Cut and Come Again (21 page)

And gradually Jonah fetched him round until he stood within arm's reach of the blackboard and then of the cane hanging on the wall behind it. He held Bruno like iron with one hand and then whipped the cane off the wall with the other, the spidery arm flickering up and down and then in a flash across Bruno's shoulders.

‘Now stand up! Stand up! Straight! And hold out your hand. Hold it out!'

And Bruno stood still. He was half looking at Jonah, glinting up. We waited, tense.

‘Hold out your hand! Hold it out! Hold it out.'

Slowly Bruno held it out. The cane went up. Something even more tense than our own hatred flared up in Jonah's face, an almost demoniacal look of fury. It increased as the cane quivered and began to descend.

It flamed up into frenzy as the cane lashed down. The cane was like lightning, but Bruno's hand, whipped back, was quicker, and the cane whistled in the empty air like a whip.

Somehow Jonah controlled himself. He said nothing. He held the cane back, as to an oncoming animal. He was very quiet. There was something dangerous in it. And suddenly he seized Bruno's hand from behind his back and wrenched it out. Bruno knuckled it. Jonah held the cane high over his head and then, without warning, and with Bruno's hand still clenched, he brought down the cane with mad force, like a guillotine.

Bruno had no chance. He tried to tear back his hand, but Jonah had it and he crashed down the cane on the clenched knuckles with terrific power. And then, before Bruno could realise it, it went up and crashed down again and then again.

It was going up for the fourth time when Bruno, half-weeping with rage and terror, kicked with all his force at Jonah's shins. It was a sickening sound. The bone seemed to ring hollow and Jonah went very white, a curious stark whiteness, with the pure sickness of rage and agony.

In another moment he dropped the cane and went
for Bruno with blind madness, hitting him full across the ear with an open-hand blow that sent him staggering against the blackboard. We heard the sickening crash of Bruno's head and then the slithering of the blackboard itself as it came off the pegs and clattered on the block floor and then the rattle of the easel as Bruno pushed it back against the iron radiator like a man pushing back a crowd in a street fight.

Then Jonah hit Bruno again, and then again. Bruno was on the ground, kicking. Jonah lugged him up and then half knocked him down again. Bruno got up with the tears pouring down his face and his breath fluttering wildly, kicking Jonah's shins again with all his might. Then Jonah seized the cane and hit him with that, across the shoulders and arms and even across the legs and wherever he could. The boy fell down again and Jonah seized him again by the coat collar and wrenched him up. Then Bruno tried the old trick, locking his arms about the iron stays of the front desk, and Jonah for a moment could not move him, until suddenly he seized hold of Bruno with both hands, front and back and shook him, trying to break him free.

In another moment he stood straight up, with a sound of pain. We saw the blood start out on his hand where Bruno had bitten him and we saw it shaken off in little spatters of crimson as he rushed at Bruno to tear him away from the desk, seizing hold of Bruno's jacket with both hands.

Finally we heard the sound of Bruno's jacket ripping down the seam. We saw the cloth hanging loose and the dirty grey lining pouring through the rent. Bruno scrambled up wildly, in hysteria, crying in thick blubbers of hatred and terror, going for Jonah
as a half-defeated boxer goes for another in a last hope of victory, punching his body with his hands.

And for a moment Jonah looked defeated. He stood with the momentary limpness of a man who half-mistrusts himself and his own rage. And while he stood there, limp, panting a little, the blood running down his hand, Bruno kicked him again.

In a moment it was all over. He suddenly descended on Bruno with the terrorizing swiftness of a new rage. Bruno, seeing it, started towards the door. Jonah was after him, picking up the cane as he went, bringing it down madly on Bruno's shoulders as he struggled with the door and finally opened it, and went half-whimpering and half-wailing down the corridor beyond.

Jonah vanished in the corridor too. We were standing up in a moment, on the forms and half on the desks, gabbling with excitement.

Suddenly there was a tattoo on the partition. We stood paralysed. It was Miss Salt, with an odd scared look on her greyish face, tapping on the glass.

She stood watching over us until Jonah came back. He came into the classroom alone, his hair wild, the blood smeared now on both hands.

He took one look at us.

‘Class – sit!'

We sat.

Presently Jonah too sat down. This time he did not cage his fingers and he forgot to tuck back the cuffs of his shirt into his sleeves. He was trembling. We could see the trembling slightly in his hands and hear it distinctly in his voice:

‘The Hindus are the result of a mixing of Aryans and Aborigines …'

In the afternoon Jonah was not there after the bell had gone and Bruno's desk was empty. For a quarter
of an hour Miss Salt kept watch on us through the partition door.

Finally Jonah came in. His face was whiter than we had ever seen it, almost as white as the bandage on his hand, and he seemed so preoccupied that he forgot to shut the classroom door behind him.

In another moment we saw why he had forgotten to shut it. Bruno came in.

And then, after Bruno, someone else: a soldier, a little fellow with stocky legs, a drooping yellow moustache and rather round bland eyes. He held Bruno's torn coat in his hands, and standing at the door, he spoke to Bruno as he walked to his seat.

‘Y'know what I told you. If he lays half a finger on you, come and tell me.' He looked at Jonah. ‘And y'know what I told you as well, y'big sod!'

He went out without another word. All that afternoon and for almost another week Jonah did not even look at Bruno. And we in turn, like Bruno, could scarcely look at Jonah, and only then with fear in our hearts.

As we struggled with our bags up the little German road in the August heat, leaving the camp of English soldiers-of-occupation in the valley to the left of us, we were all wondering if there would be a bath at the end of the journey. And when was the end of the journey? We must have asked that question of Karl a thousand times. ‘Soon,' he would say carelessly, ‘soon.' But we were afraid of mentioning the bath, for at heart we all felt that we were going into some lost and legendary German world so isolated and primitive that baths would be as unknown as Englishmen.

It was beautiful country, lost and peaceful. The roadside was starred with many stiff blue chicory flowers and milky-yellow snapdragons and scarlet poppies, the flowers drifting thinly back into hedge-less crops of potatoes and ripening wheat and rye that had old pear trees planted among them in wide lines, the lines gapped here and there where a tree had died. Along the roadside there were again lines of pear trees, with odd apple trees interplanted, and the same breaks where a tree had gone. Beyond the crops of corn and potatoes, the land rose gently, always a pale sand colour, to the vineyards that gleamed a strange bluish-green in the straight sunlight. To the left was the valley with its broad river flowing between the many-coloured crops, and the English soldiers' tents grouped by the water like chance mushrooms. The road climbed continually, always farther and farther away from that river where we might have bathed and on towards the vineyards that we never quite seemed to reach.

‘Where is this village, Karl? How much farther? Can't we stop and rest? Let's stop and get some beer. Karl, let's stop.'

But it made no difference to Karl. He and I walked in front, setting the pace, with chicory-flowers stuck in our buttonholes, while Wayford and Thomas came behind us, together, and after them the two brothers Williams. It was the Williams, the one like a little rosy pig and the other like some thin provincial photographer dressed to photograph a funeral, who wanted to rest continually. It seemed that they had once spent a week in Paris and had drunk champagne there; and now it gave them a sort of melancholy amusement to compare the boulevards with the little German road winding up to the vineyards, and the champagne with the lager. But Karl was deaf. The country was his native land, the little road with the poppies and chicory flowers had not changed since his childhood, and he was the prodigal returning after many years.

So he led us implacably on in that August heat until, very late in the afternoon, we came to his native village, a lost and beautiful place, full of old white houses with green jalousies and great courtyards shut off from the narrow shadowy streets by tall wooden doors, a forgotten place, as legendary as we had half imagined it, lying up there between the forests and the vineyards like a village out of some old German fairy tale.

When we arrived there was great excitement, a sort of explosive excitement, all the fat German fraulein who were Karl's sisters or aunts or cousins popping off shrieks and cackles of hysterical laughter, and the heavy German men booming thunderously in their round bellies and slapping themselves and
Karl on the back in their immense joy. When we were introduced there was a great shaking of hands and a babbling of voices and a running hither and thither, together with all the pantomimic signs with hands and eyes and lips that pass between men who do not speak each other's language. And over and above it all, hysterically and incredulously:

‘Karl! Karl! Karl! Karl!'

From that moment our visit became a kind of festival. Day and night there was an incessant pouring of wine and coffee in that old farmhouse with the great courtyard, a babbling arrival and departure of visitors, a cracking and frizzling of a thousand eggs over the great wood fire in the dark and lofty kitchen. We lived for three days the luxurious and pampered life of a conquering army under the roofs of a conquered people. In the mornings we lazed about the courtyard in the hot sunshine, and in the afternoon walked up to the vineyards to watch the peasants thinning and spraying the vines for the last time; or we strolled off into the forest, the breathless pine forest that shut us off from the outer world, and then came back to photograph the peasants cutting the patches of wheat and rye with ancient reapers drawn by even more ancient oxen. We could go where we liked and do what we liked and drink what we liked. We were the English, which seemed to mean that we were the favoured, the elect. Wherever we went in that village some old man or woman or child or young girl would come out to speak and laugh with us and make all the eternal pantomimic signs of gladness and friendship. If we were tired we could walk into the nearest house and sit there and rest; and there would be wine and coffee, talk and laughter, and diffident respect and a sense of quivering happiness. Every-where
there was that feeling of relief and joy that comes between two people who have quarrelled and are friends again, and want only to forget their bitterness.

But there was no bath. And perhaps because of the bath, or perhaps because the elder brother Williams had chased a litter of pigs out of the courtyard with a broomstick, we began to notice a subtle change of feeling towards us on the third day.

We were still welcome; and there was still the same flow of wine and coffee, and still the same air of great respect for us. But now we began to sense the faintest air of suspicion, of unrest, as though we had stayed too long. We began to notice that the peasants would spy on us from half-curtained windows as we walked along the streets. We noticed that the women gossiping in two's and three's became silent as we passed.

‘Let's go to Berlin,' the Williams kept saying. ‘We could at least get a bath there. Let's get away from this hole.'

‘Go,' said Karl. ‘Do what you like.'

But they were reluctant. Perhaps the fare was too much? We saw them counting their money in corners.

Then, next day, Williams the elder made a great shine over some cream at lunch.

‘This isn't cream,' he whispered.

‘Then what the hell is it?' said Karl.

‘It's tinned milk.'

Karl sat furious, too hurt and angry to speak articulately. But at last he turned to me:

‘Is it cream? You tell them. You're from the country. You tell them. Is it cream or not?'

‘It's lovely cream,' I said.

‘It's tinned milk!' said the elder Williams excitedly.
‘Any fool can tell you that. It's tinned milk, I tell you!'

Across the table the peasants were watching the scene, suspicious. We were their guests. They must have detected the note of dissatisfaction in Williams' uplifted voice. Karl was miserable and furious.

‘At least wait till we get outside!' he whispered. ‘At least do that.'

The meal was finished in silence, in a silence of suspicion and unhappiness.

Afterwards, in the courtyard, it all broke out again:

‘We're off to Berlin!' the Williams shouted.

‘And good riddance!' shouted Karl.

‘What time is there a train?'

‘Find out.'

‘We can't speak the language.'

‘Learn it.'

They went indoors at last to pack their bags, furious. Coming downstairs again they stood in the courtyard and pored over their little red pocket dictionary in silence, anxious, but independent.

Karl, quieter now, went to them:

‘You know the nearest station is four miles off?' he said.

‘We can walk,' they said.

‘It's a branch line.'

‘We know that.'

‘Hadn't you better wait? It's seventeen hours to Berlin.'

‘We're going to Paris.'

Karl gave it up. Standing on the far side of the courtyard, I could see the peasants standing unrestfully at doors and windows, watching the scene. They must have sensed the cause of the quarrel, that they and their food and their ways were no longer good enough for us, and the air was tense.