by Nigel Dennis
The usual developments accompanied the revival of the town. Middle-class residences became pensions; go-ahead fathers compressed their children into backrooms, and made the front rooms a home for Kodak supplies, postcards, soft drinks, Tauchnitz books, Uhu, Camels and Players. American children, peeping into the mullioned store-windows of the Old World, saw Beechnut, Klapp and Hemo. The cathedral was restored in the parts that no longer existed, and when someone thought he recalled, that in the sixteenth century the central dome had had a peculiar timepiece, in which God struck the hours by hitting the Devil with a club, this too was restored, by a firm of Swiss clockmakers. The inscrutable Force that had made Mell a rare combination of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Klondike, modified by Teutonic influences, was exploited in interlocking agreements too numerous and enclaused to describe: the signers included the Pilsudski Charabanc Company of Turin, the Gdynia Traction Co., the Hotel Poland, the Warsaw Railways, Katinka’s Fur Emporium, The Mell Association of Goldholders, The Ancient Bank of Danzig, The Amalgamation of Mell Pensions, and Mike’s Last Bid—a small gold-mine in the Union of South Africa, owned by an Irishman who had changed the name of his property to Mell and who supplied “Mell” nuggets when tourist demand was more than the mother-town could meet.
On the old site of the Bishop’s Palace stood the Hotel Poland, Mell’s largest, most expensive hotel. Here, at dawn on July 4, Morgan jumped out of bed, took one look out of the window, and dressed with the speed of a person who has not a moment to lose. The rest of the hotel was still asleep; in the room adjoining Morgan’s Divver lay asleep too, his fists clenched, gently gnashing his teeth.
Outside the two rooms a long corridor, carpeted in green, ran past numbered doors until it was halted at either end by a green shrub in a copper tub. Frosted lights hugged the ceiling; little squares of white cardboard hung by strings to the door handles, saying, “Do Not Disturb.”
Morgan moved down the corridor at a tripping step. He wore a brand-new summer suit; his hair, watered and combed, shone under the lights. In his pigskin wallet was a wad of pink and blue Polish banknotes of whose value he had not the faintest idea. Smiling and bowing at the doors, the frosted lights, the warning notices and his polished shoes, he declaimed to himself:
Your majesty shall shortly have your wish,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis….
O, my lord, ’tis sweet and full of pomp.
Electric arrows on the passage walls indicated the direction of the elevators. With instant stubbornness he walked in the opposite direction, in search of a means of leaving and entering the hotel that would be exclusively his own.
At the end of the passage, on either side of the tall palm, was a door, one of metal, one of green baize.
He opened the baize door, and at first found it difficult to see anything in the dim world beyond. Then he saw that it was some special part of the hotel. The passage in which he stood continued through the doorway, but once across the threshold it doubled its width, and its trim green carpeting was displaced by a heavier, red, Oriental nap. The ceiling sprang ten feet higher, the ceiling lights collected and dropped into one huge chandelier, its long crystals attached to a rich gilt crown suspended from the ceiling by a chain. To the left was a short row of black-oak doors, their lintels carved inches deep with leaves and fruit. On the first door, under an elaborate heraldic shield, was painted in flowing script: “The Archduke Suite.”
Exactly at that moment this door opened and a portly, white-haired man stepped out, wearing, of all things, a common American worksuit of blue denim. He crossed the passage and stepped straight into what appeared to be a gold cage set in the opposite wall, where he remained motionless for a few seconds; all at once his legs disappeared, followed by his body and head, and there was a faint sucking noise of uncoiling greased steel rope.
Morgan closed the baize door and opened the metal one. Here, the trim corridor dropped sharply away into a flight of rough stone backstairs; the walls were stained and damp, a bare bulb hung over the stairwell from a length of flex. Morgan ran down at once—past floors littered with rusty buckets, dripping taps, mops, squeegees, corrugated drums of wax and oil —until he saw light at the end of a long passage, and emerged into the Hotel Poland’s backyard of broken, lumpy cobblestones. At his back the hotel’s six stories of grimy brickwork climbed to a summit of water tanks, swinging air-vents and bunches of stumpy chimneys. But without pausing Morgan rounded the side of the hotel, still at a half-run, holding his breath in anticipation—and in a flash the marvellous world he had seen from his window was in front of him again.
The morning sun was still so low that its white light disbursed not warmth but coolness. To Morgan’s right, the white facade of the hotel—its name printed in gilded capitals across the third storey, its entrance of broad marble steps flanked by flowering shrubs—looked out on a cobbled square as large as a playing-field. An immense lime tree, its foliage spreading shade to twenty houses, stood at one long end of the square; at the opposite end Mell Cathedral’s green, fluted dome, ringed at the base by a circlet of little domes and topped by a short spire with a gold cross at the tip, raised itself out of a crush of old houses which hid its lower half. The big dome and its little satellites were still dewey; they sparkled in the early sun, except where strips and patches had dried off into jagged patches of a deeper green.
The charm of the square was not in uniformity but in harmonious variety. Six streets, hardly wider than alleys, ran out of it at eccentric points and careless angles. The fronts of the little blocks emerged as architectural islands whose styles were not even distantly related. Most of the block directly opposite the Hotel Poland was made up simply of square, plain pensions and cafés, limewashed in blues, greens, and yellows, and sporting their names in coloured script and block letters; metal tables, chairs and furled sunshades were folded to the walls, awaiting a sign from the sleeping tourists. Only an alley’s width from them stood a row of the strangest houses Morgan had ever seen: they began with a flat, withdrawn, ground floor and then proceeded to veer upwards and outwards into three-storey frontispieces of carved wooden balconies, thick with little struts and pillars, small windows in which the diamond panes were virtually crushed by elaborate frames, and so far withdrawn behind the balconies that they were scarcely visible from across the square. Their uniform gables ran upward at the edges in fat convolutions of dark wood, and were decorated in the angle of the peak with complicated allegorical carvings.
The next block was simply the town hall, police station, post office and mayoral headquarters, assembled in one sprawling, stone building. This architecture was simply that which is common to mayors, postage and criminals throughout Western Europe. Notices concerning postage, mobilization and crime were attached to one of the outer walls.
This block was divided from the Gothic houses that hid the lower part of the Byzantine cathedral by a sudden burst of Italian Renaissance, whose function was explained by a tall board at the entrance, bearing the words: S. LAUREL, O. HARDY.
Renaissance, Gothic, Byzantine, peasant and civil service were united at the base by the spread of the cobblestones, and gently linked at the top by telephone wires that zig-zagged lightly from epoch to epoch off pairs of ivory-white insulators.
Half the square was still black with the shadow of the houses on the east side. Morgan walked westward, hurrying over the cold dark stones, until he stepped over the dividing line and all at once stood in the sunlight, the only living object in sight. His heart raced, he was so confounded by his entrance into the square’s spacious unblemished emptiness that he remained halted, turning his eyes dimly from side to side, staring with the vagueness of astonishment at the bright pattern of hundreds of stones spreading away from under his feet, the blue sky, the sleeping, lifeless buildings, the glittering golden cross on the green dome. He could not adjust himself to the dominating silence of the cool, white morning; he strained his ears but could not catch a breath of sound; his wande
ring eyes caught a flashing change of colour when a window-shade sprang suddenly up the pane in one of the pensions, but no sound of its whirring spring broke out into the square. He felt that if he stood any longer, so rigid in body and roving in vision, the scene around him would slowly begin to turn on his axis, the assorted houses in their varying architectures and disparity of colour spinning gently on a single rim, first to his right, in a half-circle, then, after a check, back again and round to his left. Shaking the dizziness out of his head, he began to walk again, too bemused to lift his legs into a stride. Through the soles of his shoes he could feel the polished curved surface of each stone.
When he looked up again the bulk of the cathedral was still hidden, but he could see clearly a balcony that ran around the base of the big dome. Now, a door flapped up at one end of this balcony, and the Devil emerged, askance and coated with verdigris, and began a bent and shaky progress round the edge of the dome. He was followed instantly by God, who was also oxidized but very grim, his bearded head bobbing as he tremulously struck the Devil between the shoulders with a club. At the first strike the Devil shuddered, and a clear, metallic clang rang over the square, quite breaking the silence and flinging a whistling flock of pigeons into the sky. After the seventh blow God desisted; and he and the Devil turned their backs on Morgan and jogged along with halting amiability until they disappeared into a hole. A door slammed down behind them, the pigeons swept back to their perch behind the dome, and the air was again empty except for the fading sound waves of the seventh blow.
Morgan had breakfast in the only one of the cafés that was open. It was served by a sleepy, beefy girl whose eyelids were still half stuck together and who had put only just enough pins into her wads of flaxen hair to keep it out of the coffee. He thought she was the finest looking woman he had ever seen; he spent some minutes considering how passionately she would love him in their small Polish cottage. Then he took out his new billfold, and for the first time in his life he made a payment in foreign currency. Rising, he tipped the girl—so richly, that with the other hand she clutched her heart.
The square was filled with sunlight when he came out—walking in a trance, following his awed feet. Beside the arched entrance, blocked by a big metal door, of one of the old grey houses on the cathedral side, he saw two priests, one of them tall and dignified, wearing a biretta; the other, bareheaded, young, stout, and dowdy. A workman with heavy moustaches lowered his hand into a socket at the base of the metal door and threw it up into the arch with a roll and a crack. He exposed the familiar black depths of a garage, in the foreground of which stood a remarkable automobile.
It had been built in the Austrian city of Steyr, in the year 1914. Brass headlamps as big as searchlights, connected to a drum of acetyline by whorls of tubing, looked out into the square with glassy, round eyes. The car’s thick-spoked wheels were clamped in place by hubs that projected a clear four inches: there were roomy brass handles to the four high doors, brass screws and hinges on a windshield that operated in four sections, and a brass bulb horn whose tubes swirled in tight horizontal layers, until they opened out into a gorgeous trumpet mouth like a French huntsman’s corne de chasse. Behind, were maroon leather seats, set with the height and dignity of canonical stalls, stuffed to bursting, and patterned in the stiff, plump lozenges of old stained-glass. The hood was slashed by rakish wind-vents: the mechanic raised it on both sides and hung the edges to a long hook in the garage ceiling. Revealed was a massive engine in which each element was first countersunk as deeply as possible and then concealed in its hermitage by a roof of cast-iron. The mechanic bowed over the engine; the two priests watched in silence.
From a toolbox on the running-board the mechanic took a wrench as thick as his wrist, unbolted one of the iron roofs and displayed a medieval carburetter. He then took a small bottle from his pocket and poured half of it into the carburetter—at which the tall priest raised his eyebrows, suggesting that although he was not familiar with anything more mechanized than a pyx, no one could convince him that the car would run far on that. He even had the temerity to murmur something to the mechanic, who looked at him coldly and made no answer. At this point, the other priest, unable to resist temptation any longer, leaned forward timidly and pressed the bulb of the giant trumpet with fingers and thumb: it emitted no more than the faintest sigh, and the mechanic looked at this priest, too, with disdain. Then he adjusted, with much tugging and grimacing, two great levers on the steering-wheel marked PETROLEUM and MAGNETO; after which he muttered something to the dignified priest. This priest made no reply; he merely looked haughtily at his dowdy colleague, who hastily produced a grubby handkerchief. The mechanic snatched the handkerchief and stuffed it into the mouth of the carburetter.
From a binding of leather straps that belonged to the days of horse-carriages, the mechanic released a big crank, which he drove into the front of the car with a grunt. Then, with the air of a Titan, he raised himself up, looked full into the sun’s eye, swelled his chest, slowly rolled his sleeves to the elbow, spat richly into each hand, ponderously rubbed his gluey palms together, straddled his legs, and with an immense groan bowed down his frame and grasped the handle of the crank….
There was a thunderclap that shot half the tourists in Mell off their pillows. It was followed by a medley of snaps and cracks, and jinglings from the open tool box: the high seats, the splashboards, the suspended hood leaped into a trembling jig, jumping feverishly on the springs, jerking from side to side: a moth fluttered out from the floor-carpets, and the nearer area of the garage floor became alive with scurrying swirls of dust, old match-ends, brittle flower petals, scraps of newspaper, all racing for shelter from gusts that seemed to fly out of every vent from crank to exhaust. A fine haze of blue smoke mounted over the rear seats, fell into a draught and drifted out into the sunshine. “Bravo!” cried the tall priest, delicately clapping his finger-tips. The mechanic gave a loud roar, and gestured with one big hand—at which the dowdy priest nervously fingered his way to the carburetter, grasped the sodden handkerchief between finger and thumb and twitched it high into the air with the gesture of a triumphant magician. At this, the engine seemed about to die of indignation; it caught its breath, and then redoubled its roar until the walls shook. The mechanic flew to the levers and worked them grimly down the steering-wheel: the engine followed him, diminuendo, until it was firing with such moderation that Morgan could hear the soft smacks of the pistons and the suctions of air. The tall priest stretched out his hand and tapped the mechanic approvingly on the shoulder; but the sullen man only tore from its moorings behind the engine an immense oil can, and went his round, opening a score of secret trap-doors and squirting in floods of lubricant. Then he replaced the hood and climbed behind the wheel, arranging one foot on an accelerator as gawky and broad as the foot-brake on a hay-waggon. Next, he bore down on the clutch, grasped the great ball on the top of the gearshift, and worked the stick in and out of a collection of wide gates, inscribed: ZURÜCK, VORWAERTS EINS, VORWAERTS ZWEI, VORWAERTS DREI, NEUTER. With his right hand he discovered outside the door a yard of outside brake, which he thrust forward to the length of his arm. The whole impressive contraption roared again and moved ponderously into the sunshine, where it bounced with dignity over the cobbles and turned down a side street in rolls of smoke. As it disappeared, three children sprang from nowhere and attached themselves to its high, green back. Morgan smiled; the priests smiled; and the dowdy one took a leaflet from his pocket and handed it to Morgan with a little bow. They went away, and he was alone again.
The leaflet was written in English (I suppose by now, Morgan thought, they are able to recognize an American when they see one). At the top of it was a murky engraving of Mell cathedral, silhouetted against a pageant of stars and stripes. Underneath was written: “On July 4th, share your American Day of Independence with Tutin Province’s Festival of St. Bertha (W).” In the centre of the page was a woodcut of George Washington, holding a nun’s hand. Half a dozen me
dieval waves separated the general’s highboots from the nun’s invisible feet; Washington wore the uniform of a sergeant of the Polish cavalry; St. Bertha’s eyes were cast down, but she was smiling with a nun’s exorbitant innocence.
I never heard of St. Bertha (W), Morgan said to himself, but I do know that this is the happiest day of my life, my day of independence.
Overhead, two strings of national flags had appeared, covering the square with a St. Andrew’s cross.
He walked down the nearest street, which quickly turned into an alley of thatched cottages. They had no front lawns, no front porches, no doorsteps, not even a sidewalk: they stood in the road itself, and their doors touched the dust. At one open window a man in a singlet was holding a starched white collar up to the light and removing yesterday’s grime from it with the crumby side of a crust of bread.