by Nigel Dennis
The engineer pulled on the long, tasselled bell-rope. “Not a true word in it,” he said, “but it has an honest ring.”
“It’s a beautiful letter, Mr. Divver,” said Harriet. “No one’s ever written one like that to me.”
“I like to imagine the baron working his way through it with his little dictionary,” said the engineer.
Divver stood in the centre of the room, sheepish, relieved, smiling uncomfortably, a little proud, a little ashamed, on the whole much happier. It seemed to Morgan that Divver had sold his last morsel of independence; but Divver only drew a deep breath, and said: “I feel as if I’ve come out of a whole battle.” He looked at Harriet, then at the engineer, with relaxed affection.
“For the Baron von Turn und Mannefarbe,” said the engineer, handing the envelope to the page-boy. “And now let us all drown our manifold discontents with this unhappy globe in a sparkling highball.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Divver.
The three of them began to laugh uproariously.
PART THREE
ONE day, early in August, about two weeks after the dinner at which Divver had found his master and Morgan had lost his mistress, visitors to Mell found beside their places a polite, official request to keep out of the square between the hours of eight and ten p.m., when there was to be another evacuation rehearsal. Far from grumbling at this intrusion upon their liberty, the tourists accepted it as an excellent change in the wind. For, as July went out and the season’s peak reached its height, Mell’s hotel-owners and shopkeepers had risen to the occasion with furious covetousness. The Bread Street shops now stayed open until midnight; customers were assured that even if after that hour they suddenly yearned for a gold necklace, they need only hammer on the door to be served; and when the black-coated salesman came home, too exhausted to speak, he found his wife and children, whom he scarcely recognized any more, fast asleep, and only the tiny blue bulb of economy burning dimly over the staircase to light him to bed. Waiters and chambermaids had studied the bus and train schedules down to the last asterisk; they knew to the minute when the tourists in their corridor were due to leave; they were on hand at the period of packing for tips and left-overs; and many a tourist, walking to the elevator for the last time and remembering something he had left behind, would return to find an angry group in uniforms already fighting for it. This superhuman effort to extort their last cent was an old story to most of the tourists; they hastened to draw from it, as they had in the ruthless resorts of their own country, a rather admirable moral, in which inexorable avarice was translated into the shrewd, earthy wisdom of poor folks. But the tourists whose lives were dedicated to universal service and contained an emptiness that could be filled only with bought grief, yearned for more touching examples of international brotherhood: in return for being milked dry they demanded, as keepsake of Mell’s last days, one bona-fide impression of antique despair, one poignant incident which would round off a happy vacation with a moment of memorable tragedy.
They recognized this moment when they read the typed slip of paper beside their plates, and sharp at eight o’clock they collected in the lobby. The men arranged the women in chairs at the open french windows, and made a circle around them, conveying their orders, passing their highballs. Behind, hovered the waiters, embarrassed by the impending show, but determined to give the occasion the air of an enjoyable picnic. The floor of the square had been marked off into numbered rectangles, among which a growing number of authentic peasants were roving in the dusk. The lobby lights were suddenly switched into dimness: “The mayor,” one of the waiters explained, “is afraid there may be no electric light when the real night comes.” “Why are you not out there, Hans? … Timmy, your elbow is pressing right in my neck.” “Madam, I am not an inhabitant of this town,” said the waiter rather coldly: “now, Madam, lean forward in your chair and look up; the emergency lights are ready.” And from the neighbouring rooftops, acetylene spotlights like those used in primitive places to illuminate dancing girls, cathedral towers and hunted deer poured into the square a glare so white that it reduced the cobbles to a flat sheet and obliterated everything above door level. The furniture of the outdoor cafés had been shoved back against the walls, and tourists with no window to see from stood out, embarrassed and chalk-white, among the folded chairs and tables. Only the fat trunk and lower foliage of the great lime tree could be seen; the rest of it was lost with the housetops and the stars in the upper blackness. “And there is the mayor himself,” said the waiter a little sarcastically, pointing to a stocky figure in a vest, rolled shirt-sleeves and a moustache that the light turned as white as the rest of him, who sat before the trunk of the lime, a wooden table over his knees, a megaphone dangling from his wrist. “He is not loved by the shopkeepers for frightening you with this nonsense,” said the waiter. “I think he’s wonderful,” said an invisible woman in an indignant voice.
The mayor raised his snowy megaphone, his voice bellowed through the square. “Now, madam, the first thing,” said the waiter, “the ambulance men for the old and the sick”—and a housedoor opened suddenly and two husky men, white as sheets, with red crosses showing grey on home-made armbands, came loping into the limelight, their heads held down, their backs bent, one a few feet behind the other, each pretending to be gripping something with his fists. “They are carrying stretchers,” said the waiter, “and now they slide them into the ambulance”—and the two ghosts halted in one of the rectangles, went through peculiar gestures and flung their arms forward like javelin throwers. Then they loped off again and their place was instantly taken by identical men who went through the identical motions; and this charade was repeated for nearly half an hour. “When the real day comes they will have the real stretchers and cars,” said the waiter’s smooth voice: “and now the mayor commends their efficiency and demands the schoolchildren.”
A crocodile of boys and girls, flanked on one side by a very old schoolmaster and on the other by a brisk-looking teacher in slacks and sweater, came trotting across the square: a long-haired youth sprang into sight manipulating an imaginary steering-wheel: after swerving agilely he rested at the head of the blinking crocodile, and raised a laugh among the white figures by making the choked humming noise of a waiting bus. The mayor roared—“He orders them to get in without nonsense,” said the waiter—and docilely, under the eyes of the old master and the young mistress, the crocodile proceeded two by two to mount the steps of the invisible bus, and were whisked off with a roar by the clownish driver.
In the next charades were women with imaginary infants in their arms, more women, men doing their best to co-operate without appearing foolish: then came another summons from the mayor’s megaphone, to which only a handful responded. “He asks for the hotel and pension employees,” said the waiter, his voice smoother than ever, “but not all of them have been able to obtain leave from their duties…. So now he calls for the last group, the police”—and here it seemed that the mayor had shrewdly planned to leave a taste of reality in his people’s minds, because Mell’s five policemen, in full uniform and firemen-like helmets, leapt from their posts among the crowd, and, sitting up stiffly, were whirled off into the darkness in a genuine police wagon. As the sound of the engine faded the mayor rose from his seat, advanced into the centre of the square and spoke briefly to the company; a king of the ghosts addressing his subjects. “He tells them,” said the waiter, “that they are still a band of idiots, but that no doubt they are doing their best, and he thanks them.” The stout white figure waved one hand to the upper darkness and turned away; one by one the spotlights went out and grey figures appeared dimly above the eaves, coiling tubes and boxing equipment. The houses resumed their gables and corners, lights appeared in one window after another, waiters began briskly setting up the chairs and tables of the cafés; all the Hotel Poland’s lights lit up suddenly. “The mayor is a careful person,” said the waiter, and went quickly to join the other waiters, all hastening to force everyt
hing back to normal by pulling the big chairs away from the windows, flapping their napkins over the tabletops, demanding orders with large, encouraging smiles.
But the tourists, blinking in the streaming light, turned from the windows shocked and dumb, shaking their heads to proclaim their horror and to ease an accusing hand from their necks. They looked at their own and one another’s handsome clothes; their inner pockets bulged shamefully with the passports and reservations that would soon evacuate them with haughtiness and serenity. Clutching and gulping their highballs, they tuned their ears, like sinners longing toward a confessor, for any muffled suggestion that might indicate the way of absolution. And soon they caught the unmistakable note: out of a little group in the heart of the lobby, two or three voices were climbing into tones of assurance. The speakers were assembled around a man in a brown suit whose voice was low and self-conscious; but each time he mumbled something he set off a strong chorus of agreement. Soon, everyone knew that this man was somehow prepared to save the occasion, and from every corner of the lobby they moved toward his circle, their faces stiff and disturbed, their eyes bright with hope. As their outer circle grew thicker, the voices of the inner circle grew bolder; its members looked each other straight in the face and talked with the firm, informal noisiness that characterises the intimacy of strangers in an emergency. The man in brown still mumbled; but a tall woman had placed herself at his elbow and was making herself the megaphone of his suggestions. Her hair was grey, she wore an evening dress, her big yellow teeth gave snap to her words; her face and eyes expressed emotions that seemed to torture her to hysteria. “I don’t believe there’s one of us doesn’t feel the same way; not one!” she cried; “and we need a man to do it, please, please”—turning sharply on the man in brown. He began to sweat, but stood straight; worried, but not wilting. “I only happened to say …” he said.
But at that moment a middle-aged man elbowed his way through the circle and tried to wedge a ten-dollar bill under a lapel of the brown man’s coat. “You take this,” he shouted: “I’ll trust you with it any day. No, not a word. I know you’re a right guy. I’m asking no questions.” “We don’t know that there is an evacuation fund,” said the brown man, shrinking from the bill. “We know there is one now,” shouted the donor: “just take it”; and, seeking out the brown man’s hand, he pressed the bill into it and folded a couple of uneasy fingers over it. “There!” he cried, “you know what to do with it.” “But I don’t!” “I don’t care how it’s done,” continued the donor inexorably, “just so long as I know it is done.” Then, holding his head high, he mashed a path for himself and disappeared in the direction of the bar, leaving an infection of clicks and rustles as wallets were hauled out and pocketbooks opened. Bills began to flutter like pennants on a flag day; and the man in brown, surrendering to his fate with a sigh, suddenly became firm. “First, if you please, a table,” he said, holding up his hand and sternly waving away the bills. “Sure, give him a break, give him a table!” roared his elbow-woman proudly; and he was hustled to the nearest one. Clumsy hands stripped it of its half-empty glasses, splashing dregs over the women’s dresses; eager perfectionists blew loose ash into one another’s faces. “Easy, easy, now if you please,” said the brown man, settling himself behind the table in a chair, and at once resembling a fledgling whom a score of screaming parents, worms in beaks, are clamouring to feed. He took out a fountain pen that was as brown and chubby as himself, arranged a sheet of hotel writing-paper and took the nearest bill, saying: “And what’s your name, ma’am?” “Mary Mac …” she began: but a voice cried: “No; no names!” “Yes, make it anonymous,” cried someone else; “anonymous is more equal.” “O.K.,” said the brown man: “anonymous; any way you want; let’s have ’em.”
At once, the table was plastered with bills; all kinds of low remarks were heard: “It’s all right, Sylvia, your father is donating for all of us”: “I don’t care if Poppy is: I’m going to give my own.” “Look under your Camels”: “I did, but it must have fallen out when we paid to go into that shrine.” “Somehow, if they’d had a real ambulance I wouldn’t feel so bad”—and meanwhile, those who had seen the first donor’s ten-dollar contribution and hadn’t enough on their persons to match it with, were running to the elevators, scampering down the long corridors to their rooms, and descending again, trembling and breathless, to lay their money on the table. Within half an hour, a few hundred dollars was arranged on the table in neat heaps, and last-minute donors were still panting home. “Oh, I was sure I’d be too late!” a girl cried, her face rosy with excitement; and she flung a fifty-dollar bill into the middle of the table with intense relief. On seeing it, the crowd let loose impressed murmurs and a few high, delighted whistles; but there were also glances which suggested that to rise to fifty dollars was to descend into bad taste. But right after the girl came a prim old lady of the kind who, for decades, has scrimped through eleven months of each year to spend the twelfth elsewhere: she defiantly laid down five silver dollars, which everyone guessed she had hoarded as curios for years, and said firmly to the room at large: “I can’t properly afford even that much. And I won’t pay a penny to foreign wars, because I am an American, and one of Jehovah’s Witnesses too. But I could never look my country or The Watchtower in the face again if I went back after seeing those rows of little children without having given my mite.” She spoke from the hearts of all; everyone smiled with joy, and a big man struck her devotedly between the shoulders. Inspired, she at once continued: “Now, I’ve travelled over all of Europe since before most of you were born. And I know the Pacific Northwest and Uruguay …”—but at this point everyone saw that she was a damned old bore and rushed away from her.
The man in brown called for a big envelope. Three times he tucked the fat heap of bills into it, three times he kept it open, to add last-minute donations. But at last the fervour was spent, the package sealed; and the brown man’s fountain pen hung over the face of the envelope. “What are we going to say?” he asked. “How about: ‘To His Honour the Mayor of Mell, in aid of evacuation services. A small token of profound sympathy and respect from American residents of the Hotel Poland’?”
But others remembered that the total included a handful of notes in foreign currency, and their generosity swelled into powerful international enthusiasm. “Let’s just say ‘residents,’” someone suggested, and at once everyone shouted: “Sure, just ‘residents’.” “He’ll guess the truth, anyway,” said the man in brown, with a cynicism that shocked everybody; and he wrote the inscription in a large hand. “And now what?” he asked. “Hand it over to the manager until morning?”
There was a disappointed silence. Everyone felt that something better could be done, something that would involve more furious happiness for recipients and donors: they would double their donations, erase the most anonymous superscriptions, make any concession but that of retiring to bed while their boiling lava cooled overnight in a steel box. “Why don’t we give it to the mayor right now?” said the elbow-woman. “It’s not too late, eh?” said the man in brown; and someone examined a watch and said: “Hell no; it’s only ten-forty-five.” “Why don’t we then?” “Yes, lets some of us go with it.” “Anyone know the mayor’s name? Anyone know where he lives? Waiter! Waiter!”
But the first waiter was a Frenchman who had barely heard of the mayor until this evening; the second was an ignoramus from Cracow; the third promised to get the information and went off to find a local waitress. While he was gone, the crowd thinned out somewhat; those who remained, paced up and down restlessly, feeling that if anything went wrong, the buoyant spirit of spontaneity would evaporate into a dull gas. But the waiter returned with a dirty scrap of paper, on which was pencilled a short, impossible name and a long, impossible address. “What the hell; we’ll find it!” exclaimed someone. “That’s just what we won’t do,” said the man in brown sensibly, and rising from his chair he read the name of the street aloud. “Does anyone know where it is?” he cri
ed.
There was silence: they looked at each other with saddening faces.
“I think I do.”
The crowd trembled, clapped, fell back. Morgan advanced to the table, rather shyly. “I do a lot of walking around,” he explained, as though his knowledge were indecent.
“Oh, you swell boy; we’re all grateful to you a million times!” cried the spokeswoman, seizing him by his tie. “Now, you lead the way: but we can’t all go, a whole mob; so let’s just have it that you go, and the gentleman who has the money, and two more—you two there,” pointing to a young couple, “and we’ll all stay here until you come back”—and swishing her long skirt under her behind she planted herself on the nearest sofa—“and tell us every word. Now, honey,” she added, patting the next cushion, and addressing the girl who had given fifty dollars, “you sit right down here by me and we’ll wait. Now, off you go, you four.”
The delegates bobbed and grinned at each other and went out into the square. The young man, who wore a tuxedo and a crew-cut, placed his hand behind the elbow of his girl, who was dressed in white satin with tiny high-heel shoes to match and wore an emerald bracelet.
“It’s this way,” said Morgan.
They crossed the square, passed the cathedral and went down Bread Street. A heavy whirring sounded overhead, and God beat the devil eleven times. On this one night the shops were already closed off with thick iron gates, their windows empty save for their velvet floors and terraces. Grey dustbins, splintered wooden boxes trailing wisps of excelsior, lay waiting for the dawn rubbish-cart; the girl, her white satin shining in the dusk, daintily moved off the sidewalk into the bare street. But halfway down it she stopped under a streetlight with a wincing noise, clutched her young man’s arm, raised one perfect leg and began to ease its satin shoe up and down. She hung thus, snow-pure and delicate against the heavy stone-work, but pouting irritably. Biting her lips with sharp, white teeth she said, in a marked Southern accent: “These cobbles may have suited Roman chariots, but they are death to slippers.”
