Horizon (9 page)

“Time I was getting out of here, and getting out pretty damn quick,” he said emphatically. Now that the man from Bozen was here it would be easier to give his ultimatum. It hadn’t been so easy with Frau Schichtl. Three times now, upstairs in this room, he had made the resolution that he was leaving. Three times, downstairs, his resolution had melted away. Somehow a woman always made you feel a swine if you insisted on doing something she didn’t want you to do. Today, it was true, he had begun to say what was on his mind. He smiled, remembering the way in which the door had closed.

“Five minutes past eight,” he said. He talked aloud quite a lot now. Well, he had certainly used up five minutes of this day. He looked down at the roadway, and wondered how slow it would be to travel through roads as mud-filled as that. The ground was thawing out now, and the water from the melting snow on the mountains streamed down on to the meadows. But Frau Schichtl had said it drained off quickly. She had said the higher fields and woods were already passable. If Johann would guide him by the secret paths known to those who had been brought up in this district the journey would be much simpler. And once
he was out of this chain of mountains he could strike alone south-east across the plains. He could reach the Adriatic and Jugoslavia this time. His plans to reach them were still as fresh in his mind as they had been eight months ago.

He stiffened. He stood motionless, his eyes rigid. On the road, slipping heavily on the yellowish mud, were two figures. They were walking towards Hinterwald. They hesitated as they neared the house, halted beside a tree. The taller figure seemed to be urging the other on. They started again towards the house. The uncertain one was limping now. He was leaning heavily on his friend’s shoulder.

Lennox moved quickly. He was out of his room, and he was knocking sharply on all the three doors on the landing before he had even got his thoughts straight. From one door came Johann’s voice, and then a deeper voice asking, “What the devil?”

It was Johann who appeared. His sleepy eyes opened fully as Lennox pushed past him to confront the bearded man who was sitting up in bed.

“Two men are approaching this house,” Lennox was saying. “American flyers, I think. One of you had better get downstairs and put out the welcome mat.”

“What the devil—” the bearded man began. He rubbed the back of his head and yawned widely. But he was reaching for his trousers lying over the rail at the foot of the bed. “I’ll go,” he grumbled. He glanced at his large silver watch on the chair beside him. “Three hours’ sleep. Hand me those boots, damn you. Thanks. So you are Lennox? I’m Paul Mahlknecht. Johann, stand by. If I call come downstairs. Lennox, you stay up here.”

Lennox nodded. Paul Mahlknecht was already hurrying out of the room, buttoning his trousers with one hand, slipping his broad bright-coloured braces over his shoulders with the other. He lifted his waistcoat from the chair as he kicked the door open. He gave Lennox a rueful shake of his head as he left the room. “No rest these days,” he said, with considerable enjoyment.

Downstairs the front door was opened. There was the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps.

“Anyone here?” a strange voice called. It repeated the question in English.

Lennox stood very still. Then he crossed over to the door and closed it quietly.

“Perhaps they are
your
friends,” Johann said, with his broad, simple smile.

“Perhaps.” Lennox was too tense. He walked over to the window. This time he was looking from the back of the house, over to the pine woods, up to the mountains. This was the view he had seen each night as he had waited for someone who had never come. Now they had come. He couldn’t believe it.

“Perhaps,” he said again, trying to fight down his emotion.

Johann was talking as he dressed. He was half grumbling, half pleased. “Another journey,” he was saying. “I’ve just finished taking three Americans into Jugoslavia. God, can’t they give a man some rest?”

Peter Lennox smiled at that. He turned from the window to look at the “man.” The boy’s face was hidden by a rough towel as he polished his red-apple cheeks.

“So that’s what you’ve been doing in these last months,” Lennox said. He realised now why Johann had kept silent about such a job. Lennox would have wanted to go along too.

“That’s what I’ve been doing.” Pride was in Johann’s voice. “Personal escort service.” He threw the towel at Lennox, and began pulling on his shirt.

“Meet any trouble?”

“It’s getting more difficult,” Johann acknowledged. “The first batches were easy. The Germans never guessed we would
help any Allied flyers. But now the remains of several planes have been found in the South Tyrol, without a live American or Britisher to show for them. So the Germans are beginning to wonder. No grounded flyer could make his way alone out of these mountains unless he were an expert climber and had a mountaineering map. He would have to come down into the valleys and ask for help. Now the Germans are increasing their garrisons and patrols. They are in a nasty temper about that, too.” The smile had left Johann’s face. Watching him, Lennox suddenly realised that Johann was no longer a boy. But then, journeys over and around these Dolomite peaks in winter would age anyone. Death lay waiting at many a twisting corner in a mountain path.

“And how have you been?” Johann’s politeness was formal. He was really listening for any possible call from downstairs. When Lennox gave no answer to that he went on cheerily, “Got to keep an ear cocked, you know.” But his eyes were thoughtful and he was watching the Englishman.

“What you need is some exercise,” Johann said suddenly. “Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you started some mountain-climbing too, soon.”

“Perhaps I shall,” Lennox said grimly.

Johann was still watching him, as if he could read the meaning behind the short words. “I don’t blame you,” he said at last. “Being shut up in this house would drive me crazy. But you can’t tell that to my mother, though.” He laughed and then stopped short. He opened the door slightly. It was Mahlknecht, calling in very definite terms for both of them to hurry up and come downstairs.

“Both of us?” Lennox asked, and there was a first real note
of gladness in his voice. His hope had grown to a certainty.

Johann pushed him good-naturedly out of the room towards the staircase. “Let Uncle Paul set the pace,” he whispered, “Cousin Peter from the North Tyrol.” He was grinning widely. Lennox was smiling too as they clattered down the wooden stairs.

* * *

In the sitting-room there were mud-caked footsteps on the floor, and two pairs of heavy flying-boots lying side by side. That must have been the point where Paul Mahlknecht had stopped the two strangers and made them take off their boots. Frau Schichtl’s rules were observed even by the formidable brother from Bozen, it seemed.

Mahlknecht had chosen to remain standing. The two flyers were sitting on the hard wooden bench against the wall near the stove. They were huddling towards the heat of its wood fire. On that seat the light from the two kitchen windows fell sharply across their faces. Their eyes looked up as Johann and Lennox entered.

Mahlknecht said, “One of them speaks a little German. The other doesn’t. They don’t seem to understand me very well.”

Lennox, conscious of the strangers’ eyes watching Johann and him curiously, kept his face emotionless. But the tide of hope which had surged through his heart only a minute ago suddenly ebbed. These men hadn’t come seeking him. They had obviously not even asked for him; and they couldn’t even talk German properly. The men who would be sent must certainly be able to talk and understand the Austrian dialect of the Tyrol. And then Lennox was conscious of another thing: Mahlknecht, whose voice upstairs had held less accent than Johann’s, was
now using the coarsest form of dialect. Words were slurred, endings were altered, some consonants were eliminated, vowels were broadened to the point of caricature. Lennox had to strain to catch the meaning of these three sentences. And a signal seemed to have been given to Johann. He stopped lounging, drew his hands out of the pockets of his trousers, and decided not to sit at the table as he had intended. He strolled carelessly over to one of the windows, and leaned against the broad sill with his back to the light. Lennox chose a chair in the darkest corner of the kitchen, between Johann and the door. It was then that he wondered why Paul Mahlknecht should have called him downstairs along with Johann. Unless these men had been sent to make contact with him, it was dangerous and stupid to bring him down here. But the dark, bearded face of Mahlknecht with its broad brow, deep-set and thoughtful eyes gave no answer. And something in the rich, deep calmness of this man showed his strength and will and judgment. Peter Lennox sat back in his chair. He was watching the two strangers now. If he had been brought down here then there was some reason. He would have to find it.

“Does no one speak English?” the taller of the two strangers asked. He spoke slowly in German, looking anxiously at Johann and then at Lennox. He was a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man with irregular features. The other had a charming, pretty-boy look, with fair hair and a delicate cut to the bones of his face. His light grey eyes were quite blank of expression, as if he had come to the end of his resistance. He would be a tiger among the girls, Lennox thought, but this was definitely not one of his better moments.

Mahlknecht drew a deeply curved pipe from his pocket. He
concentrated on lighting it. His eyes met Lennox’s. There was a single urgent message in them. Then they fell to watching a briefly flaring strand of tobacco. He packed the smoking bowl more tightly with his thumb, and then took a long pull at the yellowed pipe. Lennox wanted to smile: this was the treatment with a vengeance. He had been given the same long silences, the same pauses between question and answer, when he had first come here. The only difference was that he had been offered something to smoke, something to eat and drink. The only difference... Lennox sat motionless in the shadowy corner, withdrawing into the anonymity of its stillness. But his eyes were doubly watchful now, and his mind was worried.

Mahlknecht began to speak, telling Johann and Lennox that here were two American flyers who had crashed some miles away after yesterday’s attack on the Brenner railway. They were the only survivors. They had walked through the night. They wanted help to take them out of these mountains.

The two flyers were watching Mahlknecht with intelligent concentration. They seemed reassured by his voice, for they leaned back against the wall as if the action was now taken out of their hands. The dark-haired man was beginning to feel warmer: he opened his lambskin-lined flying-jacket, and pulled it off his shoulders. He wore a faded and worn American flyer’s blouse, decorated with three medals and the insignia of captain. The fair-haired flyer followed his example. Again there was an American blouse, well-fitted and this time less worn. There were decorations along the left breast-pocket, and a lieutenant’s bar. Both men were lusty specimens: there was a natural glow of health on their skins, their eyes were clear and alert. The fair-haired one drew a crushed packet of American cigarettes out of
his blouse-pocket, and lit one with an efficient lighter. He was sitting more erect now, as if his initial exhaustion had passed. He listened in silence, his eyes watchful, while his companion spoke.

“Will you help us? We need a place to sleep, some food and drink, and a guide tonight to take us south through the mountain passes.” The man’s German was ungrammatical. It was slow and halting. But some vague disturbing emotion jangled an alarm in Peter Lennox’s mind. The man’s German was ungrammatical, but words he used were easy, colloquial words, and they were correctly pronounced. If you used such words so naturally why should there be such grammatical mistakes? Why the long pauses between fluent phrases? These things didn’t match.

Lennox glanced at Johann and Paul Mahlknecht. They had noticed no inconsistency in the man’s speech. Johann was still watching the flyers placidly, neither believing nor disbelieving. Paul Mahlknecht drew patiently at his pipe, one hand cupping its heavy bowl, the other tucked into his belt. His brown eyes were watchful under their heavy brows, but there had been no change in his expression during this last minute. I’m imagining things, Lennox thought angrily. He hated any proof of these months of loneliness: he had become too damned jumpy, too suspicious, too bloody-well sensitive. And yet the uneasiness in his mind wouldn’t leave him. Johann and his uncle hadn’t noticed the strange unbalance in this foreigner’s speech, but then they had never had to learn to speak German as a foreigner. They had grown up with the language. And Lennox, remembering his own first struggles to talk German, thought of the stilted vocabulary and the mistakes in pronunciation which
went with grammatical errors and stupid pauses.

“Why did you come here?” Mahlknecht was asking slowly. He was fussing with his pipe again. It seemed as if nothing were going to hurry him. The quiet room, the quiet fields and trees beyond the windows, gave emphasis to his deliberateness. The two flyers were beginning to be restless. The blond lieutenant fingered the decorations on his chest, as if to win the three peasants’ trust and sympathy. The captain began replying. He was explaining that a house near the plane crash had sheltered them yesterday, that they had been told of men who lived under the Schlern Mountain who would be able to help them, that they had walked all night with the massive peak to guide them.

Lennox was only listening to the man’s voice and the way he used it. He didn’t listen to the words. He was suddenly convinced that Paul Mahlknecht had called him down here to make a decision. He had been called down here to determine if these men were really American flyers. The responsibility of refusing help to possibly honest friends had been placed on him. He glanced quickly at Mahlknecht. The same short but insistent look which had been given him when he entered the room was his reply. Now he was indeed convinced: Mahlknecht needed his help; Mahlknecht was somehow doubtful; Mahlknecht depended on his being able to judge a real American when he saw one.