Paris atelier, ca. 1937
A train filled with skiers took us up mountains that looked more accessible than the Alps. I liked that too.
We got off at a tiny railroad station. There was a one-hour walk along a pleasant, winding mountain road. Gentle slopes, evergreen trees, a few neat, solid houses. Everything clean, orderly, reassuring, as if the whole landscape had been rearranged to accommodate the people.
At a turn in the road, Abel suddenly threw his rucksack down into the snow and gestured angrily toward the valley that opened in front of us. At the bottom, a lone, elongated wooden structure crouched under a fluttering giant blood-red flag bearing the black swastika.
“I am not going to sleep under that rag,” Abel said, picking up his rucksack and starting to walk back. I followed grudgingly.
At the unattended railroad station, a poster indicated that there would be only one late train.
Winter 1937
I promised I would get very sick if the place turned out to be unpleasant, and we slowly retraced our steps.
“The place” was a military training camp equipped to take in guests who did not mind rustic accommodations.
We were out skiing the whole day long. In the evening, we sometimes saw clean-shaven, heel-clicking young soldiers. The officer in charge, young, clean-shaven, heel-clicking, graciously offered us his room, a low-ceilinged affair furnished with two narrow, hard bunks. We ate the evening meal—black bread, sausage, and beer—with him and two other skiers, teachers eager to practice their French. They taught me some German.
On the last evening, as we had a glass of wine, the young officer, keen on physiognomy, analyzed Abel’s features. His forehead, he said, was “sehr gut,” “sehr Deutsch.” I understood that. His eyes were “sehr gut,” “sehr Deutsch.” But the two lines on each side of his mouth indicated “Polnische grausamkeit,” he said.
Abel translated: “Polish cruelty.”
I giggled . . . .
The officer turned red.
“Why Polish?” we asked.
“The name.”
“It’s Slovak, not Polish,” Abel said.
The German officer was triumphant: “Ja. Ja. Slavische grausamkeit!”
We laughed about that exchange. Ah, we laughed about so many things.
VII
I came back from our vacation with good feelings toward orderly, clean, comfortable Germany. The Germans, I said, were perhaps a bit clumsy, but they were so polite.
Abel was not listening.
“My friend from Argentina was right,” he said. “We are heading for trouble.”
The next day, he visited South American consulates. I reluctantly went along. Lines were long at the Brazilian, Argentinean, and Chilean consulates.
I inquired about a teaching position at the French school of Montevideo in Paraguay. There was a two-year wait. Good. I did not want to leave Paris.
Abel wrote several letters to his friend in Argentina. No answer came.
In March 1938, Hitler conquered Austria without firing a shot. No one budged. It was as if we had begun to think he had the right to do what he was doing. After all, Austria was a German-speaking country.
Shortly after, the editors of the Berlin sports magazine wrote that they could not continue publishing Abel’s articles since he was not a member of the National Socialist Party. Help for Abel’s mother was cut off. This was cause for worry.
The spring and early-summer months were a little sad. Our old cafés, the Dôme, the Coupole, were deserted, and we felt lost in the new ones that, for some reason, everyone we knew favored now. The number of our friends had dwindled. Why? Abel had recently received high praise for his painting from no less than Waldemar George, the best art critic in Paris. We fought unpleasant thoughts. The most enjoyable, at the moment, was our beautiful atelier. But then news came that the owner would want it back at the end of the year.
We spent a quiet summer in a remote village by the sea in northern Brittany. The flat, monochromatic landscape, the rare wind-dwarfed trees, the lonely little houses bewilderingly alike, the great violent waves crashing on the deserted beaches, the sullen inhabitants faithful to their ancient language all inspired Abel. He sketched the little gray-white houses and the crooked trees, green-eyed, unsmiling little girls, young boys in red pants like their fishermen fathers, farmers in their fields, the stunning tall, two-tiered granite crosses and the many granite statues—saints or pilgrims—gathered at their bases. Shortly before our departure, Abel sketched a lone, distraught woman stalking the wild beach. Back in his studio, he made a large painting of this disquieting gray figure, called it Quo Vadis. It turned out to be the last of the paintings from the happy days.
At the end of August, we hiked across Brittany. And then, since he had to report at the advertising agency in early September, Abel took the train home. I decided to walk the 250 kilometers back to Paris.
I chose a quiet route along the slow-flowing River Loire. It led close to famous chateaus I had always wanted to see, through orchards and vineyards where I rested on warm afternoons and ancient cities I knew only from history books. Every one of them offered a quaint historic hotel, a fine historic restaurant, a shady historic park, and everywhere the lazy September air was dizzy with the scent of roses and ripening pears.
The castle at Chinon (postcard)
I walked between twenty-five and forty kilometers a day at a steady pace. Once, only once, I accepted a ride when my sandal strap broke. That day I arrived in Chinon at twilight. The ancient city called back memories of legend, and history that mimicked legend: Gargantua and Jeanne d’Arc.
At the Auberge de Gargantua, where I stayed overnight, the high ceilings could have accommodated a giant, and the dining table of dark, carved wood dwarfed the guests. The bed I slept in, piled up with mattresses of different thicknesses, was nearly a meter high. Above it, a lofty canopy supported by slender columns had cretonne curtains, their faded prints still showing impossibly big fruits and flowers.
The majestic ruins of the castle where, in 1433, Charles VII received Jeanne d’Arc were still there upon the hill. And so were parts of the city’s medieval ramparts and narrow streets, their cobblestones not yet worn out.
Close to the Auberge de Gargantua were a few shops. In early morning, I hobbled to one that had dangling from a rusty rod above its door a metal sign with a dainty pink lady’s shoe painted on it.
I climbed two high stone steps and entered an incredibly small shop. A pale young man, a ragged magpie perched on his left shoulder, sat behind a high, narrow counter. Right above his head, a lush climbing plant with bell-shaped blue flowers nearly covered a small window.
The young cobbler sang an ancient song as he leisurely repaired my sandal. I sat meanwhile on a box propped against the open door. The magpie jumped down onto the counter when I put a few coins on it. The cobbler smiled and wished me good luck.
I had a long hike before me. Tours, my goal, was forty-five kilometers away, forty of them through a dense forest.
The narrow, unswerving road of yellow gravel cut through the dark mass of the trees like a shaft of light. This was not the main road to Tours but the shortest. And a deserted one, I found. For most of the long day, no