Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (371 page)

He seemed not only disappointed, but indignant. He explained the matter to the crowd, and they all seemed indignant.

Why
everybody should be indignant with me I could not comprehend. There are plenty of people who do not understand Scandinavian. It was absurd to be vexed with me because
I
did not. I do know a little, and that is more than some people do.

I inquired of the old gentleman about B. He did understand me. I must give him credit for that. But beyond understanding me, he was of no more use than the others; and why they had taken so much trouble to fetch him, I could not imagine.

What would have happened if the difficulty had continued much longer (for I was getting thoroughly wild with the lot of them) I cannot say. Fortunately, at this moment I caught sight of B. himself, who had just entered the room.

I could not have greeted him more heartily if I had wanted to borrow money of him.

“Well, I
am
glad to see you again!” I cried. “Well, this
is
pleasant! I thought I had lost you!”

“Why, you are English!” cried out the old gentleman in the white hat, in very good Saxon, on hearing me speak to B.

“Well, I know that,” I replied, “and I’m proud of it. Have you any objection to my being English?”

“Not in the least,” he answered, “if you’d only talk English instead of Norwegian. I’m English myself;” and he walked away, evidently much puzzled.

B. said to me as we sat down:

“I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you, J. — you know too many languages for this continent. Your linguistic powers will be the ruin of us if you don’t hold them in a bit. You don’t know any Sanscrit or Chaldean, do you?”

I replied that I did not.

“Any Hebrew or Chinese?”

“Not a word.”

“Sure?”

“Not so much as a full stop in any of them.”

“That’s a blessing,” said B., much relieved. “You would be trying to palm off one or other of them on some simple-minded peasant for German, if you did!”

It is a wearisome journey, through the long, hot hours of the morning, to Cologne. The carriage is stifling. Railway travellers, I have always noticed, regard fresh air as poison. They like to live on the refuse of each other’s breath, and close up every window and ventilator tight. The sun pours down through glass and blind and scorches our limbs. Our heads and our bodies ache. The dust and soot drift in and settle on our clothes, and grime our hands and face. We all doze and wake up with a start, and fall to sleep again upon each other. I wake, and find my neighbour with his head upon my shoulder. It seems a shame to cast him off; he looks so trustful. But he is heavy. I push him on to the man the other side. He is just as happy there. We roll about; and when the train jerks, we butt each other with our heads. Things fall from the rack upon us. We look up surprised, and go to sleep again. My bag tumbles down upon the head of the unjust man in the corner. (Is it retribution?) He starts up, begs my pardon, and sinks back into oblivion. I am too sleepy to pick up the bag. It lies there on the floor. The unjust man uses it for a footstool.

We look out, through half-closed eyes, upon the parched, level, treeless land; upon the little patchwork farms of corn and beetroot, oats and fruit, growing undivided, side by side, each looking like a little garden dropped down into the plain; upon the little dull stone houses.

A steeple appears far away upon the horizon. (The first thing that we ask of men is their faith: “What do you believe?” The first thing that they show us is their church: “
This
we believe.”) Then a tall chimney ranges itself alongside. (First faith, then works.) Then a confused jumble of roofs, out of which, at last, stand forth individual houses, factories, streets, and we draw up in a sleeping town.

People open the carriage door, and look in upon us. They do not appear to think much of us, and close the door again quickly, with a bang, and we sleep once more.

As we rumble on, the country slowly wakes. Rude V-shaped carts, drawn by yoked oxen, and even sometimes by cows, wait patiently while we cross the long, straight roads stretching bare for many a mile across the plain. Peasants trudge along the fields to work. Smoke rises from the villages and farm-houses. Passengers are waiting at the wayside stations.

Towards mid-day, on looking out, we see two tiny spires standing side by side against the sky. They seem to be twins, and grow taller as we approach. I describe them to B., and he says they are the steeples of Cologne Cathedral; and we all begin to yawn and stretch, and to collect our bags and coats and umbrellas.

HALF OF SATURDAY 24TH, AND SOME OF SUNDAY, 25TH

Difficulty of Keeping this Diary. — A Big Wash. — The German Bed. — Its Goings On. — Manners and Customs of the German Army. — B.’s Besetting Sin. — Cologne Cathedral. — Thoughts Without Words. — A Curious Custom.

This diary is getting mixed. The truth is, I am not living as a man who keeps a diary should live. I ought, of course, to sit down in front of this diary at eleven o’clock at night, and write down all that has occurred to me during the day. But at eleven o’clock at night, I am in the middle of a long railway journey, or have just got up, or am just going to bed for a couple of hours. We go to bed at odd moments, when we happen to come across a bed, and have a few minutes to spare. We have been to bed this afternoon, and are now having another breakfast; and I am not quite sure whether it is yesterday or to-morrow, or what day it is.

I shall not attempt to write up this diary in the orthodox manner, therefore; but shall fix in a few lines whenever I have half-an-hour with nothing better to do.

We washed ourselves in the Rhine at Cologne (we had not had a wash since we had left our happy home in England). We started with the idea of washing ourselves at the hotel; but on seeing the basin and water and towel provided, I decided not to waste my time playing with them. As well might Hercules have attempted to tidy up the Augean stables with a squirt.

We appealed to the chambermaid. We explained to her that we wanted to wash — to clean ourselves — not to blow bubbles. Could we not have bigger basins and more water and more extensive towels? The chambermaid (a staid old lady of about fifty) did not think that anything better could be done for us by the hotel fraternity of Cologne, and seemed to think that the river was more what we wanted.

I fancied that the old soul was speaking sarcastically, but B. said “No;” she was thinking of the baths alongside the river, and suggested that we should go there. I agreed. It seemed to me that the river — the Rhine — would, if anything could, meet the case. There ought to be plenty of water in it now, after the heavy spring rains.

When I saw it, I felt satisfied. I said to B.:

“That’s all right, old man; that’s the sort of thing we need. That is just the sized river I feel I can get myself clean in this afternoon.”

I have heard a good deal in praise of the Rhine, and I am glad to be able to speak well of it myself. I found it most refreshing.

I was, however, sorry that we had washed in it afterwards. I have heard from friends who have travelled since in Germany that we completely spoiled that river for the rest of the season. Not for business purposes, I do not mean. The barge traffic has been, comparatively speaking, uninterfered with. But the tourist trade has suffered terribly. Parties who usually go up the Rhine by steamer have, after looking at the river, gone by train this year. The boat agents have tried to persuade them that the Rhine is always that colour: that it gets like that owing to the dirt and refuse washed down into it during its course among the mountains.

But the tourists have refused to accept this explanation. They have said:

“No. Mountains will account for a good deal, we admit, but not for all
that
. We are acquainted with the ordinary condition of the Rhine, and although muddy, and at times unpleasant, it is passable. As it is this summer, however, we would prefer not to travel upon it. We will wait until after next year’s spring-floods.”

We went to bed after our wash. To the
blasé
English bed-goer, accustomed all his life to the same old hackneyed style of bed night after night, there is something very pleasantly piquant about the experience of trying to sleep in a German bed. He does not know it is a bed at first. He thinks that someone has been going round the room, collecting all the sacks and cushions and antimacassars and such articles that he has happened to find about, and has piled them up on a wooden tray ready for moving. He rings for the chambermaid, and explains to her that she has shown him into the wrong room. He wanted a bedroom.

She says: “This
is
a bedroom.”

He says: “Where’s the bed?”

“There!” she says, pointing to the box on which the sacks and antimacassars and cushions lie piled.

“That!” he cries. “How am I going to sleep in that?”

The chambermaid does not know how he is going to sleep there, never having seen a gentleman go to sleep anywhere, and not knowing how they set about it; but suggests that he might try lying down flat, and shutting his eyes.

“But it is not long enough,” he says.

The chambermaid thinks he will be able to manage, if he tucks his legs up.

He sees that he will not get anything better, and that he must put up with it.

“Oh, very well!” he says. “Look sharp and get it made, then.”

She says: “It is made.”

He turns and regards the girl sternly. Is she taking advantage of his being a lonely stranger, far from home and friends, to mock him? He goes over to what she calls the bed, and snatching off the top-most sack from the pile and holding it up, says:

“Perhaps you’ll tell me what this is, then?”

“That,” says the girl, “that’s the bed!”

He is somewhat nonplussed at the unexpected reply.

“Oh!” he says. “Oh! the bed, is it? I thought it was a pincushion! Well, if it is the bed, then what is it doing out here, on the top of everything else? You think that because I’m only a man, I don’t understand a bed!”

“That’s the proper place for it,” responds the chambermaid.

“What! on top?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then where are the clothes?”

“Underneath, sir.”

“Look here, my good girl,” he says; “you don’t understand me, or I don’t understand you, one or the other. When I go to sleep, I lie on a bed and pull the clothes over me. I don’t want to lie on the clothes, and cover myself with the bed. This isn’t a comic ballet, you know!”

The girl assures him that there is no mistake about the matter at all. There is the bed, made according to German notions of how a bed should be made. He can make the best of it and try to go to sleep upon it, or he can be sulky and go to sleep on the floor.

He is very much surprised. It looks to him the sort of bed that a man would make for himself on coming home late from a party. But it is no use arguing the matter with the girl.

“All right,” he says; “bring me a pillow, and I’ll risk it!”

The chambermaid explains that there are two pillows on the bed already, indicating, as she does so, two flat cushions, each one a yard square, placed one on top of the other at one end of the mixture.

“These!” exclaims the weary traveller, beginning to feel that he does not want to go to bed at all. “These are not pillows! I want something to put my head on; not a thing that comes down to the middle of my back! Don’t tell me that I’ve got to sleep on these things!”

But the girl does tell him so, and also implies that she has something else to do than to stand there all day talking bed-gossip with him.

“Well, just show me how to start,” he says, “which way you get into it, and then I won’t keep you any longer; I’ll puzzle out the rest for myself.”

She explains the trick to him and leaves, and he undresses and crawls in.

The pillows give him a good deal of worry. He does not know whether he is meant to sit on them or merely to lean up against them. In experimenting upon this point, he bumps his head against the top board of the bedstead. At this, he says, “Oh!” and shoots himself down to the bottom of the bed. Here all his ten toes simultaneously come into sharp contact with the board at the bottom.

Nothing irritates a man more than being rapped over the toes, especially if he feels that he has done nothing to deserve it. He says, “Oh, damn!” this time, and spasmodically doubles up his legs, thus giving his knees a violent blow against the board at the side of the bed. (The German bedstead, be it remembered, is built in the form of a shallow, open box, and the victim is thus completely surrounded by solid pieces of wood with sharp edges. I do not know what species of wood it is that is employed. It is extremely hard, and gives forth a curious musical sound when struck sharply with a bone.)

After this he lies perfectly still for a while, wondering where he is going to be hit next. Finding that nothing happens, he begins to regain confidence, and ventures to gently feel around with his left leg and take stock of his position.

For clothes, he has only a very thin blanket and sheet, and beneath these he feels decidedly chilly. The bed is warm enough, so far as it goes, but there is not enough of it. He draws it up round his chin, and then his feet begin to freeze. He pushes it down over his feet, and then all the top part of him shivers.

He tries to roll up into a ball, so as to get the whole of himself underneath it, but does not succeed; there is always some of him left outside in the cold.

He reflects that a “boneless wonder” or a “man serpent” would be comfortable enough in this bed, and wishes that he had been brought up as a contortionist. If he could only tie his legs round his neck, and tuck his head in under his arm, all would yet be well.

Never having been taught to do any really useful tricks such as these, however, he has to be content to remain spread out, warming a bit of himself at a time.

It is, perhaps, foolish of him, amid so many real troubles, to allow a mere æsthetical consideration to worry him, but as he lies there on his back, looking down at himself, the sight that he presents to himself considerably annoys him. The puffed-up bed, resting on the middle of him, gives him the appearance of a man suffering from some monstrous swelling, or else of some exceptionally well-developed frog that has been turned up the wrong way and does not know how to get on to its legs again.