do not approve of auto-stop.”
They assured him that this method of travelling was well-established even in England, and that they had no personal objection to it, had even used it on occasions. They installed the young man, his sandwich, and his rucksack. Christine, rendered thoughtful by the last glimpse of the gherkin as it vanished behind strong white teeth, reached into the food-box and began to compile a mid-morning snack.
“You are also students?” asked their new passenger, as they drove through Rozvadov, a nondescript street- village hardly different from those they had left on the other side of the frontier, except that, lacking the exact German tidiness, it appeared a little shaggier and dustier. “My name is Miroslav Zachar. To my friends Mirek—you will find it easier to remember. I am student of philosophy.”
They told him freely who they were, and what they were reading, and he overflowed with uninhibited questions, produced so naturally and confidently that it was impossible to find any of them offensive. They were on vacation, of course, like him? Was it their first visit to Czechoslovakia? Where were they going to stay in Prague? And where else did they intend to go? He was full of helpful suggestions. Castles, lakes, towns, he knew them all.
“You must do quite a lot of auto-stopping,” said Christine, busy with cheese and crackers. “You seem to have been everywhere.”
“I do it a lot, yes. Every holiday. Sometimes I go with friends, sometimes alone. It is better alone. For one person it is easy to get a lift.”
“And what made you come all the way out here? You
“I have been walking in these hills of the Bohemian Forest. Now I come back to the road, hoping to get a lift back into Prague quickly. This is a good place, foreign cars coming in here, naturally they rush straight to Prague. But I am lucky to meet some more students. That’s nice! I’m glad I time it so good. No, in Prague I have an uncle and aunt, if you will kindly take me so far I can stay with them, and afterwards stop another car,” he said serenely, “to take me on eastwards. Because of course you will be staying in Prague.”
“Perhaps only for one or two nights,” Tossa said suddenly, in that gruff boyish croak of hers, that could be so disconcerting to the unaccustomed ear.
They were on a stretch of road complicated by many climbing bends among trees, but without forks where Dominic could possibly go wrong. Miroslav Zachar abandoned his navigating for a moment to turn his head and study this dark-brown girl seriously. His amiable moon-face shone upon her approvingly.
“You will be going on so soon? But where?”
“Into Slovakia,” she said quite positively, asking no one’s agreement.
“No, really? You go to Bratislava, perhaps?”
“No,” she said, with the same authority; and if no one took her up on it now they were quite certainly committed. And no one did. “No, we want to go to the Tatras. We can make a longer stay in Prague on the way back. Is that the same way you wanted to go? You did say eastwards. Where is your home?”
“My home,” said Mirek, delighted, “is in Liptovsky Mikulas. That is very near the Tatra range. If you are really going so far, and if you would like to have a guide, believe me, I will make it easy for you, I will take care of everything. You have rooms in Prague? No? I can arrange it. The Students’ Union will manage it for us, you’ll see. And I will show you the city. I know it like my hand. How long you would like to stay? One night? Two nights? I shall make a programme for you. And then you will take me with you to Slovakia? I know the best camping-ground on the way, in Javornik, in the most beautiful hills. Oh, I shall work my passage, you will see!”
It sounded like the answer to everything. The others might have demurred at leaving Prague so soon in other circumstances, but with a heaven-sent guide added to the party, gratis, it seemed much the most practical and economic solution to run right through, as Tossa had urged, spend as long as possible in the east, and then make their way back, without a guide, over a road already travelled once. Even if they saw fit to vary it, they would at least know the lie of the land.
“It’s a bargain!” said Tossa, incandescent with eagerness. “One night in Prague, if you can really work it for us…”
“Two!” Christine demurred.
“One! We shall come back, and we shall know the basic lay-out then, we can easily find our way around. And then we go on to the Tatras. Mirek, you must know those parts awfully well, if it’s your home. Do you know a place—not in the High Tatras, actually, in the Low Tatras—called Zbojska Dolina?”
“Dig that!” said Toddy, impressed. “The girl’s been studying the map.”
“You have so good a map?” Mirek was astonished and respectful. “It is only a small valley. I think it is not marked on any map I know. We do not have many such large-scale maps for walking, like yours.”
Tossa fortified herself with a large bite from her cheese cracker, and made the most of the muffling noise. “No, it isn’t on the maps. I knew somebody once who stayed there, and they—she—said it was lovely. I always thought I’d like to go there.”
Geese, parading the dusty open green of the small town of Bor, scuffled with indignant shrieks from before the wheels of the van. The small, dilapidated castle mouldered peacefully among its trees on their right, as they curled through the single deserted street. Everything was coloured a faint, neutral brown. New pastel paint would have shattered a sacred silence. Border Bohemia drowsed, veiled itself, and let them pass by.
“Hey!” reminded Dominic peremptorily. “Which way at this fork? I can’t see any ‘Praha’.”
Children at the crossroads, in diminutive shorts and faded cotton sweaters, bounced, smiled and waved at them energetically. Of the welcome extended to foreigners, on this level, there was no possible doubt. They were the glitter in the children’s world.
“To the left,” said Mirek, sliding hastily back to his duty.
“This friend of mine,” Tossa’s voice persisted, doggedly offhand behind Dominic’s shoulders, “stayed at a little inn somewhere in this Zbojska Dolina. It was called the Riavka hut. Do you know it?”
They cruised down into a river valley, level green meadows on the near side of it, a sharp escarpment beyond, and climbed out again by a winding road, glimpsing silver on either hand as they turned.
