by William Boyd
My first flight, across the front and on into Belgium, had been oddly entrancing despite the danger of my predicament. My slowly deflating gray sausage balloon appeared to possess the entire Belgian sky. The wind drove me silently eastwards, the only noises being the creaking of wicker and the occasionally audible hiss of escaping hydrogen from the balloon. I was descending very gradually and—so it seemed—quite safely. At about two hundred feet I passed over a small market town and caused consternation in the streets. Traffic halted, houses and shops emptied as people ran out to stare and point at me. I waved. The children waved back.
But of course as the air escaped the rate of descent increased. Soon I was palpably aware of a dropping sensation. Fortunately, the wind had increased and my lateral movement compensated for the vertical fall. At under a hundred feet, or thereabouts, I was wondering how best to brace myself for my eventual landing. I threw out the tripod of my Aeroscope and lashed the camera to the basket side.
We cleared—just—a ghostly coppice of silver birch, the base of the basket being scratched by the topmost twigs, and looked set to land square in the middle of a plowed field. As I perched on the edge of the basket, waiting, I saw over to my right a man on a bicycle, pedaling violently along a mud lane, trying to keep up with me. The balloon moved across the field, a tantalizing ten or fifteen feet above the ground. I contemplated jumping. Up ahead was a drainage ditch with tall patchy hawthorn hedges on both banks and six or seven young poplars. The trees loomed as the wind gusted. I jumped at five feet and turned my ankle on the hard uneven furrows. Winded, I watched the soft collision of my wrinkled flying machine with the trees. Twigs and a few dead leaves fell to the ground. I got up and limped over to the basket, well snagged by the jaggy hawthorns, and with some difficulty retrieved the Aeroscope. I looked about me. Dismal, flat, wintry Belgian fields. The mad cyclist had abandoned his bicycle at the edge of the field and was now endeavoring to sprint across it. As he approached I saw he was wearing a uniform—navy-blue with red piping—and a tall cap with three brass buttons on it. We faced each other. I did not know what to say and was in any event astonished by the man’s face, a hot pink flowing with perspiration, wordless mouth gasping for air. I assumed I was under arrest.
I should have taken the opportunity to hide or bury the Aeroscope, because with it I was immediately taken to be an agent in some sort of fiendish espionage exercise. My uniform, devoid of rank badges, was further cause for suspicion. In the series of patient interrogations I underwent as I was transported back towards Germany, my story was universally and wearily regarded as the most blatant fabrication. For me the initial and most painful loss was the confiscation of my wonderful film of the two front lines. My strident demands that the film be kept safe were naturally ignored. Equally, the universal skepticism that greeted my account did not encourage people to check out the few details I gave them. I was playing for time, they told me; well, they were patient men. Gradually I began to find myself in a kind of administrative limbo: I was regarded as a spy, but spies do not wear uniform. I was dressed as an officer but wore no rank badges and was attached to no regiment. My pass and my documents were sitting in the briefcase I left in my Humber. The interrogations were protracted, tedious and civilized but could get no further because I was telling them the truth. They chose not to believe me and somewhere, somebody decided to let me stew. I claimed to be an officer so I was not to be sent to an “other ranks” camp. But at the same time my suspicious circumstances (and, to be fair, I could see their point of view) dictated some more heedful form of confinement. I was to be kept apart from my own countrymen and held incommunicado until either I told the truth or the facts of my story were authenticated, or so the genial major interrogating me said.
And so, one damp early morning in February, with long tracts of mist hanging still in the Taunus Forest, I was marched off the train at Weilburg Station and met by four guards from Offizier-Kriegenstagenlager 18, escorted through the near-deserted town and down the hill past terraced fields to the gray walls of the veterinary science college and my joyless cell above the gymnasium.
One morning before breakfast I lay beneath my blankets fretting about how I could get to see someone in authority. The guards—all middle-aged men—seemed to understand my repeated requests, nodded and grunted in acquiescence to my urgent demands that action be taken about me, but nothing ultimately happened. I was beginning to wonder if an act of disobedience would be necessary to attract some attention—an assault on a guard, an escape attempt, perhaps—when I heard quick footsteps in the corridor and somebody, a man, singing. The footsteps passed my door in an instant, but I heard enough to make out:
When I beheld my darling,
She looked so sweet and charming,
She looked so sweet and charming
In every high degree—
As the tune dwindled I inevitably took it up in my head (it effectively banished “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”), but it was not until some seconds later that I realized it had been sung in English. So when a guard (a dull fellow with a purple pickled nose) came with my breakfast, I sang a snatch of the tune at him—“Dashing away with a smoothing iron, she stole my heart away”—and said, “Engländer?”
He looked puzzled, then gave a weak smile and said, “Schön,” and applauded.
Two days later, none the wiser, I paced slowly round the exercise yard. It was a generous size for one prisoner, about thirty yards square, surrounded by a palisade about twelve feet high. On the other side of the wall was a raised boardwalk to allow a guard to supervise me. This practice was soon abandoned. Today, however, there was a guard watching. I glanced at him momentarily, then carried on with my exercise. All I did was walk, but I tried to walk randomly round the enclosed square. The thought of beating out a path obscurely depressed me. I moved hither and thither, turned on my heel, with no system except to establish no system.
I had plucked a dandelion leaf absentmindedly from the ground and as I walked, still going through my futile options, I tore bits of it off. As one trajectory carried me beneath the guard on the boardwalk, he spoke to me.
“She loves me, she loves me not … ahhh.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t be unquiet, old fellow. She’ll be waiting, I promise you, a fire burning in the window.”
He spoke English, with a marked but pleasant German accent. This must be my singer. He leaned against the palisade top, rifle slung across his back, hands and forearms dangling over. He was young, much younger than the other guards, my age possibly. His round forage cap was pushed back on his head, revealing the short black fringe favored by German Army barbers. His face was long and thin, pale, with a thin wide mouth. It was strongly characterized by his eyebrows, almost circumflex, dark and bushy, and that met above his nose. It gave him a sharp Mephistophelian look. A mischief-maker, but not necessarily malicious. Amoral, perhaps, but not necessarily malign.
“I like your hair,” he said. “Mine, it used to be so long. But now …” He doffed his cap. I half-expected his ears to be elvish, pointed, green-tipped. He rubbed his hand over his stubbly head.
“Little prickles, all over,” he said. “I hate it.” He smiled. “I shouldn’t talk with you,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I can’t speak bloody Russian, I can’t speak bloody French, and these old fellows”—he gestured at the gymnasium—“all they do is play cards, and talk about food and their disgusting illnesses.”
“You speak excellent English.”
“Listen, I live in London, 1912. For one year I’m painting, an artist. Camden Town. The Islington Angel. You know it?”
“No. I come from Scotland. Edinburgh.”
“Ah. Bonny Scotland.” He looked round. “Scheisse, here comes fat offo. Seeing you anon.” He reslung his rifle and began ostentatiously to pace round the boardwalk.
I did not see him again for a couple of days. Then, one evening, he brought me my eight o’clock dinner. Having only seen his hea
d and shoulders I was surprised at how tall and thin he was—at least six foot two or three. His uniform fitted him badly and he looked very out of place in it. It was something to do with his posture. Everything about his attitude was the opposite of erect or stiff. He seemed permanently at ease, always in an attitude of total repose.
He put the tray down.
“Macaroni soup and—yes!—I see a bit of fish. A lucky day.” He smiled, showing sharp-looking, uneven teeth. “I hear you’re a dangerous spy. Very exciting.”
I told him my story. At first I was a little suspicious of his affability, but I soon saw it was entirely disinterested. Over the next week or so we had several short conversations. They never lasted more than five minutes as, for all his insouciance, he seemed constantly alert to the possibility of being discovered fraternizing. He told me his name was Karl-Heinz Kornfeld (“Charlie Cornfield,” he translated badly). He was twenty-two years old and he was serving as a prison camp guard because he was unfit for the front. He pointed at his stomach. “I have Magengeschwür.” He mimed stomach cramps and swigging from a bottle. “Too much drinking,” he said, and smiled his thin rude grin.
Steadily, over the next fortnight, a curious acquaintanceship grew up between us. He told me he had abandoned painting and had become an actor before being conscripted. He said he had a cousin in Vienna, an eminent playwright who was going to write him a play. I let him know something of my background, but oddly it was he who seemed to have the need to talk more than I. From him I learned more about the camp and its inhabitants—the generals in mufti, the lugubrious Russian officers, now doubly pessimistic since the revolution, who made delicate, beautiful wooden toys that they sold to the Weilburg villagers to buy alcohol. They would drink anything, Karl-Heinz said. From time to time he sold them turpentine when they were desperate.
This last piece of information was casually dropped, to let me know, I surmised, that he was corruptible. I had no money (my panting florid captor had relieved me of my wallet) and had received no Red Cross parcels. I let him know this.
“You have your sugar,” he said. “You can exchange.”
And so the bartering began. For half my sugar ration I received three cigarettes and a dozen matches. I cut them into inch-long sections and smoked them at night, opening the window a crack and exhaling through it into the night air. Suddenly, my life appeared immeasurably rich. I had Karl-Heinz’s irregular companionship and I had my tobacco. I made the tiny cigarettes last three nights, rationing my avid puffs, constructing from the dry straw in my mattress a simple holder that allowed me to smoke down to the last shreds of tobacco. Now I had something to plan for and look forward to, nightly, and it was illicit. At last my life acquired some texture.
The next thing I asked for was meat. I said I had nothing to barter for it. Karl-Heinz thought for a moment. “That’s all right,” he said. “You can pay me later.” I was not sure what he meant, but I had no complaints three days later when he brought me my breakfast and withdrew a thin sausage from his jacket pocket. It was dry and shriveled and full of gristle. I ate it with unreal pleasure.
Then I asked him to find out about my predicament. He screwed up his eyes. “Difficult,” he said. “I see what I can do.”
And so it continued for two weeks—three weeks? I do not know. Time was passing with slightly more variation, but as much sloth as always. It was to counteract this that I asked him for one more favor.
“Karl-Heinz?” I said one day as he escorted me to the washroom. “Do you think you could get me something to read?”
“My good God!” he said, feigning surprise. “An English book? Where do you think I get that?”
“I don’t know. But you seem to be able to get most things.”
“Difficult,” he said. He expounded further on the difficulties as I shaved. I wrapped the safety razor and bar of soap in the flannel and handed it back to him.
“There’s a schoolteacher in Weilburg,” he said. “Maybe I could borrow from him. No. Better to buy.” He made a sad face. “But you got no money.” He looked at me. “You give me something and I get an English book for you.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“A kiss.”
Kissing Karl-Heinz was not as unpleasant as I imagined. It was much more pleasant, for example than eating my dormmates’ wax-bogey balls at Minto Academy. Unlike Huguette, he did not open his mouth and use his tongue. We simply pressed our lips together and held them there for quite a long time, sometimes—I always counted—as long as a minute. We kissed four or five times, usually in the washroom, before the book arrived. I assume he expected things to go further. After our second kiss he asked me very politely if I would hold his penis, but I declined. “Fine,” he said, a little disappointed. “Only kissing, then.”
The book was delivered to me in loose-leaf sections in the exercise yard. Karl-Heinz would tear some pages out—twenty or thirty—fold them up and stuff them in a crack in the palisade wall. It was easy for me to retrieve them, hide them on my person and take them back to my cell undiscovered. I will never forget my excitement that first day as I prized the folded wad of pages from between the planks. Later, locked back in my cell, I stuffed all but the first page into my mattress. If anyone came in I would have time to crumple up the page I was reading and pocket it.
I was ready to start. I sat down on my chair and spread the page flat before me on the table. The page was small, so was the type, as if it came from an octavo pocket edition. The paper was thin, like Bible paper. My hands were visibly trembling as I smoothed out the folds. I shut my eyes and paused before reading the first sentence. I felt humbled with gratitude. Karl-Heinz had only given me the text—I did not know the title, I did not know the author. I was ignorant of the book’s subject and genre. Yet to me, sitting there in that cell, it felt as though I were on the brink of a fabulous adventure and that I held something immensely precious in my shaking hands. It was a divine moment. It was going to change my life.
* * *
Chapter One
My heart beat vigorously with anticipation. The first sentences, the first paragraph … what would they be like? I read.
I am now entering on a task which is without precedent and which when achieved will have no imitator. I am going to show my fellow creatures a man in all the integrity of nature; and that man shall be myself.
Yes. Myself! I know my own heart and have studied mankind. I am not made like anyone I have seen. I do not believe there is another man like me in existence.
I had to set the page down, such was my emotion. My heart clubbed, struggled violently in my chest. My God.… I felt drugged, intoxicated, almost swooning.
I know I was in every possible way in reduced circumstances. Like a parched man in the desert coming across a spring of fresh water. But I have never read such an opening to a book, have never been so powerfully and immediately engaged. Who was this man? Whose was this voice that spoke to me so directly, whose brazen immodesty rang with such candid integrity? I read on, mesmerized. Ten pages were all Karl-Heinz had supplied this time. I read and reread them. But the suspense was insufferable, agonizing. I had to wait two restless days for the next installment.
Karl-Heinz “fed” me the entire book over the next seven weeks. The metaphor is exact. The thin wads of pages were like crucial scraps of nutrition. I devoured them. I masticated, swallowed and digested that book. I cracked its bones and sipped its marrow; every fiber of meat, every cartilaginous nodule of gristle was dined on with gourmandising fervor. I have never read before or since with such miserly love and profound concentration. I paid for half that book with lingering chaste kisses, but the remaining portion was purchased more orthodoxly. I received my first Red Cross parcel. There had been some pilfering but I was left with a scarf, a pair of socks, a one-pound plum pudding and a bag of peppermints. Parcels began to arrive once a fortnight. I gave away my food for a book.
And the book? You will have recognized the unmistakable
tones of Jean Jacques Rousseau in The Confessions. I was seized and captivated by this extraordinary autobiography—so intensely I could have been reading about myself. Buy it, read it and you will see what I mean. I knew nothing of Rousseau, nothing of his life, his work, his ideas, and precious little about eighteenth-century Europe, but the voice was so fresh, the candor so moving and unusual, it made no difference. Here was the story of the first truly honest man. The first modern man. Here was the life of the individual spirit recounted in all its nobility and squalor for the first time in the history of the human race. When I set the dog-eared stack of pages down at the end of my seven-week, fervid read, I wept. Then I started reading it again. This man spoke for all of us suffering mortals, our vanities, our hopes, our moments of greatness and our base corrupted natures.
Pause. Stop. Reflect. We will come back to The Confessions. Suffice it to say that at this juncture the book released me from prison, metaphorically speaking. Rousseau and his autobiography delivered me. I never forgot that precious exceptional gift. The book, as you will see, was to become my life.
Karl-Heinz found it hard to understand my fervent gratitude.