Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
And as you approach the town--and as you leave it--and as you walk
through its streets, the broad calm empty-looking ones, or the narrow
thoroughfares whose houses seem so near to each other, whether you climb
or descend--or cross bridges, or gaze at churches, or step out on your
balcony at night to look at the mountains and the moon--always it seems
that from some point you can see it gazing down at you--the citadel of
Hohen-Salzburg.
It was to Salzburg they went next, because at Salzburg was to be found
the man who looked like a hair-dresser and who worked in a barber's
shop. Strange as it might seem, to him also must be carried the Sign.
"There may be people who come to him to be shaved--soldiers, or men who
know things," The Rat worked it out, "and he can speak to them when he
is standing close to them. It will be easy to get near him. You can go
and have your hair cut."
The journey from Munich was not a long one, and during the latter part
of it they had the wooden-seated third-class carriage to themselves.
Even the drowsy old peasant who nodded and slept in one corner got out
with his bundles at last. To Marco the mountains were long-known wonders
which could never grow old. They had always and always been so old!
Surely they had been the first of the world! Surely they had been
standing there waiting when it was said "Let there be Light." The Light
had known it would find them there. They were so silent, and yet it
seemed as if they said some amazing thing--something which would take
your breath from you if you could hear it. And they never changed. The
clouds changed, they wreathed them, and hid them, and trailed down them,
and poured out storm torrents on them, and thundered against them, and
darted forked lightnings round them. But the mountains stood there
afterwards as if such things had not been and were not in the world.
Winds roared and tore at them, centuries passed over them--centuries of
millions of lives, of changing of kingdoms and empires, of battles and
world-wide fame which grew and died and passed away; and temples
crumbled, and kings' tombs were forgotten, and cities were buried and
others built over them after hundreds of years--and perhaps a few stones
fell from a mountain side, or a fissure was worn, which the people below
could not even see. And that was all. There they stood, and perhaps
their secret was that they had been there for ever and ever. That was
what the mountains said to Marco, which was why he did not want to talk
much, but sat and gazed out of the carriage window.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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