A Fable

‘Your bayonet,’ the priest said, extending his hand.

‘I cant do that,’ the man said. ‘I’m on parade—on post. The corporal will——The Officer of the Day himself might come along——’

‘Tell them I took it,’ the priest said.

‘Took it?’ the man said.

‘Demanded it,’ the priest said, his hand still steadily out. ‘Come.’ Then the hand moved, not fast, and drew the bayonet from the man’s belt. ‘Tell them I took it,’ the priest said, already turning. ‘Good night.’ Or perhaps the man even answered; perhaps even in the silent and empty alley again one last fading echo of one last warm and human voice speaking in warm and human protest or amazement or simple unquestioning defence of an is simply because it is; and then no more, thinking It was a spear, so I should have taken the rifle too, and then no more: thinking The left side, and I’m right handed, thinking But at least He wasn’t wearing an infantryman’s overcoat and a Magasin du Louvre shirt and so at least I can do that, opening the coat and throwing it back and then opening the shirt until he could feel the blade’s cold minuscule point against his flesh and then the cold sharp whisper of the blade itself entering, beginning to make a sort of thin audible cry as though of astonishment at its own swiftness yet when he looked down at it barely the point itself had disappeared and he said aloud, quietly: ‘Now what?’ But He was not standing either, he thought He was nailed there and He will forgive me and cast himself sideways and downward, steadying the bayonet so that the end of the hilt should strike the bricks first, and turned a little until his cheek lay against the still-warm bricks and now he began to make a thin sweet crying of frustration and despair until the pinch of his hand between the bayonet’s cross guard and his own flesh told him better and so he could stop the crying now—the sweet thick warm murmur of it pouring suddenly from his mouth.

Beeping its horn steadily—not pettishly nor fretfully nor even irritatedly but in fact with a sort of unwearyable blase Gallic detachment—the French staff-car crept through the Place de Ville as though patting the massed crowd gently and firmly to either side with the horn itself to make room for its passage. It was not a big car. It flew no general’s pennon nor in fact any insignia of any kind; it was just a small indubitable French army motor car driven by a French soldier and containing three more soldiers, three American privates who until they met in the Blois orderly room where the French car had picked them up four hours ago had never laid eyes on one another before, who sat two in the back and one in front with the driver while the car bleated its snaillike passage through the massed spent wan and sleepless faces.

One of the two Americans in the back seat was leaning out of the car, looking eagerly about, not at the faces but at the adjacent buildings which enclosed the Place. He held a big much-folded and - unfolded and -refolded map open between his hands. He was quite young, with brown eyes as trustful and unalarmed as those of a cow, in an open reliant invincibly and incorrigibly bucolic face—a farmer’s face fated to love his peaceful agrarian heritage (his father, as he would after him, raised hogs in Iowa and rich corn to feed and fatten them for market on) for the simple reason that to the end of his eupeptic days (what was going to happen to him inside the next thirty minutes would haunt him of course from time to time but only in dreams, as nightmares haunt) it would never occur to him that he could possibly have found anything more worthy to be loved—leaning eagerly out of the car and completely ignoring the massed faces through which he crept, saying eagerly:

‘Which one is it? Which one is it?’

‘Which one is what?’ the American beside the driver said.

‘The Headquarters,’ he said. ‘The Ho-tel de Villy.’

‘Wait till you get inside,’ the other said. ‘That’s what you volunteered to look at.’

‘I want to see it from the outside too,’ the first said. ‘That’s why I volunteered for this what-ever-it-is. Ask him,’ he said, indicating the driver. ‘You can speak Frog.’

‘Not this time,’ the other said. ‘My French dont use this kind of a house.’ But it wasn’t necessary anyway because at the same moment they both saw the three sentries—American French and British—flanking the door, and in the next one the car turned through the gates and now they saw the whole courtyard cluttered and massed with motorcycles and staff-cars bearing the three different devices. The car didn’t stop there though. Darting its way among the other vehicles at a really headlong speed, now that its gambits were its own durable peers instead of frail untriumphable human flesh, it dashed on around to the extreme rear of the baroque and awesome pile (‘Now what?’ the one in the front seat said to the Iowan who was still leaning out toward the building’s dizzy crenellated wheel. ‘Did you expect them to invite us in by the front?’

‘It’s all right,’ the Iowan said. ‘That’s how I thought it would look.’) to where an American military policeman standing beside a sort of basement areaway was signalling them with a flashlight. The car shot up beside him and stopped. He opened the door, though since the Iowan was now engaged in trying to refold his map, the American private in the front seat was the first to get out. His name was Buchwald. His grandfather had been rabbi of a Minsk synagogue until a Cossack sergeant beat his brains out with the shod hooves of a horse. His father was a tailor; he himself was born on the fourth floor of a walk-up, cold-water Brooklyn tenement. Within two years after the passage of the American prohibition law, with nothing in his bare hands but a converted army-surplus Lewis machine gun, he himself was to become czar of a million-dollar empire covering the entire Atlantic coast from Canada to whatever Florida cove or sandspit they were using that night. He had pale, almost colorless eyes; he was hard and slender too now though one day a few months less than ten years from now, lying in his ten-thousand- dollar casket banked with half that much more in cut flowers, he would look plump, almost fat. The military policeman leaned into the back of the car.

‘Come on, come on,’ he said. The Iowan emerged, carrying the clumsily-folded map in one hand and slapping at his pocket with the other. He feinted past Buchwald like a football half-back and darted to the front of the car and held the map into the light of one of the headlamps, still slapping at his pocket.

‘Durn!’ he said. ‘I’ve lost my pencil.’ The third American private was now out of the car. He was a Negro, of a complete and unrelieved black. He emerged with a sort of ballet dancer elegance, not mincing, not foppish, not maidenly but rather at once masculine and girlish or perhaps better, epicene, and stood not quite studied while the Iowan spun and feinted this time through all three of them—Buchwald, the policeman, and the Negro—and carrying his now rapidly disintegrating map plunged his upper body back into the car, saying to the policeman: ‘Lend me your flashlight. I must have dropped it on the floor.’

‘Sweet crap,’ Buchwald said. ‘Come on.’

‘It’s my pencil,’ the Iowan said. ‘I had it at that last big town we passed—what was the name of it?’

‘I can call a sergeant,’ the policeman said. ‘Am I going to have to?’

‘Nah,’ Buchwald said. He said to the Iowan: ‘Come on. They’ve probably got a pencil inside. They can read and write here too.’ The Iowan backed out of the car and stood up. He began to refold his map. Following the policeman, they crossed to the areaway and descended into it, the Iowan following with his eyes the building’s