My first day in Furtwangen began.
No chamber pot, so it was Adam’s Duty, after which I washed in the stream and was observed by a surly sawmill worker. I might have tipped a peasant to post my letter but no, not him.
There was nothing for breakfast but some small bitter strawberries which made the hunger worse. No life was evident except the Huguenot writing by a window.
I asked him when was breakfast served.
“Sir,” said he, “one becomes accustomed to it.”
He continued with his scribbling.
“You wonder what I am doing?” he said.
I had not.
“I am a fairytale collector,” he said.
How extraordinary, I thought, I have met a fairytale collector. Whatever will happen next?
I set off to find the village of Furtwangen where I was intent on posting my letter. Awful morning. No need to describe my humiliations. Foreigners not liked, obviously. A boy threw a stone at me. Not even the priest would understand what I needed with my urgent envelope and by the time I had been forced to stand aside to permit the locals right of way, had tramped along a rutted road and then a highway, I was completely lost. It took me all afternoon to find the sawmill by which time I was suffering the most painful bilious hunger. My stomach was tight as a drum, filled with sloshing river water.
It was late afternoon, nothing but a boiling kettle on the stove. I would not steal food. I would endure, but what of Percy? How long can a small boy wait?
Carl came to fetch me in due course. He held my sleeve, which small show of kindness I was grateful for. The dinner was the same as the previous night. What I would have given for all the old boarding-school favourites I once reviled—toad-in-the-hole, stewed beetroot, fried bread, frog’s spawn. I was so hungry now I could have swallowed maggots and asked for more. My hosts looked down at their plates, and I knew they were embarrassed by my manners, but I was in a rage. I turned my eyes upon them one by one and dared them return my gaze.
Finally they retired and when Sumper left the field, I scraped his plate, the last skerrick of cheese sauce as well.
Then I stepped out into the dark, my guts in agony.
I lay on the damp path and listened to my hosts—grotesque moustached hens setting each other off, exploding bass and treble, sighing. Sometimes I woke and heard them laughing, and then I understood I had been snoring.
The stars were out. I was damp with dew, too shy to walk through the kitchen to my bed.
They spoke excellent English except when singing and composing lists which was a passion it would seem. What lists these were I could not know. Men’s names, or perhaps villages or landmarks which would assist in finding where an individual lived, or so I guessed. The so-called fairytale collector’s thin voice remained dominant. Why this was, I could not imagine, unless he was like those tramps who knew the names of farmers, which one is a “soft touch,” etc. On and on they went. When not lists, then folk songs. When no songs, then crickets.
“For God’s sake, you will die.”
Sumper helped me to my feet, and led me to the kitchen. Here he sat me at table and watched me as if he was my mother. Frau Helga served me a sort of porridge. Sumper remained watching while I ate it.
“What are you up to, Herr Brandling?”
“It is urgent that I send a letter to my son.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, having no notion of the life at stake.
In the mornings, from my bedroom window, I observed how strange bright-eyed Carl went trotting off, hopping along the goat path, waving to the harvesters, returning in an hour or two with a package or a basket or no more than a bulge in his pocket, which mystery would be delivered up the stairs, across the chute, knock knock, and greeted with exclamation either of triumph or reproof.
He had the most extraordinary hands, Carl, so long and thin you might think he needed another set of knuckles. Sumper treasured this boy. He called him Genius and Spirit and other extravagant expressions that led me to believe that it was with those unworldly hands that Percy’s machine was being constructed.
Without looking up from her darning needle Helga said: “Show him our new post box, M. Arnaud.”
“Directly,” Arnaud replied, but then he wandered off. I was still in that same room at supper when he finally returned.
After the remains of the meal had been cleared away, I announced that I would leave to find the post box by myself.
The fairytale collector leapt to his feet.
“Do you have your letters ready, Herr Brandling?”
I saw that the wretch was now dressed “for town,” with waistcoat and breeches of dark green velveteen, stout boots, and a broad leather belt which he now took in a notch around his narrow waist.
“I do not have stamps,” I said.
“We have stamps in beautiful colours,” said the fairytale collector. “It is for England that they are required. Two letters I think?”
You have known this all day, I thought. Soon it will be dark.
“We will need a lantern.”
“No need.”
“There will be a moon?”
“I have the eyes of a cat,” the queer man said. And we descended into the spray and chaos of the gorge.
When, minutes later, we emerged, the world was alight with golden straw. One could hear the birds again, the light clink of the chain that tethered three dwarf goats beside the stream.
“My mother was a cat,” said the fairytale collector, as if he had made the most common observation.
I made no riposte but in truth I have a horror of fairy stories not because I believe them but because I cannot stop myself imagining the evil stepmother, say, being forced to dance inside her red-hot iron shoes. What cruelties we humans practise every day.
The village turned out to be very near. I deposited Percy’s letters in an iron box with golden tassels like a General. Then we turned the corner of a lane and I beheld the quaint houses pressed together, the pointed roofs with their projecting eaves, the wooden staircases, and, drenched in the last rays of the setting sun, a glorious yellow inn, now glowing golden.
“The inn is not too far, Herr Brandling,” he said shyly, and I finally understood why he had made me wait all day.
THE COLLECTOR OF ANCIENT cruelties was a mere smidgen, a tiny creature, with a mass of curling salt-and-pepper hair. At the sawmill he had not seemed any more eccentric than anybody else, but at this village inn he cut a most unusual figure, soft-skinned, half man, half child, with his head in perfect proportion to the whole.
At the sawmill he had been completely at his ease. At the inn he was as nervous as a bird, its heart always pattering as if everything, even a single grain of wheat, might pose a mortal risk. Perhaps he saw the possibility of violence in the schnapps bottles, or perhaps it was his Protestant bones in a Catholic atmosphere, or the excessive smoke, or the fearsome physiognomies—Jews and Germans playing cards, arguing, in too many languages to count.
The mistress of the inn, a stout bustling little missus like you see in the old engravings, greeted M. Arnaud very fondly, found him a table, and brought us cheese and small beer before we had a chance to ask. I said how very nice she was.
Arnaud leaned close toward my ear.
What did I know of Herr Sumper? Why had I brought my plans to him? Why had I not commissioned a Karlsruhe clockmaker where the sort of work I wished could have been more surely done?
I thought, whoa Dobbin. I did not need my confidence undone.
I asked him how he came into Sumper’s circle.
He spilled some volatile oils onto a handkerchief and dabbed at his cartilaginous nose. In the candlelight his nostrils seemed alight with blood.
Why, he demanded, had I not asked Sumper for letters of reference?