Old Acquaintance by David Stacton Page B

visible behind the actors, with interest. It looked far away, like a farm one’s family had once owned somewhere, before one’s own time.
    It was at least a place to go back to, whereas Charlie, she suspected, merely had somewhere to go next. And even that had to be planned in advance, rather carefully.
    It is difficult to go on traveling without somewhere to go back to. It is even more difficult to have nowhere to go but on. But that is the way life is. We have to move. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught napping.

XXI
    CHARLIE proposed a walk. The walks and sights of Mondorf were not extensive. There were the main street, the French border, the empty fields, and their fellow guests. Charlie chose the main street. Though he professed himself to be charmed by out-of-the-way places, it was their one fashionable quarter, if any, that he headed for when he got there. If they had no fashionable quarter, then he made do with the main street.
    Halfway down the street was the sort of smart gift shop that specializes in Icelandic sweaters, bedwarmers from Trinidad, and sari scarves, but still, you could see that Mondorf was catching up.
    “La Gazza Ladra Import Company,” said Charlie informatively. “It’s an international cartel.” It was his name for all those establishments run by young men who have revolutionized simple peasant crafts in countries that by and large don’t have any. If it comes from Manchester or Paris they wouldn’t be caught dead selling it. But if it is bright and sparkles, they bring it home. Thus the name.
    Beyond this cultural beachhead (Kashmiri wastepaper baskets seemed to be moving well), the landscape to the right became bucolic, though more in the manner of Maurice de Guérin than of Theocritus. Luxembourg had never had a famous poet. What it had had, they were about to see.
    “Sometimes I come here to meditate upon the nature of things, amid the family tombs,” said Charlie appreciatively.
    “What’s that?”
    “Ah, you’ve caught a glimpse of it. That’s fine.”
    To their left a shallow brook not so much flowed as crawled beneath adolescent trees. Down this stream white swans serenely glided, their feet dragging the bottom, only to run out of water and have to waddle across to the next patch with the irritated look of fishwives hiking their skirts up to cross a muddy lane. Then down they went again, serenely gliding. It was as much a part of etiquette not to watch the waddle as it was to admire the glide. Nature has much to teach.
    Beyond the swans, who avoided it, was a cement monolith decorated with bronze plaques. The local great man, no doubt, but he seemed unusually muscular.
    “Come,” said Charlie.
    An Art Nouveau young man with heavy features peeped out from behind his own flexed arm, as though from behind a boa. Lotte went round to the left. The plaque there showed merely a thigh. “What’s on the other side?”
    “His right bicep,” said Charlie. “He was European Champion Weightlifter about 1906. He’s the national hero.”
    “Oh.”
    “Well, you wanted to see the sights. You should go round the back. On the back he is holding a quadriga in his teeth. You know what I’ve taken to doing in the afternoons?”
    “What?”
    “I go to the river. It’s the Moselle, on the Trier road. It’s rather pretty.”
    So they went. It was something to do.
    Charlie seemed to be looking for one particular place. After a while he found it, though it looked no different to her than any other place they had passed. She had to grant the woods here looked hospitable, thin, with low shrubs at different heights so that the light came from everywhere, and varied green with green, into intangible surf.
    She’d never seen Charlie anywhere but indoors until afterdark in her life, but he led the way as though he knew the place. They came out of the surf onto a broad green shelf that sloped to the river, which was placid and shallow here.
    Charlie sat down with his hands across his