And as you enter the tunnel, the last thing you see is the onyx canal and the old women fishing for lambrequins and palfreys.

INGO

“ZUM ANDENKEN”

The first night we sat down at the inn table for supper I lost my heart to Ingo!  Ingo was just ten years old.  He wore a little sailor suit of blue and white striped linen; his short trousers showed chubby brown calves above his white socks; his round golden head cropped close in the German fashion.  His blue eyes were grave and thoughtful.  By great good fortune we sat next each other at table, and in my rather grotesque German I began a conversation.  How careful Ingo was not to laugh at the absurdities of my syntax!  How very courteous he was!

Looking back into the mysterious panorama of pictures that we call memory, I can see the long dining room of the old gasthaus in the Black Forest, where two Americans on bicycles appeared out of nowhere and asked for lodging.  They were the first Americans who had ever been seen in that remote valley, and the Gasthaus zur Krone ("the Crown Inn”) found them very amusing.  Perhaps you have never seen a country tavern in the Schwarzwald?  Then you have something to live for.  A long, low building with a moss-grown roof and tremendous broad eaves sheltering little galleries; and the barn under the same roof for greater warmth in winter.  One side of the house was always strong with an excellent homely aroma of cow and horse; one had only to open a door in the upper hall, a door that looked just like a bedroom entrance, to find oneself in the haymow.  There I used to lie for hours reading, and listening to the summer rain thudding on the shingles.  Sitting in the little gallery under the eaves, looking happily down the white road where the yellow coach brought the mail twice a day, one could see the long vista of the valley, the women with bright red jackets working in the fields, and the dark masses of forest on the hillside opposite.  There was much rain that summer; the mountains were often veiled all day long in misty shreds of cloud, and the two Americans sat with pipes and books at the long dining table, greeted by gales of laughter on the part of the robust landlord’s niece when they essayed the native idiom. “Sie arbeiten immer!” she used to say; “Sie werden krank!” ("You’re always working; you’ll be ill!”)

There is a particular poignance in looking back now on those happy days two years before the war.  Nowhere in all the world, I suppose, are there more cordial, warmhearted, simple, human people than the South Germans.  On the front of the inn there was a big yellow metal sign, giving the military number of the district, and the mobilization points for the Landsturm and the Landwehr, and we realized that even here the careful organization of the military power had numbered and ticketed every village.  But what did it mean to us?  War was a thing unthinkable in those days.  We bicycled everywhere, climbed, mountains, bathed in waterfalls, chatted fluent and unorthodox German with everyone we met, and played games with Ingo.