Anthony Powell - The Military Philosophers

‘It’s for Major Prasad, sir, he —’

‘I don’t believe it, Major Jenkins, I believe you want it for yourself.’

Bobrowski had begun to laugh a lot.

‘It is the particular wish of Major Prasad, sir —’

‘Look here,’ said Asbjornsen, ‘I have the bath. I keep it.’

That was the crux of the matter. There was no arguing. I had hoped, without much conviction, to achieve General Asbjornsen’s dislodgment without playing Prasad’s trump card. Now this would have to be thrown on the table. It had become clear that much more discussion of this sort, to the accompaniment of Bobrowski’s determination to treat the matter as a huge joke, would make Asbjornsen more intractable than ever.

‘It’s a question of religion, sir.*

‘What?’

‘Major Prasad requires the room for religious reasons.’

That silenced them both. The statement, at least for the moment, made even more impression than I had hoped.

‘Religion?’ repeated Bobrowski.

I wished he would keep out of it. The bathroom was no business of his. By now I was entirely on Prasad’s side, dedicated to obtaining the bathroom for whatever purpose he needed it.

‘But this is a new idea,’ said Bobrowski. ‘I had not thought that was how baths are allotted on this tour. I am Catholic, what chance have I?’

‘Sir —’

‘Now I see why General Philidor went off to bed without even asking for the bathroom. Like many Frenchmen, he is perhaps free-thinker. He would have no chance for the bath. You would not let him, Major Jenkins. No religion — no bath. That is what you say. It is not fair.’

Bobrowski thought it all the funniest thing he had ever heard in his life. He laughed and laughed. Perhaps, in the long run, the conclusion of the matter owed something to this laughter of Bobrowski’s, because General Asbjornsen may have suspected that, if much more argument were carried on in this frivolous atmosphere, there was danger of his being made to look silly himself. Grasp of that fact after so comparatively short an interlude of Bobrowski’s intervention did Asbjornsen credit.

‘You can really assure me then, Major Jenkins, that this is, as you have reported, a question of religion.’

‘I can assure you of that, sir.’

‘You are in no doubt?’

‘Absolutely none, sir.’

‘In that case, I agree to the proposal.’

General Asbjornsen almost came to attention.

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed. Major Prasad will be most grateful. I will inform Colonel Finn when I see him.’

‘Come upstairs and help me with my valise.’

The gruffness of General Asbj0rnsen’s tone was fully justified. I followed him to the disputed room, and was relieved to see the valise on the floor still unpacked. The bathroom door was open. It seemed an apartment designed for the ablutions of a very thin dwarf, one of Mime’s kind. However, spatial content was neither here nor there. The point was, Prasad must have it. I took one end of the valise, Asbj0rnsen the other. Prasad was peeping through the crack of his door. When informed of the way the battle had gone, he came out into the passage. Asbjornsen was not ungracious about his renunciation. Prasad expressed a lot of thanks, but was unaware, I think, that the victory, like Waterloo, had been ‘a damned close run thing’. General Asbjornsen and I carried his valise into Prasad’s former room. I helped Prasad with his valise too, on his taking over of the bathroom. As soon as Prasad and I were out in the passage, General Asbjornsen shut his bedroom door rather loudly. He could not be blamed. My own relations with him, even when we returned to England, never fully recovered from that night. For the rest of the tour I speculated on what arcane rites Prasad conducted in that minute bathroom.

Next morning I rose early to check transport for the day’s journey. The cars were to assemble at the entrance of the Grand Hotel, then pick up baggage of the party at La Petite Auberge on the route out of town. The Grand’s main entrance was on the far side from the sea-front. It faced a fairly large, more or less oval open space, ornamented with plots of grass and flower beds long untended. From here the ground sloped away towards a little redbrick seaside town, flanked by green downs along which villas were spreading. The cars, on parade early, were all ‘correct’. Finn was not due to appear for some minutes. Wondering what the place was like in peacetime at the height of the season, I strolled to the side of the hotel facing the ‘front’. On this façade, a section of the building — evidently the hotel’s dining-room, with half-a-dozen or more high arched windows — had been constructed so that it jutted out on to the esplanade. This promenade, running some feet above the beach, was no doubt closed to wheeled traffic in normal times. Now, it was completely deserted. The hotel, in café-au-lait stucco, with turrets and balconies, was about fifty or sixty years old, built at a time when the seaside was coming seriously into fashion. This small resort had a pleasantly out-of-date air. One pictured the visitors as well-to-do, though not at all smart, only insistent on good food and bourgeois comforts; the whole effect rather smug, though at the same time possessing for some reason or other an indefinable, even haunting attraction. Perhaps that was just because one was abroad again; and, for once, away from people. In the early morning light, the paint on the side walls of the hotel had taken on a pinkish tone, very subtle and delicate, blending gently with that marine aporousness of atmosphere so enthusiastically endorsed by the Impressionists when they painted this luminous northern shore. It was time to find Finn. I returned to the steps of the main entrance. The large hall within was in semi-darkness, because all the windows had been boarded up. Some of the military attachés were already about, polishing their boots in a kind of cloakroom, where the greatcoats had been left the night before. They seemed to be doing no harm, so I went back to the hall. Finn, carrying his valise on his shoulder, was descending the stairs.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning, Nicholas. Couldn’t use the lift over there. No lift boys in wartime. Didn’t sleep too well. Kept awake by the noise of the sea. Not used to it’

I reported the matter of the bath. Finn looked grave. ‘Awkward situation, damned awkward. I’ve always tried to keep out of religious controversy. You handled it well, Nicholas. I’ll have a word with Asbjornsen and thank him. Any of them down yet?’

‘Some are cleaning their boots in the lobby through there.’

‘Cleaning their boots? My God, I believe they must have found my polish. Which way? I must stop this at once. It will be all used up.’

He rushed off. The fleet of cars got under way soon after this. That day I found myself with Cobb, Lebedev and Marinko, the Jugoslav. The seating was altered as a matter of principle from time to time. I was beside the driver. Lebedev — the name always reminded one of the character in The Idiot who was good at explaining the Apocalypse, though otherwise unreliable — rarely spoke; nor did he usually attend more than very briefly — so our Mission working with the Russians reported — the occasional parties given by their Soviet opposite numbers, where drinking bouts attained classical proportions, it was alleged. He was, indeed, commonly held to derive his appointment from civil, rather than military, eminence at home, his bearing and methods — despite the top boots and spurs — lacking, the last resort, the essential stigmata of the officier de carrière .

‘I tried to talk to Lebedev the other day about Dostoievski’s Grand Inquisitor,’ Pennistone said. ‘He changed the subject at once to Nekrassov, of whom I’ve never read a line.’