INGO

"ZUM ANDENKEN"

The first night we sat down at the inn table for supper I lost my heart

to Ingo! Ingo was just ten years old. He wore a little sailor suit of

blue and white striped linen; his short trousers showed chubby brown

calves above his white socks; his round golden head cropped close in the

German fashion. His blue eyes were grave and thoughtful. By great good

fortune we sat next each other at table, and in my rather grotesque

German I began a conversation. How careful Ingo was not to laugh at the

absurdities of my syntax! How very courteous he was!

Looking back into the mysterious panorama of pictures that we call

memory, I can see the long dining room of the old gasthaus in the Black

Forest, where two Americans on bicycles appeared out of nowhere and

asked for lodging. They were the first Americans who had ever been seen

in that remote valley, and the Gasthaus zur Krone ("the Crown Inn")

found them very amusing. Perhaps you have never seen a country tavern

in the Schwarzwald? Then you have something to live for. A long, low

building with a moss-grown roof and tremendous broad eaves sheltering

little galleries; and the barn under the same roof for greater warmth in

winter. One side of the house was always strong with an excellent homely

aroma of cow and horse; one had only to open a door in the upper hall, a

door that looked just like a bedroom entrance, to find oneself in the

haymow. There I used to lie for hours reading, and listening to the

summer rain thudding on the shingles. Sitting in the little gallery

under the eaves, looking happily down the white road where the yellow

coach brought the mail twice a day, one could see the long vista of the

valley, the women with bright red jackets working in the fields, and the

dark masses of forest on the hillside opposite. There was much rain that

summer; the mountains were often veiled all day long in misty shreds of

cloud, and the two Americans sat with pipes and books at the long dining

table, greeted by gales of laughter on the part of the robust landlord's

niece when they essayed the native idiom. "_Sie arbeiten immer_!" she

used to say; "_Sie werden krank_!" ("You're always working; you'll be

ill!")

There is a particular poignance in looking back now on those happy days

two years before the war. Nowhere in all the world, I suppose, are there

more cordial, warmhearted, simple, human people than the South Germans.

On the front of the inn there was a big yellow metal sign, giving the

military number of the district, and the mobilization points for the

Landsturm and the Landwehr, and we realized that even here the careful

organization of the military power had numbered and ticketed every

village. But what did it mean to us? War was a thing unthinkable in

those days. We bicycled everywhere, climbed, mountains, bathed in

waterfalls, chatted fluent and unorthodox German with everyone we met,

and played games with Ingo.

Dear little Ingo! At the age when so many small boys are pert, impudent,

self-conscious, he was the simplest, happiest, gravest little creature.

His hobby was astronomy, and often I would find him sitting quietly in a

corner with a book about the stars. On clear evenings we would walk

along the road together, in the mountain hush that was only broken by

the brook tumbling down the valley, and he would name the constellations

for me. His little round head was thrilled through and through by the

immense mysteries of space; sometimes at meal times he would fall into a

muse, forgetting his beef and gravy. Once I asked him at dinner what he

was thinking of. He looked up with his clear gray-blue eyes and flashing

smile: "_Von den Sternen_!" ("Of the stars.")

The time after supper was reserved for games, in which Wolfgang, Ingo's

smaller brother (aged seven), also took part. Our favourite pastimes

were "Irrgarten" and "Galgenspiel," in which we found enormous

amusement. Galgenspiel was Ingo's translation of "Hangman," a simple

pastime which had sometimes entertained my own small brother on rainy

days; apparently it was new in Germany. One player thinks of a word, and

sets down on paper a dash for each letter in this word. It is the task

of the other to guess the word, and he names the letters of the alphabet

one by one. Every time he mentions a letter that is contained in the

word you must set it down in its proper place in the word, but every

time he mentions a letter that is not in the word you draw a portion of

a person depending from a gallows; the object of course being for him to

guess the word before you finish drawing the effigy. We played the game

entirely in German, and I can still see Ingo's intent little face bent

over my preposterous drawings, cudgelling his quick and happy little

brain to spot the word before the hangman could finish his grim task.

"Quick, Ingo!" I would cry. "You will get yourself hung!" and he would

laugh in his own lovable way. There was never a jollier way of learning

a foreign language than by playing games with Ingo.

The other favourite pastime was drawing mazes on paper, labyrinths of

winding paths which must be traversed by a pencil point. The task was to

construct a maze so complicated that the other could not find his way

out, starting at the middle. We would sit down at opposite ends of the

room to construct our mysteries of blind alleys and misleading passages,

then each one would be turned loose in the "irrgarten" drawn by the

other. Ingo would stand at my side while I tried in obstinate stupidity

to find my way through his little puzzle; his eager heart inside his

sailor blouse would pound like a drum when I was nearing the dangerous

places where an exit might be won. He would hold his breath so audibly,

and his blue eyes would grow so anxious, that I always knew when not to

make the right turning, and my pencil would wander on in hopeless

despair until he had mercy on me and led me to freedom.

After lunch every day, while waiting for the mail-coach to come

trundling up the valley, Ingo and I used to sit in the little balcony

under the eaves, reading. He introduced me to his favourite book _Till

Eulenspiegel_, and we sped joyously through the adventures of that

immortal buffoon of German folk-lore. We took turns reading aloud: every

paragraph or so I would appeal for an explanation of something.

Generally I understood well enough, but it was such a delight to hear

Ingo strive to make the meaning plain. What a puckering of his bright

boyish forehead, what a grave determination to elucidate the fable! What

a mingling of ecstatic pride in having a grown man as pupil, with

deference due to an elder. Ingo was a born gentleman and in his fiercest

transports of glee never forgot his manners! I would make some purposely

ludicrous shot at the sense, and he would double up with innocent mirth.

His clear laughter would ring out, and his mother, pacing a digestive

stroll on the highway below us, would look up crying in the German way,

"_Gott! wie er freut sich_!" The progress of our reading was held up by

these interludes, but I could never resist the temptation to start Ingo

explaining.

Ingo having made me free of his dearest book, it was only fair to

reciprocate. So one day Lloyd and I bicycled down to Freiburg, and

there, at a heavenly "bookhandler's," I found a copy of 'Treasure

Island' in German. Then there was revelry in the balcony! I read the

tale aloud, and I wish R.L.S. might have seen the shining of Ingo's

eyes! Alas, the vividness of the story interfered with the little lad's

sleep, and his mother was a good deal disturbed about this violent yarn

we were reading together. How close he used to sit beside me as we read

of the dark doings at the _Admiral Benbow_: and how his face would fall

when, clear and hollow from the sounding-board of the hills, came the

quick _clop, clop_ of the mail-man's horses.

I don't know anything that has ever gone deeper in my memory than those

hours spent with Ingo. I have a little snapshot of him I took the misty,

sorrowful morning when I bicycled away to Basel and left the Gasthaus

zur Krone in its mountain valley. The blessed little lad stands up erect

and stiff in the formal German way, and I can see his blue eyes alight

with friendliness, and a little bit unhappy because his eccentric

American comrade was gomg away and there would be no more afternoons

with _Till Eulenspiegel_ on the balcony. I wonder if he thinks of me as

often as I do of him? He gave me a glimpse into the innocent heaven of a

child's heart that I can never forget. By now he is approaching sixteen,

and I pray that whatever the war may take away from me it will spare me

my Ingo. It is strange and sad to recall that his parting present to me

was a drawing of a Zeppelin, upon which he toiled manfully all one

afternoon. I still have it in my scrapbook.

And I wonder if he ever looks in the old copy of "Hauff's Märchen" that

I bought for him in Freiburg, and sees the English words that he was to

learn how to translate when he should grow older! As I remember them,

they ran like this:

For Ingo to learn English will very easy be

If someone is as kind to him as he has been to me;

Plays games with him, reads fairy tales, corrects all his mistakes,

And never laughs too loudly at the blunders that he makes--

Then he will find, as I did, how well two pleasures blend:

To learn a foreign language, and to make a foreign friend.

If I love anybody in the world, I love Ingo. And that is why I cannot

get up much enthusiasm for hymns of hate.