1. The lack of money is an evil. But it can turn to a good.
2. What is lost is lost.
3. The bicycle is a great good. But it can turn nasty, if ill employed.
4. There is food for thought in being down and out.
5. There are two needs: the need you have and the need to have it.
6. Intuition leads to many a folly.
7. That which the soul spews forth is never lost.
8. Pockets daily emptier of their last resources are enough to break the stoutest resolution.
9. The male trouser has got stuck in a rut, particularly the fly which should be transferred to the crotch and designed to open trapwise, permitting the testes, regardless of the whole sordid business of micturition, to take the air unobserved. The drawers should of course be transfigured in consequence.
10. Contrary to a prevalent opinion, there are places in nature from which God would appear to be absent.
11. What would one do without women? Explore other channels.
12. Soul: another four-letter word.
13. What can be said of life not already said? Many things. That its arse is a rotten shot, for example.
These illustrations did not blind them to the goal they had in view. This appeared to them, however, with ever increasing clarity as time wore on, one to be pursued with calm and collection. And being still just calm and collected enough to know they were no longer so they reached without difficulty the happy decision to postpone all action to the following day and even, if necessary, to the next but one. They returned then in excellent spirits to Helen’s apartment and dropped asleep without further ceremony. And even the following day they refrained from the pretty frolics of wet forenoons, so keen were they to be on their toes for the trials to come.
It was chiming midday when they left the house. In the porch they paused.
Oh the pretty rainbow, said Camier.
The umbrella, said Mercier.
They exchanged a look. Camier vanished up the stairs. When he reappeared, with the umbrella, Mercier said:
You took your time.
Oh you know, said Camier, one does what one can. Are we to put it up?
Mercier scrutinized the sky.
What do you think? he said.
Camier left the shelter of the porch and submitted the sky to a thorough inspection, turning celtically to the north, the east, the south and finally the west, in that order.
Well? said Mercier.
Don’t rush me, said Camier.
He advanced to the corner of the street, in order to reduce the risk of error. Finally he regained the porch and delivered his considered opinion.
In our shoes I wouldn’t, he said.
And may one enquire why not? said Camier. It’s coming down, if I am to believe my eyes. Can you not sense you’re wet?
Your inclination would be to put it up? said Camier.
I don’t say that, said Mercier, I simply ask myself when we’ll put it up if we do not do so now.
To the unprejudiced eye it was less an umbrella than a parasol. From the tip of the spike to the ends of the stays or struts was a bare quarter of the total length. The stick was terminated by an amber knob with tassels. The material was red in colour, or had been, indeed still was in places. Shreds of fringe adorned the perimeter, at irregular intervals.
Look at it, said Camier. Take it in your hand. Come on, take it in your hand, it won’t bite you.
Stand back! cried Mercier.
Where was it dug up at all? said Camier.
I bought it at Khan’s, said Mercier, knowing we had only one raincoat to our name. He asked a shilling for it, I got it for eight pence. I thought he was going to embrace me.
It must have come out about 1900, said Camier. The year I believe of Ladysmith, on the Klip. Remember? Cloudless skies, garden parties daily. Life lay smiling before us. No hope was too high. We played at holding fort. We died like flies. Of hunger. Of cold. Of thirst. Of heat. Pom! Pom! The last rounds. Surrender! Never! We eat our dead. Drink our pee. Pom! Pom! Two more we didn’t know we had. But what is that we hear? A clamour from the watch-tower! Dust on the horizon! The column at last! Our tongues are black. Hurrah none the less. Rah! Rah! A craking as of crows. A quartermaster dies of joy. We are saved. The century was two months old.
Look at it now, said Mercier.
A silence ensued which Camier was the first to violate.
Well, he said, do we put it up now or wait for the weather to worsen?
Mercier scrutinized the inscrutable sky.
Go take a look, he said, and see what you think.
Camier again gained the corner of the street. On his return he said:
There is perhaps a little light below the verge. Would you have me go up on the roof?
Mercier concentrated. Finally he exclaimed, impulsively:
Let us put it up and pray for the best.
But Camier could not put it up.
Give it here to me, said Mercier.
But Mercier had no better success. He brandished it above his head, but controlled himself in time.
What have we done to God? he said.
Denied him, said Camier.
Don’t tell me he is all that rancorous, said Mercier.
Camier took the umbrella and vanished up the stairs.
No sooner was he alone than Mercier went. His path crossed, at a given moment, that of an old man of weird and wretched aspect, carrying under his arm what looked like a board folded in two. It seemed to Mercier he had seen him somewhere before and he wondered as he went on his way where that somewhere could have been. The old man too, on whom for a wonder the transit of Mercier had not been lost, was left with the impression of a scarecrow encountered elsewhere and busied himself for a space with trying to recall in what circumstances. So, as with laboured steps they drew apart, each occupied the other’s thoughts in vain. But the least little thing halts the Merciers of this world, a murmur coming to its crest and breaking, a voice saying how strange the autumntide of day no matter what the season. A new beginning, but with no life in it, how could there be? More manifest in town than in the country, but in the country too, where slowly over the vast empty space the peasant seems to stray, so aimless that night must surely overtake him far from the village nowhere, the homestead nowhere to be seen. There is no time left and yet how it drags. Even the flowers seem past their time to close and a kind of panic seizes on the tired wings. The hawk stoops always too soon, the rooks rise from the fallows while it is still light and flock to their places of assembly, there to croak and squabble till nightfall. Then, too late, they agitate to set out again. Day is over long before it ends, man ready to drop long before the hour of rest. But not a word, evening is all fever, a scurrying to and fro to no avail. So short it is not worth their while beginning, too long for them not to begin, that is the time they are pent up in, as cruelly as Balue in his cage. Ask the hour of a passer-by and he’ll throw it at you over his shoulder at a venture and hurry on. But you may be easy in your mind, he is not far wrong who every few minutes consults his watch, sets it by official astronomic time, makes his reckonings, wonders how on earth to fit in all he has to do before the endless day comes to an end. Or with furious weary gesture he gives the hour that besets him, the hour it always was and will be, one that to the beauties of too late unites the charms of prematurity, that of the Never! without more of an even dreader raven. But all day that is how it is, from the first tick to the last tack, or rather from the third to the antepenultimate, allowing for the time it needs, the tamtam within, to drum you back into the dream and drum you back out again. And in between all are heard, every millet grain that falls, you look behind and there you are, every day a little closer, all life a little closer. Joy in saltspoonfuls, like water when it’s thirst you’re dying of, and a bonny little agony homeopathically distilled, what more can you ask? A heart in the room of the heart? Come come. But ask on the contrary your way of the passer-by and he’ll take you
r hand and lead you, by the warren’s beauty-spots, to the very place. It’s a great grey barracks of a building, unfinished, unfinishable, with two doors, for those who enter and for those who leave, and at the windows faces peering out. The more fool you to have asked.
Mercier’s hand released the railing to which this attack of wind had fastened it. But he had not gone far when he stopped again to observe, advancing towards him, a ragged shaggy old man plodding along beside a donkey. The latter, unbridled, set with small steps its dainty dogged course beside the curb, unswervingly except to circumvent a stationary vehicle or a group of urchins at marbles on their hunkers in the gutter. The man walked in the street, between the grey haunch and the hostile cars. They raised their eyes from the ground only when danger threatened, to take its measure. Mercier said to himself, disappointing again as usual, No outerness will ever disestablish that harmony. It was perhaps too great a call on his strength, this parting from Camier at so sombre an hour. Admittedly strength was needed for to stay with Camier, no less than for to stay with Mercier, but less than for the horrors of soliloquy. Yet there he is on his way again, the voice has ceased, he is over the worst of the old man and the donkey, his being fills again with that merciful fog which is the best he knows, he’s good for the long road yet. His dim shape moves on, hugging the railing, in the shadow of God knows what evergreens so called, hollies perhaps, if shadow is the word for a light hardly less leaden than that of the bogland nearby. The collar of his coat is turned up, his right hand is in his left sleeve and vice versa, they lie jogging on his belly in senile abandon, now and then he glimpses as through shifting seaweed a foot dragging on a flagstone. Heavy chains, hung between small stone pillars, festoon with their massy garlands the pavement on the street side. Once in motion they swing on and on, steadily or with serpentine writhings. Here Mercier would come to play when he was small. Running along the line of chains he set them going, one after another, with a stick, then turned back to look how the great jolts shook the pavement from end to end till it seemed they would never come to rest.
VI
Camier sat near the door at a small red table with a thick glass top. On his left hand strangers were belittling equal strangers, while to his right the talk, in undertones, was of the interest taken by Jesuits in mundane matters. In this or some cognate connexion an article was cited, recently appeared in some ecclesiastical rag, on the subject of artificial insemination, the conclusion of which appeared to be that sin arose whenever the sperm was of non-marital origin. On this angelic sex issue was joined, several voices taking part.
Change the subject, said Camier, or I’ll report you to the archbishop. You’re putting thoughts in my head.
He could not distinguish clearly what lay before him, all outline blurred in the smoke-laden air. Here and there emerged, rifting the haze, the unanswerable gesture complete with irrefutable pipe, the conical hat, fragments of lower limbs and notably feet, shuffling and fidgeting from one state of torment to the next, as though the seat of the soul. But behind him he had the stout old wall, plain and bare, he could feel it in his rear, he laid the back of his head against it and rubbed. He said to himself, When Mercier comes, for come he will, I know my man, where will he sit? Here, at this table? This problem absorbed him for a time. No, he decided in the end, no, he must not, he Camier could not bear it, why he knew not. What then? The better to envisage this, that is to say what then, since Mercier must not join him in his corner, Camier took his hands from his pockets, disposed them before him on the table in a snug little heap and rested his face thereon, first gently, then with the full weight of the skull. And the vision was not long in coming of Camier seeing Mercier before Mercier Camier, rising and hastening to the door. There you are at last, he cries, I thought you had left me for ever, and he draws him to the bar-counter, or deep into the saloon, or they go out together, though this is hardly likely. For Mercier is weary, in want of rest and refreshment before going any further, and has things to tell that can ill brook delay, and Camier too has things to tell, yes, they have things of moment to tell each other and they are weary, they need to compose themselves, after this long separation, and take their bearings, determine more or less how they stand, whether the future is bright or dark or merely dim as so often, and if there is one direction rather than another in which preferably to bend their steps, in a word collect themselves sufficiently to press hotfoot on, all smiles and lucidity, towards one of the innumerable goals indulgent judgement equivails, or else all smiles (optional) do justice on this élan and admire them from a distance, one after another, for they are distant. It is then a glimpse is caught of what might have been were one not as one had to be and it is not every day such a hair is offered for splitting. For once whelped all over bar the howling. Having thus cleaned up the immediate future Camier raised his head and saw before him a creature which he took some little time, so great was the resemblance, to recognize as Mercier, whence a tangle of reflections that left him no peace (but what peace then!) till the next day but one, with the comforting conclusion that what he had so dreaded as to deem it unbearable was not to feel his friend by his side, but to see him cross the sill and tread the last stage of the great space separating them since noon.
Mercier’s entry had provoked some embarrassment in the saloon, a kind of uneasy chill. And yet the company was of dockers and sailors for the most part, with a sprinkling of excisemen, such as are not easily affected, as a rule, by singularity of exterior. A hush fell none the less as voices lulled, gestures froze, tankards trembled tilted on the brink and all eyes looked the same way. An acute observer, had one been present, but none was, might well have been put in mind of a flock of sheep, or a herd of oxen, startled by some dark threat. Their bodies rigid, drawn with fixed glare to face the common foe, they are stiller for a moment than the ground on which they graze. Then all to their heels, or full tilt at the intruder (if weak), or back to whatever they were about, cropping, chewing, coupling, gambolling. Or in mind of those walking sick who still all speech where they pass, dispel the body and fill the soul with dread, pity, anger, mirth, disgust. Yes, when you outrage nature you need be mighty careful if you don’t want to hear the view-halloo or suffer the succour of some repugnant hand. For a moment it seemed to Camier that things were going to turn nasty and his hamstrings tensed under the table. But little by little a vast sigh arose, an exhalation higher and higher like a shoreward sweeping wave whose might in the end collapses in froth and clatter, for the glee of children.
What became of you? said Camier.
Mercier raised his eyes, but their stare was not at Camier, nor even at the wall. What on earth could it have been that they fixed with such intensity? One wonders.
Christ what a face, said Camier, you look straight from the infernal regions. What’s that you say?
No doubt about it, Mercier’s lips had moved.
I know of only one, said Mercier.
They didn’t beat you? said Camier.
Across them the shadow fell of a huge man. His apron ended halfway down his thighs. Camier looked at him, who looked at Mercier, who began to look at Camier. Thus were engendered, though no eyes met, images of extreme complexity enabling each to enjoy himself in three distinct simultaneous versions plus, on a more modest scale, the three versions of self enjoyed by each of the others, namely a total of nine images at first sight irreconcilable, not to mention the confusion of frustrated excitations jostling on the fringes of the field. In all a gruesome mess, but instructive, instructive. Add to this the many eyes fastened on the trio and a feeble idea may be obtained of what awaits him too smart not to know better, better than to leave his black cell and that harmless lunacy, faint flicker every other age or so, the consciousness of being, of having been.
Mercier and Camier Page 6