She collapsed into laughter again, then told me a few details. She was right. I had to admit it was funny. I relented completely.
I had gone right off dwarfs by this time, though, and as I still had the Exhibition site all paid for but empty, I got hold of a Japanese giant to put in his place.
Do you remember the Japanese Giant of 1878? Mine, all mine.
And let me tell you, he was very different from the little English dwarf. Apart from being appreciably taller, he was also kind, willing and chaste.
At least, he seemed endowed with these qualities. I say “seemed” advisedly, because after only a few days I made another earth-shattering discovery.
I turned up unexpectedly at Camille’s place one day (Camille, that was her name, I remember now) only to find, strewn all over the floor, discarded Japanese giant’s garments. And there in bed with Camille was …. guess who!
No, don’t try. You’d never guess in a thousand years.
The dwarf again!
That little bastard of an English dwarf had disguised himself as a Japanese giant just to sneak back into Camille’s bed.
The episode marked the definitive end of my career as the new Barnum and Bailey.
THE TEMPLARS
I once knew a man who really was a man – a man’s man, and as tough as they come. I was in the army at the time, stationed down on the Mediterranean, and he was the sergeant of the squadron. Tough? I’m telling you, he could bring the whole damn squadron to a halt just by tightening his knees on his poor horse. Cross my heart. Funny thing was, he might be a bit rough on the parade ground but off duty he was as nice as they come.
What the hell was he called? One of those funny Alsatian names, it was. Damned if I can remember. Wurtz, or Schwartz, or something like that. Yes, Schwartz, I think. Let’s call him Schwartz anyway. He came from Neubrisach, I remember that much, or from near Neubrisach.
By God, he was a man and a half, old Schwartz was!
I remember he came to me one Sunday and said: ‘Well, what shall we do today?’ ‘Anything you like, Schwartz, old boy,’ I said. The upshot being that we decided to go for a bit of a row. No sooner said than done; we hired a boat, rowed like mad for a while and there we were, out in the open sea. Lovely day for it, it was too, a bit of wind perhaps but not a cloud to be seen anywhere. So we shot along like greased lightning, only too happy to see the coast slip out of sight behind us for once.
One thing about rowing, though, it does make you ravenous, so it wasn’t too long before we stopped for a bit to eat. By God, we stuffed ourselves silly! I’ve never seen a leg of ham get stripped so fast, almost indecent really. And we were so busy eating that we never noticed how the wind was getting up a bit behind our backs and the water starting to chop about in a funny sort of way.
‘Christ, look!’ said Schwartz suddenly. ‘I think we ought to ….’
Hold on, hold on, I’ve got the name wrong. It wasn’t Schwartz. It was a bit longer than that – something like Schwartzbach. Yes, Schwartzbach sounds more like it.
Anyway, Schwartzbach said: ‘Time to think about turning back, lad.’
All very well to say that, but what if it’s blowing up half a storm? Before we could do anything about the situation, a fierce gust of wind took our little sail away, a breaker carried one of the oars off, and there we were, at the mercy of the waves. Turn back, I ask you! All that happened was we went faster and faster out to sea, tossing about like a teetotum. There was only one thing we could do, and that was take off our coats and shoes in case the worst happened.
By the time dusk fell, it had become a proper hurricane.
Smashing idea it had been to go out for a quiet day on the blue Mediterranean, I don’t think.
Then, getting on for midnight, when it had become so dark you couldn’t see a blind thing, there was suddenly a great crash! and a nasty sort of tearing, rending noise. We’d run aground.
Yes, but where?
Schwartzbach, or rather Schwartzbacher, because I remember now his name was Schwartzbacher, anyway Schwartzbacher turned out to be quite hot on geography (clever bastards, these Alsatians) and said straightaway:
‘Well, sonny boy, we’ve just hit the island of Rhodes.’
(By the by, could I make a plea to the authorities to put up a few more name plates on Mediterranean islands? They’re hell to tell apart in the dark if you’re new to the game.)
It was still as black as the ace of spades and we were wetter than two plates of soup, but somehow we managed to clamber up the rocks till we came out on top of the cliffs and had a look round.
Not a light to be seen anywhere.
Bleeding lovely.
‘At this rate we’ll miss reveille tomorrow morning,’ I said, just for something to say, like.
‘Tomorrow night and all,’ said Schwartzbacher sombrely.
So any rate we started off on a long walk through scrubby little gorse bushes and prickly furzes, just walking along to keep warm really, with not the faintest idea of where we were heading. Till Schwartzbacher suddenly cried out:
‘Hey! A light! Over there – see?’
I looked over where he was pointing and sure enough, there was a light. A long way off and a queer sort of light at that, but a light all the same. Not an ordinary light like the light of a house or the glow of a village but …. well, a queer sort of light.
We set off again, faster this time. And after a long, long while we finally got there.
What it was was a castle set high on the rocks, a big, impressive-looking, solid sort of castle that didn’t somehow give the impression of having been built for fun. One of the towers was obviously meant to be a chapel, because the light we’d seen was the chapel candlelight filtering out through great big Gothic stained glass windows. There was singing coming out too, very serious-sounding singing sung by deep men’s voices, enough to make your knees all soft and wobbly.
‘Right!’ said Schwartzbacher. ‘In we go!’
‘What? Oh …. all right. How, though?’
‘Easy. We just look round till we find an exit.’
Find an exit, he said, when of course what he meant was find an entrance, but still it came to the same thing so I didn’t think on the whole it was worth pointing out his mistake which was probably only due to the cold affecting his judgement anyway. So I didn’t bother.
There were plenty of entrances all right, but they were all locked solid and there were no bell-pushes or knockers. There might as well have been no bloody entrances at all. But at last we found a low wall that we managed to scramble over, and after that we were in.
‘Now,’ said Schwartzbacher, ‘now we head straight for the kitchens.’
Easier said than done. They didn’t seem to have any kitchens. Least, we wandered round and round the endless corridors like rats caught in a maze, and we never smelt the slightest whiff of food. All there was was the occasional bat flying past and brushing against our faces.
Eventually we found ourselves in a huge great hall and suddenly realised that the singing we had heard right at the beginning was much louder, which meant much closer. Sure enough, we had landed up in the room right next door to the chapel.
‘Know what?’ said Schwartzbacher (or rather Schwartzbachermann, I remember now) ‘We’re in the castle of the Knights Templar, that’s where we are.’
And as he spoke the words, the great iron door to the chapel swung open and flooded us in light, and there they were, before our very eyes, several hundred of them, all kneeling, all with helmets on and all looking bloody big and strong. As we watched, they rose to their feet with a great clanking noise and turned round. That’s when they saw us. And when they saw us, they all drew their swords in one motion and advanced on us blades at the ready.
Well, I don’t mind admitting that only one thing crossed my mind and that was the possibility of the ground opening up and swallowing us. But good old Schwartzbachermann never lost his nerve for a moment. Quick as a flash he rolled up his sleeves
, put up his fists and shouted:
‘All right, you Templars, come on and get me! I don’t care if there’s a bleeding thousand of you! Durand’s the name, fighting’s the ….’
Ah, I remember now! Durand! That was his name! His father was a tailor from Aubervilliers. Of course – Durand!
He was a man and a half, was Durand. I often wonder what became of him.
D’ESPARBES’S REVENGE
He was only a country postman, but he could really deliver the goods.
Every day he turned up with the post on the dot, and as soon as I saw him coming I would appear at our door with a glass of old Calvados in exchange for my letters. An unusual arrangement, perhaps, but I don’t remember him ever complaining. And as soon as we were comfortably ensconced with refreshments we would always turn to one of the issues of the day for discussion. Sometimes we chose one of the great issues of the day. Sometimes we chose the most trivial we could think of. It didn’t matter which we chose, because I knew that D’Esparbès (that was his name) would always wind up with the same verdict.
‘Don’t expect me to take sides,’ he would say. ‘I am completely electric.’
(I think he meant ‘eclectic’.)
There was a perfectly good reason for his electric view of the world. Along with his other duties he had to deliver various magazines to all the subscribers in the district and he made a point of browsing through every weekly or monthly before he delivered it. Which meant that one day he would imbibe socialist dogma, the next day reactionary ideas, the following day the latest satirical outbursts and the day after that straight Catholicism. Small wonder if he had ended up being the most broad-mindest person possible; not only had he rid himself of any sense of prejudice or political bias, he had also lost all idealism, all crusading fervour, all will to change the world. He was, in a word, electric.
But if D’Esparbès’s mind was a sea frequented by the floating wrecks of dead political ideas, it was also illuminated by the light of one sublime lighthouse. Love.
D’Esparbès was in love.
He was in love with a widow who lived nearby, a well-built brunette with little side-curls who may not have been quite as young as she used to be but was still every bit as attractive. For her part, the well-built and attractive widow was far from insensible to the charms of D’Esparbès’s young limbs (I use the term loosely) and made no secret of her feelings. Thus it came to pass that when our country postman went to deliver the fair widow’s mail, he was wont to tarry longer than the mere handing over of a packet of letters might seem to warrant. Ah well, country folk are fairly tolerant in these matters.
But one morning D’Esparbès turned up with my morning papers and post without his usual little opening quip (it was always different from the day’s before without ever actually changing very much) and looking as grim as death. All the light had gone out of his eyes; his brow was like thunder.
‘You look ghastly, D’Esparbès,’ I said sympathetically. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing…. really, it’s nothing.’
Luckily, I have this gift for getting people to talk and five minutes later I knew everything there was to know.
It was quite simple. His attractive widow was being unfaithful to him. She had taken another lover on the side.
And who do you think the other lover was?
The local vicar.
L’abbé Chamelle, the curé of Cornouilly.
One of those low-down clergymen who make you wonder if bishops have the faintest idea just what kind of men they send out to look after all those nice respectable country parishes.
A real cad.
Small wonder if D’Esparbès was burning with fury.
‘I’ll get even with him for this, though!’ he told me. ‘I’ll get my revenge on him, see if I don’t!’
And so he did, even if the manner of his revenge makes the ink run cold in my pen as I describe it for you.
One evening our humble postman sallied forth after dinner to Houlbec, to visit one of those public establishments of which there are so many in our small seaside towns, the kind of establishment frequented mostly by merchant seamen, late night fishermen and girls no better than they ought to be – girls, moreover, who may be amply endowed with physical charms but who are invariably ignorant of the basic rules of hygiene and disease prevention.
D’Esparbès spent a few minutes closeted with one of them (not a merchant seaman or a fisherman – a girl).
And emerged highly satisfied. In all respects. Because shortly afterwards he visited his doctor and received authorisation to stay off work for a full week in order to recover from infection.
Next Sunday, very early, I was awoken by D’Esparbès in person, looking more cheerful than I had ever seen him.
‘Game for a bit of fun?’ he wanted to know.
I indicated that I was.
‘Right! Get your carriage out and come with me to Cornouilly. We’re both going to Holy Communion. And I can promise it will be worth it!’
We arrived at Cornouilly just as the congregation was gathering for the said service in the aforesaid church. And as the service got under way, I could tell that the poor Abbé Chamelle was not putting much effort into the aforesaid sacred proceedings. Truth to tell, he looked pretty sickly and seemed to find it quite a job just getting up the altar steps.
D’Esparbès, meanwhile, was killing himself with silent laughter.
Eventually the time came for the priest to present the chalice full of the blood of Christ to his flock, then to take a sip himself of the very same cheap Graves (1 fr 80 a cask, wholesale). And it was at that moment that D’Esparbès stood up in his pew and shouted out, a bit sarcastically, I thought:
‘Watch it, padre! No alcohol with your complaint! Doctor’s orders!’
ARFLED
I may be rich and famous now, but five or six years ago things were very different. (May I take this opportunity, by the way, of denying the widespread rumour that my meteoric rise was due entirely to my hypnotic effect on influential women? Alas, I had to rely solely on talent.)
If you had met me in those days you would never have guessed that I was about to rocket to fame. You would have found my means modest, my habits humble, my modi operandi not always moral, my possessions paltry and my credit chimerical. To be more precise, I was living in a guest house called the ‘Hôtel des Trois Hémisphères’ in the rue des Victimes, where the clientele apart from me formed a cross-section of circus and music-hall people from all over the world. There I rubbed shoulders with contortionists from Chicago, tenors from Toulouse, clowns from Dublin and even at one point a lady snake-charmer all the way from Fontainebleau.
It was a very happy house, thanks to the manageress – she was a wonderful woman and we all loved her. A splendid blonde, just a touch past her prime perhaps and tending to plumpness, but still with lovely sparkling eyes and a great sense of fun.
The manager was otherwise. We didn’t love him at all. I hated him. And Arfled loathed him.
Arfled? You don’t remember Arfled? He was the clown in Fernando’s Circus. Arfled was an English lad: very handsome, very athletic and a fine figure of a man. He could hardly speak French to save his life, mark you, but when you’re as great a mime as Arfled was it doesn’t really seem to matter.
‘Arfled is a funny sort of name,’ I said to him one day. ‘How did you get it?’
He told me that originally he had been called Alfred but that the very first time he had had a costume specially made to display his name the seamstress had muddled the letters up and it had come out as ARFLED. The new name had appealed to him and he took to it immediately.
Which is more than you could say for M. Pionce, the manager of the hotel, whom he detested. Why? Difficult to say, really. My own theory is that he had actually had a great deal of affection for the Pionce household as a whole, but that by some quirk of fate it had all become focussed on Mme Pionce, with none left for Mo
nsieur. Well, it showed he had good taste.
It meant, too, that he provided the two high spots in Mme Pionce’s daily routine. The first came when he left his key at the desk on the way out in the morning. If he should happen to spy from the top of the stairs that Mme Pionce was on duty all by herself, he would descend in radiance. His face would light up blissfully, his eyes be bathed in sunshine and his mouth take on an exaggerated Cupid’s bow shape, as if the air was filled with divine sounds and smells. Rapturously he would float down the stairs and shower compliments on her as best he could.
‘Bon joor, Madam Pyonce, commong portay voo? Havay voo passay la bon nooee? Voos etes ploo jolee que jamay. Bon joor madam et bon appetay!’
But if he saw M. Pionce there when he came down, Arfled would immediately turn up his coat collar, pull his hat down over his eyes and change into a dangerous animal, slinking past the desk with a growl in his throat for all the world like a savage guard dog.
Her second high spot came when Arfled returned in the evening, and the same performance (depending on whether M. Pionce was there or not) took place again, all done with such masterly skill that Mme Pionce only had to see Arfled to burst into uncontrollable laughter.
*
One morning, when Arfled came down, he found Mme Pionce talking to one of the other guests.
‘Is your husband any better today?’ he heard the man ask.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to send for the doctor.’
At this, Arfled’s face crumbled into a mosaic of despair.
‘Monseeor Pyonce ay malade?’
‘I’m afraid so, M. Arfled. He has been coughing all night.’
‘Toot la nooee? Oh! Oh! Pover omme!’
As soon as he came back in the evening Arfled inquired after M. Pionce’s health with the most touching solicitude.
The World of Alphonse Allais Page 9