Horizon (14 page)

It was then that Katharina had gathered the older village children together and had told them to stay away from school. It was then that her mother had found her, and sent her home at once. People spoke to her as she left the village: no one knew why she was leaving, for her mother would tell no one the real reason. And among those who had spoken to her was Paul Mahlknecht. He gave her the message for the Schichtl house. If she didn’t find Peter Schichtl at home she would find him
walking in the wood. She must go quietly, she must not call to him, she must wait at the path until she saw him. She had done what she had been told.

The girl’s voice, as regular as her step, now halted. Then, when he didn’t speak, she said, “Now, have I told you enough?”

“Yes.” He was still seeing, in his mind’s eye, the crowd of gaily dressed farmers and foresters with their quiet wives and handsome daughters. He saw Schroffenegger’s two strange “friends,” merging into this natural background. After what he had been told he felt that the Germans were merely there to press-gang the stronger men for the army or for labour camps. The two strangers would never have been allowed to walk in the procession if the search had been for them: they would have been arrested in the first five minutes. And, as he thought still more about it, he felt that the Germans who had visited the Schichtl house today and the Germans who had watched the procession in the village had different purposes. The latter had wanted labourers. The former—well, that was something he still had to find out.

The girl said, “But you are still puzzled. What else can I tell you?”

“Nothing.” He was surprised at the gentleness of his own voice. Its bitter edge had gone. “You’ve told me everything. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

They halted now that they had reached a spur of sloping rock. In the shelter of a large boulder they rested. The wood, and the road to Hinterwald past the Schichtl house, was far below them.

The girl watched him curiously as he looked at the long stretch of country sloping away from him. So much peace, he
was thinking, and yet so much threat of danger. Peace and yet no peace.

“Whom do you hate most?” he asked suddenly.

She stared at him in surprise. “Once I would have said the Italians. Now I say anyone who comes into my country and says that it is his. I hate him, whoever he is.”

“Someone once said, ‘Let them hate, provided that they fear.’”

She frowned as she followed the meaning of his words. And then she smiled. “But what if we don’t fear?”

He smiled too. “There is no answer to that,” he said, with a good deal of feeling. He gripped both of her shoulders, and held them tightly. They stood there smiling—as Lennox suddenly thought—like a couple of imbeciles. His hands dropped to his side.

“Where’s this valley of yours?” he asked quickly. “I don’t believe it exists.”

“But it does!” She took his hand, and walked beside him, pulling him gently on. “Look! There it is.” She was watching him again, not curiously this time. Whatever he had said in these last minutes had been the right thing to say. It wasn’t mere politeness now which kept her smiling. She liked him, without knowing why he was here and without the feeling that she ought to like him. She was a friend with no conditions attached. He kept smiling too: somehow he felt like a human being again.

The narrow valley, a gorge of rushing water deep down in the cleft of mountains, led them eastward. Lennox, looking upward at the jagged peaks above him on either side, felt as if he were buried in mountains. Ahead of him were mountains too, crest rising behind crest towards the eastern Alps. He was climbing with considerable effort along the narrow path which followed the turbulent rush of water, digging in with his feet, holding on with his hands. Katharina seemed as confident as the pine-trees which grew so boldly on the steep banks. He had long since given up admiring the beauties of nature, and concentrated on following the girl.

Even when the path ended abruptly she didn’t pause, but led him towards the source of the stream—a series of waterfalls cascading down the ledges of the mountain precipice. He stared at the lowest fall, where the arc of whitened water plunged into a turbulent pool before it raced down through the gorge.
We are stuck, completely stymied, he thought; she’s made a mistake—we have taken the wrong path. And his annoyance at having been out-walked and out-climbed vanished, and he felt sorry for the girl. She had tried so hard to help.

“Too bad,” he said commiseratingly, but the noise of the falling water blotted out his words. Katharina smiled, said something which he couldn’t hear either, and then laughed. He laughed too, just to cheer her up. Inwardly he was groaning at the idea of having to retrace his steps over that path. She had said Schönau was three miles from the Schichtl house. They must have travelled well over two miles. If they had found the right path they would have almost been at Schönau by this time. Inwardly he began cursing.

The girl was pointing to his shoes. He got the idea that she was telling him to remove them. At her instruction, he rolled up his white footless half-stockings almost to reach his leather breeches. “Legs wash and dry more quickly than wool,” she shouted, and then laughed once more at the whisper of her words. She picked up her wide skirt and innumerable layers of starched petticoats, drawing them up to her knees. Lennox noted the shape of her legs with approval. And then he was jolted out of his admiration as she stepped on to the soft ground where the path ended, and he realised he was supposed to follow her. Her precautions were justified. By the time they reached the waterfall and were walking over rocks, smoothed by floods and weather, their legs were generously coated with the rich black earth which comes from centuries of dying trees. As the fine spray of falling water pin-pricked his brow, Lennox looked at the girl in amusement.

“Do we just walk through it?” he shouted, and decided that sarcasm needed a quiet voice.

But she nodded seriously. She pointed, and he saw a rocky ledge which ran out from the bank to disappear under the waterfall.

He shook his head. “Not I,” he said decidedly.

She laughed at that, and placing her mouth against his ear, said, “The water falls out from the mountain, not down it. There’s a shallow cave hidden behind that sheet of water. Four men could walk abreast under the fall. Come.”

She didn’t wait for him to finish his head-shaking. She started over the rocky bank of the torrent, along the ledge. She seemed to disappear into the fine spray. He was left alone on the bank, staring at the boiling pool. He cursed, and then called her name. There was only the roar of water for an answer. He cursed again and began to walk slowly over the ledge. The foothold was slippery, and the rock against which his hand balanced was too wet for any secure grasp. But strangely, the spray was less strong here than it had been on the bank. Soon it had ceased, and the ledge had broadened. It was as the girl had said. A shallow cave had been eroded out of the mountain face, from which the sun’s rays were blotted out by a curtain of water. There was only a strange green light and a constant dull roar, like the constant grinding of heavy wheels on cobbled stones. The world outside didn’t exist.

He stood and stared at the sheet of water which fell in front of him. Now he began to see the texture of the torrent, like long close strands of gleaming silk. But the noise blotted out even his thoughts: he felt he couldn’t even hear himself think. He left the broadened ledge, watching it narrow, feeling the spray sprinkle his face and hands and legs once more. And then he was out into a world of blinding yellow light, and he was
groping carefully along the narrow foothold with his hand once more balancing him. The waterfall was behind him. The girl was waiting on the other bank. She had washed the mud from her legs and feet, and she was now carefully shaking down her skirt and petticoats.

“You can put on your shoes again,” she advised. “We travel a short distance through pine-trees now. No mud to worry about there.”

He washed the mud away beside a small inlet of water at the bank, and drew on his shoes. He was still staring at the waterfall. And it still didn’t look possible. He felt a fool, but anyway he had been a logical fool. It didn’t look possible that anyone could walk under that sheet of water. From the bank, the ledge looked only a natural roughness in the face of rock.

The girl was examining a smear of green on the wide sleeve of her blouse. “That rock!” she said in disgust. “It’s oozing slime. Now I
must
get home before my mother does, so that I can clean this.” She began to hurry up through the pine wood which covered this part of the mountainside. Lennox chased after her. His legs were tiring now. He kept pace with her only with difficulty. He didn’t talk, but the girl pretended not to notice.

“The lumber camp is just five minutes away now,” she said. “There’s a broad meadow up there. That’s Schönau.”

When he still didn’t say anything she went on cheerfully, “The real road to Schönau lies along the north side of the valley. That’s the way the foresters and their carts come. But this short-cut along the south side is very useful. We keep a watch on the north road, and if we don’t like who is coming then we take the south short-cut back to the village. Johann once spent two hours in that cave under the waterfall while the
Italians searched all around for him.”

He nodded. He was saying to himself, “You damned superior fool to get angry because a girl had more sense than you had; because a girl can walk this way on bare feet and you’ve got to have shoes; because she’s as fresh as a daisy and you’re dead beat.” And, having admitted his damned superior foolery, he was able to smile. The girl seemed to have understood, for she was smiling too. She pointed to the liberal green smears on his clothes, evidence that he had hugged the wall of the waterfall too closely. They both began to laugh.

Johann was standing behind a tree at the edge of the wood, watching this path so quietly that they hadn’t noticed him.

“Thought you were never coming,” he grumbled. He looked at them accusingly. “That path is supposed to be a short-cut, you know. Come on. All the rest of us are here.” He gave a short whistle as a warning signal to the others wherever they were.

“I had to walk in my best dress,” Katharina explained. “We came as quickly as we could.” It was a neat feminine excuse, all the neater because she didn’t look at Lennox to place the blame on him.

Lennox didn’t have to speak, because Johann had grasped his arm and was walking beside him, talking in that hoarse, confidential whisper of his. “One’s an American. One’s English. Both were dropped by parachute about six miles from here. They went to Schroffenegger’s house. He brought them to us. They are all right. We are sure of them. They knew all the right questions and answers.”

The wood thinned. At its edge there was a foresters’ hut. Before them was a broad stretch of fine green grass with isolated
trees. A cart-track wound down into the valley. That would be the usual road, which followed the valley back to Hinterwald as Katharina had described. The hut door was open, and Paul Mahlknecht was standing in its shadow. He looked pleased. At least, he was grinning widely. He put his arm round Lennox’s shoulders and drew him into the hut.

“Your friends are here,” he said.

Lennox looked over his shoulder, out at the green grass and the sunlight and the twisted oak-trees. Johann was there, but Katharina had gone.

“Don’t worry. We’ve two men out there watching the north road,” Mahlknecht said, misinterpreting that look. “We are well protected.”

“Where’s the girl?” Lennox asked quickly.

“What? Missing her already?” said Mahlknecht, with mock concern, and he began to laugh. His head was thrown back, his teeth were white against the dark, bearded face. Johann and old Schroffenegger were laughing too. The two strangers smiled politely and looked at each other, as if the joke might be funny but not quite so funny as all that.

Lennox said angrily, “She shouldn’t have gone back to her house. There are two Germans in her father’s barn now.”

The laughter ceased. Lennox explained quickly. The faces round him became more serious. He ended with the true reason why Katharina had been sent home from the village by her mother. The faces were thoughtful now.

“She went back just after I met them,” Johann explained worriedly to his uncle. Then, as if to convince himself, “She’ll be all right. Katharina will follow the wood almost to Hinterwald before coming down into the road. She won’t walk straight out
of the wood at our house. The Germans will only think she is coming back from the village.”

“That is, if that Mussner girl doesn’t tell them when Katharina was sent home from the village,” Lennox said. “Or why,” he added grimly.

Johann moved to the door. “I’ll see if I can catch up with Katharina. What shall I do? Give her warning, or bring her back here? If she doesn’t return home her mother will have a search party out for her. The whole village will be talking then.”

Mahlknecht glanced worriedly at the two polite strangers. He had a habit of biting the corner of his lip when he was working out a problem. He must have solved it, for his lower lip suddenly covered his top one determinedly, and his chin was more aggressive than ever.

He said, “She can’t come here, obviously. Tell her to go to her aunt’s house and stay there today. Her aunt can let her mother know where she is.”

Johann nodded. He saluted them all with a perky forefinger, and stepped outside.

Lennox moved quickly to the door. “She will have to pass the large boulder at the north-east corner of our wood. She left her shoes and apron there.”

“Bet you I find her before she leaves the torrent,” Johann said, and with a parting grin which split up his face into two wide curves, he began a steady, loping run. There was something very neat and compact and capable about his movements.

Lennox was thinking of the boy’s cool confidence. It wasn’t boasting. Johann would probably overtake Katharina before she had travelled very far. He began to share the boy’s quiet
assurance, and he realised that if ever anything were to come of Mahlknecht’s plans then he and these two other strangers would have to learn to trust the people of the mountains. For they knew their own capabilities, and they didn’t claim anything beyond what they could do. He remembered the incident at the waterfall: certainly he had been too quickly discouraged there. And as he turned to enter the foresters’ hut and meet the men who had arrived on the Schlern Lennox was thinking that perhaps nothing was so difficult, or so easy, as it first seemed.