Читать книгу The Dawn of Reckoning - James Hilton - Страница 7

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All through the summer night the boat throbbed its way up the Danube, and in the morning the dawn rose on a wide green plain which the river split into halves. At intervals during the night, calls had been made at sleeping villages by the river-side; passengers had embarked and disembarked; once Monsell had been awakened by the slight bump of the boat against a pier.

He rose fairly early and breakfasted alone, for his mother never left her cabin until lunch-time. The dark-coloured rye bread and bitter coffee were at once refreshing and unsatisfying, but he lingered long over them, with the August sunlight pouring on him through the windows of the saloon. He was quite happy. This idea of his mother's—to take the slow comfortable journey by river-steamer instead of the quicker uncomfortable journey by rail—was proving an excellent one. He smiled, thinking what a remark able woman she was, how all the most interesting people everywhere clustered round her, and how supremely competent she was to decide everything for herself.

After he had paid the waiter he took a notebook and pen from his pocket and continued a letter to a friend in England.

"I am writing this on the Danube boat some where between Mohacs and Buda-Pesth. We ought to reach Buda about eight this evening, and what we shall do when we get there I don't know. Probably we shall stay a few days, or, if mother really takes a fancy to the place, a few weeks or months—you know how everything depends on her. She's enjoying herself immensely, and so am I. The scenery and the weather are both delightful.

"We had quite an adventure yesterday when a young Hungarian girl tried to drown herself by diving into the river at night. One of the crew jumped in after her, but eventually she saved herself by swimming to the boat and being hauled up. Rather ignominious, eh?—Shows how hard it is for a swimmer to commit suicide by drowning. There was no doctor on board, so mother had to attend to her..."

Through the saloon windows he could see the shore rapidly approaching, and in the near distance a quaint little brown-roofed village basking in the sun. It was too good to be missed, so he interrupted his letter and climbed on to the upper-deck, whence he could view the interesting and sometimes amusing scene of embarkation. Scrubby little brown-faced children stood barefooted on the beach, cheering and waving coloured handkerchiefs; a single blue-uniformed gendarme guarded the pier and examined the papers of those who wanted to land. From the faces that filled every available window-space, it was obvious that the arrival of the bi-weekly boat was an important event. For those on board, of course, it was a mere pause in the peaceful monotony of the journey. Admiring remarks were passed in a variety of languages; cameras clicked; and then, after a few moments of bustle and chatter from down below, the gangways were hauled up and the paddles began to chug their way into midstream again.

Monsell went down the stairway into the steerage quarters, for the scene there was always interesting after a halt. Brightly-dressed peasants who had just come aboard were hurrying about with their bundles, finding places where they could curl up and sleep, and chattering shrilly all the while. A group of tall dark-skinned youths were singing a sleepy ballad to the music of a mandolin, and the remorseless chug-chug of the engines beat out a calm monotonous rhythm as the boat crawled slowly against the stream. The sun was rising high in the sky, and it was already very hot. The whole mingling of colour and sound fascinated Monsell, and he passed intricately amongst the crowd, smiling apologetically when once or twice he collided with somebody. The extreme forepart of the boat was cooler, with the breeze blowing through it, but it stank abominably with the various crates of perishables that had been loaded up during the journey. And it was there, almost hidden behind a huge packing-case, that he saw a girl sitting disconsolately on a heap of rope.

Her feet and legs were bare, and she was leaning forward with her chin resting on her hands, so that her face was shaded. There was something so instinctively despairing in her attitude that Monsell stopped, too acutely embarrassed to go any nearer. For almost a minute he stood watching, expecting her to move, but she did not. The half-sad, half-passionate lilt of the ballad-singers kept coming to him faint and then full on the changing breeze...

"M'sieur..."

He started at the interruption. One of the stewards had come up just behind him—a fat greasy fellow whose smattering of half a dozen languages made him one of the most important officials on board. He smiled at Monsell with a magnificent array of gold-filled teeth.

"M'sieur regard the—the girl, hein?...Gestern—yaisterday she—" he made a gesture with his arms over the rail of the boat. "Comprenez?"

"I understand," replied Monsell coldly.

The girl looked up, hearing the sound of voices. Monsell could see that she was hardly more than a child, but a child of astonishing beauty. And she was angry, with pouting rosebud lips and dark violet eyes stained by weeping. For a moment she stared back at the two men who were staring at her; then without any warning, broke into a passionate torrent of words that seemed to rise tempestuously up to the final syllable, which rang out like a pistol-shot.

The steward said something in reply, and Monsell turned to him and spoke rather curtly. "What did she say?" he asked.

The other's greasy forehead puckered as he prepared himself for the effort of translation. "She say," he began cautiously, with his gold teeth gleaming in the sunlight, "She say—she wish—to be dead...And she say—also—she wish—that nobody—see her..."

Monsell turned away and looked hard at the rivet, glaring under the sun's fierce rays. "Tell her I'm sorry," he answered uncomfortably, moving away amongst the litter of the deck.

He heard the steward muttering something in that strange incomprehensible language, and then, as he turned a corner, another sound was on him like a flood. All the men and women in the steerage, excepting those asleep, were joining in some wild and throbbing refrain to which the thrumming of the mandolin added a final touch of weirdness.

"Teli van a Duna,

Tán még ki is szalad.

Szivemben is alig

Fér meg az indulat..."*

* From the Reszket a bokor (The Tembling Bush) by Sándor Petöfi (01.01.1823-ca. July 1849). High water in the Danube, Enough, perhaps, to breast the banks. So full also is my heart With feelings nigh to overflow.