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 one passed by.
After hours of solitary walking, eyes riveted on trees—armies of trees, bent on erasing the puny road—I began to feel uneasy. I sat briefly at the edge of the dark woods, had a snack quite unlike the previous day’s big lunch in a tranquil vineyard, and soon was marching again.
It was while crossing this forest on horseback with his escort of chevaliers in armor that King Charles VI had become insane. On a very hot summer afternoon, not a cool September day, and more than five centuries ago, at a time when bandits lurked behind every tree, I reflected, smiling at myself.
Still, the afternoon hours were oppressive, and I rejoiced when the road started to climb a hill and, at last, a vehicle passed by. A van and a trailer hooked to it. Both painted green, with little shuttered windows like the horse-drawn gypsy wagons of old. The odd convoy was struggling up the hill when the trailer started rolling back. Acrobat-like shadows jumped out, grabbed rocks from the roadside, blocked the wheels, rehooked the trailer to the van. The image out of a child’s dream vanished over the top of the hill, the last image from the world I knew before it sank into confusion and fear.
Last solitary walk, September 1938
I reached Tours in late afternoon, spent the night there, remember none of it. The 1914 nightmare resurrected the next day, September 24, 1938, has erased all recollections except one—a white poster on a gray stone wall with two oversized black words at its top: Mobilisation Génèrale.
“Mobilisation génèrale means war,” my father had said when I was six years old. And it had come true, then.
In panic, I boarded the first train for Paris, a maddeningly slow train. At every stop I saw them again, invading my compartment, the soldiers of 1914 in soiled “horizon blue” singing “La Madelon,” pouring red wine into tin cups.
Of the days that followed, I remember mostly the tense quiet on the streets of Paris and the anxieties we shared, Abel and I, but did not talk about. What had been done with German civilians living in France during the last war? Interned, I vaguely remembered. How? Where?
At the singularly quiet terrace of the Dôme, older artists ventured halfhearted jokes. Chamberlain was meeting Hitler, we heard. “The umbrella against the sword, the duel of the century!” someone exclaimed. Not many of us laughed. There was too much fear in the air.
At last, on September 30, France and England signed an agreement with Germany: the Munich Agreement.
No war. There would be no war. That was all we saw. And Czechoslovakia? Sacrificed. Yes, yes, but peace, we had “won” peace!
Jubilant crowds greeted Edouard Daladier, the French premier, upon his return from Munich. Grateful farmers at the border with Germany gave farewell parties for our soldiers and loaded them up with presents. A returning friend knocked on our door one night. In his military backpack he carried a freshly slaughtered goose and a bottle of Alsatian liquor.
We had a victory banquet. We had several victory banquets.
Less than two months later, Abel’s German friend unexpectedly showed up. How I disliked him! I still do. After that, things went fast. On
