He has waited so long he must be certain; he has waited too long to afford a mistake.
ONE ASPECT OF A RAINY DAY
(1962)
HE HAD SEEN his older brother, Günther, swear personal allegiance to Hitler when Günther was fifteen and he, Stefan, only six. Actually Günther promised nothing aloud, but stood with his lips tight. Later on, the boys’ father said to Günther, “You haven’t proven anything. No one knows what you were thinking. It was too late to drop out at the last minute. You have promised what the others promised, whether you wanted to or not.”
What Stefan had never known and wondered now – it came back to him eighteen years later on a winter morning in France – was whether Günther was against the words because they were binding or against the idea they expressed. The formula of fidelity had been changed since the war (from 1939 until the capitulation, one swore to the person of Hitler instead of to the State), and perhaps Günther positively did not wish to make a gift of his life. Whatever his silence concealed, it stood for extreme feeling. Günther, now dead, had nothing more to say or conceal. And Stefan, walking among the French on a rainy morning, was wordless, as his brother had been eighteen years before.
In the laboratory outside Paris where Stefan’s scholarship had taken him, the professors, the technicians, his friends and comrades, had put on their coats. Someone said, “Is Germany with us?” “Germany” meant Stefan. The rooms were dark and the heat in the building turned off; there was a general strike from eight until noon. Stefan went with the rest. It was too dark to work and he couldn’t very well stay there alone.
There were nearly eighty of them straggling along the pavement. They walked slowly, as if it were a mild spring day instead of a winter morning of rain. They walked by the stone walls, the brick houses, the drenched winter gardens of this town that had been a quiet suburb and was now ringed with factories and fragile-looking blocks of flats. Rain darkened Stefan’s fair hair. If the police came now and asked them what they were doing, he intended to excuse himself. “Forgive me,” he would say, “but it was impossible to stay behind. I am in France with a scholarship. I am a guest of the country. I regret any worry I might be causing you by walking to the center of town instead of remaining at my work.”
He was more than a guest; they had sent for him. What is a foreign scholarship if not a sort of bribe? Faint conceit made him glance at a girl walking beside him – a girl who had flirted with him in the halls. Now she walked with her hands in the pockets of her raincoat. Her head, in a cotton scarf, was bent slightly forward. She was silent and thinking hard; he could see that because of the way a tooth held her lower lip. It would have seemed to him attractive, rather sensual, if she had not been so removed. Stefan hoped for her sake that she was wearing a sweater under her thin raincoat. Now and again she shivered. When they got back to the laboratory, he would advise her to take aspirin, he thought.
The general strike made the country seem submerged; he felt as if they were walking through waves. And now a smaller strike of one hour had been called. Plenty of cars rushed by, splashing the walkers on the pavement, but some taxis pulled up to the side of the road, and some shops were locked, with the blinds drawn. The main street, which they now descended, was the highway to Paris. Here they seemed to Stefan conspicuous. How intent, how uncasual they would seem if the police should appear now! He hoped he would have time to say, “Excuse me, this is none of my affair.” In Germany the police broke up demonstrations with fire hoses, and the most anyone got was a good wetting. He wondered why the French police didn’t copy this tactic instead of moving in with clubs.
The leader of their group was a young man Stefan had seen in the laboratory but scarcely knew. Why should he be leader all at once? He had taken on authority without asking consent. This leader had a proclamation in his pocket, and they were on their way, all eighty of them, to the city hall of a Parisian suburb to read the proclamation to the mayor. The proclamation said they were against violence and murder, and that they stood for the Republic, whatever the Republic was. The owner of a fruit shop, who had joined in the one-hour strike, stood in his doorway, watching the fruit outside to make sure none if it was stolen. The pears under their protective netting looked delicious. If you bought one the merchant would say, “Is it for lunch, or dinner, or tomorrow?” If it was for lunch, it had to be eaten straightaway; tomorrow the interior would be spotted and brown.
At the city hall neither of the armed guards at the door moved an inch; not the guardian of the peace with his club and his gun, or the statue in dark blue with his machine gun. Being armed and in uniform, the two were not men. They were targets, objects, enemies – pictures of something. The group trailed past them and into the building and stood, scuffling their soaked shoes, in the dark lobby. A marble plaque, yellow now, gave the names of the dead in the 1914 war, and a much smaller, whiter piece of marble held the names of the few who had died twenty years ago. The building felt as if it had not been heated for days. The group waited, giving off an aura of coldness and dampness like a cloud. The leader had his proclamation to read, but the mayor was away – on a voyage, said the elderly clerk, who, if you forgot the armed guards outside, was the greeting committee. The mayor’s assistant was away as well. There was no one to read the proclamation to, and so the young man read it aloud to Stefan, the shivering girl, and the rest of them. Stefan was aware of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the young leader – as if he had promised a victory and failed. Someone observed they could at least mark the occasion with one minute’s silence, and that gave the leader another chance. He looked at his watch and said the minute had begun. In the long minute, Stefan heard people walking to and fro in the building and a telephone ringing. When the minute was up, the group pressed back out to the rain, which was warmer than indoors. The minute had tired them more than the walk. “Keep in line,” the leader urged them. “Let us look as if …” He was losing his authority again; but surely it wasn’t his fault if the mayor was away on a voyage? And the mayor’s assistant, too?
Because of the strike, none of the traffic signals were working. Cars came from every direction. It was when they were trying to cross the main street of the town, the highway into Paris, that some of the group began to stamp in rhythm – three beats and three more – O. A. S. as-sas-sins. Everyone knew what three-three stood for, even without the syllables.
Now Stefan felt tricked and stubborn, as his brother might have done during the oath-of-allegiance ceremony eighteen years before. “Is Germany with us?” his comrades had asked. They knew he couldn’t stay behind; but he hadn’t come out on the streets to stamp and shout and risk his career for something that had nothing to do with him. Saying nothing, he thought he was saying everything. If the police came now, he would not even have time to explain, “I am a guest of France and deeply regret …” Then he noticed he was not the only one who was silent. Some were shouting and some were still, but no one knew what anyone thought, or what the silence contained. His own father had never known what Günther believed or why he behaved in a certain way.
When they turned up the hill to the laboratory, another group of marchers suddenly came around a corner and upon them. Both groups stopped and the slogans died in the rain. The men and women looked at each other. What had the others been shouting? Were they shouting and tramping the three beats and three, which made them friends, or had they been marching to the three-and-two that were Al-gé-rie Fran-çaise? Neither group had heard the other. Were they mortal enemies or close friends? At any rate, they weren’t either of them the police. They stared as long as the silent minute in the city hall. Nothing happened; the groups passed without trouble. They mingled, parted, re-formed their lines, one going up the hill to the laboratory, the other along perhaps to the lycée; they had the look of teachers. No one stamped or called now. They were men and women in the rain. They might have been coming from anywhere – a cinema, or a funeral.
Foreign papers exaggerate; Stefan’s moth
er sent him such anxious letters from Berlin! He would write tonight and tell her not to worry. Nothing was as serious as it seemed from the outside. Moreover, his superiors thought highly of him, and his work was going well.
FRENCH CRENELLATION
(1981)
INVITED TO SPEAK at the inaugural of the latest in the series of bunkers established under the Paris Faubourg Art Depot, this one to be used for storing rare examples of French crenellation, I cannot help asking myself, “What else can Charles Filament, leading historian and philosopher of his generation, say about a subject to which he has so often and brilliantly contributed in the past?” And I know some of you are already murmuring, “Crenellation! What is the point! Look at the way the world is going! What help is all this to us!”
When General Achille Sifflet subjugated America not so long ago, he found the inhabitants of Washington living in wattled huts that they had to enter on their hands and knees. They spent their waking hours playing with the rusted scraps of old assembly lines abandoned by the departing Dramssks, who had finally given up hope of ever civilizing them. Their only food was heff, a primitive offshoot of the potato, which they fried in large communal caldrons kept bubbling day and night.
As General Sifflet’s Chief Biographer, I was among the last to disembark, and I saw that smoke billowing from the open-air cooking pots had completely overpowered the First Diarists Special Regiment. Attributing the cloud to some advanced and mysterious weapon, I feared for my documentation, and the turbulent arrival of the Americans, clad in unmatched furs and shoes cut out of automobile tires, did nothing to still my apprehension. However, their tumultuous pushiness turned out to be the curiosity of the unsophisticated, which was soon satisfied by the distribution of gilt picture frames, postcard views of Vosges sawmills in November, and little pieces of bread. Having mistaken General Sifflet for the Moon Goddess of Seine-et-Marne, whose arrival is prophesied in the Early Financial Chronicle, the soothsayers offered him a ritual jug, the contents of which he drank down without a thought for his own safety. Then, looking out over the restless crowd, none in it more than two feet tall, the General spoke the words that have so often been misquoted: “We shall have to proceed very, very slowly.”
His first act was to call in all the local idols and put them through a shredder. Then came the gradual introduction of Old World secrets: the swaddling of infants, the application of leeches, and the delicate, painstaking doctoring of wine. Have I remembered to say I had the General’s entire confidence? One day he turned to me and said, “A little crenellation won’t hurt them now. It will keep you on your toes, Filament, and off mine.” (I think most of you are familiar with my anthology of his quips, “General Merriment,” which contains over nine hundred jokes, amply illustrated by photos of myself at home, at school, and in retirement.)
I set to work with a will, discovering the population to be more childlike and trusting than its fierce demeanor suggested. Finding myself worshipped as an Auxiliary Sunspot, a minor deity mentioned in the old Chronicle, gave me pause, but I bore in mind the General’s counsel: “Each step must be explained. When you run out of explanations, throw them a biscuit.” I am afraid I soon ran out of both. Some women, not knowing what crenellation was for, wore it in their hair. Others believed it had everything to do with fertility – a blind credence that accounts for a swift fall of the birth rate. It was not until William Thrisbee, last in the line of native kings, published a paper proving that crenellation was an inhibiting factor that procreation resumed its normal cadence.
As we sailed away, leaving behind a subdued and cultivated nation, I ventured a remark to General Sifflet: How long would it be before they reverted to savagery? I do not recall his reply. Recent excavations in O Street N.W. have brought to light examples of French crenellation introduced by me at that time, as well as decadent specimens that can safely be dated a little later. Its refining influence, I venture to say, remains alive in subconscious racial memory.
THE REJECTION
(1969)
HE SUPPOSED he had always been something of a sermonizer, but it was not really a failing; he had a mountain of information on many subjects, and silence worried him over and above the fear of being a bore. He had enjoyed, in particular, the education of his little girl. Even when she seemed blank and inattentive he went on with what he was saying. He thought it wrong of her to show so plainly she was sick to death of his voice; she ought to have learned a few of the social dishonesties by now.
They were in a warm climate, driving down to the sea. He must have been talking for hours. He said, “If indefinite time can be explained at all, it means there is another world somewhere, exactly like ours in every way.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said, finally answering him – high and irritable and clear. “To make it another world you’d have to change something. The ashtray in the dashboard could be red instead of silver. That would be enough to make another world. Otherwise it’s just the same place.”
This was her grandmother’s training, he thought. She had been turned into a porcupine. Tears came to his eyes; none of it had been his fault.
“Who do you think tells the truth?” he said. “Your grandmother?”
“What do you mean?”
“Which of us do you like best? That must be what I meant.”
“To tell you the God’s truth,” said the child, in a coarse voice he was not accustomed to hearing, “I’m not dying about either one of you.”
In a rush of warm air the rest of her words were lost. She bent and picked up something that had been creeping on the floor – a reptile he could not identify. It was part lizard, or snake, or armadillo, the size of a kitten, and repulsive to see; but as the girl had made a pet of the thing – seemed attached to it, in fact – he said nothing.
He had lost her words, but he understood their meaning. “You don’t want me to bring you up, is that it?”
“Yes. I said that.”
“And your grandmother?”
“That’s finished, too.” Her voice was empty of anything except extreme conviction. She was a small girl, delicate of feature, but she wore, habitually, an expression so set and so humorless that her father felt weak and dispersed beside her – as if age and authority and second thoughts had, instead of welding his personality, pulled it to shreds.
I wonder, the man thought, if she can be mine? She had none of the qualities he recognized in himself, and for which he had been loved: warmth, tenacity, a sense of justice. Perhaps his desire to educate covered a profound unease, but he had never deserted the weak, never betrayed a friend. He was flooded with a great grievance all at once, as if he had been laughed at, his kindness solicited, his charity betrayed, for the sake of someone to whom he owed nothing. Perhaps, he thought – and this was even darker – perhaps she is not her mother’s; for where were her qualities? Charm over shyness; gaiety over anxiousness; camouflage, dissimulation, myth-making to make life easier – myths explain the dark corners of life. Not even those! The child was the bottom of a pool from which both their characters had been drained away. She had nothing, except obstinacy, which he did not admire, and shallow judgment. Of course she was shallow; she had proved it: she did not love her father.
“If you do not love me,” he wanted to say, “you will never care about anyone,” but he felt so much pain at the possibility of not being loved that he added quickly, “I forgive you.” Instantly the pain receded.
“Look here,” he said. “How old are you, exactly?”
“Six and a half,” said the child, without surprise.
“That would be it, that would be the right age,” he said. She could be ours. With that, the pain returned.
He could not remember what they had been saying during much of the drive, but he must have been using the wrong language, or, worse, have allowed the insertion of silence. Everything had been a mistake. The child sat, perfectly self-contained, protected by an innocence that transformed her feelings and made them ne
utral. We must make a joke of this, her father thought, or the pain will make me so hideous, so disfigured, that she will be frightened of me. He opened his mouth, meaning to describe, objectively, what anguish was like, giving as examples the dupe on his way to be sacrificed, the runner overtaken by a tank, the loathed bearer of a disease, but he said instead, “I can’t understand you,” in a reasonable voice. “I was interested in you, I never neglected you. If you’d had more experience, you’d know when you were well off. You just don’t know what other men can be like.”
As if pleased with the effect she had produced, the child played with the monster’s collar and bell. He heard the bell tinkle, and saw a flash of her small hands. She had not warned him, or prepared him, or even asked his advice. He could have stopped driving, flung himself down, appealed in the name of their past; but he had heard in his own last words a deliberate whine, which rendered any plea disgraceful.
He was dealing with a child, he suddenly recalled; it was not a father’s business to plead for justice but to dispense it. Pride, yes, pride was important, but he was not to give up his role. He resumed reasonableness; he said, “I suppose you find me tiresome, sometimes.”
“Yes, I did,” said the child. “That was one of the things.”
He was in the little girl’s past, and she was so young that the past was removed from life. This is my fault, he said to himself. I’ve let her believe she was grown up; I have been too respectful. She thinks her life is her own; she doesn’t know that she can’t plan and think and provide for herself. He said, jokingly, as if they had been playing a game all along, “All right, who do you want to live with?,” thinking she would laugh at the question, but instead she said at once, “With Mr. Mountford.”
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