Vampire Mission [antikvár]

War seemed a distant concept, almost inconceivable, in the peaceof these pine-clad Transylvanlan Alps, True, to the north theRussians were rolling back the Wehrrnacht. In France the Anglo-American invasion force was driving towards the Rhine In ItalyGerman resistance to the Allied drive north was crumpling. In theFar East even the Japanese were beginning to foresee theirultimate defeat.But in snow-bound Vetroseni they knew of none of these things.No newspapers came to Vetroseni, high in its remote valley. Hadthe newspapers come, there would have been few who could haveread them, Education had barely nibbled at the edge of theRumanian mountains. Their inhabitants lived as had their fathers,their grandfathers and all their ancestors back into history hadlived.It was true that the schoolmaster had a wireless set, and some-times when a German column came by the village he was able toget his battery charged and listen to the news. But the news did notmuch appeal to him for the news was always bad. He could onlybe glad that he was not himself a German to listen to such tales ofdaily disaster, of defeats, of ration cuts and cities bombed, Uphere in the mountains there was none of that.In the village there were few to join the schoolmaster when hedid listen to his set. The villagers9 attitude was that one had heardof science and doubtless it was a very fine thing for those wholived in great cities from which the good God preserve us. But tolisten to the voices from a distance, the music conjured out of theair - was it not for some such happening that one's great-great-great-grandmother was burned at the stake as a witch ? For one-self, no doubt it was very fine to listen to this science; but it wouldhave been called magic in another age. Though the schoolmastersaid that magic was the name that ignorance gave to that which itdid not understand, there was still the burning stake lying buriedbeneath the clay floor of the market.