Free A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor Page B

me beneath row upon row of Greek and Latin classics. The works of Lessing, Mommsen Kant, Ranke, Niebuhr and Gregorovius soared to a ceiling decoratively stencilled with sphinxes and muses. There were plaster busts of Pericles and Cicero, a Victorian view of the Bay of Naples behind a massive desk and round the walls, faded and enlarged, in clearings among the volumes, huge photographs of Paestum, Syracuse, Agrigento, Selinunte and Segesta. I began to understand that German middle-class life held charms that I had never heard of.
    * * *
    The gables of the Rhine-quays were gliding past and, as we gathered speed and sailed under one of the spans of the first bridge, the lamps of Cologne all went on simultaneously. In a flash the fading city soared out of the dark and expanded in a geometrical infinity of electric bulbs. Diminishing skeletons of yellow dots leaped intobeing along the banks and joined hands across the flood in a sequence of lamp-strung bridges. Cologne was sliding astern. The spires were the last of the city to survive and as they too began to dwindle, a dark red sun dropped through bars of amber into a vague Abendland that rolled glimmering away towards the Ardennes. I watched the twilight scene from the bows of the leading barge. The new plaque on my stick commemorated the three Magi—their bones had been brought back from the crusade by Frederick Barbarossa—and the legend of St. Ursula and her suite of eleven thousand virgins. [6]
    The barges were carrying a cargo of cement to Karlsruhe, where they were due to take on timber from the Black Forest and sail downstream again, possibly to Holland. The barges were pretty low in the water already: the cement sacks were lashed under tarpaulin lest a downpour should turn the cargo to stone. Near the stern of the leading barge the funnel puffed out a rank volume of diesel smoke, and just aft of this hazard swung the brightly painted and beam-like tiller.
    The crew were my pals from the bar! I had been the first to realize it. The others grasped the fact more slowly, with anguished cries of recognition as everything gradually and painfully came back to them. Four untidy bunks lined the walls of the cabin and a brazier stood in the middle. Postcards of Anny Ondra, Lilian Harvey, Brigitte Helm and Marlene Dietrich were pinned on the planks of this den; there was Max Schmeling with the gloves up in a bruising crouch, and two chimpanzees astride a giraffe. Uli and Peter and the diesel-engineer were all from Hamburg. We sat on the lower bunks and ate fried potatoes mixed with Speck : cold lumps of pork fat which struck me as the worst thing I had ever eaten. I contributed a garlic sausage and a bottle of schnapps—leaving presents from Cologne—and at the sight of the bottle, Ulihowled like a beagle in pain. Cologne had been a testing time for them all; they were at grips with a group-hangover; but the bottle was soon empty all the same. Afterwards Peter brought out a very elaborate mouth-organ. We sang Stille Nacht , and I learnt the words of Lore, Lore, Lore and Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Städtele ’naus ; they said this had been the wartime equivalent of Tipperary ; then came a Hamburg song about ‘Sankt Pauli und die Reeperbahn.’ By pulling down a lock of his hair and holding the end of a pocket comb under his nose to simulate a toothbrush moustache, Uli gave an imitation of Hitler making a speech.
    It was a brilliant starry night but very cold and they said I would freeze to death on the cement sacks; I had planned to curl up in my sleeping bag and lie gazing at the stars. So I settled in one of the bunks, getting up every now and then to smoke a cigarette with whoever was on duty at the tiller.
    Each barge had a port and starboard light. When another string of barges came downstream, both flotillas signalled with lanterns and the two long Indian files would slide past each other, rocking for a minute or two in each other’s wakes.