Breakfast In The Ruins Part 11

"The s.h.i.+p is nearly fifty miles away, Mr. Marsden."

"I'll give it you tomorrow."

When Marsden jumped forward and grabbed up the bag, Karl didn't move. When Marsden pushed him aside and ran with the bag up the aisle, Karl sat down in one of the pews. If Marsden really did have four pounds ten, then at least Karl would have lost nothing on the deal. He would return the bag to his friend in Armenian Street and wait until he had a proper customer.

A short while later the young Sikh from Delhi came into the church. He was holding the bag. The Sikh had been staying at the Imperial Indian Hotel and had had trouble paying his bill. The manager of the restaurant had told Karl this and Karl had told the Sikh how he could earn the money to pay for his room. The Sikh evidently did not relish working for Karl, but he had no choice. He handed Karl the bag.

"Did he have enough money?" Karl asked.

The Sikh nodded. "Is that all?"

"Excellent," Karl told him. "Where is Marsden now?"

"In the tank. He was probably drunk and fell in there. It happens to sailors, I hear, in Calcutta. He may drown. He may not."

"Thank you," said Karl.

He waited for the Sikh to leave and remained in the church for some minutes, watching the mosquitoes dancing in the light from the windows. He was a little disappointed, he had to admit. But sooner or later another deal would come, even if he had to work a trifle harder, and there was no doubt that his savings would increase, that his ambitions would be realized.

A priest appeared from behind the altar. He saw Karl and smiled at him. "You're early, laddie, if you've come for the choir practice."

- You're learning, says the black man lasciviously. You see, I said you would.

Karl smiles up at him and stretches. - Yes, you said I would. It's funny ...

- You were saying about that girl-friend of yours. The black man changes the subject. - How she became pregnant?

- That's right. Before the abortion reforms. It cost me the best part of two hundred pounds. Karl smiles. - A lot of uniforms.

- But the other two were cheaper? The two before?

- They got those done themselves. I was always unlucky. I couldn't use those rubber things, that was the trouble. I'd just lose interest if I tried to put one on.

- None of your children were born?

- If you put it like that, no.

Let the next one be born. The black man puts his hand on the muscles of Karl's upper forearm.

Karl is astonished at this apparent expression of human feeling. - You're against abortion, then?

The black one rolls over and reaches for his cigarettes on the bedside table. They are Nat Sherman's Queen Size Cigaretellos, an obscure American brand which Karl hasn't seen before. Earlier he has studied the packet with some interest. He accepts one of the slim, brown cigarettes and lights up from the tip of the black man's. He enjoys the taste.

- You're against abortion, then? Karl repeats.

- I'm against the destruction of possibilities. Everything should be allowed to proliferate. The interest lies in seeing which becomes dominant. Which wins.

- Ah, says Karl, I see. You want as many pieces on the board as you can get.

-Why not?

What Would You Do? (7) You are a refugee fleeing from a government which will kill you and your family if they catch you.

You reach the railway station and in a great deal of confusion manage to get your wife and children onto the train, telling them to find a seat while you get the luggage on board.

After a while you manage to haul your luggage into the train as it is leaving the station. You settle it in the corridor and go to look for your family.

You search both ends of the train and they are not there. Someone tells you that only half the train left, that the other half is going to another destination.

Could they have got into the other half by mistake?

What will you do?

Pull the communication cord and set off back to the station, leaving your luggage on the train?

Wait until you reach the next station, leave your luggage there and catch the next train back?

Hope that your family will remain calm and follow you to your ultimate destination on the next available train?

8.

Quiet Days in Thann: 1918: Mixed Meat Never, probably in the history of the world, not even in the last years of the Napoleonic domination, has there taken place such a display of warlike pa.s.sion as manifested itself in the most civilized countries of Europe at the beginning of August, 1914. Then was seen how frail were the commercial and political forces on which modern cosmopolitanism had fondly relied for the obliteration of national barriers. The elaborate system of European finance which, in the opinion of some, had rendered war impossible no more availed to avert the catastrophe than the Utopian aspirations of international Socialism, or the links with which a common culture had bound together the more educated cla.s.ses of the Continent. The world of credit set to work to adapt itself to conditions which seemed, for a moment, to threaten it with annihilation. The voices of the advocates of a world-wide fraternity and equality were drowned in a roar of hostile preparation. The great gulfs that separate Slav, Latin, Teuton, and Anglo-Saxon were revealed; and the forces which decide the destinies of the world were gauntly expressed in terms of racial antagonism.

HISTORY OF THE WAR Part One.

Published by "The Times", 1915.

- It's your turn now, says the black man. - If you like...

- I'm tired, says Karl.

- Oh, come now! Tired! Psychological tiredness, that's all! The black man pats him on the back. He gives Karl an encouraging grin, offering him the riding crop.

- No, says Karl. - Please, no...

-Well, I offered.

Karl is thirteen. His mother is twenty-nine. His father is dead, killed at Verdun in 1916. His mother has gone to live with her sister in a village near Thann, in Alsace...

- Leave me alone, says Karl.

- Of course. I don't want to influence you.

When Karl was thirteen he met a man who claimed to be his father. It was in a public lavatory somewhere in West London. "I'm your dad," the man had said. His stiff p.e.n.i.s had been exposed. "Are you still at school, lad?" Karl had mumbled something and run out of the lavatory. He regretted his decision later because the man could have been his father, after all.

- Leave me in peace.

- You're a very moody chap, young Karl, laughs the black man.

He brings the riding crop down with a crack on Karl's back. Karl yells. He scrambles cut of the bed and begins to get dressed - That's it, he says.

- I'm sorry, says the black man. Please forgive me.

Karl is thirteen. He is now the provider for his mother and his aunt. The war continues not too far away. While it continues, Karl will survive...

- I misinterpreted you, that's all, says the black man. Please stay just a short while longer, eh?

-Why should I?

But Karl is weakening again.

KARL WAS THIRTEEN. His mother was twenty-nine. His father was dead, killed in the War. His mother's sister was twenty-six, also a widow. Where they lived there were many reminders of the war. It had been fought around here for a while. Broken fences, smashed trees, craters filled with water, old trenches and ruins. Ploughmen did not like to plough the ground, for they always found at least one corpse.

Karl had found a gun. It was a good French rifle. He had found plenty of ammunition in the belt of the soldier. He had tried to get the soldier's boots, but the flesh inside them had swollen up too much. Besides, Karl was perfectly satisfied with the gun. With it, he was now able to earn a decent living. Few people in the villages around Thann could do that at present.

In a thick corduroy jacket and tweed knickerbockers secured below the knee with an English soldier's puttees, with a large German knapsack over his shoulder and the French rifle in the crook of his arm, Karl sat comfortably on a slab of masonry and smoked a cigarette, waiting.