by David Fraser
‘Aha,’ said Kaspar – ‘Ja, Frido – the second verse –’
Frido, without self-consciousness, put back his head without rising from his chair –
‘Der Mond, der ist ihr Buhle –’
He had a gentle, true voice.
‘Bravo, Frido,’ said his father.
‘Go on, Frido,’ said Werner, ‘you can’t stop before the final verse. No happy endings please!’
‘Sie blüht und glüht und leuchtet
Und starret stumm in die Höh:
Sie duftet und weinet und zittert
Vor liebe und liebesweh
Vor liebe und liebesweh!’
Frido sang, very softly. He enunciated clearly and Marcia thought she had caught most of the words. The song was half-familiar.
She said, ‘Lotosblume, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. The poor Lotosblume – and the poor moon, her lover.’
‘What’s “Zittert”,’ Frido?’
‘Trembles. She weeps and trembles.’
‘From love and its pain,’ said Werner with his usual half-smile – ‘“Chagrin d’amour” and so forth.’
‘Is it Schumann?’ asked Marcia, breaking a quiet that had a touch of tenseness in it.
‘It is. A song by Heinrich Heine.’
‘Ah,’ said Anthony. ‘Ein Jüde,’ he added with a smile to Kaspar.
‘A charming lyric poet,’ said von Arzfeld, unsmiling, and they were quiet again as Lise touched the keys.
After that first evening, neither Anthony nor she had directly raised with any of the von Arzfelds the questions which were so profoundly disturbing the mind of Europe – the character, the obsessions, the brutality of Germany’s young régime. Marcia would have described herself as not particularly interested in politics, but these things were frequently headlined in the British press and the sort of vindictiveness which she and Anthony had witnessed in Herzenburg had little to do with politics and everything, surely, to do with common humanity. It erected a barrier, created a gulf filled by unspoken, distressing ideas, between, she thought, them and us.
But this shadow in the background, which she would have liked some open discussion to acknowledge and perhaps to lift – this had certainly not darkened her increasingly radiant perception of Werner von Arzfeld. She found that she had never experienced so disturbing a personality. ‘He is so different to his brother,’ she thought. ‘Frido is charming, gentle, articulate.’ Werner said little. He appeared, at times, almost surly in his silences; his quick, decisive movements, made as if impatient with the delay which consideration of others might impose. Yet Werner’s smile was enchanting, and his eyes caressing and hypnotic. As Marcia rode from sunlight to shade and on again, she felt Werner’s presence all about her, both exciting and alarming.
Werner checked his horse to a walk and Marcia drew level. She looked into his face. Her cheeks were flushed from the exercise. She wore a borrowed riding cap and a pair of Lise’s jodhpurs and was warm enough with only her cardigan over a short-sleeved yellow shirt.
‘Werner, you know that question we were talking about on our first evening – the way Jews are being treated –’
Werner appeared not to hear. He did not turn his head. They were riding stirrup to stirrup.
‘We’ve not talked about it since, but –’
Werner suddenly reined in. He said,
‘This way,’ and cantered fifty yards to his left down a small crossing ride, leading to a circle of grass surrounded by young evergreens. Plantations of the latter were interspersed with the great beech colonies in a pattern of contrasting colour and texture. Marcia followed. Werner dismounted and took her horse’s bridle.
‘We will eat here. It is warm and dry. And through the trees, there, one looks west across the valley. It is beautiful is it not?’ He smiled into her eyes as she slipped from the saddle, took off her cap and shook her hair from her face.
It was indeeed a beautiful place. The dark shapes of hills rose sharply west of the Weser, etched against the sky. Small, red-roofed villages were perceptible in their folds. Werner looped the reins of both horses over the stump of a dead tree and produced a blanket from in front of his saddle. Unfolding it on the grass he took bread, smoked sausage and apples from a saddle bag.
‘The grass is already dry but this will be better.’ He gestured to Marcia to sit down. She took off her cardigan and felt the spring sun hot on her bare arms. Really, it was remarkable weather! Werner, sitting beside her, started cutting the sausage with a pocket knife.
As he did so, he said softly, in his exact, slightly pedantic-sounding way, not looking at her,
‘You and your brother always want to talk about Jews. There are many other things to talk about. Many other things I would like to talk to you about, Marcia.’
‘Werner, you can’t say we “always” want to talk about the Jews! We – Anthony – mentioned them once, our first evening. Not since. And isn’t it important? If one lot of people are being bullied, hounded –’
‘Hounded?’
‘Yes. Hunted. Gehetzt, isn’t that it? And if that’s happening, isn’t it both wrong and important? And it’s getting you all a very bad name.’
Werner had finished preparing the sausage. He folded the knife, put it away and seemed to be considering. He said,
‘Yes, I think it is important. And there are other things important also. Just now the most important thing for me is this.’
Next moment Marcia found herself held tightly in his arms, his mouth seeking and finding hers.
‘Marcia, you are delicious, you are as beautiful as the morning, you are soft, you are smooth –’
‘I feel terribly wicked. But terribly happy. It was all right in the end, wasn’t it? But, oh dear, Werner, I’m really a very carefully brought up young lady, you know.’
‘I am sure of it. And I am a very polite, responsible officer.’
‘You! You’re a fiend! Look me in the eyes again! What are we going to do?’
‘Perhaps we shall stay here for ever. The horses are happy. They are warm and lazy and there is some grass. And a stream at the foot of the little hill. You too. Are you warm and lazy?’
‘Very warm.’
‘And lazy?’
‘And lazy. I think I’d like to go to sleep. How long have we been here?’
‘About an hour. One marvellous hour. Everything will be all right. You must trust me.’
‘I do. But Werner, you must think terrible things of me. To let you –’
‘I think only wonderful things of you. You enchant me.’
‘Werner, are you sure –’
‘I am sure. Everything will be all right. And all that matters is when I see you again. I have to return to my regiment tomorrow. You will soon be going to England. All that time I shall want you. I shall dream of you in my arms. My eyes will see you when I close them, my hands and limbs will be hungry to touch you. When –’
‘Werner, my father and mother have talked about sending me to Vienna this summer to study art which I want to do. We’ve got cousins there.’
‘Austrian cousins?’
‘No, Cousin Francis Carr is very British, he’s my father’s cousin and he was at the Embassy. Now, of course –’
‘Of course. No Embassy. There has been a union between Germany and Austria.’
‘Well, Cousin Francis is still there, with his family. I think there’s a British Consulate-General or something. Would you be able –’
‘Vienna is not a long way from where my regiment is in Bavaria.
‘You are really warm enough?’
‘Well, I think I ought to put on something –’
‘In a little while.’
‘Werner! Oh! …’
‘In a little while. Not quite yet.’
It was at about six o’clock that Anthony’s car began to make disquieting noises.
In the morning Frido had been an excellent guide to Celle. Anthony had insisted on giving him and Lise lunch at
a small Gasthof in the country five miles east of the town. The afternoon was spent in leisurely exploration north-eastward.
‘There is a cousin of my father who lives not far from Celle,’ said Frido. ‘She married an officer in the Luftwaffe called Langenbach. She’s part English. Very charming. She has an English grandmother.’
‘I didn’t know you had English relations, Frido.’
‘It is not so. My cousin, Anna, is born von Arzfeld but the grandmother who is English is not our grandmother. Anna’s grandfather and our grandfather were brothers. Anna’s grandfather married an English lady. Both Anna’s own parents are dead.’
‘Is her husband’s airforce station near here, then?’
‘No, she is living with his parents. He is away. He is in Spain.’ Frido’s voice was surprisingly cold.
Anthony digested this. From the start, the civil war which had broken out in 1936 in Spain had aroused strong emotions in Britain. It was peculiar to hear, in so matter of tact a way, of a German officer serving there, presumably flying. A good many of his acquaintances at Oxford believed with furious indignation that the Spanish Republic was victim of an appalling conspiracy of evil; that democracy and decency were ranged against brutality and oppression; that right was self-evidently on one side. There had been countless demonstrations and fund raising occasions. Trains packed with volunteers had steamed out of Glasgow amid cheering crowds and a good deal of confusion.
‘Communist organized, all this, of course,’ John Marvell had observed. ‘Wonderful chance for them to show themselves on the side of the angels.’
On the other side of the coin he recalled a lunch in a friend’s rooms at Magdalen. A fellow guest, aged about thirty, was introduced to him as a Norwegian: a stolid, dependable-seeming man, a little dour. Anthony learned that the Norwegian worked in a family timber business, with an office in Spain.
‘But no longer, unfortunately. We had to get out.’
‘And whose side are you for?’ asked Anthony.
‘Me?’ said the Norwegian, looking astonished at the question, ‘Why, for Franco – and civilization. It had broken down completely. There was anarchy. Butchery. He, or somebody, had to come.’
And whatever the rights and wrongs of it, a good many people took small interest in what they regarded as the incomprehensible quarrels of a bunch of Dagoes. Anthony’s mind went back to drunken shouts in The Broad at Oxford, to Freddie Barnett’s high-pitched yells, to Frido’s grave face.
Now Frido was talking again.
‘Langenbach is quite well known as a brilliant flying man, I believe. He’s a lot older than my cousin, Anna. He is clever, too. Now he is away, she lives with his parents. I would like you to meet them. They are nice people. Rather strict but nice.’
‘Is it on our way?’
‘No. It is eastward. I should have planned earlier perhaps.’
He sounded regretful. Anthony was not sure whether Frido was tacitly suggesting an unannounced descent upon the Langenbachs. Nothing, in fact, was further from Frido’s mind. Such things were not for hasty improvisation. The Langenbachs, staid and formidable, were not of the kind to welcome ‘dropping in’ by a young trio, whether or not they claimed cousin-ship with their daughter-in-law Anna.
‘When you come again we will arrange something,’ said Frido. ‘Next time. Next time will be soon, please. I would like you to see the house, it is rather famous, it is old, older than Arzfeld. And our cousin is charming.’
‘Charming!’ said Lise, fervently.
Eventually they decided to head south, toward home.
‘It’s been a lovely day,’ said Anthony with sincerity. He turned his face full to Frido and smiled, in the way Frido recognized from their strolls through Oxford side by side, Anthony careless of whom he bumped. Frido found himself wishing that this habit was confined to pedestrian rather than motoring progression.
‘How far to home, Frido?’ They had been wandering with little sense of time or distance.
‘About sixty-five miles, maybe.’
Anthony whistled. ‘That’s going to take a bit of time! As we know, the roads aren’t exactly fast.’ Soon it would be dark and he had discovered, rather surprisingly, that Frido’s skill at map reading was less than perfect.
‘Damn!’
The striped pole of a level crossing descended before them. Anthony wound down the window.
‘I can’t even hear the train!’
‘It will come,’ said Frido lamely. Kaspar von Arzfeld liked regularity. Uncovenanted lateness for meals was to be deplored. Lise was additionally nervous because her attentions were needed for the preparation of supper, but she said nothing.
Anthony switched the engine off. After what seemed an eternity a slow freight train rumbled past. It consisted of flats: on each flat was a large shape covered by tarpaulins, each shape exactly similar. Anthony’s inexperienced eye took in what appeared to be caterpillar tracks, visible below each tarpaulin.
‘Do you suppose those are tanks, Frido?’
‘Well maybe, I don’t know,’ said Frido.
‘Hell of a lot of them.’ Anthony looked at his watch. Nearly six o’clock.
Eventually the train passed and the barrier lifted. It was three minutes after they started again that the sounds beneath the bonnet of the Morris became insistent and menacing. Neither Anthony nor Frido was a skilled or even primitively instructed mechanic. They looked at each other. It was a regular, rapping sound. Anthony made a face and drove on faster. The sound grew louder.
‘I think you have trouble,’ said Frido, very seriously. At that moment steam began to float back over the windscreen. The rapping noise was now louder than the engine.
‘Better have a look,’ said Anthony. He had no idea what to look for. He stopped the car on a grass verge, and dismounted to fiddle with the catches securing the bonnet. The others climbed out.
‘Have you a torch in the car, Anthony?’ There was no torch. The light was fading. A cloud of steam hit them as the bonnet flap was raised. There was a hissing sound. A great deal of oil appeared everywhere.
‘Anthony, perhaps it would be better to return to the village we just went through. We can borrow a torch. We can inspect.’
‘I don’t think inspection will help us much. But I agree. Let’s go back there.’
They climbed into the car. Anthony pressed the self-starter. No response. This happened several times.
‘I’ll swing it.’
But efforts with the starting handle also proved futile.
‘Do we know what the village was called? We’d better walk back to it and see if we can organize help.’
‘I saw the name,’ said Lise, ‘I don’t think I have been to it before. It said Kranenberg.’
Frido had a cigarette lighter and they inspected the map.
‘I can’t see it. This is our road south isn’t it, Frido? And we’ve just crossed the railway.’
Frido was peering intently at the map, frowning. He sighed. He had found Kranenberg.
‘Anthony, we are on the wrong road. We have been going east. Not south but east. South-east.’
They digested this.
‘Well,’ said Anthony, ‘we’re broken down, wherever we are. And I think we’d better set out in search of rescuers. Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a telephone in Kranenberg?’
Frido was still bent over the map.
‘We are very near the Langenbachs. The family I told you about. Where Anna von Arzfeld lives. Anna Langenbach.’
‘How near?’
‘Maybe two miles. This is what I will do. I will walk back to Kranenberg. I will telephone from there to Anna and explain. I will ask her to organize help. She – the Langenbachs – will know where the nearest repair garage is, someone who can tow the car in. I will ask Anna to speak to them. She will advise us.’
‘If she’s there.’
‘I expect she is there. It is very quiet. She does not go away. It will be easier if I speak to Anna. If she is
not there I will explain to Herr Langenbach.’ Frido sounded dubious and disappeared into the gathering darkness.
About two hours later Anthony looked about him and marvelled at how swiftly life’s minor disasters can become instead delightful adventures. A broken-down car on the wrong road in a strange country, dark falling and companions as mechanically unskilled as he was, had promised tedium and discomfort – to say nothing of the displeasure likely to be felt by Kaspar von Arzfeld. Now, Anthony reflected, it was turning into one of the most enjoyable evenings he had experienced in Germany.
Frido had returned to the car with a lighter step and brighter voice. Their cousin Anna Langenbach had been at home. Yes, she knew an excellent garage, but it was fifteen kilometres away. Meanwhile, she proposed immediately to come in a car and consult at the scene of the disaster. Thus, a few minutes after Frido’s return, a car drew up on the quiet road followed by some sort of farm truck. Torches flashed. Anthony could get little impression of who was who. There appeared to be a woman in the car, accompanied by a man, and there was the driver of the truck.
Anna had brought the farm bailiff and an employee described as a ‘clever mechanic’ with a vehicle, well able to tow the Morris to some place of shelter and inspection. In what seemed no time at all Anthony found himself steering the Morris towed behind the truck, the bailiff sitting beside him while Lise and Frido drove with their cousin. He had thankfully acquiesced in the proposal of the clearly competent bailiff, that the ‘clever mechanic’ should see what he could find under the bonnet. Only after this preliminary diagnosis would steps be taken, if necessary, to summon the garage repair service from fifteen kilometres away. Meanwhile –
‘Meanwhile,’ Anna Langenbach had said, ‘you will all have supper with us. My parents-in-law will be delighted. It is a surprise of the nicest kind.’ Her command of English was that of one who had spoken it from birth – which, on and off, Anna had done. And Anthony thought he had never heard so charming an accent, a mere touch, an inflexion, a lilt which betrayed one knowing a tongue perfectly but still more at home in another.