Free The Europe That Was by Geoffrey Household Page A

of a fractionating column. It was familiar, friendly, a section not only of steel but of the continuity of his life. He knew the refinery that must have ordered it, the route it would take, and could even guess at the accident which had made so urgent its delivery.
    This gigantic cylinder of steel was labelled and scrawled with injunctions for speed—speed in handling as deck cargo, speed in unloading, speed in railing to Ploesti. The very written word ‘Ploesti’ comfortedhim. Even in that tough and smelly oil town there had been a restaurant where the proprietor, if you gave him warning, would joyfully attempt the standards of the Gradina.
    To Devenor the cavernous, complicated tube was home. It wouldn’t be the first time he had explored the interior of a fractionating column. And he knew its journey so well—twenty-four hours to Constantsa and, in the merry evening of capitalism, not more than two or three days on the docks, provided his agent had dealt generously with customs officers and stationmasters. Those minor bureaucrats would certainly do a better job now—would rail the column at once to Ploesti in a real Romanian panic, for fear of being accused of sabotage.
    He admitted that it was entirely illogical to treat a strange section of fractionating column as an old friend, and that a journey inside it was likely to be just the sort of adventure he wanted to avoid. Still, there it lay—about to be transported into the heart of Romania like a prince’s private railway coach. It was even divided into compartments by the bubble trays, with, as it were, a corridor down the middle.
    Devenor bought an inflatable mattress and a hamper of nourishing food. He entered the column through the manhole in what would be the top when it was erected at Ploesti. The hole was large enough to admit his stomach, but too small to light the recesses of the interior, the forbidding labyrinth of trays and take-off legs and leads. The other end of the section was shored with timber and effectively plugged.
    He took only water to drink. He prided himself on that. It was proof of a disinterested missionary spirit. ‘I thought,’ he would say, ‘that in the heat I must expect as deck cargo even wine and water might reduce efficiency.’
    It was hot. He chose a part of the column which was shaded by wood and sacking, but he could not avoid the heat of the Black Sea sun on steel. He had lost pounds in his Romano-Turkish bath when the cranes lifted him off the deck and dropped him on to the waiting railway truck. The drop was uneven. He used to protest, with professional indignation, that the fools must have strained every joint in the section.
    He anchored himself firmly in his corner seat between bubble tray and take-off leg, while the great flatcar was violently shunted up and down the yard. At last he felt himself moving purposefully in one direction, and relaxed upon his mattress with all the self-satisfaction of a traveller who had successfully cheated the customs.
    â€˜But I was frightened,’ he admitted. ‘Yes, sheer panic underneath. There wasn’t a minute when I didn’t wish I had stayed in London. Still, when the train started, I couldn’t help feeling proud of myself.’
    He looked cautiously out of the manhole. The flatcar was at the tailof the train with only the caboose behind it. On the platform of the caboose a sentry was settling down to sleep. He was glad to see that the Romanians still posted their unemployable military on trains to prevent pilfering. It was a comforting reminder that the national character had not changed.
    The train rumbled over the Danube, and idled across the starlit Wallachian plain. Whenever it halted, Devenor, kneeling at the manhole, heard the dear sounds of his second homeland: the barking of dogs in distant villages, the sigh and swirl of the streams past their willows, the croaking of frogs. Frogs fried Colbert—that was the