The Young Lions

CHAPTER ONE

THE town shone in the snowy twilight like a Christmas window, with the electric railway's lights tiny and festive at the foot of the white slope, among the muffled winter hills of the Tyrol. People smiled at each other broadly, skiers and natives alike, in their brilliant clothes, as they passed on the snow-draped streets, and there were wreaths on the windows and doors of the white and brown houses because this was the eve of the new and hopeful year of 1938.

Margaret Freemantle listened to her ski boots crunching in the packed snow as she walked up the hill. She smiled at the pure twilight and the sound of children singing somewhere in the village below. It had been raining in Vienna when she left that morning and people had been hurrying through the streets with that gloomy sense of being imposed upon that rain brings to a large city. The soaring hills and the clear sky and the good snow, the athletic, cosy gaiety of the village seemed like a personal gift to her because she was young and pretty and on vacation.

" Dort oben am Berge," the children sang, "da wettert der Wind," their voices clear and plangent in the rare air.

"Da sitzet Maria," Margaret sang softly to herself, "und wieget ihr Kind." Her German was halting and as she sang she was pleased not only with the melody and delicacy of the song, but her audacity in singing in German at all.

She was a tall, thin girl, with a slender face. She had green eyes and a spattering of what Joseph called American freckles across the bridge of her nose. Joseph was coming up on the early train the next morning, and when she thought of him she grinned.

At the door of her hotel she stopped and took one last look at the rearing, noble mountains and the winking lights. She breathed deeply of the twilight air. Then she opened the door and went in.

The main room of the small hotel was bright with holly and green leaves, and there was a sweet, rich smell of generous baking. It was a simple room, furnished in heavy oak and leather, with the spectacular, brilliant cleanliness found so often in the mountain villages, that became a definite property of the room, as real and substantial as the tables and chairs.

Mrs Langerman was walking through the room, carefully carrying a huge cut-glass punchbowl, her round, cherry face pursed with concentration. She stopped when she saw Margaret and, beaming, put the punchbowl down on a table.

"Good evening," she said in her soft German. "How was the skiing?"

"Wonderful," Margaret said.

"I hope you didn't get too tired." Mrs Langerman's eyes crinkled slyly at the corners. "A little party here tonight. Dancing. A great many young men. It wouldn't do to be tired."

Margaret laughed. "I'll be able to dance. If they teach me how."

"Oh!" Mrs Langerman put up her hands deprecatingly.

"You'll have no trouble. They dance every style. They will be delighted with you." She peered critically at Margaret. "Of course, you are rather thin, but the taste seems to be in that direction. The American movies, you know. Finally, only women with tuberculosis will be popular." She grinned and picked up the punchbowl again, her flushed face pleasant and hospitable as an open fire, and started towards the kitchen. "Beware of my son, Frederick," she said. "Great God, he is fond of the girls!" She chuckled and went into the kitchen.

Margaret sniffed luxuriously of the sudden strong odour of spice and butter that came in from the kitchen. She went up the steps to her room, humming.

The party started out very sedately. The older people sat rather stiffly in the corners, the young men congregated uneasily in impermanent groups, drinking gravely and sparely of the strong spiced punch. The girls, most of them large, strong-armed creatures, looked a little uncomfortable and out of place in their frilly party finery. There was an accordionist, but after playing two numbers to which nobody danced he moodily stationed himself at the punchbowl and gave way to the gramophone with American records.

Most of the guests were townspeople, farmers, merchants, relatives of the Langermans, all of them tanned a deep red-brown by the mountain sun, looking solid and somehow immortal, even in their clumsy clothes, as though no seed of illness or decay could exist in that firm mountain flesh, no premonition of death ever be admitted under that glowing skin. Most of the city people who were staying in the few rooms of the Langermans' inn had politely drunk one cup of punch and then had gone on to gayer parties in the larger hotels. Finally Margaret was the only non-villager left. She was not drinking much and she was resolved to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep, because Joseph's train was getting in at eight-thirty in the morning. She wanted to be fresh and rested when she met him. As the evening wore on, the party became gayer. Margaret danced with most of the young men, waltzes and American foxtrots. About eleven o'clock, when the room was hot and noisy and the third bowl of punch had been brought on, and the faces of the guests had lost the shy, outdoor look of dumb, simple health and taken on an indoor glitter, she started to teach Frederick how to rumba. The others stood around and watched and applauded when she had finished, and old man Langerman insisted that she dance with him. He was a round, squat old man with a bald pink head, and he perspired enormously as she tried to explain in her mediocre German, between bursts of laughter, the mystery of the delayed beat and the subtle Caribbean rhythm.

"Ah, God," the old man said when the song ended, "I have been wasting my life in these hills." Margaret laughed and leaned over and kissed him. The guests, assembled on the polished floor in a close circle around them, applauded loudly, and Frederick grinned and stepped forward and put his arms up.

"Teacher," he said, "me again."

They put the record on again and they made Margaret drink another cup of punch before they began. Frederick was clumsy and heavy-footed, but his arms around her felt pleasantly strong and secure in the spinning, warm dance.

The song ended and the accordionist, now freighted with a dozen glasses of punch, started up. He sang, too, as he played, and one by one the others joined him, standing around him in the firelight, their voices and the rich, swelling notes of the accordion rising in the high, beamed room. Margaret stood with Frederick's arm around her, singing softly, almost to herself, her face flushed, thinking, how kind, how warm these people are, how friendly and child-like, how good to strangers, singing the new year in, their rough outdoor voices tenderly curbed to the sweet necessities of the music.

"Roslein, Roslein, Roslein rot, Roslein auf der Heide," they sang, old man Langerman's voice rising above the chorus, bull-like and ridiculously plaintive, and Margaret sang with them. She looked across the fireplace at the dozen singing faces. Only one person in the room remained still.

Christian Diestl was a tall, slender young man, with a solemn, abstracted face and close-cut black hair, his skin burned dark by the sun, his eyes light and almost golden with the yellow flecks you find in an animal's eyes. Margaret had seen him on the slopes, gravely teaching beginners how to ski, and had momentarily envied him the rippling, long way he had moved across the snow. Now he was standing a little behind and away from the singers, an open white shirt brilliant in contrast to his dark skin, soberly holding a glass and watching the singers with considering, remote eyes.

Margaret caught his glance. She smiled at him. "Sing," she said.

He smiled gravely back and lifted his glass. She saw him obediently begin to sing, although in the general confusion of voices she could not hear what addition he made to the music.

Now, with the hour and the strong punch and the imminence of a new year, the party had become less polite. In dark corners of the room couples kissed and pawed each other, and the voices grew louder and more confident, and the songs became harder for Margaret to follow and understand, full of slang and double meanings that made the older women giggle, the men roar with laughter.

Then, just before midnight, old man Langerman stood up on a chair, called for silence, gave a signal to the accordionist, and said in an oratorical, slightly drunken tone, "As a veteran of the Western Front, wounded three times, 1915-18, I would like everyone to join me in a song." He waved to the accordionist, who went into the opening chords of "Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles". This was the first time Margaret had ever heard the song sung in Austria, but she had learned it from a German maid when she was five. She still remembered the words and she sang them, feeling drunk and intelligent and international. Frederick held her tighter and kissed her forehead, delighted that she knew the song, and old man Langerman, still on his chair, lifted his glass and offered a toast, "To America. To the young ladies of America!" Margaret drained her glass and bowed. "In the name of the young ladies of America," she said formally, "permit me to say that I am delighted."

Frederick kissed her neck, but before she could decide what to do about that, the accordionist struck up once more, ringing, primitive chords, and all the voices sang out, harshly and triumphantly, in the chorus. For a moment Margaret didn't know what the song was. It was one which she had heard only once or twice before, in surreptitious snatches in Vienna, and the male, roaring voices, obscured by drink, made the tangled German words hard to understand.

Frederick was standing stiffly next to her, clutching her, and she could feel his muscles straining with the passion of the song. She concentrated on him and, finally, she recognized the song.

"Die Fahne hoch, die Reihen fest geschlossen," he sang, the cords standing out on his throat, "S. A. marschiert in ruhig festen Schritt Kameraden die Rotfront und Reaktion erschlossen."

Margaret listened, her face stiffening. She closed her eyes and felt weak and half-strangled in the grinding music and tried to pull away from Frederick. But his arm was clamped around her and she stood there and listened. When she opened her eyes she looked across at the ski-teacher. He was not singing, but was watching her, his eyes somehow troubled and understanding.

The voices became louder and louder, full of threat and thunder, as they crashed to the end of the Horst Wessel song. The men stood up straight, eyes flashing, proud and dangerous, and the women, joining in, sank like opera nuns before an operatic god. Only Margaret and the dark young man with the yellow-flecked eyes were silent when the last "Marschieren mit uns in ihrem Geiste mit" rang through the room.

Margaret began to weep, silently, weakly, hating herself for the softness, clamped in Frederick 's embrace, as the bells of the village churches rang out in thin, joyous pealing, echoing against the hills in the winter night air.

Old man Langerman, beet-red by now, the sweat running off his round, bald dome, his eyes glistening as they might have glistened on the Western Front when first he arrived there in 1915, raised his glass. "To the Fuehrer," he said in a deep, religious voice.

"To the Fuehrer!" The glasses flashed in the firelight and the mouths were eager and holy as they drank.

"Happy New Year! Happy New Year! God bless you this year!" The high patriotic spell was broken, and the guests laughed and shook hands and clapped each other on the back, and kissed each other, cosy and intimate and unwarlike. Frederick turned Margaret around and tried to kiss her, but she ducked her head. The tears turned into sobs and she broke away. She ran up the steps to her room on the floor above.

"American girls," she heard Frederick say, laughing. "They pretend they know how to drink."

The tears stopped slowly. Margaret felt weak and foolish and tried to ignore them, methodically brushing her teeth and putting her hair up and patting cold water on her red, stained eyes, so that in the morning, when Joseph came, she would be lively and as pretty as possible.

She undressed in the shining, clean, whitewashed room, with a thoughtful brown wood Christ hanging on a crucifix over the bed. She put out the light, opened the window and scrambled into the big bed as the wind and the moonlight came soaring in off the powdery, bright mountains. She shivered once or twice in the cold sheets, but in a moment it was warm under the piled feathers. The linen smelled like fresh laundry at home in her grandmother's house when she was a child, and the stiff white curtains whispered against the window frame. By now the accordionist was playing softly below, sad, autumn songs of love and departure, muffled and heartbreaking with so many doors between. In a little while she was asleep, her face serious and peaceful, childish and undefended in the cold air above the counterpane.

Dreams were often like that. A hand going softly over your skin. A dark, generalized body next to yours, a strange, anonymous breath against your cheek, a clasping, powerful arm, pressing you…

Then Margaret woke up.

"Be quiet," the man said, in German. "I won't harm you."

He has been drinking brandy, Margaret thought irrelevantly. I can smell it on his breath.

She lay still for a moment, staring into the man's eyes, little jets of light in the darkness of the eye-sockets. She could feel his leg thrown over hers. He was dressed and the cloth was rough and heavy and scratched her. With a sudden jerk, she threw herself to the other side of the bed and sat up, but he was very swift and powerful and pulled her down again and covered her mouth with his hand. He chuckled.

"Little animal," he said, "little quick squirrel."

She recognized the voice now. "It's only me," Frederick said.

"I am merely paying a little visit. Nothing to be frightened of." He took his hand tentatively from her mouth. "You won't scream," he whispered, still the small chuckle in his voice, as though he were being amused by a child. "There is no point in screaming. For one thing, everyone is drunk. For another, I will say that you invited me, and then maybe changed your mind. And they will believe me, because I have a reputation with the girls anyway, and you are a foreigner, besides…"

"Please go away," Margaret whispered. "Please. I won't tell anyone."

Frederick chuckled. He was a little drunk, but not as drunk as he pretended. "You are a graceful little darling girl. You are the prettiest girl who has come up here this season…"

"Why do you want me?" Margaret desperately took the cue, trying to tense her body, make it stony, so that the inquisitive hand would meet only cold, antagonistic surfaces. "There are so many others who would be delighted."

"I want you." Frederick kissed her neck with what he obviously thought was irresistible tenderness. "I have a great deal of regard for you."

"I don't want you," Margaret said. Insanely, caught there next to that huge, tough body in the dark bed, deep in the night, she felt herself worrying that her German would fail her, that she would forget vocabulary, construction, idioms, and be taken because of that schoolgirl failure. "I don't want you."

"It is always more pleasant," Frederick said, "when the person pretends in the beginning she is unwilling. It is more lady-like, more refined." She felt him sure of himself, making fun of her.

"There are many like that."

"I'll tell your mother," Margaret said. "I swear it."

Frederick laughed softly, the sound confident and easy in the quiet room. "Tell my mother," Frederick said. "Why do you think she always puts the pretty young girls in this room, with the shed under it, so it is simple to get in through the window?"

It isn't possible, Margaret thought, that little, round, cherry-faced, beaming woman, who had hung crucifixes in all the rooms, that clean, industrious, church-going… Suddenly, Margaret remembered how Mrs Langerman had looked when the singing had gripped them all in the room below, the wild, obstinate stare, the sweating, sensual face swept by the coarse music. It is possible, Margaret thought, it is, this foolish eighteen-year-old boy couldn't have made it up…

"How many times," she asked, talking swiftly, postponing the final moment as long as possible, "how many times have you climbed in here?"

He grinned and she could see the gleam of his teeth. For a moment his hand lay still as he answered, pleased with himself.

"Often enough," he said. "Now I am getting very particular. It is a hard climb, and it's slippery with the snow on the shed. They have to be very pretty, like you, before I will do it. You're so pretty," Frederick whispered, "you are so well joined together."

"I'm going to scream, I warn you."

"It will be terrible for you if you do," Frederick said. "Terrible. My mother will call you all sorts of names in front of the other guests, and will demand that you go out of her house at once, for luring her little eighteen-year-old son into your room and getting him into trouble. And your gentleman friend will come here tomorrow and the whole town will be talking about it…" Frederick 's voice was amused and confidential, "I really advise you not to scream."

Margaret closed her eyes and lay still. For a moment she had a vision of all the faces of the people at the party that evening, grinning, leering conspirators, disguised in their mountain health and cleanliness, plotting against her among themselves in their snowy fortress.

Suddenly Frederick rolled over and was on top of her. She felt smothered and lost beneath him. She felt the tears coming into her eyes and fought them back.

Her hands were free and she scratched at his eyes. She could feel the skin tearing and hear the rasping, ugly sound. Again and again, swiftly, before he could grasp her hands, she ripped at his face.

"Bitch!" Frederick grabbed her hands, held them in one great hand, hurting her wrists. He swung the other and hit her across the mouth. She felt the blood come. "Cheap little American bitch!" He was sitting astride her. She was lying rigid, staring up at him, triumphant, bloody and defiant, with the level moon lighting the scene in peaceful silver.

He hit her again, backhanded. With the taste of his knuckles, and the feel of bone against her mouth, she got a fleeting ugly whiff of the kitchen where he worked.

"If you don't go," she said clearly, although her head was dipping and whirling, "I'll kill you tomorrow. My friend and I will kill you. I promise you."

He sat above her, holding her hands in one of his. He was cut and bleeding, his long, blond hair down over his eyes, his breath coming hard as he loomed over her, glaring at her. There was a moment of silence while he stared at her. Then his eyes swung indecisively. "Aaah," he said, "I am not interested in girls who don't want me. It's not worth the trouble."

He dropped her hands, pushed her face with the heel of his hand, cruelly and hard, and got off the bed, purposely hitting her with his knee as he crossed over. He stood at the window, arranging his clothing, sucking at his torn lip. In the calm light of the moon, he looked boyish and a little pathetic, disappointed and clumsy, buttoning his clothes.

He strode across the room heavily. "I am leaving by the door," he said. "After all, I have a right."

Margaret lay absolutely still, looking up at the ceiling.

Frederick stood at the door, loath to go without some shred of victory to take with him. Margaret could feel him groping heavily in his farmboy mind for some devastating thing to say to her before leaving. "Aaah," he said, "go back to the Jews in Vienna."

He threw the door open and left without closing it. Margaret got up and quietly shut the door. She heard the heavy footsteps going down the stairs towards the kitchen, echoing and reechoing through the old wooden walls of the sleeping, winter-claimed house.

The wind had died and the room was still and cold. Margaret shivered suddenly in her creased pyjamas. She went over to the window and shut it. The moon had gone down and the night was paling, the sky and mountains dead and mysterious in the greying air.

Margaret looked at the bed. One of the sheets was torn, and there were blood spots on the pillow, dark and enigmatic, and the bed-clothes were rumpled and crushed. She dressed, shivering, her body feeling fragile and damaged, her wrist-bones aching in the cold. She got into her warmest ski-clothes, with two pairs of wool socks, and put her coat on over them. Still shivering and unwarmed, she sat in the small rocker at the window, staring out at the hills as they swam up out of the night, touched now on their pale summits by the first green light of dawn.

The green turned to rose. The light marched down until all the snow on the slopes glistened, bright with the arrival of morning. Margaret stood up and left the room, not looking at the bed. Softly she went down through the quiet house, with the last shades of night still lying in the corners and a weary smell of old celebration hanging over the lobby downstairs. She opened the heavy door and stepped out into the sleeping, white and indigo New Year.

The streets were empty. She walked aimlessly between the piled drifts on the side of the walks, feeling her lungs tender and sensitive under the impact of the thin dawn air. A door opened and a round little woman with a dustcap and apron stood there, red-cheeked and cheery. "Good morning, Fraulein," she said. "Isn't it a beautiful morning?"

Margaret glanced at her, then hurried on. The woman looked after her, her face first puzzled, then snubbed and angry, and she slammed the door loudly.

Margaret turned off the street and on to the road leading towards the hills. She walked methodically, looking at her feet, climbing slowly towards the ski-slopes, wide and empty now and glistening in the first light. She left the road and went across the packed surface towards the ski-hut, pretty, like a child's dream of Europe, with its heavy beams and low, peaked roof, crusted heavily with snow.

There was a bench in front of the hut and Margaret sank on to it, suddenly feeling drained and incapable of further effort. She stared up at the swelling, gentle slopes, curving creamily up to the high, forbidding rocks of the summit, now sharp and purple against the blue sky.

"Good morning, Miss Freemantle," a voice said beside her.

She jerked her head round. It was the ski-instructor, the slender, burned-dark young man whom she had smiled at and asked to sing when the accordionist played. Without thinking, she stood up and started away.

Diestl took a step after her. "Is anything wrong?" he asked. The voice, following her, was deep, polite and gentle. She stopped, remembering that of all the loud, shouting people the evening before, when Frederick had stood with his arm around her, braying at the top of his voice, only the ski-instructor had remained silent. She remembered the way he had looked at her when she wept, the sympathetic, shy, baffled attempt to show her that she was not alone at that moment.

She turned back to him. "I'm sorry." She even essayed a smile. "I was thinking and I suppose you frightened me."

"Are you sure nothing's the matter?" he asked. He was standing there, bareheaded, looking more boyish and more shy than he had at the party.

"Nothing." Margaret sat down. "I was just sitting here admiring your mountains."

"Perhaps you would prefer being left alone?" He even took a tentative step back.

"No," Margaret said. "Really not." She had suddenly realized that she had to talk about what had happened to someone, make some decision in her own mind about what it meant. It would be impossible to tell Joseph, and the ski-instructor invited confidence. He even looked a little like Joseph, dark and intellectual and grave. "Please stay," she said.

He stood before her, his legs slightly apart, his collar open and his hands bare, as though there were no wind and no cold. He was graceful and compact in his beautifully cut ski-clothes. His skin seemed to be naturally olive-coloured under the tan, and his blood pulsed a kind of coral-red under the clear tone of his cheeks.

The ski-instructor took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to her. She took it and he lit it for her, deftly cupping the match against the wind, his hands firm and certain, masculine and olive-coloured close to her face as he leaned over her.

"Thank you," she said. He nodded and lighted his own cigarette and sat down next to her. They sat there, leaning against the back of the bench, their heads tilted easily back, staring through half-closed eyes at the glory of the mountain before them. The smoke curled slantwise over them and the cigarette tasted rich and heavy against Margaret's morning palate.

"How wonderful," she said.

"What?"

"The hills."

He shrugged. "The enemy," he said.

"What?" she asked.

"The enemy."

She looked at him. His eyes were slitted and his mouth was set in a harsh line. She looked back at the mountains.

"What's the matter with them?" she asked.

"Prison," he said. He moved his feet, in their handsome, strapped and buckled boots. "My prison."

"Why do you say that?" Margaret asked, surprised.

"Don't you think it's an idiotic way for a man to spend his life?" He smiled sourly. "The world is collapsing, the human race is struggling to remain alive, and I devote myself to teaching fat little girls how to slide down a hill without falling on their faces."

What a country, Margaret couldn't help thinking, amused despite herself; even the athletes have weltschmerz.

"If you feel so strongly," she said, "why don't you do something about it?" He laughed soundlessly, without pleasure.

"I tried," he said. "I tried in Vienna seven months. I couldn't bear it here any longer and I went to Vienna. I was going to get a sensible, useful job, if it killed me. Advice: don't try to get a useful job in Vienna these days. I finally got a job. Under-waiter in a restaurant. Carrying dishes for tourists. I came home. At least you can earn a respectable living here. That's Austria for you. For nonsense you can get paid well." He shook his head. "Forgive me," he said.

"For what?"

"For talking like this. Complaining to you. I'm ashamed of myself." He flipped his cigarette away and put his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders a little, embarrassedly. "I don't know why I did. So early in the morning, perhaps, and we're the only ones awake on the mountain here. I don't know. Somehow… you seemed so sympathetic. The people up here…" He shrugged. "Oxen. Eat, drink, make money. I wanted to talk to you last night…"

"I'm sorry you didn't," said Margaret. Somehow, sitting there next to him, with his soft, deep voice rolling over his precise German, considerately slow and clear for her uncertain ear, she felt less bruised now, restored and calm again.

"You left so suddenly," he said. "You were crying."

"That was silly," she said flatly. "It's merely a sign I'm not grown up yet."

"You can be very grown up and still cry. Cry hard and often." Margaret felt that he somehow wanted her to know that he, too, wept from time to time. "How old are you?" he asked, abruptly.

"Twenty-one," Margaret said.

He nodded, as though this were a significant fact and one to be reckoned with in all future dealings. "What are you doing in Austria?" he asked.

"I don't know…" Margaret hesitated. "My father died and left me some money. Not much, but some. I decided I wanted to see a little of the world before I settled down…"

"Why did you pick Austria?"

"I don't know. I was studying scene-designing in New York and someone had been in Vienna and said there was a wonderful school there, and it was as good a place as any. Anyway, it was different from America. That was the important thing."

"Do you go to school in Vienna?"

"Yes."

"Is it good?"

"No." She laughed. "Schools are always the same. They seem to help other people, but never yourself."

"Still," he said, turning and looking gravely at her, "you like it?"

"I love it. I love Vienna. Austria."

"Last night," he said, "you were not very fond of Austria."

"No." Then she added, honestly, "Not Austria. Just those people. I wasn't very fond of them."

"The song," he said. "The Horst Wessel song."

She hesitated. "Yes," she said. "I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't think, up there, in a beautiful place like this, so far away from everything…"

"We're not so far away," he said. "Not so far away at all. Are you Jewish?"

"No." That question, Margaret thought, the sudden dividing question of Europe.

"Of course not," he said. "I knew you weren't." He pursed his lips thoughtfully and squinted out across the slope, in what was a characteristic grimace, puzzling and searching. "It's your friend," he said.

"What?"

"The gentleman who is coming up this morning."

"How did you know?"

"I asked," he said.

There was a little silence. What a curious mixture he is, Margaret thought, half bold, half shy, humourless and heavy, yet unexpectedly delicate and perceptive.

"He's Jewish, I suppose." There was no trace of judgment or animosity in the grave polite voice as he spoke.

"Well…" Margaret said, trying to put it straight for him.

"The way you people figure, I suppose he is. He's a Catholic, but his mother's Jewish, and I suppose…"

"What's he like?"

Margaret spoke slowly. "He's a doctor. Older than I, of course. He's very handsome. He looks like you, a little. He's very funny, and he always keeps people laughing when they're with him. But he's serious, too, and he fought in the Karl Marx Apartments battle against the soldiers. He was one of the last to escape…" Suddenly she stopped herself. "I take it all back. It's ridiculous to go around telling stories like that. It can start a lot of trouble."

"Yes," the ski-instructor said. "Don't tell me any more. Still, he sounds very nice. Are you going to marry him?"

Margaret shrugged. "We've talked about it. But… no decision yet. We'll see."

"Are you going to tell him about last night?"

"Yes."

"And about how you got the cut lip?"

Margaret's hand went involuntarily to the bruise. She looked sidelong at the ski-instructor. He was squinting solemnly out at the hills. " Frederick paid you a visit last night, didn't he?" he said.

"Yes," Margaret said softly. "You know about Frederick?"

"Everyone knows about Frederick," the ski-instructor said harshly. "You're not the first girl to come down from that room with marks on her."

"I'm afraid," Margaret said, "it's all of a piece."

"What do you mean?"

"The Horst Wessel song, Nazis, forcing yourself into women's rooms, hitting them…"

"Nonsense!" Diestl's voice was loud and angry. "Don't talk like that."

"What did I say?" Margaret felt a little returning unreasonable twinge of uneasiness and fear.

" Frederick did not climb into your room because he was a Nazi." The ski-instructor was talking now in his usual calm manner, patient and teacher-like, as he talked to children in his beginners' classes. " Frederick did that because he is a pig. He's a bad human being. For him it is only an accident that he is a Nazi. Finally, if it comes to it, he will be a bad Nazi, too."

"How about you?" Margaret sat absolutely still, looking down at her feet.

"Of course," the ski-instructor said. "Of course, I'm a Nazi. Don't look so shocked. You've been reading those idiotic American newspapers. We eat children, we burn down churches, we march nuns through the street naked and paint dirty pictures on their backs in lipstick and human blood, we have breeding farms for human beings, etc. etc… It would make you laugh, if it weren't so serious."

He was silent. Margaret wanted to leave, but she felt weak, and she was afraid she would stumble and fall if she got up now. Her eyes were hot and stinging and there was an uncertain feeling in her knees as though she hadn't slept for days. She blinked and looked out at the quiet, white hills, receding and less dramatic as the light grew stronger.

What a lie, she thought, the magnificent, peaceful hills in the climbing sun.

"I would like you to understand…" The man's voice was gentle, sorrowful and pleading. "It's too easy for you in America to condemn everything. You're so rich and you can afford so many luxuries. Tolerance, what you call democracy, moral positions. Here in Austria we cannot afford a moral position." He waited, as though for her to attack, but she remained silent, and he went on, his voice low and toneless. "Of course," he said, "you have a special conception. I don't blame you. Your young man is a Jew and you are afraid for him. So you lose sight of the larger issues. The larger issues…" he repeated, as though the sound of the words had a reassuring and pleasant effect on his inner ear. "The larger issue is Austria. The German people. It is ridiculous to pretend we are not Germans. It is easy for an American five thousand miles away to pretend we are not Germans. But not for us. This way we are a nation of beggars. Seven million people with no future, at anyone's mercy, living like hotel-keepers off tourists and foreigners' tips. Americans can't understand. People cannot live for ever in humiliation. They will do whatever they have to do to regain their self-respect. Austria will only do that by going Nazi, by becoming a part of the Greater Germany." His voice had become more lively now, and the tone had come back into it.

"It's not the only way," Margaret said, arguing despite herself. But he seemed so sensible and pleasant, so accessible to reason… "There must be other ways than lying and murdering and cheating."

"My dear girl," the ski-instructor shook his head patiently and sorrowfully, "live in Europe ten years and then come and tell me that. If you still believe it. I'm going to tell you something. Until last year I was a Communist. Workers of the world, peace for all, to each according to his need, the victory of reason, brotherhood, brotherhood, etc. etc." He laughed.

"Nonsense! I do not know about America, but I know about Europe. In Europe nothing will ever be accomplished by reason. Brotherhood… a cheap, street-corner joke, good for second-rate politicians between wars. And I have a feeling it is not so different in America, either. You call it lying, murdering, cheating. Perhaps it is. But in Europe it is the necessary process. It is the only thing that works. Do you think I like to say that? But it is true, and only a fool will think otherwise. Then, finally, when things are in order, we can stop what you called the 'lying and murdering'. When people have enough to eat, when they have jobs, when they know that their money will be worth the same tomorrow as it is today and not one-tenth as much, when they know they have a government that is their own, that cannot be ordered about by anyone else, at anyone else's whim… when they can stop being defeated. Out of weakness, you get nothing. Shame, starvation. That's all. Out of strength, you get everything. And about the Jews…" He shrugged. "It is an unlucky accident. Somehow, someone discovered that that was the only way to come to power. I am not saying I like it. Myself, I know it is ridiculous to attack any race. Myself, I know there are Jews like Frederick, and Jews, say, like myself. But if the only way you can get a decent and ordered Europe is by wiping out the Jews, then we must do it. A little injustice for a large justice. It is the one thing the Comrades have taught Europe – the end justifies the means. It is a hard thing to learn, but, finally, I think, even Americans will learn it."

"That's horrible," Margaret said.

"My dear young lady," the ski-instructor swung round and took her hands, speaking eagerly and candidly, his face flushed and alive, "I am speaking abstractly and it sounds worse that way. You must forgive me. I promise you something. It will never come to that. You can tell your friend that, too. For a year or two he will be a little annoyed. He may have to give up his business; he may have to move from his house. But once the thing is accomplished, once the trick has done what it is intended to do, he will be restored. The pressure on the Jews is a means, not an end. When everything else is arranged, he will come back to his proper place. And don't believe the American newspapers. I was in Germany last year, and I tell you it is much worse in a journalist's mind than it is on the streets of Berlin."

"I hate it," Margaret said. "I hate them all."

The ski-instructor looked into her eyes, then shrugged, sorrowful and defeated, and swung slowly round. He stared thoughtfully at the mountains. "I'm sorry," he said. "You seem so reasonable and intelligent. I thought, perhaps here is one American who would speak a good word when she got home, one American, who would have some understanding…" He stood up. "Ah, I suppose it is too much to ask." He turned to her and smiled, pleasantly, his lean, agreeable face gentle and touching. "Permit me to make a suggestion. Go home to America. I'm afraid Europe will make you very unhappy." He scuffed at the snow. "It will be a little icy today," he said in a brisk, business-like voice. "If you and your friend are going to ski, I will take you down the west trail myself, if you like. It will be the best one today, but it is not advisable to go alone."

"Thank you." Margaret stood up, too. "But I think we won't stay."

"Is he coming on the morning train?"

"Yes."

The ski-instructor nodded. "He'll have to stay at least until three o'clock this afternoon. There are no other trains." He peered at her under his heavy eyebrows, bleached at the ends.

"You don't wish to remain here for your holiday?"

"No," said Margaret.

"Because of last night?"

"Yes."

"I understand. Here." He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and a pencil, and wrote for a moment. "Here is an address you can use. It's only twenty miles from here. The three-o'clock train stops there. It's a charming little inn, and a very good slope, the people are very nice. Not political at all." He smiled. "Not horrible, like us. There are no Fredericks there. You will be made very welcome. And your friend, too."

Margaret took the paper and put it in her pocket. "Thank you," she said. She couldn't help thinking, how decent and good this man is, despite everything. "I think we'll go there."

"Good. Have a pleasant holiday. And after that…" He smiled at her and put out his hand. "After that, go home to America."

She shook his hand. Then she turned and started down the hill towards the town. When she was at the bottom of the hill, she looked back. His first class had begun, and he was crouched over on his skis, laughing, patiently lifting a seven-year-old girl, in a red wool cap, from the snow where she had fallen.

Joseph arrived, bubbling and joyful. He kissed her and gave her a box of pastries he had carried with great care all the way from Vienna, and a new skiing cap in pale blue that he hadn't been able to resist. He kissed her again, and said, "Happy New Year, darling," and "God, look at your freckles," and "I love you, I love you," and "You are the most beautiful girl in the world," and "I'm starving. Where is breakfast?" and breathed deeply and looked around him at the encircling mountains with pride and ownership, his arm around her, "Look! Look at that! Don't tell me there is anything like this in America!" and when she began to cry, helplessly, softly, he grew serious and held her, and kissed the tears, and said in his low, honest voice, "What? What is it, darling?"

Slowly, standing close to each other, in a corner of the little station, hidden from most of the people on the platform, she told him. She didn't tell him about Frederick, but about the singing the night before and the Nazi toasts, and that she couldn't stay there for another day, no matter what. Joseph kissed her forehead absently and stroked her cheek. His face lost the gaiety it had had when he got off the train. The fine bones of his cheeks and jaw suddenly showed sharp and hard under the skin, and his eyes looked sunken and deep as he spoke to her. "Ah," he said, "here, too. Indoors, outdoors, city, country…" He shook his head. "Margaret, Baby," he said gently, "I think you had better get away from Europe. Go home. Go back to America."

"No," she said, letting it come out, without thinking about it. "I want to stay here. I want to marry you and stay here."

Joseph shook his head, the soft, closely cropped hair, greying a little, glistening where some drops of melting snow had fallen on it. "I must visit America," he said softly. "I must visit the country that produces girls like you."

"I said I want to marry you." Margaret held his arms tight and hard.

"Some other time, Sweet," Joseph said tenderly. "We'll discuss it some other time."

But they never did.

They went back to Langermans', and had a huge breakfast, sitting quietly before a sparkling, sunny window, with the Alps a majestic background for the bacon and eggs and potatoes and pancakes and Viennese coffee, with globs of whipped cream. Frederick waited on them, discreetly and politely. He held Margaret's chair when she sat down and was quick to refill Joseph's cup when it was empty.

After breakfast Margaret packed, and told Mrs Langerman that she and her friend had to leave. Mrs Langerman clucked and said, "What a shame!" and presented the bill.

There was an item on the bill of nine schillings.

"I don't understand this," Margaret said. She was standing at the shiny oak desk in the lobby as she pointed out the neatly inked entry on the bill. Mrs Langerman, bobbing, starched and brilliantly scrubbed, behind the desk, ducked her head and peered near-sightedly at the piece of paper.

"Oh." She looked up and stared without expression at Margaret. "Oh, that's for the torn sheet, Liebchen."

Margaret paid. Frederick was helping with her bags. She tipped him. He bowed as he helped her into the cab and said, "I hope you have enjoyed your visit."

Margaret and Joseph left their bags at the station and walked around, looking at the shops until it was time to get their train.

As the train pulled out she thought she saw Diestl, graceful and dark, at the end of the platform, watching. She waved, but the figure didn't wave back. Somehow though, she felt it would be like him to come down to the station and, without even greeting her, watch her go off with Joseph.

The inn Diestl had recommended was small and pretty, and the people charming. It snowed two of the three nights and there was fresh cover on the trails in the morning. Joseph had never been gayer or more delightful. Margaret slept secure and warm, with his arms around her all night, in the huge feather bed that seemed to have been made for mountain honeymoons. They didn't talk about anything serious, and they didn't mention marriage again. The sun shone in the clear sky over the peaks, all day long, every day, and the air was winey and intoxicating in the lungs. Joseph sang Schubert lieder for the other guests in front of the fire at night, his voice sweet and searching. There was a smell of cinnamon always in the house. Both of them were burned a deep brown, and more freckles than ever before came out on her nose. Margaret found herself crying when she went down to the station on the fourth day because they had to get back to Vienna. The holiday was over.