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.
He could have laughed. He had known Americans. Some had been with him in the second Italian camp in which he had been imprisoned. One of them had actually made that attempted escape with him, and they had come to be pretty good friends. But how was that going to make him an expert on recognising an American? If these two strangers had been British he couldn’t have been an expert on them either. The Americans and British varied too much: it was only on the stage or screen that you found stock characteristics. If he could have talked in English he could have tried some operational slang on them. Then he might have learned something. Or he could have spoken about New York. His American friend used to talk a lot about food, about certain restaurants in New York, until Lennox almost believed that he had eaten there himself. But he couldn’t speak in English. He was a peasant living near Hinterwald. He could have laughed in his frustration, but there wasn’t any time for laughing. Desperately he tried to think of some way, some way to find out.
“But we know of no one who could help,” Mahlknecht was saying. He was playing for time, waiting for Lennox’s help. “My nephew here reports for service in Bozen this week. I myself know only the mountains which lie above us. My other nephew is ill as you can see. He was honourably discharged with wounds after having fought in Libya. There is no one here who can help you. And we know of no one who could.”
It struck Lennox that, for a man who could speak little German, the captain was fairly quick at understanding dialect.
“There must be someone in this village who would help us,” he said quickly. “We cannot enter the village in daylight. You could at least send your young nephew to the village for someone who will help us.” The voice was pathetic in its urgency.
Lennox leaned forward. The palms of his hands were hot and damp. In German he asked, “What are these?” He pointed to the ribbons on the flyer’s chest.
The captain frowned in annoyance. “Medals.” He turned towards Mahlknecht again. “We are desperate. We need—”
“What for?” Lennox asked. His was obviously a one-track mind.
‘For campaigns,” the flyer answered impatiently. “Please help—”
“Where?”
The two flyers exchanged bitter glances.
The captain said, pointing, “This is for Egypt and Libya, this for Tunisia, this is a D.F.C. for battle.”
“Libya,” Lennox said reminiscently. “I was there too. And I was in Egypt. But I got no medals, only bullet holes. Where were you in Egypt?”
The captain took a deep breath. “Everywhere.”
“But there weren’t aerodromes everywhere,” Lennox said slowly, with the obstinate logic of a simple man who lived among simple people. “Where was your ’drome? I once was in an attack near a British aerodrome. There were Americans there, too. That’s where I got this.” He held up his scarred right hand. He smiled to show that there was no ill-feeling. “Perhaps you or your friends gave it to me.”
The captain smiled back uneasily. “Perhaps,” he said.
“Where was your aerodrome? The one we attacked was at Beni Jara. Did you know it? About five miles south of a place they called Himeimat. That was a big one. We fought two weeks near there. That’s where I got wounded.” Lennox’s palms were no longer sweating. He was beginning even to enjoy himself. South of Himeimat was the ugliest piece of salt-marsh where no aircraft could ever have landed. And Beni Jara was a name that had just occurred to him. It sounded good enough, he thought. In fact, it sounded damn good.
“I was stationed nearer El Alamein,” the captain said. He mentioned a well-known flying field. But it seemed to Lennox that the captain wasn’t quite happy about something. With a consciously pleasant smile, the captain said quickly, “But of course we knew Beni Jara. In fact, I’ve refuelled there. Why do you ask?” There was a touch of steel in his voice.
“It was a dangerous place. We attacked bravely. Perhaps you did win your medal.”
“Of course I did.” The captain was half indignant, half amused.
“I never won any medals,” Lennox said. He looked at the scar on his hand.
The captain sensed an advantage. He pressed it hard. “The Germans treated the Austrians badly at Beni Jara,” he said with sympathy. “Threw them against us in hopeless attacks. I remember my friends used to talk about that. Don’t you see that is why you must help us? We are your friends. The Germans are enemies of both of us.” He was looking at Mahlknecht as he ended. So was the lieutenant. It was the last appeal.
Lennox was looking too. And Mahlknecht’s deep-set eyes, hardly flickering, caught that look. He saw the slow, careful movement of Lennox’s head. He saw Lennox’s tense left hand, the knuckles folded, the thumb pointing downward.
Mahlknecht cleared his throat. “I have already told you that you came to the wrong place. If there is such a house as you describe then I have never heard of it. We cannot help you. No one can. Please go.”
The two flyers stared at him. Mahlknecht’s face was still impassive, as if what he said now was exactly what he had been saying all along.
“Go,” he repeated. “You came into this house uninvited. Go. Or I shall walk to the village and ’phone Kastelruth that you are here.”
They rose to their feet, and struggled into their flying-jackets. The captain’s jaw was rigid. The fair-haired man’s lips were white-edged. Mahlknecht’s quiet, determined voice was final. They knew that now. They halted in the sitting-room to pull on their cumbersome flying-boots. The three men in the kitchen watched them in silence. In equal silence, the two flyers left the house. They didn’t turn towards the village. They went back towards the pine woods from which they had come.
There was a drawn look in Paul Mahlknecht’s face. He was knocking the ashes out of his pipe with solemn concentration.
“I hope to God that you were right,” he said to Lennox.
11
Frau Schichtl came home early that day. She brought a pile of text-books and note-books. The Kasal girl accompanied her to the door, helping her to carry the slipping load of books. The girl didn’t follow Frau Schichtl indoors. She stood hesitating, speaking a few words in her quiet voice. And Frau Schichtl didn’t invite her to come in. She wasn’t even talking very much. All she said was, “Thank you, Katharina.”
The girl spoke again, but her voice was too low for Lennox to catch the meaning of her words. All he could hear was the soft lilt of a girl’s voice. It was the first girl’s voice he had heard in two years. He moved to the window and watched her walking slowly towards the Kasal farm. She was older than he had thought, but perhaps that was because she was now walking gravely with her head slightly bowed. Before, he had always seen her hurrying, generally running. She was wearing her shoes, and didn’t even seem to notice that the mud was ruining them. He didn’t need to hear the clatter of the books, which Frau Schichtl let fall on the kitchen table, to realise something was wrong.
He turned from the window, and left the fair-haired girl with the strong young body walking over the green fields. Frau Schichtl’s face was white: the bright colour had gone, leaving two small pink daubs on her cheeks where the red veins were broken. Paul Mahlknecht put aside his pipe carefully.
“Well, Frieda?” he asked.
Frau Schichtl sat on the bench. She folded her hands tightly on her lap. Her lips were in a bitter line.
“No more school,” she said,
in a low voice.
“Yes?” Mahlknecht’s quiet question urged her on.
Suddenly she was speaking quickly, angrily.
A man had been appointed teacher of the school. He was Heinrich Mussner, the same Mussner who had left for the North Tyrol in 1939. He had come back to Hinterwald last week. Last night Germans had come from Kastelruth. They had come to see that everyone was happy in Hinterwald. That was their story. They called a meeting to discuss how Hinterwald could be improved. The meeting became merely an intimation that as this district was now incorporated into the Reich, the school would have to be better managed. The woman volunteer must go: she had been a pupil-teacher in 1917, it was true, but that was too long ago. Someone with more recent experience must be chosen. A man must be chosen. Volunteers for the job were asked. And before the slow-moving, astounded villagers had begun to understand the meaning of this move Heinrich Mussner had volunteered. He had been accepted.
“And what teaching has he ever done?” Mahlknecht demanded.
“Seemingly he has been learning to teach in these last five years.”
“Aye,” her brother said grimly. “We can make a guess at what he has been learning to teach.”
Frau Schichtl closed her eyes wearily. “Anyway, he’s in. And I’m out. The Germans left after the meeting. But they are setting up a police station, too. German policemen are arriving tomorrow. And there is to be a German postmaster. And next week more people are returning from the North Tyrol. People like Mussner who left in 1939. They are going to run this village. I can see that.”
“Mussner... Well, at least we know now where he stands,” Mahlknecht said. He picked up his pipe again, and studied the bowl thoughtfully. “We are supposed to be such fools that we really believe Mussner just happened to volunteer. We are supposed not to see that the whole meeting was an obvious German manoeuvre, so that Mussner wouldn’t seem the German choice.” He smiled grimly. “And so we would not distrust or hate him.”
Frau Schichtl rose and went to the table. She began arranging her books on a shelf along the wall. “Where’s Johann?” she asked.
“I sent him to the houses of the Committee with some information. He should be back soon.”
“Anything wrong?” Frau Schichtl asked sharply. “Come, Paul, you don’t have to pretend with me. Something is wrong.” She turned to look at Lennox, and then at the kitchen, as if her answer might be found there. She noticed, for the first time, the dried mud on the sitting-room floor. She walked slowly towards it.
“Oh, Paul!” she said in dismay. “I scrubbed it only yesterday afternoon.” Then all her postponed emotion broke. She began to cry.
“Now, Frieda,” Mahlknecht was saying uncomfortably, “we’ll scrub it for you today. I’ll tell you what happened as soon as you are a sensible woman again. Perhaps this rest from school will be good for you. You’ve been doing too much.”
“I have not.” Frau Schichtl’s tears were in control, but her temper was ragged. It was the first time that Lennox had seen her anything but calm and capable. Somehow she was all the more human. “I have not. None of us have. We’ve done too little. We let the Germans appoint this and that. We do nothing but plan for the future. What good is that to us now?”
“The Germans have the machine guns and we have not,” her brother said patiently. “We are a small collection of people. We are farmers. We have no factories, no machines to help us. We can’t make arms. We’ve stolen some from derailed trains, and from the Italians’ barracks. But we haven’t enough yet. If we use them now we’d be wiped out within a week. What good would we be then to the Allies or to ourselves? All we can do is to wait, to have our plans well made, to be ready. Then we can help in the fighting when the Allies are coming up towards the Brenner. There will be plenty of fighting and dying then, Frieda. But it will be useful fighting and useful dying. Ask Peter, here, if you don’t believe me.”
Frau Schichtl was silent. And then she said sadly, “I don’t need to ask him. I just get so tired of waiting, that’s all. And I get worried. Everything seems to be going wrong.” She looked at Lennox. “He’s unhappy: he wants to leave. And Johann is seeing too much of that girl. He went to see her yesterday before he came home, and that’s why he arrived only half an hour before you did, this dawn. He should have been here yesterday. And now this school business. The children will be questioned about their families, and their minds will be poisoned. They will be told the wrong things.”
“What girl are you talking about?” Mahlknecht asked.
“Eva Mussner. Mussner’s niece. She was in Bozen for the last five years, Johann saw her there. Now she’s come back to Hinterwald. She opened up her uncle’s house. She’s staying there.”
“Eva Mussner,” Paul Mahlknecht said thoughtfully. “A skinny little thing with straight hair, if I remember.”
“She is hardly that now,” Frau Schichtl answered tartly. “She met me in the village today. She was very upset about what happened. So she said.”
There was a pause. Mahlknecht was lost in his thoughts.
“What was it you were going to tell me,” Frau Schichtl asked at last, “about that mess of mud on my best sitting-room floor?”
“We had two visitors this morning. American flyers.”
Frau Schichtl glanced at the ceiling. “They are sleeping now, I suppose.”
“No. We sent them away.” Mahlknecht began to light his pipe. “We don’t think they were Americans, although they were dressed correctly. We think they are Germans.”
“But, Paul, what if they aren’t?” Frau Schichtl was roused once more. “How could you be so sure?”
“They said their plane had crashed many miles away, and that explained why they could arrive without us hearing their plane. But the houses are scattered so much over the Schlern that someone must have heard and seen the crash. And when flyers are dragged from their planes or are found wandering near them our rule is that someone accompanies them to the places where they can get a guide out of the mountains. They said a house had sheltered them near where they had crashed. But no one had been sent with them to prove to us that they had crashed. That made me wonder. The only men who would come as quietly and unannounced as they did would have been men who had parachuted on to the Schlern. That is what I thought they were when I went downstairs to meet them: but they didn’t ask for Peter or for me, and they didn’t give any of the right identifications. So I called Johann and Peter downstairs just to make sure that they were Americans. The slightest doubt, and we couldn’t help them. Peter found a doubt.” Mahlknecht began to laugh. He threw back his head as he had done when Lennox had first explained his trick, and his teeth were white against the dark beard. He was explaining it now, all over again. Frau Schichtl smiled too, and then a new worry appeared.
“If they were Germans, and you called Peter down here so that they could see him...” Frau Schichtl began. “Paul, how could you!”
“He didn’t talk English, Frieda. In fact, he gave a good imitation of old Schroffenegger’s style of conversation.”
Lennox grinned self-consciously. He had often watched Josef Schroffenegger, one of the Committee men who came up to visit Frau Schichtl on Saturdays, with a good deal of amusement. Now that he considered it, he had given a sizable imitation of the old warrior.
“What else could I have done, Frieda?” Mahlknecht went on. “I had to know if these men were real Americans. It was logical to believe that Peter would know more about judging them than we do. He has fought and lived beside them. And our risk did work. He did find out.”
“Then they will blame him.”
“No. I took care to do all the deciding. It is I whom they will blame. Anyway, all they can report is that we refused to help American flyers.”
Lennox said, “Won’t the Germans expect us to report these flyers?”
Mahlknecht smiled. “That is a good idea,” he said. “But perhaps it is too good. The Germans might begin to wonder why we were suddenly so helpful. The
only informers they have found are people like Mussner, and the Germans know them all. From the rest of us, they may not expect actual trouble, but they have learned this winter not to expect help either. They think we are a slow, pig-headed, selfish lot of peasants. They think we are inefficient and lazy. Unbiddable thickheads. No, we don’t have to worry about reporting to the Germans. It would seem out of character.” He smiled again, encouragingly, as he watched the younger man’s face. “It was a good idea, well worth suggesting,” Mahlknecht added. “We would have used it, if the Germans weren’t so convinced that people fall into rigid classifications.”
Frau Schichtl wasn’t listening to this explanation. She was still worrying about two particular Germans. She asked impatiently, “So you sent Johann to warn the Committee? Do you think there will be more trouble?”
“We shall have to keep our eyes open. For if the Germans chose this house for their trick then they had some suspicion.”
“Suspicion.” The cold word set Frau Schichtl’s face into a mask.
“Yes. Kasal’s farm would have been a better place to find food or to hide. A farm has always more food than a cottage; it has outbuildings and barns. Yet they chose this house.”
Frau Schichtl was silent. And then, looking at Lennox, she said, “What about Peter?”
Mahlknecht walked over to the window. “Roads are bad,” he said, “but this part of the hillside always did trap most water. Can’t judge by it. Most roads will be drying up by another week, and there are some parts of the woods that are passable even now. Schönau, for instance. I think Schroffenegger’s lumber camp at Schönau will have to open early this spring. Schroffenegger has got his men all selected for it: we can trust each one of them. Peter will join them there. Ever cut down trees, Peter?” Lennox shook his head.
“Good for you. Gives you exercise. Makes you fit.”
They heard Johann’s cheery whistle. He came in with high good humour. “Everything’s all right,” he said. “They must have been Germans. Didn’t try any other houses. I saw all the local Committee, and they are keeping watch.”
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