A Fable

by William Faulkner

  Beeping its horn steadily—not pettishly nor fretfully nor even irritatedly but in fact with a sort of unwearyable blasé Gallic detachment—the French staff-car crept through the Place de Ville as though patting the massed crowd gently and firmly to either side with the horn itself to make room for its passage. It was not a big car. It flew no general’s pennon nor in fact any insignia of any kind; it was just a small indubitable French army motor car driven by a French soldier and containing three more soldiers, three American privates who until they met in the Blois orderly room where the French car had picked them up four hours ago had never laid eyes on one another before, who sat two in the back and one in front with the driver while the car bleated its snaillike passage through the massed spent wan and sleepless faces.

  One of the two Americans in the back seat was leaning out of the car, looking eagerly about, not at the faces but at the adjacent buildings which enclosed the Place. He held a big much-folded and -unfolded and -refolded map open between his hands. He was quite young, with brown eyes as trustful and unalarmed as those of a cow, in an open reliant invincibly and incorrigibly bucolic face—a farmer’s face fated to love his peaceful agrarian heritage (his father, as he would after him, raised hogs in Iowa and rich corn to feed and fatten them for market on) for the simple reason that to the end of his eupeptic days (what was going to happen to him inside the next thirty minutes would haunt him of course from time to time but only in dreams, as nightmares haunt) it would never occur to him that he could possibly have found anything more worthy to be loved—leaning eagerly out of the car and completely ignoring the massed faces through which he crept, saying eagerly:

  ‘Which one is it? Which one is it?’

  ‘Which one is what?’ the American beside the driver said.

  ‘The Headquarters,’ he said. ‘The Ho-tel de Villy.’

  ‘Wait till you get inside,’ the other said. ‘That’s what you volunteered to look at.’

  ‘I want to see it from the outside too,’ the first said. ‘That’s why I volunteered for this what-ever-it-is. Ask him,’ he said, indicating the driver. ‘You can speak Frog.’

  ‘Not this time,’ the other said. ‘My French dont use this kind of a house.’ But it wasn’t necessary anyway because at the same moment they both saw the three sentries—American French and British—flanking the door, and in the next one the car turned through the gates and now they saw the whole courtyard cluttered and massed with motorcycles and staff-cars bearing the three different devices. The car didn’t stop there though. Darting its way among the other vehicles at a really headlong speed, now that its gambits were its own durable peers instead of frail untriumphable human flesh, it dashed on around to the extreme rear of the baroque and awesome pile (‘Now what?’ the one in the front seat said to the Iowan who was still leaning out toward the building’s dizzy crenellated wheel. ‘Did you expect them to invite us in by the front?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ the Iowan said. ‘That’s how I thought it would look.’) to where an American military policeman standing beside a sort of basement areaway was signalling them with a flashlight. The car shot up beside him and stopped. He opened the door, though since the Iowan was now engaged in trying to refold his map, the American private in the front seat was the first to get out. His name was Buchwald. His grandfather had been rabbi of a Minsk synagogue until a Cossack sergeant beat his brains out with the shod hooves of a horse. His father was a tailor; he himself was born on the fourth floor of a walk-up, cold-water Brooklyn tenement. Within two years after the passage of the American prohibition law, with nothing in his bare hands but a converted army-surplus Lewis machine gun, he himself was to become czar of a million-dollar empire covering the entire Atlantic coast from Canada to whatever Florida cove or sandspit they were using that night. He had pale, almost colorless eyes; he was hard and slender too now though one day a few months less than ten years from now, lying in his ten-thousand-dollar casket banked with half that much more in cut flowers, he would look plump, almost fat. The military policeman leaned into the back of the car.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ he said. The Iowan emerged, carrying the clumsily-folded map in one hand and slapping at his pocket with the other. He feinted past Buchwald like a football half-back and darted to the front of the car and held the map into the light of one of the headlamps, still slapping at his pocket.

  ‘Durn!’ he said. ‘I’ve lost my pencil.’ The third American private was now out of the car. He was a Negro, of a complete and unrelieved black. He emerged with a sort of ballet dancer elegance, not mincing, not foppish, not maidenly but rather at once masculine and girlish or perhaps better, epicene, and stood not quite studied while the Iowan spun and feinted this time through all three of them—Buchwald, the policeman, and the Negro—and carrying his now rapidly disintegrating map plunged his upper body back into the car, saying to the policeman: ‘Lend me your flashlight. I must have dropped it on the floor.’

  ‘Sweet crap,’ Buchwald said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘It’s my pencil,’ the Iowan said. ‘I had it at that last big town we passed—what was the name of it?’

  ‘I can call a sergeant,’ the policeman said. ‘Am I going to have to?’

  ‘Nah,’ Buchwald said. He said to the Iowan: ‘Come on. They’ve probably got a pencil inside. They can read and write here too.’ The Iowan backed out of the car and stood up. He began to refold his map. Following the policeman, they crossed to the areaway and descended into it, the Iowan following with his eyes the building’s soaring upward swoop.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It sure does.’ They descended steps, through a door; they were in a narrow stone passage; the policeman opened a door and they entered an anteroom; the policeman closed the door behind them. The room contained a cot, a desk, a telephone, a chair. The Iowan went to the desk and began to shift the papers on it.

  ‘You can remember you were here without having to check it off, cant you?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘It aint for me,’ the Iowan said, tumbling the papers through. ‘It’s for the girl I’m engaged to. I promised her——’

  ‘Does she like pigs too?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘—what?’ the Iowan said. He stopped and turned his head; still half stooped over the desk, he gave Buchwald his mild open reliant and alarmless look. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with pigs?’

  ‘Okay,’ Buchwald said. ‘So you promised her.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the Iowan said. ‘When we found out I was coming to France I promised to take a map and mark off on it all the places I went to, especially the ones you always hear about, like Paris. I got Blois, and Brest, and I’ll get Paris for volunteering for this, and now I’m even going to have Chaulnesmont, the Grand Headquarters of the whole shebang as soon as I can find a pencil.’ He began to search the desk again.

  ‘What you going to do with it?’ Buchwald said. ‘The map. When you get it back home?’

  ‘Frame it and hang it on the wall,’ the Iowan said. ‘What did you think I was going to do with it?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to want this one marked on it?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘What?’ the Iowan said. Then he said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Dont you know what you volunteered for?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘Sure,’ the Iowan said. ‘For a chance to visit Chaulnesmont.’

  ‘I mean, didn’t anybody tell you what you were going to do here?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘You haven’t been in the army very long, have you?’ the Iowan said. ‘In the army, you dont ask what you are going to do: you just do it. In fact, the way to get along in any army is never even to wonder why they want something done or what they are going to do with it after it’s finished, but just do it and then get out of sight so that they cant just happen to see you by accident and then think up something for you to do, but instead they will have to have thought up something to be done, and then hunt for somebody to do it. Durn it, I dont believe they have a pencil here either.’<
br />
  ‘Maybe Sambo’s got one,’ Buchwald said. He looked at the Negro. ‘What did you volunteer for this for besides a three-day Paris pass? To see Chaulnesmont too?’

  ‘What did you call me?’ the Negro said.

  ‘Sambo,’ Buchwald said. ‘You no like?’

  ‘My name’s Philip Manigault Beauchamp,’ the Negro said.

  ‘Go on,’ Buchwald said.

  ‘It’s spelled Manigault but you pronounce it Mannygo,’ the Negro said.

  ‘Oh hush,’ Buchwald said.

  ‘You got a pencil, buddy?’ the Iowan said to the Negro.

  ‘No,’ the Negro said. He didn’t even look at the Iowan. He was still looking at Buchwald. ‘You want to make something of it?’

  ‘Me?’ Buchwald said. ‘What part of Texas you from?’

  ‘Texas,’ the Negro said with a sort of bemused contempt. He glanced at the nails of his right hand, then rubbed them briskly against his flank. ‘Mississippi. Going to live in Chicago soon as this crap’s over. Be an undertaker, if you’re interested.’

  ‘An undertaker?’ Buchwald said. ‘You like dead people, huh?’

  ‘Hasn’t anybody in this whole durn war got a pencil?’ the Iowan said.

  ‘Yes,’ the Negro said. He stood, tall, slender, not studied: just poised; suddenly he gave Buchwald a look feminine and defiant. ‘I like the work. So what?’

  ‘So you know what you volunteered for, do you?’

  ‘Maybe I do and maybe I dont,’ the Negro said. ‘Why did you volunteer for it? Besides a three-day pass in Paris?’

  ‘Because I love Wilson,’ Buchwald said.

  ‘Wilson?’ the Iowan said. ‘Do you know Sergeant Wilson? He’s the best sergeant in the army.’

  ‘Then I dont know him,’ Buchwald said without looking at the Iowan. ‘All the N.C.O.’s I know are sons of bitches.’ He said to the Negro, ‘Did they tell you, or didn’t they?’ Now the Iowan had begun to look from one to the other of them.

  ‘What is going on here?’ he said. The door opened. It was an American sergeant-major. He entered rapidly and looked rapidly at them. He was carrying an attaché case.

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ he said. He looked at Buchwald. ‘You.’ He opened the attaché case and took something from it which he extended to Buchwald. It was a pistol.

  ‘That’s a German pistol,’ the Iowan said. Buchwald took it. The sergeant-major reached into the attaché case again; this time it was a key, a door key; he extended it to Buchwald.

  ‘Why?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘Take it,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘You dont want privacy to last forever, do you?’ Buchwald took the key and put it and the pistol into his pocket.

  ‘Why in hell didn’t you bastards do it yourselves?’ he said.

  ‘So we had to send all the way to Blois to find somebody for a midnight argument,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Get it over with.’ He started to turn. This time the Iowan spoke quite loudly:

  ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘What is this?’ The sergeant-major paused and looked at the Iowan, then the Negro. He said to Buchwald:

  ‘So they’re already going coy on you.’

  ‘Oh, coy,’ Buchwald said. ‘Dont let that worry you. The smoke cant help it, coy is a part of what you might say one of his habits or customs or pastimes. The other one dont even know what coy means yet.’

  ‘Okay,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘It’s your monkey. You ready?’

  ‘Wait,’ Buchwald said. He didn’t look back to where the other two stood near the desk, watching him and the sergeant-major. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I thought they told you,’ the sergeant-major said.

  ‘Let’s hear yours,’ Buchwald said.

  ‘They had a little trouble with him,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘It’s got to be done from in front, for his own sake, let alone everybody else’s. But they cant seem to make him see it. He’s got to be killed from in front, by a Kraut bullet—see? You get it now? he was killed in that attack Monday morning; they’re giving him all the benefit: out there that morning where he had no business being—a major general, safe for the rest of his life to stay behind and say Give ’em hell, men. But no. He was out there himself, leading the whole business to victory for France and fatherland. They’re even going to give him a new medal, but he still wont see it.’

  ‘What’s his gripe?’ Buchwald said. ‘He knows he’s for it, dont he?’

  ‘Oh sure,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘He knows he’s gone. That aint the question. He aint kicking about that. He just refuses to let them do it that way—swears he’s going to make them shoot him not in the front but in the back, like any top-sergeant or shave-tail that thinks he’s too tough to be scared and too hard to be hurt. You know: make the whole world see that not the enemy but his own men did it.’

  ‘Why didn’t they just hold him and do it?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘Now now,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘You dont just hold a French major-general and shoot him in the face.’

  ‘Then how are we supposed to do it?’ Buchwald said. The sergeant-major looked at him. ‘Oh,’ Buchwald said. ‘Maybe I get it now. French soldiers dont. Maybe next time it will be an American general and three Frogs will get a trip to New York.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘If they just let me pick the general. You ready now?’

  ‘Yes,’ Buchwald said. But he didn’t move. He said: ‘Yeah. Why us, anyway? If he’s a Frog general, why didn’t the Frogs do it? Why did it have to be us?’

  ‘Maybe because an American doughfoot is the only bastard they could bribe with a trip to Paris,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Come on.’

  But still Buchwald didn’t move, his pale hard eyes thoughtful and steady. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Give.’

  ‘If you’re going to back out, why didn’t you do it before you left Blois?’ the sergeant-major said.

  Buchwald said something unprintable. ‘Give,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  ‘Right,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘They rationed it. The Frogs will have to shoot that Frog regiment, because it’s Frog. They had to bring a Kraut general over here Wednesday to explain why they were going to shoot the Frog regiment, and the Limeys won that. Now they got to shoot this Frog general to explain why they brought the Kraut general over here, and we won that. Maybe they drew straws. All right now?’

  ‘Yes,’ Buchwald said, suddenly and harshly. He cursed. ‘Yes. Let’s get it over with.’

  ‘Wait!’ the Iowan said. ‘No! I——’

  ‘Dont forget your map,’ Buchwald said. ‘We wont be back here.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ the Iowan said. ‘What you think I been holding onto it this long for?’

  ‘Good,’ Buchwald said. ‘Then when they send you back home to prison for mutiny, you can mark Leavenworth on it too.’ They returned to the corridor and followed it. It was empty, lighted by spaced weak electric bulbs. They had seen no other sign of life and suddenly it was as though they apparently were not going to until they were out of it again. The narrow corridor had not descended, there were no more steps. It was as if the earth it tunnelled through had sunk as an elevator sinks, holding the corridor itself intact, immune, empty of any life or sound save that of their boots, the white-washed stone sweating in furious immobility beneath the whole concentrated weight of history, stratum upon stratum of dead tradition impounded by the Hôtel above them—monarchy revolution empire and republic, duke farmer-general and sans culotte, levee tribunal and guillotine, liberty fraternity equality and death and the people the People always to endure and prevail, the group, the clump, huddled now, going quite fast until the Iowan cried again:

  ‘No, I tell you! I aint——’ until Buchwald stopped, stopping them all, and turned and said to the Iowan in a calm and furious murmur:

  ‘Beat it.’

  ‘What?’ the Iowan cried. ‘I cant! Where would I go?’

  ‘How the hell do I know?’ Buchwald said. ‘I
aint the one that’s dissatisfied here.’

  ‘Come on,’ the sergeant-major said. They went on. They reached a door; it was locked. The sergeant-major unlocked and opened it.

  ‘Do we report?’ Buchwald said.

  ‘Not to me,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘You can even keep the pistol for a souvenir. The car’ll be waiting where you got out of it,’ and was about to close the door until Buchwald after one rapid glance into the room turned and put his foot against the door and said again in that harsh calm furious controlled voice:

  ‘Christ, cant the sons of bitches even get a priest for him?’

  ‘They’re still trying,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Somebody sent for the priest out at the compound two hours ago and he aint got back yet. They cant seem to find him.’