by B. TRAVEN
I don’t understand why train officials always have to examine tickets. There must really be many railroad cheaters. Well, I won’t say cheaters; let us say, people who cannot afford to buy tickets. Oh, of course, there must be some kind of inspection. Who would pay dividends to the stockholders if everybody rode free?
French trains are different from ours. There is a long corridor on one side that runs the length of the car. From this corridor doors lead into small compartments in which five or six persons can be seated.
All of a sudden the conductor walked through the corridor and opened the door to the compartment in which I was sitting. I had no time to attend to my urgent private business. So I sat there and looked him straight in the face. I used mental influence, or what is called telepathy. I looked at him as if I had a ticket. He caught my stare and closed the door. I knew telepathy was a great science, and it worked fine. He was absolutely convinced that I had a ticket.
I was just about to think it over and decide how to use telepathy in other things, particularly with my consuls, when the conductor returned. He opened the door, looked at me doubtfully, made a gesture as though to close the door again, and then said: “Excuse me, sir, where did you say you wanted to get off or change trains, please?”
He said this in French. I could grasp the meaning, but not the exact words. So I had no answer ready. I tried to think up a few French words to answer him with.
The conductor, however, gave me no time to explains He pleaded: “Will you, please, let me have your ticket again?”
He spoke very politely. Yet he could not get from me what I did not have.
Satisfaction with his own cleverness spread all over his face when he said: “I thought so.”
Since I was sitting next to the door and as there were only two more passengers in the same compartment, sitting by the window, they did not notice the tragedy that was happening right under their noses.
The conductor took out a notebook, wrote something in it, and went his way. Perhaps he has a good heart and will let me slip by? I shall never forget his kindness. Maybe some day his grown-up sons will come to Cincin, and I shall treat them fine.
In Toulouse, right in front of my car, I was awaited and received. The conductor made a slight gesture toward me, and two gentlemen said in a low voice: “Please follow us, quietly.”
Nobody seemed to notice what was going on. The gentlemen put me between them exactly as though they were friends meeting another friend who had just arrived at the depot.
Outside, a motor-car is waiting. French motor-cars, as I now notice for the first time, are different from our flivvers. They are fire- and burglar-proof. There are tiny little compartments inside, just big enough so you can sit down without spreading your elbows in comfort. Each compartment has a door. I am let in and the door is locked from the outside. The car, after a while, makes off. There is one little window close to the top. I can see nothing from it but the upper floors of the houses we pass. It’s an important car, because a whistle from the chauffeur gets it the right of way over all other vehicles.
I have a feeling that the car will take me to some place I do not like. I have gathered sufficient experience by now to know that whenever I run up against certain strange customs anywhere in Europe, then I am on my way to a police-station. I never had anything to do with the police back home. In Europe everything is different. I may sit quite satisfied with myself on a box by the docks, and, sure enough, a cop comes up, asks me questions, and takes me to the police-station. Or I may lie in bed, doing nobody any harm, and somebody knocks at the door, and half an hour later I am again in a police-station. There are still people who say you cannot sin while you’re asleep. But the police in Rotterdam insisted that I did sin while asleep that morning. Then again I may sit in a train, speaking to nobody, looking into nobody’s purse, asking no one for his paper. It doesn’t help me a bit. I find myself in the police-station as soon as the train has pulled in. I think that must be the trouble Europe is suffering from. These people simply cannot attend to their own affairs. The police will not allow them to do so. Seven-eighths of their short lives have to be spent, some way or other, with the police. Whenever they move from the second floor to the third floor in the same house, they have to notify the police that they have done so, and they have to fill in three blanks, in which they specify their religion, the names of their grandfathers, and where their grandmothers were born. And that is only the brighter side of their intercourse with the police. They can do practically nothing without asking the police for their kind permission. Even closing or opening your own window in your own home is regulated by the police. And heaven knows for what reason, they are for ever acting like sergeants with liver trouble; they never act like human beings who receive their salaries from the very same people they push around day and night. You cannot even dance in your own home, or in a public dance-hall, without a special permit from the police. All Europe is a paradise for bureaucrats. Under such circumstances it is no wonder that our bankers will never collect from any European countries the debts they ran up fighting for democracy and civilization and humanity. All the money these people earn goes to building up a better bureaucracy and a bigger police force. I hope only that somebody will come up to me again to offer me liberty bonds on the installment plan.
“Where do you come from?”
A uniformed high priest is sitting behind a very high desk, in front of which I stand like a two-legged mite. They are all alike, be they in Belgium, Holland, Paris, Toulouse. Always asking questions. Always asking the same questions. Always doubting every answer given them. I cannot get away from the idea that if some day a sailor without a passport should land in hell, he would have to pass the same kind of desk before he is admitted.
Now, of course, I might just ignore their questions and say nothing. Yet who is he that could stand a hundred questions and answer none? An unanswered question flutters about you for the rest of your life. It does not let you sleep; it does not let you think. You feel that the equilibrium of the universe is at stake if you leave a question pending. A question without an answer is something so incomplete that you simply cannot bear it. You can get crazy thinking of the problems of an unbalanced solar system. The word “Why?” with a question mark behind it is the cause, I am quite certain, of all culture, civilization, progress, and science. This word “Why?” has changed and will again change every system by which mankind lives and prospers; it will end war, and it will bring war again; it will lead to communism, and it will surely destroy communism again; it will make dictators and despots, and it will dethrone them again; it will make new religions, and it will turn them into superstitions again; it will make a nebula the real and the spiritual center of the universe, and it will again make the same nebula an insignificant speck in the super-universe. The little word “Why?” with a question mark.
So what could I do, a sailor without papers, against the power of the word “Why?”
“Why are you here? Where do you come from? What’s your name?”
I have given no answers as yet. But now I can no longer resist the question mark. I have to say something. I do not know what might be better, to tell him that I came from Paris or to tell him I came from Limoges. Since Limoges is nearer, the railroad hasn’t got so big a claim on me as it would have if I said I came from Paris.
“I took the train at Limoges.”
“That is not correct. You came from Paris.”
Let’s see if they are smart.
“No, officer, I was not on the train since Paris, only since Limoges.”
“But you have a station ticket here from Paris, good only for the first suburb out.”
With this I realize that my pockets have been searched again. I hadn’t noticed it at all. I seem to have become so accustomed to being searched that I have lost my capacity to take account of it. It must be the same with married people and their kisses; divorce proceedings begin when they take account again.
“This
ticket? Oh, you mean this ticket from Paris? I have had this for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks or so.”
“Strange ticket. Rather a great miracle. The ticket given out to you six weeks ago bears yesterday’s date.”
“I am sure, then, that the clerk must have postdated it by mistake.”
“We have this fact clear now. You boarded the train at Paris.”
“I paid from Paris to Limoges.”
“Yes, you are a very good payer. You even buy two tickets. Because you would not have needed this ticket if you had bought a ticket to Limoges. Where is your ticket from Paris to Limoges? Since you did not leave the train at Limoges, the ticket must still be in your possession.”
“I gave it to the conductor on reaching Limoges.”
“Then where is the ticket from Limoges? How could you get into the train after you handed in the ticket at the collection gate at Limoges?”
“I do not know.”
“Let us now take your name.”
I could not spoil my decent American name. Some day I might belong to society. It is only a question of making money. So I gave him a name which I borrowed for this occasion from a grocer I used to know in Chic, who once threw a stick after me. For that he is now on the police blotter in Toulouse, France. A warning to all grocers never to throw sticks after little boys when they catch them with their dirty hands in the barrel of maple syrup.
“Nationality?”
What a question! It has been testified to by my consuls that I no longer have such a thing as nationality, since there is not the slightest proof that I was born. I might tell here that I am French. My consul told me there are lots of people who speak excellent French but are not Frenchmen, so there must also be lots of people who do not speak any more French than I do, but who are nevertheless French citizens. I should like to know for whom it would be cheaper to ride on a French railroad without a ticket — for a Frenchman, or for an American, or for —?
There’s an idea! A German! A Boche! Right now, only a few years after the war. All France is still filled to the brim with the most terrific hatred against the Heinies. Might be a new experience. One should never cease to learn. If you cannot go to college because you have no money and you have to sell papers to make your own living, you should nevertheless not miss any means by which you can get educated. Traveling, and having lots of experiences in life, are the best education for any man. Profs are as dull as last week’s morning paper. I wonder what they’ll do to a German caught riding on their express trains so soon after the war.
“I am only a German, sir.”
“A German? What do you know about that! A German! I suppose from Potsdam, too?”
“Not, not from Potsdam, officer. Only from Vienna.”
“That is in Austria. Anyway, it is all the same. They are all alike. Why have you no passport?”
“I had one. But I lost it.”
“You do not speak the hacky French of a German. What district are you from?”
“The district I was raised in is situated in a region where Germans still speak an old English tongue.”
“That is right. I know the district well. It is where English kings had a great influence up to the middle of the last century”
“Yes, sir, you are right. It is called Saxony.”
For the first time I learned that it is a good thing not to have a passport. If you haven’t any, nobody can find one in your pockets; so nobody can look up your record. Had they known that I had already robbed the French national railroad, it might have cost me two years, or even Devil’s Island. I got only two weeks.
When the first day in prison was over, taken up with registration, signing my name in dozens of books, bathing, weighing, medical examinations, I felt as though I had done a long and hard day’s work.
Kings and presidents don’t rule the world; the brass button is the real ruler.
Next morning, right after a poor breakfast which did no justice to the overestimated French cuisine, I was taken to the workshop.
In front of me was a pile of very peculiar-looking nameless things stamped out of bright tinned sheet iron. I wanted to know what they were. Nobody could tell me, neither my fellow-prisoners nor the wardens. One said that he was sure they were parts of a dirigible manufactured in different sections throughout the country. The day after the declaration of the new European war all these parts would be gathered together, and within less than a week about five thousand dirigibles would be ready for service. Others denied this and insisted that the little things had nothing to do with dirigibles, but were parts of secretly manufactured submarines. Again, others said they were parts of a new machine-gun, one as effective as the best in existence, but so light that a soldier could carry it like a rifle. Others, that they were parts of a tank that would have a speed of about seventy miles an hour. Another fellow told me that they were parts of a new type of airplane, each carrying no less than two hundred gas-bombs, fifty heavy nitroglycerin bombs, and three machine-guns, and having a speed of six hundred kilometers per hour, and a service-time of eighteen hours without refueling. Not one person, warden or prisoner, ever suggested that they might be parts of machinery or something else useful to mankind. Such an idea occurred to no one. It was the same everywhere in France. Whenever something was made that nobody knew anything about, everyone concluded that it was to be used in the next war to end war.
I myself could form no idea as to what these little things might be good for.
The warden in charge of the shop came up and said: “You count off this pile one hundred and forty-four pieces. Then you make a new little pile of a hundred and forty-four pieces. Then again you count off one hundred and forty-four pieces, pile them up neatly, and put them aside. That is your work.”
After I had counted the first pile, the warden returned. He looked at the little pile and said: “Are you sure there are exactly one hundred and forty-four pieces, not one more or less?”
“Yes, officer.”
“Better count them again. I trust you fully. But, please, I beg of you, count them with the greatest care. That’s why I gave you this special work. You look intelligent. I think you are the only man here who has the intelligence to do work with his brain and not with his hands.”
“You may be assured, officer, I shall do my best.”
“Please do. That’s a good boy. You see, suppose my superior checks up and finds one piece above or below the hundred and forty-four I have to deliver; I might get a terrible rebuke. I might even lose my job here. I would not know what to do, with a wife sick at home and three little kids; and my mother and the mother of my wife also depend upon me. I could not afford to lose the job. Please be careful when counting.”
I counted them first in one heap; then I made twelve dozens, counting carefully each dozen, then all the dozens twelve times. After that I counted them all over in heaps of ten each, making fourteen heaps of ten, and adding at the end four single pieces. Having done that, I counted them in piles of twenty, making seven piles all together, and again four extra.
The warden came up, looked at what I was doing, and said: “That’s the way to do it. You are the first one that ever could do it right. I knew that you had brains, and that you know how to use them. I can depend upon you. Thank you.”
When finally I had decided that I had one pile of one hundred and forty-four pieces, I laid them aside and reached out to count off a second pile of one hundred and forty-four. No sooner had I started than the warden, who had been watching me all the time from a seat in the corner, came up and said: “Better count them once or twice more. There might easily be a mistake. I would commit suicide if I lost my job for such a grave error.”
I took the pile and began to count the pieces again, one by one. The warden stood for a while watching me, and said: “That’s exactly the way it has to be done. Just use a little brain, that’s all. I will see to it that you get some cigarettes for good behavior.”
When at last my time was up, I had counted the grand total of three piles, of one hundred and forty-four pieces each. For months afterwards I still wondered whether perhaps one of the three piles was not counted incorrectly. I trust, however, that the warden gave my piles to a newcomer to count over.
I received fourteen centimes in wages. I didn’t want to ride on a French railroad again without a ticket. It was not that I was afraid of being caught once more. No, it was just that I could not burden my conscience with the thought that on my account the French railroad or the French nation would go bankrupt. It might come to a point where the French government would say that I was responsible for their failure to pay their debts. (By the way, these are the same people that make such a fuss about the Russians not paying their debts.)
To tell the truth, I must say that it was not my concern for the welfare of the French nation that made me decide to leave France and go elsewhere. It was that when I found myself outside the prison there were again two gentlemen waiting for me to warn me seriously to leave the country within fifteen days or go back to jail for six months and after that be deported to Germany. I did not like to see the Germans go to war with France again, this time on my behalf. I do not wish to be responsible for another war. It will come anyway.
