Horizon (17 page)

After that he felt he deserved an outsized sandwich. He ate it, standing at the side of the neat window with its crisp curtains, keeping his body well out of sight of the road. He was wondering just what the two Germans were planning now;
they must have identified him from the Kasal barn, and yet they themselves couldn’t come over here to question him. It gave him some pleasure to think that life was complicated for them too. If anything he had the advantage over them: the Germans were watching him, but they didn’t know that they themselves were being just as carefully watched. His vigil at the window was rewarded. He saw one of the men leave the Kasal barn, moving quickly round its side so that he could no longer be seen from the Schichtl house or the road. He didn’t appear again: he must have gone down into the low-lying field where his movements would be hidden. Lennox heard the Kasal dog bark. The German must be walking past the lean cows at pasture. Well, that was one way of reaching Hinterwald quietly and making a report. The other must still be waiting in the barn. How both of them must have cursed the simplicity of life in these mountains: a telephone in the Kasal farmhouse would have been a useful gadget at this moment. Anyway, Lennox thought as he turned away from the window, he had ruined a fine May afternoon for them. He hoped they had run out of cigarettes, too.

He poured some milk, cut another slice of bread and another chunk of cold meat, and sat down at the table with a feeling of satisfaction. The next move was the Germans’, and he guessed it wouldn’t take long. He had made the opening gambit. This whole business was, the more he thought of it, rather like a game of chess. It was a damned queer way to fight a war. Yet this was the way it was being fought by a lot of people. He wondered how many women and men in Europe were at this moment waiting for a German to come and question them.

He had finished his second glass of milk, and was making a third sandwich, when he heard the approaching car. So the
German, slinking across the fields, had reached Hinterwald and recruited strength. And now the test. He imagined Johann at this moment, alert, watchful. Probably sweating it out. Lennox wasn’t exactly cool and collected himself. But he would have to be... Lack of confidence was an expensive luxury when you paid with your life. Prison-camp had taught him to be an actor, a dissembler. He had faced questioning before; all he had to do, he knew, was to stick to his story.

He began eating the sandwich. He sat down once more, sprawling with his feet resting on a second chair. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, and propped the German-published
Bozener Tageblatt
against the earthenware crock of milk at his elbow. The haggled loaf spread its coarse crumbs on the tablecloth. The remains of meat looked as if it had been enjoyed. Lennox studied the effect and was satisfied. The observant German eyes, which would mark every detail, would see a picture of a bucolic bachelor enjoying the simple pleasures of home.

The car halted outside the house. Peter Lennox looked up from his newspaper as the front door was pushed open.

The two Germans, in the black uniform of special police, whom he had already seen today, were standing in the doorway.

Lennox stopped chewing, and surveyed them gravely.

“This the road to Seis?” one of them asked.

Lennox nodded with deliberation. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it’s one of the roads to Seis.” He ignored the prying eyes. He went on eating. “There’s a better road down on the meadows.”

“Have you been here all day?”

“Mostly.”

“Did you see two men following this road?”

Lennox shook his head.

“Are you sure?” While the one man questioned the other looked round the kitchen intently. He didn’t learn anything there, for he moved back into the living-room. It seemed to Lennox that he was staring at the steps leading up to the bedroom.

“I didn’t notice anyone while I was here,” Lennox said, with determination through a well-filled mouth. He chewed reflectively.

“You were down at the village?”

“No. I was out for a walk this afternoon. Went to get a breath of air.”

“Did you see a car?”

“I heard a car just after I left the house. Couldn’t see it, though.”

“Were you away from this house for long?”

“Not so very long. An hour or two. Perhaps three. Time passes quickly.”

“Three hours looking at the view?” The German’s voice was losing any patience it had adopted initially.

“I fell asleep.” Lennox’s voice was friendly and confiding. “There’s a good place under a pine-tree. The sun was warm. And the view was good.”

“Enjoying life, aren’t you?” There was no humour in the hard eyes.

Lennox finished the sandwich and then looked up at the German. “There were no mountains to look at in Africa,” he said. “There wasn’t much sleep either.”

The other German was standing at the entrance to the house. His head was bent as if he were studying the gleam on his well-polished boots.

“So you’re an old soldier. Got your papers?” the cross-examining German asked. Lennox produced them. The German read them with interest.

“From the Zillertal, eh? You’re quite a way from home.”

“I’ve no home there any more. I came here because my aunt could give me one until I got well again.”

The German didn’t answer. He was now studying Peter Schichtl’s discharge papers. He glanced quickly at Lennox’s right hand. The scar reassured him, for he went on reading with less interest. Severe wound in right hand, shrapnel fragments in right forearm, bullet-wound close to left lung and possible weakness of lung.

The German threw the papers on the table. “Report with these at the police station,” he said. “All men are to register there.”

Lennox stared stupidly.

The German said impatiently, “The police station in Hinterwald.”

As Lennox still said nothing, still sat staring, the German said with rising anger, “Report at police headquarters. At the Golden Roof Inn. Today. Understand?”

Lennox gathered up his papers slowly, put them carefully away, rose, and searched for his hat, and nodded.

The German, who was waiting at the door, said, “Nothing here. Come on.” He moved out into the sunlight.

The German who had done the talking followed him. They didn’t speak within Lennox’s hearing. He heard the car start, and saw it follow ostensibly the track to Seis. He was quite prepared to wager that it would swing west on the first crossroads it met, and circle round by the “foreigners’ road” towards Hinterwald again. The Germans were concentrating on Hinterwald today.

He cleared the table so that the littered kitchen wouldn’t upset Frau Schichtl on her return. The stove was burning slowly with the new wood. The logs he hadn’t used were drying on the whitewashed stone hearth. Before he left the house he paused as the curious German had done, and looked at the staircase. The steps were perfectly normal, practical wooden steps scrubbed white. But as he looked he had a sudden doubt. The four bottom steps were less white, as if a dust film were over them. He bent down and drew a finger along the surface of the lowest step. There was a whitish powder on his forefinger. He walked up the four steps and then walked down again. The dust had clung to his shoes, and there was the faint but clear outline of their soles. He crossed over to the front door. The same fine powder had been scattered over the threshold, for the impression of the Germans’ boots was there. Not strong, but definite enough if you were looking for it. At the back door, he found the marks of many footsteps, but it was plain they came from the one pair of shoes—his shoes. Anyone coming into this house, carefully, cleverly, to avoid the Germans would have still been caught; anyone hidden in a secret place upstairs which the Germans hadn’t been able to discover in their search, anyone venturing downstairs when he thought the house was empty, would have been discovered.

Lennox was not exactly cheerful as he left the house and started to walk towards the village. He was too angry with himself for having taken so long to notice the German trick, a petty trick, a silly trick. But still a trick which might have come off. He reflected that when he had been a prisoner-of-war he had been sharp-witted enough to notice that kind of thing, or at least to have suspected something like it. He had learned
the old lesson once more this afternoon: expect nothing, trust nothing. Fortunately the Schichtls and Mahlknecht hadn’t been so simple-minded as the Germans had thought. There had been no strangers as secret guests in the house.

He passed the Kasal barn, and then the farmhouse. Johann, from his vantage-point in the woods, must have seen him on this stretch of road; and he would know that all was well so far. And Johann would now be keeping a steady pace on the higher mountain-path to Hinterwald, so that he would reach there before Lennox did, and would be standing at the doorway of the Hotel Post to welcome his “cousin.” They had chosen the Post as their meeting-place, for it lay at the beginning of the village, and Lennox would see it very easily. Besides, the owner of the hotel was a trusted friend of Mahlknecht.

The Kasals’ dog barked. But there was no other noise or movement from the farm buildings. As he followed the twisting road, and knew that he was now hidden from view from the Kasal barn, Lennox began to walk more briskly. His movements felt natural once more, now that no German eyes were watching him.

The first stage was over: he had made his claim that he had been near the house all day, and that he had been alone. There was no evidence, yet, to disprove that. The second stage was now beginning: the Germans were to be drawn away from the Schichtl house. The solitary German, now left in the barn, must have seen Lennox take the road to Hinterwald. There were two things the German could do. Either he could keep right on sitting in the barn, and much good that would do him watching an empty house, or he could set out to follow his suspect to Hinterwald. “Don’t look now, but...” Lennox told himself. He
began to whistle one of Frau Schichtl’s favourite songs.

His spirits mounted as he thought of the three men—the German, Johann, and himself—all travelling to Hinterwald by parallel routes: Johann up on the hillside, he on the cart-track, the German no doubt using the short-cut across the fields. It amused him still more that the Germans were under a pretty delusion: they didn’t know that within this last hour their whole function had changed. They had become just as much the hunted as they had been the hunters.

The road began to wind downhill like a snake basking in sunshine. Evening was drawing near. The cool breeze on the hillside gave way to the still air of the valley. Sounds were magnified. The music was stronger now: Lennox could hear the clear notes of a trumpet and the deeper tones of a trombone. The drum beat out the first pulse in a gay three-to-the-bar tune.

He passed four large summer villas, shuttered and abandoned, hiding their loneliness among scattered trees. Then there was a small meadow, falling in a gentle curve towards the village. A small church, no longer than forty feet, had been built on top of the meadow. The wooden spire, rising from the square tower, was onion-shaped. The plaster walls had been coloured, and they had weathered into a faded pink. There were wide-spaced paintings of saints, which decorated without concealing the walls’ surface. Lennox noted that the balance of the design was good. He slowed his pace, and then suddenly climbed the short
slope of grass towards the church. He began walking round its outside walls.

Some of the murals showed definite training and talent, some were more primitive. Those on the south wall had almost disappeared under sun and rain. There were cracks in the wall too, now that he examined it closely. This church was poor: little money had been spent on it in recent years. Above the door was the figure of Christ on the Cross. The loin-cloth was painted white, and the flesh tone was dark brown. The artist had captured a strangely pitying look in the large, gentle eyes. Lennox’s interest quickened.

He hesitated on the worn stone step. The inside of the church was in shadow, for the windows were high-placed on the walls. There was a pyramid of candles burning with a clear, steady flame on the small altar. Behind it was an elaborately carved wooden triptych. Lennox took a step forward. It was as if the last five years of his life had vanished in as many minutes.

There was the rustle of silk and the light sound of narrow heels. A woman came out of the church. She pulled back the embroidered scarf which had covered her smooth dark hair, and let it fall around her shoulders as a shawl. She was young. Her low-necked black dress was of rich silk banded with velvet. The wide sleeves of her blouse, very white above the black lace which covered her forearms, were transparent and crisp. Her flower-embroidered apron was of a curiously clear blue. It matched the colour of her eyes.

She looked at him in surprise for a moment. But she recovered first. “
Grüss Gott
!” she said.

“
Grüss Gott
!” he answered slowly. He was watching her, with the background of gleaming candles behind the dark
head, with the faded pink walls framing the slender figure in its elaborate costume.

“There is no one in the church. Father Sturm had to leave—he was needed at Seis. Frau Kaufmann is dying.”

“In that case,” Lennox began awkwardly, and moved away from the church door. He didn’t finish his sentence. He remembered that Hinterwald shared its old Austrian priest with several other small villages. The Tyrolese were deeply Catholic, but they had never attended the larger church which the Italians had built to the south of Hinterwald, even if it were in good repair and had a priest who lived beside it. For the Italian functionaries and their families and the summer visitors had worshipped there. And as long as the name of Hinterwald had been struck off the map to give way to the alien Montefierro, as long as the children at school were forced to speak in a foreign language, as long as a man could be arrested for whistling a Tyrolese song in public, these Austrians of the South Tyrol had avoided the well-provided church at the other end of the village. That, reflected Lennox, was something for the future peacemakers and map-drawers to remember about human beings.