I was back in history! Something had come over me. Rising from the bed, I felt curiously unlike myself. Or rather, I could feel the old cautious Bodenland inside, but it seemed as if a new man, fitted for decision and adventure, had taken control of me. I went downstairs to demand supper.
Men were drinking there by a fire, beneath a cuckoo-clock. There were tables, two empty, two occupied. One of the occupied tables contained a man and woman and child, tucking in to great slabs of meat. At the other occupied table sat a lean-visaged but elegant man in dark clothes, reading a paper by candle-light as he ate.
Ordinarily, I would have chosen an empty table. In my new mood, I went over to the solitary man and said easily, pulling out a chair, ‘May I sit at your table?’
For a moment I thought my accent had not been understood. Then he said, ‘I can’t stop you sitting here,’ and lowered his head to his paper again.
I sat down. The innkeeper’s daughter came across to me, and offered me a choice of trout or venison. I ordered trout with white wine to accompany it. She was back promptly with a chilled wine and bread rolls with crisp brown crust and thick doughy interior, which I broke and ate with covert greed. How heady was my excitement, tasting that historic food!
‘May I offer you a glass of wine?’ I said to my table companion. He had an earthenware jug of water by his side.
He looked up and studied me again. ‘You may offer, sir, and I may refuse. The social contract countenances both actions!’
‘My action may be more mutually beneficial than yours.’
Maybe my answer pleased him. He nodded, and I summoned the girl to bring another wine glass.
My hesitant companion said, ‘May I drink to your health without necessarily wishing to listen to your conversation? You will think me discourteous, but perhaps I may excuse myself by explaining that it is the discourtesy of grief.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. To hear that you have cause for grief, I mean. Some find distraction welcome at such times.’
‘Distraction? All my life I have been a man who scorned distraction! There’s work to be done in the world – so much to be found out—’ He checked himself abruptly, lifted his glass at me and took a sip from it.
How good that wine tasted, if only because I secretly thought, what a rare old vintage I must be quaffing, laid down no doubt before the Battle of Trafalgar!
I said, ‘I am older than you, sir (how easily that polite “sir” crept in as a mode of address!) – old enough to discover that finding out often leads to less pleasurable states of mind than mere ignorance!’
At that he laughed curtly. ‘That I find an ignorant point of view. I perceive nevertheless that you are a man of culture, and a foreigner. Why do you stay in Sècheron and deny yourself the pleasures of Geneva?’
‘I like the simple life.’
‘I should be in Geneva now … I arrived there too late, after sunset, and found the gates of the city shut, confound it. Otherwise I’d be at my father’s house …’
Again an abrupt halt to his speech. He frowned and stared down at the grain of the table. I longed to ask questions but was wary of revealing my complete lack of local knowledge.
The girl brought me soup and then my trout, the best and freshest I had ever tasted, though the potatoes that accompanied it were not so good. No refrigeration, I thought; not a can to be found throughout the land! A shock went through me. Cultural shock. Temporal shock.
My companion took this opportunity to hide himself in his papers. So I listened to the talk of the travellers about me, hoping for a bit of instant history. But were they talking about the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars? Were they talking about the increasing industrialization of the times? Were they talking about the first steamship crossing the Atlantic? Were they talking about Walter Scott or Lord Byron or Goethe or Metternich? Were they talking about the slave trade or the Congress of Vienna? (All matters which I judged to be vital and contemporary!) Did they spare one word for that valiant new American nation across the Atlantic?
They did not.
They talked about the latest sensation – some wretched murder – and about a woman, a maidservant, who was to be tried for the murder in Geneva the next day! I would have sighed for human nature, had it not been for the excellence of my trout and the wine which accompanied it.
At last, as I set my knife and fork down, I caught the gloomy eye of my table-companion and ventured to say, ‘You will be in Geneva tomorrow in time to see this wretched woman brought to justice, I presume?’
His face took on severe lines, anger glowed in his eyes. Setting his papers down, he said in a low voice, ‘Justice, you say? What do you know of the case that you prejudge this lady’s guilt beforehand? Why should you be so anxious that she should hang? What injury did she ever do you – or any living soul, for that matter?’
‘I must apologize – I see you know the lady personally.’
But he had dropped his eyes and lost interest in me. Shrinking back in his chair, he seemed to become prey to some inner conflict. ‘About her head hangs purest innocence. Deepest guilt lies heavy on the shoulders …’ I did not catch his last words; perhaps he said, ‘… of others’.
I rose, bid him good evening, and went outside to stand in the road and enjoy the scents of darkness and the sight of the moon. Yes, I stood in the middle of the road, and gloried that there was no danger of being knocked down by traffic.
The sound of a running stream invited me over to a bridge. Standing there in shade, I observed the man and woman who had also been eating in the hotel emerge with their child.
He said, ‘I wonder if Justine Moritz will sleep peacefully tonight!’ They both chuckled and passed on down the road.
Justine Moritz! I divined that they spoke of the woman who was on trial for her life in Geneva on the morrow. More! I had heard that name before, and searched my memory to discover its associations. I recalled de Sade’s heroine, Justine, and reflected that he too would be alive now, if now was when I believed it to be. But my new superior self told me that Justine Moritz was somebody else.
As I stood with my hands resting on the stone of the bridge, the door of the hotel was again thrown open. A figure emerged, pulling a cloak about him. It was my melancholy friend. An accordion sounded within the hotel, and I guessed that the distractions of music might have driven him outside.
His movements suggested as much. He paced about with arms folded. Once, he threw them wide in a gesture of protest. He looked in every way a man distraught. Although I felt sorry for him, that prickliness in his manner made me reluctant to reveal myself.
Of a sudden, he made up his mind. He said something aloud – something about a devil, I thought – and then he began striding away as if his life depended on it.
My superior self came to an immediate decision. Normally, I would have returned indoors and gone meekly to bed. Instead, I began to follow my distraught friend at a suitable distance.
The way he went led downhill. The road curved, and I emerged from a copse to confront a splendid panorama. There was the lake – Lake Geneva, Lac Léman, as the Swiss call it – and there, not far distant, lay the spires and roofs of Geneva!
It was a city I had loved in my time. Now, how it was shrunken! The moonlight lent it enchantment, of course, but what a pokey place it looked, lying by the lakeside in the clear night. Romantic behind its walls, yes, but nothing to the great city I had known. In my day – why, Sècheron would have been swallowed up by inner suburbs clustering