lesson 57

   I stopped to let the car cool off and to
study the map. I had expected to be near
my objective by now, but everything still
seemed alien to me. I was only five when
my father had taken me abroad, and that
was eighteen years ago. When my mother
had died after a tragic accident, he did
not quickly recover from the shock and
loneliness. Everything around him was
full of her presence, continually re-
opening the wound. So he decided to
emigrate. In the new country he became
absorbed in making a new life for the
two of us, so that he gradually ceased to
grieve. He did not marry again and I was
brought up without a woman's care; but
I lacked for nothing, for he was both father and mother to me. He always meant
to go back one day but not to stay. His roots and mine had become too firmly
embedded in the new land. But he wanted to see the old folk again and to visit
my mother's grave. He became mortally ill a few months before we had planned
to go and, when he knew that he was dying, he made me promise to go on
my own.
I hired a car the day after landing and bought a comprehensive book of maps,
which I found most helpful on the cross country journey, but which I did not
think I should need on the last stage. It was not that I actually remembered
anything at all. But my father had described over and over again what we should
see at every milestone, after leaving the nearest town, so that I was positive I
should recognize it as familiar territory. Well, I had been wrong, for I was
now lost.
I looked at the map and then at the milometer. I had come ten miles since
leaving the town, and at this point, according to my father, I should be looking
at farms and cottages in a valley, with the spire of the church of our village
showing in the far distance. I could see no valley, no farms, no cottages and no
church spire--only a lake. I decided that I must have taken a wrong turning
somewhere. So I drove back to the town and began to retrace the route, taking
frequent glances at the map. I landed up at the same corner. The curious thing
was that the lake was not marked on the map. I felt as if I had stumbled into a
nightmare country, as you sometimes do in dreams. And, as in a nightmare,
there was nobody in sight to help me. Fortunately for me, as I was wondering
what to do next, there appeared on the horizon a man on horseback, riding in
my direction. I waited till he came near, then I asked him the way to our old
village. He said that there was now no village. I thought he must have mis-
understood me. so I repeated its name. This time he pointed to the lake. The
village no longer existed because it had been submerged, and all the valley too.
The lake was not a natural one, but a man made reservoir.