Europe on Saturday Night by Gould John;

Author:Gould, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608935536
Publisher: Down East Books
Published: 2016-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

And Rothenburg, a. d. Tauber

We had already fallen under the magic spell of the Black Forest, but that was nothing to the spell Irene wove as she guided us. I sat up front with the chauffeur, and conducted occasional prayers as he took some of the turns. For our special benefit he tuned the car radio to the American armed forces network, and for about fifteen kilometers we had the worst razzle-dazzle of stomach-turning music, so called, that I ever heard. It is the sort of thing we turn off at home, and if a station plays it we don’t listen to that station. So I mulled over my words enough so I could ask him would he please find some German concert, and I never saw a man so happy in my life. He was willing to go along listening to that crud as part of the occupational penalty for being Fritz’s chauffeur, and a burden to be borne patiently while entertaining Americans. He flipped to the Süddeutscherundfunk, and we rolled up into the hills to beautiful music.

But first we had to see Pforzheim — Irene’s home-town. She showed us her early neighborhood, although things have changed, and the factory of her family. And the mountain of debris. After the war all the bombed-out mess that was Pforzheim was taken, truckload by truck-load, and piled up in one great mountain — a memorial. When I was a boy we used to take a lunch and climb Hedgehog Mountain, spending the day clambering over the ledges, and we thought it was quite a hill. Today Pforzheimers can take a lunch and climb the much larger cairn of their wartime debris, and I suppose look off with their thoughts.

Time and again we were struck by the unemotion with which Europeans speak of war. War is a consequence of affairs and it kills people and destroys things — but one day it is over and affairs begin again. The intense friendship developed ’twixt us and the Bechtles has no overtones of national enmity, and any reference to strife has been matter-of-fact. It seemed to us that something ought to be said, one way or the other, and perhaps with some emotion, about the mound in Pforzheim — but Irene merely showed it to us, and we looked at it, and the chauffeur drove along.

Irene was sad that Fritz wasn’t with us, for the two of them consider the Black Forest their own special private place — as does every German — and she was extra sad when we came at last to an inn high in the hills where she and Fritz often come. It was “Zuflucht,” and the people knew her and inquired for Fritz. We admired the small glass cups in which our Kirschwasser was served, and Irene got a half-dozen of them for us and we have them at home — but without any Black Forest Kirschwasser to adorn them as they were adorned that day. Possibly I made

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