Complete Short Stories (32 page)

‘So I rose to my feet, feeling a little less like a lost lamb, and pointed out that the notice-board said “All, All are Welcome!” and that I wasn’t used to being bawled out – and, what was more, I didn’t believe he was any less mortal or vincible than the next man. This put my lord Simon on his mettle, and
he roared again into the microphone: “I am the Standing One! He who stood, stands, and will ever stand! Step up here, worm, and make obeisance at my throne!” When I told him that I’d come up the aisle and punch his nose for him if he liked, he laughed in a god-like way and informed me that nobody could strike the Standing One. “You cannot reach me,” he boomed, “your feet will stick to the floor.”

‘I didn’t like this. I marched boldly up the aisle towards that ugly face at the other end, but each step was more difficult to take than the last. The congregation were silently and solidly behind him, willing me to get back to my seat. I felt as if I were lugging my legs through liquid clay. I struggled another inch or so, and then stuck dead. And I hadn’t even got half-way.

‘Simon Magus sneered
at me: “You see, you are helpless! Come now, I make you free to move. Step up and make obeisance!” I could feel the united congregation willing me: “Make obeisance, make obeisance to the Standing One!” And I had to lean back and dig in my heels to stop being propelled forward.

‘I still meant to punch his nose, mind you, but my fists hung down at my sides like hundred-pound weights at the end
of strings. And then – then I happened to look at one of the chorus-girls – Simon’s gnostic wives they were, I learned afterwards: and, lo and behold, there sat Louella, peering down at me pityingly, as much as to say: “Domination, what do you know about that, you sap? The Standing One,
he
certainly understands domination.” And she got up and whispered in Simon Magus’s ear.

‘“I’m coming to hit
you!” I shouted at Simon. This confused the congregation. Most of them were still trying to push me ahead. A few were doing their damnedest to hold me back. I know that, because I felt their wills like spiders’ webs snapping across my face as I rushed forward and mounted the chancel steps. I was within two yards of the throne before the going got sticky again. Simon Magus had regained control of
the situation – called up his spiritual reserves and was hitting at me with all the voodoo in his vocabulary. I was stuck again: stuck, bogged and pinioned.

‘He said: “You see, helpless as an infant! Come now, make obeisance, you big blubbering Limey! Make obeisance to the Standing One.” Blubbering Limey! – that saved me! It was an insult Louella had put into his mouth. I recognized it. Then
I lost my temper as I’d never lost it before. I drew both feet from the gnostic bog. I hauled up both my fists. The congregation began to get scared, I could feel it – even the spiritual wives and the doves in the choir, even the Standing One himself…’

He slowly discarded his overcoat and jacket, and slowly rolled up his shirt-sleeves. ‘A red fire of anger swept over me,’ he said earnestly. ‘I
took a step forward, I braced my right arm; I measured the distance… Ever boxed, by the way?’

That was a question I was not sorry to answer.

‘Yes!’ I yelled, as I delivered a furious right hook to his jaw.

He slumped back in his seat and passed out.

Presently, the stolid, red-faced ex-R.A.F. type, the correct bank-manager and the worthy headmaster in the clerical collar trooped in again and
resumed their seats as if nothing had happened, each with only a casual glance at the inert body, and not a word of thanks to me.

‘Who says that losing your temper won’t get you anywhere?’ I shouted at them bellicosely. ‘Ever been in Egypt?
Ever had a guinea-worm?
EVER GONE BERSERK?’

But I felt like hell afterwards. Takes it out of you, that sort of thing.

I
T WAS NOT
always so. Majorca used to be the most crime-free island in Europe. When I came back here with my family shortly after World War II, one could still hang one’s purse on a tree and return three months later to find its contents intact. Unless, of course, someone short of change had replaced the small bills with a larger bill of equal value.

I am wasting this morning
in the draughty corridors of the Palma Law Courts, because of my son William’s ‘abstracted’ bicycle. He lent it to his younger brother, Juan, a year ago, when Juan’s own bicycle… But forget Juan’s bicycle for the moment and focus on William’s. We imported both of them from England. The Spaniards certainly know how to ride bicycles; they are heroic racing cyclists, and the mortality among leaders
of the profession is a good deal higher than among bullfighters. A recess at the back of the Palma Cycling Club provides a shrine for one of its members killed on a mountain road during the Tour of Spain – his pedals and shoes hung up beneath a plaque of St Christopher, with candles perpetually burning. Other members, who have died in lesser contests, are not so commemorated. But we British at
least know how to
make
bicycles. I hasten to say that I am not criticizing Spanish workmanship. The British just happen to be experts in this particular trade; they even export vast quantities of bicycles to the choosy United States. The Spanish government will not, of course, agree that anyone else in the world can make anything better than Spaniards do, and surely a government’s business is
to foster faith in the nation’s industrial proficiency? This attitude, however, makes it difficult for a Spaniard or a foreign resident in Spain – here comes the point – to import a British bicycle, especially when Spanish sterling reserves are low. Such a person must fill out fifteen forms in quintuplicate, supplying all his own vital statistics, with those of his relations in at least the nearer
degrees, and showing just cause why he should be allowed a British bicycle (despite the hundred-per-cent Spanish import duty) instead of a much better, locally manufactured machine, which can be bought at half the cost. When he has waited fifteen months for an answer, while sterling reserves continue to fall, the chances are that the answer will be: ‘We lament to inform you that last year’s bicycle
import quota has already been satisfied; we therefore advise you to fill out the necessary forms in quintuplicate for the present year’s quota’ – the year which, as a matter of fact, ended three months before. The most painless, therefore, way to import a British bicycle, as I learned from a friendly clerk at the Town Hall, is to arrive with it at the frontier, prepared to pay the import duty
in cash, and insist on entry.

‘If you are accompanied by children,’ said the friendly clerk, ‘there should be no trouble. All Spaniards are sympathetic toward fatigued fathers of families who have taken long journeys by train.’

‘And if, by ill luck, I hit on an exception?’

‘Then try a frontier post farther up the Pyrenees. On occasion, the officials at remote posts have no information about
the rate of payment due from residents of Spain for imported bicycles. If the traveller happens to be a fatigued father of a family, they may well advise him – this has, in fact, happened – to rub a little mud on the machine and so convert it into an old one. His son can then ride across the frontier as a summer tourist.’

It’s a long story… At any rate, we got William’s bicycle to Majorca legally
enough. That was in 1949, and no immediate trouble ensued. The British bicycle was much admired, for the solidity of its frame and for being the only one on the island with stainless-steel wheel rims and spokes, brakes that really braked, and an efficient three-speed gearshift. Then, around 1951, British, French, and American travellers accepted the fantasy of Majorca as the Isle of Love, the
Isle of Tranquillity, the Paradise where the sun always shines and where one can live like a fighting cock on a dollar a day, drinks included. A tidal wave of prosperity struck these shores, and though statistics show that a mere three per cent of the Paradise-seekers return, there are always millions more where they come from. Which means, of course, that thieves, beggars, dope peddlers, confidence
tricksters, gigolos, adventuresses, perverts, inverts, deverts, and circumverts come crowding in, too, from all over the world – of whom no less than ninety-seven per cent stay. Their devious activities place unreasonable burdens on the shoulders of the gentle Civil Guards. Repeat ‘gentle’. The Civil Guards are, by and large, gentle, noble, correct, courageous, courteous, incorruptible, and single-minded.
They are probably the sole Spaniards without the national inferiority complex about not being bullfighters, which attacks even racing cyclists. You are earnestly advised to refrain from laughing at the Civil Guards’ curiously shaped patent-leather helmets and calling them ‘comic-opera’. This antique headgear usually covers real men.

A Civil Guard barracks stands just around the corner from our
Palma apartment. Conditions inside are pretty austere, the living quarters being not unlike those in the prison recently demolished near Boston – what was it called? The one where they had so many mutinies? I know two or three of the Guards there, and my family has a standing invitation to their
annual show on March 1st (the Day of the Angel of the Guard), which is really quite something. So when,
one evening in 1952, William’s bicycle was stolen from the entrance hall of our apartment house – we live on the second floor – I went straight to a Guard, whom I remembered as a fat and dirty baby back in 1929, and asked him for immediate action. He called a plainclothes colleague, whose children had been at school with mine, and sent him down to the gipsy camp by the gasworks. (One early sign
of Majorcan prosperity was an influx of undisciplined and picturesquely filthy gipsies from the south of Spain.) The camp, consisting of low, unmortared, doorless stone shelters, roofed with driftwood, rags, and odd sheets of rusty metal, is where one would normally search for stolen bicycles. On this occasion a blank was drawn. But as the plainclothes Guard, trudging back, came within sight of
the barracks – its entrance inscribed ‘All for the Fatherland’ – a bicycle shot across the road out of control, brushed past him, and piled up against a lightpole. Its rider, a half-witted young man from Minorca, was severely injured – and so was William’s bicycle. Unaccustomed to a three-speed gear, the poor fellow had changed down as he passed the barracks, without ceasing to pedal, had broken
a cog in the gearbox, and thus lost his head, his balance, his consciousness, and his freedom. I had to sign a long charge against the Minorcan and also swear to the bicycle before being allowed to take it back. ‘Mind you,’ said the lieutenant, ‘this machine must be produced in evidence when the criminal comes up for trial. Since we know you well, you may keep it temporarily, but look after it with
care!’

The wave of prosperity had caused such a fearful bottleneck in judicial activity that the case is still on the waiting list. Prisoners are allowed bail, but the Minorcan could not even afford to pay for the damage done to William’s bicycle, so if he has not succumbed to his injuries, I imagine some prison or other holds him yet. All I can say is that the local press keeps silence on the
subject. A young English acquaintance of mine saw the wrong side of a Palma jail not long ago; he was charged with being drunk and in possession of a lethal weapon. When the Captain General released him, in return for some obscure favour from the British Consul, I heard a lot about that jail. A prisoner could earn a day’s remission of sentence for every full day of voluntary work (this meant plaiting
the palm-leaf baskets, which have ‘Souvenir of Majorca’ and a few flowers stitched on in coloured raffia, for tourists), also two days’ remission for overtime on Sundays and national holidays. The only other inmate, besides the Englishman, who refused to work was a Valencian pickpocket, found guilty of several delinquencies and sentenced to a stretch totalling a hundred and eighty years. From
my friend’s description, it seemed a very old-fashioned jail as regards bedding, plumbing, and social arrangements – ‘pure eighteenth-century, a regular collectors’ piece’. But card-playing, drink, unimproving (i.e., non-devotional) books, and American cigarettes
were forbidden. No Majorcans figured among the eleven criminals with whom he shared the cell – they had to occupy the only three beds
in four shifts – because Majorcans seldom commit crimes (unless smuggling be so regarded, which must remain an open question) and can always raise bail from near or distant relations.

Well, when the bicycle case comes up, perhaps even this year, and the Minorcan is given a ten-year sentence, he will already have cleared it off and be a free man again, with a trade at his fingers’ tips, and money
in his pocket – accumulated payment at one cent for each and every basket plaited, less deductions for an occasional coffee or shave. Meanwhile, we have repaired the bicycle, which had lost a pedal bar, and fitted it with a Spanish lamp and a Spanish front mudguard, the original ones having become casualties. The three-speed gear is hardly what it was, but the bicycle still runs, despite other
accidents soon to be related.

Now, to speak of Juan’s own bicycle, also legally imported – or very nearly so. We chose one of pillar-box red, for conspicuousness, because the wave of prosperity was mounting and we did not want it stolen. Being a perfectionist, Juan treasured that bicycle like the apple of his eye, treating it daily with oily rag, duster, and saddle soap. In an evil hour we entered
him at – let us call it San Rococo – reputedly the best boys’ school in Palma. Juan is a Protestant, and the worthy priests who run San Rococo hoped to steer him into the Catholic fold, as they had just steered in a little Dane, two little Germans, and another little Englishman. But Juan, who has inherited bitter black Protestant blood from both sides of his family, remained obdurate. The baffled
priests withdrew their fatherly protection, and Juan was soon assaulted by a group of his classmates. It happened that England had just beaten Spain at association football, four goals to one, so these patriotic lads accused the English forwards, and Juan, of foul play. They kicked out two of his bicycle spokes, threw the top of his bell over a wall, wrecked his lighting dynamo, and made away
with his pump. It should be explained that they were not Majorcans but sons of wave-of-prosperity Galicians, recently come to Palma, and that Spain’s goalkeeper had been a Galician.