Schlump

by Hans Herbert Grimm

  ‘But monsieur,’ she said finally, ‘I cannot . . .’ She paused helplessly, peered under the bed, then looked at him with ever more anxiety and embarrassment written on her face.

  Now the penny dropped. ‘I’ll be right back,’ Schlump called out as he vanished. He hurried to the fence separating the estaminet from the neighbouring house and took down one of the many chamber pots that adorned the grey posts like helmets. They were all carefully arranged with their handles facing front, like a platoon standing to attention. Beside them was a second platoon, the neighbour’s chamber pots, their handles facing in the opposite direction and exhibiting their backs. Schlump grabbed the first one: a white pot, which may have been a corporal, as all the others wore blue uniforms.

  He marched through the entire village with this faintly ridiculous vessel, greeting the people returning from the fields. Astounded by what they saw, they asked him whether someone was on their deathbed, for he was carrying the chamber pot as solemnly as a priest.

  But Madeleine was very grateful to Schlump and no longer angry at him.

  •

  Monsieur Rohaut stood at Schlump’s door, twirling his hat between his large fingers. He had three gorgeous daughters, the eldest of whom was Jeanne with the curvy thighs. Rohaut begged Schlump for his fields to be cultivated, which were now lying fallow for the second year in succession. ‘I do understand, Monsieur Rohaut,’ Schlump said, ‘but as you’re well aware, we have too few horses and yokes and we have to work the fields by the road. For when the major drives here from Thumeries for an inspection, he wants to see people at work.’ Schlump felt sorry for the man, because he looked so sad, and because Monsieur Doby was forever pulling his leg, as he was slow on the uptake and invariably acquiescent. Rohaut always took off his boots outside the estaminet so he could greet the landlady in his clean clogs. On one occasion recently, Monsieur Doby had filled these boots with slops. As it was dark when he left, Rohaut thrust one foot unsuspectingly into his boot, and although his face was squirted with sewage he tried with the other foot to see whether the miracle would be repeated.

  Monsieur Rohaut thus left the office an unhappy man. No sooner had he entered the bar to greet Madame Doby than a terrible accident occurred out in the street. The boys were playing soldiers and robbers, for which they’d crafted wooden swords and taken the chamber pots they’d found on the fence as helmets. Little Erneste, son of Widow Foulard, whose husband had died in Maubeuge in 1914, bravely went for the wretched robber. But the latter was no coward; tossing away his sword, he bashed the pot with his bare fist on his foe’s head, slamming it so hard that it sank over the boy’s ears. Erneste grabbed the pot with both hands and tried to yank it off, but in vain! It merely got stuck over his ears. The boy started to howl as if he were being roasted on a spit. Unable to find a way out from the chamber pot, his voice made a peculiar, rather amusing sound, like a bluebottle trapped inside a metal watering can that takes a brief rest before buzzing even louder until it finally finds its way out of the spout. But Erneste couldn’t find his way out of the hole.

  The boys stood around him, convulsed with laughter, until one eventually got scared and tried to help the poor creature. He grasped the cursed chamber pot with both hands and heaved it up, which only made Erneste howl even louder, so the terrified boy let the pot sink again. In the meantime, Erneste’s mother had raced to the scene. She too seized the pot with both hands and lifted it up, together with her son. The boy thrashed around with his legs and remonstrated hellishly. The neighbours came running as well and tried everything they could, but were left wringing their hands. ‘He’ll starve to death,’ Madame Besnard said, starting to cry.

  Fearing the worst, the unfortunate mother took her son with his iron mask to Schlump and asked him whether the poor boy would have to spend his whole life in a chamber pot. What would happen when the pot got too small? another woman asked. Schlump said they had to see a doctor; he would give them all a pass so they could get there. They thanked him for his smart suggestion and begged him to prepare the passes at once. But Schlump announced that he wanted to go with them.

  By this time a large crowd had gathered outside headquarters, which parted respectfully when Schlump appeared with the sorely tested mother and the boy wearing the chamber pot. Then they all filed along behind Schlump to Mons-en-P. When they came to Deux Villes, all the people came running out and the poor mother, in floods of tears, had to tell the story again, while the boy started buzzing and droning once more in his prison. Then they continued on their way, with the people of Deux Villes joining the procession.

  Arriving in Mons-en-P, they called out the doctor, and there was silence as he examined his patient. He made a serious face, put his head on one side, screwed up his eyes, and pondered for a while. Finally he declared that he could be of no help in this case and that they needed to see the tinsmith. The crowd realised how right the experienced doctor was and expressed its agreement with him. The mother was filled with hope and the procession moved on. By now a huge mass of people swarmed around Schlump and his entourage, and the murmurs and excitement of the throng were so great that you could hardly hear the blue-bottle buzzing in its chamber pot. Finally they arrived at the tinsmith’s and Schlump went in with the mother and boy while the rest waited outside.

  The captain commanding the battalion of recruits, who was staying opposite the tinsmith, was an excitable fellow. When he saw the effervescent crowd, all speaking animatedly and waving their arms in the air, he thought an attack on the army was imminent, and that this throng was on its way to procure arms from the tinsmith in broad daylight. Rushing to the telephone, he informed the guard and issued the alarm to the entire garrison. Five minutes later the troops arrived to the rolling of drums, on the double and with bayonets fixed. They encircled the inhabitants of Mons-en-P., Deux Villes and Loffrande, and a lieutenant came forward brandishing a sword and demanding their surrender. Terrified, the poor crowd fetched Schlump, who stepped up to the lieutenant, stood to attention and explained the situation in a few terse words. The lieutenant smiled, returned his sword to its scabbard, ordered the soldiers to lay down their arms, and handed over command to a sergeant. Then he went in with Schlump to see the tinsmith, who was grinding and crunching away at the metal chamber pot with his pliers. The boy stood perfectly still; his mother told him to close his eyes. A few seconds later she was holding her son in her arms, and as she wept she wiped away the two trails of snot that ran down to his chin. The lieutenant sent his troops home and went to report to the captain, who in the meantime had put on his helmet. Schlump, however, strode back to Loffrande in triumph, his subjects in tow.

  •

  Madame Gaspard from Drumez stood before Schlump, resting her bony hand on the desk. She was wearing clogs and looked like a withered old Christmas tree. She was as tall as a hop pole and from her clogs rose a pair of thin sticks wrapped in thick woollen stockings. Her long black skirt hung in dense folds around her waist, and a woollen jacket was bound tightly over her meagre breasts, covering half of her scrawny neck. Like a man she had a pointed Adam’s apple, which gaped out between the two steep sinews that held her sharp chin in place. Her face had the appearance of an old Camembert; two grey eyes cast an ice-cold stare from between colourless lashes, and there was no hint of any eyebrow in her precipitous rectangular forehead. She was as thin as a hop pole too; only her hips stood out at right angles, like a pair of branches from which no more green shoots would ever grow. ‘I’ve come to complain about Madame Fontaine,’ she said, casting him a fierce look.

  ‘And?’ Schlump asked.

  Now this arid creature became animated and started talking verbosely.

  ‘Well, that woman said that I’d said to Madame Aulnoy that Madame Patard had said that she’d shared a bed with Carolouis. Of course she’s shared a bed with Carolouis, she still is, I know she is, I know for a fact or my name’s not Madame Gaspard, because those sorts of people have got no sense of honour, and they’ve got no sh
ame sleeping with a Prussian, not to mention one with bandy legs. But these are wicked people, you know, and impertinent to boot. They’re saying that’s what I said to Madame Aulnoy, but Madame Aulnoy will vouch that I never said a word to her about that woman. Madame Fontaine is lying, I tell you; she ought to be locked up, that one. She’s a shameless hussy, she lets her cows graze on my meadow day in, day out, and she’s also nicked clover, and then her brother, well . . .’

  ‘Just wait a moment,’ Schlump shouted in a pause for breath. ‘I see Carolouis passing by outside; he can go and get Madame Fontaine.’ Schlump was relieved to have shut the woman up.

  ‘Oh yes, get Madame Fontaine here. Tell him to fetch her.’

  Schlump opened the window, called Carolouis in, and told him to find Madame Fontaine because Madame Gaspard had come to lodge a complaint about her.

  Madame Fontaine arrived five minutes later. Around her shoulders was a filthy woollen scarf, and she was wearing a pair of felt shoes, or something similar. She immediately thrust her hands on her hips, which, next to Madame Gaspard’s, looked broad and healthy. Her face was as black as a stove door, and around her mouth long blackish-grey hairs knitted together to form a patchy moustache, giving this part of her face the appearance of an English park. But her eyes, set either side of a hooked nose, were full of life and as black as coal. They twinkled and shone from between long dark lashes, above which a pair of bushy matted grey eyebrows hung down. The black hair on her head sat in greasy strands; it looked as if she’d never washed it in her life. Staring straight past Madame Gaspard and opening her mouth, she asked, ‘Eh bien, quoi?’

  ‘Madame Gaspard says you said that Carolouis . . . hold on . . . what did you say, Madame Gaspard?’ Schlump asked. But when the raven-haired woman heard the name Carolouis, she went as rigid as if she’d been stabbed.

  ‘What?’ she screamed. ‘What? Has she been gossiping about Carolouis again? And what about the three men she’s had?’

  ‘You’ve had three men,’ the arid creature ranted, ‘and at the same time, too, not one after the other like me, and—’

  ‘Three men, and she slept with the hunchback. If you ask me, she’s a brazen hussy, a haughty cow, a filthy—’

  ‘Filthy? Who’s the filthy one around here? Who’s ridden with lice like a Prussian? Who’s whoring herself up and down the village? Who nicks and steals at night? Who set Célestine up with the gendarme for a few miserable sous? And now the poor girl’s got a child by him. Who—’

  Madame Gaspard raised her claws and was about to grab the other woman’s hair, but Madame Fontaine was prepared for a struggle. She bared her own claws, then the two women set upon each other, opening wide mouths full of gaps where teeth should have been. At the sight of this performance Schlump started to laugh so loudly and uncontrollably that the quarrelling women stared at him in bewilderment. They turned around and were about to exit the office when their bottoms collided, sending the door flying and smashing a hole in the wall with the handle.

  A horrified Madame Doby came out of the kitchen and looked wide-eyed at Schlump, who was wiping the tears from his eyes and pointing at the hole in the wall.

  •

  Summer was long past, and autumn too. It was that time of year when you couldn’t tell if winter had arrived yet. At times a humid wind rustled the treetops, the bushes dripped with the perpetual fog, door handles were wet, and thick drops of water fell incessantly from gutters on to the street.

  They had started threshing. The threshing machine gave out a high-pitched whine that resonated throughout the entire village. And if it was given too much to eat, its monotonous melody would climb by a minor third, before soon falling back to its old tune. In the distance the cannons beat out a fast rhythm as an accompaniment. The girls loaded the sheaves into the thresher, and from time to time one of the young lads would skip into the barn and pinch their legs, producing squeals of delight. The cart, heavily laden with yellow wheat, rocked and rattled past Schlump’s headquarters, making way for the other cart that was taking away the straw to be added to an enormous stack.

  The short major from the agricultural section, to whom Schlump sent his weekly reports, had paid a visit a few days previously. He asked Schlump about supplies, about hay, how much seed there was, and how much butter he was delivering. Schlump made a succinct report, gave him the figures, and stated that butter was churned every Thursday so that the peasants could deliver punctually. An energetic mayoress looked after this and settled the accounts every week. The major appeared to be satisfied. He clicked his tongue, tightened the reins, and rode off.

  Louis Gez came into the office after the major. He was exactly one metre fifty tall and just as wide, even though he had sloping shoulders. He unashamedly wore a very baggy pair of corduroy slacks, which were tied above his shoes, a red handkerchief around his neck, and a cap on the back of his head.

  ‘You ought to grow a moustache,’ he said to Schlump. ‘The girls love them. There’s a real pretty one I’ve singled out for you – a hard-working, sturdy girl, let me tell you – but I need you to do me a favour . . .’

  Schlump knew who he was referring to: Helen over in Marchelles, but she was well known far and wide; she’d already lent her favours to the entire artillery regiment stationed there.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m right out of chewing tobacco, Monsieur Jean, and you know jolly well that a man without tobacco is only half a man.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Schlump said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll go to the mess and fetch you some, and some snuff for your neighbour, Madame Héaulmière. But tell me, Louis, is it true, you know, the story in Arras?’

  ‘True? Why of course it’s true. You know, times were very different then, you could still get chewing tobacco and cognac. My goodness, cognac! Do you have any of that in the mess too?’ he interrupted himself.

  ‘You’ll get a half-bottle, Louis. That’s a promise.’

  ‘Merci, Monsieur Jean, merci. Oh yes, you could still get chewing tobacco and cognac in those days. The fair was on in Arras, and they’d organised a prize bull exhibition. Well, the richer peasants were strutting around the streets with their fat sticks, making all manner of lewd comments to the girls, twirling their moustaches and jingling the large coins in their pockets. They looked just like their bulls. And horns had been put on their heads, too, only you couldn’t see them,’ he said, giving Schlump an exaggerated wink. ‘I was supposed to be operating the big machine at the fair, which was beside the cinematographic theatre and drove the dynamo. But it worked by itself, so I spent the whole day with the beautiful Céline in the bar in the market square. Quite a woman, that Céline, let me tell you. Oh yes, and as I’m drinking my cognac, all of a sudden out in the street they start running and screaming, and the peasants come running too, scarlet-faced, waving their sticks, and they scramble into the bar. The women are screeching, and one literally leaps through the window, cutting her chubby cheeks. In no time at all the bar is jammed and the market square is dead. I go to the door to take a look, and in the middle of the square I see a huge bull. Quite a fellow, you know, with powerful horns, and what a neck! He’s bracing his front hooves against the ground, nodding his head up and down, then jerking it in the air like horses when the oats prickle them. And – I can still picture it today – in front of it, not ten paces away from the beast, there’s a child playing by the fountain, a little girl. She’s beaming with joy and singing, blissfully unaware of what’s going on. The women have yanked open the upstairs windows, and now they’re screaming and wringing their hands helplessly. All of a sudden a door opens on the far side of the square and out rushes a woman, a pale, delicate thing – why, she couldn’t have weighed more than forty kilos. She runs straight past the bull, grabs the girl and dashes back, while the bull gapes idiotically behind her. I tell you, the women applauded from their windows and cried “Bravo!” like those crazy ladies do at the Paris opera.

  ‘I felt ashamed, I was furiou
s, because the women in this part of the world are manly enough as it is. But I wanted to show them. I creep slowly up to the beast, which has started pawing and shaking its head again, and then I’m right in front of him, and he’s staring at me! As quick as a flash I grab it by the horns, and before you know it, the thing’s lying there on its back!

  ‘Well, the women came running and applauded once more and, I have to say, Monsieur Jean, I had a good time after that . . . Nice work . . .’

  As he laughed, he spluttered, rocking back and forth on his short legs.

  Schlump again promised him the tobacco and cognac, but Louis said that wasn’t the reason he’d come. ‘I’m sure you know how poor we are, and little Célestine, who has the child by the gendarme, is living with me. We need wood, so please give me a permit to collect some in the forest in Marchelles.’

  Schlump gave him the permit, for he knew that Madame Drouart lived there. And Louis Gez loved her.

  •

  His comrades, the recruits he’d come with from home, had long since been sent to the Front. Others had arrived who were now being trained in Carvin. Only a few clerks had stayed put.

  The wind blew colder and Christmas was round the corner. Every day an orderly would bring Schlump his instructions and take back his reports. One day he announced he’d probably be getting billeted there soon with the service corps, to take over from Schlump. An hour later the telephone rang; it was Corporal Nebe from headquarters in Mons-en-P. He was the NCO to whom Schlump had to deliver butter and eggs, and who was then supposed to forward the goods to the military hospitals. Schlump couldn’t bear the man because no matter how much he delivered, it was never enough, and because he was a deceitful, rotten soul. Corporal Nebe told him that a service corps unit would be arriving in two days’ time to replace him. Schlump would soon learn when he was leaving. He hung up angrily, for he’d detected an unmistakable Schadenfreude in Nebe’s voice.