Читать книгу Working my Way Around the World - Harry Alverson Franck - Страница 5

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Three days later I took passage to London, and that same afternoon sailed for Rotterdam. At sunrise the next morning I climbed on deck, and found the ship steaming slowly through a peaceful canal. On all sides were flat plains, stretching as far as the eye could see. Far below us were clusters of squat cottages with the white smoke of kindling fires curling slowly upward from their chimneys. Here and there a peasant, looking very tiny from our high deck, crawled along over the flat meadows. In the distance clumsy windmills were turning slowly in the morning breeze.

Our canal opened out into the busy harbor of Rotterdam. A customs officer asked me where I was going, slapped me on the back in a fatherly fashion, and warned me in German to look out for the “bad people” who lay in wait for seamen ashore.

I quickly tired of the city, and turned out along the broad, flat highway to Delft. The road ran along at the side of a great canal, and at times crossed branch waterways half hidden by boats, filled with cargo, toiling slowly by on their way to market and by empty boats gliding easily homeward. On board, stout men bowed double over the poles they use to push their craft along. On the bank, along the gravel path, women strained like oxen at the tow-ropes around their shoulders.

In the early afternoon I passed through Delft, and pushed on toward The Hague. Beyond Delft I turned into a narrow cobblestone roadway running between two canals. It was a quiet route. I went on my lonely way, thinking of many things and gazing off across the flat green country.

Suddenly a galloping “rat-a-tat” sounded close behind me. A runaway horse! To pause and glance behind might cost me my life; for the crazed brute was almost upon me. With a swiftness born of fear, I began to run! Luckily, ahead of me I spied a foot-bridge over one of the canals. I made one flying leap toward it, and reached it in safety just as there dashed by me at full speed—a Hollander of some six summers, bound to market with a basket on his arm!

After spending only a few hours in the interesting city of The Hague, I looked for the highway to Leiden. I was not very successful in my search for it, for the mixed language of German, English, and deaf-and-dumb show with which I tried to make myself understood did not get me clear directions. A road to Leiden was finally pointed out to me right enough, but it was not a public highway. By some mistake, I set out along the Queen’s private driveway, which led to the boyhood home of Rembrandt, the great Dutch artist.

It was a pleasure to travel by the Queen’s own highway, of course, especially as it led through a fragrant forest park. But, unfortunately, there was no chance of finding an inn when hunger and darkness came on me. There was not even a cross-road to lead me back to the public highway, where I could find a place to eat and sleep. So I plodded on deep into the lonely forest until night overtook me. Just what hour it was when I reached Leiden, I could not tell. But it was certainly late; for, except a few drowsy policemen, the good people, and even the bad, were sound asleep. With a painful number of miles in my legs, I went to bed on a pile of lumber.

A baker’s cart of Holland on the morning round.

The warm sun awoke me early—before the first shopkeeper was astir. It was Sunday, so I was not able to buy any food. Still hungry, I set off toward Haarlem. On those flat lowlands it was disagreeably hot. Yet the peasants, in their uncomfortable Sunday clothes, plodded for miles along the dusty highway to the village church.

The men marched along sadly, as if they were going to prison. The women, stout, and painfully awkward in their stiffly starched skirts, tramped perspiringly behind the men. Even the children, the frolicking, romping youngsters of the day before, were imprisoned in home-made strait-jackets, and suffered discomfort in uncomplaining silence. Yet one and all spoke a pleasant word to me as they passed.

Ever since leaving Rotterdam, I had noticed that there were no wells in country places. I had so far been able to quench my thirst only in the villages. But toward noon on this hot Sunday I became so thirsty that I finally turned in at the only place in sight, a farm cottage. Beside the road ran the ever-present canal. A narrow foot-bridge crossed it to the gateway leading to the cottage. Around the house ran a branch of the main waterway, giving the farmer a place to moor his canal-boat. I could not open the gate, and I had to shout again and again before any one in the house heard me. At last, from around the corner of the building a very heavy woman came into view, bearing down upon me like an ocean liner sailing into a calm harbor. I could not speak Dutch, but I did the best I could. Perhaps the lady spoke some German, so I said: “Ein Glass Wasser, bitte.”

“Vat?”

It could do no harm to give my mother tongue a trial:

“A glass of water.”

“Eh!”

I tried a mixture of the two languages:

“Ein glass of vater.”

This time she understood.

“Vater?” shrieked the lady, with such force that the rooster in the back yard leaped sidewise a distance of six feet. “Vater!”

“Ja, Vater, bitte.”

A deep silence followed—a silence so intense that one could have heard a fly pass by a hundred feet above. Slowly the lady placed a heavy hand on the gate between us. Perhaps she was wondering if it were strong enough to keep out the madman on the other side. Then, with a snort, she wheeled about and waddled toward the house. Close under the eaves of the cottage hung a tin basin. Snatching it down, she sailed for the canal behind the house, stooped, dipped up a basinful of that very same weed-clogged water that flowed by at my feet, and moved back across the yard to offer it to me with a patient sigh. After that, whenever I became thirsty, I got my drink from roadside canals after the manner of beasts of the field—and Hollanders.

Long before I reached Haarlem, I came upon the great flower farms. I saw more and more of these as I neared the town. I passed through the city of tulips and out onto the broad, straight highway that leads to Amsterdam. It ran as straight as a bee line to where it disappeared in a fog of rising heat-waves. Throughout its length it was crowded with vehicles, horseback riders, and, above all, with wheelmen who would not turn aside an inch for me, but drove me again and again into the wayside ditch.

I reached Amsterdam late in the afternoon; and, after much wandering in and out among the canals, I found a room in a garret overhanging the sluggish waterway. The place was clean, as we have heard all places are in Holland, and there was a coffee-house close at hand, where eggs, milk, cheeses, and dairy products of all kinds were served at small cost and in cleanly surroundings.

I visited parks, museums, and the laborers’ quarters in Amsterdam, and every evening spent a long time searching for my canal-side garret, because it looked so much like other canal-side garrets.