The Hour of the Donkey

The nettle stings on Bastable's hands had risen as painful white blotches in the middle of raspberry-coloured stains. It struck him as ridiculous that they should bother him, such little childish pains— Don't scratch it, Henry, it'll only make it worse. Wrap a dock-leaf round it—at a time like this.

Not just unconcerned. Serene.

His mouth was full of a foul taste, made up of sleep and the stale fumes of alcohol: at some stage last night he hadn't been quite sober, if he hadn't actually been drunk.

Last night—

The night hadn't been dark, as night should be. It had been full of greyness, and black shapes and the flicker of war to the north, like distant thunder and lightning.

And finally the loom of the blacker shape on the road ahead, and the different, slower light of torches—

'Achtung! Achtung! The guttural warning and the torch-beam swung towards him simultaneously, terrifying him and blinding him at the same time. ' Halt!' Stop—

dummy4

' Heil Hitler!' shouted Wimpy confidently.

'Hande hoch! Halt! Halt!' Boots scraped on the road.

'Heil Hitler!' Wimpy shouted again, his voice cracking.

'Kameraden! Kameraden!'

The night was now blinding light and blind darkness, and absolute fear though Wimpy had prepared him for it ('The moment when they'll be as scared as we are, old boy').

'Heil Hitler!' Wimpy positively shrieked out the password this time ('Would you shoot someone who shouted 'God save the King!', old boy? Would you?') They were about to find out, anyway—once and for all!

'Schprekken zee Franz-oh-sisch? Kameraden—Kameraden?'

shouted Wimpy. 'Ich bin Froind—ich bin Froind—ja!'

The boots scraped uneasily, left and right—and closer—in the glare-and-blackness filling Bastable's brain.

More German words—but this time they were beyond his script and meant nothing.

'Ja! Ja!' exclaimed Wimpy eagerly.

The torch-beam left Bastable's face in preference for Wimpy's, dancing the familiar black hat in silhouette in front of him.

For an interminable moment there was no reply. There was only fear crawling around in the silence, and what made it worse for Bastable was that he knew he was sharing it with the Germans: in their place, in the middle of a hostile dummy4

country, at night and alone—even if he'd been winning—he would have been petrified and trigger-happy. And what made it worst of all was that he wasn't in their place: he was at the end of their rifles, and they plainly didn't know what to do next.

No—not worst of all! Worst of all was that there was nothing he could do about it, he was harnessed to the cart like a dumb animal.

'Kameraden!' Wimpy's voice cut through the silence, and Bastable was astonished at the change in it: it wasn't pleading, it wasn't trembling with fear—it was sharp with authority!

'Kameraden!'

' No half-measures, old boy— we've got to go for broke—I shall tell the buggers I'm on a Fifth Column mission of the highest importance, delayed by the damned Englanders of Arras—game leg, and all that!—sent by General Rommel in person—signed and sealed by one of his own staff officers —

with an order to prove it—piece of bloody bumf, but it's bloody bumf that makes the world go round! Bumf, and the bloody cheek to go with it, Harry!'

And Wimpy had both. But would they be enough?

The torch came towards them.

'Franzozisch—Frong-say?'

'Oui. May-ma-gron-mare-est-dalsass—El-sar-ssich, ja?'

dummy4

And Wimpy was even enlisting his Alsatian grandmother to serve with his bit of paper and his bloody cheek . . .

The beam of light played over them nervously. 'Voz papiez, m'sieur?'

'Non. Nicht owsschwhyce—' Wimpy produced—produced with a decisive flourish—the magic piece of bloody bumf on which their lives depended, from which all his great lies were stretched.

The torch illuminated the crumpled piece of paper, and Bastable strained his eyes to make out the rank of the torch-bearer.

Please God—not an officer . . . but not a complete fool, please God! Someone in between . .. say, an NCO with a little imagination, but not too much. Say, just enough to see how useful a Fifth Columnist could be to an advancing army—that had been Wimpy's reasoning.

The torch-bearer was making heavy weather of the paper—he was summoning assistance out of the darkness.