Free Europe in the Looking Glass by Robert Byron Jan Morris

I. Simon did not venture an opinion. After unloading our combined luggage in an effort to find the book of instructions which all the time was safely in the front locker where it should have been, we set about the carburettor with spanners and pincers; and after an hour’s hard work succeeded in getting it in pieces. There seemed nothing the matter; we blew the jets at either end until our cheeks ached; then put it together again. After that we changed the plugs, because they ‘wanted doing anyhow’. This made no difference. It was useless. We gave up in despair and decided to stop a car and ask for help. Every five minutes for the last two hours we had been so enveloped in dust by mechanically driven transport, as to be scarcely able to breathe. But now, in the natural course of things, another hour elapsed before anything appeared at all.

    At last, from round the corner of the bridge down the road, came the rumble of a lorry. With arms outstretched, like the little girl on the railway line, we stopped it, and two beneficent and filthy human beings, with immensely round stomachs concealed beneath white aprons, emerged from the front. They fastened on Diana’s inside with the ecstasy of starving leeches. In a moment the engine was emitting sheets of flame. David reached between the licking tongues and turned offthe petrol; Simon and I scooped the refuse of the gutter into Diana’s most delicate intestines; and, while one of the men thrust his enormous torso bodily on top of the carburettor, the other fetched a piece of sacking from the lorry, with which he eventually quenched the conflagration.
    Laughing loudly, the men then embarked on a second attempt, this time wrapping the sacking round the carburettor in the first instance. We remained more collected, with one eye on the luggage at the back, as the flames shot up in the air. Finally they tried a third time. But it was not a success. They decided to tow us.
    I sat in front off the lorry with the larger of the two. He started off with a bound that snapped the rope like a piece of thread. We retied it and tried again. The lorry was delivering Bolzano beer, with the result that we stopped at every public house on the road proving a refreshing object of ridicule to the parties of drinkers seated barefooted and half hidden in the dust. My companion told me that he had a son who spoke German and English. He also made a great deal of other conversation which I did not understand, occasionally almost stopping to apostrophise the landscape. The other man danced about the back of the lorry, asking David and Simon if he could introduce them to any ladies.
    Our progress was slow, and it was nearly dark by the time we reached the tram terminus, which lay some distance out in the country. The lorry could delay no longer. Explaining our plight to the occupant of the Bologna Tramways Office, our two benefactors left us, they to deliver the remainder of their beer, we to telephone to the Baglioni for assistance. Though not easy, we succeeded in getting through. Another car would arrive in about half-an-hour.
    During the interval we entered a wineshop. Two Wandervögel were eating bread and milk at a neighbouring table. A kitten with a dislocated shoulder proved an object of interest and affection to David. The car arrived, accompanied by an interpreter, who resembled Harold Lloyd in mind and face,confusing every issue that he was called upon to solve. The rope broke again. We mended it and reached the hotel about nine, three ghoulish figures, unrecognisable beneath a livid coating of clotted, white dust. Baths and dinner revived us. The waiter expressed himself willing, if necessary, to introduce us to some ladies. Instead we went out and entered the first café that we came to.
    Being rather tired we sat for some time in silence. The waiter behind the counter showed great interest in us. Eventually, handing me a confidential vermouth, he suggested that we might care to meet some