by James Hilton
“D’you know, it rather got me, moved me in a sense—his saying that, and the way he said it—and I’m not a very easy person to move. Perhaps it was partly his calling me by my name, for the first time. I put my hand on his dirty, sun-browned shoulder and said: ’Mirsky, don’t be a fool—come with me now—this instant— let’s both of us cross this damned river and get away. Come on— don’t think of her again—just come with me.’ I kept on talking, urging, waiting for him to say something in reply, and what he said at length was just the one word—’Clothes’—in a half-dazed voice. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I replied. ’I can lend you things, and we’ll get you a full rig-out in San Cristobal.’ ‘San Cristobal?’ he echoed, as if the name reminded him of something. And then he made a remark which made me think, as I told you before, that his mind and memory must have undergone some peculiar twist. He said: ’I must send a cable when I get to San Cristobal. Raphael Rassova is dead. Did you know that?’ Well, of course I knew it, as everybody else does. I just made some vague answer, not wishing to begin any irrelevant argument. What I was most anxious for was to have him on the other side of that river. And I honestly think I should have succeeded but for one of those appalling mischances that change the entire pattern of fate. Hearing a sound in the distance, we both looked to see what it was, and there, waddling down the forest-track as fast as she could come, was that woman.”
Russell leaned forward a little and took another drink; talking so much had made him a trifle husky. “I assure you solemnly, Oetzler, that I very nearly killed her at that moment. And I suppose, by every civil and moral law, it would have been plain murder if I had done. Yet she seemed to me, as she approached, much more than someone who had tried to take my life. As a matter of fact, I almost forgot about that. She seemed more than any merely human personality—rather the incarnation of all that keeps men enslaved, chained down. Do you know what I mean when I say she was too FEMALE?”
Lanberger nodded. “Your kink again, Russell. But I do know what you mean. I wonder if women ever think a man is too MALE? Perhaps those chaps are that you see photographs of in the physical culture papers. … But I’m too interested in your yarn to want to interrupt it again. Do continue.”
“Well, there’s very little left. Of course her coming made everything hopeless. The curtain re-descended on Mirsky—he began to rant and shout, and though I tried to pacify him, it was clearly going to be no use. Then the woman said something, and instantly he went on again about the dangers of the water-crossing and how much better it would be if I were to return with him to the hut and wait a while. That sudden change of attitude, at the woman’s bidding, struck me so sinisterly that I gave an immediate order to the guide, jumped on my mule, and plunged into the river. As a final proof that I had done wisely, the crossing turned out to be perfectly simple. There were no treacherous currents at all, and the water wasn’t nearly as deep as Mirsky had made out. When I reached the other side I took what I guessed was a last look at him and shouted good-bye. But he was talking to the woman and didn’t answer. Then I headed my beast into the forest and began the return journey to Yacaiba. That’s all.”
He sighed gently as he prepared to let the other men talk. But for several minutes neither of them did so, and Oetzler merely pushed across the whisky and cigar-box. It was Lanberger who finally broke the silence. “Well, at any rate,” he said, “I think any reasonable person will agree that you couldn’t have done more. Not many would have done as much.”
Oetzler nodded. “I second that. It’s a business I shouldn’t myself have cared to face at all. A strange experience for you, Russell. I hope you feel that the mere uniqueness of it is some reward for its unpleasantness while it lasted.”
“Oh, yes,” answered Russell, smiling. “It will fit very nicely into my autobiography, I admit.”
“Meanwhile,” Oetzler went on, “there’s one awkward problem left over from it. What am I going to write to the girl in Paris?”
“His sister? H’m… that is a problem. What sort of person is she?”
“I haven’t much idea, but I gather she’s the widow of a Frenchman, has no money, and supports herself by some rather paltry job. The usual emigré tragedy. She and her brother are all of the family that have survived. She seems to be very much attached to him—for the last few months she’s been writing to me constantly, asking where he is and why she hasn’t heard from him. I don’t suppose, but for her, I’d really have bothered you to make any enquiries.”
“Does she know he went to Maramba?” Lanberger asked.
“Oh, yes, I told her all that. And his last letter to her was from Rio, saying he was just about to set out for the earthquake zone.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you’ll feel inclined to tell her the exact truth.”
“Good God, no! She probably wouldn’t believe me, and even if she did, she’d only want to go out there right away and discover things for herself. But I shall be compelled to tell her something, after my promise to have enquiries made.”
They discussed the matter for some time, but Russell did not join in; he seemed fatigued after his narration, and at length rose to go. Oetzler went down with him to the front door, leaving Lanberger in the library. They chatted a moment till the arrival of a cab, and then shook hands. Probably Russell would have visited a good many other outlandish places before they met again, Oetzler reflected.
As he climbed again the short flight of stairs to rejoin his guest, he rather wished that Lanberger were not staying with him. The man had been amusing enough at dinner, but he was too tiresomely decorative for a conversation ŕ deux. No doubt at that very moment he was thinking of something clever to say. Oetzler felt he would rather have been alone. The evening had left him with a curious feeling of depression—curious because he could not, as so often, whisk it away by a merely cynical twist of thought. The talk at dinner and Russell’s long story somehow balanced each other in his mind—two pictures of a world that made him glad he was an old man.
When he entered the library Lanberger had lit a fresh cigar and was evidently ready for an eager resumption of the conversation.
“An extraordinary yarn, Oetzler,” he began, puffing excitedly. “Most good of you to let me in for it. As a novelist, I found it horribly fascinating. But, you know, the character in the story that interested me most of all was not Mirsky, nor even the woman, but Russell himself. What a man! It’s rare that you get a real self-revelation like that. His kink about the woman… most remarkable. He admitted himself that we must make allowance for it. On the whole, I think it’s a pity he didn’t bring back a few photographs.”
“Why?”
“Because she mightn’t have looked, to us, quite so awful as he made out. I’m not suggesting that she was a beauty, of course—merely that the peculiar quality of horror that Russell managed to convey to us may not have been so much in the woman’s body as in his own mind.”
“Maybe,” said Oetzler. He walked to the window, pulled back the curtains, and gazed upwards to a string of lights crowning the dark oblong of a neighbouring skyscraper. He felt very restless. What a bore these brilliant talkers were apt to be, when you had them all to yourself! He felt, as he sometimes did when he spent too much time in the atmosphere of his own newspaper office, the astonishing futility of words. There was a spate of them now, as never before in history—newspapers, books, the radio—yet in the whole lot was there as much eternal truth as in, say, the single statement of the Binomial Theorem? Which, by the way, was as far as he had ever got in mathematics. He sighed as he thought of his own giant presses at that moment preparing the word-stream which, in a few short hours, would suffuse the mentalities of millions of breakfasters and travellers to business. Never had there been more skilled manipulators of the thousands of items in the vocabulary; indeed, the game of everlasting permutation and combination and repetition had reached the dimensions of a giant industry. Yet was there more truth in the world, or a keener perception of the meaning of thi
ngs, than if mankind had been created deaf and dumb?
“Not that that spoils the tale,” Lanberger added, pendantly to his previous remark. “On the contrary, it’s the interplay of the first-personal with the third-personal that makes the ‘I’ technique so interesting. I know that well enough, as a novelist. I wonder if Russell really intends to use the story?”
“I should think he does,” answered Oetzler, with a smile. “He’s a word-hound like yourself, you know. Well, perhaps not quite like yourself. He’s one of those writer-men-of-action who go rooting about the world so that we can all sit in arm-chairs at home and enjoy their discomforts. Schadenfreude—isn’t that what we Germans call it?”
“He’s a talented writer, I should imagine.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You say that disparagingly?”
“Not in respect of Russell personally, I assure you.”
“Of writers in general, then?”
Oetzler laughed. “Perhaps a little. As a matter of fact, such an evening as we’ve just spent puts me in mind of Huxley’s little illustration about the monkey and the typewriter—do you remember it? He said that if one were to allow a monkey to fool about with a typewriter for long enough, sooner or later, according to the laws of probability, the creature would type out all the books that have ever been written.”
“By pure chance?”
“Yes. That’s mathematically quite sound, I understand. And, so far as I can see, it seems just as true that, sooner or later, the monkey in the same way would type out, not only all the stuff that has been written, but also some equally wonderful stuff that hasn’t. Limiting ourselves a little, shall we say a sonnet fit for the best highbrow monthly with thick paper and wide margins?”
“What an amusing idea!”
“Yes, and it’s even more amusing when you reflect that by the laws of chance this sonnet-phenomenon is just as likely to take place immediately as a million or a trillion years hence. So that if we were to set our monkey at work to-night, it’s just possible that we might come down to-morrow morning to find a genuine addition to literature all complete.”
“Well, what does it prove?”
“Nothing at all, my dear Lanberger, except that genius, talent, and all that sort of thing is a little quicker in its results than a chance- impelled monkey. Quicker, I admit; but I don’t think we can say surer. And who knows if mere quickness is any particular virtue in a universe where there seems to be time as well as space enough for everything?”
“I change my mind about your theory being amusing. I think it’s infinitely depressing.”
“Perhaps. But please don’t call it MY theory—I’m not nearly mathematician enough. As a matter of fact, I first heard it advanced—not very seriously—by an Englishman named Elliott who was over here for the War Debts negotiations in ’twenty-three. He came here one night and thawed out wonderfully after dinner, as Englishmen very often do. Interesting fellow—I see, by the way, that he’s just been given a post in the British Cabinet… Well, well, Lanberger, after all that I really think we ought to go to bed. Not quite the hour to turn to metaphysics….”
A few moments later, as they were both on their way to their respective rooms, Oetzler suddenly decided what he had better write to the girl in Paris.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT. — PAULA COURVIER
All day Paula had been very busy, for the delegations were due to arrive that evening, and they had engaged the whole of the first and second floors.
The Hôtel Corona occupied a well-chosen position at the fashionable end of the city. From its green-uniformed porters who waited at the railway- station to its lions couchant on either side of the main portico, it radiated a faint flavour of the pre-War Baedeker. Almost one expected to find its halls crowded with moustached Englishmen in tweed ulsters enquiring the times of diligences. It had five storeys, between three and four hundred apartments, and a dining-room that had at one time or another ministered to the wants of most Europeans over fifty and possessed of a yearly income exceeding a hundred thousand francs. Since the War its original air of quite Britannic majesty had been tinged from a more distant source, and there was now a cocktail-bar of immense sophistication as well as iced water for the asking.
Looking at the Hôtel Corona in the spring of 1932, one could not but feel a tide in the affairs of men that was lapping round it in a new direction, preparatory, maybe, to leaving it altogether. It still faced the lake like a starched shirt-front, living to all outward appearances that life of perpetual evening-dress for which it had been designed. But inside, the atmosphere was changed. For eighteen months the third and fourth floors had been closed entirely, and for a year the grand dining-room had been used only for occasional festivities. The grey-bearded head-porter stood in the lobby with a forlorn air of waiting for grand-dukes that might arrive at any moment. But the grand-dukes no longer arrived. The most that were now to be expected were diplomatists with leather satchels, hustling journalists who asked for beer at dinner, and that new post-War phenomenon—the typist cocotte.
Still, the “Corona” survived if it did not flourish, and its suave proprietor, M. Capel, was by no means disposed to object to the new- fashioned invasion. On the contrary, he had reopened the dining-room, engaged extra waiters and chambermaids, arranged special rooms for meetings, and laid in copious stocks of hotel notepaper. Nor had he shown much agitation when the president of the Polish delegation had rung him up from Warsaw and threatened to cancel bookings if the Soviet delegation were to be housed on the same premises. M. Capel knew that at an international conference such preliminary roulades were to be expected; and, what was more to the point he knew that the Polish delegation comprised only thirty odd, while the Russians numbered over eighty. Hence he had accepted the ultimatum resignedly and had straightway communicated with the Germans in Berlin and undercut the quotation of his rival, the Grand Hotel Moderne, along the road.
It was all fixed up, therefore, that the Germans and Russians were to have the whole of the first and second floors, and Paula Courvier, who was one of the extra chambermaids, had thus been kept busy from very early morning on that sunny day in May.
Not only the hotel, and all the other hotels, but the whole city and district were in a similar froth of excitement. International conferences were no novelties, but this one promised to be a record both for size and duration. Which meant that everything and everyone was prepared and expectant—shops, theatres, newspapers, railways, taxicabs, the post office—not a trade in the city, from laundries to lung-specialists, but looked for an augmentation of prosperity. Already during the fourteen years of the new era a considerable vested interest in peace had arisen, not dissimilar to that of Essen or Creusot in war; the municipality, indeed, might well have changed its motto to “Ex Pace Lucellum.” For some days before the official conference-opening, the advance-guard had been arriving by every schnell-zug and train de luxe—secretaries, publicists, interpreters, experts representing various interests, social hangers-on, and bevies of demi-mondaines from Berlin and Paris who were prepared to intersperse their pleasantries with trifles of eavesdropping and minor espionage. Peace had its victories a little less than war, and though the decorativeness of old- style diplomacy might be lacking, these morning-coated Metternichs and tweed- suited Talleyrands had their raffish moments— often of a kind to shock the respectable bourgeois inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Was it really possible that the celebrated authors of memoranda and draft-protocols were THAT sort of person? Alas, it was possible; but if one sold malmaisons or had shares in the local brewery, it was also possible to be tolerant.
So, from the ends of the earth, during those spring days, there gathered together the hirelings and the subordinates, followed in due course by the principals themselves. It was a General Council of the new and so far unestablished Faith—a Faith that had not yet had its Nicća, much less its Trent. The streets were brilliant with flags and banners, and noisy with chatter in many languag
es; a stroll of ten minutes’ duration had much of the interest and few of the inconveniences of a world-tour. Here an immaculate Japanese was buying a picture-postcard at a kiosk; there a group of German journalists, elaborately shabby, sat clinking glasses at a café table. Finally, towards sunset on the day before the conference-opening, a train of teak-brown coaches arrived from the east and disgorged on to the station platform a last consignment of hierarchy. Debonair even after their long journeys, they spilled into taxicabs and tipped according to the degree of lavishness with which their governments had endowed them.
By a different train, about an hour earlier, there had arrived the usual day-mail from Marseilles, and most evenings, towards seven o’clock, it was Paula’s habit to slip out, if she could manage it, across the road to the post office and enquire if there were anything “poste restante” for her. She did so on this occasion, and with the usual result. When she re- entered the Hôtel Corona by a side-door, the delegations were just arriving by the front, and all was in commotion. She went up immediately to attend to her duties on the second floor.