Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (34 page)

Divver was flushed and furious. “It would be out of the question … a letter of apology to a Nazi … it would be physically impossible.”

“Come, come now,” said the engineer impatiently. “The incident is closed. The letter is written in five minutes … I hope we all like our meat rare?”

“I am most grateful to you personally,” said Divver, “but my stomach turns at the mere thought …”

“Tut, tut, Divver, put some hot beef in your stomach if it turns … Potatoes?”

“I was wholly justified in what I did … Yes please, potatoes.”

“They are roasted … So are we all justified in things we do, sir, but there are times when common sense bids us swallow our pride.” He carved. “Let me assure you, I have daily to put up with far more insulting treatment than you will suffer through the writing of a mere letter.”

Divver stared at his plate.

“I really think Larry is right, Mr. Divver,” said Harriet, laying her hand consolingly on Divver’s arm.

“
You
know what you are,” said the engineer. “One letter
to
a toy baron is surely not going to shake your self-esteem.”

“If I could feel that that was all …” said Divver.

“What you call all, Divver, is your own self-respect …”

“Exactly.”

“… which you are not going to increase by seeing a tipsy
squabble in terms of an international incident.” He suddenly smiled benignly. “We are none of us
that
important,” he said humbly.

Divver sighed, but smiled back feebly. “I am afraid I sound very ungrateful,” he said.

“Pooh, pooh,” said Streeter, settling into his big chair. “I like to see some spirit in a man.”

“Do eat it up before it’s cold, Mr. Divver,” said Harriet.

They all fell to. After a few mouthfuls, the engineer seemed to remember Morgan, and said to him, half-smiling, half-stern. “I have no idea what
you
were mixed up in, but I hope you don’t plan to forget that from now on I am responsible for your good behaviour.
In
loco
parentis
—you should know what that means: do you?”

“Yes, I do,” said Morgan, not looking at him.

“Do they still teach Latin at your school? I approve of Latin; it’s not so dumb as it sounds. It’s a discipline.”

“I don’t go to a school.”

The engineer was quite taken aback. A buzzing conflict of fear and rage sang in Morgan’s ears. He raised his head and saw that Harriet was watching him, her eyes pleading. He saw Divver, too, was looking at him, gesturing very discreetly with his features as if to say: pipe down, this is no place for a scene. He obeyed their looks—and at once was so overcome with fury that he thought his head would burst. He felt hideously trapped, and the very thought of their two expressions filled him with shame of Harriet and Divver, and of himself, too. He felt he would explode into one of his fits, and the very idea of doing so, in the presence of three people he now so hated and despised, appalled him with its degradation: I would never forgive myself if I did that; never, never; I would die of shame. He fixed his eyes on a silver spoon and, using his favourite trick of distraction, said to himself: that is a spoon; I am thinking about you, spoon; there is nothing in
my head but spoon, with a curve in the middle, a handle, a crest on top, resting on a tablecloth …

He began to breathe more easily; his heart slowed.

Mr. and Mrs. Streeter were now talking to Divver; all three had suddenly dropped the previous mood and were laughing and joking. It was all at Divver’s expense, but very friendly. “I think you must be a nervous type, Divver,” the engineer was saying, “I think you go around in beads of sweat, asking for trouble.”

“Don’t you think, Larry,” laughed Harriet, “he’s
just
like Sinclair,”

“Which Sinclair,
ma
petite
?”

“The one we knew in Prague, you remember; who was always so stern and dignified, like our Mr. Divver.”

“I trust not: if I remember, you had something of a weakness for Master Sinclair.”

“He was cute in a way; the way stern people always are.”

“Underneath, I assure you,” said Divver, “I am not in the least stern, or dignified. I can’t help what nature has done to my physical exterior.”

“I can only say I am so glad we ran into you, Mr. Divver. You have no idea how bored Larry and I get—I mean with meeting so many terribly dull people, first here, then there….”

Her husband nodded his assent—the brief masculine nod that is both an endorsement and a restrainment of feminine gush.

“Well, that is really most kind of you,” said Divver, touched and blushing. “It has been a happy chance for me too; a
most
happy chance.”

Harriet brought on brandied cherries and whipped cream. “My, that looks good!” Divver exclaimed, smacking his lips.

Perhaps the letter will just be forgotten, Morgan thought. Under his brows he watched Divver closely. After this they’ll never make him write it. They’ll never be so bold as to make him. If they try he’ll fight.

He found himself brooding: Who cares what a letter says? Who cares what its politics are? It’s one’s own decision to write or not to write, that’s all. How can anything else matter?

Relaxed in his big chair, the engineer looked what he was: a smallish man of no great physical strength. Beside him, Divver looked as big as Goliath. He will never have the courage to try, thought Morgan, looking at the engineer.

He was quite wrong. No sooner had they drunk their coffee than Streeter got up, rubbed his hands, and said briskly: “Let’s get that letter out of the way.”

Divver fingered an embroidered scene of Tristan and Isolde, and pretended not to hear.

“Divver? How about it? Let’s get that letter off.”

“I’ve been thinking since we last spoke,” said Divver, “and I am sorry but it does seem to me that to write that letter would be against my principles.”

“Oh, now, Mr. Divver . .!” cried Harriet.

Her husband gave her one hard, cold look and she was silent immediately. He then began to smile, and laid a fatherly hand on Divver’s shoulder. “Now listen…. I’m a much older man than you are, Divver, which doesn’t mean I’m wiser. But I’ve been around for a good many years, and I think I can take just a little humble pride in recognizing an honest man when I see one. Any fool can see that you’re an honest man, Divver. It shows all over you.”

Divver hung his head. He still frowned—partly, it seemed to Morgan, in genuine uncertainty, but partly with a human being’s superstitious fear that words sweet as honey which he has always longed to hear must, when at last they come, be greeted disapprovingly if punishment is not to follow. “I simply try, I always have tried,” he said, “to retain certain standards of practical behaviour….”

“
Ex
-actly,” said the engineer. “And it is hard for me to believe that your magazine would have placed you in positions of
trust over these many years had they doubts as to your honourable attitude. Am I not right?” he asked, suddenly turning on Morgan.

Morgan nodded. He nodded simply because Divver was his friend, to whom he owed loyalty, and because, faced by a much older man with a strong voice, he didn’t have the courage to say what he was thinking.

“Am I not right?” repeated the engineer, looking at his wife.

“Of
course,”
she said. “Do write that
silly
letter, Mr. Divver, and then we can all sit down again and be happy.”

Divver laughed. “Well, if you put it
that
way, I guess I can be as silly as the next man,” he said.

The engineer opened his desk, pointed to paper and envelopes, and gave Divver his own fountain-pen. “Do you know how old that pen is?” he asked him. “Twenty-five years, bought with my first earnings in Europe. So don’t get so worked up that you snap the end off.”

“I’ll respect it,” said Divver, smiling. A grim, determined expression settled over his face; humping his back he sat down to write.

The other three left him in the corner. Streeter and his wife talked about personal matters that excluded Morgan, in lowered voices, as though to give Divver a fair chance. Morgan looked blankly at the carpet. At home, he thought, mother has put on her horn spectacles and is reading something new and dull. In a moment the sound of plates and forks will stop coming from the kitchen, and after a few minutes mother will notice the silence, take off her spectacles and tell grandfather to go to bed. The light will come on in Rosa’s bedroom, and there’ll be the sound of feet on the gravel outside, as the maids go off to their homes.

A bugle blew in the square; there was a sound of running feet, talk and laughter. The evacuation practice was beginning.
The engineer jumped up, slammed the windows and pulled the curtains to. “Finished?” he asked, walking over to the desk.

“That’s as good as I can do,” said Divver with absolute determination, stuffing the letter into the envelope and rising from the desk.

“If you please….” said the engineer, boldly taking the letter from him. “Don’t forget I’m responsible for you now.” He unfolded the letter, set his lips with feigned solemnity, and read: “‘My dear Sir’ …”

“Not
aloud
!”
said Divver, reaching for the letter.

“Come, come, come!” said the engineer, “four minds are better than one.”

“I’ll not make a single change,” said Divver.

“No one’s asked you to,” said the engineer. He began again, with high pleasure: “‘My dear Sir—very formal, Mr. Divver; but no matter—‘Last week, you no doubt recall’—rather an understatement to a man whose nose has been broken, no?— ‘you and I were involved in an argument concerning the relative merits of American democracy and the present system of the Third Reich and certain other nations. My stand was, and to be completely frank, remains and will, I hope, always remain, that under Fascism the free, creative spirit of man, and all sincere acts that accompany that spirit, are shackled ’—an untidy sentence, Divver, I can hardly believe that your magazine prints sentences like that. However—‘I also stated that Fascism was dependent upon brute force, with which I could not admit any sort of sympathy. I then struck you on the nose. I did so in genuine anger, but since I was not in absolute conscious control of my actions at that particular moment, I feel that it is my duty to make you an apology, without however withdrawing a single one of my spoken words’—well, you rounded that corner neatly enough; one soft spot of filling between two piecrusts, ha-ha!—‘I also feel that it is my duty to admit that in striking you I acted contrary to my stated principles,
though not, in my opinion, contrary to certain instincts which I respect in myself’—hmmm, deep water you’re getting into there, young man.—‘My principal reason for writing is to say that I sincerely regret the whole episode. Yours truly, Max Divver.’”

The engineer pulled on the long, tasselled bell-rope. “Not a true word in it,” he said, “but it has an honest ring.”

“It’s a
beautiful
letter, Mr. Divver,” said Harriet. “No one’s ever written one like that to me.”

“I like to imagine the baron working his way through it with his little dictionary,” said the engineer.

Divver stood in the centre of the room, sheepish, relieved, smiling uncomfortably, a little proud, a little ashamed, on the whole much happier. It seemed to Morgan that Divver had sold his last morsel of independence; but Divver only drew a deep breath, and said: “I feel as if I’ve come out of a whole battle.” He looked at Harriet, then at the engineer, with relaxed affection.

“For the Baron von Turn und Mannefarbe,” said the engineer, handing the envelope to the page-boy. “And now let us all drown our manifold discontents with this unhappy globe in a sparkling highball.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Divver.

The three of them began to laugh uproariously.

O
NE day, early in August, about two weeks after the dinner at which Divver had found his master and Morgan had lost his mistress, visitors to Mell found beside their places a polite, official request to keep out of the square between the hours of eight and ten p.m., when there was to be another evacuation rehearsal. Far from grumbling at this intrusion upon their liberty, the tourists accepted it as an excellent change in the wind. For, as July went out and the season’s peak reached its height, Mell’s hotel-owners and shopkeepers had risen to the occasion with furious covetousness. The Bread Street shops now stayed open until midnight; customers were assured that even if after that hour they suddenly yearned for a gold necklace, they need only hammer on the door to be served; and when the black-coated salesman came home, too exhausted to speak, he found his wife and children, whom he scarcely recognized any more, fast asleep, and only the tiny blue bulb of economy burning dimly over the staircase to light him to bed. Waiters and chambermaids had studied the bus and train schedules down to the last asterisk; they knew to the minute when the tourists in their corridor were due to leave; they were on hand at the period of packing for tips and left-overs; and many a tourist, walking to the elevator for the last time and remembering something he had left behind, would return to find an angry group in uniforms already fighting for it. This superhuman effort to extort their last cent was an old story to most of the tourists; they hastened to draw from it, as they had in the ruthless resorts of their own country, a rather admirable moral, in which inexorable avarice was translated into the shrewd, earthy wisdom of poor folks. But
the tourists whose lives were dedicated to universal service and contained an emptiness that could be filled only with bought grief, yearned for more touching examples of international brotherhood: in return for being milked dry they demanded, as keepsake of Mell’s last days, one bona-fide impression of antique despair, one poignant incident which would round off a happy vacation with a moment of memorable tragedy.

They recognized this moment when they read the typed slip of paper beside their plates, and sharp at eight o’clock they collected in the lobby. The men arranged the women in chairs at the open french windows, and made a circle around them, conveying their orders, passing their highballs. Behind, hovered the waiters, embarrassed by the impending show, but
determined
to give the occasion the air of an enjoyable picnic. The floor of the square had been marked off into numbered rectangles, among which a growing number of authentic peasants were roving in the dusk. The lobby lights were suddenly switched into dimness: “The mayor,” one of the waiters explained, “is afraid there may be no electric light when the real night comes.” “Why are
you
not out there, Hans? … Timmy, your elbow is pressing right in my neck.” “Madam, I am not an inhabitant of this town,” said the waiter rather coldly: “now, Madam, lean forward in your chair and look up; the emergency lights are ready.” And from the neighbouring rooftops, acetylene spotlights like those used in primitive places to illuminate dancing girls, cathedral towers and hunted deer poured into the square a glare so white that it reduced the cobbles to a flat sheet and obliterated everything above door level. The furniture of the outdoor cafés had been shoved back against the walls, and tourists with no window to see from stood out, embarrassed and chalk-white, among the folded chairs and tables. Only the fat trunk and lower foliage of the great lime tree could be seen; the rest of it was lost with the housetops and the stars in the upper blackness. “And there is
the mayor himself,” said the waiter a little sarcastically, pointing to a stocky figure in a vest, rolled shirt-sleeves and a moustache that the light turned as white as the rest of him, who sat before the trunk of the lime, a wooden table over his knees, a megaphone dangling from his wrist. “He is not loved by the shopkeepers for frightening you with this nonsense,” said the waiter. “I think he’s
wonderful
,” said an invisible woman in an indignant voice.

The mayor raised his snowy megaphone, his voice bellowed through the square. “Now, madam, the first thing,” said the waiter, “the ambulance men for the old and the sick”—and a housedoor opened suddenly and two husky men, white as sheets, with red crosses showing grey on home-made armbands, came loping into the limelight, their heads held down, their backs bent, one a few feet behind the other, each pretending to be gripping something with his fists. “They are carrying stretchers,” said the waiter, “and now they slide them into the ambulance”—and the two ghosts halted in one of the rectangles, went through peculiar gestures and flung their arms forward like javelin throwers. Then they loped off again and their place was instantly taken by identical men who went through the identical motions; and this charade was repeated for nearly half an hour. “When the real day comes they will have the real stretchers and cars,” said the waiter’s smooth voice: “and now the mayor commends their efficiency and demands the schoolchildren.”

A crocodile of boys and girls, flanked on one side by a very old schoolmaster and on the other by a brisk-looking teacher in slacks and sweater, came trotting across the square: a long-haired youth sprang into sight manipulating an imaginary steering-wheel: after swerving agilely he rested at the head of the blinking crocodile, and raised a laugh among the white figures by making the choked humming noise of a waiting bus. The mayor roared—“He orders them to get in without nonsense,”
said the waiter—and docilely, under the eyes of the old master and the young mistress, the crocodile proceeded two by two to mount the steps of the invisible bus, and were whisked off with a roar by the clownish driver.

In the next charades were women with imaginary infants in their arms, more women, men doing their best to co-operate without appearing foolish: then came another summons from the mayor’s megaphone, to which only a handful responded. “He asks for the hotel and
pension
employees,” said the waiter, his voice smoother than ever, “but not all of them have been able to obtain leave from their duties…. So now he calls for the last group, the police”—and here it seemed that the mayor had shrewdly planned to leave a taste of reality in his people’s minds, because Mell’s five policemen, in full uniform and firemen-like helmets, leapt from their posts among the crowd, and, sitting up stiffly, were whirled off into the darkness in a genuine police wagon. As the sound of the engine faded the mayor rose from his seat, advanced into the centre of the square and spoke briefly to the company; a king of the ghosts addressing his subjects. “He tells them,” said the waiter, “that they are still a band of idiots, but that no doubt they are doing their best, and he thanks them.” The stout white figure waved one hand to the upper darkness and turned away; one by one the spotlights went out and grey figures appeared dimly above the eaves, coiling tubes and boxing equipment. The houses resumed their gables and corners, lights appeared in one window after another, waiters began briskly setting up the chairs and tables of the cafés; all the Hotel Poland’s lights lit up suddenly. “The mayor is a careful person,” said the waiter, and went quickly to join the other waiters, all hastening to force everything back to normal by pulling the big chairs away from the windows, flapping their napkins over the tabletops, demanding orders with large, encouraging smiles.

But the tourists, blinking in the streaming light, turned
from the windows shocked and dumb, shaking their heads to proclaim their horror and to ease an accusing hand from their necks. They looked at their own and one another’s handsome clothes; their inner pockets bulged shamefully with the passports and reservations that would soon evacuate them with haughtiness and serenity. Clutching and gulping their highballs, they tuned their ears, like sinners longing toward a confessor, for any muffled suggestion that might indicate the way of absolution. And soon they caught the unmistakable note: out of a little group in the heart of the lobby, two or three voices were climbing into tones of assurance. The speakers were assembled around a man in a brown suit whose voice was low and self-conscious; but each time he mumbled something he set off a strong chorus of agreement. Soon, everyone knew that this man was somehow prepared to save the occasion, and from every corner of the lobby they moved toward his circle, their faces stiff and disturbed, their eyes bright with hope. As their outer circle grew thicker, the voices of the inner circle grew bolder; its members looked each other straight in the face and talked with the firm, informal noisiness that characterises the intimacy of strangers in an emergency. The man in brown still mumbled; but a tall woman had placed herself at his elbow and was making herself the megaphone of his suggestions. Her hair was grey, she wore an evening dress, her big yellow teeth gave snap to her words; her face and eyes expressed emotions that seemed to torture her to hysteria. “I don’t believe there’s
one
of us doesn’t feel the same way; not one!” she cried; “and we need a
man
to do it,
please,
please
”—turning sharply on the man in brown. He began to sweat, but stood straight; worried, but not wilting. “I only happened to say …” he said.

But at that moment a middle-aged man elbowed his way through the circle and tried to wedge a ten-dollar bill under a lapel of the brown man’s coat. “You take this,” he shouted:
“I’ll trust you with it any day. No, not a word. I know you’re a right guy. I’m asking no questions.” “We don’t know that there
is
an evacuation fund,” said the brown man, shrinking from the bill. “We know there is one
now,”
shouted the donor: “just take it”; and, seeking out the brown man’s hand, he pressed the bill into it and folded a couple of uneasy fingers over it. “There!” he cried, “you know what to do with it.” “But I don’t!” “I don’t care
how
it’s done,” continued the donor inexorably, “just so long as I know it
is
done.” Then, holding his head high, he mashed a path for himself and disappeared in the direction of the bar, leaving an infection of clicks and rustles as wallets were hauled out and pocketbooks opened. Bills began to flutter like pennants on a flag day; and the man in brown, surrendering to his fate with a sigh, suddenly became firm. “First, if you please, a table,” he said, holding up his hand and sternly waving away the bills. “Sure, give him a break, give him a table!” roared his elbow-woman proudly; and he was hustled to the nearest one. Clumsy hands stripped it of its half-empty glasses, splashing dregs over the women’s dresses; eager perfectionists blew loose ash into one another’s faces. “
Easy,
easy,
now if you please,” said the brown man, settling himself behind the table in a chair, and at once resembling a fledgling whom a score of screaming parents, worms in beaks, are clamouring to feed. He took out a fountain pen that was as brown and chubby as himself, arranged a sheet of hotel writing-paper and took the nearest bill, saying: “And what’s your name, ma’am?” “Mary Mac …” she began: but a voice cried: “No; no names!” “Yes, make it anonymous,” cried someone else; “anonymous is
more
equal.
” “O.K.,” said the brown man: “anonymous; any way you want; let’s have ’em.”

At once, the table was plastered with bills; all kinds of low remarks were heard: “It’s all right, Sylvia, your father is donating for all of us”: “I don’t care if Poppy is: I’m going
to give my own.” “Look under your Camels”: “I did, but it must have fallen out when we paid to go into that shrine.” “Somehow, if they’d had a
real
ambulance I wouldn’t feel so bad”—and meanwhile, those who had seen the first donor’s ten-dollar contribution and hadn’t enough on their persons to match it with, were running to the elevators, scampering down the long corridors to their rooms, and descending again, trembling and breathless, to lay their money on the table. Within half an hour, a few hundred dollars was arranged on the table in neat heaps, and last-minute donors were still panting home. “Oh, I was
sure
I’d be too late!” a girl cried, her face rosy with excitement; and she flung a fifty-dollar bill into the middle of the table with intense relief. On seeing it, the crowd let loose impressed murmurs and a few high, delighted whistles; but there were also glances which suggested that to rise to fifty dollars was to descend into bad taste. But right after the girl came a prim old lady of the kind who, for decades, has scrimped through eleven months of each year to spend the twelfth elsewhere: she defiantly laid down five silver dollars, which everyone guessed she had hoarded as curios for years, and said firmly to the room at large: “I can’t properly afford even
that
much. And I won’t pay a penny to foreign wars, because I am an American, and one of Jehovah’s Witnesses too. But I could never look my country or The Watchtower in the face again if I went back after seeing those rows of little children without having given my mite.” She spoke from the hearts of all; everyone smiled with joy, and a big man struck her devotedly between the shoulders. Inspired, she at once continued: “Now, I’ve travelled over all of Europe since before most of you were born. And I know the Pacific Northwest and Uruguay …”—but at this point everyone saw that she was a damned old bore and rushed away from her.

The man in brown called for a big envelope. Three times
he tucked the fat heap of bills into it, three times he kept it open, to add last-minute donations. But at last the fervour was spent, the package sealed; and the brown man’s fountain pen hung over the face of the envelope. “What are we going to say?” he asked. “How about: ‘To His Honour the Mayor of Mell, in aid of evacuation services. A small token of profound sympathy and respect from American residents of the Hotel Poland’?”

But others remembered that the total included a handful of notes in foreign currency, and their generosity swelled into powerful international enthusiasm. “Let’s just say ‘residents,’” someone suggested, and at once everyone shouted: “Sure, just ‘residents’.” “He’ll guess the truth, anyway,” said the man in brown, with a cynicism that shocked everybody; and he wrote the inscription in a large hand. “And
now
what?” he asked. “Hand it over to the manager until morning?”