will say I have
done it for lard. They will never have me back.’ She says, ‘Oh, you’re very
erratic.’
‘Erotic?’
He brightens with the word, smiling towards her. ‘Erratic,’ she repeats.
He stops and takes his little dictionary from the inside pocket of his saggy
tweed jacket and gravely looks up the word.
They are
walking along the edge of the wood. This time it is another of the band, Heinz
the communist, small and tough, the survivor of a captured U-boat who shakes
hands with himself continually for his decision to work against Hitler and who
looks with breezy energy to the inevitable defeat of Germany when he hopes to
take up his peacetime job as a waiter in London instead of Hamburg. Heinz the
communist and Erich the count are her favourite walking-partners. Some
afternoons they walk all three together. The two men practise their English on
Elsa. The path by the edge of the wood is narrow, for the fields have been
furrowed right to the verge because of the wartime need for crops to grow on as
many lengths and patches of earth as possible.
They
walk through the woods now, these three, talking of their past as if they were
middle-aged and not all in their young twenties. The war has given them a past.
It will never be the same afterwards. They none of them want it so. Heinz
speaks cheerfully of his boyhood in the cold alleys of Berlin. Erich glimpses a
rabbit before it bobs into its hole. ‘If I had a gun I would have shot him for
supper,’ he says. ‘As a boy I shot rabbits.’
‘I
stole rabbits,’ says Heinz, and goes on to recount, in English that becomes
more curiously constructed as his story develops, how adept he was as a boy at
slipping dead rabbits off their hooks, where they hung at the doors of big
butchers’ shops, then bearing them to an alley butcher’s where he obtained a
very small but precious price for them. So they talk of their past, Heinz with
his alley-wits in the hungry back streets, his gang battles with the Hitler
Youth and his training as a radio operator in the navy in the early days of the
war, gives out his past in a series of pictures, distinct, primitive,
undisdainful, without hope, without pain, without any comment but the grin and
laugh of a constitutional survivor, who has, and always will have, plans for
the future.
Erich,
whose home is a castle among the mountains of Southern Austria, now occupied
by the military, does not seem to care much that it once contained his past
life. This past of his still clings about his young personality in bits, as
late leaves droop singly from a winter tree; he has shaken off most of it. He
was married shortly before the war. It was not a love match. ‘But,’ he has once
said, ‘if I find they have killed my wife I shall of course shoot myself.’ He
trudges through the woods with Heinz and Elsa, identifying birds by their
calls, naming ferns, examining burrows in the earth and catkins on the trees,
about all of which he is explicitly knowledgeable. They trudge through last
year’s leaves under the spring foliage and speculate as everyone else is doing
about the forthcoming D-Day, whether the Allies will attack from North Africa,
from Norway, or from the Channel. Elsa, too, has brought her past life with her
and shares it as casually as she shares the sandwiches of bread, margarine and
bits of cold bacon whenever she can scrape these items together from her allotted
rations. She brings with her scraps of her life in a family of poor relations
in a semi-detached house in Sevenoaks, a tumble-down education at a boarding
school where she played lacrosse and the piano. The three laugh often, for they
think of things to laugh about and offer them round, one by one, until it is
time to return to the village and wait for the official bus at four o’clock
which will carry them to the Compound for their work. The villagers stare at
them with contempt, not knowing in the least what is going on, but knowing only
that their countryside
done it for lard. They will never have me back.’ She says, ‘Oh, you’re very
erratic.’
‘Erotic?’
He brightens with the word, smiling towards her. ‘Erratic,’ she repeats.
He stops and takes his little dictionary from the inside pocket of his saggy
tweed jacket and gravely looks up the word.
They are
walking along the edge of the wood. This time it is another of the band, Heinz
the communist, small and tough, the survivor of a captured U-boat who shakes
hands with himself continually for his decision to work against Hitler and who
looks with breezy energy to the inevitable defeat of Germany when he hopes to
take up his peacetime job as a waiter in London instead of Hamburg. Heinz the
communist and Erich the count are her favourite walking-partners. Some
afternoons they walk all three together. The two men practise their English on
Elsa. The path by the edge of the wood is narrow, for the fields have been
furrowed right to the verge because of the wartime need for crops to grow on as
many lengths and patches of earth as possible.
They
walk through the woods now, these three, talking of their past as if they were
middle-aged and not all in their young twenties. The war has given them a past.
It will never be the same afterwards. They none of them want it so. Heinz
speaks cheerfully of his boyhood in the cold alleys of Berlin. Erich glimpses a
rabbit before it bobs into its hole. ‘If I had a gun I would have shot him for
supper,’ he says. ‘As a boy I shot rabbits.’
‘I
stole rabbits,’ says Heinz, and goes on to recount, in English that becomes
more curiously constructed as his story develops, how adept he was as a boy at
slipping dead rabbits off their hooks, where they hung at the doors of big
butchers’ shops, then bearing them to an alley butcher’s where he obtained a
very small but precious price for them. So they talk of their past, Heinz with
his alley-wits in the hungry back streets, his gang battles with the Hitler
Youth and his training as a radio operator in the navy in the early days of the
war, gives out his past in a series of pictures, distinct, primitive,
undisdainful, without hope, without pain, without any comment but the grin and
laugh of a constitutional survivor, who has, and always will have, plans for
the future.
Erich,
whose home is a castle among the mountains of Southern Austria, now occupied
by the military, does not seem to care much that it once contained his past
life. This past of his still clings about his young personality in bits, as
late leaves droop singly from a winter tree; he has shaken off most of it. He
was married shortly before the war. It was not a love match. ‘But,’ he has once
said, ‘if I find they have killed my wife I shall of course shoot myself.’ He
trudges through the woods with Heinz and Elsa, identifying birds by their
calls, naming ferns, examining burrows in the earth and catkins on the trees,
about all of which he is explicitly knowledgeable. They trudge through last
year’s leaves under the spring foliage and speculate as everyone else is doing
about the forthcoming D-Day, whether the Allies will attack from North Africa,
from Norway, or from the Channel. Elsa, too, has brought her past life with her
and shares it as casually as she shares the sandwiches of bread, margarine and
bits of cold bacon whenever she can scrape these items together from her allotted
rations. She brings with her scraps of her life in a family of poor relations
in a semi-detached house in Sevenoaks, a tumble-down education at a boarding
school where she played lacrosse and the piano. The three laugh often, for they
think of things to laugh about and offer them round, one by one, until it is
time to return to the village and wait for the official bus at four o’clock
which will carry them to the Compound for their work. The villagers stare at
them with contempt, not knowing in the least what is going on, but knowing only
that their countryside
Similar Books
