A Fable

‘So,’ the German general said. ‘That is both of you. Three of us.’ He sat down, picked up the crumpled napkin and drew his chair up, and took up the filled brandy glass and sat back and erect again, into that same rigidity of formal attention as when he had been standing to toast his master, so that even sitting the rigidity had a sort of visible inaudibility like a soundless clap of heels, the filled glass at level with the fixed rigid glare of the opaque monocle; again without moving he seemed to glance rapidly at the other glasses. ‘Be pleased to fill, gentlemen,’ he said. But neither the Briton nor the American moved. They just sat there while across the table from them the German general sat with his lifted and rigid glass; he said, indomitable and composed, not even contemptuous: ‘So then. All that remains is to acquaint your Commander-in-Chief with what part of our earlier discussion he might be inclined to hear. Then the formal ratification of our agreement.’

‘Formal ratification of what agreement?’ the old general said.

‘Mutual ratification then,’ the German general said.

‘Of what?’ the old general said.

‘The agreement,’ the German general said.

‘What agreement?’ the old general said. ‘Do we need an agreement? Has anyone missed one?—The port is with you, General,’ he said to the Briton. ‘Fill, and pass.’

Thursday

Thursday Night

This time it was a bedroom. The grave and noble face was framed by a pillow, looking at him from beneath a flannel nightcap tied under the chin. The nightshirt was flannel too, open at the throat to reveal a small cloth bag, not new and not very clean and apparently containing something which smelled like asafoetida, on a soiled string like a necklace. The youth stood beside the bed in a brocade dressing gown.

‘They were blank shells,’ the runner said in his light dry voice. ‘The aeroplane—all four of them—flew right through the bursts. The German one never even deviated, not even going fast, even when one of ours hung right on its tail from about fifty feet for more than a minute while I could actually see the tracer going into it. The same one—aeroplane—ours—dove at us, at me; I even felt one of whatever it was coming out of the gun hit me on the leg here. It was like when a child blows a garden pea at you through a tube except for the smell, the stink, the burning phosphorus. There was a German general in it, you see. I mean, in the German one. There had to be; either we had to send someone there or they had to send someone here. And since we—or the French—were the ones who started it, thought of it first, obviously it would be our right—privilege—duty to be host. Only it would have to look all right from beneath; they couldn’t—couldn’t dare anyway—issue a synchronised simultaneous order for every man on both sides to shut their eyes and count a hundred so they had to do the next best thing to make it look all regular, all orthodox to anyone they couldn’t hide it from——’

‘What?’ the old Negro said.

‘Dont you see yet? It’s because they cant afford to let it stop like this. I mean, let us stop it. They dont dare. If they ever let us find out that we can stop a war as simply as men tired of digging a ditch decide calmly and quietly to stop digging the ditch——’

‘I mean that suit,’ the old Negro said. ‘That policeman’s suit. You just took it, didn’t you?’

‘I had to,’ the runner said with that peaceful and terrible patience. ‘I had to get out. To get back in too. At least back to where I hid my uniform. It used to be difficult enough to pass either way, in or out. But now it will be almost impossible to get back in. But dont worry about that; all I need——’

‘Is he dead?’ the old Negro said.

‘What?’ the runner said. ‘Oh, the policeman. I dont know. Probably not.’ He said with a sort of amazement: ‘I hope not.’ He said: ‘I knew night before last—two nights ago, Tuesday night—what they were planning to do, though of course I had no proof then. I tried to tell him. But you know him, you’ve probably tried yourself to tell him something you couldn’t prove or that he didn’t want to believe. So I’ll need something else. Not to prove it to him, make him believe it: there’s not time enough left to waste that way. That’s why I came here. I want you to make me a Mason too. Or maybe there’s not even time for that either. So just show me the sign—like this——’ he jerked, flicked his hand low against his flank, as near as he had been able to divine at the time or anyway remember now from the man two years ago on the day he joined the battalion.

‘That will be enough. It will have to be; I’ll bluff the rest of it through——’

‘Wait,’ the old Negro said. ‘Tell me slow.’