Horizon (19 page)

Lennox began to talk, speaking in the old prison-camp way, his voice low, his lips scarcely moving.

The band had finished drinking its beer in the garden of the Hotel Post, and had begun to play once more. It seemed as if these people couldn’t have enough of their simple, light-hearted music. But then, this was the first village festival for twenty-five years at which the old Tyrolese songs were allowed to be played in public without threat of fine or imprisonment. The wine-room had emptied. The children went out holding their grandmothers’ hands, and the old men followed to sit in the garden and listen to their music.

Frau Schichtl had gone too. As she left the table she had come round to where her son and Peter Lennox were sitting, and she had paused long enough to say in a low voice, “Take good care of each other.” She placed her hand for a moment on their shoulders. Lennox realised, as she had already done, that he might never see her again.

The empty room gathered its shadows. From the darkening
garden came the lilt of a light-stepping air. No one was dancing yet, as if the people were trying to postpone it.

When darkness came, Lennox thought, there would have to be plenty of dancing. The older men and women would pretend it was quite normal that the younger men were no longer there. And the girls would dance with each other, as if they were enjoying themselves, as if it didn’t matter that there were no young men to dance with. And those who were determined not to believe any wild rumours about German lorries would blame the suspicious young men for having ruined the festival. All of those people were facing an evening which their stubborn highland pride would not let them abandon. Some of them hoped to cover the absence of the younger men, to give them enough time to reach the huts scattered high over the mountains. Others were going to stay to prove that the hot-heads were wrong with this whispered talk of danger. But none of them had a real sense of disaster: tonight was only a repeating pattern to the people of Hinterwald. Once the Italians had come hunting young men too, and when there were no young men to be found the Italians had gone away. The village had been fined. That was all. These people had not yet learned that the Germans are more persevering, more thorough, and more ruthless than the Italians.

When darkness came, Lennox thought, Johann and he must be ready. He had already explained his plan to the boy beside him, and the main points—the timing and place of their action—had been decided. Only one problem remained. The room had remained empty, and the hotel-keeper—he could be trusted—had stationed himself in the hall. When darkness came, Lennox thought once more, he and Johann would be
moving quietly to the road which led away from the village to Kastelruth. For although the Tyrolese might think that the lorries would roll away empty if there were no younger men to fill them, Lennox wasn’t so sure about that. He knew the Germans better than these people did: he had seen what they could do when all disguises were down.

Johann was trying to find a solution to that last problem. He was biting his lip in a beardless imitation of Mahlknecht.

“No telephone wire anywhere?” Lennox asked again. “Surely somewhere, Johann.”

“We should have to strip the telephone-poles. No time. What about rope?”

“Not strong enough.” Lennox was worried. It showed in his eyes, and the impatient tapping of his fingers on the table. The last detail was a small one, but unless it were perfect, his whole plan would be useless.

“Or a tree across the road would block them. That would give those in the lorries a chance to escape. If you could find a gun we could divert the soldiers’ attention. They would think it was an ambush,” Lennox said. He was thinking out loud now, but even as he spoke he knew that this alternative suggestion was no good.

Up on Schönau Mahlknecht had said that for the moment there must be no obvious evidence of violence. And the two officers had agreed; for German retaliation and restrictions would make their work twice as difficult, twice as slow. At this stage of the organising of resistance it would be better that no action were taken by Johann and Lennox if that action meant open trouble for Shaw’s and Thomson’s plans now being made at Schönau. Lennox suddenly realised that they had given him a pretty big responsibility: it was up to him entirely to keep a
balance—to do neither too much nor too little.

Johann said, “I don’t see why it isn’t strong enough. It is strong enough, certainly, not to be sawn through by the edge of rock.”

Lennox stared. “Mountaineering rope, you mean?”

“Of course. What else? We’ve plenty of it in the village. It has wire woven through its centre.”

Wire through the centre. That might do. Lennox said, “What about its colour? It is almost white, isn’t it? Can you get any dark paint or stain?”

“This is the season for painting shutters and window-boxes, isn’t it?” Johann was smiling now. Their plan was beginning to look simple once more. “I’ll attend to it right away, eh? It won’t take long. I’ll meet you at the trees just south-west of the church, beside Saint Johann’s shrine. In half an hour—as soon as the dance starts.”

“How long will it take us to reach the part of the road you’ve chosen for the accident?”

“By short-cuts, about fifteen or twenty minutes. Maybe less. By the road itself, it would take us three times as long as that. The road winds to avoid hilly ground.” Johann’s hand traced the road’s curves through the air as he spoke.

“Good. You are sure that part of the road is suitable?”

“Sure? It is what you described, isn’t it?” Johann was beginning to get impatient. Lennox decided not to say, “Perhaps we shouldn’t take any of this action. It is on our own authority. Perhaps we have done enough already. Perhaps the lorries will return empty to Kastelruth, after all.” For Johann would have been too disappointed. He would have thought that Lennox did not really want action, or even that a doubtful plan was not worth preparing. No; better let Johann keep his excitement
and his energy. Any qualification on the plan at this moment would only dampen the boy’s enthusiasm. It would only lead to disappointment and resentment.

“In half an hour,” Lennox said.

The hotel-keeper straightened his shoulders, moved away from the door, and had a short attack of coughing. Someone must have entered the hall from the street. Lennox and Johann exchanged glances. Johann’s hand travelled to his waist, where he kept his sheathed knife. Lennox was calculating the distance to the kitchen entrance to the room; there would be a back exit through there. Even if the inn had been surrounded the number of people gathered in its garden would make escape possible. You could lose yourself in a crowd.

But the person who entered was a woman. She stood very still at the threshold of the room, as if she were trying to identify them in the dusk. She seemed satisfied, and came forward into the room.

“Why don’t you turn on the light?” she asked. “I nearly missed you.” It was Eva Mussner.

Johann rose abruptly. The wooden bench scraped angrily on the floor as he pushed it aside, and he walked past the girl without even looking at her.

“You see,” she said to Lennox, “I have lost my friends.”

He rose too. He walked towards the hall. Johann had already vanished. In half an hour he would be waiting. In half an hour Lennox would have to decide what Mahlknecht and his two visitors would want him to do.

Eva Mussner caught his arm as he passed her.

“Please,” she said. “Please.”

She had dropped her voice, until it was almost a whisper. “I
have something to tell you. Not here. This isn’t a good place: no one could talk of secret things here. Let us go outside, and pretend to be watching the Alpine Glow. Please.”

She was walking beside him. He pretended to agree. He was planning to lose her in the crowd, quietly, effectively: that was the best treatment.

She said, “They sent me to talk to you. They want to know more about you.”

He halted for a moment, looking down at her.

“You are all wasting a lot of breath,” he said brutally. But he had changed his mind about losing this girl in the crowd. He wanted to hear what she had been told to tell him. And he wanted her to repeat to “them” what he wanted them to believe.

The street was still more crowded. People were coming out of the houses, out of the other inns. They were walking slowly towards the Hotel Post. Soon the dance would begin.

The girl drew close to his side, and guided him towards the house at the beginning of the street where the obliterated Fascist slogan stood. It was less crowded here, as if the people disliked this end of the street. The girl walked slowly now, and she began to speak, quickly, quietly. Both of them seemed to be watching the sun’s last rays reflecting on the high mountain walls. The sun was almost set, and the air had lost all its light, but the peaks of grey rock came to life. They glowed with the rich fire of rubies. The sun disappeared, even as Lennox watched, and the village became a place of deep twilight with white ghost-like houses. The mountain walls had turned to opals. In the dark sky they glowed with the sunlight they had trapped and still held. They shone with the changing, blending shades of gold and purple and rose. There was stillness over
the village as everyone, standing in the first darkness of night, turned to watch the Alpine Glow.

The girl was watching too. She was speaking, and her voice was unsteady as if she had been tortured at the sight of the glowing mountains.

“The Germans have lorries outside the village. And soldiers. They have been waiting all day for the signal when everyone is gathered together.”

He said nothing. He hoped she would think his face, if she could see it clearly, was registering doubt. But he was thinking that she couldn’t have chosen a more clever opening. She was establishing confidence by news which was no news.

When he didn’t answer she said quickly, “They’ve decided the dance will be the best time. They need volunteers. Men.”

“Do they?”

She ignored his sarcasm. “They are angry. A police station was set up here today. Notices were posted. But no one has registered. Only my uncle has been, what they call polite. And they began to notice, in this last hour, that the young men have left the village. They are angry and worried. They are beginning to ask questions. They asked me about you.”

“And you said?” The mountain colours were infused with streaks of indigo, turning the rose colour to a violet-red. The sky above, the forests below, were almost black. “That you were a stupid country bumpkin, and that you hadn’t become any less stupid in the Army.”

In spite of himself, he was annoyed. “Thank you for the compliment.”

“I also said I had known you for a long time, that you came to Bozen on leave.”

He didn’t reply at once to that. He was too busy thinking he couldn’t blame Johann for having trusted this girl. There was a sincerity in her voice which was disarming.

“And why did you say that?” he asked coldly.

“Oh, please!” The girl was almost in tears now. “No man can be so stupid that he doesn’t see the dangers staring him in the face.”

Lennox kept silent. Blindness doesn’t only attack fools, he thought grimly.

She said, “Listen, you’ve got to believe me. Listen. They have been ordered to treat us with velvet gloves so that we’ll collaborate easily. They don’t want to stir up any more trouble at the moment. The news has just come that Cassino has fallen, that the German Army is withdrawing. Rome will fall too.”

Lennox was standing very still now. But he wasn’t looking any longer at the glowing mountains suspended in darkness. She sensed she had won some reaction, for she was speaking still more urgently. “But what if they find no one who will collaborate with them except men like my uncle? They have begun talking up at my uncle’s house about how firm they can allow themselves to be. They have decided that if they can find no men to volunteer they will take women and children and hold them as hostages at Kastelruth, until the young men come down from their hiding-places in the mountains to volunteer.”

“And when is this to happen?”

“At eight o’clock.”

Eight o’clock. That was earlier than he had thought the Germans would act. They must be worried. He asked, more casually than he felt, “And what am I supposed to do?”

“You could tell Frau Schichtl—Johann—anyone who could
pass the word round. You could warn the village, let everyone know, let everyone go away.”

“And what about the people who live in this village? What are they to do? Will your uncle defend them against reprisals?”

She ignored that jibe. “If we could save some, and then plan together to take action—I don’t know—just something. Some kind of action—not just waiting around to be driven like a flock of sheep. Something—you’re a man. You ought to know what to do. I know something must be done, but I’m a woman, and I don’t know what to plan.”

Lennox turned to watch the violet, rose-veined mountains. “Protests don’t do any good,” he said at last.

“I’m not asking you to make protests. I’m asking you to do something, even if it is just to warn people, to tell them.”

“And how?”

She stamped her foot like an angry child.

“Look, before nine o’clock the lorries will be moving out of the village. They’ll have their ‘volunteers’ whether it’s men or women and children. And along with the lorries will be that car with the two men who watched the Schichtl house today. You didn’t know, did you, that two men were watching you all afternoon while the police were paying you a visit? These two men have talked about you. And they were talking about some airfield in Egypt. They were worried about that airfield—and they were talking about it when they were discussing you, so it has something to do with you.”

“What airfield?” This time he was startled. The Germans had been holding a post-mortem on their failure as American airmen yesterday. And they weren’t satisfied with it. Perhaps he had been too clever about that Beni Jara.

“One of them said they could find out about it from von Haller in Kastelruth.”

“And who in creation is von Haller?”