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tracts that stood in a special rack in the school library. Concentrationcamps fascinated us. Mashed bloody flesh. Bayonets stuck in the goolies. Sir, say what you will, we half-become what we hate. Would we, any of us, have had it otherwise, the film run back to the time when there were no gas-chambers and castrations without anaesthetic, then a new, sinless, reel put in the projector? We will these horrors to happen and then we want to feel good about not wreaking vengeance in kind. Roper and I, instead of Father-Byrne-Shylock dribbling over the reports from black Germany, would have done better to sweat it all out in a decent bout of sex in the chapel. I said to Roper: ‘What about good and evil?’
    â€˜It seems reasonable to suppose,’ said Roper, chewing on a fibre of stewed mutton, ‘that good is the general name we give to what we all aspire to, whatever thing it happens to be. I think it’s all a matter of ignorance and the overcoming of ignorance. Evil comes out of ignorance.’
    â€˜The Germans are said to be the least ignorant people in the world.’
    He had no real answer to that. But he said: ‘There are particular fields of ignorance. They’re politically ignorant, that’s their trouble. Perhaps it’s not their fault. The German states were very late in being unified, or something.’ He was very vague about it all. ‘And then there are all those forests, full of tree-gods.’
    â€˜You mean they have atavistic tendencies?’
    He didn’t know what the hell he meant. He knew nothing now except the trilogy of sciences he was studying for the Higher School Certificate. He was becoming both full and empty at the same time. He was turning into a
thing
, growing out of boyhood into thinghood, not manhood – a highly efficient artefact crammed with non-human knowledge.
    â€˜And,’ I asked, ‘what will you do when war breaks out? Just say that it’s all a matter of ignorance and the poor sods can’t help it? Because they’ll be coming for us, you know. Poison gas and all.’
    He suddenly seemed to realise that the war was going to touchhim as well as other people. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t thought about that. That’s going to be a bit of a nuisance, isn’t it? There’s this question of my state scholarship, you see.’ There was no doubt that he was going to get one of those; his examination results were going to be brilliant.
    â€˜Well,’ I said, ‘think about it. Think about the Jews. Einstein and Freud and so on. The Nazis regard science as a kind of international Jewish conspiracy.’
    â€˜They have some of the finest scientists in the world,’ said Roper.
    â€˜Had,’ I said. ‘They’re getting rid of most of them now. That’s why they can’t win. But it’ll take a long time to persuade them they can’t win.’
    That was a lovely summer. Roper and I, with ten pounds each in our wallets, hitch-hiked through Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and France. We had a month of bread and cheese and cheap wine, of the ‘
J’aime Berlin
’ pun about Chamberlain the umbrella man, of war talk under brilliant sun. We spent one night in our sleeping-bags near the teeth of the Maginot Line, feeling well protected. We were back in England three days before war broke out. Our examination results had come through in our absence in soon-to-be-locked-up Europe. I’d done well; Roper had done magnificently. There was some talk of my going to the School of Slavonic Studies in London; Roper had to wait for news of his scholarship. We were both drawn, during the interim time, to the only community we knew; we went back to school.
    Father Byrne was now very good as Suffering Ireland. He came from Cork and hinted that his sister had been raped by the Black and Tans during the Troubles. ‘Warmongering England,’ he cried in morning assembly.