“But blood is red, and blood is life. Red was the colour of kings. Kings, far-off kings, painted their faces vermilion, and were almost gods.”
THE EVANGELISTIC BEASTS
“Oh, put them back, put them back in the four corners of the heavens, where they belong, the Apocalyptic beasts. For with their wings full of stars they rule the night, and man that watches through the night lives four lives, and man that sleeps through the night sleeps four sleeps, the sleep of the lion, the sleep of the bull, the sleep of the man, and the eagle’s sleep. After which the lion wakes, and it is day. Then from the four quarters the four winds blow, and life has its changes. But when the heavens are empty, empty of the four great Beasts, the four Natures, the four Winds, the four Quarters, then sleep is empty too, man sleeps no more like the lion and the bull, nor wakes from the light-eyed eagle sleep.”
CREATURES
“But fishes are very fiery, and take to the water to cool themselves.”
“To those things that love darkness, the light of day is cruel and a pain. Yet the light of lamps and candles has no fears for them; rather they draw near to taste it, as if saying: Now what is this?
So we see that the sun is more than burning, more than the burning of fires or the shining of lamps. Because with his rays he hurts the creatures that live by night, and lamplight and firelight do them no hurt. Therefore the sun lives in his shining, and is not like fires, that die.”
REPTILES
“Homer was wrong in saying, ‘Would that strife might pass away from among gods and men!’ He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away — for in the tension of opposites all things have their being — ”
“For when Fire in its downward path chanced to mingle with the dark breath of the earth, the serpent slid forth, lay revealed. But he was moist and cold, the sun in him darted uneasy, held down by moist earth, never could he rise on his feet. And this is what put poison in his mouth. For the sun in him would fain rise halfway, and move on feet. But moist earth weighs him down, though he dart and twist, still he must go with his belly on the ground. — The wise tortoise laid his earthy part around him, he cast it round him and found his feet. So he is the first of creatures to stand upon his toes, and the dome of his house is his heaven. Therefore it is charted out, and is the foundation of the world.”
BIRDS
“Birds are the life of the skies, and when they fly, they reveal the thoughts of the skies. The eagle flies nearest to the sun, no other bird flies so near.
So he brings down the life of the sun, and the power of the sun. in his wings, and men who see him wheeling are filled with the elation of the sun. But all creatures of the sun must dip their mouths in blood, the sun is for ever thirsty, thirsting for the brightest exhalation of blood.
You shall know a bird by his cry, and great birds cry loud, but sing not. The eagle screams when the sun is high, the peacock screams at the dawn, rooks call at evening, when the nightingale sings. And all birds have their voices, each means a different thing.”
ANIMALS
“Yes, and if oxen or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds.”
“Once, they say, he was passing by when a dog was being beaten, and he spoke this word: ‘Stop! don’t beat it! For it is the soul of a friend I recognized when I heard its voice.’ “
“Swine wash in mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.”
GHOSTS
“And as the dog with its nostrils tracking out the fragments of the beasts’ limbs, and the breath from their feet that they leave in the soft grass, runs upon a path that is pathless to men, so does the soul follow the trail of the dead, across great spaces. For the journey is a far one, to sleep and a forgetting, and often the dead look back, and linger, for now they realize all that is lost. Then the living soul comes up with them, and great is the pain of greeting, and deadly the parting again. For oh, the dead are disconsolate, since even death can never make up for some mistakes.”
PEOPLES, COUNTRIES, RACES
GERMAN IMPRESSIONS:
I. French Sons of Germany
In Metz I prefer the Frenchmen to the Germans. I am more at my ease with them. It is a question of temperament.
From the Cathedral down to the river is all French. The Cathedral seems very German. It is nothing but nave: a tremendous lofty nave, and nothing else: a great jump at heaven, in the conception; a rather pathetic fall to earth in execution. Still, the splendid conception is there.
So I go down from the Cathedral to the French quarter. It is full of smells, perhaps, but it is purely itself. A Frenchman has the same soul, whether he is eating his dinner or kissing his baby. A German has no soul when he is eating his dinner, and is beautiful when he kisses his baby. So I prefer the Frenchman who hasn’t the tiresome split between his animal nature and his spiritual, in whom the two are fused.
The barber drinks. He has wild hair and bloodshot eyes. Still, I dare trust my throat and chin to him. I address him in German. He dances before me, answering in mad French, that he speaks no German. Instantly I love him in spite of all.
“You are a foreigner here?” I remark.
He cannot lather me, he is so wildly excited. “No he was born in Metz, his father was born in Metz, his grandfather was born in Metz. For all he knows, Adam was born in Metz. But no Leroy has ever spoken German; no, not a syllable. It would split his tongue- he could not, you see, Sir, he could not; his construction would not allow of it.”
With all of which I agree heartily; whereupon he looks lovingly upon me and continues to lather.
“His wife was a Frenchwoman, born in Paris. I must see his wife.” He calls her by some name I do not know, and she appears — fat and tidy.
“You are a subject of France?” my barber demands furiously.
“Certainly,” she begins. “I was born in Paris — ” As they both talk at once, I can’t make out what they say. But they are happy, they continue. At last, with a final flourish of the razor, I am shaved. The barber is very tipsy.
“Monsieur is from Brittany?” he asks me tenderly.
Alas! I am from England.
“But, why?” cries Madame; “you have not an English face; no, never. And a German face — pah! impossible.”
In spite of all I look incurably English. Nevertheless, I start a story about a great-grandfather who was refugee in England after the revolution. They embrace me, they love me. And I love them.
“Sir,” I say, “will you give me a morsel of soap? No, not shaving soap.”
“This is French soap, this is German,” he says. The French is in a beautiful flowery wrapper, alas! much faded.
“And what is the difference?” I ask.
“The French, of course, is better. The German is five pfennigs- one sou, Monsieur — the cheaper.”
Of course, I take the French soap. The barber grandly gives my twenty-pfennig tip to the lathering boy, who has just entered, and he bows me to the door. I am in the street, breathless.
A German officer, in a flowing cloak of bluey-grey — like ink and milk — looks at me coldly and inquisitively. I look at him with a “Go to the devil” sort of look, and pass along. I wonder to myself if my dislike of these German officers is racial, or owing to present national feeling, or if it is a temperamental aversion. I decide on the last. A German soldier spills something out of a parcel on to the road and looks round like a frightened boy. I want to shelter him.
I pass along, look at the ridiculous imitation-medieval church that is built on the islet — or peninsula — in the middle of the river, on the spot that has been called for ages “The Place of Love.” I wonder how the Protestant conscience of this ugly church remains easy upon such foundation. I think of the famous “three K’s” that are allotted to German women, “Kinder, K
uche, Kirche,” and pity the poor wretches.
Over the river, all is barracks — barracks, and soldiers on foot, and soldiers on horseback. Everywhere these short, baggy German soldiers, with their fair skins and rather stupid blue eyes! I hurry to get away from them. To the right is a steep hill, once, I suppose, the scarp of the river.
At last I found a path, and turned for a little peace to the hillside and the vineyards. The vines are all new young slips, climbing up their sticks. The whole hillside bristles with sticks, like an angry hedgehog. Across lies Montigny; to the right, Metz itself, with its cathedral like a brown rat humped up. I prefer my hillside. In this Mosel valley there is such luxuriance of vegetation. Lilac bushes are only heaps of purple flowers. Some roses are out. Here on the wild hillside there are lively vetches of all sorts, and white poppies and red; and then the vine shoots, with their tips of most living, sensitive pink and red, just like blood under the skin.
I am happy on the hillside. It is a warm, grey day. The Mosel winds below. The vine sticks bristle against the sky. The little church of the village is in front. I climb the hill, past a Madonna shrine that stands out by the naked path. The faded blue “Lady” is stuck with dying white lilac. She looks rather ugly, but I do not mind. Odd men, and women, are working in the vineyards. They are very swarthy, and they have very small-bladed spades, which glisten in the sun.
At last I come to the cemetery under the church. As I marvel at the bead-work wreaths, with ridiculous little naked china figures of infants floating in the middle, I hear voices, and looking up, see two German soldiers on the natural platform, or terrace, beside the church. Along the vineyard path are squares of yellow and black and white, like notice boards. The two soldiers, in their peculiar caps, almost similar to our round sailors’ hats, or blue cooks’ caps, are laughing. They watch the squares, then me.
When I go up to the church and round to the terrace, they are gone. The terrace is a natural platform, a fine playground, very dark with great horse-chestnuts in flower, and walled up many feet from the hillside, overlooking the far valley of the Mosel. As I sit on a bench, the hens come pecking round me. It is perfectly still and lovely, the only sound being from the boys’ school.
Somewhere towards eleven o’clock two more soldiers came. One led his horse, the other was evidently not mounted. They came to the wall, or parapet, to look down the valley at the fort. Meanwhile, to my great joy, the mare belonging to the mounted soldier cocked up her tail and cantered awav under the horse-chestnuts, down the village. Her owner went racing, shouting after her, making the peculiar hu-hu! these Germans use to their horses. She would have been lost had not two men rushed out of the houses, and, shouting in French, stopped her. The soldier jerked her head angrily, and led her back. He was a short, bear-like little German, she was a wicked and delicate mare. He kept her bridle as he returned. Meanwhile, his companion, his hands clasped on his knees, shouted with laughter.
Presently, another, rather taller, rather more manly soldier appeared. He had a sprig of lilac between his teeth. The foot-soldier recounted the escapade with the mare, whereupon the newcomer roared with laughter and suddenly knocked the horse under the jaw. She reared in terror. He got hold of her by the bridle, teasing her. At last her owner pacified her. Then the newcomer would insist on sticking a piece of lilac in her harness, against her ear. It frightened her, she reared, and she panted, but he would not desist. He teased her, bullied her, coaxed her, took her unawares; she was in torment as he pawed at her head to stick in the flower, she would not allow him. At last, however, he succeeded. She, much discomfited, wore lilac against her ear.
Then the children came out of school — boys, in their quaint pinafores. It is strange how pleasant, how quaint, and manly these little children are; the tiny boys of six seemed more really manly than the soldiers of twenty-one, more alert to the real things. They cried to each other in their keen, naive way, discussing the action at the fortress, of which I could make out nothing.
And one of the soldiers asked them, “How old are you, Johnny?” Human nature is very much alike. The boys used French in their play, but they answered the soldiers in German.
As I was going up the hill there came on a heavy shower. I sheltered as much as I could under an apple-tree thick with pink blossom; then I hurried down to the village. “Cafe — Restauration” was written on one house. I wandered into the living-room beyond the courtyard.
“Where does one drink?” I asked the busy, hard-worked-looking woman. She answered me in French, as she took me in. At once, though she was a drudge, her fine spirit of politeness made me comfortable.
“This is not France?” I asked of her.
“Oh, no — but always the people have been French,” and she looked at me quickly from her black eyes. I made my voice tender as I answered her.
Presently I said: “Give me some cigarettes, please.”
“French or German?” she asked.
“What’s the difference?” I inquired.
“The French, of course, are better.” “Then French,” I said, laughing, though I do not really love the black, strong French cigarettes.
“Sit and talk to me a minute,” I said to her. “It is so nice not to speak German.”
“Ah, Monsieur!” she cried, and she loved me. She could not sit, no. She could only stay a minute. Then she sent her man.
I heard her in the other room bid him come. He was shy — he would not. “Ssh!” I heard her go as she pushed him through the door.
He was very swarthy, burned dark with the sun. His eyes were black and very bright. He was a man of about forty-five. I could not persuade him to sit down or to drink with me; he would accept only a cigarette. Then, laughing, he lighted me my cigarette. He was a gentleman, and he had white teeth.
The village, he told me, was Sey: a French name, but a German village.
“And you are a German subject?” I asked.
He bowed to me. He said he had just come in from the vines, and must go back immediately. Last year they had had a bad disease, so that all the plants I had seen were new. I hoped he would get rich with them. He smiled with a peculiar sad grace.
“Not rich, Monsieur, but not a failure this time.”
He had a daughter, Angele: “In Paris — in France.”
He bowed and looked at me meaningly. I said I was glad. I said:
“I do not like Metz: too many soldiers. I do not like German soldiers.”
“They are scarcely polite,” he said quietly.
“You find it?” I asked.
He bowed his acquiescence.
It is a strange thing that these two Frenchmen were the only two men — not acquaintances — whom I felt friendly towards me in the whole of Metz.
II. Hail in the Rhineland
We were determined to take a long walk this afternoon, in spite of the barometer, which persisted in retreating towards “storm.” The morning was warm and mildly sunny. The blossom was still falling from the fruit-trees down the village street, and drifting in pink and white all along the road. The barber was sure it would be fine. But then he’d have sworn to anything I wanted, he liked me so much since I admired, in very bad German, his moustache.
“I may trim your moustache?” he asked.
“You can do what you like with it,” I said.
As he was clipping it quite level with my lip he asked:
“You like a short moustache?”
“Ah,” I answered, “I could never have anything so beautiful and upstanding as yours.”
Whereupon immediately he got excited, and vowed my moustache should stand on end even as Kaiserly as did his own.
“Never,” I vowed.
Then he brought me a bottle of mixture, and a gauze bandage, which I was to bind under my nose, and there I should be, in a few weeks, with an upstanding moustache sufficient as a guarantee for any man. But I was modest; I refused even to try.
“No,” I said, “I will remember yours.” He pitied me, and vo
wed it would be fine for the afternoon.
I told Johanna so, and she took her parasol. It was really sunny, very hot and pretty, the afternoon. Besides, Johanna’s is the only parasol I have seen in Waldbrol, and I am the only Englishman any woman for miles around could boast. So we set off.
We were walking to Niimbrecht, some five or six miles away. Johanna moved with great dignity, and I held the parasol. Every man, even the workmen on the fields, bowed low to us, and every woman looked at us yearningly. And to every women, and to every man, Johanna gave a bright “Good day.”
“They like it so much,” she said. And I believed her.
There was a scent of apple-blossom quite strong on the air. The cottages, set at random and painted white, with their many numbers painted black, have a make-believe, joyful, childish look.
Everywhere the broom was out, great dishevelled blossoms of ruddy gold sticking over the besom strands. The fields were full of dandelion pappus, floating misty bubbles crowded thick, hiding the green grass with their globes. I showed Johanna how to tell the time. “One!” I puffed; “two-three-four-five-six! Six o’clock, my dear.”
“Six o’clock what?” she asked.
“Anything you like,” I said.
“At six o’clock there will be a storm. The barometer is never wrong,” she persisted.
I was disgusted with her. The beech wood through which we were walking was a vivid flame of green. The sun was warm.
“Johanna,” I said. “Seven ladies in England would walk out with me, although they knew that at six o’clock a thunder-shower would ruin their blue dresses. Besides, there are two holes in your mittens, and black mittens show so badly.”
She quickly hid her arms in the folds of her skirts. “Your English girls have queer taste, to walk out seven at a time with you.”
We were arguing the point with some ferocity when, descending a hill in the wood, we came suddenly upon a bullock-wagon. The cows stood like blocks in the harness, though their faces were black with flies. Johanna was very indignant. An old man was on the long, railed wagon, which was piled with last year’s brown oak- leaves. A boy was straightening the load, and waiting at the end of the wagon ready to help, a young, strong man, evidently his father, who was struggling uphill with an enormous sack-cloth bundle- enormous, full of dead leaves. The new leaves of the oaks overhead were golden brown, and crinkled with young vigour. The cows stood stolid and patient, shutting their eyes, weary of the plague of flies. Johanna ‘flew to their rescue, fanning them with a beech- twig.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1001