A Walk with Love and Death. Hans Koning

and whoever came would later be entitled to wear a hat made of wolf fur. We all became very excited about the plan.

      Just then someone who sat near the window shifted his seat and said: “Boys, the snow has turned into rain.”

      He didn’t speak loudly; no one paid attention to his remark. I don’t know why his words sounded like thunder to me. They went through me in a shiver; I thought, I have heard them before, I have lived through this before. And: this is what people mean when they say they’ve heard the voice of God.

      I stood up. “I have to leave,” I said.

      They looked at me; “But you’re coming tonight?” someone asked.

      I shook my head and left the house.

      I came outside and walked to the middle of the street, slipping over the gleaming cobblestones. I looked up at the whitish sky; the rain was coming down hard now and hit my face. I won’t die with the world, I thought; as a matter of fact, neither the world nor I will die; there is something else to be found but not at this dead university and not by hunting wolves in a cemetery. I’ll have my hour yet, I’m not going to have it stolen from me; I’ll go find it, in spring. I will escape.

      I don’t know really what came over me that morning; but as I went home in the streaming rain I felt reborn. That was the first time in my life I was consciously happy to be young. I made a song for myself from those words “the snow has turned into rain” and sang it as hard as I could, over the swishing of the rain and the gurgling sound of the bells of the Sorbonne which were ringing in the wet air. The people taking shelter under the gutters of the houses stood staring at me. The water dripped from my hair into my mouth.

      And now it was spring, my hour had come, and I was going north through the woods away from Paris and toward the sea.

5

      I came out onto a glade and here a woman was charring young green wood. I asked her about the way and as she said she’d be going presently to take charcoal to a house up north, I waited and went with her. A big house, she told me, at two hours’ distance. It was called Dammartin and the building intendant of Valois lived there; he was a strange man.

      She was very articulate, but when I asked her had she always been charcoal burner, she answered only: “No.”

      She said that beyond Dammartin the wood ended and the plain began once more, yet between Dammartin and a castle on the hill of Montmélian were no houses. I had told her I was on my way north without adding anything about England, for that might have sounded odd to her and made her suspicious about my company. She was enormous; I had a hard time keeping up with her although she was carrying her load. She didn’t even get out of breath: she walked to the tune of some chant she sang hoarsely but quite well.

      It was already getting dark on the path, and I was stumbling over roots and stones, when we came to the gate of the house. It was smaller than I had imagined from her words, a low stone structure with outbuildings, barely fortified, with a beautiful lawn all around it.

      There was no one in sight and no sound but the barking dogs.

      I looked at her with some surprise; she shrugged with the same indifference as when I had asked her earlier if she wasn’t afraid of wolves. “He lives as if it was peacetime,” she said. “I leave you here, sir, good-bye.” She opened the gate and vanished behind the house with her charcoal, shouting at the dogs, which fell silent.

      I crossed the lawn and looked around me in the dusk. Then I knocked on the front door.

      From behind it an old voice called, “Who is it?”

      I said I was a student asking lodging for the night. First a peephole, then the door itself opened. It was so dark in the house that I could barely make out the man holding the door.

      I thought he’d question me but he said only, “This way if you please.”

      I followed him blindly through a long corridor and down some steps, and through a courtyard where the evening light still hung, caught between the white walls, into an almost bare room.

      “The master of the house is indisposed,” he said, “and will not be able to entertain you.” He made a slight bow and left; I almost called after him. Suddenly, I felt unbearably lonely.

      There was a bunk against the far wall; I sat there until it had become so dark that the gray square of the window no longer stood out. Then I lay down in the blackness and pulled the cover over me. I was cold through and through, and it took me a long time before I stopped shivering.

      When I woke, the room was filled with sunlight, and the old man came and led me back down that corridor to what seemed part of a large hall screened off. The furniture consisted of wooden tables and benches. There was a wide window of little glass panels in lead; a man was sitting near it, beside a long table, bent over and looking out on the lawn. When he heard my step he lifted his head and turned a pale sharp face toward me. He made a gesture for me to sit down; there was nowhere to sit very near him and I took a bench at the lower end of his table.

      Bread and wine, cheese and meat were brought; before he started eating he said, “I’m the owner of Dammartin House; please feel at home.”

      “I’m Heron of Foix,” I answered, but he did not speak again during his meal.

      He ate little and left the room shortly afterward, indicating with a little nod that I should take my time.

      I had been afraid to seem greedy and was delighted to be left alone with all that food, for I was starved. I didn’t remember ever having sat at such a well-laid table. I seated myself more comfortably, cut a huge slice of the cheese and now started my breakfast in earnest.

      The room had been warmed by the sun, the grass outside shone with smoothness, and I was as snug as a prince. When I had finished I didn’t stir; I couldn’t quite get going again. I poured some more wine; it gave off slow oily reflections in the sunlight.

      The house was silent, it was as if my presence had been forgotten.

      I fell into a reverie. Traveling to England, I would have to cross the sea, which I had never seen; it seemed to me now as if that sea itself was my destination. I visualized it, a smooth glittering plain of water, slowly canting up and down, boats gliding to and fro, and everyone in them seasick. Everyone but me; I climbed a mast, there was a hard wind in my face, great brightness all around me.

      “Good morning,” someone said. I looked up into the face of a girl.

6

      I cannot now remember how it felt to see her without knowing who she was. I know I was struck by her eyes, gray-brown, and the copper color of her hair (it was the sunny room which made it that way, her hair is simply dark blond); I remember that for some reason a line from a stupid song sprang to my head, which goes, “and her round high breasts . . .” although she wore a wide and chaste dress; above all she seemed to possess a quality which I’d describe as an overflowing, youthful, luminousness. Perhaps a less biased observer would simply call her a fair-skinned almost plump girl—she isn’t plump though—but I know that I decided in that same moment to fall in love with her.

      “Good morning,” I said, and stood up. Instead of looking at her I looked down upon myself and was aware of appearing shabby and ill-kempt. I thought hastily, I must try and get in a romantic explanation of my disheveled state. Just then a maid entered who said to me in an unpleasant tone, “We thought you’d gone, sir. This is the lady of the house, who has to be here.”

      I didn’t think of anything to answer. I bowed and left, walked to the back of the house and came to the kitchens where a cook explained to me the way to Montmélian. I set out hesitantly: I had wanted to talk to the girl.

      I got as far as the edge of the lawn. They hadn’t built