She said 'What's the alternative?'
I said This.'
I looked up to the ceiling where the ridge-beam had been cracked by the branch falling on the roof.
She said 'Don't we need a prop for that roof?'
She went out into the glade in front of the cottage. I tried to send a message to you — This is all right, my angeclass="underline" you will be all right? The girl came in dragging a branch that we had cut off and I sawed it to the right size and trimmed it of its lesser branches and then we put the narrower end against the cracked ridge-beam of the ceiling and the other end at an angle on the floor.
She said 'Can you tell me — what is a mutation?'
I said 'It is a new sort of being that happens as a matter of luck. What you can do for it, which is not a matter of luck, is to make an environment that you would wish for whatever turns up. This is what you have been doing. You love your baby.'
She said 'In my imagination.'
I said 'In fact.'
She said 'I told you I was lucky.'
We got hold of the bottom end of the prop and heaved; I kicked it so that the top end pressed against the ridge-beam; then I got hold of another piece of wood and banged the bottom of the prop with it while the girl pulled and the prop gradually became upright and the ridge-beam was raised so that it became level and dust and rubble drifted down like bits of light.
She said * You mean, this is some sort of practice?'
I said'Yes.'
She got a broom that seemed to have been made of twigs from the glade; she swept up the dust and rubble that had fallen to the floor; she tidied the tea-things that were round the grate; she made sure that the fire was safe; then she stood and looked round the room.
I said 'You see, you have made this place; now you can carry it in your head.'
She said 'Is that what you do?'
I said'Yes.'
She said 'All right, I'll tell him. I expect he'll marry me.'
I thought — This place, this afternoon, exist as if they were a painting.
She said 'Did you hear what I said?'
I said 'Yes.' She took the jug of milk and poured a little of it into the vase of lilies.
She said 'If my baby is a girl I am going to call her Lilia.'
I said 'Why?'
She said 'Because lilies are the flowers that grow at this time of year.'
Gasthof Friedrich, Zurich See September 2nd 1939 My Angel,
The fact that I am writing this means that I am alive -
That I am alive means that this is what the universe is like -
You are taking care of yourself?
I got Walburga's car. I set off early in the morning. There was news on the wireless coming through about the German invasion of Poland. There was almost no one in the streets. People were huddled round their wirelesses. It seemed that I might have just one or two days before Britain and Germany declared war.
Walburga had tried again to come with me. She had said 'Why not?' I had said 'Because then it wouldn't work.' I suppose it will always be impossible to explain this.
At the Swiss frontier the man who looked at my passport said 'You are sure you want to go into Germany at this time?' I said 'I have to find my father.' He stamped my passport.
On the German side of the frontier the man said 'You are sure you want to come into Germany at this time?' I said 'I will only be here for one or two days.' He stamped my passport.
The men in the customs house were huddled round their wirelesses. It was a scene like that in Morocco on the day when there was the first news of the war in Spain.
Here there had been rumours that if Germany attacked Poland, and if France and Great Britain declared war on Germany in accordance with treaty obligations, then Germany might attack France through Switzerland in order to avoid the defences of the Maginot Line. But there was hardly any traffic on the roads: no troops, no cheering. It was as if everyone was turned inwards in groups round wirelesses, waiting for news of war perhaps to go round the universe and hit them on the backs of their heads.
It was fifty miles from the frontier to the village above which Franz's family had their house. I had been there once before when Franz and I had gone wandering like birds in the forest. Then some time later I had met you, and we had been like those two people in that play wandering but also looking for each other in a town in which there was already war.
Bruno had said 'Germans split themselves into Mephistopheles and Faust: the one is deep enough to know that good can come out of evil, the other is too shallow to take responsibility for this knowledge.'
You had said 'I do not want to be like Faust.'
I had said 'Faust needed someone to save him.'
Franz had said 'I am like Faust!'
I drove up into the mountains. I stopped in the village to ask someone the way. There was a voice on the wireless coming through half-closed shutters; it told of the extent of the German advance into Poland. I found that I did not want to talk to anyone to ask them the way.
It was not difficult to find Franz's house; there was only one road up from the back of the village. I recognised the driveway. The house was a long single-storey building with plate-glass windows
and a view over the top of the forest. There was a car parked at the side of the building which might have belonged to Franz or to some other member of his family. I left my car and went to the front of the house and looked in through one of the huge windows. There were signs of someone having recently been in the sitting-room: the cushions of the sofa had the imprint of a body; there were an ashtray and a glass and an empty bottle on the floor. There is something alarming about looking through a window into a room where humans have been recently but are no longer; what is the need for them to have been there at all.
I rang the bell by the front door. Behind me was the enormous expanse of the forest. A large black dog appeared from round a far corner of the house. Mephistopheles first appeared in the guise of a black dog, did he not? This dog was one of those that appear to be so embarrassed at the presence of humans that they can hardly move: it smiled and squirmed and dragged the back half of its body along the ground. But it was also behaving as dogs do when they want you to follow them. It seemed that there was no one in the house. I thought — Dogs behave like this when something terrible has happened to their masters in a forest.
I followed the dog past the far end of the house and into the trees. The forest was like that on the upper plateau of San Juan de la Pena at the place where the horse but not its rider had gone over the cliff. Or there was that mountain path in Switzerland where you and I had stopped in our walk — do we not often come to this place? — where there had been a rock, a butterfly, a cobweb, a tree. Or, indeed, before this there was the cave in a wood to which I had followed Franz and he had indeed seemed to be practising some self-destruction. The black dog snorted and slithered like a snake in front of me. Ahead, through the trees, in a small clearing which did seem to be, yes, on the edge of a cliff, I saw Franz sitting to one side of the path with his back against a tree. He was holding a shotgun between his knees; the barrel went up past his face. The black dog went up to him; it seemed to be laughing or crying. Franz gave no signs of seeing me. I went to him and said 'Hullo, Franz.' He still did not look at me. I said Tve come to ask you if you know about my father.' When he looked round it was as if he had experienced some sort of dying.
I said 'I understand that you've been in touch with my father.'
He said 'Who told you that?'
I said 'Walburga.'
'And you forwarded to me a letter from my father.'
'That was a long time ago.'
'Can you tell me what he is doing now? And I also, yes, wanted to talk to you.'