In Europe

paddle steamers glide past the cities on the river, every now and then you hear their mournful whistles in the cold morning mist. In the afternoon, when one of them sails by, you feel the urge to wave your cap at gentlemen in straw hats and ladies in white frocks who people the decks, as though nothing has happened for the last century.
    These are lovely, late days of summer, people are gathering rose hip along the roadsides, and from the hills the landscape looks like a vast garden painted by one of the Brueghels, full of farms, fields, white houses along the rivers, here and there a village spire. In the Czech Republic, all that changes. The border crossing at Hžrensko is one huge market of brass-ware, laundry detergents, alcohol, cigarettes, baskets and Third World shopping bags, there are a dozen whores standing beside the highway, and then follows one industrial monument after the other: factories, weathered smokestacks, abandoned railway yards, all of them almost antique. The surroundings must be rich in wildlife: the number of dead animals on the road increases, along the shoulders are dozens of hedgehogs, a hare and even a crushed fox, its head still proudly raised. A shower of rain clatters on the roof, the sun leaves bright spots on the hillsides, and then I am in Prague.
    It is a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. The Vitava is littered with tourist boats criss-crossing back and forth on the current, steered by big-eyed girls in sailor suits. Skaters, the heroes of Europe this year, race up and down the steps of the underground stations. On the Charles Bridge, twoyoung men are playing Bach sonatas, the gulls cry across the water, German and Dutch tourists pass by the hundred, but right below, on the far side, there is suddenly a silent, walled orchard full of apple, pear and nut trees, a place where only a few people are sitting, reading a newspaper or a book in the warm September sun.
    I'm sitting in the Hanged Coffee café, not far from the castle. Here you can order two cups of coffee and have one – empty – ‘hanged’ from the ceiling. When a penniless student comes in, she can ask for a ‘hanged cup’ and receive coffee for free. My Czech acquaintances are telling me the story of their families. Elisabeth comes from a village in the Sudetenland. Her mother and her grandfather were German, they were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia because they were married to natives. The rest of the village fled to Germany. ‘You can still see that on the houses, even after two generations. The village is dead, it has no soul.’ Olga's grandfather died in the middle of the war by ridiculous chance: he was standing at the front of a line to hand in his rifle when the city hall was blown up by partisans. Her grandmother was driven almost mad with sorrow; whenever there was a bombardment she would run out onto the street in the hope of being struck down. Her mother was thirteen at the time. Later her grandmother became wealthy by reading cards for the Russian officers garrisoned in the town. Her mother married: two children, six abortions.
    ‘If you want to know how a country is doing, you need to look at the oldest people and at the youngest,’ Veronika says calmly. ‘The oldest, that's my grandmother. She wouldn't be able to survive if we didn't help her. She still receives the same pension she did before 1989, and that's not enough to buy anything. She really doesn't want our help, but at Christmas we always buy her a new coat. Things like that. That whole generation is having a hard time of it now. And as far as the youngest go … it's almost impossible to have children here. It's simply too expensive, no one can afford it.’ Suddenly she grows tearful. As it turns out, she's pregnant. ‘My mother says: “It's okay, we'll be all right.”’
    On 26 January, 1946,
The Economist
described the situation in Europe as though talking about an African famine: ‘The tragedy is enormous. Thefarmers are reasonably well off, and the rich can afford to use the black market, but the poor population of Europe, perhaps a quarter of the continent's 400 million inhabitants, is doomed to starve this winter. Some of them will die.’
    The particular problem areas were Warsaw and Budapest – where tens of thousands of victims were anticipated – Austria, northern Italy and the large German cities – where an average per capita allowance of no more than 1,200 calories a day was available – as well as the western