by Nigel Dennis
The chauffeur took off his peaked cap and ate a sandwich, sprawling haughtily on the running-board. The little boys approached the limousine with the caution of Indian scouts: when one of them fingered a chromium handle, the chauffeur was suddenly inflamed and drove them all away.
The villa door flew open as suddenly as it had closed, and the five men shot out again and moved toward the mills. It was still impossible to hear what they said, but they all seemed to be in a fine mood; and once the Minister stopped dead and sawed his arm up and down, apparently driving home an intensely witty point, because his secretary almost doubled up laughing. Streeter took the lead when they reached the mills, and all five paraded down the flashing, leaping line, their faces grave. Once or twice the Minister locked his fingers behind his back and peered into something, while the secretary reached out a hand to prevent his coat from being drawn into the machinery. Half-way down the line the Minister paused to smile at one of the mechanics, who removed his cap and blushed: the Minister’s lips moved and he patted the man on the shoulder, and then passed on, raising his eyebrows in refined but playful surprise on noticing a very young oil-checker. Having distinguished each of the indistinguishable mills, Streeter led the party to a point where the nearest of the old, shambling, unreorganized mills was visible: he waved his hand at it very casually; and after the contrast had sunk in, he brought them all back and led them slowly up the shining rails of the new track, where their black figures could be observed standing respectfully at the edge of the big quarry. A gap appeared in the row when the expert jumped down into the quarry and returned with a chunk of ore, which was passed from hand to hand with interest. Then they walked slowly back to the mills, where Streeter, it seemed, invited the Minister to scrape a plate. The Minister did so in a thoroughly jolly way, not caring a scrap how dirty his cuffs got, and wielding the rubber block as smartly as if it were a rubber stamp. When he had scraped half the plate—the others all watching him with genial smiles—he passed the block to the expert, who finished off the plate in a more clumsy, professional manner. Then Streeter collected the grey scrapings into a chamois bag, which he screwed so tightly at the neck that the scrapings were forced into a ball, and the excess quicksilver burst through the bag’s pores in a pretty silver shower that astonished the Minister. Streeter then took out the little ball of amalgam, and with a mock bow presented it to the Minister, who tossed it up and down happily, gave it to the secretary, who also tossed it, and handed it on to the expert, who gave it a blasé glance and turned it over to a mechanic. The expert then began to question Streeter closely; apparently technicalities were introduced, because very soon the Minister took a little stroll down the mills and made friendly remarks to the workmen, cupping his hand behind his ear and bending courteously to hear their stuttered answers: he wrote down one man’s name and address in a little notebook.
It was now five o’clock. Workmen from Area B. appeared on bicycles, pedalling to the Mell road without any singing, glancing respectfully at the Minister’s hindquarters. But the last cyclist shouted something to Mr. Hovich, who ran to the telephone in the villa, and came out looking very pale and ran to the expert and Streeter, who at once called the secretary. They all ran to the Minister, who was exchanging little jokes with a deaf foreman.
“I hope nothing has gone wrong,” said Divver.
As he spoke Morgan heard a sound like a bird breaking cover. The leaves of the lilac bush were torn open, and a small chunk of stone landed with a crack on the fender of the limousine.
The boilerman ran to the steam-cock and shut it off; instantly the arms and shoulders of the stamps hung tight and motionless and a total silence covered the area—a silence broken by loud explosions, whistles, shouts from the ministerial party and the workmen, all of whom assembled around the Minister and herded him into his car much faster than he had loped out of it.
“The goddamed idiots are blasting!” cried Divver, and he and Morgan ran like mad into the villa. Snug against the parlour wall, they stared through the window, as the workmen fled down the road and the secretary and the expert sprang after their master into the limousine. The expert tried to pull Streeter in behind them, but he shook his head and, followed by Mr. Hovich, ran into the villa, guarding his eyes with one hand, his genitals with the other. The limousine, one door swinging open violently, shot off down the road and was out of sight in a minute. The blasting went on, and the panting men in the parlour heard the crash of breaking glass as a stone smashed into a kitchen window. Then silence came again, and they could hear nothing but the faint hissing of steam from the boiler’s safety-valve.
They all seemed to want to say something, but no one knew just what it should be, which perhaps was what at last prompted Divver to remark hopefully: “Except for this, I think everything else went off according to Hoyle; no?”
They looked at the engineer and shuddered. The abstracted look on his white face was that of a man who recovers self-possession through immediate, methodical study of the way to torture the responsible criminal. “Fetch that man here,” he said to Mr. Hovich, his voice rising. “Bring him here to this chair…. And then drive as fast as you can into the town, see the Minister, present my apologies and inform him that I am immediately investigating the matter. I will join him in one hour.”
He took his seat behind the table.
In a few minutes the Representative, swearing in Polish, delivered a miner at the door and then ran to his car and drove off.
The miner, a sullen, elderly man, took a seat by the door. He began to talk loudly, but seeing that the engineer paid no attention whatever, he sat back and sulked.
For twenty minutes they all sat without a word. Occasionally the engineer fingered the edges of some papers; for the rest of the time he sat like a statue, looking expressionlessly out of the window.
Mr. Hovich returned, and his agitated mournful face was at once frozen into dread.
“Well?” said the engineer.
“The Minister has left. He presents his apologies. He has an appointment at the next mine he cannot miss.”
“As I expected.” The engineer reflected for a few more moments and then closely studied the gloomy miner, coughing slightly to attract the man’s attention. In his monstrous self-control, which was made evident only in his rather heavy breathing, he was a human counterpart to the boiler outside, hissing away only the unbearable summit of its pressure. He took a sheet of paper and a pencil and said: “Ask him his name and the name of his mine.” In a clear, steady hand he wrote the answers down, asking: “Is that a ‘v’ or a ‘w’?”
The miner let loose a flow of words. “He says,” said Mr. Hovich, who was explosive with hate, “that you ordered the other areas to continue as usual and make no change on account of the Minister. He also says that the foreman who supervises the blasting was here, by our orders.”
“We are still a long way from that point,” said the engineer quietly, “and we will deal with it when we come to it. Now, let me see…. Ask him how long he has owned his mine and what price the Government is paying him for it?” He leaned back in his chair.
“Twenty years,” said Mr. Hovich. “The price is still in dispute. Needless to say, he has engaged lawyers to drag it all out.” Infected by the slow venom of the inquisition, he had become quite calm.
The engineer made no reply. Accustomed to his interminable silences, the others patiently waited for the next question. Not for a full minute did they all, simultaneously, guess that something else was the matter, that the boiler had silently burst. “Are you all right, sir?” exclaimed the Representative, springing up.
The engineer’s lips moved, his baby-blue eyes shone brilliantly, and a lock of white hair fell out of place as one tremor after another ran through his body. “Put him in the car! Bring it close to the door!” Mr. Hovich cried, running to the telephone. “Oh, what a day! What a terrible day!”
*
The Flags of All the Nations were still up in the square, and ha
lf the local population of Mell seemed to be waiting for the car outside the Hotel Poland. Because the summer doctor had already left for the Riviera, the engineer was put on to a stretcher by the town druggist, and taken from his car to his suite via the baggage elevator and the passage with the green-baize door. A troop of people preceded and followed the stretcher to the suite: old Simon in the lead, opening the doors on the route with a blue and shaky hand; two husky bouncers carrying the stretcher; the druggist walking beside it with his fingers on the engineer’s arm; and, behind, Divver, Morgan, Mr. Hovich, the manager, the druggist’s son and assistant, and three hotel employees who had, respectively, picked up the engineer’s spectacles when they fell off the stretcher, held the druggist’s bag when he administered a sedative, informed the manager that the engineer was dead—deeds which entitled them to places in the cortege. The long string bunched in a ball at the Archduke’s door, on which Simon, subject to decades of courtesy, was already knocking politely. Morgan heard Harriet call out, “Come in!” and Divver snap at him: “You don’t need to come any further”; and he snapped back: “I didn’t intend to,” just as though they were having a private squabble.
The door opened; the stretcher-bearers marched in. Harriet gave two frightful screams; the manager followed Divver in and closed the door.
Morgan hung about the corridor as though it was his duty to hear and share more sounds of horror. He tried to project his imagination into the suite, even though he knew that he was properly excluded from it, and that whatever sympathy he felt for Harriet he was the last person who could put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her: no incident could have made the nonsense of their relationship clearer. In a sweat, he walked back to his room, struggling simultaneously to commiserate Harriet from the depths of his heart and to deny a heartless conviction that the engineer had got what he deserved—emotions so dissimilar that they merely combined in his feeling like a dirty rat. So as he walked down the passage, he felt cornered and savage, and looked at all the familiar trappings with disgust, wishing to God that he were the hell out of the whole stinking place … why had he ever come? … how soon could he get out?
He had no idea what to do, except keep moving or keep in a place where others were moving. He went down to the lobby, to see the Tutin doctor drive up. The place was completely empty except for the desk clerk, who handed him a cable from his mother. It was a peremptory order to go straight to the American consul in Tutin, who would put him on the first boat. As he opened it impatiently, he was sure that its appearance was an old story that he had fully expected; as he threw it in the wastebasket, he glared across the Atlantic and shouted: Dry up, for Christ’s sake! Can’t you see I want to get out of this stew every bit as much as you want me to? Leave me in peace, you old ignorant busybody!
The clerk came over, leaned on a chair arm and asked him in a rather bored way if he and Mr. Divver were making preparations to leave the hotel; it would certainly be closed within the week. Normally, the clerk said, some sort of service was continued until the end of October; this year, however—and he waved one hand at the empty lobby and pointed the other at the enormous headlines on the day’s newspaper. “We’re getting out in the next couple of days,” Morgan said testily: “at least I know I am.”
A car drew up at the entrance; a man entered with a black bag and looked around expectantly. The clerk rushed him into the gold elevator, and they disappeared.
Mr. Hovich came down later with the clerk. He looked run-over. “It is not fatal,” he said: “only serious. His wife has almost collapsed too,” he added, as if that were the last straw. “I am going to bed. Good night.”
The manager came down with the surly look of a well-conducted person who has been insulted. Snapping a reprimand at the clerk, he went to the row of electric switches and turned off all the lights except the one that lit the corner where Morgan was sitting. He said impatiently: “How long do you and your friend …?”
“Yes, yes: the clerk told me already. I’m getting out in a couple more days …”
“Your friend …?”
“Ask him yourself: it’s none of my business.”
At least everything seems to be coming out into the open at last, he thought.
On his way to bed, he saw Simon behind him with a tray of soups, and he waited for him to catch up, full of sympathy for the old man. “How are things going, Simon?” he asked, “you must be worn out.” “We are all worn out,” said the old servant, giving him a malignant look, “except your friend the Madam-Director, who is crying for her papa.”
*
He arose next morning in a panicky mood, searching for anything that he could pin his mind on and make a centre for the scores of disjointed, exclamatory feelings that came and went inside him. He made himself believe that if he assumed a certain facial expression and gently asked Divver how the engineer was doing, they would suddenly become friends again. But Divver’s bed had not been slept in; his workclothes lay in middle of the floor where he had stamped them off yesterday; the door of the closet from which he had torn his summer suit was still hanging open.
Downstairs, too, everything was the opposite of what he expected. For the first time since his arrival in Mell he felt the cold, shocking touch of a national crisis. Instead of a grave crowd of people, talking in low voices and glancing up at the Archduke Suite, there was a lonely desert of public rooms. He was unable to find the manager or Mr. Hovich or even the desk clerk. Outside, all the shops had been closed and locked: there were children playing in the side streets as usual, but he saw a horse-cart moving out of the town with household furniture. Passers-by disregarded him as if he did not exist, and, strangest of all, the familiar TO RENT OR SELL sign was hanging over the deserted office of the real estate agent himself.
He soon knew that everyone but himself was preoccupied with matters that had no concern with the engineer. He found a newspaper that said nothing that he could translate. To calm his feeling that everyone except himself was all of a piece and moving in a definite direction, he walked up and down the streets he knew best, recognizing familiar objects and saying goodbye to them respectfully, sealing each one with a visit that he began to sense would be his last. When he got back to the hotel, the desert was full of bewildering life and bustle. Strange men, bellboys and waiters, all in shirt-sleeves, were rolling up and carrying away the big carpets. In the lobby his feet felt the peculiar touch of bare, dusty floorboards; but he searched with innocent politeness for an ashtray until it struck him that there was no longer any need for one. The desk clerk, also in shirt-sleeves, was busy in his alcove; the safe door was open, and the clerk was rapidly tying up bundles of papers and tossing them into a mail bag. When he saw Morgan, he beckoned and quickly scrawled out bills for him and Divver to-date. “They are not due for three days,” said the clerk, clicking his fingers impatiently, “but under the circumstances we would be grateful if …” Morgan paid both the bills: when he laid down the money for Divver, he felt as if he were sordidly buying the right to at least a word of thanks. “Can you tell me how Mr. Streeter is coming along?” he asked. “Mr. Streeter?” said the clerk, as though the engineer belonged to a world that no longer existed: “no, I know nothing about him. I presume he is an American citizen?” “Oh, yes.” “Well, then,” said the clerk, shrugging, “his condition cannot be very dangerous.”
One of the town girls came in and exchanged words with the clerk. Morgan recognized her as the simple, pretty girl who worked in a perfume shop. Now, she was nattily dressed and lip-sticked, and carried a neat little leather case. Seeing Morgan, she eagerly put a question to the clerk, who glanced at Morgan and asked politely: “Do you by any chance, sir, own a car? No?” His contemptuous look returned, he shook his head impatiently at the girl. Next minute, he briskly strapped up the mouth of the sack, threw it over his shoulder and went out of the hotel with the girl. He left the safe-door wide open.
In sudden panic, Morgan flew up the main stairs to his room and b
anged on Divver’s door. When there was no answer, he dragged out his suitcases and began packing them feverishly, hoping as he crushed each article into a place too small for it that he was keeping a cool and steady head. He was jumping on a lid with both feet, when he heard a click behind him and felt a faint breeze—on which something enormous and invisible approached and hovered over the back of his neck. He gave a yell, and jumped for his life.
The huge apparition slowly congealed into Harriet’s small figure. “It’s only me, Jimmy.”
“Gosh, you gave me a scare!”
“There’s no switchboard … And I was afraid of disturbing …” She broke off the explanations and with unusual firmness took him by the arm and drew him towards her. “Come downstairs with me, please, at once …”
“Wait, I’ll put on my tie.”
“Do leave the tie, Jimmy. Who cares about your manners any more?”
They walked together down the main stairs. The fact that she was trembling all over made no difference to the decided way in which she advanced. She led him through the empty bar and out of the hotel by a side-door. “You must think I’ve gone crazy,” she said. “Well, I very nearly have.”
They came to a place which was more a local tavern than a café. It was full of whispering townspeople. “Here,” she said, and sat down at a window table with her back to the crowd. “What is the time by your watch?” she asked.
