That’s the line he takes with me.
I have visions of knocking him on his ass… and then I calm down… I’d prefer to keep on talking… I really wanted to ask about the girl… it was a little more serious all the same!… Like why she totally clammed up?… And whether it was on her uncle’s orders?…
“Does she talk to you?”
“No, my little laddie! Not a single word! Ah! You know, her behind is still smarting! ‘Goodness me! That uncle of mine!’… She doesn’t want him to go back to that! And the whizz! Whizz! The switch! Such a severe disciplinarian! How it whizzed through the air! Oh my goodness! My ass! You should know about that, having been in the cavalry!…”
It really turned him on something incredible! Thinking back on the circumstances! How they were all in the audience… the flunkies… all the servants!…
“Ah! The flunkies too, no less!…”
He was sorry not to have been a part of the scene!…
“Shut up! Christ!…” I cut him off… “Shut up!…”
He was starting to wear on my nerves.
“Shut up, Sosthène… You’re a big show-off! I’m going to let you in on something… You’re too funny for your own good!… I’ve known a lot of funny guys in my time! Some real jokers, absolute laugh-riots! And they all came to a horrible end! I’m telling you this as a friend!… Ease up!…”
“Me?” he snickers at me. “Me, too funny? Ah! You’re going too far there, Ferdinand! What do you take me for?”
He’s getting all worked up now.
“But you’ve got to laugh, goddamn it!… You’re bursting with health! Good spirits! And so tell me then! Whizz! Whizz!… What if Uncle gave you a go? Like that right on your own butt! Wouldn’t it make you laugh? You know you’d be splitting your sides! Show me how you’d act!…”
He did an imitation with his ass…
“You’re a dimwit, Sosthène! You’re a dimwit!… A dimwitted moron!”
“Me, dimwitted? Me, dimwitted?…”
Ah! He looks at me… hard… he’s floored… me calling him a dimwit!…
“Me, dimwitted?… Me, you snotnose!…”
Ah! He won’t hear a word about dimwits!… Ah! He lashes back something horrible!
“A metaphysical guy like me?… Did you get that? Metaphysical!”
Ah! Floored… I struck a raw nerve!…
“That’s what you’ll never understand, my little bungling shit-assed brat! Metaphysical!… Metaphysical!…” Couldn’t get a word out from the shock… crazy with anger!
“You ju-ju-just li-listen to me go-good! Instead of following your instincts… thief! Looter! Lout!…”
Ah! He didn’t consider himself to be dimwitted in any way shape or form… Ah! That stuck in his craw!
“Metaphysical! Etherian!… So there, you little jerk, now you know what I am!”
“If I were in your shoes, Mr Sosthène, I wouldn’t lose my temper… I wouldn’t start preaching to anybody… I wouldn’t act so conspicuous!…”
“Conspicuous! Ah! Conspicuous!… Ah! That’s just too rich! Will you just listen to this snotnose! And what about you, you dirty little roughneck, you mean you haven’t been acting conspicuous! Ah! You want to know the whole story! Ah! You want me to fill you in! Ah! You make me lose my temper! Well now, I’m going to give you a little piece of information! Here’s what’s going to happen to you! You’re going to get sacked! Kicked right the hell out the door! You little ingrate! You little rat! Right out in the street! You dirty little pig!… Right into the gutter you crawled out of…”
He was boiling mad at me…
“You’re jealous, Mr Sosthène… You don’t know what’s coming out of your mouth!…” I answer real calmly… “But since you’re such a blabbermouth… one little secret deserves another! I’ll let you in on something too, Monsieur de Rodiencourt… if you get me sacked… well then, you’ll be hanged! Monsieur le marquis de Sosthène! You unmitigated son of a bitch!…”
Ah! Got him there, tit for tat!
“Hanged! Yes, dear master!” I rub it in… “Hanged! You heard me!… Hanged!… And that’s the least of it! Hanged high! And I guarantee you! Oh yes! High! That’s what’s in store for you!…”
“You’re yelling like a stuck pig, Monsieur Squealer!… We’re guests here!”
“What I said’s not sinking in – you’re a dimwit, Monsieur de Sosthène! Let me run it past you one more time! I’ve already told you… You’re the one forcing me to yell!…”
“This isn’t our place… and you’re acting like a swine!… Like a bum!… It’s obvious you were born in a whorehouse!…”
That did it! Wham, I pounced on the jerk, didn’t have far to go, his nose was in my face…
“A whorehouse! A whorehouse! Ah! Just hold on one second! I’ll show you what a whorehouse looks like!”
“Ah!” he hollers… bellows… “Murderer! There’s the murderer!…” like that, his finger pointing in the air… “Watch out! Look! Look! Look!”
Ah! He turns my stomach… he takes the heart out of me! I wash my hands of him! Shit!… I flop back on the bed… I could reduce him to a pulp and he’d be just as totally vomitous!… It wouldn’t do a damn bit of good!… He’s a son of a bitch, end of story!… I roll over face to wall!
“I want to get some shut-eye!” I shout… “You hear me! I want to get some shut-eye, you bastard!…”
If I can, that is…
“Quiet! Lights out!” I bark.
I’d had enough!…
OK! Fine!… A second goes by… I hear him blubbering quietly… sobbing into his bolster…
“How long you gonna keep that up?…”
Long… his wheels keep spinning… I know… the circus in his head!… I don’t give a damn… He’s making me drowsy… wah… wah… wah… on that note he sends me beddy-bye!…
*
The thought of more hassles worried me stiff… I beat it for the whole day… right after breakfast… I was off and running! Heading into the City, to Holborn, and then especially to Clerkenwell! For all the nice little chemical ingredients, the chlorine, the sulphur. I stopped by Pépé’s, she was still the funniest gal of the gang! She filled my ear with some real dirt about Sosthène… about the time they were travelling acrobats in Australia and the Midwest, about his mining flimflam in Cape Town, the crap he pulled in India, his so-called prospecting. According to what I thought I could make out about his run-ins and bum deals, his name was mud throughout the entire southern hemisphere, he must have had at least twenty search warrants on his ass!… Setting foot in that neck of the woods again was out of the question! Sosthène could bend over backwards to deny it, but Pépé wasn’t throwing any bull about the clink, time behind bars, she had seen the whole rigmarole up close!…
“You can’t imagine, darling!…” (She always called me darling.) “What those judges in Bombay are like! They’re vultures! Genuine vultures! Worse than the judges in Rangoon! Jungle hyenas? They’re lambs compared to the judges in Rangoon! They’d tear you straight to pieces!… With your heart still beating!… And honey, those prisons of theirs! Just the thought, oh sweetheart! I feel sick!… The stink!… My precious!… The stink! Mass graves! Ten, a hundred prisoners to a single pit! Living and dead left to rot! All squashed together! You can’t imagine!… Ah! The judges in Burma!”
She shuddered in fear at the mere memory!…
“Ah! If only he had loved me!”
She started up that old song on cue!… The one about Sosthène… It really threw her into a blue funk!… I dropped her a kind word, then flew out of there. Another afternoon, I passed by Prospero’s pub, well, the place where it used to stand anyway… nothing but rubble… ashes… a picket fence… that’s all that was left of the Cruise pub… I ask around for some news… from the neighbours… the other pub farther down the block… Nobody’d seen Prospero again… I had some dealings in that neck of the woods, a little farther off over in Wapping, at the Gordon Well factory… carburi
zed carboys… The traffic’s crazy out this way, a steady stream of goods towards the docks… Basically it keeps right on rolling!… A perpetual hubbub… the vehicles pour between the walls of the buildings tall as cliffs… A roar echoes inside… crashing, thumping, bumping… shaft horses… drays, heavy lorries pulling up to the holds, the edge of the water, all part of the scenery, the river itself like a stage, brightly lit, whipped by the wind, and your dreams carry you away… I can see it now… I’m starting to go mushy… So I asked all around… I’d really have liked to see Prospero again all the same, despite everything, have a peek at how the old guy was getting along these days!… And that joint of his built out over the water… anyway so what’d I turn up?… Just the fact his whole place had gone under, and up in flames!… Nothing left from his joint, the two-storey Cruise pub, but the piles! Plus bits and pieces of everything in the sludge!… At ebb tide the river bared it… the debris… all rotting away in front of the Dundee Docks… I’m telling it like it is…
Ah! But to get back to my story…
My strolling days were over, that’s a fact!… Every now and then I’d just sneak in a small detour!… Between two factories!… I wasn’t parading around with thick wads of dough in my pockets… Just a two-three pounds for what I needed to buy, and always absolutely alone!… Never again with Virginia!… I had time to read the papers this way hopping from one bench to the next!… There were scads left scattered all over the place… Greenwich wasn’t in the news any more, our nasty business… not a single word mentioned… not a single allusion, zip… True, lots of other stuff, more exciting mysteries were going on in this great big world! Even for London… some real killers… so there was no end of things to read!… A corpse found under a subway car, a nurse down in a sewer stabbed with this terrifically long knife!… An infant dangling in mid-air… from a telegraph wire… plus the big offensives revving up in Flanders!… The plan was to drive forward all the way to Berlin… plus the capture of Salonika due any day now!… Endless excitement!… At least eight “Specials” every day!… This gives you some idea what a jumping time it was… But not one word about our calamity!… You would have thought that Claben had never existed… Delphine neither!… It was outrageous!… A dream!… It really gave me the willies!… Yet I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing!… Those scrapes were all too damned real! Horrible and threatening!… The proof was the way I was shaking… jittering at the mere thought!… Sure I’d got a breather, but so what, big deal! The ups and downs of the war!… Kept people kind of fascinated… cos the tide would turn our way any day now!… It just put off the final day of reckoning!… “Boomerang, sir… Boomerang!…” Greenwich’ll pop back in the news some day… Ah! I was ready to bet my life on it!… I carried my load of junk and worries from one district to the next… I looked for crowded spots… streets thick with traffic… where I could vanish in a snap… melt suddenly into the mob… I took a good look around… the number of wounded was on the upswing, the squares and esplanades were crawling with them… the war was starting to take a real toll… From every country… of all stripes… strutting around… in roving packs… squadrons!… Mobbing the sidewalks, hobbling, thumping along, twisted out of shape, arms in slings, crutches everywhere. The Zeelands* especially looked the most messed up to me, lots of them around in little wheelchairs!…
No more scenes back at the house… not a single word!… Model behaviour!… I’d roll in around so-called mealtimes, go beddy-bye right after!… Sosthène worked day and night! I could hear him up under their rafters rattling around all their scrap metal… filing, cutting… when I woke up they’d still be banging away!… They were still whacking away at the sheet metal!… Feverishly preparing for the day of the so-called big contest… I thought they were going to flip into their old routine at any moment!… Fly into one of their awful conniptions… and tear the whole joint down around our ears again!… In a fit of frenzy!… Knock each other off right on top of the rubble!… It’d take just one puff, just another whiff of their gas… their nastiest concoction… their “Ferocious”… and they’d be back to their old crimes!… They slacked off only at the first light of day, pooping over dead asleep! Right in the middle of their gewgaws!… But they didn’t laze around with the wind knocked out of them!… Just a couple of hours of shut-eye, back on their feet, bam, quick, to the table!… Touchy situation, oh yeah… a real tough time… I could see Virginia’s poor face, her sad little expression… she’d have really liked to talk with me. Ah! I was on my guard… She scared me too much… Yes, honest! It wasn’t just my yellow streak… I kept looking at her uncle, at Sosthène… the window… anywhere… at anybody… to avoid her glance… she gave me the creeps sort of… ever since our night out with the Tweet-Tweeters… Could it be just a fever?… One of my hare-brained hallucinations?… A fit?… Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing?… And nothing had really happened?… Back at the Dingby neither!… And what about the rest?… My eyes playing furious tricks!… They’d just come over me like that… It was real possible!… With all the awful shocks I’d experienced… everything my head had been through!… Fractures, concussions, trepanation… Maybe they were just dizzy spells?… Ever since my operations I’d had my share!… Horrible bouts!… My mind would start wandering… I’d fly out of whack at the drop of a hat! I didn’t want to dig too deep for the reasons… Too dangerous!… More than I could handle!… My head was my heel – Achilles’ I mean!… Well, wasn’t that just tough shit!… Stay on your toes!… Poor little darling!… She scared the hell out of me, that’s all there is to it! End of story!… She was wearing me out!
We had dinner at eight o’clock on the dot, everybody gathered around the table… The touchiest moment of all!… I hardly ate a thing… I was losing weight apparently right before their eyes… in a truly extraordinary way!…
“Your bones are showing, Ferdinand! Eat, my friend! Eat!…”
The Colonel wanted me to eat… he cared a lot about my figure!… He adjusted his monocle for a better look…
“Your bones! Your bones!… Fantastic!…”
Was that any of his business?
Nothing fantastic about me! He was the queer customer!… the weird bird! I’d never been so sensible… I’d grown old, body and soul! That’s what’d happened to me!… I didn’t want to have any more adventures!… Or misadventures… or whatever the hell you want to call them!… Ah! No! No kidding, you can keep them all!… Right off I told them straight to their faces!… So that they’d be informed once and for all!… And they could take off for the moon! The Cyclades! The Sunda Islands!… Happy sailing! Good riddance!… Have a nice trip!… With masks on or off! By dirigible! By Underground! On all fours! By trolley! By omnibus! I couldn’t have given a royal fuck! I was no part of their travel plans… they could count me out completely! Totally calm and sensible! The new me!… “Your bones are showing through, Ferdinand!” So I had to pack on a few pounds!… The word from him!… No more worrying myself sick, no more misunderstandings!… Nothing but kindness… a quiet recovery… so I could just sit back and wait for peacetime to roll around, the bright future!… My life would be made once the war was over!… That’s right, a piece of cake!… I could already picture myself in a first-class set-up!… Some small concern… hustling something or other that would jump off the shelves!… Ah! No more heavy stuff! No more bulky crap!… My backbreaking days were over!… I’d had it with humping around tons of junk!… No, from now on, nothing but featherweight articles… Wristwatches for instance… which as a matter of fact were just starting to come in!… With my eighty-per-cent disabled veteran’s pension, if I watched my pennies, I’d be living in the lap of luxury!… Just had to let it fall slowly and surely into my hands… and not rock the boat! Not act cocky, but be a nice boy, pleasant even… Enough with the hard knocks… Sure or not, I’d had it up to my eyeballs… Good luck! Good riddance! Fly away, darling floozies and clowns!… Slick rascals, old scarecrows! Life’s too complicated as it is! Beat it, sluts! Y
ou too, virgins! Blow out of here, cyclones! To hell with you freaks!… Leicester! Van Claben! Tweet-Tweet Club! Enough anarchy!… Clear off, dumb clowns! I didn’t want to work up my mind any more!… Or my body!… Or anything at all!… Patience!… Patience! And a totally cool head!… Meantime, I had to make a living… keep slogging away… holding out!… Matthew was hanging around outside… Ah! You could bet on that… maybe here too?… Probably!… Her uncle must be cooking up something!… Even more two-faced than his other schemes!… Not to mention his fetish for his riding crop! I saw right through that guy’s game with us… playing cat and mouse… He kept watching us… plotting… must have been having a ball these past days!… Must have been stretching out his pleasure… One fine morning he’d rat on us just like that! To the cops!… Ah! I knew what he was up to!… But what if the pair dropped dead in their gas masks… Ah! That’d be a different story!… That’d be just fantastic in my book!… Maybe I’d even inherit a little something… I’d rob them blind before taking off!… A slew of plans was popping in and out of my head during our lunches while I babbled on about this and that… what a bunch of worthless creeps!… Selfish pricks, period!… The kid too, when you came down to it… each out for himself!… The trials were around the corner… the famous contest of theirs was almost here… It sent shivers down the spine of Mr Chinaman Sosthène… Most of the time the cat had his tongue… he mumbled only a word or two to the Colonel… He looked down in the dumps… every meal we sat there at the table with our two gloomy mugs. Luckily the Colonel came through with flying colours… a one-man conversation, kept up a sparkling patter, perpetual witticisms, endless riddles… little cock-and-bull stories!… Danger breathing down his neck really brought out the joker in him, goofier than ever, constantly firing off quips and conundrums… luckily he forgot everything… from one minute to the next… He’d keep repeating the same ones:
My first one’s a little birdie!
My second’s a big ministerrr
London Bridge Page 30
