Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  Then there was the reach of the desert that drew off on either hand and rolled away, ever so gently, toward the place where the hollow sky dropped out of sight behind the shimmering horizon, swelling grandly and gradually like some mighty breast which, panting for breath in the horrible heat, had risen in a final gasp and had then, in the midst of it, suddenly stiffened and become rigid. On this colourless bosom of the desert, where nothing stirred but the waxing light in the morning and the waning light in the night, lay tumbled red and gray rocks, with thin drifts of sand in their rifts and crevices and grey-green cacti squatting or sprawling in their blue shadows. And there was nothing more, nothing, nothing, except the appalling heat and the maddening silence.

  And in the midst of it all, — we.

  Now “we” broadly and generally speaking, were the small right wing of General Pawtrot’s division of the African service; speaking less broadly and less generally, “we” were the advance-guard of said division; and, speaking in the narrowest and most particular sense, “we” were the party of war-correspondents, specials, extras, etc., who were accompanying said advance-guard of said wing of said army of said service for reasons herein to be set forth.

  As the long, black scow of the commissariat went crawling up the torpid river with the advance-guard straggling along upon the right, “we” lay upon the deck under the shadow of the scow’s awning and talked and drank seltzer.

  I forget now what led up to it, but Ponscarme had said that the Arabs were patriotic, when Bab Azzoun cut in and said something which I shall repeat as soon as I have told you about Bab Azzoun himself.

  Bab Azzoun had been born twenty-nine years before this time, at Tlemcen, of Kabyle parents (his father was a sheik). He had been transplanted to France at the age of ten, and had flourished there in a truly remarkable manner. He had graduated fifth from the Polytéchnique; he had written books that had been “couronné par l’Académie”; he had become naturalised; he had been prominent in politics (no one can cut a wide swath in Paris in anything without hitting against la politique;) he had occupied important positions in two embassies; he was a diplomat of no mean qualities; he had influence; he dressed in faultless French fashion; he had owned “Crusader”; he had lost money on him; he had applied to the government for the office of “Sous-chef-des bureaux-Arabes dans l’Oran,” in order to recoup; he had obtained it; he had come on with “us”, and was now on this, his first visit to his fatherland since his tenth year, on his way to his post.

  And when Ponscarme had spoken thus about the patriotism of the Arabs, Bab Azzoun made him answer: “The Arabs are not sufficiently educated to be true patriots.”

  “Bah!” said Santander, “a man does not require to be educated in order to be a patriot. And, indeed, the rudest nations have ever been the most devotedly patriotic.”

  “Yes,” said Bab Azzoun, “but it is a narrow and a very selfish patriotism.”

  “I can’t see that,” put in Ponscarme; “a patriot is like an egg — he is either good or bad. There is no such thing as a ‘good enough egg,’ there is no such thing as a ‘good enough patriot’ — if a man is one at all, he is a perfect one.”

  “I agree,” answered Bab Azzoun; “yet patriotism can be more or less narrow. Listen and I will explain” — he raised himself from the deck on his elbow and gestured with the amber mouth-piece of his chibouk— “Patriotism has passed through five distinct stages; first, it was only love of family — of parents and kindred; then, as the family grows and expands into the tribe, it, too, as merely a large family, becomes the object of affection, of patriotic devotion. This is the second stage — the stage of the tribe, the dan. In the third stage, the tribe has sought protection behind the inclosure of walls. It is the age of cities; patriotism is the devotion to the city; men are Athenians ere Grecians, Romans ere Italians. In the next period, patriotism means affection for the state, for the county, for the province; and Burgundian, Norman and Fleming gave freely of their breast-blood for Burgundy, Normandy and Flanders; while we of to-day form the latest, but not the last, link of the lengthening chain by honouring, loving and serving the country above all considerations, be they of tribe, or town, or tenure. Yet I do not believe this to be the last, the highest, the noblest form of patriotism.

  “No,” continued Bab Azzoun, “this development shall go on, ever expanding, ever mounting, until, carried upon its topmost crest, we attain to that height from which we can look down upon the world as our country, humanity as our countrymen, and he shall be the best patriot who is the least patriotic.”

  “Ah-h, fichtre!” exclaimed Santander, listlessly, throwing a cushion at Bab Azzoun’s head; “va te coucher. It’s too hot to theorise; you’re either a great philosopher, Bab, or a large sized” — he looked at him over the rim of his tin cup before concluding— “idiot.” ...

  But Bab Azzoun had gone on talking in the meanwhile, and now finishing with “and so you must not blame me, if, looking upon them” (he meant the Arabs) “and theirs, in this light, I find this African campaign a sorry business for France to be engaged in, — a vast and powerful government terrorising into submission a horde of half-starved fanatics,” he yawned, “all of which is very bad — very bad. Give me some more seltzer.”

  We were aroused by the sudden stoppage of the scow. A detachment of “Zephyrs,” near us upon the right bank, scrambled together in a hollow square. A battalion of Coulouglis, with haik and bournous rippling, scuttled by us at a gallop, and the Twenty-Third Chasseurs d’Afrique in the front line halted at an “order” on the crest of a sand ridge, which hid the horizon from sight. The still, hot air of the Sahara was suddenly pervaded with something that roused us to our feet in an instant. Thévenot whipped out his ever-ready sketch-book and began blocking in the landscape and the position of the troops, while Santander snatched his note-book and stylograph.

  Of the scene which now gathered upon us, I can remember little, only out of that dark chaos can I rescue a few detached and fragmentary impressions — all the more vivid, nevertheless, from their isolation, all the more distinct from the grey blur of the background against which they trace themselves.

  Instantly, somewhere disquietingly near, an event, or rather a whirl of events that rushed and writhed themselves together into a maze of dizzying complexity, suddenly evolved and widened like the fierce, quick rending open of some vast scroll, and there were zigzag hurryings to and fro and a surging heavenward of a torrent of noises, noises of men and noises of feet, noises of horses and noises of arms, noises that hustled fiercely upward above the brown mass and closed together in the desert air, blending or jarring one with another, joining and separating, reuniting and dividing; noises that rattled; noises that clanked; noises that boomed, or shrilled, or thundered, or quavered. And then came sight of blue-grey tumulous curtains — but whether of smoke or dust, I could not say, rumbling and billowing, bellying out with the hot tempest-breath of the battle-demon that raged within, and whose outermost fringes were torn by serrated files of flashing steel and wavering ranks of red.

  And this was all at first. I knew we had been attacked and that behind those boiling smoke-billows, somewhere and somehow, men, infuriated into beasts, were grappling and struggling, each man, with every sinew on the strain, striving to kill his fellow.

  And now we were in the midst of a hollow square of our soldiery, yet how we came there I cannot recall, though I remember that the water of the Jeliffe made my clothes heavy and uncomfortable, although a mortal fear sat upon me of being shot down by some of our own frenzied soldiers. And then came that awful rib-cracking pressure, as, from some outward, unseen cause, the square was thrown back upon itself. And with it all the smell of sweat of horses, and of men, the odour of the powder-smoke, the blinding, suffocating, stupefying clouds of dust, the horrible fear, greater than all others, of being pushed down beneath those thousands of trampling feet, the pitch of excitement that sickens and weakens, the momentary consciousness — vanishing as soon as felt �
� that this was what men called “war,” and that we were experiencing the reality of what we had so often read.

  It was not inspiring; there was no romance, no poetry about it; there was nothing in it but the hideous jar, one against the other, of men drunk with the blood-lust that eighteen hundred years had not quenched.

  I looked at Bab Azzoun; he was standing at the gunwale of the scow (somehow we were back on the scow again) with an unloaded pistol in his hand. He was watching the battle on the bank. His nostrils quivered, and he shifted his feet exactly like an excited thorough-bred. On a sudden, a trooper of the Eleventh Cuirassiers came spinning round and round out of the brown of the battle, gulping up blood, and pitched, wheezing, face downwards, into the soft ooze where the river licked at the bank, raising ruddy bubbles in the water as he blew his life-breath in gasps into it, and raking it into gridiron patterns as his quivering, blue fingers closed into fists. Instantly afterward came a mighty rush across the river beneath our very bows. Forty-odd cuirassiers burst into it, followed by eighty or a hundred Kabyles.

  I can recall just how the horse-hoofs rattled on the saucer-like cakes of dry mud and flung them up in countless fragments behind them. They were a fine sight, those Kabyles, with their fierce, red horses, their dazzling white bournouses, their long, thin, murderous rifle-barrels, thundering and splashing past, while from the whole mass of them, from under the shadow of every white haik, from every black-bearded lip, was rolling their war-cry: “Allah, Allah-il-Allah!”

  Some long dormant recollections stirred in Bab Azzoun at this old battle-shout. As he faced them now, he was no longer the cold, cynical boulevardier of the morning. He looked as he must have looked when he played, a ten year-old boy, about the feet of the horses in his father’s black tent. He saw the long lines of the douars of his native home; he saw the camels, and the caravan crawling toward the sunset; he saw the women grinding meal; he saw his father, the bearded sheik; he saw the Arab horsemen riding down to battle; he saw the palm-broad spear-points and the blue yataghans. In an instant of time all the long years of culture and education were stripped away as a garment. Once more he stood and stepped the Kabyle. And with these recollections, his long-forgotten native speech came rushing to his tongue, and in a long, shrill cry, he answered his countrymen in their own language:

  “Allah-il-Allah, Mohammed ressoul Allah.”

  He passed me at a bound, leaped from the scow upon the back of a riderless horse, and, mingling with the Kabyles, rode out of sight.

  And that was the last I ever saw of Bab Azzoun.

  A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG

  It had been the celebration of the feast of the Holy St. Patrick, and the various Irish societies of the city had turned out in great force — Sons of Erin, Fenians, Cork Rebels, and all. The procession had formed on one of the main avenues and had marched and countermarched up and down through the American city; had been reviewed by the mayor standing on the steps of the City Hall and wearing a green sash; and had finally disbanded in the afternoon in the business quarter of the city. So that now the streets in that vicinity were full of the perspiring members of the parade, the emerald colour flashing in and out of the slow moving maze of the crowd, like strands of green in the warp and woof of a loom.

  There were marshals of the procession, with batons and big green rosettes, breathing easily once more after the long agony of sitting upon a nervous horse that walked sideways. There were the occupants of the endless line of carriages, with their green sashes, stretching their cramped and stiffened legs. There were the members of the various political clubs and secret societies, in their one good suit of ready-made clothes, cotton gloves, and silver-fringed scarfs. There was the little girl, with green tassels on her boots, who had walked by her father’s side carrying a set bouquet of cut flowers in a lace paper-holder. There was the little boy who wore a green high hat, with a pipe stuck in the brim, and who carried the water for the band; and there were the members of the groups upon the floats, with overcoats and sacques thrown over their costumes and spangles.

  The men were in great evidence in and around the corner saloons talking aloud, smoking, drinking, and spitting, and calling for “Jim,” or “Connors,” or “Duffy,” over the heads of the crowd, and what with the speeches, and the beer, and the frequent fights, and the appropriate damning of England and the Orangemen, the day promised to end in right spirit and proper mood.

  It so came about that young Shotover, on his way to his club, met with one of these groups near the City Hall, and noticed that they continually looked up towards its dome and seemed very well pleased with what they saw there. After he had passed them some little distance, Shotover, as well, looked up in that direction and saw that the Irish flag was flying from the staff above the cupola.

  Shotover was American-bred and American-born, and his father and mother before him and their father and mother before them, and so on and back till one brought up in the hold of a ship called the Mayflower, further back than which it is not necessary to go.

  He never voted. He did not know enough of the trend of national politics even to bet on the presidential elections. He did not know the names of the aldermen of his city, nor how many votes were controlled by the leaders of the Dirigo or Comanche Clubs; but when he was told that the Russian moujik or the Bulgarian serf, who had lived for six months in America (long enough for their votes to be worth three dollars), was as much of an American citizen as himself, he thought of the Shotovers who had framed the constitution in ‘75, had fought for it in ‘13 and ‘64, and wondered if this were so. He had a strange and stubborn conviction that whatever was American was right and whatever was right was American, and that somehow his country had nothing to be ashamed of in the past, nor afraid of in the future, for all the monstrous corruptions and abuses that obtained at present.

  But just now this belief had been rudely jarred, and he walked on slowly to his club, the blood gradually flushing his face up to the roots of his hair. Once there, he sat for a long time in the big bay-window, looking absently out into the street, with eyes that saw nothing, very thoughtful. All at once he took up his hat, clapped it upon his head with the air of a man who has made up his mind, and went out, turning in the direction of the City Hall.

  Whence arrived there, no one noticed him, for he made it a point to walk with a brisk, determined air, as though he were bent upon some especially important business, “which I am,” he said to himself as he went on and up through tessellated corridors, between court-rooms and offices of clerks, commissioners, and collectors.

  It was a long time before he found the right stairway, which was a circuitous, ladder-like flight that wormed its way upward between the two walls of the dome. The door leading to the stairway was in a kind of garret above the top floor of the building proper, and was sandwiched in between coal-bunkers, water-tanks, and gas-meters. Shotover tried it, and found it locked. He swore softly to himself, and attempted to break it open. He soon concluded that this would make too much noise, and so turned about and descended to the floor below. A negro, with an immense goitre and a black velvet skull-cap, was cleaning the woodwork outside a county commissioner’s door. He directed Shotover to the porter in the office of the Weather Bureau, if he wished to go up in the cupola for the view. It was after four by this time, and Shotover found the porter of the Weather Bureau piling the chairs on the tables and sweeping out after office-hours.

  “Well you see,” said this one, “we don’t allow nobody to go up in the cupola. You can get a permit from the architect’s office, but I guess they’ll be shut up there by now.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Shotover; “I’m leaving town to-morrow, and I particularly wanted to get the view from the cupola. They say you can see well out into the ocean.”

  The porter had ignored him by this time, and was sweeping up a great dust. Shotover waited a moment. “You don’t think I could arrange to get up there this afternoon?” he went on. The porter did not turn around.

&
nbsp; “We don’t allow no one up there without a permit,” he answered.

  “I suppose,” returned Shotover, “that you have the keys?”

  No answer.

  “You have the keys, haven’t you — the keys to the door there at the foot of the stairs?”

  “We don’t allow no one to go up there without a permit. Didn’t you hear me before?”

  Shotover took a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket, laid it on the corner of a desk, and contemplated it with reflective sadness. “I’m sorry,” he said; “I particularly wanted to see that view before I left.”

  “Well, you see,” said the porter, straightening up, “there was a young feller jumped off there once, and a woman tried to do it a little while after, and the officers in the police station downstairs made us shut it up; but ‘s long as you only want to see the view and don’t want to jump off, I guess it’ll be all right,” and he leaned one hand against the edge of the desk and coughed slightly behind the other.

  While he had been talking, Shotover had seen between the two windows on the opposite side of the room a very large wooden rack full of pigeon-holes and compartments: The weather and signal-flags were tucked away in these, but on the top was a great folded pile of bunting. It was sooty and grimy, and the new patches in it showed violently white and clean. But Shotover saw, with a strange and new catch at the heart, that it was tri-coloured.

  “If you will come along with me now, sir,” said the porter, “I’ll open the door for you.”

  Shotover let him go out of the room first, then jumped to the other side of the room, snatched the flag down, and, hiding it as best he could, followed him out of the room. They went up the stairs together. If the porter saw anything, he was wise enough to keep quiet about it.