Nothing for Tears [antikvár]

IntroductionWhat happens in civilized communities when suddenly, between a sunset and a dawn, the bulwarks of security are shattered and the barbarians break in? Often, when visiting a ruined Román villa on somé lazy summer afternoon, have I pictured to myself the night of horror, when the woods became alive with shouts and torches, and a pool of blood síid slowly across the tessellated pavement, obscuring the figure of Európa, seated plump and flattered astride her buli. As the sky began to lighten in the east, the burning beams would fali hissing one by one among the gold-fish in the fountain, and when the roof collapsed the hills would echo with the clatter of falling tiles and the yews and beech-trees would flicker, strangely green, in the last blaze of holocaust. For a little while a wounded dog, escaped into the coppice, would howl in agony. Thereafter would descend the silence of four hundred years.More pertinently, sometimes, I ask myself what would occur if next October Russian parachutists descended from the sky upon my own calm patch of Kent and if the news seeped through from London that all organized resistance was at an end. I suppose that I should myself be quickly liquidated, or bundled into the farm lorry (together with the vicar, the schoolmaster and a few local koulaks) and driven, on the wrong side of the road, to the concentration camp at Biggin Hill. But what would happen to those left behind? The books, the pictures and the china would, I suppose, be quickly defaced, slashed and broken as intolerable evidence of capitalist decadence. Much time would be spent by the marauders in searching for hidden treasure or stores of non-existing wine. The garden hedges and