Leontyne (20 page)

The town of Heidelberg was well kept and neat, with a population of citizens who seemed to be concerned only with
obeying the rules. Ray and I lifted the car off to tour the town. We drove up to the castle and managed to get a fistful of parking tickets, which must be filling up a disk somewhere on somebody's computer. In the forecourt of the castle a company that puts on an annual performance was having their dress rehearsal for
The Student Prince
– in English. I became curious as to who these enthusiasts could be, and asked a girl at the back of the audience who was lounging against a tree. It appeared that most of the cast were from the nearby American Air Force base. The soprano was a chunky girl from California with a complexion like a peach which ripened visibly when, at the end of the ‘Drinking Song', the students hoisted her to their shoulders for the final chorus and she began to slip inexorably from their grasp. I hope it went well on the night, but for now she ended in an embarrassed heap at the students' feet.

Our mooring in Heidelberg was close to the oldest part of the town, very near the town hall, in the reception lobby of which there happened to be a display of books about Israel. It seemed odd to have such an exhibition in a town like this, and I asked the pleasant-looking woman who seemed to be in charge what it was like to be a Jew in Germany in these days. She told me that she came from an Israeli family that had always lived in Israel and while still in Israel had married an Israeli whose mother had been German. Fifteen years previously they had come to Berlin where, before the war, many thousands of Jews had lived; now there were only a handful. When she had started, running a small newsagent's shop with her husband, she found it very hard indeed to like the country or the inhabitants, but time had passed and the local people had eventually come to her for their papers rather than the other
Ausländer
round the corner, who was a Turk. She had obviously made a success of her life in Germany and told me that when she arrived she was an Israeli, but now she felt like a Jew. While a few people came to browse through the books, she told me that when she had
first arrived, she had seen any man who was the right age and who could have been in the war as a possible murderer of her race. Now, she said, she had grown comfortable in Germany, but could never like it. I longed to ask why she did not leave but her sad eyes warned me to go no further.

Before we left Heidelberg we stopped for water at the local yacht club, which was just what a German yacht club should be, with a lot of retired gentlemen eager to share a beer at ten in the morning. Next to us was another visitor who was amused by this attention from the members, and, as I could see that he had a twinkle in his eye, I went to talk to him. He and his wife, who, he explained, was single-handedly supporting the German Post Office by at least fifty postcards every day, had been up the Rhine to Basel from their home port of Rotterdam. Being a Dutchman he spoke beautiful English in a direct manner, and told us that, before retirement, he'd been in charge of a huge Dutch firm building supertankers. In his youth he had been a racing yachtsman and had been in famous boats before the war, when the Dutch were at the top of the league in twelve-metre racing yachts. He told us of his days as an apprentice before the war, and of working on a Dutch coaster bringing Cornish slates from near Penzance to Putney up the Thames. He clearly longed for the open sea and the wind filling his sails, but ‘the crew', which was how he referred to his wife, found the rivers and canals more agreeable. Presumably this was because there were more postboxes for her postcard production. ‘The crew' wrote on silently, never once referring to an address book, and sticking the stamp on with a flourish when each card was covered in all the legal places. I was reminded by Sabine of a tragic occurrence when, on one of our earlier trips down the Canal du Midi in the South of France, she had written a large number of postcards and had allowed the lot to blow away in a gust of wind. How she had howled as they floated away in the wash of the
Leo
! The cards, together with the Yehudi Menuhin
Teach Yourself Violin
book, had all sunk by the time I had stopped and reversed to recover them.

We slipped down the Neckar, which I am sure is very romantic when it's not cold, damp and grey, as it was that day. We stopped in Mannheim and I went to buy some batteries for our portable radio, bumping into our Rhine pilot who was, of course, carrying his holdall full of dried soup. We set off down the Rhine together and he told us of what had befallen him with the other barges he had taken up to Strasbourg. It seems they'd had a very bad trip with some serious mechanical trouble, and I think he was pleased to be back on board the
Leo
which, with all its failings, always seemed to get you there. We had not far to go on the five-knot current before we turned right at Mainz and into the Main. Sabine and Robert got out their violins and sat at the head of the barge, playing deliciously as we flashed past the village of Nierstein, its beautiful church silhouetted against the world-famous vineyards. The sun shone on Sabine's golden hair and I felt very proud to be her father.

The pilot called up a fuelling barge who came alongside and refuelled us, charging an exorbitant price – probably the highest in Europe – for our diesel. We left the pilot on board the fuelling barge, smoking away just under a huge No Smoking sign. Ray and I had decided to take a chance and go up the Main river without him, as it seemed quite unnecessary and also expensive to have him on board. We had no difficulties at the first couple of locks and moored by a football pitch in Florsheim, a rather pretty place where they made shoes.

I had had an introduction to a very impressive woman by the name of Princess Metternich, and I thought that since she did not live too far away, I would call on her. She lived in a castle on the Rhine, called the Schloss Johannisburg, which was famous for its cellars and excellent white wine. It had been bombed by the Allies during the Second World War – by mistake, unless it was that some pilot wanted to
unload his bombs on the way home and thought that it looked a likely target. The old castle had been completely rebuilt, with state help, largely because of its vast wine cellars which had not been too badly damaged by the bombing. The wine there had become famous as a result of a mistake: a messenger, sent by the bishop who owned the estate in the sixteenth century with the message that the grape harvest should begin, was unaccountably delayed for a few days. The result was that the grapes had started to rot on the vine by the time they were gathered, but, surprisingly, tasted delicious. The accident was adopted as a technique, and this is what gives the wine from this vineyard its distinctive bouquet. It is also an example of the discipline of the Germans as a race, for I am sure that neither the French nor the Italians would dream of waiting for orders that would prejudice the harvest, and would have acted on their own accord.

We went over to the castle by car, and the Princess, who is a charming woman, greeted me very cordially. She told me of her days in Berlin during the war, where she and her sister, Russian émigrées, had found work in various government offices. I asked her what it had really been like in those days and, refreshingly, she told me that she and her sister had been pretty girls together and had a fine time of it for the first years, and then, when they had realized the extent of the Nazi barbarism, did what they could with the many languages that they spoke. Her sister had been working for the outstanding Adam von Trott, who many say was the architect of the 20 July plot on Hitler's life. The Princess herself had married a German army officer of the old school and had moved to their estates in Czechoslovakia towards the end of the war, only to find that they had to leave because of the rapid advance of the Russian army. They walked with what they could carry to their other estate: this castle by the Rhine at Schloss Johannisburg.

The Prince was away, so I took the liberty of sitting in the chair that had belonged to
the
Metternich, who was famed
for his wiliness at the Congress of Vienna, and had a few irreverent thoughts about world domination. Metternich, according to most of the history books, had been attending a ball in Vienna when the news broke that Napoleon had landed in Cannes, at the start of the campaign that was to end at Waterloo. This unwelcome information had been a real party stopper and the ball had broken up in mid-waltz. The Princess confided that her husband's forebear had actually been in bed at the time, or possibly sitting in the same chair as I was.

The area between the Main and Frankfurt, with Wiesbaden in between, seems like an enormous ribbon development from the road, but from the river it is quite different. The industrial developments, though huge, have somehow been contained and do not seem endless and pointless as they do in Britain or Belgium. One moment there would be an enormous chemical works on the banks of the river, and the next a charming little village set in the midst of trees and fields. I found this very surprising and so we stopped at Höchst, mooring near a boat which was being converted to the height of luxury for taking passengers on all-year-round cruises down the Rhine and into the Low Countries.

The little town was a few hundred yards up the hill through some municipal gardens. Our first task was to fill up with water but surprisingly there were no hydrants about and the nearest tap was in the ladies' toilets in the gardens. The hose just reached, but as I was debating with myself about the right moment to dash in and fix it to the tap, I found myself being eyed very sternly by a German lady. She clearly felt I was up to no good, and, as I was unable to explain why it was necessary to enter the ladies' lavatory and she was clearly not going to make any kind of effort to understand what I had in mind, we were in a stand-off position. She withdrew to gather reinforcements and I sat down on one of the benches
and waited till the coast cleared. Eventually the park-keeper arrived, summoned by the informer. I tried to explain what I wanted but, though it was clear that had I had another hundred foot of hosepipe I would have been able to fill up from the gents, he said that it was
ganz verboten
to enter the ladies' toilet under any circumstances, such is the strict adherence to rules in Germany. Who was it that, during the war, called the Germans carnivorous sheep? Defeated, I wound up the hose and returned to the boat. As we had no water Ray and I stayed at the local hotel, which was a huge floating barge, so that we could have a bath before entering Frankfurt.

Our journey had taken on a new aspect. The countryside was no longer familiar and our attempts with the language were extremely basic. Many people that we met spoke English but I was acutely embarrassed by my rudimentary German and wished I had worked harder at it while I was at school. We did not take long to cover the twenty kilometres into Frankfurt but we had no idea where we could moor, which made it a rather nervous trip: unlike Paris, Frankfurt does not have many bridges and along the north bank of the Main there are neat gardens surrounded by trim walls of the regional red sandstone. I decided to stop, in what looked like the city centre, alongside a promenade. I was slightly concerned about the possibility of things getting stolen but I need not have worried. The boat became an instant point of interest and for a couple of hours Ray and I sat talking to passers-by from all over the world. A beautiful girl dressed in the briefest of bikinis went by, draped over the bows of a small speedboat, and greeted us as she passed in a surprisingly low voice. Her ‘Hallo boys' turned our heads and our attention from the middle-aged Persian sisters who were telling us about the difficulties they had had in raising money for the poor in Iran from this enormously wealthy city.

It was a holiday weekend and, as luck would have it, I broke a bit off my tooth on some hard German bread and
had to have it fixed. There was no possibility of going to a dentist because they had all taken the weekend off, and anyway it is against the rules for good German teeth to break over a weekend. As we approached our mooring, I had noticed that there was an immense hospital on the south bank. I made my way over there and at once became embroiled in the Euro-nightmare of getting free medical care in another European country. It very soon became extremely clear to me that there was no chance of cracking the problem of having no permanent address, and so I asked whether it would be possible to be treated privately. I was told to sit in a huge waiting room, quite empty, in the front row of row upon row of shiny plastic chairs. After some minutes of wondering if this expedition had been a good idea, I heard brisk footsteps approaching. Their owner was a nice Irish girl who had been a dental nurse in Dublin but had not been able to get a job in a hospital here till she spoke German, which she had learned by working in a German butcher's. I liked her at once, and as we walked to the surgery she told me I was in luck as, according to her, the most brilliant young dentist in Germany was going to look after me. The surgery was a gleaming, modern affair and I was told to sit in the chair, where I was left alone. I closed my eyes for a minute and must have dozed off. When I opened them again I found myself looking into the most beautiful pair of clear blue orbs. Their owner turned out to be the brilliant – and beautiful – dentist, who gently fixed my tooth assisted by her Irish handmaiden. I happily paid her, and, for the first time in my life, left a dental surgery walking on air.

Ray decided to fly home to see his family, and I stayed with the boat which meant I could wander about Frankfurt for a few days. Moored up as we were in the equivalent of Hyde Park or Central Park, I had one slight disadvantage – the lack of a hall porter who would have an idea of what was on and what to do. I saw Ray off at the central station on his way to the airport and then, having smartened myself up as
best I could, walked into one of Frankfurt's swankiest hotels. It had a large circular lobby and as I paused, uncertain of my direction, I could feel disapproving eyes boring into my baggy blue jeans and unpolished shoes. How could they know that I was one of the few people in the last fifty years who had come from London by water to their hotel lobby? The concierge was a charming Indian which was not what I had expected, and I immediately felt at home. I explained that I wanted to know what was going on in the city and told him how I had arrived. He produced several brochures and a tram timetable and promised to visit the boat on his day off. For a moment I felt tempted to stay in this comfortable hotel and use the hotel telephones instead of having to struggle with the German telephone boxes which are strangely inefficient, but I had a water supply on the quay and I felt it would be abandoning the
Leo
to leave her during the night.