Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (374 page)

When he is three inches off the bridge, he pulls himself up straight, and the brickwork, as the train dashes through, kills a fly that was trespassing on the upper part of his right ear.

Then, when the bridge is passed, and the train is skirting the very edge of a precipice, so that a stone dropped just outside the window would tumble straight down 300 feet, he suddenly lets go, and, balancing himself on the foot-board without holding on to anything, commences to dance a sort of Teutonic cellar-flap, and to warm his body by flinging his arms about in the manner of cabmen on a cold day.

The first essential to comfortable railway travelling in Germany is to make up your mind not to care a rap whether the guard gets killed in the course of the journey or not. Any tender feeling towards the guard makes railway travelling in the Fatherland a simple torture.

At five a.m. (how fair and sweet and fresh the earth looks in the early morning! Those lazy people who lie in bed till eight or nine miss half the beauty of the day, if they but knew it. It is only we who rise early that really enjoy Nature properly) I gave up trying to get to sleep, and made my way to the dressing-room at the end of the car, and had a wash.

It is difficult to wash in these little places, because the cars shake so; and when you have got both your hands and half your head in the basin, and are unable to protect yourself, the sides of the room, and the water-tap and the soap-dish, and other cowardly things, take a mean advantage of your helplessness to punch you as hard as ever they can; and when you back away from these, the door swings open and slaps you from behind.

I succeeded, however, in getting myself fairly wet all over, even if I did nothing else, and then I looked about for a towel. Of course, there was no towel. That is the trick. The idea of the railway authorities is to lure the passenger, by providing him with soap and water and a basin, into getting himself thoroughly soaked, and then to let it dawn upon him that there is no towel. That is their notion of fun!

I thought of the handkerchiefs in my bag, but to get to them I should have to pass compartments containing ladies, and I was only in early morning dress.

So I had to wipe myself with a newspaper which I happened to have in my pocket, and a more unsatisfactory thing to dry oneself upon I cannot conceive.

I woke up B. when I got back to the carriage, and persuaded him to go and have a wash; and in listening to the distant sound of his remarks when he likewise discovered that there was no towel, the recollection of my own discomfiture passed gently away.

Ah! how true it is, as good people tell us, that in thinking of the sorrows of others, we learn to forget our own!

For fifty miles before one reaches Munich, the land is flat, stale, and apparently very unprofitable, and there is little to interest the looker-out. He sits straining his eyes towards the horizon, eagerly longing for some sign of the city to come in sight.

It lies very low, however, and does all it can to escape observation; and it is not until he is almost within its streets that he discovers it.

THE REST OF SUNDAY, THE 25TH

We Seek Breakfast. — I Air My German. — The Art of Gesture. — The Intelligence of the Première Danseuse. — Performance of English Pantomime in the Pyrenees. — Sad Result Therefrom. — The “German Conversation” Book. — Its Narrow-minded View of Human Wants and Aspirations. — Sunday in Munich. — Hans and Gretchen. — High Life v. Low Life.—”A Beer-Cellar.”

At Munich we left our luggage at the station, and went in search of breakfast. Of course, at eight o’clock in the morning none of the big cafés were open; but at length, beside some gardens, we found an old-fashioned looking restaurant, from which came a pleasant odour of coffee and hot onions; and walking through and seating ourselves at one of the little tables, placed out under the trees, we took the bill of fare in our hands, and summoned the waiter to our side.

I ordered the breakfast. I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to try my German. I ordered coffee and rolls as a groundwork. I got over that part of my task very easily. With the practice I had had during the last two days, I could have ordered coffee and rolls for forty. Then I foraged round for luxuries, and ordered a green salad. I had some difficulty at first in convincing the man that it was not a boiled cabbage that I wanted, but succeeded eventually in getting that silly notion out of his head.

I still had a little German left, even after that. So I ordered an omelette also.

“Tell him a savoury one,” said B., “or he will be bringing us something full of hot jam and chocolate-creams. You know their style.”

“Oh, yes,” I answered. “Of course. Yes. Let me see. What is the German for savoury?”

“Savoury?” mused B. “Oh! ah! hum! Bothered if I know! Confound the thing — I can’t think of it!”

I could not think of it either. As a matter of fact, I never knew it. We tried the man with French. We said:

“
Une omelette aux fines herbes
.”

As he did not appear to understand that, we gave it him in bad English. We twisted and turned the unfortunate word “savoury” into sounds so quaint, so sad, so unearthly, that you would have thought they might have touched the heart of a savage. This stoical Teuton, however, remained unmoved. Then we tried pantomime.

Pantomime is to language what marmalade, according to the label on the pot, is to butter, “an excellent (occasional) substitute.” But its powers as an interpreter of thought are limited. At least, in real life they are so. As regards a ballet, it is difficult to say what is not explainable by pantomime. I have seen the bad man in a ballet convey to the
première danseuse
by a subtle movement of the left leg, together with some slight assistance from the drum, the heartrending intelligence that the lady she had been brought up to believe was her mother was in reality only her aunt by marriage. But then it must be borne in mind that the
première danseuse
is a lady whose quickness of perception is altogether unique. The
première danseuse
knows precisely what a gentleman means when he twirls round forty-seven times on one leg, and then stands on his head. The average foreigner would, in all probability, completely misunderstand the man.

A friend of mine once, during a tour in the Pyrenees, tried to express gratitude by means of pantomime. He arrived late one evening at a little mountain inn, where the people made him very welcome, and set before him their best; and he, being hungry, appreciated their kindness, and ate a most excellent supper.

Indeed, so excellent a meal did he make, and so kind and attentive were his hosts to him, that, after supper, he felt he wanted to thank them, and to convey to them some idea of how pleased and satisfied he was.

He could not explain himself in language. He only knew enough Spanish to just ask for what he wanted — and even to do that he had to be careful not to want much. He had not got as far as sentiment and emotion at that time. Accordingly he started to express himself in action. He stood up and pointed to the empty table where the supper had been, then opened his mouth and pointed down his throat. Then he patted that region of his anatomy where, so scientific people tell us, supper goes to, and smiled.

He has a rather curious smile, has my friend. He himself is under the impression that there is something very winning in it, though, also, as he admits, a touch of sadness. They use it in his family for keeping the children in order.

The people of the inn seemed rather astonished at his behaviour. They regarded him, with troubled looks, and then gathered together among themselves and consulted in whispers.

“I evidently have not made myself sufficiently clear to these simple peasants,” said my friend to himself. “I must put more vigour into this show.”

Accordingly he rubbed and patted that part of himself to which I have previously alluded — and which, being a modest and properly brought-up young man, nothing on earth shall induce me to mention more explicitly — with greater energy than ever, and added another inch or two of smile; and he also made various graceful movements indicative, as he thought, of friendly feeling and contentment.

At length a ray of intelligence burst upon the faces of his hosts, and they rushed to a cupboard and brought out a small black bottle.

“Ah! that’s done it,” thought my friend. “Now they have grasped my meaning. And they are pleased that I am pleased, and are going to insist on my drinking a final friendly bumper of wine with them, the good old souls!”

They brought the bottle over, and poured out a wineglassful, and handed it to him, making signs that he should drink it off quickly.

“Ah!” said my friend to himself, as he took the glass and raised it to the light, and winked at it wickedly, “this is some rare old spirit peculiar to the district — some old heirloom kept specially for the favoured guest.”

And he held the glass aloft and made a speech, in which he wished long life and many grand-children to the old couple, and a handsome husband to the daughter, and prosperity to the whole village. They could not understand him, he knew; but he thought there might be that in his tones and gestures from which they would gather the sense of what he was saying, and understand how kindly he felt towards them all. When he had finished, he put his hand upon his heart and smiled some more, and then tossed the liquor off at a gulp.

Three seconds later he discovered that it was a stringent and trustworthy emetic that he had swallowed. His audience had mistaken his signs of gratitude for efforts on his part to explain to them that he was poisoned, or, at all events, was suffering from acute and agonising indigestion, and had done what they could to comfort him.

The drug that they had given him was not one of those common, cheap medicines that lose their effect before they have been in the system half-an-hour. He felt that it would be useless to begin another supper then, even if he could get one, and so he went to bed a good deal hungrier and a good deal less refreshed than when he arrived at the inn.

Gratitude is undoubtedly a thing that should not be attempted by the amateur pantomimist.

“Savoury” is another. B. and I very nearly did ourselves a serious internal injury, trying to express it. We slaved like cab-horses at it — for about five minutes, and succeeded in conveying to the mind of the waiter that we wanted to have a game at dominoes.

Then, like a beam of sunlight to a man lost in some dark, winding cave, came to me the reflection that I had in my pocket a German conversation book.

How stupid of me not to have thought of it before. Here had we been racking our brains and our bodies, trying to explain our wants to an uneducated German, while, all the time, there lay to our hands a book specially written and prepared to assist people out of the very difficulty into which we had fallen — a book carefully compiled with the express object of enabling English travellers who, like ourselves, only spoke German in a dilettante fashion, to make their modest requirements known throughout the Fatherland, and to get out of the country alive and uninjured.

I hastily snatched the book from my pocket, and commenced to search for dialogues dealing with the great food question. There were none!

There were lengthy and passionate “Conversations with a laundress” about articles that I blush to remember. Some twenty pages of the volume were devoted to silly dialogues between an extraordinarily patient shoemaker and one of the most irritating and constitutionally dissatisfied customers that an unfortunate shop-keeper could possibly be cursed with; a customer who, after twaddling for about forty minutes, and trying on, apparently, every pair of boots in the place, calmly walks out with:

“Ah! well, I shall not purchase anything to-day. Good-morning!”

The shopkeeper’s reply, by-the-by, is not given. It probably took the form of a boot-jack, accompanied by phrases deemed useless for the purposes of the Christian tourist.

There was really something remarkable about the exhaustiveness of this “conversation at the shoemaker’s.” I should think the book must have been written by someone who suffered from corns. I could have gone to a German shoemaker with this book and have talked the man’s head off.

Then there were two pages of watery chatter “on meeting a friend in the street”—”Good-morning, sir (or madam).” “I wish you a merry Christmas.” “How is your mother?” As if a man who hardly knew enough German to keep body and soul together, would want to go about asking after the health of a foreign person’s mother.

There were also “conversations in the railway carriage,” conversations between travelling lunatics, apparently, and dialogues “during the passage.” “How do you feel now?” “Pretty well as yet; but I cannot say how long it will last.” “Oh, what waves! I now feel very unwell and shall go below. Ask for a basin for me.” Imagine a person who felt like that wanting to know the German for it.

At the end of the book were German proverbs and “Idiomatic Phrases,” by which latter would appear to be meant in all languages, “phrases for the use of idiots”:—”A sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the roof.”—”Time brings roses.”—”The eagle does not catch flies.”—”One should not buy a cat in a sack,” — as if there were a large class of consumers who habitually did purchase their cats in that way, thus enabling unscrupulous dealers to palm off upon them an inferior cat, and whom it was accordingly necessary to advise against the custom.

I skimmed through all this nonsense, but not a word could I discover anywhere about a savoury omelette. Under the head of “Eating and Drinking,” I found a short vocabulary; but it was mainly concerned with “raspberries” and “figs” and “medlars” (whatever they may be; I never heard of them myself), and “chestnuts,” and such like things that a man hardly ever wants, even when he is in his own country. There was plenty of oil and vinegar, and pepper and salt and mustard in the list, but nothing to put them on. I could have had a hard-boiled egg, or a slice of ham; but I did not want a hard-boiled egg, or a slice of ham. I wanted a savoury omelette; and that was an article of diet that the authors of this “Handy Little Guide,” as they termed it in their preface, had evidently never heard of.