Fancies and Goodnights Part 5

He stood at the back for about half an hour, waiting, and no one took any notice of him at all. In the end one of the little cotton-backs beckoned him up to the bra.s.s railing. Foiral delved in his pocket, and produced the cheque. The cotton-back looked at it as if it were a mere nothing. "Holy Virgin!" thought Foiral.

"I want the money for it," said he.

"Are you a client of the bank?"

"No."

"Do you wish to be?"

"Shall I get the money?"

"But naturally. Sign this. Sign this. Sign on the back of the cheque. Take this. Sign this. Thank you. Good-day."

"But the thirty thousand francs?" cried Foiral.

"For that, my dear sir, we must wait till the cheque is cleared. Come back in about a week."

Foiral, half dazed, went home. It was a bad week. By day he felt reasonably sure of the cash, but at night, as soon as he closed his eyes, he could see himself going into that bank, and all the cotton-backs swearing they'd never seen him before. Still, he got through it, and as soon as the time was up, presented himself at the bank again.

"Do you want a cheque-book?"

"No. Just the money. The money."

"All of it? You want to close the account? Well! Well! Sign here. Sign here."

Foiral signed.

"There you are. Twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and ninety."

"But, sir, it was thirty thousand."

"But, my dear sir, the charges."

Foiral found it was no good arguing. He went off with his money. That was good. But the other hundred and ten! That sticks in a man's throat.

As soon as he got home, Foiral interviewed the stranger. "I am a poor man," said he.

"So am I," said the stranger. "A d.a.m.ned sight too poor to pay you extra because you can't get a cheque cashed in a civilized way."

This was a peculiarly villainous lie. Foiral had, with his own eyes, seen a whole block of these extraordinary thirty-thousand-franc billets in the little book from which the stranger had torn this one. But once more there was nothing to be done about it; a plain honest man is always being baffled and defeated. Foiral went home, and put his crippled twenty-nine thousand-odd into the little box behind the stone chimney. How different, if it had been a round thirty thousand! What barbarous injustice!

Here was something to think about in the evenings. Foiral thought about it a lot. In the end he decided it was impossible to act alone, and called in Arago, Ques, Laf.a.go, Vigne, Barilles. Not Guis. It was Guis who had told the fellow he had paid too much for the house, and put his back up. Let Guis stay out of it.

To the rest he explained everything very forcefully. "Not a relation in the whole countryside. And in that book, my dear friends - you have seen it yourselves - ten, twelve, fifteen, maybe twenty of these extraordinary little billets."

"And if somebody comes after him? Somebody from America?"

"He has gone off, walking, mad, just as he came here. Anything can happen to a madman, walking about, scattering money."

"It's true. Anything can happen."

"But it should happen before the lawyer comes."

"That's true. So far even the cure hasn't seen him."

"There must be justice, my good friends, society cannot exist without it. A man, an honest man, is not to be robbed of a hundred and ten francs."

"No, that is intolerable."

The next night, these very honest men left their houses, those houses whose tall uprights of white plaster and black shadow appear, in moonlight even more than in sunlight, like a heap of bleached ribs lying in the desert. Without much conversation they made their way up the hill and knocked upon the stranger's door.

After a brief interval they returned, still without much conversation, and slipped one by one into their extremely dark doorways, and that was all.

For a whole week there was no perceptible change in the village. If anything, its darks and silences, those holes in the fierce light, were deeper. In every black interior sat a man who had two of these excellent billets, each of which commanded thirty thousand francs. Such a possession brightens the eyes, and enhances the savour of solitude, enabling a man, as the artist would have said, to partake of the nature of Fabre's tarantula, motionless at the angle of her tunnel. But they found it no longer easy to remember the artist. His jabbering, his laughter, even his final yelp, left no echo at all. It was all gone, like the rattle and flash of yesterday's thunderstorm.

So apart from the tasks of the morning and the evening, performing which they were camouflaged by habit, they sat in their houses alone. Their wives scarcely dared to speak to them, and they were too rich to speak to each other. Guis found it out, for it was no secret except to the world outside, and Guis was furious. But his wife rated him from morning till night, and left him no energy for reproaching his neighbours.

At the end of the week, Barilles sprang into existence in the doorway of his house. His thumbs were stuck in his belt, his face was flushed from lead colour to plum colour, his bearing expressed an irritable resolution.

He crossed to Arago's, knocked, leaned against a doorpost. Arago, emerging, leaned against the other. They talked for some little time of nothing at all. Then Barilles, throwing away the stump of his cigarette, made an oblique and sympathetic reference to a certain small enclosure belonging to Arago, on which there was a shed, a few vines, a considerable grove of olives. "It is the very devil," said Barilles, "how the worm gets into the olive in these days. Such a grove as that, at one time, might have been worth something."

"It is worse than the devil," said Arago. "Believe me or not, my dear friend, in some years I get no more than three thousand francs from that grove."

Barilles burst into what pa.s.ses for laughter in this part of the world. "Forgive me!" he said. "I thought you said three thousand. Three hundred - yes. I suppose in a good year you might make that very easily."

This conversation continued through phases of civility, sarcasm, rage, fury and desperation until it ended with a cordial handshake, and a sale of the enclosure to Barilles for twenty-five thousand francs. The witnesses were called in; Barilles handed over one of his billets, and received five thousand in cash from the box Arago kept in his chimney. Everyone was delighted by the sale: it was felt that things were beginning to move in the village.

They were. Before the company separated, pourparlers were already started for the sale of Vigne's mules to Ques for eight thousand, the transfer of Lloubes' cork concession to Foiral for fifteen thousand, the marriage of Roustand's daughter to Vine's brother with a dowry of twenty thousand, and the sale of a miscellaneous collection of bra.s.s objects belonging to Madame Arago for sixty-five francs, after some very keen bargaining.

Only Guis was left out in the cold, but on the way home, Lloubes, with his skin full of wine, ventured to step inside the outcast's doorway, and looked his wife Filomena up and down, from top to toe, three times. A mild interest, imperfectly concealed, softened the bitter and sullen expression upon the face of Guis.

This was a mere beginning. Soon properties began to change hands at a bewildering rate and at increasing prices. It was a positive boom. Change was constantly being dug out from under flagstones, from the strawy interiors of mattresses, from hollows in beams, and holes in walls. With the release of these frozen credits the village blossomed like an orchid sprung from a dry stick. Wine flowed with every bargain. Old enemies shook hands. Elderly spinsters embraced young suitors. Wealthy widowers married young brides. Several of the weaker sort wore their best black every day. One of these was Lloubes, who spent his evenings in the house of Guis. Guis in the evenings would wander round the village, no longer sullen, and was seen cheapening a set of harness at Laf.a.go's, a first-rate gun at Roustand's. There was talk of something very special by way of fiesta after the grape harvest, but this was only whispered, lest the cure should hear of it on one of his visits.

Foiral, keeping up his reputation as leader, made a staggering proposal. It was nothing less than to improve the mule track all the way from the metalled road on the rim of the hills, so that motor trucks could visit the village. It was objected that the wage bill would be enormous. "Yes," said Foiral, "but we shall draw the wages ourselves. We shall get half as much again for our produce."

The proposal was adopted. The mere boys of the village now shared the prosperity. Barilles now called his little shop "Grand Cafe Glacier de l'Univers et des Pyrenees." The widow Loyau offered room, board, and clothing to certain unattached young women, and gave select parties in the evenings.

Barilles went to Perpignan and returned with a sprayer that would double the yield of his new olive grove. Lloubes went and returned with a positive bale of ladies' underclothing, designed, you would say, by the very devil himself. Two or three keen card players went and returned with new packs of cards, so l.u.s.trous that your hand seemed to be all aces and kings. Vigne went, and returned with a long face.

The bargaining, increasing all the time, called for more and more ready money. Foiral made a new proposal. "We will all go to Perpignan, the whole d.a.m.ned lot of us, march to the bank, thump down our billets, and show the little cotton-backs whom the money belongs to. Boys, we'll leave them without a franc."

"They will have the hundred and ten," said Ques.

"To h.e.l.l with the hundred and ten!" said Foiral. "And, boys, after that - well - ha! ha! all men sin once. They say the smell alone of one of those creatures is worth fifty francs. Intoxicating! Stair carpets, red hair, every sort of wickedness! Tomorrow!"

"Tomorrow!" they all cried, and on the morrow they went off, in their stiffest clothes, their faces shining. Every man was smoking like a chimney, and every man had washed his feet.

The journey was tremendous. They stopped the bus at every cafe on the road, and saw nothing they didn't ask the price of. In Perpignan they kept together in a close phalanx; if the townspeople stared, our friends stared back twice as hard. As they crossed over to the bank, "Where is Guis?" said Foiral, affecting to look for him among their number. "Has he nothing due to him?" That set them all laughing. Try as they might, they couldn't hold their faces straight. They were all choking with laughter when the swing doors closed behind them.

ARE YOU TOO LATE OR WAS I TOO EARLY.

In the country, I accept the normal and traditional routine, doing what every man does: rising early, eating when I should, turning up my coat collar when it rains. I see the reason for it, and shave at the same hour every morning.

Not so in town. When I live in town I feel no impulse in the starling migrations of the rush hours. There is no tide, in any submarine cave, anywhere, that is not more to me than the inflow and outflow at the cold mouths of offices or the hot mouths of restaurants. I find no growth in time, no need for rain, no sense in sobriety, no joy in drinking, no point in paying, no plan in living. I exist, in this alien labyrinth, like an insect among men, or a man in a city of the ants.

I despise the inconsiderable superiority of the glum day over the starless night. My curtains are always drawn; I sleep when my eyes close, eat when I remember to, and read and smoke without ceasing, allowing my soul to leave my wastrel and untended carcase, and seldom do I question it when it returns.

My chambers are in the stoniest of the Inns of Court. I keep no servant here, for I mean always to go back to the country within the week, though sometimes I stay for months, or ... I don't know how long. I supply myself with immense stocks of cigarettes, and such food as I happen to remember, so that I shall have no reason to return from the landscapes of Saturn or the undescribed gardens of Tourgeniev in order to go out into the streets.

My fingers are horribly blistered by the cigarettes that burn down between them while still I walk in the company of women with the heads of cats. Nothing seems strange to me when I wake from such reveries unless I part the curtains and look out into the Square. Sometimes I have to press my hands under my heart to resume the breathing that I have entirely forgotten.

I was constantly ambushed and defeated in I forget what journeys, or what loves, or where, by the fullness of a saucer in which a hand of mine failed to find room to crush out its cigarettes. Habit, which arranges these things, demanded some other receptacle. I rose, holding my thoughts as one holds a br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s, and was moved into the bathroom, drawn by the vague memory of a soap dish, which lay stranded like an empty sh.e.l.l on the empty beaches of a blank mind. But, swallowed by G.o.d knows what high-reaching wave, that sh.e.l.l was gone, and my reviving eyes, straying at first aimlessly, soon called me all back again, poor Crusoe! to regard on the cork mat a new, wet, glistening imprint of a naked foot.

It was not long before I a.s.sured myself that I was dry, dressed in my pyjamas and slippers, and that I was not clean. Moreover, this foot, the prints of whose toes were as round as graded pearls, was neither long, like that of a man, nor hideous, like that of a bear; it was not my own. It was that of a woman, a nymph, a new-risen Venus. I conceived that my wandering spirit had brought me back a companion from some diviner sea's edge, and some more fortunate sh.e.l.l.

I drank up this moist footprint with my hot eyes; it dried as I looked upon it. It was not the air took it, but I; I had it for my own. I examined it for days and nights, building, upon its graceful rotundities, arched insteps, ankles equally graceful, and calves proportionately round. I deduced knees, haunches, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, shoulders, arms, plump hands and pointed fingers, full neck, small head, and the long curl, like the curve when the wave breaks, of the green-gold hair.

Where there falls one footprint there must fall the next; I had no doubt I should soon be vouchsafed the dull gleam of her hair. For this, I at once became ravenous, and slunk restlessly from room to room.

I noticed, with half-unconscious approval, that even the neglected furnishings seemed responsive to the G.o.ddess, and stood clean and tidy as onlookers at a holiday. The carpet, as if she were Persephone instead of Venus, bloomed with new flowers beneath her invisible feet. The sun shone through the open window, and warm airs entered. At what moment had I swept back the curtains and extended this invitation to sun and air? Perhaps she had done so herself. It was, however, impossible to attend to such lovely trifles. I desired the gleam of her hair.

"Forgive me for having rejoiced in the pallor of the dead! Forgive me for having conversed with women who smelled like lions! Show me your hair!"

I was devoured by a cruel nostalgia for this being who was always with me. "Supposing," I thought, waking in my strangely fresh bed, "supposing she appeared terrifyingly in the darkness, white as marble, and as cold!" At that moment I felt an intermittent warmth on my cheek, and knew that she breathed beside me.

There was nothing to clasp but the empty air. For days I moved to and fro, my blood howling in me like a dog that bays the moon. "There is nothing but the empty air."

I persuaded myself that this was nonsense. I had seen the trace of beauty, and felt the warmth of life. Gradually one sense after another would be refracted on this divine invisibility, till she stood outlined like a creature of crystal, and then as one of flesh and blood. As soon as I was well-persuaded, I saw her breath dimming upon a mirror.

I saw some flowers, which had appeared, part their petals as she bent her face to them. Hurrying there, I smelled, not the flowers, but her hair.

I threw myself down, and lay like a dog across the threshold, where, once or twice in the day, I might feel the light breeze of her pa.s.sing. I was aware of the movement of her body, or an eddy in the light where she moved; I was aware of the beating of her heart.

Sometimes, as if out of the corner of my eye, I saw, or thought I saw, not her bright flesh, but the light on her flesh, which vanished as I widened my eyes upon it.

I knew where she moved, and how she moved, but I was destroyed by a doubt, for she did not move towards me. Could there be some other existence, to which she was more responsive, some existence less tangible than her own? Or was she my unwilling prisoner here? Were those movements, of which I was not the object, the movements of one who longed only to escape?

It was impossible to tell. I thought I might know everything if only I could hear her voice. Perhaps she could hear mine.

I said to her, day and night, "Speak to me. Let me hear you. Tell me you have forgiven me. Tell me you are here forever. Tell me you are mine." Day and night I listened for her answer.

I waited in that unutterable silence, as one who, in a darkness equally profound, might await the arrival of a gleam of light from a star in whose existence he had good reason to believe. In the end, when I had ceased to hope or believe, I became aware of a sound-or something as near to a sound as the light on her cheek was near to the flesh of her cheek.

Now, living only in my ear-drum, not moving, not breathing, I waited. This ghost of a sound increased: it pa.s.sed through infinite gradations of rarity. It was like the sound in the second before the rain; it was like the fluttering of wings, the confused words of water; it was like words blown away in the wind; like words in a foreign tongue; it grew more distinct, closer.

Sometimes my hearing failed me, exactly as one's sight fails, dimmed suddenly by tears, when one is about to see the face one has always loved, after an ineffable absence. Or she would fall silent, and then I was like one who follows the sound of a brook, and loses it under the m.u.f.fling trees, or under the ground. But I found it again, and each time it was clearer and stronger. I was able to distinguish words; I heard the word "love," I heard the word "happy."

I heard, in a full opening of the sense, the delicate intake of her breath, the very sound of the parting of her lips. She was about to speak again.

Each syllable was as clear as a bell. She said, "Oh, it's perfect. It's so quiet for Harry's work. Guess how we were lucky enough to get it! The previous tenant was found dead in his chair, and they actually say it's haunted."

FALLEN STAR.

In h.e.l.l, as in other places we know of, conditions are d.a.m.nably disagreeable. Well-adjusted, energetic, and ambitious devils take this very much in their stride. They expect to improve their lot and ultimately to become friends of distinction.

In the great ma.s.s of ordinary, plodding, run-of-the-mill devils, any escapist tendencies are sufficiently ventilated by entertainments akin to radio and television, which offer them glimpses of what they take to be Paradise, interrupted by screaming commercials.

There are, however, certain idle, worthless, and altogether undevilish devils who dream incessantly of getting away from it all, and a few of them have actually managed to do so. The authorities are at no great pains to recapture them, for they are invariably chronic unemployables and nothing but a burden on the community.

Some of the fugitives have established themselves on sundry minute planetoids which are scattered here and there along the outer fringes of the Pleiades. These tiny worlds rise like green atolls in the everlasting blue. Here the deserters build their sorry shacks, and subsist on a little desultory soul-fishing. They live like beachcombers, growing fatter and lazier every year, and they compare themselves to the mutineers of the Bounty.

When they want a bit of change, they take a swim in the azure ether, and sometimes go as far as the cliffs of Heaven, just to take a look at the girls, who, naturally enough, are as beautiful as angels.

The cliffs of Heaven, you may be sure, are studded with summer resorts and well-supervised bathing beaches. There are also some quiet creeks and unfrequented bays where the ether washes in sapphire waves upon golden rocks, and over sands of a quality to make any honest digger call for spade and pail. Here, where no lifeguard stands with unfolded pinions, bathing is strictly prohibited. This is because of the occasional presence of one of those lurking, sharkish, runaway devils, and whoever goes in in defiance of the regulations must be prepared to face the consequences. But in spite of the risk, or because of it, some of the younger set of Heaven take a huge delight in breaking the rules, as the younger set do everywhere.

Thus a certain delightful young she-angel came down one morning into one of these forbidden caves. The weather was heavenly and her heart was as vibrant as one of her own harpstrings. She felt that her blissful existence might blossom into something even more blissful at any moment She sat a long while on an overhanging rock, and sang as gaily as the lark of the morning. Then she stood up, made a pose or two, she hardly knew why, and finally she took off with a swan-dive into the exhilarating ether.

An elderly, fat, and most unprepossessing devil had been hanging off-sh.o.r.e in the shallows for no other purpose than to play the Peeping Tom. The sight of this lovely creature aroused a ticklish and insistent longing in the old reprobate; it rose up in his black heart like a belch in a tar caldron. He swung in and seized her as a shark might seize on a bathing beauty, and he swept her swooning off to his little verdant planet, and on to the rickety porch of his cabin, which jutted out from the rocks for all the world like one of those fishing shacks that are to be found on any island in the tropics.

She came to herself with a gasp, and looked with horror at her repulsive captor, whose paunch sagged over his greasy belt, and whose tattered jeans scarcely sufficed to conceal his devilishness. He, with a rusty pair of shears, was already at work clipping her wings, and, gathering up the feathers: "These," said he, "will clean my pipe out to perfection. I like to smoke while I fish. Here is my favourite line; it is stronger and longer than it looks. With this I can dabble deep into the dormitories of the Y.M.C.A. For bait I use some pleasant little dreams I've had at one time and another. I keep 'em in this bucket over here, and you can take one right now and put it on the hook."

"The nasty, wriggly, slimy things!" cried she, shrinking away from the sight. "I wouldn't touch them for anything."

"You'd better," said he, "if ever you want to taste the heart and sweetbreads of a tender young divinity student"

"I'll feed myself," said she, with a curl of her lip. "I eat nothing but honey and flowers, and sometimes the egg of a hummingbird, when I'm extra hungry."

"Very uppish!" said he. "Very snooty! If you think you're here to play the fine lady, you'd better think again. Soft, silly, and good-hearted-that's old Tom Truncheontail if you stroke his fur the right way! But cross me up, and I can be rough, I can be tough, and I can be quarrelsome. You'll bait my hooks when I tell you, and you'll scrub and you'll scour and you'll sweep, and you'll cook the dinner and tend the still and make the bed..."

"The beds?" said she. "I'll make my own bed. As to yours ... !"

"Do one without doing the other," said he, "and you shall ride me back to Heaven with a bridle of daisies. I said bed. If a singular, that is, and it'd be a lot more singular if it were plural." With that he laughed fit to split his sides.