Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [52]
‘You actually mean–’
‘Girls together.’
He stared at her. Then he threw his head back and roared with laughter.
Chapter 12
Court Jester
They left the Schloss at midday, saying goodbye to their hostess. Then they had driven down the winding road, leaving the Schloss high above them and they had come at last, after many hours of driving, to a stronghold in the Dolomites–an amphitheatre in the mountains where meetings, concerts and reunions of the various Youth Groups were held.
Renata had brought him there, his guide, and from his seat on the bare rock he had watched what went on and had listened. He understood a little more what she had been talking about earlier that day. This great mass gathering, animated as all mass gatherings can be whether they are called by an evangelistic religious leader in Madison Square, New York, or in the shadow of a Welsh church or in a football crowd or in the super demonstrations which marched to attack embassies and police and universities and all the rest of it.
She had brought him there to show him the meaning of that one phrase: ‘The Young Siegfried’.
Franz Joseph, if that was really his name, had addressed the crowd. His voice, rising, falling, with its curious exciting quality, its emotional appeal, had held sway over that groaning, almost moaning crowd of young women and young men. Every word that he had uttered had seemed pregnant with meaning, had held incredible appeal. The crowd had responded like an orchestra. His voice had been the baton of the conductor. And yet, what had the boy said? What had been the young Siegfried’s message? There were no words that he could remember when it came to an end, but he knew that he had been moved, promised things, roused to enthusiasm. And now it was over. The crowd had surged round the rocky platform, calling, crying out. Some of the girls had been screaming with enthusiasm. Some of them had fainted. What a world it was nowadays, he thought. Everything used the whole time to arouse emotion. Discipline? Restraint? None of those things counted for anything any more. Nothing mattered but to feel.
What sort of a world, thought Stafford Nye, could that make?
His guide had touched him on the arm and they had disentangled themselves from the crowd. They had found their car and the driver had taken them by roads with which he was evidently well acquainted, to a town and an inn on a mountain side where rooms had been reserved for them.
They walked out of the inn presently and up the side of a mountain by a well-trodden path until they came to a seat. They sat there for some moments in silence. It was then that Stafford Nye had said again, ‘Pasteboard.’
For some five minutes or so they sat looking down the valley, then Renata said, ‘Well?’
‘What are you asking me?’
‘What you think so far of what I have shown you?’
‘I’m not convinced,’ said Stafford Nye.
She gave a sigh, a deep, unexpected sigh.
‘That’s what I hoped you would say.’
‘It’s none of it true, is it? It’s a gigantic show. A show put on by a producer–a complete group of producers, perhaps.
‘That monstrous woman pays the producer, hires the producer. We’ve not seen the producer. What we’ve seen today is the star performer.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘He’s not real either,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘He’s just an actor. A first-class actor, superbly produced.’
A sound surprised him. It was Renata laughing. She got up from her seat. She looked suddenly excited, happy, and at the same time faintly ironical.
‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d see. I knew you’d have your feet on the ground. You’ve always known, haven’t you, about everything you’ve met in life? You’ve known humbug, you’ve known everything and everyone for what they really are.
‘No need to go to Stratford and see Shakespearean plays to know what part you are cast for–The Kings and the great men have to have a Jester–The King’s Jester who tells the King the truth, and talks common sense, and makes fun of all the things that are taking