed
us into the drawing-room. ‘Ender. Pliz come in.' It was a great honour, a great honour. He was overwhelmed, overjoyed to have us bathe with him. He could think of no greater honour. And were we in the War? We were too young? Yes? But he, Herr Schmidt, was in the War, and was wounded. Ah! but let us not talk about it. It was all over, all finished. Let us not talk about it. ‘Ender! Pliz come in. Pliz come in!'

He rushed away excitedly, excusing himself elaborately. Left in the drawing-room we all became conscious of a strange thing.

The drawing-room was like a boiler house. The heat was terrific, a thick steaming heat that had condensed on the walls and on the pictures and the old polished furniture. As we sat there the memory of the sultry summer evening outside seemed cool and delicious. And now and then we heard strange squeaks and guttural rumblings overhead and about us, like the sound of water bubbling hotly in hidden pipes, and at intervals the sound increased to a great stuttering grunt, as though the pipes must burst.

But Herr Schmidt, carrying many bottles of hock under his arms, came puffing in to reassure us. Had we heard anything? Anything we might hear was just the bath water. It was just beginning to get hot. Beginning! We sat in a mute sweat of alarm at that word. Only a little while and the water would be hot and the bath would be ready. Until then, we must have a little wine. Yes? Herr Schmidt brandished the bottles excitedly.

We were too hot to speak. Herr Schmidt uncorked the bottles loudly and poured out the pale green wine. We sat about weakly, too limp from that steamy heat to talk or move. All the time the subterranean squeaks and grumblings went on in the pipes about us, like
the grunting of a litter of pigs, and each time there was some louder and more ominous growling Herr Schmidt would laugh with stentorian excitement, proud as a father at the chucklings of a new baby, drowning the sound of the boiling water with his own enormous voice.

During all this the Williams sat in silent discomfort, bathed in uneasy sweat. They never spoke, and the peasants sat apart from them, as though remembering the quarrel and its causes.

All the time the room grew hotter and the growlings in the pipes more alarming. When we felt that we could bear it no longer, Herr Schmidt rushed out of the room and back again and shouted that the bath was ready.

‘Who'll go first?' said Karl.

But Herr Schmidt was not ready. First we must view the bath. It was after all unique, a virgin among baths, and ours were to be the first bodies to enter it. So with the peasants eyeing us enviously we all trooped out after Herr Schmidt to the bathroom.

‘Ender! Pliz come in. Pliz ender!'

He bowed us into the bathroom. Inside, the heat was infernal, and there, with an immense ten-foot stove of flowered tiles built against it, was the wonder, the virgin bath. We gazed in awe. It seemed to us that that bath could have held an elephant, or that a man might have used it with safety as a boat on the high seas.

Herr Schmidt was almost hysterical with joy at our silent wonder. He dusted the tiniest flecks of dirt off the white porcelain and turned on the tap with a flourish, letting out a volcanic stream of hissing water that set all the pipes in the house growling ominously again.

We murmured in admiration, and Herr Schmidt thundered his laughter.

Ten minutes later I was standing in the bath, the water burning my feet like acid. We had drawn lots for the bath and I was first. But the water was so hot that I could not bear it and the water in the cold tap had grown lukewarm from the violent heat of the stove. I washed myself tenderly and got out of the bath quickly and went back to the drawing-room.

And one by one the rest took their baths and came out quickly, as though they had been through fire. It happened that the Williams had drawn the last places, and by the time they went into the bathroom the grumblings and squeakings in the pipes were already dying away.

‘How was it?' we said when they appeared. They had gone in together to scrub each other down. ‘Was it too hot?'

‘It was beautiful,' they said.

They were radiant.

‘Could you get down in it?' we asked. None of us had been able to sit in that infernal water.

‘It was grand,' was all they could say. ‘It was worth waiting for. It was perfect.'

They were smiling, their faces pink from the fresh warm water. And as they sat down to drink the wine that Herr Schmidt had poured out for them they seemed like different men. The bath seemed to have washed away their sulkiness and misery, their air of condescension, the memory of all their petty grievances. It was so plain in their faces that even the peasants could see it.

We stayed in Herr Schmidt's house all that evening. The wine and the coffee flowed endlessly again, there was good German food, and Herr Schmidt sang songs
for us. We also sang songs in return and danced heavily round the room, clumping our feet, with the German women. Even the Williams danced, and all the old feeling of suspicion, and all the deeper feeling that our countries had once been enemies, vanished completely. It was as if the bath had washed them away.

We did not leave till early morning and perhaps because of the wine there seemed to be many more of us to go home than there had been to come. The night was very still and soundless; a big summer moon half way to setting, a warm gold, in the clear and colourless sky, the corn white in the moonlight, the old pear trees among it as still as the distant forest and the hills.

As we walked down the road we linked arms with the peasants, making a chain across the road. The girls rested their soft heads on our shoulders, and we all sang at the tops of our voices, not knowing quite what we were singing, in the common language of joy.

The barley-field lay white in the full moonlight, cleared of its crop except for a cluster of shocks standing like dwarf tents under an old hawthorn hedge. The cart was making its last journey. The moon, rising fast and growing whiter every moment, was turning the black mare to roan with its radiance, and the men's pitchforks to silver. For miles the land lay visible, quiet and stark, not even the shadow of a bird flickering across it and its windless silence broken only by the clack of cartwheels in the stubbleruts and the voices of the two children urging on and stopping the horse.

Alexander was nine and the girl, Cathy, was fourteen. The boy had the bridle in his right hand, his fingers boldly close to the mare's wet mouth. The girl, dark-haired, tall for her age and too big for her tight cotton dress, was holding the bridle also, in her left hand, though there was no need for it. Up on the cart the boy's uncle was loading the sheaves that the girl's father picked and tossed lightly up to him with a single flick of his fork. The girl, tall enough to rest her head against the horse's neck, would sometimes hold the bridle in both hands, her fingers casually stretched under the mare's silky mouth, as though by accident, to touch the boy's fingers. Impatient of it, he would snatch at the bridle, half to frighten the horse and half to frighten her into taking her hand away, and if the horse started on he would seize the chance of a swagger and would lug at the bridle and would lift his voice in manful anger:

‘Whoa! damn you. Stan' still.'

‘Here! What the nation you saying?' His uncle would growl the reprimand. ‘By God, if your father heard that talk.'

‘Stan' still,' the boy would say as though in soft correction of himself. ‘Stan' still, mare, stan' still.'

Then he would walk round to the back of the cart ostensibly to see if the load were sitting right but in reality to see if his bow, made of green willow, and his arrows, made of horned wheat-straws tipped with soft-pithed stems of young elder were still where he had hidden them secretly in a slot above the cart-springs.

‘Alexander,' the girl would say entreatingly as she followed him. ‘Alexander.'

The boy in disgust would go back to the mare, and the girl, following, would hold the bridle again and caress the mare's nose, murmuring softly.

Suddenly, as they were loading the last of the sheaves by the hedge-side, the men shouted: ‘A leveret! After it, boy! After it! A leveret!'

In the bright moonlight the leveret was clearly visible leaping across the stubble and then doubling to hide in the few remaining shocks. The boy let go the horse's bridle and a second later was hunting the young hare between the barley shocks, urged on and taunted by the men: ‘After it, after it. Ah! you ain't quick enough. There it is, after it! Ah! you lost it.'

When the leveret disappeared the boy stopped, at a loss.

‘It went in the last shock,' said Cathy.

She had followed him in the hunt, and now she followed him as he ran to the shock and began swishing it and beating it with his hands and rustling the sheaves in order to scare the leveret. Then when he began to unbuild the shock she also helped to
throw the sheaves aside, and at last the leveret bolted again, scurrying wildly across the moonlit stubble for the hedge.

‘In the ditch!' the men called. ‘You'll have him. He'll skulk! You'll have him.'

Alexander, tearing across the stubble, flung himself into the ditch. He heard the soft rustle of the girl's dress slipping into the dry grass behind him, and a moment later she was beside him, panting quietly.

‘You go that way,' he said.

‘He went your way,' she said.

‘Listen!' he whispered. ‘Listen!'

In the ditch there was the faintest rustling. They lay still together, the girl touching him.

‘Behind you!' he shouted. ‘Behind you!'

Springing up, he scrambled past the girl and ran back up the ditch, kicking the dry grasses with both feet as he ran. There was a mad scuttling as the leveret broke loose again, and struggled among the dead thorn stumps of the hedge to make its wild escape into the field beyond. Flinging himself down in a last attempt to catch it, Alexander lay deep among the dry grasses in an attitude of listening and watching. There was no sound except the girl's breathing as she too lay listening. But in the blaze of the moonlight the stubble, seen from the ditch, seemed like a vast white plain with the barley-sheaves like an encampment of tents upon it and the loaded cart like a covered wagon being unhitched for the night.

The girl had crept along the ditch to lie beside him and for the first time he was glad that she was so near.

‘We're Indians,' he whispered.

Without speaking she lay very close to him and put one hand across his shoulders, but he was so
absorbed in watching the plain, the tents and the wagon in the moonlight that he was hardly aware of it.

‘Don't move,' he said. ‘They mustn't see us. Don't move.'

‘Let's stay here,' she said.