Текст книги "Hope"

Автор книги: Len Deighton

Соавторы: Len Deighton
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With vivid movements of the hand and head, Uncle Nico related the story of the saint's death. According to Uncle Nico, King Boleslaw the Bold personally beheaded the bishop upon a tree trunk, before having him chopped into pieces and dumped into a nearby pond. That was in 1079, since when pond, tree trunk and saint have become unrivaled objects of pilgrimages.

Dicky nodded and told us that the mortal remains of Saint Stanislaus are to be found in the Wawel Royal Cathedral in Cracow. Dicky had discovered this in a guidebook he'd been reading in the car. Showered with praise for displaying this knowledge he smiled modestly, as if keeping some succulent morsels about the doings of Saint Stanislaus to himself. My vodka finished, I picked up the cut-glass tumbler and its contents: water. There was no wine in evidence; just tumblers of water, one at each place setting.

'When will the book be published?' Dicky asked.

Perhaps the book would never be finished said Aunt Mary. But it did not matter. The writing of the book was essential to the household, and indeed to the nearby village. She spoke of the book, as everyone was to do, in a hushed and respectful voice. Each night Uncle Nico told his family assembled round the dinner table some aspect of the book that he felt they should know. Often this was something they had all heard many times, but that did not matter. AD that mattered was that a long and seemingly important book about Poland's medieval history was being written in this house, and they were all sharing the glory of it.

A young servant girl in a black dress and starched frilly apron served vegetable soup from a large chinaware tureen, measuring each ladleful with care. It took a long time.

The dining room was memorable for the large stuffed, and somewhat moulted, bird of prey that, cantilevered from the wall, seemed about to swoop upon the table. It was a huge creature, about six feet from tattered wing tip to wing tip, with realistic glass eyes and open beak. The flickering candles encouraged the illusion that. it was alive. Residents no doubt soon grew accustomed to dining under the sharp talons of this menacing creature, but I noticed Dicky glancing up at it apprehensively while the soup was being served, as I admit I did too.

'Did you read the Premier's speech?' Uncle Nico asked the assembled diners, tapping the weekly newspaper that was jutting from his coat pocket. When no one replied he repeated his question, holding his head to one side and fixing us, one after the other, with his glassy stare.

Still no one replied until I told him, no, I hadn't.

'More reforms,' he said. 'Capitalism mixed with socialism.'

'Is that good?' Dicky asked, smiling.

'Is champagne good when mixed with prussic acid?' the old man asked sarcastically. Dicky didn't answer. Uncle Nico drank some water. Someone at the other end of the table picked up a basket of roughly sliced bread and passed it around.

Karol tore up his thick slice of dark bread and dropped pieces of it into the fruity vinegar-flavored vegetable soup. While doing this he said: 'There will be no reforms; the Soviet Union will prevent Poland making reforms. '

'By invading us?' said Aunt Mary.

'Why invade us? The Kremlin have already made sure that apparatchiks have the key positions in Poland. Their job is to block or sabotage all meaningful reforms here. They will say yes and do nothing. In that way the men in the Kremlin can sleep soundly.'

It seemed to be the accepted view, for no one argued; they just drank their soup. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power. The optimists in Warsaw were saying that the men in the Kremlin were too concerned with their own troubles to wield Soviet military power against their neighbors as belligerently as once they had done. But Mikhail Gorbachev, for all his posturing, was a dedicated Marxist, and, as we had seen on the road from Warsaw, he had his soldiers discreetly positioned should he decide the Poles were changing things too quickly. So the going was slow. Uncle Nico sighed deeply, and in that way that families communicate without speech, a sudden mood of resignation followed the exchange. Or was it a reluctance to speak frankly in front of the servants?

'Art is long,' proclaimed Dicky encouragingly. 'Life is short, opportunity . . .'

Before Dicky could continue with this provocative display of classical learning, Uncle Nico interjected, 'The Premier? The communists? These are the people who suppressed Dostoevsky!'

As if heading off a diatribe, Aunt Mary picked up a small porcelain bell and jingled it loudly as a signal for the soup dishes to be cleared. From upstairs there came the sudden sound of the piano. The technique was the same as the afternoon performance: Chopin played with precision. But again it was given a slow deliberate tempo that marred its graceful melodies.

The main course was stewed cabbage with flecks of bacon hiding in it. Even the privileged, with a the countryside to forage, did not eat meat on a regular basis.

'It's getting better,' said Dicky, investigating the cabbage suspiciously with his fork. 'The generals are becoming more tolerant towards Solidarity aren't they?'

Uncle Nico snorted. 'Because in some parts of the country Solidarnosc branch leaders advertise their meetings and hold them, and no one gets arrested? Is that what you've been told? Don't believe the newspapers. Only the ineffective groups are tolerated. Hardnosed Solidarnosc activists remain in prison. Anyone talking of strikes or demonstrations is likely to disappear for ever.'

Karol the secretary asked for the salt to be passed to him. He did it in such a manner that Uncle Nico began eating and said no more. The plates were soon emptied and the maidservant brought the next course: crêpes with stewed apple.

'The generals and the Party leaders are paralyzed by indecision,' said Karol, adding to the conversation for the first time. 'But the army has a tricky course to steer between Moscow's tanks and the Solidarity hotheads.' His voice was moderate, as if hoping to calm Uncle Nico's temper. 'Do you know how much cash Poland owes to the Western banks? It's alarming. And rising higher and higher every minute. Who will lend us more?'

'We'll manage,' said Uncle Nico defensively.

'No one,' said the secretary in answer to his own question. 'Finally we shall invite the Russians to occupy us. We will need their oil and grain. It will be our only way out of this economic mess. That, or we will starve to death.'

'I say we'll manage,' repeated Uncle Nico.

'You don't buy the food and run the house,' said the secretary earnestly. 'This week again the dairymen from the village went to Warsaw, selling their soft cheeses from the back of a truck. They won't sell to local people any more; in Warsaw people will pay in American dollars or pounds or German marks. All the hard cheeses disappeared months ago. Our pickled vegetables are already almost eaten. Our apples have all been stolen. These are almost the last of them.' He mashed the stewed apple with his fork as if angry with it.

'You shouldn't have traded those apples,' said Uncle Nico.

'For paraffin oil? What would we do without light?'

'When they saw the apples, they knew where to come and help themselves,' said Uncle Nico.

The secretary would not be distracted from his woe. 'This winter will see starvation and ruin right across the land. Disease will follow. It could destroy the whole of Europe, and perhaps the world.'

We all looked at him. The candlelight flickered across his face. The Poles have a style of melancholy that is entirely their own. Russian melancholy breathes vodka fumes; Scandinavian melancholy is masochistic. Austrian melancholy is entirely operatic, while German melancholy is disguised self-pity. But Polish melancholy is a world-embracing philosophy impervious to cheer.

Beyond him, and through the window, I could see the dark forest. Now flickering lights amongst the trees revealed the approach of men with a handcart. They were carrying flashlights. Karol turned his head to see what had caught my attention. By this time the two callers had approached close enough to the windows to be lit by the lamps in the drawing-room.

'Men from the village. They are delivering meat,' explained the secretary, as if this was the normal time for meat deliveries in this part of the world. I nodded.

Aunt Mary got to her feet and rang her bell and ordered that coffee should be taken to the drawing room. The young people who had joined us for the meal slipped away without a word. In the drawing room I tried to secure a seat near the stove but I was too late, Aunt Mary got it. A servant set the coffee tray before her and she poured it from a huge silver pot. The maidservant took the cups, one by one, to each of us and offered us canned milk and sugar. Uncle Nico put two level teaspoons of sugar into his tiny cup of black coffee, measuring them with the exaggerated care a pharmacist might devote to mixing a dangerous sleeping draught for a valued customer. Then he stirred furiously and watched the whirlpool slow before sipping some and burning his lip.

'It is made with boiling water, you old fool,' said Aunt Mary in low and rapid Polish, an admonition clearly not intended for our ears.

He nodded without looking at her and turning to me said, 'They've found a body.' Absentmindedly he spoke in Polish.

'I beg your pardon?' I said.

'The body. Didn't they tell you?' He tutted as if at some inexcusable lapse of good manners. 'Didn't they tell you they are digging up a corpse? It's why they are out there.'

I looked at Karol the secretary. He had declined coffee and had moved his chair closer to the stove. With one arm resting on the back of the sofa he could actually walk his fingertips along the warm white porcelain, and this he did. As if totally occupied with warming his fingers he made no reaction to the old man's startling revelation.

'No,' I said, 'I didn't know.' I drank some coffee. Speaking Polish is difficult for me; understanding it brings on a headache.

'What did he say?' Dicky asked me.

'Nothing,' I said. 'I'll tell you in a moment.'

'A body,' said Karol to Dicky in English. 'They are talking about a dead body. A copse . . . ' he corrected himself. 'A corpse.' Then he covered his mouth with his hand and burped.

'Oh,' said Dicky and smiled to hide his confusion.

'He might have stayed there for years,' said Uncle Nico. 'But the dog found him. About twenty meters off the forest path . . . buried. But the dog found it. An arm. It's fresh.'

'That's Bazyliszek,' said Aunt Mary. 'That's the dog they take when they are looking for truffles.' She reached for my empty cup and poured me a second cup of coffee. It was very good coffee; very strong.

'A body?' I said without putting too much emotion into it.

'The ground is hard,' said Uncle Nico. 'Didn't you see the men at work when you arrived? When you asked the way.'

'Yes,' I said.

'They are always finding bodies,' said Aunt Mary calmly. She discovered a ball of wool on the floor. She picked it up and looked at it as if suspecting that it might belong to someone else, but eventually she put it in her workbasket. Everyone was watching her and waiting upon her words: 'Those woods are full of secrets,' she said. 'The Germans buried people there during the war. Mass graves. Jews, soldiers, villagers, gypsies . . .'

'You silly old woman. This is nothing to do with the war,' said Uncle Nico.

Undeterred Aunt Mary continued: 'The partisans fought here. Thousands died. The remains of the old wartime encampments and bunkers and hideaways run right through our land.'

'I say it's not the war,' said Uncle Nico, puffing angrily at his cigarette.

'No,' agreed Aunt Mary, suddenly changing tack. 'It will be that girl Anna from the pig fann. She was pregnant. I could see it when she was in church the Sunday before she disappeared.'

'Be quiet, you foolish woman,' said Uncle Nico. 'She went to her cousin in Gdynia to have the baby. She writes letters home.'

'Letters! Rubbish! I say it's her. She's dead. Her father went to the next village and said prayers for her.'

'It's not the pig girl; it's a man,' said Uncle Nico. He looked at the secretary but Karol was staring at the floor.

'We will see tonight when they dig it up. They'll put it in the barn and the police will come,' Aunt Mary said. She opened her needlework basket, looked down to be sure everything was inside, and closed it again.

'Not tonight. The ground is as hard as rock,' said Uncle Nico. 'It will take a lot of digging.' He got to his feet and Aunt Mary got up too. They wished us good night and departed.

'Vodka?' the secretary asked.

'Not for me,' said Dicky. I shook my head. I was shivering with the cold. All I wanted was to get into bed and pull the blankets over me.

'I shall have one,' said Karol the secretary, getting to his feet very slowly. I suddenly realized he was very drunk. Some of the glasses at the dining table had not contained water. He poured himself a large vodka. Standing propped against the sideboard, with the drink in hand, he said: 'Uncle Nicolaus is a fine old fellow: a fighter. Each year, on the anniversary of the uprising, he goes, together with a few old comrades, to stand in front of the Palace of the Republic at the place where he, and the rest of the patriots, descended into the sewers for the final act of the battle against the German beasts.' He sipped his drink. 'The police don't like that sort of celebration. One year they arrested all the survivors; they said they were a threat to public order.' From upstairs the piano started again. This time it seemed to be a nocturne. 'Let me pour you a vodka? Perhaps you don't like the potato vodka. Pertsovka with the red and black pepper makes a good nightcap.'

'No, thanks,' I said. 'I have to keep a clear head for dreaming.' Karol shrugged and topped up his own drink. He had downed two more of them by the time I was halfway up the stairs. As I got to the door of my room I heard him trip over the walking stick rack in the hall and get up cursing.

That night I took a long time getting off to sleep. Drinking strong black coffee keeps me awake at night nowadays. It's a sign of getting old, at least that's what Dicky says. He's two years younger than I am. He drinks a great deal of coffee and sleeps even during the daytime. As I was nursing my headache, and thinking about the family conversation, I heard soft deliberate footsteps along the corridor outside my room. It was someone in padded shoes, walking in a fashion that would minimize the sound. The steps halted outside my bedroom door. I reached for the flashlight, switched it on and looked at my wristwatch. It was ten past two in the morning. Instinctively I looked for something to use as a weapon but I had nothing except the metal flashlight. The footsteps went away, but in no more than three minutes they were back again. I visualized someone standing in the corridor and not moving, and tried to guess what they might be doing. Next there came a rumbling noise very close to my head. I sat up in bed and put my feet on the floor. There was a muted clang of metal and I jumped up in alarm only to hear the padded footsteps slowly moving off along the corridor again. I realized it was one of the servants putting a log into my stove. All the stoves were built so as to be fueled from outside the rooms.

I remained awake for a long time after that. From the forest there were the cries of animals: foxes or wild dogs perhaps. Once I fancied I heard the barking of wolves. Dogs locked in their kennels in the courtyard joined in the howling. Perhaps tomorrow George would come. Unless it was George they were digging up in the forest in the dark.

4

The Kosinski Mansion, Masuria, Poland.

The following day brought no further news of either George or Stefan Kosinski. I got up early and, having abandoned the effort of making a palatable pot of tea with the warm water delivered to my room, I went to the kitchen and ate porridge and drank coffee with the servants. Dicky didn't like porridge. He slept late and then went out to examine the vehicles in the coach house. There were six of them. They included a sleigh – with hand-painted edelweiss and functioning jingle bells – a coach, a carriage and a pony trap, the last two in good condition and evidently in regular use. Apart from the car in which we had arrived, there were no motor vehicles to be seen except for the remains of a tractor which had been stripped bare for tires and spare parts.

Dicky had heard a story about a young Dutch banker finding two vintage Bugattis in a barn not far from where we were. This Dutchman was said to have persuaded the fanner to exchange the priceless old cars for two modern Opels. I didn't believe the story but Dicky insisted that it was true, and the thought of it was never far from his mind. Several times on our journey from Warsaw I'd had to dissuade him from going to search likely-looking farm buildings for such treasures.

'Do you think the Russians will come?' Dicky asked me as I found him opening the door of a carriage and looking inside to see the amazing muddle of cobwebs.

'Invade'? I don't know.'

Dicky closed the door, but the lock didn't engage until he tried three times, finally slamming the door of the carriage with enough force to shake the dust out of the springs. 'I don't want to find myself explaining my presence to some damned Russian army intelligence officer,' he said. 'And I don't want you here explaining yourself either.'

There was little I could say to that. It established Dicky's superiority in a way that required no elaboration. I reasoned that the danger was not imminent. My own guess was that the Soviets would order the Polish security forces to stage a mass round-up of every possible Polish odd-ball, opponent and dissident, before risking their infantry in the Warsaw streets, or even the open countryside. But it was better to let Dicky worry; he was a worrier by nature, and it kept him occupied and off my back.

I followed him as he walked to the far end of the coach house where a trestle bench had been cleared. It was covered with clean newspaper, and there were three shiny black rubbish bags, empty, folded and ready, at one end.

'A body,' mused Dicky, picking up one of the plastic bags and putting it down again. 'That's all we needed.' He sneezed. 'I've picked up some sort of virus,' he said after wiping his nose on a large handkerchief.

'It's the dust,' I said.

'How I wish it was dust,' said Dicky with a brave smile. 'You're lucky; you don't get these damned allergies and stiffer the way I do.'

'Yes,' I said. I could recognize the symptoms; Dicky had had enough of Polish austerity – hard beds, potato soup and chilly bedrooms – and now he was preparing to make his excuses and depart.

Dicky looked at his watch. 'Shall we go down to look at the digging? Everyone seems to have disappeared. Except that secretary fellow, he left the house at six-thirty this morning. It was scarcely light.' Dicky went out into the courtyard and stamped around on the cobbles. The sky had cleared in the night, and the temperature had dropped enough for the cold to sting my face and give Dicky a glittering pink complexion.

'You saw the secretary leaving?'

'On a horse. A beautiful hunter. Dressed up to the nines in riding breeches, polished boots and a hacking jacket, like some English country squire. He's a shifty sod, we must watch him.'

'And he hasn't returned yet?'

'I was checking the stables. The horse is not here. I wonder where the bastard's gone. He was very quiet last night, wasn't he? He was watching you like a hawk, did you notice that?'

'No, I didn't.'

'All the time. You should be more observant, Bernard. These people are not to be trusted. They tell us only what they want us to hear.'

'You're right, Dicky.'

'You probably didn't notice that there is no telephone in that house.'

'That's probably why the secretary went off somewhere on his horse.'

'Damned odd, isn't it? No phone?'

'Maybe. Stefan's a writer; perhaps he doesn't want a telephone in his house.'

'Writer, huh. I'm going to see what those people are digging up in the forest, just in case it is a body. I'll jog there, it's not far. Better we both go.'

Today Dicky had delved into his wardrobe for a three-quarter-length military jacket. It was an olive-green waterproof garment with huge pockets, a long-sleeve version of the sort of garment General Westmoreland modeled in Nam. The name patch had been carefully unpicked from it, leaving the impression that it was an item of kit retained after Dicky's military service. This was an interpretation that he liked to encourage, but Daphne once confided that all Dicky's military wardrobe came from a charity shop in Hampstead.

It did not matter that Dicky had brought his oddments of (démodé military uniform; half the population of Poland seemed to be outfitted by the US army. But other men wore stained and patched ones, and wore them in a sloppy and informal way. Dicky's well-fitting jacket was clean and pressed. With the jacket fully buttoned, and a red paratroop beret worn pulled down tight on his skull, Dicky was conspicuous in this country governed by soldiers. Only his trendy blue-and-white running shoes saved him from looking like a general about to inspect an honor guard of the riot police.

'It's a long hike,' I warned.

'Come along, Bernard. A brisk canter would do you good. Ye gods, I jog across Hampstead Heath every morning before breakfast.'

'Daphne said you'd given up the daily jogging,' I said.

My remark had the calculated effect. 'Daphne!' Dicky exploded. 'What the hell does Daphne know about what I do? She's in bed when I get home, and in bed when I get up in the morning.'

'I must have got it wrong,' I said. 'I noticed you'd put on weight, and thought it must be because you'd cut out the jogging.'

'You're a bloody shit-stirrer,' said Dicky. 'Do you enjoy making mischief? Is that it?'

'There's no need to get upset, Dicky,' I said, trying to look pained.

'I'll show you who is out of condition. I'll show you who is puffing and collapsing. Come on, Bernard, it's no more than three miles.'

'You start. I'll go upstairs and put on my other shoes,' I said. My accusations about his lack of exercise had aroused something in Dicky's metabolism, for he began running on the spot, and punching the air around him to fell imaginary assailants.

'You'd better hurry,' he called and, with no further prompting, went jogging across the cobbled courtyard through the gate and along the path that led through the woods. I watched him slow as he entered the meadow that was now knee-high with dead ferns and weeds. They produced a crisp puffing sound as Dicky jogged through them. The impression of a choo-choo train was completed by the white vapor his breath left on the cold air.

I went inside the house to the kitchen. There was no one in evidence. I helped myself to a cup of warm coffee and toasted a slice of dark bread before following Dicky down the forest path at a leisurely pace. There were starlings, blackbirds and sparrows foraging for food. I understood their shrill cries; being without food in Poland was a grim plight. I was moved enough to toss a few bite-sized fragments of my breakfast bread to them, and decided that if I started to believe in reincarnation I'd go for something migratory.

'My God, where have you been?' Dicky said when I got to him. He had joined some men standing around looking at a shallow ditch. It was where they had been digging when we passed them the previous day. Accompanying the men there was a brown shaggy-haired mongrel dog; presumably it was Basilisk, the noted truffle-hound. It was sniffing at Dicky's running shoes that were now caked in mud.

'I took it easy; it was icy,' I explained.

'I know, I know,' agreed Dicky, gently kicking the dog's nose aside. 'I slipped on a patch of it near the stream. I went full-length and hurt my back. But still I was here half an hour before you.'

'It's just as well that one of us remains uninjured,' I said.

'Very droll,' said Dicky. Then, turning his dissatisfaction upon the laborers, he said: 'They say they got a part of a leg yesterday – not an arm, the old man got it wrong – but it's gone off to the police station.'

'What kind of leg?' I kicked at the ground. Here under the trees where no sunlight ever came, it was hard, very hard. 'What kind of leg?' Dicky scoffed. 'How many kinds are there? Left and right?' He coughed. His exertions seemed to have exhausted him and now he stood arms akimbo and breathed in and out slowly and deliberately, smiling fixedly while he did it, like those girls who sell exercise machines on television.

'Young? Old? Decomposing? Mall? Short? Hairy? Smooth?'

'How do I know?' said Dicky, abandoning his breathing exercises. 'It's gone to the police.'

I turned to the men and tried my inadequate Polish on them but got only vague answers. Their attitude to the dismembered corpse was not unlike Dicky's; a leg was a leg.

'You didn't change your shoes,' said Dicky accusingly. 'No,' I admitted. 'I only brought the pair I'm wearing.'

'You said you were going to change.'

'I forgot. I'd not brought spares.'

'You're a bloody scrimshanker,' said Dicky.

I didn't deny it. I singled out the German-speaking Blackbeard and said: 'Show me the leg.' Before he could start his excuses I added, 'These are human remains. I'll bring the priest. If you try to prevent me arranging proper Christian burial I'll see you damned in hell.'

He stared at me angrily. After a moment in which we stood motionless he pointed to a battered old wooden box. I pulled the top off it to see a shoe, a wrinkled sock and a grotesque hunk of chewed flesh that was undoubtedly a leg.

'The dogs got it,' explained Blackbeard. I glanced at the sleepy Basilisk. 'Not this one . . . dogs from the village. They run wild in packs at night.'

I leaned over to see the well-chewed piece of flesh the men had discovered. It was chafed and grazed as if it had been scraped with a wire brush. Chunks of flesh were bitten away deeply enough to reveal the tibia bone. The big toe had been entirely torn off, leaving some of the small neighboring gray bones visible. The four other toes were intact, and complete with toenails. I reached into the box and turned the remains over to see where it had been detached from the upper leg. Surrounding the rounded stump of the bone there was a mop-like mess of ligaments, cartilage and tendon. 'It's a human leg all right,' I said, carefully replacing it in the box. 'And it looks like the dogs made a good meal of it.'

'Uggh!' said Dicky. 'How repulsive.'

I picked up the shoe. Despite being damaged it was an Oxford brogue of unmistakably English origin. It was the expensive handmade sort of shoe that George Kosinski liked, and the leather had a patina that comes when shoes are carefully preserved by servants, as George's shoes were. Such shoes, in such condition, were not commonly to be found in Poland even on the feet of the most affluent. The sock was silk, and although I couldn't decipher all the markings, there was enough to establish that it was English too.

'George Kosinski?' said Dicky.

'It looks like it,' I said as I leaned over to estimate the size of the shoe against the foot.

'You don't seem very surprised.'

'What do you want me to do . . . ? No. In fact, someone in Warsaw told me he had been killed.'

'In Warsaw? Why don't you bloody well confide in me?' said Dicky in exasperation.

'You don't want me to repeat every last stupid unlikely rumor I hear, do you?'

'How did you know?' Dicky turned to glance at the men. 'That these buggers still had it, I mean. They told me the police had collected it.'

'The police?' I said. 'You think the police would have come out here, parceled up a bloodstained section of cadaver, said thank-you, and then gone quietly back to the barracks to think about it? In this part of the world, Dicky, the cops come complete with armored cars and assault weapons. Fresh human remains dug up out here in the sticks would have had them interrogating everyone in the house. We would have been paraded in our nightclothes in the courtyard, while search and arrest teams tore up the floorboards and kicked shit out of the servants.'

'Yes, yes, yes, you're right.'

'That's why no one sends for the bastards. That's why I knew they were still thinking about what to do with this.' I tossed the shoe and the sock into the box with the severed leg, and then put the lid on it. I looked round and found the diggers looking at me.

'Where did you dig it from?' I asked them.

'That's the problem,' said Blackbeard. 'The dogs had it here, under the beech tree. It could have come from anywhere. It could have come from miles away.'

'So why are you digging here?'

'The ground was disturbed. Shall we stop digging?'

I wasn't going to fall for that one. 'No, keep digging. We'll keep it to ourselves,' I suggested. 'Tell no one. When Mr. Stefan returns he'll know what to do.'

This wait-and-see solution appealed to the men. They nodded and Blackbeard picked up the wooden box and placed it further back in the darkness of the forest.

'Are you jogging back for lunch?' I asked Dicky.

'Can't you see I've hurt my back?'

'We'll walk then,' I said. 'I'll show you the ruins of the generator house and traces of what must be the German fortified lines from the Tannenberg battle in 1914.'

'Tannenberg?' said Dicky doubtfully.

I said: 'Every German schoolboy knows about Tannenberg, just as every English boy is taught about Trafalgar. Fifty miles of Masurian lakes split the Tsar's attacking army. The invincible General Hindenburg walloped one half and then the other, to win a classic victory.' I stopped abruptly as I realized to what extent my upbringing at a Berlin school had caused me to forget that the Tsar and his army were fighting on the Allied side. In 1914 Hindenburg had been Britain's deadly enemy.