The World of Alphonse Allais

by Alphonse Allais

  I was just picking myself up when I felt a helping hand on my shoulder and turned round to find that it belonged to a rather nice-looking fair-haired girl. She smiled at me and said:

  ‘Never mind, come over to my place and you can get cleaned up there.’

  She lived just across the road, it turned out.

  Well, at a time like that you don’t try to take advantage of the situation, you just go along with it. So I went along.

  And a few minutes later she was busy helping me out of my outer clothing, wiping the dirt off and brushing them all down in a maternal sort of way, before returning them to me in their pristine condition.

  While she was thus engaged, I had plenty of time to take a good look round her quarters and I suddenly realised that my benefactress was nothing other than a lady of the streets.

  Well, I had to show her my gratitude somehow. So why not by offering her my custom there and then?

  But when I did, she gently edged away from me and whispered: ‘No, don’t, I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Why not, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Because …’

  ‘Because what …?’

  ‘Well, because then you’d only think I’d helped you so that I could get you back here and take advantage of you.’

  The idea was ludicrous, but nothing I said could make her change her mind.

  I wouldn’t have minded so much, except that she really was an extraordinarily attractive girl.

  So I came back the next day, clean and dry.

  Still no good.

  Resisting adamantly, she said: ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t possibly. I know what you’d say. You’d say I only came to your rescue because I was after your business. I’m sorry, but no.’

  ‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t say anything of the sort. Honestly I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You might not say it, but you’d be sure to think it.’

  Well, I have been going back to her every day and not once have I managed to wring the slightest concession out of her.

  How could one possibly not fall in love with a nature of such sensitivity?

  So now you know why I have asked her to be the mother of my children.

  * An interesting demonstration of the fact that swallowing a non-toxic substance can sometimes lead to death.

  THE GOOD PAINTER

  Tonal harmony was his passion in life. The sight of clashing colours made him gnash his teeth as furiously as violent discords would a musician. In the provinces he was upset by the clashing ensembles of ladies’ costumes; at the Paris Opera by the clashing costumes of ladies’ ensembles.

  It was such an obsession that whenever he ate fried eggs he never drank red wine at the same meal, for fear of the vile colour scheme it would produce in his stomach.

  Once, hurrying along the pavement, he happened to bump into a flashy young man wearing a fawn overcoat and knock him against a freshly decorated shop-front (WET PAINT – DO NOT TOUCH).

  ‘You might look where you’re going!’ protested the young man.

  The artist stood back and squinted at him in the manner of painters studying their work.

  ‘I don’t see what you’ve got to complain about,’ he said. ‘The effect is very …. Japanese.’

  Not long ago he received a letter from an old friend of his who was out in Java hunting black panthers for the Wild Animal Stores of Trieste. Touched at the thought of someone so far away and so long ago remembering him, he wrote a long letter back to his old friend and packed it up in a huge envelope. Java being very distant and the letter being very heavy, the postage cost him a small fortune.

  The Post Office clerk grumpily dished out six or seven stamps of varying hue and price.

  Taking infinite pains, the artist proceeded to stick the stamps on the big envelope in a vertical row making sure that all the colours were in exactly the right combination. (There’s nothing worse than a loud letter.)

  More or less satisfied, he was about to thrust it into the gaping void marked ABROAD when a last look at the stamps caused him to return abruptly to the counter.

  ‘A three sou stamp, please.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  And he stuck it on the envelope below all the others.

  ‘If I may say so, sir,’ said the employee, unbending a little, ‘the letter was quite correctly stamped already.’

  ‘I know that, thank you,’ said the artist obligingly. ‘I needed a blue highlight.’

  PERSONAL COLUMN

  To Madame la Marquise de Ch… Please return your last shipment of prussic acid to us. If it really is corked, as you say, we shall of course replace it free of charge.

  *

  To M.V.P.– Well, it’s your own fault. If you hadn’t tried to impress your doctor by telling him you were a solicitor, instead of admitting that you really worked as a fire-eater in a travelling circus, then Dr. Pelet (who is an extremely conscientious physician) would not have given you nitro-glycerine tablets to take, and you would not consequently have suffered from internal explosions, burnings and mild indigestion. That will teach you to bluff your way through life, dear boy.

  *

  To the Marquise de B… No, you won’t find any more edible oysters now till September, except in really exclusive shops. The best month for eating oysters, of course, is February which has no less than two r’s in it.

  *

  To the brothers Rothschild– No problem at all. Drop in and borrow 100 sous any time you like.

  *

  To H.M. Queen Victoria– There is no excuse at all for your confusion. One is spelled Bauer, the other Boer. Don’t you ever read the papers?

  *

  To Mme Q. Hyer, of Pau– Well, I went to the boulevard des Capucines and looked for the number you mentioned, but I couldn’t find a field of rape anywhere. Are you sure you got the address right?

  *

  To Mademoiselle Nina Pack of the Opéra Comique– Your letter is charming, mademoiselle, but your anthropology leaves a little to be desired. If a man is of average height it does not necessarily follow that he is the product of a giant father and dwarf mother.

  *

  To Mmes Jane à Digne (Basses–Alpes) and Jane à Ding (c/o navigable section of the Upper Mekong River)– I have used the following method for many years and always found it worked perfectly.

  First, I heat the water to boiling point. Then without warning I put it out in a draught. Microbes, you are doubtless aware, have a very weak chest and this brings on a bad chill from which they scarcely recover.

  When I find it too troublesome to build a fire – if I am out bicycling, for instance, or stranded on pack-ice – I make do by spiking the water with a little gin (1 part water to 3 parts gin).

  This latter method was given to me personally by Captain Cap and is just as good.

  *

  To M. Michesse (of the firm Michesse et Rieux)– I agree, the anomaly you mention is certainly extremely odd, but I can think of an even odder one. Did you know that the word ‘cage’ is masculine in the country, but feminine in town?

  So, for instance, one says ‘L’oiseau chante dans le bocage’ in the country, but in town one would say ‘L’oiseau chante dans la belle cage’.

  I can see now why foreigners have difficulty learning French.

  *

  April 26 1896

  To Paul Escudier, Town Councillor of Paris– Many thanks for your 30 francs, which I have already spent. In all honesty, I should tell you that I no longer reside in the Saint-Georges district and therefore cannot vote for you.

  My local councillor is now M. Bompard, to whom I have already pledged my vote. I am sure he will be glad to reimburse you.

  *

  April 29 1896

  To Messrs. Puglesi-Conti and Urbain Gohier– Very well, gentlemen, I shall vote for you as well.

  To Léon Gandillot, Paris– You have been correctly informed, sir. Cats that eat flies never get fat.

  The same applies to tigers. E
specially if they eat nothing but flies.

  *

  To Captain Ch. Lamy, on board Destroyer 166 – To find the time of the spring neap tide, simply add thirty-six hours to the date of the equinox. The height of the neap tide in any port is the product of the height above sea level of the port times a hundredth of the tide level plus the normal tide.

  See you soon, I hope.

  *

  May I remind all readers wishing to write to me to enclose a 15 centime stamp? Not for the reply – I never reply to readers’ letters – but to help pay for my correspondence with tradesmen.

  *

  NEWS IN BRIEF

  Instead of persecuting bookmakers and innocent flower-girls, the Chief of Police would be far better employed controlling the hordes of bicycles which are causing such a nuisance in this hot weather. Only yesterday morning a bicycle escaped from its shed in the rue Vivienne and rushed at top speed down the street, knocking into all the passers by and leaving a trail of terror and consternation in its wake. It got as far as the junction of the boulevard Montparnasse and the rue Lepic before a brave gendarme managed to bring it down with a bullet in its left pedal.

  The autopsy showed that it had gone certifiably mad.

  A hand-cart which it bit en route is still under day-and-night observation at the Pasteur Institute.

  *

  To M. Franc-Nohain of La Rochelle: The case you report is not as unusual as you think. I have noticed that adulterous wives frequently marry cuckolded husbands.

  *

  To the Marquise de F… of Blois: Yes, madame, you are absolutely right: the gentleman in question was indeed myself. I was not nearly as drunk as you make out, though.

  A TACTICAL ERROR

  One fine morning the river ferry steamed across from Le Havre to Honfleur as it always did, and deposited on the Honfleur quayside an impressively unusual figure. He was a grizzled old seaman, obviously as hard as a ton of nails, tough as old beef, and so tanned by sun and rain that the children on the quay took him at first for a negro, till they looked closer. The kind of man you or I would expect to go straight about his business with no nonsense or hanging about.

  You or I would be quite wrong, because the first thing he did was stroll over to the seawall, drop his large canvas bag in the dust and take a good, long look at the town, as if the whole place belonged to him and he had nothing better to do than stand and stare at it.

  ‘Blow me, but nothing much has changed,’ he muttered, after a while. ‘The Harbour Master’s place is still just the same. The White Horse Hotel. And old Deliquaire’s shop. And the old town hall. They’ve rebuilt St. Catherine’s, though. Not before time, neither.’

  But when he started looking at the people round him, it was a different story. He didn’t recognise a single one of them.

  Which wasn’t really too surprising, considering it was his first visit to the place in thirty years or more.

  What was surprising, perhaps, was that someone suddenly hove into view whom the sailor did recognise, a white-haired old officer with a couple of medals stuck on his jacket and a big cigar stuck in his mouth. As soon as the old seaman spotted him, he told a young lad to look after his bag for a moment and then approached the man respectfully, taking off his cap as he addressed him.

  ‘Morning, Cap’n Forestier, and I trust things are well with you, sir. Do you remember me by any chance? No, I can see as you don’t. It’s Théophile Vincent, sir. I worked with you on the Fair Ida once. Down Valparaiso way.’

  The captain looked closely at him.

  ‘Good God! Old Théophile! Well, I’ll be damned. I thought you’d gone down to Davy Jones’s locker long ago.’

  ‘No, Cap’n, not by a long chalk. That’s one gentleman I’ve no immediate plans for getting acquainted with.’

  While the two old mariners started chewing over old times, a couple of veteran local pilots drifted over out of curiosity, followed by an odd longshoreman or two, and one by one they all recognised Théophile. He gave them his news as briefly as he could, then started to ask after old friends.

  ‘What happened to So-and-so?’

  ‘Dead, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Ah. What about So-and-so?’

  ‘Lost at sea.’

  ‘Well, what about What’s-his-name?’

  ‘He never came back. No-one ever found out what happened to him.’

  After which he got round to inquiring about the fate of his own relations, only to be told that almost all of them had gone down to whoever looks after the land-lubbers’ locker.

  It turned out that the only family he had left in the whole wide world consisted of two nieces, one of whom had got married to the local bailiff, the other ending up as a farmer’s wife not far from Honfleur.

  Logically, Théophile decided to go and look up the bailiff first. He had no qualms left about invading the privacy of officialdom, not after thirty years spent knocking about the South Seas, so he picked up his bag, said goodbye to his rediscovered friends and didn’t stop walking till he was standing in the middle of the bailiff’s office.

  The only person in the bailiff’s office, however, was a young office boy engaged in the vital task of transforming a page of dull regulations into a passable drawing of a whaling launch. Théophile cast his eye over the sketch, gave the lad the benefit of his knowledge of the construction of launches in general and of whalers in particular till the drawing was improved out of all recognition, and finally got round to asking:

  ‘Where can I find Irma?’

  ‘Irma?’ said the lad, nonplussed.

  ‘Yes. The bailiff’s wife. She’s my niece.’

  ‘Ah. He’s gone home for lunch.’

  Five minutes later Théophile burst unceremoniously into his niece’s dining room, just as the family were sitting down to their midday meal.

  ‘Morning, Irma, and good morning to you too, sir! By God, Irma, I says it as maybe shouldn’t, but you’ve changed a hell of a lot in thirty years! You were all peaches and cream last time I saw you. You look more like an old guava now!’

  Irma’s husband took this in quite the wrong spirit, I’m afraid, and went scarlet with rage. He was not a nice sort at all – an unlovable, bad-tempered red-head as well as being one of those petty civil servants whose fat behinds seem created expressly to invite the shotgun pellets of the resentful poor.

  Irma sided with him, sad to say.

  In other words, Théophile got such short shrift that within seconds he had humped his bag on his shoulder again and was on his way back to the harbour. He ended up in a sailors’ tavern where he ate, drank and stood countless rounds to such good effect that he ended up just that little bit intoxicated. So it wasn’t until the evening that he remembered he still had another niece to see; Constance. She’s a country lass, he thought to himself. She’ll lay on the hospitality, anyway.

  Constance and family were hard at work on the evening stew when he arrived.

  ‘Bon appétit, everyone!’ he cried, as he entered.

  Constance got up, looking very hard and cold.

  ‘And what might you be after?’

  ‘Constance! Don’t you recognise me, old girl?’

  ‘Never seen you before in my life.’

  ‘But I’m your uncle Théophile!’

  ‘Rubbish. He’s dead.’

  ‘No, he’s not! And here I am to prove it!’

  ‘That’s as may be. But he’s dead as far as we’re concerned. Understand? Now clear off.’

  Théophile understood. He also conveyed, in a few short, sharp, spicy expressions, exactly what he thought of her and her poxy family. Then he wandered off into the night again, not without a certain sadness though, which he proceeded to assuage very thoroughly back in the sailors’ tavern in the company of his old mates from sea-faring days. The treatment proved so effective that by the time the police came to close the place down at eleven, everyone present was crying tears of pure gin at the thought of the decline of the world of sail. So much
so that they all sallied forth with the firm intention of rowing out to scuttle a large Norwegian steamer that lay at anchor in the harbour waiting for the tide.

  Needless to say, nothing was scuttled by anyone and they all reached their beds with no harm done.

  When Théophile got up the next morning, his first important errand was to his lawyer, to whom he imparted the information that he was not just an old sailor back from a life on the ocean wave, he was also by way of being extremely rich. Because in that canvas bag there were no less than 200,000 francs, acquired in various dubious ways no doubt, but acquired nonetheless.

  And it wasn’t very long before the news of his opulence reached his nieces’ ears, with startling results.

  ‘My dear Uncle Théophile,’ said Irma, ‘if there is ever anything we can do…..’

  ‘You must have thought us terribly rude,’ said Constance, ‘but I never dreamt that it was really you…..”

  Théophile’s reaction to these fervent protestations of love and affection could best be described as tending to the cynical. But as they seemed to be as undying as they were fervent, he eventually put an end to the family persecution by announcing that he would give both sides extreme pleasure by agreeing to stay six months of the year with one niece and the other six months with the other. And he further decreed that every Sunday both families should be together for a communal meal of great harmony and cordiality.

  It was at one of these uneasy family get-togethers that Théophile made the following little speech:

  ‘I need hardly remind you that we none of us know when we are likely to die….’

  All ears were pricked…

  ‘,…… So I have been and gone and made my will.’

  Cries of protest and dismay.

  ‘Yes, I have. And as, furthermore, I don’t like the idea of splitting my fortune in two, I have decided to leave it all to one party.’