The World of Alphonse Allais

by Alphonse Allais

  ‘The time was obviously ripe for M. Dahl’s fish, or animal, to climb yet another rung on the evolutionary ladder. This time he set out to teach him how to move about on land, and actually managed to get him slithering around like a snake. After a few months’ practice the clever herring could actually move along quite fast – so much so that the scientist often took him for walks and led him around rather like a pet poodle.’

  Well, to cut a long report short and get straight to the denouement …..

  ‘One day, M. Henrik Dahl and his faithful herring were strolling round the harbour area when they happened to pass over a bridge made of wooden slats laid loosely side by side. Sadly, the creature slipped through one of the cracks and fell into the water below.’

  And, the Journal Des Débats adds coolly:

  ‘It seems that the herring, being no longer used to sea water, was drowned immediately.’

  A SAD POEM TRANSLATED FROM THE BELGIAN

  for Maeterlinck

  The woman I love will be an older woman, though not as old as all that.

  Having experienced everything that life can offer, she will no longer believe in anything.

  Though not beautiful, she will still have the ability to enslave all men, without exception.

  No-one has ever seen her laugh,

  except, sometimes, when her pale mouth is touched by a smile in memory of her tragic betrayals.

  *

  Being the ex-mistress of an English painter who always got cruelly drunk

  and blackened her body

  her whole body

  with his blows,

  she will have a healthy loathing for all men.

  *

  She will deceive me with a young unpublished poet

  whose hair, so long and thick

  and not very clean,

  will turn the heads of men in the street

  and women as well

  *

  I shall know all about it but, like a coward, pretend to know nothing.

  Nothing!

  The young poet will dedicate his outpourings to me,

  ironically.

  *

  The affair will last for months

  and months.

  Then one fine day, Eloa will become addicted to morphine.

  *

  For Eloa is her name.

  *

  The morphine will wreak its usual havoc.

  Eloa’s cheeks will become pockmarked with little blotches

  and turn puffy,

  so puffy

  that her eyes will disappear.

  For hours on end she will lie on her sofa

  like some great weary animal

  and every time she breathes one will notice a strange fetid odour.

  *

  One day, when Eloa’s chemist is drunk,

  he will make a mistake

  and instead of morphine

  give her some strange alkaline or other.

  She will become as sick

  as a dog.

  Her extremities will go as cold

  as those of a snake,

  and the sound of agony will be heard in her throat.

  *

  Her suffering will get worse and worse.

  *

  I will put my hand into Eloa’s hand

  and she will make me swear

  that when she is dead

  I will kill myself.

  That our two bodies, enclosed in the same bier,

  will decompose and putrefy together.

  The mingled juices of our rotting flesh will turn into the same sap,

  feed the same stems of the same bushes,

  flourish greenly in the same leaves

  and spread, radiantly, into the same flowers.

  *

  And in the cemetery,

  in springtime,

  when a young girl says: ‘What a beautiful smell!’

  that fragrance will be none other than the sublime commingling of our souls.

  *

  These are the last wishes of Eloa.

  I shall promise everything she asks, and more besides.

  *

  Then she will die.

  *

  I shall give Eloa a decent funeral and then,

  next day,

  I shall go out and get a mistress

  who is a bit more fun.

  WIDOW AND SON

  Once upon a time there lived at 256 rue Rougemont, in a nice apartment on the second floor (3,500 francs a year, not counting rates, etc.) a family who rejoiced in the name of Martin. There were three of them: M. Martin, Mme Martin and their son, also called M. Martin.

  When our story begins, the father had just retired from business. He had made a large fortune as the founder and chief director of the Society for Insurance against Solicitors, despite which he was an unusually retiring, not to say anti-social man, and (unlike his wife and child) cordially loathed all dances, evenings at the theatre and gatherings of any description. (His wife and child, who had no sense of respect whatsoever, were insufferably rude to him on this account.)

  Mme Martin was on the wrong side of thirty, but partly made up for this by being on the right side of forty. As she was also rather pretty, dressed well and sparkled in company, many people took her to be her husband’s daughter and her son’s elder sister.

  The son himself was eighteen and abominably spoilt by his mother. He had already fallen into bad habits and constantly borrowed large sums of money from friends of the family, ran up considerable debts with tradesmen and had even, on one occasion, touched the concierge for a small amount. Yet a mother’s heart is infinitely forgiving and Mme Martin always repaid his debts, quite unknown to father.

  But there came a day when young Martin got so deeply in debt that it could no longer be hid from Martin senior. And for once father completely lost his temper and laid down the law, to the effect that for his own good young Gaston should enlist in the Army for the next five years. Now, a mother’s eyes contain infinite reservoirs of tears, and Mme Martin wept hard enough to flood the average landscape, but it was no good. M. Martin was made of granite. He was, in a word, adamant.

  The only concession he made was that the distraught mother could accompany her son as far as the barracks. And there she burst into tears to such good effect that the platoon sergeant’s heart softened and he advised her to go to the Captain or even the Colonel to plead for good treatment of her son.

  She went to see the Captain first, a young buck of about thirty.

  She stayed with him about a quarter of an hour and came out feeling a bit better.

  Then she went to see the Colonel.

  He was nearing sixty and, frankly, past his best.

  Mme Martin stayed with him for about three quarters of an hour.

  But she left him feeling much better.

  Alas, it did not last for long, because when Gaston first wrote home he had heartbreaking news to report.

  All the chocolate she had given him had been taken away.

  And his description of military life was harrowing in the extreme – uncomfortable bedding, bad food, unsympathetic colleagues, unpleasant fatigue duties, tough training, practical jokes, tossings in blankets, etc….. The only nice thing about being in the army, it seemed, was listening to the regimental band on a Sunday afternoon.

  Mme Martin could not stand the thought of her son’s suffering. She took the next train and went to see the Colonel again. The Colonel was no older than he had been last time, but he hadn’t got any younger either. So it was only after an hour of pleading by Mme Martin that he at last relented and agreed (quite against regulations) to let Private Martin have eight days’ leave.

  The next evening the family was reunited as before for the supper ritual; and talking things over, M. Martin admitted that he might have been a bit hasty in his decision. (A fine time to admit it!) Then, before he went to bed, M. Martin went out on the balcony to smoke his last pipe of the evening, as he always had d
one from time immemorial, while mother and son stayed to chat in the living room.

  ‘Tell me,’ said mother, ‘is there really no way of getting out of this frightful regiment?’

  ‘No, mother, not unless I am invalided out or become the son of a widow. That’s the law.’

  ‘Son of a widow?’

  ‘Yes, mother, son of a widow.’

  His mother thought things over for a moment, then said abruptly:

  ‘Are you very fond of your father?’

  ‘Of course not, mother! Are you?’

  ‘Me?’

  She raised her eyes heavenwards briefly. Then she said:

  ‘I’ll show you how fond I am. Just watch.’

  At that very moment M. Martin was leaning right out over the edge of the balcony. His centre of gravity was not quite across the little railing, but it wasn’t far off – any slight shift in the position of his mass might result in a highly unstable state of balance, not to say a sudden precipitation. Mme Martin crept up behind him, quiet as a vixen, grasped the seat of his trousers and smartly sent him on his way at high velocity towards the object on the pavement below which he had been studying so painstakingly, all executed with a precision and firmness which you might not have expected in such a society lady.

  Meanwhile M. Martin was executing a brief but swift fall. At the very moment it ended he collided with a stretch of asphalt below, producing the kind of whummmmmp! noise made by meat when it is being flattened, followed almost instantaneously by a loud crack! as of clay being broken.

  M. Martin’s pipe had snapped in two.

  Not only that, but a young lady walking past on the way back from the theatre found her dress splattered all over with grey blobs, which she started to wipe off with her handkerchief. But a kindly passer-by stopped and said:

  ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you. It’s only brain, and that doesn’t mark clothes. Just let it dry and then tomorrow get it off with a good stiff brush. It won’t leave a single trace.’

  Which shows just how much the passer-by knew about it, because the human brain contains fatty matter (phosphorus) and stains clothes just like any other greasy stuff.

  Meanwhile Mme Martin and her son had rushed down the stairs and come out to the scene of the accident.

  ‘My husband!’ shrieked the wife. ‘Oh my poor, dear husband!’

  ‘Father, father!’ cried his son.

  After which things took their usual course. A vast crowd gathered instantly, and bared their head out of respect for such doubly heartfelt grief. A fat doctor wheezed up, confirmed that M. Martin was dead and asked where he should send the bill to. A beautiful funeral was arranged for the late M. Martin, starring his son and heir in a lovely black outfit with a mourning band on his arm, sobbing so convulsively that everyone sighed: ‘Poor, poor boy.’ And there was a short legal ceremony which decided that M. Martin had been killed by a fall caused by a fit of apoplexy.

  After which, being now a widow’s son, young Martin quickly left the Army and became a civilian again, much to the anguish of the Colonel who had become hugely attracted to Mme Martin.

  Sorry though I feel for the bereaved pair, I cannot conceal that the period of mourning observed by the widow and orphan was remarkably short. After what might seem an indecently brief interval they swung back into society again, showing either a distressing lack of taste or a remarkable philosophical resignation.

  But the best bit of the story is that Mme Martin has, with the full backing of her son, decided to remarry, and is shortly to become a wife again. Which means, though it has not occurred to either of them, that Gaston will promptly be recalled to the ranks again.

  The only person who might warn them is the Colonel, and he has no intention of letting them know. He would rather wait and see Gaston’s expression when he is re-enlisted.

  THE POLYMYTH

  I first set eyes on him in a café in the Latin Quarter when he came in and sat down at the table next to me. And ordered six cups of coffee.

  ‘Aha,’ I thought to myself. ‘This gentleman is about to be joined by five friends, if I am not much mistaken.’

  I was much mistaken. As soon as the six cups of steaming Mocha had arrived he drank them all himself, one after the other. (Which is much the best way to do it, as you will know if you have ever tried to drink six cups of coffee simultaneously.) When he noticed my air of bafflement, he leant across to enlighten me.

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ he said. (He spoke in a flat, down-at-heel sort of voice, as if he was talking with his shoe-laces undone.) ‘The fact is, I am another Balzac. I, too, drink far too much coffee.’

  Fascinated, I waited to see what he would do next. I didn’t have to wait long. He called the waiter over and asked him to bring some writing paper. As soon as it came, he scribbled a few words on the first sheet, then crumpled it and threw it under the table. The same happened to the next. And the next. And the next and the next, until the floor was covered in screwed up pieces of paper.

  ‘You see,’ he told me in the same flat voice, ‘you see, I am another Flaubert. I find it almost impossible to get a sentence right.’

  Such a distinguished man was obviously worth cultivating and in order to find out more about him, I struck up a conversation. But when I happened to mention that I was a Norman from Honfleur, it brought a deep frown to his face.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that. I am like Charlemagne; I despise the barbarians from the north.’

  I hastily explained that we Normans had ceased being Norsemen many years ago, and he looked relieved at the news.

  ‘Ah, I didn’t know that. I know nothing about the north – as a matter of fact, I am another Puvis de Chavannes. I too grew up in Lyons.’

  Where, it turned out, all his family had been in the meat trade. In fact, his father had insisted on his going into the business for a while.

  ‘I am another Shakespeare. I too started out as a butcher’s boy.’

  Then he had moved to Paris, fallen in love and got married. He didn’t tell me very much about his wife.

  ‘Let’s just say that I have much in common with the Emperor Napoleon I. We both married a woman called Josephine.’

  Josephine, sad to say, had run off almost immediately with an Englishman, leaving my friend feeling somewhat hurt, not to say rather offended.

  ‘Put it this way,’ he put it. ‘I am another Molière. I too had an unfaithful wife.’

  Part of the trouble seems to have been that he and Josephine were not entirely compatible in some ways. She, apparently, liked very virile, very passionate men. Unfortunately….

  ‘You see, I have something else in common with Napoleon. My ….’

  The rest of the sentence was carried away by a sudden gust of wind. Being very anxious to learn more about a man with so many diverse talents, I was careful not to leave before I had arranged to meet him again, and we agreed to have lunch together soon, fixing our rendezvous for twelve midday precisely.

  I arrived at one minute past twelve and found him tapping his watch impatiently.

  ‘You may not have realised that I am another Louis XIV. I cannot bear to be kept waiting.’

  He relented sufficiently over lunch to tell me in great detail about a serious eye infection he had been suffering from since I last saw him. Luckily the doctors had found a cure and now it had almost completely cleared up. Or as he put it, with a slight variation on the normal theme:

  ‘I have no wish to be another Homer or Milton.’

  The other news he had at this, our second meeting, was that he had managed to shake off the memory of Josephine by falling in love with another woman.

  Alas, I heard some time later that she had not returned his feelings and had rejected all his overtures.

  So he had shot her dead.

  And they had arrested him for murder.

  When he first came to court, he refused to answer any of the examining magistrate’s questions.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ he told him. ‘
I am afraid I am another Louis XV. I do not recognise the authority of this court.’

  Which did not prevent him, in due course, from coming up for trial.

  I’m glad to say that this time he did speak up for himself.

  ‘I wish to say in my defence that I am a second Attila the Hun. I am a law unto myself.’

  The jury did not consider this to be an extenuating circumstance and passed sentence of death on him. The only thing that could have saved him then was a Presidential reprieve but, as usual, our head of state was surrounded by incompetent advisers and no Presidential reprieve was forthcoming.

  Poor boy. I can still remember clearly the third and last time I saw him. He came through the prison gates at dawn like a pale Pierrot, with his hands tied behind his back, his feet bound and his shirt slashed at the top in a conveniently guillotine-shaped cut. I was standing among the onlookers, and he turned round and saw me.

  He smiled then, and spoke the last words I ever heard him say in that flat voice which sounded as if he were talking with his shoe-laces undone.

  ‘I am another Jesus Christ. We were both fated to die at the age of thirty-three.’

  A MOST UNUSUAL WAY TO DIE

  The highest recorded tide of this century (the fifteenth I have witnessed personally and many more to come, I hope) took place last Tuesday, November 6.

  It was a fine sight and I wouldn’t have missed it for all the tea in China. Or India. Or, indeed, Ceylon.

  The sea was very rough that day; whipped on by a strong S.W. wind, it rose to quay-top level at Le Havre and flooded into the drains of the said town, meeting the inhabitants’ waste water halfway along and obligingly taking it back into their houses.