“Its name is Bruno,” said little Bert.
Unshaven, wearing a rather short dressing gown and glasses that sat crookedly, Herbert seemed unprepared to deal with sponges. He had let all three of them be pushed along to Christine’s room and suffered the door to be padlocked behind him. “We shall never come to this hotel again,” he remarked. Was that all? No, more: “And I intend to write to the Guide Michelin and the Tourist Office.”
But the porter had left them. His answer came back from the passage: “Dirty Boches, you spoiled my holiday in Bulgaria. Everywhere I looked I saw Germans. The year before in Majorca. The same thing. Germans, Germans.”
Through tears she did not wish the child to observe, Christine stared at larches pressing against the frame of the window. They had the look they often have, of seeming to be wringing wet. She noticed every detail of their bedraggled branches and red cones. The sky behind them was too bright for comfort. She took a step nearer and the larches were not there. They belonged to her schooldays and to mountain holidays with a score of little girls — a long time ago now.
Herbert did not enlarge on the incident, perhaps for the sake of little Bert. He said only that the porter had behaved strangely and that he really would write to the Guide Michelin. Sometimes Herbert meant more than he said; if so, the porter might have something to fear. She began to pack, rolling her things up with none of the meticulous folding and pleating of a week ago, when she had been preparing to come here with her lover. She buckled the lightest of sandals on her feet and tied her hair low on her neck, using a scarf for a ribbon. She had already shed her robe and pulled on a sleeveless dress. Herbert kept little Bert’s head turned the other way, though the child had certainly seen all he wanted to night after night.
Little Bert would have breakfast on the French train, said Herbert, to distract him. He had never done that before.
“I have never been on a train,” was the reply.
“It will be an exciting experience,” said Herbert; like most parents, he was firm about pleasure. He promised to show little Bert a two-star restaurant at the Gare de l’Est. That would be fun. The entire journey, counting a stopover in Strasbourg and a change of trains, would take no more than twelve hours or so; this was fast, as trains go, but it might seem like a long day to a child. He was counting on little Bert’s cooperation, Herbert concluded sombrely.
After a pause, during which little Bert began to fidget and talk to his bath sponge, Herbert came back to the subject of food. At Strasbourg they would have time for a quick lunch, and little Bert had better eat his …
“Plum tart,” said little Bert. He was a child who had to be coaxed to eat at every meal, yet who always managed to smell of food, most often of bread and butter.
… because the German train would not have a restaurant car, Herbert went on calmly. His actual words were, “Because there will be no facilities for eating on the second transport.”
Christine thought that Herbert’s information left out a great deal. Little Bert did not know what a two-star restaurant was, and would certainly have refused every dish set before him had he been taken to one. Also, the appalling schedule Herbert had just described meant that the boy would have nothing to eat or drink from about eleven in the morning until past his bedtime. She suggested they buy a picnic lunch and a bottle of mineral water before leaving. Her impression of the week just past was that little Bert had to be fed water all day and part of night. But Herbert said no, that the smell of food on trains made him — Herbert — feel sick. It was the thing he hated most in the world, next to singing. The train would be staffed with vendors of sandwiches and milk and whatever little Bert wanted. Herbert did not foresee any food or drink problem across the Rhine.
Well, that was settled, though leaving early had destroyed Herbert’s plans for exposing the Louvre to little Bert and finding out what he had to say about the Postal Museum. “Too bad,” said Herbert.
“Yes, too bad.” She knew now that there had been only one purpose to this holiday: to see how she got along with little Bert.
Herbert let the child carry the sponge to the station, hoping he would forget it on the way. But he continued to address it as “Bruno” and held it up to their taxi window to see Paris going by.
“The porter seemed drugged,” said Herbert. “There was something hysterical, irrational. What did he mean by ‘too late’? He meant ‘too early’!”
“He was playing,” said little Bert, who had the high, impudent voice of the spoiled favourite. “He wanted you to play too.”
Herbert smiled. “Grown people don’t play that way,” he said. “They mean what they say.” His scruples made him add, “Sometimes.” Then, so that little Bert would not be confused, he said, “I mean what I say.” To prove it he began looking for the two-star restaurant as soon as they had reached the station. He looked right and left and up at a bronze plaque on the wall. The plaque commemorated a time of ancient misery, so ancient that two of the three travellers had not been born then, and Herbert, the eldest, had been about the age of little Bert. An instinct made him turn little Bert’s head the other way, though the child could barely read in German, let alone French.
“I can’t protect him forever,” he said to Christine. “Think of what the porter said.”
It was a sad, gnawing moment, but once they were aboard the express to Strasbourg they forgot about it. They had a first-class compartment to themselves. Herbert opened one smooth morning paper after the other. He offered them to Christine but she shook her head. She carried a paperback volume of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essays tucked in behind her handbag. For some reason she thought that Herbert might tease her. They moved on to breakfast in the dining car, where Herbert insisted on speaking French. Little Bert was truly cooperative this time and did not interrupt or keep whimpering, “What are you saying?” He propped the object Herbert had begun to refer to as “that damned sponge” behind the menu card, asked for a drop of coffee to colour his milk, and ate toasted brioche without being coaxed. When the conductor came by to check their tickets little Bert suddenly repeated a French phrase of Herbert’s, which was, “Oh, en quel honneur?” Everyone who heard it smiled, except Christine; she knew he had not meant to be funny, though Herbert believed the child had a precocious sense of humour. He did not go so far as to write down little Bert’s remarks, but made a point of remembering them, though they were nothing but accidents.
The early start and the trouble at the hotel must have made Herbert jumpy. He kept lighting one cigarette after another so carelessly that sometimes he had two going at once. He looked at Christine and told her in French that she was overdressed. She smiled without replying; it was the end of the holiday, too late for anything except remarks. She glanced out at men fishing in ditches, at poplar shadows stretched from fence to fence, and finally — Herbert could tease her or not — she opened her book.
Little Bert was beside her in a second. He stood leaning, breathing unpleasantly on her bare arm. He laid a jammy hand over the page and said, “What are you doing?”
“Standing on my head.”
“Don’t,” said Herbert. “Children can’t understand sarcasm. Christine is reading, little Bert.”
“But he can see that I’m reading, can’t he?”
“What are you reading?” said the child.
“A book for an examination.”
“When is it?” he said, as if knowing they had been expecting another “what?”
“In two days’ time at eight in the morning.”
Still he did not remove his paw from the page. “Can you read to me?” he said. “Read a story about Bruno.”