Latitudes and Liberties
Under the new regime our privileges were considerably extended. A few days after the Armistice, for instance, we were permitted to be present at a cinematographic entertainment.
The show was held in a rather dull and sad little hall, on the roof and walls of which, however, some artist had made valiant efforts at decoration with impossible pots and vases of impossible roses—neither white, nor red, nor even blue.
Behind the screen was a suggestion of a small stage, on which, doubtless, tragedy histrionic had been achieved in the days before tragedy overtook the town and the country generally. A dispirited-looking woman seemed to be in charge of affairs, and under her rather anxious direction our orderlies—all out for the afternoon—wheeled a piano into the hall, on which Lieutenant Davies and a German soldier, who has studied at the Berlin Conservatorium, alternately played melodies classic and cinematographic during the performance. A preliminary notice flung on the screen, “Rauchen ist Verboten,” went unheeded.
The first film, which gave rather charming glimpses of German family life, represented the adventures and misadventures of a poor little girl, who, after drinking a magic elixir, dreamt that she had become the daughter of a Graf. Mark Twain’s “Prince and the Pauper” in more modern guise. Second item, the efforts of a policeman to bring home his sheaves with him in the shape of a very sly and slippery tramp. The third, a Lustspiel in four most amatory acts, introducing the customary machinery, so well known to the cinema stage, of love missives, magnificent motor-cars, bedrooms and bathrooms; keyholes betwixt these apartments; the never-failing porter with the inevitable trunk which forms the last inevitable stronghold and sanctuary for the inevitable hapless lover pursued by the inevitable unhappy husband.
Altogether, not too bad an entertainment for the money, which was one mark per head—Lagergeld, we having not yet been supplied with ordinary currency. This was the first night I had been out after dark since my capture, and it was pleasant to step free upon the pavement, and to see the comfortable lights in the shops. At a second cinema entertainment, we had—by request—a series of pictures showing German soldiers at work and play in rest billets.
In the outskirts of the forest stood the Gesellschaft Gasthaus, with, in the window, announcement of an entertainment in the form of an acrobatic act by “Les Original Alfonso Geissler.” The handbill, highly coloured, represented in one part of it, Monsieur, in evening dress, and with all the suavity of the dove, making request for a glass of beer from Mademoiselle at a public bar; in a second tableau discovers him, sloughed of his garb of respectability and, arrayed in multi-coloured tights, displaying all the cunning and pliancy of the serpent in marvellous contortions among the barroom properties. The proprietor informed us that he and his wife and three sons—one the hero of the handbill—were all travelling acrobats, that they had appeared frequently in England, and that they were in Sweden when the war broke out. It was observable that during the entertainment—which, despite the bill, proved to be entirely cinematographic—the proprietor obtained his incidental music by making demand upon several of the talented among the audience.
In this connection a rather notable incident occurred, though here it seemed to pass without note. A boy of about fourteen, who had earned his admission by operating the cinema for the major part of the evening, came quietly forward, took the violin from the rather faltering hand of a young soldier who had been agonizing for the last hour, and commenced to play with a sure and virile bow. He proved to be a friend of our German soldier pianist, and like him has studied at the Berlin Conservatorium.