William Faulkner - A Fable

Then they had him. He vanished as though beneath a wave, a tide of heads and shoulders above which one of the crutches appeared suddenly in a hand which seemed to be trying to strike down at him with it until the converging police (there were dozens of them now, converging from everywhere) jerked it away, other police rapidly forming a cordon of linked arms, gradually forcing the crowd back while, rite and solemnity gone for good now, parade marshals’ whistles shrilled and the chief marshal himself grasped the bridles of the horses drawing the caisson and swung them around, shouting to the driver: ‘Go on!’ the rest of the cortege huddling without order, protocol vanished for the moment too as they hurried after the caisson almost with an air of pell mell, as though in actual flight from the wreckage of the disaster.

The cause of it now lay in the gutter of a small cul-de-sac side street where he had been carried by the two policemen who had rescued him before the mob he had instigated succeeded in killing him, lying on his back, his unconscious face quite peaceful now, bleeding a little at one corner of his mouth, the two policemen standing over him though now that the heat was gone their simple uniforms seemed sufficient to hold back that portion of the crowd which had followed, to stand in a circle looking down at the unconscious and peaceful face.

‘Who is he?’ a voice said.

‘Ah, we know him,’ one of the policemen said. ‘An Englishman. We’ve had trouble with him ever since the war; this is not the first time he has insulted our country and disgraced his own.’

‘Maybe he will die this time,’ another voice said. Then the man in the gutter opened his eyes and began to laugh, or tried to, choking at first, trying to turn his head as though to clear his mouth and throat of what he choked on, when another man thrust through the crowd and approached him—an old man, a gaunt giant of a man with a vast worn sick face with hungry and passionate eyes above a white military moustache, in a dingy black overcoat in the lapel of which were three tiny faded ribbons, who came and knelt beside him and slipped one arm under his head and shoulders and raised him and turned his head a little until he could spit out the blood and shattered teeth and speak. Or laugh rather, which is what he did first, lying in the cradle of the old man’s arm, laughing up at the ring of faces enclosing him, then speaking himself in French:

‘That’s right,’ he said: ‘Tremble. I’m not going to die. Never.’

‘I am not laughing,’ the old man bending over him said. ‘What you see are tears.’

END

December, 1944

Oxford—New York—Princeton

November, 1953

EDITORS’ NOTE

A Fable was conceived in 1943 during a discussion in wartime Hollywood among Faulkner, producer William Bacher, and director Henry Hathaway about a film on the Unknown Soldier. One proposal was that the Unknown Soldier might have been Jesus Christ returned to earth to give humanity one last chance, an idea Faulkner was enthusiastic about. They never made a film on this theme, but the basic idea was to consume Faulkner for over a decade, with brief stints away from it to work on filmscripts, “The Compson Appendix,” Intruder in the Dust , the stories that would make up Knight’s Gambit , and Requiem for a Nun . There exist several hundred pages of preliminary typescript and manuscript, some of it dated as early as 1947, and the typescript setting copy is itself composed of typescript pages from several different versions of various passages, typed on at least two different typewriters and clearly representing materials dating from throughout the decade of its composition. Faulkner took the typescript of A Fable to Random House on November 5, 1953, and soon after left for four months in Europe, where he visited friends and worked on a film for Howard Hawks. While reading proof in Rome in April 1954, he wired Random House that he had forgotten to include the “Judas Misery” material in the chapter titled “Tomorrow,” and he supplied that material when he returned to New York. Random House published the book on August 2, 1954, in a text altered in hundreds of major and minor ways by editorial intervention. Faulkner’s typescript is the setting copy for the Polk text reproduced here, except for the “Judas Misery” sequence, for which the first edition is the only extant text.

American English continues to fluctuate; for example, a word may be spelled more than one way, even in the same work. Commas are sometimes used expressively to suggest the movements of the voice, and capitals are sometimes meant to give significances to a word beyond those it might have in its uncapitalized form. Since standardization would remove such effects, this volume preserves the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and wording of the text as established by Noel Polk, which strives to be as faithful to Faulkner’s usage as surviving evidence permits.

The following notes were prepared by Joseph Blotner and are reprinted with permission from Novels 1942–1954 (1994) in the edition of Faulkner’s collected works published by The Library of America. Numbers refer to page and line of the present volume (the line count includes chapter headings). No note is made for material included in the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary . For more detailed notes, references to other studies, and further biographical background, see: Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography , 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1974); Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography, One-Volume Edition (New York: Random House, 1984); Selected Letters of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, 1977), edited by Joseph Blotner; and Calvin S. Brown, A Glossary of Faulkner’s South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).

1 Place de Ville] Town square.

2 Hôtel] In full, Hôtel de Ville , town hall.

3 Comité des Forges] A national association of iron and steel manufacturers.

4 S.P.A.D.] Société Provisoire des Aéroplanes Deperdussin , a society of aircraft manufacturers.

5 expletive … legend.] French general Pierre-Jacques Cambronne, commander of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo, was said to have replied “Merde” in response to a British demand for surrender.

6 ‘Gil Blas,’] A picaresque romance by Alain René Lesage (1668–1747).

7 Able … France] A play on a well-known palindrome, “Able was I ere I saw Elba.”

8 École Militaire] Military college, then at St. Cyr, for the training of infantry and cavalry officers.

9 K.R. and O.] King’s Regulations and Orders.

10 Sandhurst] Village in England, site of the Royal Military Academy.

11 Mons … bar] The Mons Star medal was given to those who served in France and Belgium before November 23, 1914. The Military Cross is a decoration for bravery awarded to officers; the bar indicates that it has been awarded a second time.

12 Cox’s] Cox and Co., Bankers and Army Agents.

13 R.T.O.] Railway Transport Office.

14 A.S.C.] Army Service Corps.

15 lo … dead] Cf. Christopher Marlowe (1564–93), The Jew of Malta , IV, 1.

16 archie] Anti-aircraft artillery.

17 In Christ … began] Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:20–22.

18 ’Change … windy] The stock exchange. Windy is slang for afraid, nervous, alarmed (from “got the wind up”).

19 long vac.] The long vacation, as in the Oxford and Cambridge academic year.

20 Gaston de la Tour] Gaston de Latour (1896), unfinished novel by Walter Pater.

21 Pip Emma] Signaling code for P.M.

22 Vickers … Lewis] On the S.E. fighter aircraft, a belt-fed Vickers machine gun was mounted on the fuselage in front of the pilot’s cockpit and synchronized to fire through the arc of the propeller without hitting its blades. A drum-fed Lewis machine gun was mounted on the top wing; in its normal position it fired forward over the propeller arc, but it could be elevated to fire upwards.