But anyway even a little boy a very little boy a very fat little boy not yet four, when he sees on a strange lady’s hat, three apples very little apples at that, says to the lady, I would like to have three apples like that and even when he knows that they are not real apples, he keeps on saying when he is awakening, I would like three little apples like that.

Anyway between babyhood and fourteen, anything they are saying, anything they are knowing, everything they are repeating is a legend, because it has to be a legend, to be learned, legs belong to them, feet to belong to them, hands and fingers come easier to belong to them and are not quite as legendary as legs and feet, not quite as legendary but still legendary enough.

And at the end of babyhood to fourteen, at the end there is nothing in between. What did she say when she was fourteen. She said she was not willing to be a queen. And he, he was not interested in a king or a queen not when he was fourteen. Not at all. And in this way from fifteen to twenty-four began and it began with also ran.

Mediaeval means, that life and place and the crops you plant and your wife and children, all are uncertain. They can be driven away or taken away, or burned away, or left behind, that is what it is to be mediaeval. And being a pioneer has a little of the same not all the same but something of the same and when you are fifteen it is all very real, mediaeval and pioneer. And now and here 1943, it is just like that, you take a train, you disappear, you move away your house is gone, your children too, your crops are taken away, there is nothing to say, you are on the road, and where are they, if you go there is nobody to say so, anything can come and anything can go and they can say yes and no, and they can say, go, they never do say come, but yes they do now, they say come now, and they have to come and they have to go, everything is all the same what can happen here can happen there, and what can happen there can happen anywhere and it does, beside it does.

So at fifteen there comes to be a realisation of what living was in mediaeval times and as a pioneer. It is very near. And now in 1943 it is here.

It is disconcerting to know and it gives you a funny feeling, that any time not only that you can be told to go and you go but also that you can be taken. Nevertheless you stay, and if you stay you do not go away. That was true in mediaeval times too.

I have just been reading King John, when I was fifteen, King John was real, but now King John is realer, here and now it is all the same, that is the way they act and that is the way they are, the way they were in Shakespearean King John. It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change, it is not in the same pockets after a change and that is all there is to say about money. Well power is the same thing, in King John it was the king and the church, and when I was young it was the middle class that is the middle class that had money, and now it is the lower middle class that is in power, and men can have and men will have money, if it is had it would not go on being the lower middle class, because that class has no legend and it has no love interest and it is not timely and it does not like to live, and move about and it does not care what it is all about, it knows what it is and it stays there, and that is what the lower middle class is and it is they that make the last there is of life in the nineteenth century because they have no hope and no adventure. Think of the dictators they are just like that. What did I say. I said it was just like that.

However fifteen is not just like that, not very likely although when it is the lower middle class it tries to be but fifteen is really mediaevel and pioneer and nothing is clear and nothing is sure, and nothing is safe and nothing is come and nothing is gone. But it all might be.

At fifteen they light a pack on their back. It makes them feel strong. At fifteen they conquer when they have a pack on their back. And now in 1943, everybody has a pack on their back, they go about just like that, they need anything and everything that can be put into a pack on their back. And so from fifteen to twenty-four and now from five to ninety everybody can have a pack on their back, in hope of finding something to put into that pack on their back.

From fifteen to twenty-four there was the Boer war, and it was the first time I knew about how many or how few should surrender and it was the first time I knew about khaki and all that, and it was the same with everybody, and now here khaki is over, at least right here, Germans and Italians wear sad green and grey, and any color can be dirty that way.

Between fifteen and twenty-five they all can be quite a good deal alive.

From fifteen on to twenty-five it is natural to think that every Sunday is good weather. And to hope that every day will be Sunday bye and bye. At fifteen walking and riding and coming and going is always a pleasure and everything else is an indecision, and everything else is better or more than that. And here and now in 1943, now that the war is coming to an end, everybody that is nobody knows whether there is or is not any future and at fifteen it is like that everybody and nobody knows whether there is or is not any future. Funny things happen, you milk a goat for the first time, you see a girl taller than yourself for the first time and you are not sure whether she is beautiful or not, you spend all day intending to go somewhere and nothing happens and you wonder if you will ever be revenged. That is what is now happening in 1943 and fifteen years old is like that. You think everything is funny and the moonlight is not clouded over and the wind blows and trees make a noise and people say funny things, they do not mean what they say, fifteen years old is like that and now in 1943 it is like that. There is a funny story about a goat.

A young woman came from Switzerland to Aix-les-Bains to work in an embroidery shop, and she went to live with a woman who always had one boarder.