Read Online The Gospel Of Judas by Simon Mawer - Free Book Online Page B

like directing the operations of the fifth male, the servant who takes things from the back of the Mercedes – hampers, a tablecloth, a canteen of cutlery – and carries them through the entrance into the amphitheatre. The woman instructs him like a general deploying troops, while her husband – the suited, hatted man – watches her keenly. ‘Over there. Not here. And those there, so that people can take them as they wish. And put the wine in the shade. We used to picnic in the woods at Buchlov,’ she explains to the others, as thought to justify her orders by claiming great experience in the matter. ‘Carriages, not cars. And tables, chairs, everything. And my brother would organise games for the children …’ The white cloth is laid out in the very centre of the theatre, as though a performance is expected and all these are props – the silver cutlery, the long-stemmed glasses, the white bone china. The servant makes a number of journeys to and fro, from cars topicnic, while a peasant with the donkey cart observes them soundlessly from the road.
    What does he make of it? Seven adults and a young boy, all milling round in the spring sunshine, exclaiming at the place, at the rough tiers of seating that rise up and outwards from the space in the centre like ripples in pond, all talking in tones he cannot grasp, words that mean nothing. But he knows them as German. That much. ‘
Ciao, nonno
,’ the boy calls to him in accented Italian. He acknowledges the greeting with a toothless grin before thumping his donkey on the flank and continuing along the road towards the village.
    ‘Spätlese,’ says the tall man, picking a bottle out of a hamper. The label is elaborate with Gothic script, bearing a picture that looks like a scene from the
Ring der Nibelungen
. The glass is beaded with condensation. ‘Wonderful.’
    ‘I prefer
our
wine,’ his wife says.
    ‘Absurd. Your wine is Austrian rubbish. This is the finest Rheinwein.’
    ‘Not Austrian, Moravian.’
    ‘Worse. Nothing but Jews and Slavs.’
    There is laughter. He draws the cork (this is a picnic: the servants can’t do
everything
) and pours the pale wine and they all take a glass and hold it to the light and sip, and agree with Herr Huber that this is delicious. They sip and swirl and make noises with their appreciative lips. Frau Huber bends down to adjust something on the tablecloth and the young man pauses to watch her skirt’s soft rise. She wears silk stockings (rare these days). They are wrinkled slightly at the knee and their seams lead eyes irrevocably upwards into the shadows where one can, for the moment, imagine stocking tops and fasteners and the cool, living silk of flesh. Herr Huber notices theyoung man’s glance, and frowns. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to sit on the ground,’ Frau Huber says, dropping to her knees as though to show the way. Her legs fold demurely beneath her. The men relax. The servant begins to serve the food, awkwardly, far too much part of the group as he stoops to present the ladies with their portions of
prosciutto crudo
(‘not as good as Viennese
Schinken
,’ Herr Huber says) and green figs, far too close to the ruling class and conscious of it.
    And then there is a sound – sudden and intrusive, like the fabric of the blue sky being torn apart. The group pause in their eating – ‘I prefer Prague ham,’ someone is saying – and glance upwards as something dark and silver, something awkward, cruciform, loud, flashes overhead from behind the fringe of holm oak and streaks over the theatre and away over the road and above the umbrella pines, tearing at the sky as though doing it a great hurt.
    ‘
Amerikaner!
’ the boy cries in excitement, getting to his feet and running to the entrance to the theatre as though he might catch the great, dark machine.
    ‘Nonsense,’ says one of the men. ‘Luftwaffe! A Messerschmidt.’
    ‘Leo!’ shouts the woman after the running child. The noise is background now, a