Adventures in Two Worlds

by A. J. Cronin

  The congregation was mainly peasant, the clear-eyed, sturdy, industrious people of this German-speaking canton of Switzerland. The men wore stiff dark suits, their necks bronzed above unusual collars. There was little finery among the women, at the most a lace head-dress or a treasured embroidered shawl. A scarlet kerchief, sported by a little boy, made a splash of colour that set the place alight. The service was one to which I was habituated and which, accordingly, evoked no new sensation. But perhaps there was more simplicity, a greater directness in these devotions. At any rate, there was for me a queer immanence, an odd expectancy vibrating in the air. And then it was time for the sermon.

  As the congregation sat down with a rustle and the clergyman came up to the plain wooden pulpit, my companion cast at me a swift glance of commiseration and regret. I had come with a middle-aged Englishman, of undemonstrative habit, who had been a patient of mine in London and who was now taking the tuberculosis cure at a Heilanstalt in the village. He spoke German fluently, while I knew not one word of that bewildering tongue. Under the deprecating twinkle in his eye I felt consigned, through my own illiteracy, to an hour of gibberish and boredom.

  And yet, as the preacher took his stand and faced his audience I felt again that queer compelling thrill. There was much in the quiet surpliced figure to rivet my attention. He was dark, short and thick-set, still in his virile thirties, with a sallow skin, a noble head and a full, magnetic eye. His manner was both vibrant and composed, charged with a fearless humility. His voice as he gave out his text was restrained yet deeply resonant, filling the tiny church and echoing from the roof. He stood very still having uttered his premise, and then, in that wholly foreign speech, he started upon his sermon.

  Now I am no revivalist. I have listened to many a windbagful of sermons in my day. Of late, especially, I had come to dread the timid bleatings, the milk-and-water flapdoodle of play-safe parsons. But this man was different: different as tempered steel from sounding brass. And as his discourse took shape, despite my utter ignorance of its content, I fell unconsciously under some strange and mystic spell. I caught one word: Christus. And one other, which was Führer. And then, as by a breath, the scene dissolved, church and congregation vanished. I saw suddenly, and with a stabbing clarity, the countries of the earth and the pestilence that lay upon them. I saw the great dictator states, controlled by one hand, one voice, deifying the doctrine of blood and iron. I saw the great democracies, sleek with good living, jealous of their vast possessions, fearful lest some vandal’s hand should rob them of their gains.

  I saw in every land the billion tons of armaments piled high. I saw the ever-multiplying shells and guns, the stores of poison gas and bombs, the skies darkened by death-compelling planes. I saw children taught from their cradles to bluster and to hate, to strut in military parade when they could scarcely walk, to nurse a rifle as though it were a cherished toy. I saw half the world’s wealth buried as useless yellow metal in a concrete tomb. I saw wheat burned by the million bushels in one corner of the globe, while in another thousands of human creatures went hungry for the lack of bread. I saw everywhere the blind surges of mankind, the frightened rushes hither and thither searching for security, the restless plunges into momentary pleasure, the fevered striving for maternal gain. And over all, amidst the sound of jazz and chink of coins, I saw the omnipresent ghastly dread, the approaching spectre of self-created doom.

  It was a vision which chilled the heart, which moved one to icy terror: this lovely fruitful earth, overflowing with plenty, riven from end to end by hate, aggression, and brutal cruelty, which, if unchecked, must surely crumble civilisation to the dust. And less than a quarter of a century before, nine million of the world’s finest men had yielded up their lives under the promise of an everlasting peace.

  Such agonising recollection could not but evoke the instant bitter query: Why, in the name of reason and sweet mercy, had this iniquitous bedlam come to pass? The question was not new, yet it struck at me with fresh relentless force. And across my mind flashed the endless explanations advanced by human ingenuity. The talk of economic stress, of boom and slump, of unemployment and the rest. Of the rise and fall of nations, the need for colonies, the survival of the fittest, the whole bag of tricks. How fatuous, how futile they all seemed now!

  For it was clear, acutely clear. There was only one reason, one basic explanation: man had forgotten God. Millions now living were blind and deaf – deaf indeed – to the knowledge of their Creator. For countless human souls that Name was nothing but a myth. For others, an inherited tradition to which lip service must be paid. For others, a convenient oath. For others, a bland hypocrisy.

  Yes, that was the blind and naked truth. False gods as evil as the golden calf of old now stood upon the altars of the Christian people. Paganism bestrode the modem earth. To all but a few the very mention of the Christ evoked a smile of mockery and contempt.

  Yet here, in this mad search for leadership, was the one Leader who could save the world. Here, forgotten amidst the wild quest for ideologies, was the one creed that promised salvation. Not a hard creed to comprehend. Nor yet to follow. A creed of beauty and simplicity. To live decently in the sight of Heaven and one’s fellow men. To love one’s neighbour, to be uncovetous of his goods. To be tolerant, charitable, humble. To recollect always that life, as we know it, is but a fragment of eternity.

  Oh, that an army of new crusaders might arise to spread afresh in every land this long-neglected counsel, to unfurl once again the faded banner of the forgotten King! Oh, that more ministers of religion might abandon their platitudes, cease to be prudent and become sincere, forsake their empty churches and sally forth like soldiers to justify themselves in valiant conflict beneath the darkening sky! Then indeed might the world come back to sanity, and poor, bemused, and tortured humanity back to God.

  Quite suddenly I felt a shock, and the swift flow of my thought was interrupted. With a wrench that was almost physical I came back to earth, and saw that the preacher had at that moment reached the end of his peroration.

  We came out of the church into the unblemished brightness of the winter day. And as we made our way down to the village I related to my companion the full account of my striking meditation.

  He heard me with ever-growing amazement. As I concluded he faced me in stark bewilderment.

  ‘But don’t you realise!’ He almost gasped for breath. ‘That, almost word for word, was the pastor’s sermon.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  With every day the danger was growing, the handwriting on the wall becoming clearer, and finally, as a few wise men had foreseen, the dogs of war once again were loosed upon the world.

  Another war! To those of us who had been involved in that first world conflict and whose sons were now called upon to fight in this, it seemed only yesterday since the thunder of the guns had been stilled, since the little black-coated politicians in whose hands we trustfully placed our destinies had promised us, in florid phrases, lasting terrestrial harmony.

  What under heaven was wrong with the human race? People, as individuals, as I had met them everywhere, were, in the main, amiable, goodhearted, peace-loving. Why, then, this mass, recurrent impulse to fall upon their neighbours, this blind hysterical urge towards slaughter and self-destruction? What folly … what purposeless, unending lunacy!

  But the mortal struggle had begun, and disasters came thick and fast upon us. The surrender of Belgium, followed swiftly by the evacuation of Dunkirk, and the occupation of Holland – these were great misfortunes. But when France fell and the streets of Paris echoed with the tramp of the invaders, it seemed as though freedom could not survive, as though violence and tyranny had prevailed.

  Then came the bombings, the guided missiles, all that human ingenuity and malice could devise, a ruthless and indiscriminate holocaust from the air. Women, children, and old people alike were killed, wounded, and maimed, mangled in a bloody mist of pain. Homes, hospitals, churches, great works of art were shat
tered and brought to ruin by these vultures of the sky. Everything which the genius of man had created to adorn and inspire the world seemed doomed to destruction. And hunger followed, a gaunt spectre, stalking among the rubble, in what seemed the twilight of the universe.

  It was small wonder that the faint of heart despaired. And when, at last, the smoke of battle cleared, how little there seemed left of the world we once had known!

  When the opportunity was given me, some months after the armistice, to make an extended tour of Europe, I set out upon this mission with a heavy heart, convinced in advance that however earnestly I sought I should find no gleam of light in the settled gloom that hung upon these devastated lands. Yet I was wrong. The human spirit, although it may be bruised and crushed, is indestructible. The evidence that I discovered was slight, perhaps, based on chance personal contacts, intangible and widely scattered. Nevertheless, it carried more weight with me than a host of cold statistics.

  I went first to Vienna, that exquisite city which in the past I had known so well and loved so much. Since morning, when the transport plane had landed me at the airfield, my mood had grown progressively more melancholy. There was no accommodation at the Bristol, and the room they had finally found for me in a drab house in the Kartnerstrasse was sparsely furnished and unheated. For lunch there was only vegetable soup and a slice of black kartoffel bread.

  In the afternoon, as I set out in the cutting wind on my tour of inspection, past the shattered Cathedral of St Stephen and the ruins of the Opera House, my heart sank further. The little palace of the Empress Eugénie where I had lunched so gaily with Count Von Zsolnay and Frank Werfel, the Hall of the Clothmakers where I had lectured to the Kulturbund … where, alas, were they now? Was this the lovely, festive city where I had known such joyful days and exhilarating nights, where I had heard Lehmann sing in La Bohème and driven afterward in an open carriage through the gaily crowded thoroughfares to celebrate the Heurige, the festival of the new wine? I had come prepared for material destruction, for shattered houses, heaps of rubble, bombed buildings, yes, even for the melancholy spectacle of the blown-up Danube bridges. I had foreseen affliction, but not this empty, silent desolation which, like a chill miasma, pervaded these grey and dingy shuttered streets.

  As it crept into my bones a blind anger grew within me, a sullen resentment against Providence that such things should come to pass. To make matters worse, as the frigid February twilight fell, it began to rain, a heavy, freezing sleet that threatened to penetrate the army mackintosh which I wore over my woollen coat.

  I was now somewhere in the eastern suburbs, and to escape I took shelter in a neighbouring building – a small church which had escaped destruction. The place was empty and almost dark, the shadows relieved only by the faint red flicker of the sanctuary light. Impatiently, I sat down to wait until the worst of the downpour should pass.

  Suddenly, I heard footsteps, and turning, I saw an old man enter the church. He wore no coat, and his tall figure, gaunt and stiffly erect, clad in a thin, much-mended suit, was painfully shabby. As he advanced towards the side altar I observed with surprise that he was carrying in his arms a child, a little girl of about six, dressed in the garments of poverty. When he reached the railing of the altar he put her down gently. I perceived then, from the helpless movements of her limbs, that she was paralysed. Still supporting her with great patience, he encouraged her to kneel, arranging her hands so that she could cling to the altar rail. When he had succeeded, he smiled at her, as though congratulating her on her achievement, then he knelt, spare and erect, beside her.

  For a few minutes they remained thus, then the old man rose. I heard the thin echo of a small coin falling into the box, then saw him take the candle, light it, and give it to the child. She held it in one transparent hand for a long moment while the glow cast a little halo about her, making visible the pleased expression on her pale, pinched features. Then she placed the candle upright on the small iron stand before the shadowed altar, admiring her little gift, dedicating it with the rapt upturned tilt of her head.

  Presently the old man got up again and, lifting the child, began to carry her in his arms out of the church. All the time that I had watched them I had felt myself intruding on their privacy, guilty of a sort of sacrilege. Yet now, though that feeling remained, an irresistible impulse made me rise and follow them to the church porch.

  Here, drawn to one side, was a small home-made conveyance – a rickety wooden box with lopsided sticks for shafts, mounted on two perambulator wheels which had long ago lost their tyres. Into this equipage the old man was bestowing the child, spreading an old potato sack across her limbs. Now that I stood close to them I could plainly confirm what I had already suspected. Every line of the old man’s drawn face, the cropped grey moustache, the fine nose, the proud eyes under deep brows, showed him a true patrician, one of those noble Viennese to whom, through no fault of their own, the war had brought total ruin. The child, whose peaked features resembled his own, was almost certainly his grand-daughter. As with his veined, fine hands he finished tucking the sack around her, he glanced at me. A rush of questions was on my tongue, but something, the spiritual quality of that face, restrained my curiosity. I could only say, with awkwardness:

  ‘It is very cold.’

  He answered me politely:

  ‘Less cold than it has been this winter.’

  There was a pause. My gaze returned to the child whose blue eyes were fixed upon us.

  ‘The war?’ I said, still looking at her.

  ‘Yes, the war,’ he answered. The same bomb killed her mother and father.’

  Another, and a longer pause.

  ‘You come here often?’ I regretted this crudity immediately it escaped me. But he took no offence.

  ‘Yes, every day, to pray.’ He smiled faintly. ‘And also to show the good God we are not too angry with Him.’

  I could find no reply. And as I stood in silence he straightened himself, buttoned his jacket, picked up the shafts of the little buggy and with that same faint smile, that polite inclination of his head, moved off with the child into the gathering darkness.

  No sooner were they gone than I had again an insufferable desire to pursue them. I wanted to help, to offer them money, to strip off my warm coat, to do something impetuous and spectacular. But I remained rooted to the spot. I knew that this was no case for common charity, that anything which I could give would be refused. Instead, it was they who had given something to me. They, who had lost everything, refused to despair, they could still believe. A feeling of confusion rose in me. Now there was no anger in my heart, no concern for my own petty deprivations, but only pity and a pervading sense of shame.

  The rain had gone off. But I did not go out. I hesitated. Then I turned and went back towards the little faithful beacon which still burned at the side altar in the no longer empty church. One candle in a ruined city. But while it shone there seemed hope for the world.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  From Austria I went to Italy. Every morning, during my brief stay in the battered little Italian village of Castelmare, near Livorno, I would see old Maria Bendetti. Small, slight, and shrunken, barefooted, clad in rusty black, a black scarf bound about her head, her frail shoulders bowed beneath the big wicker basket on her back, she typified the prevailing tragedy. Her thin brown face, so set and careworn, seemed moulded by calamity into lines of irreparable sadness.

  She sold fish, those odd and unappetising Mediterranean fishes which, eked out by a scant ration of macaroni or spaghetti, formed the meagre diet of this broken seaside community. I had known the village in its days of carefree, joyous peace. Now there was no music and laughter in the little square, where bomb-gutted buildings sprawled drunkenly among the dusty rubble, a scene of utter heartbreak, over which the scent of flowering oleanders lay poignantly, as upon a tomb. The place was dead, and because I had loved it so well, its final desolation saddened me anew.

  Most of the young men and
women had moved away. But the children and older people remained, moving, it seemed to me, like ghosts, wresting a hand-to-mouth existence from the sea with their patched-up boats and mended nets.

  And among these was Maria. Occasionally she was accompanied by her niece, a thin barelegged waif of ten, who trotted beside her and cried in a shrill insistent voice, ‘Pesci … pesci freschi!’ as though determined to establish beyond all doubt that their fish were of the freshest quality.

  One morning, as they passed through the ruined square, I spoke to them. Yes, they had been through the bombardment; the war had been a bad affair, they agreed. They now lived, with the utmost frugality, in a dark little cave of a room in the Via Eustachia, a narrow street in what remained of the poorest quarter of the town.

  In a culmination of that mood which burned within me, which was, of course, the reflex of my own pessimism and discontent, I asked abruptly:

  ‘Why don’t you leave the village? Here there is no future … all destroyed … completely finished.’

  There was a pause. The old woman slowly shook her head.

  ‘This is our home. We do not think it is finished.’

  As the two moved away it appeared that they exchanged a secret glance.

  That glance provoked my curiosity. During the few days I found myself observing their movements with a queer, unwilling interest. In the early part of the day they had their fixed and visible routine, but in the afternoon, astonishingly, they were nowhere to be found. Several times after my picnic lunch I walked to the Via Eustachia only to discover that the little room was empty. Could it be that the two were less simple than I had supposed, that their absence every afternoon concealed some underhand affair, smuggling perhaps, or some devious working of the black market?