Walcot

by Brian Aldiss

It was Helge who gave you gradually to accept the difficulties of their situation. German occupation threatened both her and her husband, Gerard, because he was a Jew, and because she had been a journalist in Hamburg, where she had spoken out against the increasingly powerful Nazi party. She had been forced to flee when her life was threatened.

  The fear and strain she had undergone had made her ill. Gerard, then a widower, had given her sanctuary in his house. They had become mutually dependent on one another, both potential victims of the Nazi regime, and had undergone what Helge called ‘a sort of marriage ceremony’. She laughed when she pronounced the words, only to sober immediately and say that she feared their two dear children were illegitimate, and so under threat on those grounds, quite apart from the fact that they were half-Jewish anti-Nazis.

  Hearing these words – although he understood no English at this time – Pief raised his right arm in the Nazi salute and shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’

  ‘That may not save you, my darling,’ said Helge with a sigh.

  As you learnt their story, you inevitably became more involved with the Geldstein family. Pief was a hyperactive boy and seemed to be the more disturbed of the two children, but when you got to know them better, you saw that Brenda also had her problems. She spoke little, and was always to be found hanging about her mother’s skirts.

  Luftwaffe bombers frequently roared past overhead. On such occasions, Brenda would run to Helge to be cuddled, and snuggled on Helge’s breast, thumb in mouth, eyes tightly closed in anxiety.

  Your leg refused to heal. An area of heat and pain maintained itself along the outside of your tibia, where a swelling remained. You were forced to hobble about slowly.

  Close to the rear of the chateau ran a stream, a tributary of the river a few kilometres away. It was Helge who first investigated the stream when drawing water from it. She announced that there were fish in it. You hobbled with her to look. Sedges bearded the water’s edge, together with little stiff-necked yellow flowers. Helge gathered some of the reeds, carrying an armful back to the chateau. There she wove a basket in which she claimed you could catch fish. You duly sank the basket by one of the banks of the stream, and waited. Although her scheme was not entirely successful, you did catch some small fish after waiting patiently. But after all, what was there to do but wait?

  The idea occurred to you that you could steal Geldstein’s van and drive south to St Nazaire. You rejected the thought almost at once. The Jew had trouble enough; besides, you had become, in effect, his right-hand man, and had slowly grown to like him.

  Gerard had a long conference with his wife, both of them speaking in low tones, after which Helge set off through the trees every morning, taking Brenda with her. She returned in the afternoon. Neither she nor Gerard offered any explanation for these missions.

  ‘I followed her to the edge of the forest,’ said Palfrey. ‘She goes into a village down there. Suppose she shops us to the authorities?’

  ‘Why should she do that?’

  He shrugged, looking at you contemptuously. ‘Why trust these foreigners? She’s a German, isn’t she? For all we know they’re both just bloody crooks.’

  ‘Gerard was Curator of the museum in Fougères. He told me so.’

  ‘And you believed him, you prat!’ He turned and swaggered away, back into the thickets.

  On the following day, Helge returned bearing a sack of groceries. The small Brenda trudged wearily behind her.

  Seating herself on a bench in the shelter, Helge called you and Gerard to her. She said that at last she had found a reliable woman in the village down the hill, a village called Le Forgel. This woman’s husband had been captured by the Wehrmacht, captured, tortured and killed. She was very bitter, had quarrelled with her neighbours and had become rather a hermit. She gave her name as Marie Bourmard. Marie claimed to know which of the villagers were collaborators and could not be trusted, and which could.

  Her promise was that as long as she was able, she would provide food – bread at the very least – twice a week for the fugitives in the forest. She would leave the food hidden in a certain hedge she had shown Helge. Helge would have to collect it from there.

  Gerard was shaking his head and looking grim. A discussion began.

  ‘Are there Germans in Le Forgel?’, Gerard asked his wife.

  Helge shook her head. ‘Marie told me that lorries and convoys regularly drive past on the crossroads just outside the village, but there are no Germans in Le Forgel itself. It’s just a cluster of small houses.’

  ‘If any Germans come to the village – so little even as one of them – then this arrangement must stop. You understand?’

  She gestured. ‘Then we shall starve. We cannot live on small fish.’

  ‘We’ll find more food here in the forest.’

  ‘Or we kill the German.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, my dear! If you kill one of the Germans, the whole village is destroyed in retribution. Better to starve.’

  ‘And our children?’

  ‘You heard what I said. This damned war can’t last for ever.’

  You intervened at this point to ask if Marie from the village could be trusted.

  Helge wiped a weary hand across her brow and face. ‘We have to trust someone.’

  You told her you would go with her, armed, to collect the food, just in case there was a trap.

  ‘You must always go a different way, so you do not leave a trail to guide people to us.’ So said Gerard.

  ‘Of course. I’m not a fool.’

  It seemed as if he trusted you more from that time onwards. He showed you his reason for choosing this particular ruin for a refuge. He had come here previously, when pursuing his work for the museum. He had found a door blocked by wreckage; by dragging away the wreckage, he had been able to pull the door open. A flight of stone steps led down into a dungeon. This dungeon would be their last refuge if enemies approached. Once inside, he had fixed a piece of wood panelling which could be dragged by a rope to cover up the existence of the door. He showed you the contraption with pride.

  You viewed this bolthole with some scepticism, but said nothing.

  Gerard stared at you. ‘Maybe this cellar was once a place of injustice. What does that matter to us? It will be our refuge.’

  ‘Good, Gerard. Good.’ But you realized your tone was gloomy. A false door offered little protection.

  ‘What’s the matter? Such terrible in justice is done to us, then we seek out a place of injustice.’

  You had heard him chopping logic before this, but could not decide whether or not he was trying to be funny in his way.

  ‘I only wondered about people searching this place. Would they not easily find the door?’

  He swept this remark aside, to ask if you had read the works of Aristotle. When you admitted you had not, Gerard said grimly that he would give you lessons.

  16

  A Lesson in Aristotle

  ‘After all’, Gerard said, ‘you might expect me to take a personal interest in justice since, as a Jew, I have suffered injustice all my life.

  ‘As a young man, I was keen to study antiquities,’ he told you, staring at you with those pale eyes of his. ‘When I left university, I won a prize which entitled me to go with an expedition of French antiquarians and experts to study antique works of art in Greece. That expedition helped shape my life. I found myself with two men, greatly my seniors, on the Greek island of Assos, where there is a remarkable collection of sarcophagi.

  ‘I should explain,’ he said, ‘that the Greek word “sarcophagus” comes from two words meaning “flesh-eating”. These coffins were made of a stone which was reputed to devour the flesh of any corpse placed within them.

  ‘I had been on the island for two weeks when I became interested in a certain young lady. She was a lace-maker, and sat most days on her doorstep making items of lace to sell on the mainland. She it was who told me something of the history of the island, when I persuaded her to take a coffee w
ith me. We went into the only taverna on the island. In the fourth century BC, she said, Assos was ruled by a tyrant or king who had an appreciation of learning. It so happened that Aristotle, who was a Macedonian, not a Greek, arrived to stay and work on Assos. He became friendly with the tyrant. They would hold long conversations by the light of a single oil lamp, until the night waned before the approach of another day. It was then that the tyrant’s daughter brought food and wine to them.

  ‘This daughter was young and beautiful and was attracted by Aristotle’s powers of thought and argument. Speculation about worlds elsewhere – above all, about abstract worlds of ratiocination – were awakened in her breast.

  ‘For his part, the youthful Aristotle was impressed by the daughter’s virtuous good manners and patience in staying up until the middle of the night to fuel the conversations taking place.

  ‘One day, so my lace-making lady told me, this daughter happened on Aristotle swimming naked in the Aegean. She impulsively disrobed and joined him in the water. Aristotle could not resist this bold approach. So –’

  At this point in his narration, Gerard looked up from under his brows to make sure you were attending. You were attending.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘Aristotle married the bold young lady because he very much longed to have sexual intercourse with her, this tyrant’s lovely daughter.

  ‘When I heard this story,’ said Gerard, ‘great was my astonishment. I had no idea there had been a Madame Aristotle. It humanized the man for me. Yet, why should I have been astonished? For Aristotle has much to say about happiness. I do believe that marriage is a way, if sometimes an uncertain one, to happiness, or at least to contentment.’

  As he spoke, Gerard rested a benevolent hand on Helge’s hand, since she was sitting close, listening to the story.

  ‘All this I tell you, Stephen,’ he continued, ‘as a mere preamble to our discussion of Aristotle’s works. Is it not the case that those of Aristotle’s writings that survive have had a profound influence on Western philosophy, affecting the course of ancient, medieval and modern philosophy? Not necessarily because of the beauty of his prose, but because he, of all men, lauded contemplation and had something valuable to say on all manner of matters which remain of concern today, twenty-four centuries later.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense,’ said Palfrey, who had been sitting on a log nearby, absent-mindedly whittling a stick. ‘Who gives a fuck about this ancient stuff?’ With that he was off, disappearing among the trees.

  ‘There is a man impervious to contemplation,’ Gerard commented. ‘He who most needs it.’

  He wished to talk about metaphysics to you because, he said, he saw in you a potential to become a good man ‘when you grew up’, as he put it. He spoke of the realization of perfection as entelechy, and feared that the war, even if you survived it, was a thing intrinsically liable to block entelechy. Gerard had read Aristotle as a consolation for the difficulties he had experienced in life. He regarded Palfrey as impervious to such teaching, but you not.

  He talked long on this subject. You listened, trying to take in what he said, yet doubting a great deal, as you had doubted the Gospels when they were expounded. Nevertheless, what Gerard told you as you sat among the ruins remained for many years half-remembered, half-forgotten. What most impressed you was that here was someone, for the first time in your young life, who took the trouble to care about helping to shape your potential self. In that alone, it was of immense value – of more value than was shouting at people, which you had previously seen as a useful way of going about the business of life.

  A little later on, Gerard spoke with you on the subject of happiness. He went on to state that Aristotle regarded some kinds of knowledge as a supreme good, although other kinds might be bad. Gerard regarded knowledge of the Nazi fascist regime as bad, but only because the regime itself was evil. Evil might prove as infectious as influenza. Such knowledge was not conducive to happiness. But, Gerard argued, it might be claimed that a thorough knowledge of the workings of the Nazi regime could qualify as good, if that knowledge assisted one to avoid its clutches.

  A worse person could be said to be he who exercises his wickedness against others. In Gerard’s opinion, a homosexual man who seduces another into his practices is wicked, but the supreme wickedness is when any man exercises his wickedness so as to pervert an entire society. He mentioned Adolf Hitler as an example; Hitler had brought the entire German people, hitherto an upright and civilized people, into shame.

  You spoke then, to say that, at the outbreak of war, the Parliament of Great Britain had debated whether the music of Beethoven, as a German composer, should be banned for the duration of the struggle. Parliament was enlightened enough to vote that it should not be banned. However, it was felt there was perhaps a different case to be made for the music of Richard Wagner, on the grounds that it was anti-Semitic and that Adolf Hitler enjoyed it. When an argument was advanced for not banning Wagner’s music, it was on the grounds that Hitler, as far as we knew, enjoyed Beethoven’s music also. Was this a false line of argument?

  There the two of you sat, with Helge an almost silent witness, under the sheltering trees, while night fell with all its rustic whisperings, and a crescent moon rose in the sky.

  You confided to Helge your gratitude to her husband for his interest in you, particularly while you were stranded in such unusual circumstances.

  ‘You must look on this as your Wanderjahre,’ she said, giving you a sad smile.

  You went with Helge to collect the vital sack of food from the hedge. The method was that you remained a distance apart, Helge leading. Both of you kept a sharp watch for other people, especially as you emerged from the shelter of the trees. On each journey you varied the route.

  You covered Helge as she reached the hedge where the sack was concealed. You never saw Marie, the deliverer of the sack. The sack was concealed in a little thicket. Helge collected it and then rapidly made her way back uphill to the concealment of the forest.

  The day came when Helge was feeling ill, greatly to your and Gerard’s concern. Pief jumped up and down, eager to go and collect the sack. Gerard was against it.

  ‘My boy, you are the future. This present time will remain always in your memory, and I trust it will influence you towards a day when there are no vagabonds such as we in the world. You must remain here, under cover. The present is bad enough: we shall not put the future in jeopardy as well.’

  You volunteered to go. You could hobble despite your injured leg, you said, smiling to show your confidence.

  You went. You were slow and cautious. At the fringe of the forest, you paused, looking out from the partial concealment of a tree. Someone was standing by the hedge where the sack was usually hidden. You made out a slim figure with a hood over its head.

  It seemed that this person had caught a movement in your direction. He shaded his eyes to peer up at the forest. You stayed immobile.

  This other person pushed through a gap in the hedge and began the shallow climb towards where you stood. You eased your revolver from its holster as the figure came nearer. You saw then it was a woman approaching. Guessing that this must be Marie Bourmard, you stepped forth. The woman stopped. She asked in French if you were waiting for her. When you said you were, she came on and stood in front of you.

  ‘You are that English officer?’

  Again you said you were. She studied your face with a half-smile, as if she felt she was being impertinent. She nodded. She took you by the arm and led the way among the trees, saying you should not be seen.

  ‘No food?’ you asked.

  Not bothering to answer the question, to which the answer was clear, she pushed the hood back from her head and said she had come to warn you that there were now Germans in the village of Le Forgel. An officer and a driver had arrived in a jeep in the early hours of the morning, with soldiers following in a truck. The newcomers had frightened everyone. They made them all get out of bed and go into the
street in their night garments while their houses were searched. They were investigating villages in the area for anyone they called ‘militants’ or other suspicious persons who might be hiding there.

  ‘So I cannot provide food until they go away again,’ she warned you. ‘I collect items of food for you from the villagers. It will be impossible to do it while these horrid men are present.’

  ‘What rank are they?’

  ‘The soldiers are gone. They found no one in their search. Just the officer and the driver remain. I don’t know German ranks. The driver is just a young man. He seems pleasant enough and is good-looking. The officer … ugh!’

  Marie had fair hair. Her face was pale but healthy, and entirely without make-up. It was clear she was frightened. She bit her finger while listening to your questions. The fear made her age hard to decipher.

  ‘You are brave to come and warn us.’

  ‘The hospital where I worked was bombed, so I am at home. Did I see you limp?’

  ‘My right leg. It’s getting better slowly.’

  ‘Sorry for the injury.’

  ‘You’d better be getting back. We’ll keep a good look out.’

  ‘I could examine your leg for you.’

  ‘You’d better get back in case you are missed.’

  You will recall your feelings – in the circumstances you had no alternative – as you limped back to the ruined chateau. You were melancholy, not for the lack of food, but for the involvement of the young woman in situations of danger and, to a lesser extent, of the wretched circumstances in which the Geldsteins and their children found themselves. It was a wretched thing that young Pief was encouraged to say ‘Heil Hitler’, even as a safety measure.

  Such was the weight of your melancholy that a passing thought suggested it would be better to finish with everything and to go down to Le Forgel and surrender yourselves to the German officer.

  This blight upon your thought extended even to your past: the Forêt de la Bouche became an analogy for the beach at Walcot, except that now you were aware of the danger you were in, whereas on the beach you had no such knowledge. Supposing in those infant days the incoming tide had swept you away and drowned you, then you would not have had to face this present dilemma. You would have escaped the war.