Oberammergau. But the German woman said scornfully:
"You do not understand. We Germans have no need of a
Jesus Christ 1 We have our Adolf Hitler here with us. He
is greater than any Jesus that ever lived." She was quite
a nice ordinary woman. But that is how she felt. Masses
of people felt it. Hitler was a spell-binder. He spoke and
they listened--and accepted the sadism, the gas chambers,
the tortures of the Gestapo.'
She shrugged her shoulders and then said in her normal
voice, 'All the same, it's odd that you should have said
what you did just now.'
What was that?'
'About the Old Man of the Mountain. The head of the
Assassins.'
'Are you telling me there is an Old Man of the Mountain
here?'
'No. Not an Old Man of the Mountain, but there might
be an Old Woman of the Mountain.'
'An Old Woman of the Mountain. What's she like?'
'You'll see this evening.'
'What are we doing this evening?'
'Going into society,' said Renata.
'It seems a long time since you've been Mary Arm.'
'You'll have to wait till we're doing some air travel again.'
'I suppose it's very bad for one's morale,' Stafford Nye
said thoughtfully, 'living high up in the world.'
'Are you talking socially?'
'No. Geographically. If you live in a castle on a mountain
peak overlooking the world below you, well, it makes you
despise the ordinary folk, doesn't it? You're the top' one,
you're the grand one. That's what Hitler felt in Berchtesgaden,
that's what many people feel perhaps who climb mountains
and look down on their fellow creatures in valleys below.'
'You must be careful tonight,' Renata warned him. 'It's
going to be ticklish.'
'Any instructions?'
'You're a disgruntled man. You're one that's against the
Establishment, against the conventional world. You're a
rebel, but a secret rebel. Can you do it?'
93
here by command, by appointment. However you liked to
put it. Renata had been told to bring him here. He wondered
why. He couldn't really think why, but he was quite ir
of it. It was at him she was looking. She was appri n, him, summing him up. Was he what she wanted? Wa it',
yes, he'd rather put it this way, was he what the cust ne:
had ordered?
I'll have to make quite sure that I know what it is she
does want, he thought. I'll have to do my best, otherwise
. . . Otherwise he could quite imagine that she might raise
a fat ringed hand and say to one of the tall, muscular
footmen: 'Take him and throw him over the battlements.'
It's ridiculous, thought Stafford Nye. Such things can't happen nowadays. Where am I? What kind of a parade, a masquerade
or a theatrical performance am I taking part in?
'You have come very punctual to time, child.'
It was a hoarse, asthmatic voice which had once had
an undertone, he thought, of strength, possibly even of
beauty. That was over now, Renata came forward, made a
slight curtsy. She picked up the fat hand and dropped a
courtesy kiss upon it.
'Let me present to you Sir Stafford Nye. The Grafin Charlotte von Waldsausen.'
The fat hand was extended towards him. He bent over
it in the foreign style. Then she said something that surprised
him.
'I know your great-aunt,' she said,
He looked astounded, and he saw immediately that she
was amused by that, but he saw too, that she had expected
him to be surprised by it. She laughed, a rather queer, grating
laugh. Not attractive.
'Shall we say, I used to know her. It is many, many
years since I have seen her. We were in Switzerland together,
at Lausanne, as girls. Matilda. Lady Matilda BaldwenWhite.'
'What
a wonderful piece of news to take home with. me,
said Stafford Nye.
'She is older than I am. She is in good health?'
'For her age, in very good health. She lives in the country
quietly. She has arthritis, rheumatism.'
'Ah yes, all the ills of old age. She should have injections
of procaine. That is what the doctors do here in this altitude.
It is very satisfactory. Does she know that you are visiti'g
me?> 'I imagine that she has not the least idea of it,' said S11'
96
Stafford Nye. 'She knew only that I was going to this festival of modern music.'
'Which you enjoyed, I hope?'
'Oh enormously. It is a fine Festival Opera Hall, is it not?'
'One of the finest. Pah! It makes the old Bayreuth Festival
Hall look like a comprehensive school! Do you know what
it cost to build, that Opera House?'
She mentioned a sum in millions of marks. It quite took
Stafford Nye's breath away, but he was under no necessity
to conceal that. She. was pleased with the effect it made
upon him.
'With money,' she said, 'if one knows, if one has the
ability, if one has the discrimination, what is there that
money cannot do? It can give one the best.'
She said the last two words with a rich enjoyment, a
kind of smacking of the lips which he found both unpleasant
and at the same time slightly sinister.
'I see that here,' he said, as he looked round the walls.
'You are fond of art? Yes, I see you arks. There, on the
east wall is the finest Cezanne in the world today. Some
say that the--ah, I forget the name of it at the moment,
the one in the Metropolitan in New York--is finer. That
is not true. The best Matisse, the best Cezanne, the best of
all that great school of art are here. Here in my mountain
eyrie.'
'It is wonderful,' said Sir Stafford. 'Quite wonderful.'
Drinks were being handed round. The Old Woman of
the Mountain, Sir Stafford Nye noticed, did not drink anything.
It was possible, he thought, that she feared to take
any risks over her blood pressure with that vast weight.
'And where did you meet this child?' asked the mountainous
Dragon.
Was it a trap? He did not know, but he made his decision.
^'At the American Embassy, in London.'
Ah yes, so I heard. And how is--ah, I forget her name
now--ah yes, Milly Jean, our southern heiress? Attractive, did you think?'
Most charming. She has a great success in London.'
And poor duU Sam Cortman, the United States Ambassador?'
A very sound man, I'm sure,' said Stafford Nye politely.
Me chuckled.
'Aha, you're tactful, are you not? Ah well, he does weU
An0^ -Re does what he is told as a good Politician should. '"la it is enjoyable to be Ambassador in London. She could
I>TP 97 D
do that for him, Milly Jean. Ah, she could get him an
Embassy anywhere in the world, with that well-stuffed purse
of hers. Her father owns half the oil in Texas, he owns land
goldfields, everything. A coarse, singularly ugly man_But
what does she look like? A gentle little aristocrat. Not blatant,
not rich. That is very clever of her, is it not?'
'Sometimes it presents no difficultie
s,' said Sir StaPord
Nye.
'And you? You are not rich?'
'I wish I was.'
"The Foreign Office nowadays, it is not, shall we say,
very rewarding?'
'Oh well, I would not put it like thai . . . After all, one
goes places, one meets amusing people, one sees the world,
one sees something of what goes on.'
'Something, yes. But not everything.'
That would be very difficult.'
'Have you ever wished to see what--how shall I put it--
what goes on behind the scenes in life?'
'One has an idea sometimes.' He made his voice noncommittal.
'I have heard it said that that is true of you, that you
have sometimes ideas about things. Not perhaps the conventional
ideas?'
There have been times when I've been made to feel
the bad boy of the family," said Stafford Nye and laughed.
Old Charlotte chuckled.
'You don't mind admitting things now and again, do you?'
'Why pretend? People always know what you're concealing.'
She looked at him.
'What do you want out of life, young man?'
He shrugged his shoulders. Here again, he had to play
things by ear.
'Nothing,' he said.
'Come now, come now, am I to believe that?'
'Yes, you can believe it. I am not ambitious. Do I loo>
ambitious?'
'No, I will admit that.'
'I ask only to be amused, to live comfortably, to eat, to
drink in moderation, to have friends who amuse me.
The old woman leant forward. Her eyes snapped open and shut three or four times. Then she spoke in ,1 ra1"6 different voice. It was like a whistling note.
'Can you hate? Are you capable of hating?'
To hate is a waste of time.'
98
I see. I see. There are no lines of discontent in your face.
That is true enough. AU the same, I think you are ready to take a certain path which will lead you to a certain
t place, and you will go along it smiling, as though you did I not care, but all the same, in the end, if you find the right
advisers, the right helpers, you might attain what you want,
if you are capable of wanting.'
'As to that,' said Stafford Nye, 'who isn't?' He shook his
head at her very gently. 'You see too much,' he said. 'Much
too much.'
Footmen threw open a door.
'Dinner is served.'
The proceedings were properly formal. They had indeed
iatnost a royal tinge about them. The big doors at the far teKl of the room were flung open, showing through to a ^ghtly lighted ceremonial dining-room, with a painted ceil^R
and three enormous chandeliers. Two middle-aged women
l^proached the Grafin, one on either side. They wore evening
dress, their grey hair was carefully piled on their heads,
each wore a diamond brooch. To Sir Stafford Nye, all the
same, they brought a faint flavour of wardresses. They were,
he thought, not so much security guards as perhaps high-class
nursing attendants in charge of the health, the toilet and other
intimate details of the Grafin Charlotte's existence. After
napectful bows, each one of them slipped an arm below Ac shoulder and elbow of the sitting woman. With the ease of
long practice aided by the effort which was obviously as much aa, she could make, they raised her to her feet in a dignified
fiuhion. ^j 'We will go in to dinner now,' said Charlotte.
With her two female attendants, she led the way. On
her feet she looked even more a mass of wobbling jelly,
yet she was still formidable. You could not dispose of her
in your mind as just a fat old woman. She was somebody,
knew she was somebody, intended to be somebody. Behind
the three of them he Ttod Renata foUowed.
As they entered through the portals of the dining-room, he felt it was almost more a banquet hall than a dining- room. There was a bodyguard here. Tall, fair-haired, handsome
young men. They wore some kind of uniform. As Charotte
entered there was a clash as one and all drew their vfwsh- They crossed them overhead to make a passageway, d Charlotte, steadying herself, passed along that passageay,
released by her attendants and making her progress solo
a vast carved chair with gold fittings and upholstered in
99
golden brocade at the head of the long table. It wa
like a wedding procession, Stafford Nye thought. ,'. ' I or military one. In this case surely, military, strictly mi -;.rybut
lacking a bridegroom.
They were all young men of super physique, t -� them,
he thought, was older than thirty. They he-.u (,ood
looks, their health was evident. They did not smi'e, ihey
were entirely serious, they were--he thought of a word or
it--yes, dedicated. Perhaps not so much a military proces^a
as a religious one. The servitors appeared, old-fashioned
servitors belonging, he thought, to the Schloss's past, to a time
before the 1939 war. It was like a super production of a
period historic play. And queening over it, sitting in the chair
or the throne or whatever you liked to call it, at the head
of the table, was not a queen or an empress but an old
woman noticeable mainly for her avoirdupois weight and her
extraordinary and intense ugliness. Who was she? What was
she doing here? Why?
Why all this masquerade, why this bodyguard, a security
bodyguard perhaps? Other diners came to the table. They
bowed to the monstrosity on the presiding throne and took
their places. They wore ordinary evening dress. No introductions
were made.
Stafford Nye, after long years of sizing up people, assessed
them. Different types. A great many different types. Lawyers,
he was certain. Several lawyers. Possibly accountants or
financiers; one or two army officers in plain clothes. They
were of the Household, he thought, but they were also in the
old-fashioned feudal sense of the term those who 'sat below
the salt'.
Food came. A vast boar's head pickled in aspic, ven.i<"n. a cool refreshing lemon sorbet, a magnificent edifice
pastry--a super millefeuille that seemed of unbelievable afectionery
richness.
The vast woman ate, ate greedily, hungrily, enjo' ,?_
food. From outside came a new sound. The sounc r '"_ powerful engine of a super sports ear. It passed the i'11'' in a white flash. There came a cry inside the room hov the bodyguard. A great cry of 'Heil! Heil! Heil Franz!
The bodyguard of young men moved with the ease of
military manoeuvre known by heart. Everyone had '"'se to their feet. Only the old woman sat without moving, re head lifted high, on her dais. And, so Stafford Nye thougtii.
a new excitement now permeated the room. .j
The other guests, or the other members of the ho'-'sehol
whatever they were, disappeared in a way that somehow
reminded Stafford of lizards disappearing into the cracks of
wall. The golden-haired boys formed a new figure, their
Words flew out, they saluted their patroness, she bowed her
head in acknowledgment, their swords were sheathed and
they turned, permission given, to march out through the door
of the room. Her eyes followed them, then went first to
Renata, and then to Stafford Nye.
>
'What do you think of them?' she said. 'My boys, my
youth corps, my children. Yes, my children. Have you a
word that can describe them?'
'I think so,' said Stafford Nye. 'Magnificent.' He spoke
Itfher as to Royalty. 'Magnificent, ma'am.' i ..''Ahl' She bowed her head. She smiled, the wrinkles multilying
all over her face. It made her look exactly like a
locodile.
'A terrible woman, he thought, a terrible woman, imossible,
dramatic. Was any of this happening? He couldn't
Clieve it was. What could this be but yet another festival
ilftil in which a production was being given.
The doors clashed open again. The yellow-haired band at the young supermen marched as before through it. This (iflBe they did not wield swords, instead they sang. Sang >Ah unusual beauty of tone and voice.
if After a good many years of pop music Stafford Nye felt
M incredulous pleasure. Trained voices, these. Not raucous
houting. Trained by masters of the singing art. Not allowed
to strain their vocal cords, to be off key. They might be
the new Heroes of a New World, but what they sang was
not new music. It was music he had heard before. An arrangement
of the Preislied, there must be a concealed orchestra
somewhere, he thought, in a gallery round the top of the
room. It was an arrangement or adaptation of various Wag- nenan themes. It passed from the Preislied to the distant ^hoes of the Rhine music.
The Elite Corps made once more a double lane where wnebody was expected to make an entrance. It was not
e old Empress this time. She sat on her dais awaiting
whoever was coming.
And at last he came. The music changed as he came. It
hea^0^131^ motif which ^ n(yw Stafford Nye had got by
caU The melody of the Young Siegfried. Siegfried's horn
ucw nslng up.in its Y0^ and its triumph, its mastery of a
U.CW 1 JVW.MA CUJU 1U� HJHAlJLlj-'lAi J
w world which the young Siegfried came to ^nrough the doorway, marching up bel
101
conquer.
between the lines
of what were clearly his followers, came one of the handsomest
young men Stafford Nye had ever seen. Golden- haired, blue-eyed, perfectly proportioned, conjured up as it
were by the wave of a magician's wand, he came forth out of
the world of myth. Myth, heroes, resurrection, rebirth, it was
all there. His beauty, his strength, his incredible assurance and
arrogance.
He strode through the double lines of his bodyguard
until he stood before the hideous mountain of womanhood
that sat there on her throne; he knelt on one knee, n sed
her hand to his lips, and then rising to his feet, he threv ap
one arm in salutation and uttered the cry that Stafford
Nye had heard from the others. 'Heil!' His German was not
very clear, but Stafford Nye thought he distinguished the
syllables 'Heil to the great mother!'
Then the handsome young hero looked from one side to
the other. There was some faint recognition, though ac uninterested one, of Renata, but when his gaze turned to
Stafford Nye, there was definite interest and appraisal. Caution,
thought Stafford Nye. Caution! He must play his part
right now. Play the part that was expected of him. Only--
what the hell was that part? What was he doing here? What
were he or the girl supposed to be doing here? Why had they come?
The hero spoke.
'So,' he said, 'we have guests!' And he added, smiling
with the arrogance of a young man who knows that he is
vastly superior to any other person in the world. 'Welcome,
guests, welcome to you both.'
Somewhere in the depths of the Schtoss a great bell
began tolling. It had no funereal sound about it, but it had
a disciplinary air. The feeling of a monastery summoned to some holy office.
'We must sleep now,' said old Charlotte. 'Sleep. We will
meet again tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock.'
She looked towards Renata and Sir Stafford Nye.
'You will be shown to your rooms. I hope you "ill &ee^ well.'
It was the Royal dismissal.
Stafford Nye saw Renata's arm fly up in the Fasc salute
but it was addressed not to Charlotte, but to thi 'yw haired boy. He thought she said: 'Heil Franz jo! 1'" n copied her gesture and he, too, said 'Heill'
Charlotte spoke to them.
'Would it please you tomorrow morning to start the day with a ride through the forest?'
'I should like it of all things,' said Stafford Nyei
And you, child?'
'Yes, I too.'
'Very good then. It shall be arranged. Good night to you
both. I am glad to welcome you here. Franz Joseph--
Passenger to Frankfurt Page 11