Leontyne

by Richard Goodwin

  For the first couple of hours all went well, as we were still on the canalized section of the Rhine. In the penultimate lock I took a ride with a family of three – a Dutchman, his wife and their small son who was just home from school for the summer holidays. They owned what seemed like a vast barge, though by Rhine standards it was small, being a mere 1300 tons. They managed this monster on their own, and were planning to be in Holland in a couple of days, even though they had chipped their propeller and were getting a certain amount of vibration as they pushed along with their load of gravel for Rotterdam. I was proudly shown over their spotless barge, which was called the Janna. They had a large saloon with washing and drying machines, a bridge you could have got lost in, a television and a video machine, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. It was their home and they had to work very hard to keep it going. They had a radio telephone which kept them in touch with their freight bureau all the time, so they were able to accept cargoes from wherever they were. The system on the Rhine for making phone calls over the ship’s VHF system is very efficient. The Dutch couple said that they did not make a fortune, but were able to keep going. They were very proud of their skill; the wife had all the same permits to drive this great ship as her husband did, so they could go for days and nights without stopping if they had to. They told me that they could have made a lot more money if they had had a bigger barge, but that would have necessitated employing crew, which would have meant all sorts of extra problems, so they were happy to stay as they were. The amount of time that they had to wait between voyages was considerably less than their colleagues in the rest of Europe – with the exception of the Germans and the Swiss.

  The Janna had been much swifter than the Leo and I had to wait for a while on the last lock before the real Rhine. I found myself wondering how Ray and the pilot were getting on, and could imagine Ray watching and waiting for the poor man to make a mistake. While I was there a Swiss tow of 15,000 tons inched its way into the lock, with no more than six inches to spare on either side of the barges. A huge pusher unit was manoeuvring them gradually into the lock from behind. The size of these tows may not come near to the size of the ones on the Mississippi – but they were enormous compared with what we had been used to.

  The Leo turned up and I had a briefing from Sabine, a veteran of many voyages on the Leo, about Ray and the pilot. She said that Ray was not at all happy and thought it very unfair that his command had been taken away from him. I could only agree, but we were entering the Rhine proper after this lock and if the pilot was to be of any use it would be now. For the first few miles the river was indistinguishable from the canalized river that we had been on. Then it became much narrower and we found ourselves putting up our blue board to pass a convoy of upstream barges starboard to starboard. This was not particularly exciting in itself, but the pilot and Ray now had something to do together which reduced the hostile atmosphere. I looked up to see the German customs post go flashing past, and frantically signalled to the pilot that we had to stop there. As I did so there was a great blast of ‘achtungs’ from the loudspeaker on the customs pontoon telling us to stop at once. This was not so easy because as we turned round we were swept further downstream and it took us about half an hour to turn and push our way back up to the customs house. As we did so a smart green customs launch, which had been radioed to come and make sure we did not do a runner, arrived alongside and asked for our papers. The procedure was simple and efficient but it was the first time that I had been confronted with Germans who spoke only German, and as mine was woefully rusty, I began to realize that it was going to be much harder to make myself understood in future. Up went our courtesy flag and we were into Germany.

  The first thing we noticed was the very large number of mobile bridge craft. I think that the NATO forces were about to make one of their periodic exercises to cross the Rhine, for there were American and German soldiers everywhere, whizzing about in inflatable boats and getting their huge lorries stuck in the marshy areas on the banks. We had our first taste of what we later called the German stare. The soldiers, or whatever they were, circled the Leo in their speedboats and gazed implacably at us with dead fish eyes, but the strong current had us whizzing along and we were soon in Speyer where I had said we would stop to buy some provisions.

  As the pilot made to chuck round to come head up into the stream so that we could land at Speyer, he swung right out towards the far bank to make his turn. The river had created some new sandbanks which he was not expecting, and I could see Ray brighten visibly as the bows of the barge went firmly aground. The pilot then went astern and drove the stern of the Leo straight on to another sandbank. Ray and I had been in the same fix a number of times, and we knew that the only way out of it was to detach the Leo from the barge, free her from the sand and then lay off a hundred yards or so in deeper water and haul the barge off the bank backwards.

  The sheer bliss of Schadenfreude had Ray beaming and I went astern to tell the pilot what he should do. He ignored me at first as he drove the poor old Leo forwards and back embedding her further at each attempt. Finally I got annoyed and told him that Ray and I were going to drop the anchor on the barge whether he liked it or not and then detach the Leo. I don’t think he believed that we would be so insubordinate but soon realized we meant what we said. I went forward again and dropped the anchor while Ray released the Leo from the barge. The pilot was going astern at the time and shot backwards as the tug was released and got firmly stuck in the sandbank. He realized at this moment that we were in charge. Gradually he got himself off, we threw him a rope from the barge and the rest of the operation went smoothly. The barge was anchored in deep water while we reattached the Leo, and off we went again without getting our provisions. It seemed that the pilot had another ship to take up the river that evening and they were waiting for him at Mannheim.

  Within the hour we were approaching this industrial city. What city in Germany is not industrial in some way? The pilot wanted to be dropped off for his next job. Ray took over the tiller, happy to be back in charge of the boat once more. With incredible skill he turned the rig in the strong current and brought us up to within two feet of the barges our pilot was to take up river that evening. The pilot stepped aboard, and after a hurried conversation shouted out that the barges had broken down and he was going to have to mend them himself. By this time Ray had turned round again and we were way out of earshot. We would be seeing him in a few days after we had gone up to Heidelberg, and planned to meet him in Mannheim when we came through again.

  Ray and I, plus Sabine and Robert, were suddenly free and covered the last few miles rapidly, through Mannheim where we turned right into the Neckar. We tied up on a pleasure-boat pier that was clearly not in use and walked up the bank into the town. The main tram depot greeted us when we got to the top and because we were tired we decided to go to the closest restaurant which turned out to be a Chinese. It was not quite what I had planned for Sabine’s first night in Germany, but, as ever, hunger is the best cook and I remember eating well before we turned in.

  Chapter Ten

  Mannheim to Frankfurt

  It only took about two hours to make our way from Mannheim to Heidelberg. It is hard for me to think of Heidelberg without thinking of The Student Prince, of which I have very special memories. When I lived in the smart part of London, in Belgravia, we had a very small cinema theatre in our basement where we could run 16mm films. I had a friend who was a great fan of Ramon Novarro and he had been approached by the secretary of the Ramon Novarro fan club – whose membership had dwindled to five ladies and a gentleman – to run the film of The Student Prince in which Novarro had starred. In those days it was extremely hard to get prints of old films and we had to ask a famous film historian to lend us his bootleg copy. When the fan club left after the showing of the film, there were a number of tear-soaked tissues under the seats. They probably thought it was the last time they would ever see their hero. They must have all been teenagers when they had j
oined the club, and the secretary had been the secretary when Novarro was alive. The idea of a member of royalty slumming it with the plebs and falling in love with a commoner has always been appealing to the masses and is, in fact, what keeps most of the British and French tabloids going today. Heidelberg University has, for the most part, been moved out of town, and all that is left now is a building that purports to be the Gasthaus where the student prince spent those heady and formative days.

  The town of Heidelberg was well kept and neat, with a population of citizens who seemed to be concerned only with obeying the rules. Ray and I lifted the car off to tour the town. We drove up to the castle and managed to get a fistful of parking tickets, which must be filling up a disk somewhere on somebody’s computer. In the forecourt of the castle a company that puts on an annual performance was having their dress rehearsal for The Student Prince – in English. I became curious as to who these enthusiasts could be, and asked a girl at the back of the audience who was lounging against a tree. It appeared that most of the cast were from the nearby American Air Force base. The soprano was a chunky girl from California with a complexion like a peach which ripened visibly when, at the end of the ‘Drinking Song’, the students hoisted her to their shoulders for the final chorus and she began to slip inexorably from their grasp. I hope it went well on the night, but for now she ended in an embarrassed heap at the students’ feet.

  Our mooring in Heidelberg was close to the oldest part of the town, very near the town hall, in the reception lobby of which there happened to be a display of books about Israel. It seemed odd to have such an exhibition in a town like this, and I asked the pleasant-looking woman who seemed to be in charge what it was like to be a Jew in Germany in these days. She told me that she came from an Israeli family that had always lived in Israel and while still in Israel had married an Israeli whose mother had been German. Fifteen years previously they had come to Berlin where, before the war, many thousands of Jews had lived; now there were only a handful. When she had started, running a small newsagent’s shop with her husband, she found it very hard indeed to like the country or the inhabitants, but time had passed and the local people had eventually come to her for their papers rather than the other Ausländer round the corner, who was a Turk. She had obviously made a success of her life in Germany and told me that when she arrived she was an Israeli, but now she felt like a Jew. While a few people came to browse through the books, she told me that when she had first arrived, she had seen any man who was the right age and who could have been in the war as a possible murderer of her race. Now, she said, she had grown comfortable in Germany, but could never like it. I longed to ask why she did not leave but her sad eyes warned me to go no further.

  Before we left Heidelberg we stopped for water at the local yacht club, which was just what a German yacht club should be, with a lot of retired gentlemen eager to share a beer at ten in the morning. Next to us was another visitor who was amused by this attention from the members, and, as I could see that he had a twinkle in his eye, I went to talk to him. He and his wife, who, he explained, was single-handedly supporting the German Post Office by at least fifty postcards every day, had been up the Rhine to Basel from their home port of Rotterdam. Being a Dutchman he spoke beautiful English in a direct manner, and told us that, before retirement, he’d been in charge of a huge Dutch firm building supertankers. In his youth he had been a racing yachtsman and had been in famous boats before the war, when the Dutch were at the top of the league in twelve-metre racing yachts. He told us of his days as an apprentice before the war, and of working on a Dutch coaster bringing Cornish slates from near Penzance to Putney up the Thames. He clearly longed for the open sea and the wind filling his sails, but ‘the crew’, which was how he referred to his wife, found the rivers and canals more agreeable. Presumably this was because there were more postboxes for her postcard production. ‘The crew’ wrote on silently, never once referring to an address book, and sticking the stamp on with a flourish when each card was covered in all the legal places. I was reminded by Sabine of a tragic occurrence when, on one of our earlier trips down the Canal du Midi in the South of France, she had written a large number of postcards and had allowed the lot to blow away in a gust of wind. How she had howled as they floated away in the wash of the Leo! The cards, together with the Yehudi Menuhin Teach Yourself Violin book, had all sunk by the time I had stopped and reversed to recover them.

  We slipped down the Neckar, which I am sure is very romantic when it’s not cold, damp and grey, as it was that day. We stopped in Mannheim and I went to buy some batteries for our portable radio, bumping into our Rhine pilot who was, of course, carrying his holdall full of dried soup. We set off down the Rhine together and he told us of what had befallen him with the other barges he had taken up to Strasbourg. It seems they’d had a very bad trip with some serious mechanical trouble, and I think he was pleased to be back on board the Leo which, with all its failings, always seemed to get you there. We had not far to go on the five-knot current before we turned right at Mainz and into the Main. Sabine and Robert got out their violins and sat at the head of the barge, playing deliciously as we flashed past the village of Nierstein, its beautiful church silhouetted against the world-famous vineyards. The sun shone on Sabine’s golden hair and I felt very proud to be her father.

  The pilot called up a fuelling barge who came alongside and refuelled us, charging an exorbitant price – probably the highest in Europe – for our diesel. We left the pilot on board the fuelling barge, smoking away just under a huge No Smoking sign. Ray and I had decided to take a chance and go up the Main river without him, as it seemed quite unnecessary and also expensive to have him on board. We had no difficulties at the first couple of locks and moored by a football pitch in Florsheim, a rather pretty place where they made shoes.

  I had had an introduction to a very impressive woman by the name of Princess Metternich, and I thought that since she did not live too far away, I would call on her. She lived in a castle on the Rhine, called the Schloss Johannisburg, which was famous for its cellars and excellent white wine. It had been bombed by the Allies during the Second World War – by mistake, unless it was that some pilot wanted to unload his bombs on the way home and thought that it looked a likely target. The old castle had been completely rebuilt, with state help, largely because of its vast wine cellars which had not been too badly damaged by the bombing. The wine there had become famous as a result of a mistake: a messenger, sent by the bishop who owned the estate in the sixteenth century with the message that the grape harvest should begin, was unaccountably delayed for a few days. The result was that the grapes had started to rot on the vine by the time they were gathered, but, surprisingly, tasted delicious. The accident was adopted as a technique, and this is what gives the wine from this vineyard its distinctive bouquet. It is also an example of the discipline of the Germans as a race, for I am sure that neither the French nor the Italians would dream of waiting for orders that would prejudice the harvest, and would have acted on their own accord.

  We went over to the castle by car, and the Princess, who is a charming woman, greeted me very cordially. She told me of her days in Berlin during the war, where she and her sister, Russian émigrées, had found work in various government offices. I asked her what it had really been like in those days and, refreshingly, she told me that she and her sister had been pretty girls together and had a fine time of it for the first years, and then, when they had realized the extent of the Nazi barbarism, did what they could with the many languages that they spoke. Her sister had been working for the outstanding Adam von Trott, who many say was the architect of the 20 July plot on Hitler’s life. The Princess herself had married a German army officer of the old school and had moved to their estates in Czechoslovakia towards the end of the war, only to find that they had to leave because of the rapid advance of the Russian army. They walked with what they could carry to their other estate: this castle by the Rhine at Schloss Johannisburg.

>   The Prince was away, so I took the liberty of sitting in the chair that had belonged to the Metternich, who was famed for his wiliness at the Congress of Vienna, and had a few irreverent thoughts about world domination. Metternich, according to most of the history books, had been attending a ball in Vienna when the news broke that Napoleon had landed in Cannes, at the start of the campaign that was to end at Waterloo. This unwelcome information had been a real party stopper and the ball had broken up in mid-waltz. The Princess confided that her husband’s forebear had actually been in bed at the time, or possibly sitting in the same chair as I was.

  The area between the Main and Frankfurt, with Wiesbaden in between, seems like an enormous ribbon development from the road, but from the river it is quite different. The industrial developments, though huge, have somehow been contained and do not seem endless and pointless as they do in Britain or Belgium. One moment there would be an enormous chemical works on the banks of the river, and the next a charming little village set in the midst of trees and fields. I found this very surprising and so we stopped at Höchst, mooring near a boat which was being converted to the height of luxury for taking passengers on all-year-round cruises down the Rhine and into the Low Countries.

  The little town was a few hundred yards up the hill through some municipal gardens. Our first task was to fill up with water but surprisingly there were no hydrants about and the nearest tap was in the ladies’ toilets in the gardens. The hose just reached, but as I was debating with myself about the right moment to dash in and fix it to the tap, I found myself being eyed very sternly by a German lady. She clearly felt I was up to no good, and, as I was unable to explain why it was necessary to enter the ladies’ lavatory and she was clearly not going to make any kind of effort to understand what I had in mind, we were in a stand-off position. She withdrew to gather reinforcements and I sat down on one of the benches and waited till the coast cleared. Eventually the park-keeper arrived, summoned by the informer. I tried to explain what I wanted but, though it was clear that had I had another hundred foot of hosepipe I would have been able to fill up from the gents, he said that it was ganz verboten to enter the ladies’ toilet under any circumstances, such is the strict adherence to rules in Germany. Who was it that, during the war, called the Germans carnivorous sheep? Defeated, I wound up the hose and returned to the boat. As we had no water Ray and I stayed at the local hotel, which was a huge floating barge, so that we could have a bath before entering Frankfurt.