A Fable

you through channels and then send a special courier up from Paris. Someone named—’ and glanced at the letter again: ‘—Reverend Tobe Sutterfield.’

And now the runner was watching the private too, already looking at him in time not only to hear but to see him say, quick and harsh and immediately final: ‘No.’

‘Sir,’ the captain prompted.

‘No what?’ the brigadier said. ‘An American. A blackamoor minister. You dont know who it is?’

‘No,’ the private said.

‘He seemed to think you might say that. He said to remind you of Missouri.’

‘No,’ the private said, rigid and harsh and final. ‘I was never in Missouri. I dont know anything about him.’

‘Say sir,’ the captain said.

‘That’s your last word?’ the brigadier said.

‘Yes sir,’ the private said.

‘All right,’ the brigadier said. ‘Carry on.’ Then they were gone and, rigid at attention, he (the runner) felt rather than saw the brigadier open the brigade order and begin to read it and then look up at him—no movement of the head at all: merely an upward flick of the eyes, steady for a moment, then down to the order again: thinking (the runner) quietly: Not this time. There’s too much rank: thinking: It wont even be the colonel, but the adjutant. Which by ordinary could have been as much as two weeks later since, a runner formally assigned to a combat battalion, his status was the same as any other member of it and he too would be officially ‘resting’ until they went back up the lines; and, except for coincidence, probably would have been: reporting (the runner) not to the battalion sergeant-major but to Coincidence, entering his assigned billet two hours later, and in the act of stowing his kit into a vacant corner, saw again the man he had seen two hours ago in the brigadier’s office—the surly, almost insubordinate stable-aura-ed private who by his appearance would have pined and died one day after he was removed further from Whitechapel than a Newmarket paddock perhaps, yet who was not only important enough to be approached through official channels by some American individual or agent or agency himself or itself important enough to use the French government for messenger, but important enough to repudiate the approach—seated this time on a bunk with a thick leather money-belt open on one knee and a small dirty dogeared notebook on the other, and three or four other privates facing him in turn, to each of which he counted out a few French notes from the money-belt and then made a notation with the stub of a pencil in the notebook.

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?’