Naturally I’m not going to tell you everything. They were too vile with me. It would be doing them too much of a favor!
I want them to taste a little more. It’s not vengeance or soreness, it’s just a feeling of prudence, an esoteric precaution. You don’t play around with omens. It costs your life if you’re indiscreet! I’m giving them just a small idea, that’ll do! I’m making a bit of an effort, all right, I’m not exhausting my charm. I’m staying on good terms with the music, little animals, the harmony of dreams, the cat, its purring. That way it’s perfect. A pleasure, no more, otherwise I fiddle around, sell myself, get worked up, I show off, I lose out boasting, it’s over! To hell with the glamor! I get down to the pebbles, I stumble all over, I flop, I proclaim myself Emperor, the Prosecutor’s after me, finds me, there I am like a dope, everyone’s picking on me, cutting me to pieces, it’s the third degree, Napoleon style.
And I’m not alluding to anyone! If the shoe fits, wear it! Wasn’t born under a lucky star! "Quarantine’s” my baptismal name, I know the oracles as I call them! I don’t go far wrong in my dreams, but on the mystifying condition that I keep my ear right to the ground and my guts full of suspicion! All right then…
Let me wobble and break down to the depths! Ah! a sorry conviction!.. "Don’t let yourself be tempted! ” Boy! have I seen witches!.. On moors! meadows and shores! and a lot of other places too!.. on rocks! in abysses!.. with their brooms and owl! The owl’s what I understand best. He always says to me, "Watch out, pal! You’re going to talk too much.”… That’s right, in a way. My good nature excites me and works me up, makes me talk without rhyme or reason. A sorry excuse! Here comes cop's meat. With an immediate comeback! Jeering, razzing, ferocities, demonic dirty deals, pouring out torrents of droppings for me to die haggard, swamped, beneath the disgrace, the repulsion of the righteous, of extortionists, legionnaires! Infamy! consummate cabal! I can’t open my pen any more. Whether in court, under the blows of wild "evidence,” or in the waiting-rooms of the big shots, I’m crushed on the spot, scraped, shriveled up slimy in the rank of stinking grubs, in spite of good intentions, loathed, beaten within an inch of my life, something absolutely unspeakable, squashed surreptitiously between saltpeter and hot ashes and the fact that proves it is that even the people on my side who are in a way in the same sort of boat are shy about my case, they’ve got scruples about discussing it, it chaps their faces a little, they’d rather keep quiet. It would be a pity for them to compromise themselves because I’m a pain in the ass to them too… So that way we’ve agreed… We understand each other without getting together.. without the slightest consultation.
That’s grace, discretion itself.
l knew a real archangel on the downgrade, though still rather frisky, even resplendent in a way. I never really knew his name. He had too many papers. They finally called him Borokrom because of his knowledge of chemistry, of the bombs he’d made, it seems, when he was young. It was hearsay, legend. He made me smile right away. I thought I knew the ropes at the time. Later on I realized the weight of the man, his value, beneath his unprepossessing exterior, of my own dumbness. He played the piano delightfully when he had nothing else to do. I’m talking about our odd jobs. He’d come to London twenty years earlier to take a job as chemist. He was supposed to work at Wickers, in the nitrate laboratory. He had all his diplomas from Sofia and Petersburg, but he didn’t know what time it was. That played him a dirty trick. He couldn’t be employed, and then he really drank too much, even for England. He didn’t stay on long at Wickers National Steel Ltd., three months with board and lodging and then fired, probably also because of his ways which were really pretty doubtful, spotty in general, a sneaky look. He hung out with a low crowd, his friends looked like a bad lot.. even worse than he..
He was always on the outs with his landladies at the end of the week. The police who knew him well left him pretty much alone. He was one of the tramps and that was that.
England’s all right for that, they never really bother you, even if you’re shabby-looking, even if you’re a little shady, with the tacit understanding that you don’t act like a jackass around noon in front of Drury Lane or at five around the Savoy. There’s a certain etiquette, that’s all. A conventional agreement. If Jackass you be, woe to you! There’re times for the Strand and others for Trafalgar, and everywhere else at ease!. Got to know the English cops, they don’t like force or scandal, they’re just loafers like father and mother, just don’t provoke them, don’t bother them in broad daylight, in short, let them the hell alone.. Even if they’ve got their pockets full of warrants with your photo, they won’t hound you if you don’t act like a wise guy, if you keep your distance, if you don’t change suits too often to show off, or change lodgings, or hangouts. There’s an etiquette, a way that’s decent and proper for real tramps, that’s the size of it! Mustn’t upset Tradition! If you act temperamental, or aggressive, or changeable, first in one pub, then another, if you’re not back at your game of pool at about your usual time, then don’t be surprised, the cops come down on you hard, they suddenly get rough and crafty, you’re complicating supervision, they get fed up with your ways, they get restless and keen to pin something on you. Any freakishness gets them wild, especially in clothes.. That was the trouble with Borokrom, who was in the habit of wearing plum derbies, never anything else on his big dome, always wearing his green plum, his uniform. He played the piano that way to earn his living between the Elephant and the Castle, the two limits of Mile End. Soon as he was kicked out of Wickers, he had to. All the pubs along Commercial, sometimes in one, sometimes the other. but always around the river. That’s what they call the Thames. He was known, likable, gay with his fingers but serious-looking, proper as a pope. It paid well, especially Saturdays. He easily took in three pounds between eight o’clock and midnight, plus the nourishing stout, so thick and creamy, absolutely all he wanted, thanks to the customers. And then the raucous song, the drinking canticle, as is the proud custom, with choruses by the drunks piled around the piano.
Yip-i-addy-i-ay-i-ay!
Yip-i-addy-i-ay!
Those were the first English words I knew by heart, "i-addy-i-ay!”. It sent terrific echoes out into the street, into the night outside where little children were waiting, shriveled up against the window, flattening their little beaks till their parents were finished sucking their beer, fun and joy of living, so drunk that the bulls would come in to kick them out so that they’d go puke somewhere else. We’d meet at La Vaillance, the pub of the swells of the lane, the busy street, the one with seven huge bars, with prows sculpted in ivory and twisted copper rails. A magnificent job. And a portrait of the Conqueror high as the ceiling, in a colossal gilt frame, adorned with sirens. That was where we were when the thing happened, when the fight started. It was Sergeant Matthew of the Yard who came in, at the sandwich counter in the swells’ stall, he blew in whistling "Good day, Ladies’’! He wasn’t in uniform, in civvies like you and me, he was humming with the others, he was a bit loaded, and so he was in good humor. Suddenly! what’s eating him?. he stops dead, he stands there frozen… in front of Boro… in a top hat! ah! that gags him! the nerve!.. busy there with his music, banging out his tunes, in a tart kind of rhythm, grinding out a cradle song, with the misty charm of tunes of that kind, they gather up your troubles, jig them away!. ding! dindin!. dong! dong!.. and whoops! presto! quick runs of trills and arpeggios! with his big dirty pudgy fingers… it was really magic the way he had them spellbound with the fluttering imps springing out of the big piano. Grinding out any old refrain. all nipping away at the pain of laughter. The hesitancy of orange marmalade that's
