William Faulkner - A Fable

And the next day, the same scene; and the day after that, and the one after that, directly after the morning parade for roll-call and inspection; the faces different faces and varying in number: two, or three, sometimes only one: but always one, the worn money-belt getting a little thinner but apparently inexhaustible, anyway bottomless, the pencil stub making the tedious entries in the grimed notebook; then the fifth day, after noon mess; it was payday and, approaching the billet, for a moment the runner thought wildly that part of the pay parade was taking place there: a line, a queue of men extending out into the street, waiting to creep one by one inside, so that the runner had trouble entering his own domicile, to stand now and watch the whole affair in reverse: the customers, clients, patients—whatever they were—now paying the grimed frayed wads of French notes back into the money-belt, the tedious pencil stub still making the tedious entries; and still standing there watching when the orderly whom he had seen that first morning in the brigade anteroom, entered and broke through the line, saying to the man on the bunk: ‘Come on. You’re for it this time. It’s a bleeding f … ing motorcar from Paris with a bleeding f … ing prime minister in it,’—watching (the runner) the man on the bunk without haste stow the notebook and the pencil-stub into the money-belt and strap it up and turn and roll the belt into the blanket behind him and rise and follow the orderly, the runner speaking to the nearest of the now broken and dispersing line:

‘What is it? What’s the money for? He’s gone now; why dont you just help yourselves while he’s not here to put it down against you?’ and still getting only the watchful, secretive, already dispersing stares, and not waiting even for that: himself outside too now, in the cobbled street, and saw that too: one of the long black funereal French motorcars such as high government officials use, with a uniformed driver and a French staff-captain in the front seat and a British one and a thin Negro youth on the two small jump seats and behind them in the rear seat, a middle-aged woman in rich furs who could be nothing but a rich American (the runner did not recognise her though almost any Frenchman would since her money partially supported a French air squadron in which her only son was a pilot) and a Frenchman who was not the prime minister but (the runner did recognise this) was at least a high Cabinet secretary for something, and sitting between them, an old Negro in a worn brushed tophat, with the serene and noble face of an idealised Roman consul; the owner of the money-belt rigid and wooden, staring but at nothing, saluting but saluting no one, just saluting, then rigid and wooden again and ten feet away while the old Negro man leaned, speaking to him, then the old Negro himself descended from the car, the runner watching that too, and not only the runner but the entire circumambience: the six people still in the car, the orderly who had fetched the man from the bunk, the thirty-odd men who had been in the creeping line when the orderly broke through it, having followed into the street to stand before the billet door, watching too, perhaps waiting: the two of them drawn aside now, the owner of the money-belt still rigid, wooden, invincibly repudiant while the serene and noble head, the calm imperial chocolate-colored face, still talked to him, murmured: barely a minute, then the Negro turned and went back to the car and got into it, the runner not waiting to watch that either, already following the white man back toward the billet, the waiting group before the door parting to let him through, then crowding in after him until the runner stopped the last one by touching, grasping his sleeve.

‘The money,’ the runner said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s the Association,’ the man said.

‘All right, all right,’ the runner said, almost testily. ‘How do you get it? Can anybody …’

‘Right,’ the man said. ‘You take ten bob. Then on the next payday you begin paying him sixpence a day for thirty days.’

‘If you’re still alive,’ the runner said.

‘Right,’ the other said. ‘When you have paid up you can start over again.’

‘But suppose you’re not,’ the runner said. But this time the man merely looked at him, so that he said, almost pettishly again:

‘All right, all right, I’m not really that stupid; to still be alive a year from now is worth six hundred percent. of anything.’ But still the man looked at him, with something so curious in his face, behind his eyes, that the runner said quickly, ‘Yes. What?’

‘You’re new,’ the other said.

‘Yes,’ the runner said. ‘I was in London last week. Why?’

‘The rate aint so high, if you’re a ……’ the voice stopping, ceasing, the eyes still watching him so curiously, so intently, that it seemed to the runner that his own gaze was drawn, as though by some physical force, down the man’s side to where his hand hung against his flank: at which instant the hand flicked out in a gesture, a signal, so brief, so rapid before it became again immobile against its owner’s khaki leg, that the runner could hardly believe he had seen it.

‘What?’ the runner said. ‘What?’ But now the face was closed, inscrutable; the man was already turning away.

‘Why dont you ask him what you want to know?’ he said. ‘He wont bite yer. He wont even make you take the ten bob, if you dont want.’

The runner watched the long car back and fill in the narrow street, to return wherever it came from: nor had he even seen the battalion adjutant yet, who at worst could be no more than captain and very likely not even as old as he: so the preliminaries would not take long, probably no more than this: what Hollywood in a few more years would coin a word for: double-take: then the adjutant: Oh, you’re that one. Why haven’t you got up your M.C.? Or did they take that back too, along with the pip?

Then he: I dont know. Could I wear an M.C. on this?

Then the adjutant: I dont know either. What else did you want? You’re not due here until Orderly Room Monday .

Then he would ask: who by now had divined who the rich American woman would be, since for two years now Europe—France anyway—had been full of them—the wealthy Philadelphia and Wall Street and Long Island names whose money supported ambulance units and air squadrons in the French front—the committees, organizations, of officially nonbelligerent amateurs by means of which America fended off not Germans but war itself; he could ask then, saying, But why here? Granted that they have one with at the head of it an old blackamoor who looks like a nonconformist preacher, why did the French government send him up here in a State motorcar for a two-minute visit with a private soldier in a British infantry battalion?— oh yes, he could ask, getting nothing probably except the old Negro’s name, which he already knew and hence was not what he lacked, needed, must have if there were peace: which took another three days from that Monday when, reporting at Orderly Room, he became officially a member of the battalion family and could cultivate the orderly corporal in charge of the battalion correspondence and so hold at last in his own hands the official document signed by the chief-of-staff at Poperinghe, containing not only the blackamoor’s name but the rich and organ-rolling one of the organization, committee, which he headed: Les Amis Myriades et Anonymes à la France de Tout le Monde —a title, a designation, so embracing, so richly sonorous with grandeur and faith, as to have freed itself completely from man and his agonies, majestic in empyrean, as weightless and palpless upon the anguished earth as the adumbration of a cloud. And if he had hoped to get anything at all, even that much, let alone anything more, from the owner of the money-belt, he would have been wrong indeed there: which (the failure) cost him five shillings in francs: hunting the man down and stopping him by simply getting in front of him and standing there, saying baldly and bluntly: