A JOURNEY TO THE HAMBURG HEATH.
We got on board the Queen Wilhelmina at about eleven in
the morning on our way to Hamburg, and watched a pony, grey and
slim, being loaded into a narrow box on the quayside and strapped
Wi th various halters until he could hardly moved: suddenly he
kicked his legs up and tried to clamber over the front; he tried
again and again, pushing his head back, but couldn't; then the
crane lifted him high in the air and lowered him slowly into the
dark hold of the ship.
Sxexereseragamesaram@kexbxbxszegotamerakanaandeooxadathaex
Agdmexdguxekelopdr
A party of Englishmen, with
young girl dressed in tight
oge
white trousers and jumper, drove fast cars on board, and behaved
in a jarring and unnatural way, as if something special ought to
be recognised in them by other people withoutbits being in their
flesh, in their eyes or even in the way they were dressed; it
seemed to be only in their engines, which made a threatening roar
as they left the quayside. They seemed to be on a jaunt but
the jaunt wasn't theirs---it was an idea they had as to what a
jaunt should be, and only the trappings were there. They were
going abroad' as it might have happened in another epoch, when
it was en ough of a privilege in itself to be noticed. The girl
had no depth in her face, her body lacked softness and real sex,
perhaps because engines and threatening roars can't moye us into
softness or sex. She kept. clasping one of the young men round
the neck inyan theatrically, but without affection and even withF
out belief in her acting. And the rest of the party laughed
uneasily and made abashed jokes. They were keeping something up
which none of them wanted, none of them believed in and none of


them were made for in any case.
One of the men had a flushed face and a paunch---they were
the material of jollity wi thout it being there; and he wore
casual clothes without any effect of casualness. It was all
like a panic-stricken perf ormance before an invisible---perhaps
hostile---audiénce; some thing had to be done, there had to be
a laugh, to create what people call vitality, a sort of HEREE
death-dance. Their nerves were smashed. And nothing could be
done until they had each haet made a sort of pause in his life,
and collected his nerves together slowly.
I've noticed this again and again since we left Italy a
few weeks ago---how torn people's nerves are. The first thing
that goes is self-trust: a smile can put them at ease XE and
a frown can unsettle them. So different from Italy where your
face isn't watched as an index of feeling.
When we got to the Hook of Holland it was sunny and quite
warm, after a rough crossing, and we stood on the quayside wait-
ing for our car to be unloaded. The pony was hauled out of the
hold again and we saw that he'd been in the same box throughout
the voyage, lasting six hours. He came swining: down, looking
haggard and worn-out. Apparently the crane swinging above
frightened him, and when it brought a car down near him he made
a sudden plunge as he 'd done at Harwich, and this time succeeded
in getting his front legs over the entrance of the box, so that
he EEXXIXETE stood there panting, his eyes with an exhausted burt
astonishiggly dignified and passionate look, and his hoofs dangling
over the front. Two or three dockworkers tried to ease him
back again, pushing at his hoofs until they were back inside:
he tolerated this slow pushing and heaving for a time, his head
high, with a flashing look of defiance, then, at the moment when


they thought they'd succeeded, he made a plunge again, with a
vivid movement of ferocity, and pushed his hoofs out exactly as
beforé. Again the slow pushing back took place and again,
with even greater ferocity than before, nearly striking one of
the dockers in the head, he made a leap that shook the whole box,
and this time he got his legs right out, and XaE had freed his
chest. Then a clerkly-1ooking man came along and calmly directed
the halters to be lossened; apparently, he was used to horses.
The pony, understanding, pulled back his hoofs and stepped out of
the box like a guest, quietly and delicately, his head bowed
rather wretchedly, his tail and mane bedraggled; he was dusty
all over and his eyes had a look of infinite relief. Someone
led him by the halter along the quayside where we were standing:
we were surprised how small he really was, his thrusts had been
so mighty. He stood no higher than my chest. We asked where
he was bound for and the man looked at the label on his halter:
it was a village near Rotterdam. Was he for killing---surely,
no? No, certainly not, the man said, shaking his head with a
smile. Perhaps for children. He now had a train journey before
him, of two or three hours.
The pony was still hardly rec overed; his head was hanging,
and we fed him a whole apple, forgetting to break it up; he showed
some interest in this and chewed for a long time without swallow-
ing, froth pouring out of his mouth on to the cobbles. He'd clearly
been sick during the voyage---he was now, according to the man,
cleaning his stomach out. He frothed over the man's trousers
and shoes, and C oughed, then he was led away. But he came back,
this time with a tall, peasant-like man who had a ruddy face and
muscular bare arms o This time we gave him abrrots, hreaking them
up, and he nudged his head against us, reviving, and made a long
groaning noise to arouse our sympathies: he was waking up and blew


loufaly down his nostrils. When he continued the walk he
went a few paces and stopped, pulling at the halter, then deliber-
ately shook his coat free of the dust; already he was looking
smarter, though his tail still hung down like pieces of old grey
cloth. His walk was steady and delicate like a young girl's,
especially as he had no shoes and So made only the slightest
thumping sound on the cobbles; and now and then he would give the
huge man at his side an intimate nudge as if he could smell the
countryside in him. There was a simplicity about the man Which
we noticed when we talked to him---he waited patiently while we
fed the animal carrots, and returned when we pulled another one
out of the bag, with an expectant smile on his face that seemed
te buny
to speak onybehelg
Animals know these things, and
it looked as though they were talkign to each other quietly as
they walked along; the pony was telling him about the awful voyage.
The party of would-be boisterous people drove off with a
roar as they'd driven on at Harwich; it eas strange, each one
of them was a quiet person, really; it showed in their faces---
they had more delicacy than they were willing to show; and their
peculiar distorted gestures and false laughs had grown up between
them like a third person.
We drove to Rotterdam and ate there. I was surprised at the
hugeness of the sky, like a blue and White dome stretched over
the earth, as I'd never seen it before. The flatness and lack
of trees makes the sky so important in Holland; everything is
contained in the sky and touched by it, made gloomy or radiant
it; and you BeR see it in people's eyes. There
is a wonderful emerald quality in the light as you sometimes see
it on the east coast of England, like an early-morning sunlight
on sand, suggesting endless spaces.


There was a pale evening sun with high, white clouds, and
people were cycling home grom work along the banked roads that
went above the fields. Rotterdam was strange, with Taet coloured
buildings shining like objects in a machine so vast that it turned
you into a (squalid)kind of midget. The biting wind swept through
the streets. Nearly everything was new. A few of the old streets
remained, their houses squeezed close together.
The roads had
a gloomy hollowness but sometimes there was a bright corner with
café-tables and coloured chairs, and restaurants with walls of
glass, such as you see in some German towns now. The innwhere we
ate belonged to older times, like a German bier-stube, the seats
wooden with tall backs, the tables thick and sturdy, wi th a massive
tiled stove reaching to the ceiling, and painted dancing figures
on the panelled walls, and newspapers in wooden clips hanging from
pegs, everything dark with cigar-smoke. We asked for wine and
the waiter, dark and Italien-looking, told us that they stocked
a good young Bordeau 'loose', which we ought to try. It tasted
of grapes, anyway. We refflected to each other that in an ordinary
Wine less than a year old you stood a better chance of getting
something pure than in nine out of ten sopcalled vintages. We
pride ourselves on what we know about wine, which isn't much.
It was the first wine we'd had for a long time and it made us
feel delightfully tired and heavy, so we decided to go to the next
small town and stay there for the night. The familiar sense of
the
a lotof
>uphrse
being foreigners grew on us again. Afterjmanjtravel): ye# *
feelms
the yor of being a natural visitor---everywhere: a visitor to
almest:
These 3
life, You enter the warmth a moment and then go. Yothere
the utmost freedom of self, you are stripped for a moment of age,
moods, even bitter personal struggle, in a perilous anonymity
which makes it difficult to grasp life again, since it can take
away all the illusions of locality---they bec ome illusions;


there isn't a place you can go back to; all places have become
gestures made in a thousand different ways amid trees and fields,
in the silence of the weather; this is the sadness, the growing
inability of things to exercise their charm over you, especially
if they come from men; there remains the Gwather, and face after
unknown face; and the challenge is how to learn to be a visitor
gladly, to really be a visitor in yourself, as we all are est the
end.
We asked the waiter how far the next town was, on the way
to the German frontier, and he told us Gouda, about half-an-hour
away. That was perfect. He added with a smile that the people
there probably went to bed early, so we should hurry.
We reached Gouda soon after ten, when everything was deserted.
The outskirts were barren as parts of Rotterdam had been,with
identical, treeless streets on rising ground. The sun had just
gone down. First we had to cross a canal and wait for the bridge
to be lowered, as a barge was passing underneath. There was this
wonderful silence of Holland, coming from the flatness of the earth.
The barge, clean and polished, with no cargo in the hold, stole
through the night silently, gliding underneath us with a perfecty
her
smooth motion, its engines making only the faintest throb in her
bowels while the water trickled and ebbed along the sides. A man
was at the helm and after the bridge had been passed he handed the
wheel over to his wife, in a tinyfelowing cabin where the baass
and paintwork shone. Then the bridge was lowered again, mech-
anically from inside the bridgehouse, and we went on into the
town.
There were further dry, ugly outskirts, all the windows
open
with their curtains undeewn in the Dutch manner, showing neat
rooms inside, some of them with polished sideboards and televisions,
others wi th the signs of a meal, solid and scrupulous. Then to


our surprise we came to the heart of an old town with canals
running through it and a tef cnurch; a tall late-mediaeval
town-hall stood alone ih the middle of the cobbled square,
its shutters bright red, its walls sloping massively, taller
than all the houses round the square but at the same time wonder-
fully unassuming, everything flat and still all round it like a
lake. When we saw it, a black shadow in the dusk three storeys
high, with its neat red shutters and A spire, we felt a sudden
relief, as if we 'd found a real home for the night. Towns were
ice
made for travellers thenk They had a special humble touch that
consoled and protec ted.
The shops and hotels round the square glowed and twinkled,
tiny compared with the gleaming shadow in the middle. We found
a tiny XXXXIXXAXXIRESKEEE* hotel in a'sidestreet, atth a canal
running by it. The staircase to the rooms was so steep, and the
high,
steps so talk, that it was like climb ing an endless tower: the
owner, a pale, thin, lined man, with still eyes, told us with a
quick, jerky smile, in a breathless way, that many sailors has
slept in these rooms over the centuries, and thet they 'd climbed
to thetcrow's nest', as theydcalled these rooms, in, xxxxxrt*xEf
*IatENXXEXHTK every sort of state, semetimesmor # 1 - after-a-
And Ke smiled at us Cmatrinedly.
reugh-seag but usually drunk. The place was simple, clean and
ke showed ws
bare. First we were shoun a tiny double room with a balcony
overlooking the canal, but that was noisy because of the trucks
and motor-cycles that roared past below, and we asked for two
single rooms instead.
One of these gave out on to the courtyard
of a hospital, and the other had no W indow at all, only a fanlight,
which he said would supply us with all the air we needed 'for the
night'. We went downstai irs again, to sit in the café for a few
minutes before going to bed, and I ordered a beer. No, it was


a temperance-notel; and the man nodded his head as he told us
this, his eyes pale, as if defending an attitude which we'd just
challenged. His voice and the way he looked at us were mild but
at the same time he was emphatic, with a puritan implacability
which showed in the way he at once returned to the book he was
reading, concentrated on it palely and bloodlessly. He added,
looking up for a moment, as if to leave/free to sin if we wanted
to, that other hotels in Gouda did serve beer and that this one
was the only one that didn't. He then put his book aside, see-
ing perhaps that beer didn't mean so very much to us, and asked if
Euhih wlile
we were English. I was about to explain that I was L Ee tra my
and
wife was German by origin, Austrian, Sewdish/=d American by up-
bringing, and English by merraige, when the opportunity passed, as
it usually does. He spoke again, this time to my wife only, A
taedher
and, satd that if we had time the following day Be should visit the
church, only a few yards away, which had the most wonderful stained-
3 So
glass windows imaginable. And he made it seem that there was some-
and Ital
secretls
thing moral about going to the church,)--2 we'd a ay determined
to shirk it: for he nodded in a quick, emphatic way, his lips
pursed as if he'd just finished a reprimanding speech, and returned
steam -
to his book, seated by the bar where there was a coffee-urn speetma
ing. The room was bare, with a front window like that of a shop,
and the tables had gloomy plastic tops.
But morality doesn't interfere with your sleep, not if you've
given it as little offence as we had that day, and we slept S oundly
all night, both of yf, my wife with the hospital outside her wind-
OW and me with a fanlight overhead. In the morning we went down
to breakfast and were amazed to see that another part of the long
ae thonght Rad been given aer entuely K. Temperance,
bare room, which Ared-tntrtsddoreho-pao.ons averinsh consisted
Snug
of pieasaxk a/dining room wi th a carpet and pleasant cloth-
covered tables RXOXRERXX for the hotel-guests, While the daily


customers sat next door drinking coffee and smoking cigars.
I had had a strange dream in which someone offered us a
house as a lodgings, consisftng only of one room, built in a perfect
square with french windows and rather ornate brickwork in the
ang
pseudo-Gothic st tyle, only slanting in the most peculiar way like
geened
the tower of Pisa. Next to it was the owner's house, which WESZ
quite normal. And both stood in a bright-green, carefully kept
lawn with cypress trees and clipped bushes, close to a wide desert-
ed roadway. The room itself reminded me of houses where I'd
stayed in Austria---Dgight, with heavy curtains and plenty of
wood, and glowing lamps, and fat, shining, tiled stoves. In this
square, leaning room I was questioned by the police, who wanted
to know---of all things---Where my ideas came from. I seemed
to understand what they meant because I was about to reply, but
they interrupted me 9 picking 'up the book I was reading, and said
that they noticed I had once expressed an idea from that hook, and
did I know the author? To which I said, Yes, I'd met him. And
there the dream ended. It was a troubled dream which left me
with the feeling that my life---and that of my wife, who'd been
questioned before me, and not allowed to warn me in time---waw
s accaunt oj
under surveillance: and - r/the thoughts that passed privately
and S ilently through my head.
But the sun was shining, and outside everything looked clean
and gleaming. I can still remember the policemen in that dream---
dark, rather reticent, methodical, concentrated on their note-
taking, without offence, abstracted from us, with blue uniforms
and peaked caps.
When we'd had a breakfast of eggs, ham, cheese and coffee
we went to the square and found a vegetable and fruit market,
with Women crowdnng round the stalls. Ond one side of the square,
squeezed in be tween two houses, stood the wileght-house as it was


called, with a fesco above showing the round Gouda cheeses
being weighed. There were redcurrants to buy, and soft, pink
peaches. We bought fruit and half a Gouda cheese, then decided
to obey the moral imperative from the night before and visit the
church. It lay behind the square with houses and canals all round
it, hugging its massive walls. All morning the bells had been
ringing, rather like the Salzburg Glockenspiel, only less dainty
and baroque: these played with a mild, haunting little tune again
and again, floating over the town, high-up in a tower, visible
they
from the ground as the a - EES swung to and fro. To get into the
church we had to ring at the sexton's house close by, opposite
the side-entrance, buy tickets at his little office and then be
escorted across: the door gas opened with a key, and we were
told that when we wanted to leave again we should ring a bell by
the door inside; then we were closed in with several other people,
captive inside a great semicircle of stained glass. The windows
were huge, depic cting all sorts of subjects from the Last Supper
to the independence of Holland.
The biggest was over twenty yards
high; and there were sixty-four windows in all. A wonderful
silence hung over the church, with the sound of the bells high in
the air outside and drifting down sometimes, muffled and gentle.
The pews were in the form of a raised auditorium round the pulpit,
rather like a lecture-room or a political assembly, the seats
rising in tiers, with a long table below, as if for clerks to
make their notes. And there were doors leading from it, out into
the church; the altar was far away, outside. My impression was
of a civic, moral religion which was discussed and hammered out
inside this closed, wooden, intimate, even festive structure from
h the augustan Eurogue age. It was put there in the middle of the Cat holic
an air of
church, which was spacious and flat, withoutjdiscussion. It
reminded me of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford; the dark wood


suggested people doing things together in community: one could
in te
imagine the mysteriousness of the silence outsiderat evening* with tte
crisp air,
time and the glow of lights inside, dulled and rendered intimate
by the wood. That has gone out of our lives; we glimpse it in
childhood perhaps---we may bring it with us---but the KEMEXDAXTRE
sens e of the silence outside being joined to us in a glowing
mystery, at Christmas, Eas ter, Michelmas, as if what we did was
knomyfto the vast silence outside, making its vastness protective
and exciting, has gone. At one time our seasons went right
through the universe, so tos speak; and this is finished in us
for a time.
ay (tbo He
We stood
the auditorium looking down. This sense of
intimacy is always, nowadays, a sense of the pas t. I remember
feeling it in Lucca once---in a hotel that has since been removed;
and in Palestrina, near Rome, walking along the main NEXTEM street,
narrow and cobbled, with lighted shops on either side full of rather
dusty objects ; at Leoben, in Austria, the dining room of a hotal
with panelled walls, everything in it intact from before the war,
withbheavy, solid-1ooking cutlery and plates, and thick velvet
cloth on the tables and old pistols and rifles and swords hanging
on the smoky wall.
Most of the windows in the Gouda church date from the second
dusing, MAAAA a à K
aak
half of the sixteenth century, E
dgtag thé Dutch war for independence that went on for eighty
years. When the present church was built the citzens asked
allthe princes and churchmen known to them to contribute a Window;
and this was the result. The first window was given by the
Bishop of Utrecht, representing the baptism of Christ ; Philip
11 of Spain also gave a window, in which he and the English Mary
Tudor, his queen, are represented---he was then Holland's ruler.
The last windows were put in after Gouda had become protestant,


at the end of the sixteenth century, and one of them represents
freedom of conscience'. You see that in the handsome wooden
auditorium, carefully civic, humped in the middle of the vast
church perhaps rather defaantly and self-consciously.
Srl
We spent the rest of the day on the road; on the Dutch
side of the German frontier we stopped and wrote a few cards to
England. It was Saturday and we were told at the local shop
that we would only find stamps on the German side of the border
and had better post the cards from there; but we wanted to pos t
them on the Dutch side because it was the first time we'd reety
been to Holland and our cards showed windmills, children in clogs
and the typical Dutch muslin hats, standing against a background
of tulips and daffodils. So the shopkeeper said he Would post
them himself on Monday if we left the money, which we did.
In Germany, not many yards across the border, we stopped for
a coffee. Already there was the German emphasis and downrightness;
it was in the shape of the road even, the way people walked, their
clothes, the signposts; the mildness of Holland and England was
gone; ; everything had a clearer and darker and more immense look,
with tall, shadowy trees on either si ide. There had been no sun-
light since the morning, and it was bitterly cold with heavy clouds,
tho ough the month was July. For a few hours we drove along quiet,
straight roads, then there was the autobahn for the last stretch
of two hundred kilometres, bef ore we reached the heath near Ham-
burg where we were to stay.
Our friends had provided a map, pencil-drawn, which showed
the local church, a hunting lodge, the woods, and several tracks
going through the woods. We were to take one of the tracks.
And the house, they wrote at the bottom of the map, had a cement
pos t outside it and a painted wood en gateway. It sounded very


simple. After leaving the autobahn we had ten or fifteen minutes
driving, then we came to it---a church, which was a clean, modern
building, with a wide sandy track at the side of it; then a hill,
dense with trees---clearly the woods marked on the map. So we
took the track. Some times thesun came through and made the houses
and sandy track gleam; then a dark cloud would pass and the shadows
under the trees would seem to be drawing everything into them.
We saw no hunting lodge, though. Up we went over thick tree-roots,
as the path got narrower and narrower; but instead of a cement pos t
and a painted gateway at the top there was more dense pine-forest,
and tiny houses half-hidden in the shadows. We came out at the
top of a hill, where the path ended, and found two houses on either
side of a courtyard, built of brick and stone, with tiled roofs;
but a notice-bpard outside announced that it was a clinic.
We'd taken the wrong track, that was clear. But there were
too many others for us to choose from. A few girls came running
out, then an older woman. They looked at our map and couldn't make
head or tail of it. They suggested that we return to the bottom
of the hill where the church was, and begin again from there.
No one had heard of our friends, nor of their houses, thoughf
they were certainly not a hundred yards away from this point.
On second th ough ts they decided that one of the girls should go
withlus, as she lived at the bottom of the hill and must return
homein any case. She was a plump, smiling girl of sixteen and
squeezed in beside us, turning the car suddenly into a sort of
merry-go-round for us, and the journey into a sorixef spree.
She laughed and exclaimed as we bumped over the roots. She
would show us the hunting lodge Mads wie ulkich tha t we hadn't
found it! Yes, we had the taken the wrong track. There was
the hunting lodge, a simple building standing alone at the foot
of the woods, closed, its windows curtainless; and close to it


was a track---it was this one we had to take. And she got out
again, waving us an energetic goodbye.
Up we went again. The path narrowed like the other one,
going into the darkness of the woods, its roots getting thicker
and thicker, like boulders; and---again like the other one---it
came out at the yop of a hill, presumably the same hill. Still
there was neither cement post nor painted gateway, only tiny shacks
half-hidden among the trees. But this time there was an open
space, at least: the track led into several others, some of
which looked promising, with houses on either side. Disregarding
the map, which now told us nothing, we took the middle one,
wh ere we saw two men walking along in a leisurely, Saturday-
afternoon way.
We stopped and asked themo 'who?' they cried, as if the
name-- -a perfectly ordinary German name---Sounded outrageous,
like hobgoblins in the woods. We repeated it. No, they'd
never heard the name. What were the houses called? Noch'n
Poem
Gedicht (Just One More Story) and Unser Paradies (Our Heaven)---
we felt a little silly saying it. They nodded---this didn't
seem outrageous or odd to them at all! No, they'd never heard
of these houses. They studied our map. Yes, they knew the
church of course, at the foot of the hill. And there was the
hunting lodge---ya, ya: they cried, spotting the hunting lodge.
And here was the path leading up from the hunting lodge---a
murmured ya, ya, as they pored over it, grim and intent.
We'd come too far, perhaps. The cement post and the painted
gatewya? we asked. No, they knew of no cement post or. painted
gateway; and from the way they shook their heads you would
think that cement posts and painted gateways/were not only not
there, or near there, but impossible anywhere. So perhaps we
hadn 't come too far! Perhaps the post and the gateway were


ahead. No, they could assure
us of that, they weren 't
ahead. And when they said this you would have thought they
wed
had them in their pockets, and, therefore quite certain about where
you wouldn 't find them. Then the map was wrong. o We all bore
down on the map in a vengeful way---the map was wrong! of course!
what a silly map: The best thing was to go by a description of
the people we were after, and the kindnof house they lived, Well,
they were called W---, and he, the husband, was a doctor; they
had four children, two of them quite grown-up; and the wife we
described in some detail---blonde, er, robust-1ooking, handsome,
blonde, blonde: No, they didn't know anyone like that. (Surely,
you felt like saying, you must know somebody in the World like it,
especially in Germany, where blonde, robust-10oking women abound?)
Back to the map. And we suddenly see, in tiny xixint
writing, that the ownder of the plot of land next door is a Drl
Schach. Ah, Doctor Schach: Yes! Shach! Schach! They BErgd
spat the word out, beaming, wit th the tremedpous German enthusiasm
that is gike a hurricane and as dangerous. Yes, now he lived
further along the track, not this way, which leads further into
the woods, but the other way, so that---here they got philosophical---
having reached the top of the hill as we'd done just now, our
correct move ought to bext turn left instead of right, whereas we
had not only turned right but taken the subsidiary of the two
tracks etc etc... Te nodded in a daze. So like a dream!
And now they came to think of it, surely they did know the
gentleman we were looking for? Dr W----? Yes, that was well-
known name on this hillside, but they couldn't thinkyin what
connection: Yes, two doctors lived side by side; it had often
phenomenm
been remarked by people locally, as a coimidene We should
certainly find the house if we went along this path, only in the
other direction.


We turned round and waved them goodbye; and they went on
with their quiet saturday-after/aoon walk, a dog running between
them. The map was hopeless, we told each other---better not use
it. This time we travelled along the brow of the hill, without
trees on either side, only heather. Then we came to a fork:
one path led downwards, back to the area we 'd Hust left, and the
other went further into the woods. The men hadn't mentioned this
in all their philosophy: It was like having ploughed all the way
being
through the Deduction of the Categories without XRXIngIXEEH told
ab out Space and Time! -
the waods seemed - toend-i
mer
wert
wan kness
I C aran
wher u further
i e
FOAN aherethey'D
The path into the woods seemed to end in darkness, a sort
of Kantian hole where you might expect to find the noumenon, af ter
all these years; and the other went into a further maze of tracks
like themes in Wagner---God alone knew where they might lead!
So we turned round again and once more found ourselves with
the Ewo men and their dog. What, we had found no houses at all?
This was a new development---as if we'd swiped the ir houses in
some way and sent thems omewhere else. Then, one of them saisz
Hav
(apparently rejecting this idea)swe must have taken the path into
the woods: And his philosophy had expressly forbidden that.
Now:
action! The man with the dog---a slim
alsor--meaning
man with genial, reflective eyes---will come with us. The wind
begins to rise, armies form up, ultimatums to be sent, officials
called into anterooms and secret chambers, bands to play, the flags
to be brought put, marching orders to be distributed---achtung!
alles verboten! himmelfaht and gute Feise! steigen Sie aus!
Rumpf 2 istunomf)und humpf!
him in?
StOnY
Couldwe squeeze
Indeed,
could, by squeezing
our front-line battalions up on the left axis and passing his


companies through on the right. But his dog? what about his
dog? is he allowed, too? Yes, yes, consider him as B Echelon, along
with the heavy armour! So we were all in. The door slammed--
achtung! wir gegen nach England! let the English king and the
English business men in their top hats and hunting boots shiver
in their timb ers, we're on our way! The man outside looked
forlorn---the army had locked him out---and he was minus not
only his afternoons Kameradshaft but the dog as well.
orfh--the car sounded like a tank, or at least a, truck
pos -
with caterpillar-tracks. And I swear we
those
lefon.
tree-roots better than we had
We rode
them---up! with
done,
swinging motion---and down again: I could have sworn there
was a war on. Just driving along a track in thewoods it
certainly was not: the noise, the riding and falling, the
bumps we took in descent, were much too momentous for that.
The dog was tiny, a little white fellow with a fluffy tail
and bright eyes rather like his master's; he sat on the floor
at the man's feet. The man we left behind---he nedded to us
o88, with
as we drove EE
a perplexed smile---was apparently
Were we
week-end guest. Maxxg/Dutch? the dog-owner asked my wife.
He had heard us talk a foreign lanuage together? No, English.
A*kXEX Ach, so! A brief silence. But the fact that *xe he'd
found himself in an enemy vehicle instead of the fatherland's
didn't make any difference---he would fight on our side! So
on we went.
This time the map really came in for it. Who had drawn
it? The lady? Yes. Ach, ach---all three of us ach-ed
as hard as we could. Women shouldn't draw maps! They don't
make allowances for the way the thing will be seen at the time,
tlod -
dumm,
falsch
h in the given situation! The ma pmwas)
gum ganz tHT
and a hell of a lot else besides. I felt like scrweing the
Tho mafs U ay blid, dumm. , gang falscd


thing into a ball. We'd certainly given 15
as effective
a Blitz as a map ever got.
Now here was the house. He nodded towards it quietly,
beaming. But where were the cement post and the painted gate-
Hhehouse, These things
26) way? Then it couldn't be] L Sresj weren't to be seen! But
there was a blonde woman, standing by the path. Admittedly,
you couldn't call her robust-looking---she was on the slim side,
but---? No, it wasn't her, my wife said. He looked at my
hasn't
wife doubtfully as if to say, 'Are you sure she kas/been taking
seemingls
slimming cures?' No, it wasn't her. And he shrugged,) tellaoa
himself that of course if we were going to reject all the blasted
blonde women in the woods we were quite likely to find ourselves
without a bed for the night, and he didn't see why he should take
responsibility.
Perhaps we should sound our horn? Our friends had told us
to sound it *KrEexti four times, as everybody else in the woods
sounded it three times and they would therefore know it was us.
We did it, four times. And at once the dog began leaping up and
down on the floor, his eyes gleaming like fires, barking his head
off. We looked down at him, astonished. We'd always thought,
until then, that the thing to do as a dog was yo bark at a car
from the outside of it when it made that noise, not from ins ide.
But this dog was different. His owner explained him to us.
This dog of mine, he said, always barks from inside the car when
he hears the horn, because that was how he, the owner, signalled
his approach to his own house on week-ends, only three times and
not four---everybody doundea their horn three times here (with
ruls
this
a quick scrutinising look, as if to say, Now you know), and that
horn, sounded from inside, meany for the dog a week-end of runs
gels
and wa. lks and routing about in the garden which he never got in
the city, for hestas in the city all week---!
His eyes nearly


exploded with gleam, and the words poured out like steam from a
German spa.
The good blonde lady who wasn't our friend began walking
towards us, and we decided to put the whole matter to her---
I think he had hopes that after a little quiet persuasion she
might prove HETXEXExITOXXEXDHI to us that she was our friend after
all. He jumped out: achtung, the attack is on! Did she know
where Dr. W----2 lived? He said it like a panzer grenadier
cap)
division moving forward under enfilade fire. But she wasn't
a bit frightened. In fact, she was like the enemy waiting under
a heavy armoured cover. She smiled---ve,ye: (two 88mm shells,
bang on their target). Ya! (a landmine). Ya! (a swift aerial
attack to mop up). She knew the lady! In fact---nein, ist
das mbglich?---We are all dancing about already, apparently the
order has tome through thet the enemy has evacuated his positions--
had
in fact, our friend, asked her to keep a look-out in case she found
And achise! was
two English friends of hers lost in the Woods! Ah-h-h-h-h!)
Roars, applause, laughter, dances---I find I'm flushed in the
cheeks already, and my wife looks as if she's been up a mountain
or a ski-ege.
daly
Our friend particul larly asked her to ask us to sound the
horn four times when we arrived instead of the customary three
C 7
necause four would denote to her that we were new to the woods.
So again---one, two, three, four---and the dog starts barking
like madd again, until his master tells him to jump out of the
al which
car, Lheny he stops barking abruptly, the rule being that he only
barks inside, at least on military operations like this one.
inite Quietness descends on the woods. Nothing happens. I
sound the horn again---this amazing dog doesn't even look up.
And again no one comes. Well, then, did our kind friend know
where the W----ramily livedby any chance? Yes, she did. In


fact, she W ould take us there---if---could she squeeze in the
car? We looked at the man, and his dog: the answer depended
on them; it now appeared that with the collapse of the enemy
defences, and their evacuation of positions, our own front was
as tight as it could be, and short of opening new engagements
on our left or gight, which would take time, we would have to ask
one of the cokmanders to fall into rear-reserve. He obliged
at once, and said he was near his home---he walked off waving
merrily, with his dog, beaming and bursting wi th happy helpfulness!
We had to turn round, our new friend told us - We had
somehow to squeeze past a post in the middle of the pathway--
that must be the cement posti---and avoid falling fifty yards
into a gully on the other side, if we could. So I turned the
car round and slowly, gingerly, edged mbleat past the post,
having asked my wife and our guest to walk behind, so haeti
(on the best military principles) to keep down the casualty-rate.
I got past, and they joined me again. Steright on! And there,
at the top of the hill, standing by a painted gateway, was our
friend, waving frantically, with two of her daughters, and in a
moment we were lost in hugs, kisses, pushes, slams, playful
pinches, hair-ruffling, squeezes and even, though I couldn't be
sure of this, bites. We'd arrived: