News From Berlin by Otto de Kat

Author:Otto de Kat [Kat, Otto de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, War & Military, Family Life
ISBN: 9781623654016
Google: 3aq5rQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1623654017
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

What was the time? Settled on his sub-tropical café terrace, Oscar whiled the afternoon away. Time had little meaning there, the siesta cancelled out all sense of urgency. He was easily drawn into the slow rhythm of a Portuguese day. He settled the bill and strolled to the tram stop. The Alfama was waking from a deep afternoon slumber, doors were opened, there was shouting and laughter. From a radio came fado music, the pride of the nation. He was not impressed. Misjudged melancholy came to mind. He remembered an evening with Envoy Sillem and his entourage, and having to endure never-ending rounds of those mournful songs. Still, Lisbon was a breath of fresh air after Berne. The city of light with the tang of brine in the breeze, the squares with palm trees, the men with their arms around each other, the gesticulations, the women in colourful dress. And no sign of war, no threat, just a strip of land on the margin of the continent, overlooked. All over Europe the lights were going out, but not there. Portugal was a lighthouse in a darkened landscape.

The downhill ride took much longer than going up, with many more people getting off and on as the tram made its leisurely, summery way to the centre.

Equally leisurely had been the cog-wheel train to Lauterbrunnen, nosing down the track towards the valley, down to the mainline station and ordinary trains, back to their ordinary lives. To the parting of their ways. He sat opposite Lara, his travel bag leaning against hers, which gave him the odd sensation of having achieved something. Bag nudging bag was not such a big leap from hand in hand. The thought of her clothes folded up in her luggage was pleasing in itself. Their knees touched from time to time; the compartment was small and the incline steep. They had not spoken, they had looked out of the window, seen nothing but fir trees, top-heavy with snow. In the glass Oscar caught his reflection and Lara’s in the illuminated interior, their faces averted and quiet. Two days in comparison with a lifetime was nothing, two days could not amount to much.

A conductor passed nimbly from one carriage to the next. He paused a moment on an outside ledge to close the door behind him and open the one in front, an acrobat in the service of ticket inspection, stepping from one moving carriage to the next, each with its own complement of passengers with different destinations and yet all part of the same train chugging forward at a snail’s pace. The war was stealing closer, though they did their best to deny it by avoiding the subject altogether.

At Lauterbrunnen, they found themselves back in the real world. Oscar saw the platform swarming with uniforms: the Swiss had mobilised a huge army. General Guisan, whose portrait hung in all the restaurants and cafés, had proclaimed that Switzerland would defend itself against any invader, whoever that might be. The man was a secret admirer of Germany, Oscar wanted nothing to do with him.

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