‘Put that umbrella down, sir!’ I said, controlling myself with difficulty.
He reluctantly lowered the weapon.
It was in a gentle, almost cooing voice, that he began again: ‘Ever been stranded in Los Angeles, by the way? Happened to me once. Because of a girl called Louella. A lovely girl, a girl in a thousand; her one fault was an obsession about wanting to be dominated, and I didn’t meet the bill. She kept on at me to lose my temper; but it’s always been my trouble that I can’t lose my temper with a woman. With a man, there’s no trouble of course; but if ever a woman is unkind to me, I just want to sit down in a corner and cry. Curious, don’t you agree? It seems that what Louella needed was some great, ill-tempered, husky pug, to take her by the hair, swing her around the apartment, and then make love to her among the smashed crockery and broken chairs. But I couldn’t even begin to play that sort of game with her. I could only sit on the bed and cry. So one fine evening she scratched my face, grabbed my wallet, and kicked me out. I went off like a lost lamb.’
Would it never stop? Rugby was still a thousand miles off.
‘A couple of days later,’ he continued, with a catch in his voice, ‘I found myself, hungry and red-eyed in the sun, sitting on the kerb of the Le Moyne sidewalk. Opposite was a big, pink building, something between a pagoda and a county-jail, with a notice-board over the portal: “All, All Are Welcome!” – but welcome to what it didn’t say, and I didn’t much care. I only needed some place to sit down and do a bit more crying. I crossed the street, went into the lobby, and listened. It sounded like a lecture. I’m good at sitting through lectures, looking interested and thinking my own thoughts. To have someone else talking and the audience listening helps in a way to isolate my mind… Ever go to lectures to think your own thoughts?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I prefer railway trains. But you don’t give me a chance.’
He waved the interruption aside. ‘I took a seat at the back and had a look around me. An enormous cool Gothic hall with great banks of flowers and coloured lanterns, and a smell of too much incense, and a screwy congregation – screwy even for California. I learned later that it was the temple of Simon Magus Redivivus. Ever read the Acts of the Apostles, by the way? Tells you a lot about Simon Magus. Well, on the side of the chancel there was a choir of women, dressed to look like doves, in white feather costumes – and a battery of African drums was being beaten to a tricky rhythm where the altar should have been. That was all right, but what I didn’t like was the stained-glass windows with wide-open pairs of yellow eyes glaring at me, and the creepy-looking mosaics in blue, black and white on the walls. The boss of the show was a short, square, swarthy fellow, in evening dress and a gold crown, who stood bang upright on a low throne. And a bevy of chorus-girls, dressed in nylon and tinsel, squatted around him on little stools.
‘Well, I had a good cry, and blew my nose and began thinking about whom to touch for money; I felt sure I must know someone in the city besides Louella. I was racking my brains for the name of the fellow with whom I’d been working when I was in the Security Police at Brussels. Nice city, Brussels. Ever been there, by the way? Said he was a Los Angeles garage proprietor. Irving Something-or-other – and it began with a Sch – big fellow with rimless glasses. I couldn’t get it, but went on trying hard until, suddenly, I was aware of a great booming noise from the chancel. It sounded like the fellow in evening dress being angry with someone; but I didn’t know him and he couldn’t have known me, so I didn’t take it personally. I went on thinking: “Wasn’t it Schellingman or Schellinger or Schlaffinger, or something of the sort…? I must have a search through the phone-book.” The voice grew angrier and angrier, until I realized at last that I was the goat. I looked up, and he accused me of being a hostile influence. Shouted that I was breaking the sacred communion of gnosis – he used that word, I remember – and I had better scram because he was the Standing One, immortal and invincible and unassailable…
‘So I rose to my feet, feeling a little less like a lost lamb, and pointed out that the notice-board said “All, All are Welcome!” and that I wasn’t used to being bawled out – and, what was more, I didn’t believe he was any less mortal or vincible than the next man. This put my lord Simon on his mettle, and he roared again into the microphone: “I am the Standing One! He who stood, stands, and will ever stand! Step up here, worm, and make obeisance at my throne!” When I told him that I’d come up the aisle and punch his nose for him if he liked, he laughed in a god-like way and informed me that nobody could strike the Standing One. “You cannot reach me,” he boomed, “your feet will stick to the floor.”
‘I didn’t like this. I marched boldly up the aisle towards that ugly face at the other end, but each step was more difficult to take than the last. The congregation were silently and solidly behind him, willing me to get back to my seat. I felt as if I were lugging my legs through liquid clay. I struggled another inch or so, and then stuck dead. And I hadn’t even got half-way.
‘Simon Magus sneered at me: “You see, you are helpless! Come now, I make you free to move. Step up and make obeisance!” I could feel the united congregation willing me: “Make obeisance, make obeisance to the Standing One!” And I had to lean back and dig in my heels to stop being propelled forward.
‘I still meant to punch his nose, mind you, but my fists hung down at my sides like hundred-pound weights at the end of strings. And then – then I happened to look at one of the chorus-girls – Simon’s gnostic wives they were, I learned afterwards: and, lo and behold, there sat Louella, peering down at me pityingly, as much as to say: “Domination, what do you know about that, you sap? The Standing One, he certainly understands domination.” And she got up and whispered in Simon Magus’s ear.
‘“I’m coming to hit you!” I shouted at Simon. This confused the congregation. Most of them were still trying to push me ahead. A few were doing their damnedest to hold me back. I know that, because I felt their wills like spiders’ webs snapping across my face as I rushed forward and mounted the chancel steps. I was within two yards of the throne before the going got sticky again. Simon Magus had regained control of the situation – called up his spiritual reserves and was hitting at me with all the voodoo in his vocabulary. I was stuck again: stuck, bogged and pinioned.
‘He said: “You see, helpless as an infant! Come now, make obeisance, you big blubbering Limey! Make obeisance to the Standing One.” Blubbering Limey! – that saved me! It was an insult Louella had put into his mouth. I recognized it. Then I lost my temper as I’d never lost it before. I drew both feet from the gnostic bog. I hauled up both my fists. The congregation began to get scared, I could feel it – even the spiritual wives and the doves in the choir, even the Standing One himself…’
He slowly discarded his overcoat and jacket, and slowly rolled up his shirt-sleeves. ‘A red fire of anger swept over me,’ he said earnestly. ‘I took a step forward, I braced my right arm; I measured the distance… Ever boxed, by the way?’
That was a question I was not sorry to answer.
‘Yes!’ I yelled, as I delivered a furious right hook to his jaw.
He slumped back in his seat and passed out.
Presently, the stolid, red-faced ex-R.A.F. type, the correct bank-manager and the worthy headmaster in the clerical collar trooped in again and resumed their seats as if nothing had happened, each with only a casual glance at the inert body, and not a word of thanks to me.
‘Who says that losing your temper won’t get you anywhere?’ I shouted at them bellicosely. ‘Ever been in Egypt? Ever had a guinea-worm? EVER GONE BERSERK?’
But I felt like hell afterwards. Takes it out of you, that sort of thing.
A Bicycle in Majorca
IT WAS NOT always so. Majorca used to be the most crime-free island in Europe. When I came back here with my family shortly after World War II, one could still hang one’s purse on a tree and return three months later to find its contents intact. Unless, of course, someone short of change had
replaced the small bills with a larger bill of equal value.
I am wasting this morning in the draughty corridors of the Palma Law Courts, because of my son William’s ‘abstracted’ bicycle. He lent it to his younger brother, Juan, a year ago, when Juan’s own bicycle… But forget Juan’s bicycle for the moment and focus on William’s. We imported both of them from England. The Spaniards certainly know how to ride bicycles; they are heroic racing cyclists, and the mortality among leaders of the profession is a good deal higher than among bullfighters. A recess at the back of the Palma Cycling Club provides a shrine for one of its members killed on a mountain road during the Tour of Spain – his pedals and shoes hung up beneath a plaque of St Christopher, with candles perpetually burning. Other members, who have died in lesser contests, are not so commemorated. But we British at least know how to make bicycles. I hasten to say that I am not criticizing Spanish workmanship. The British just happen to be experts in this particular trade; they even export vast quantities of bicycles to the choosy United States. The Spanish government will not, of course, agree that anyone else in the world can make anything better than Spaniards do, and surely a government’s business is to foster faith in the nation’s industrial proficiency? This attitude, however, makes it difficult for a Spaniard or a foreign resident in Spain – here comes the point – to import a British bicycle, especially when Spanish sterling reserves are low. Such a person must fill out fifteen forms in quintuplicate, supplying all his own vital statistics, with those of his relations in at least the nearer degrees, and showing just cause why he should be allowed a British bicycle (despite the hundred-per-cent Spanish import duty) instead of a much better, locally manufactured machine, which can be bought at half the cost. When he has waited fifteen months for an answer, while sterling reserves continue to fall, the chances are that the answer will be: ‘We lament to inform you that last year’s bicycle import quota has already been satisfied; we therefore advise you to fill out the necessary forms in quintuplicate for the present year’s quota’ – the year which, as a matter of fact, ended three months before. The most painless, therefore, way to import a British bicycle, as I learned from a friendly clerk at the Town Hall, is to arrive with it at the frontier, prepared to pay the import duty in cash, and insist on entry.
‘If you are accompanied by children,’ said the friendly clerk, ‘there should be no trouble. All Spaniards are sympathetic toward fatigued fathers of families who have taken long journeys by train.’
‘And if, by ill luck, I hit on an exception?’
‘Then try a frontier post farther up the Pyrenees. On occasion, the officials at remote posts have no information about the rate of payment due from residents of Spain for imported bicycles. If the traveller happens to be a fatigued father of a family, they may well advise him – this has, in fact, happened – to rub a little mud on the machine and so convert it into an old one. His son can then ride across the frontier as a summer tourist.’
It’s a long story… At any rate, we got William’s bicycle to Majorca legally enough. That was in 1949, and no immediate trouble ensued. The British bicycle was much admired, for the solidity of its frame and for being the only one on the island with stainless-steel wheel rims and spokes, brakes that really braked, and an efficient three-speed gearshift. Then, around 1951, British, French, and American travellers accepted the fantasy of Majorca as the Isle of Love, the Isle of Tranquillity, the Paradise where the sun always shines and where one can live like a fighting cock on a dollar a day, drinks included. A tidal wave of prosperity struck these shores, and though statistics show that a mere three per cent of the Paradise-seekers return, there are always millions more where they come from. Which means, of course, that thieves, beggars, dope peddlers, confidence tricksters, gigolos, adventuresses, perverts, inverts, deverts, and circumverts come crowding in, too, from all over the world – of whom no less than ninety-seven per cent stay. Their devious activities place unreasonable burdens on the shoulders of the gentle Civil Guards. Repeat ‘gentle’. The Civil Guards are, by and large, gentle, noble, correct, courageous, courteous, incorruptible, and single-minded. They are probably the sole Spaniards without the national inferiority complex about not being bullfighters, which attacks even racing cyclists. You are earnestly advised to refrain from laughing at the Civil Guards’ curiously shaped patent-leather helmets and calling them ‘comic-opera’. This antique headgear usually covers real men.
A Civil Guard barracks stands just around the corner from our Palma apartment. Conditions inside are pretty austere, the living quarters being not unlike those in the prison recently demolished near Boston – what was it called? The one where they had so many mutinies? I know two or three of the Guards there, and my family has a standing invitation to their annual show on March 1st (the Day of the Angel of the Guard), which is really quite something. So when, one evening in 1952, William’s bicycle was stolen from the entrance hall of our apartment house – we live on the second floor – I went straight to a Guard, whom I remembered as a fat and dirty baby back in 1929, and asked him for immediate action. He called a plainclothes colleague, whose children had been at school with mine, and sent him down to the gipsy camp by the gasworks. (One early sign of Majorcan prosperity was an influx of undisciplined and picturesquely filthy gipsies from the south of Spain.) The camp, consisting of low, unmortared, doorless stone shelters, roofed with driftwood, rags, and odd sheets of rusty metal, is where one would normally search for stolen bicycles. On this occasion a blank was drawn. But as the plainclothes Guard, trudging back, came within sight of the barracks – its entrance inscribed ‘All for the Fatherland’ – a bicycle shot across the road out of control, brushed past him, and piled up against a lightpole. Its rider, a half-witted young man from Minorca, was severely injured – and so was William’s bicycle. Unaccustomed to a three-speed gear, the poor fellow had changed down as he passed the barracks, without ceasing to pedal, had broken a cog in the gearbox, and thus lost his head, his balance, his consciousness, and his freedom. I had to sign a long charge against the Minorcan and also swear to the bicycle before being allowed to take it back. ‘Mind you,’ said the lieutenant, ‘this machine must be produced in evidence when the criminal comes up for trial. Since we know you well, you may keep it temporarily, but look after it with care!’
The wave of prosperity had caused such a fearful bottleneck in judicial activity that the case is still on the waiting list. Prisoners are allowed bail, but the Minorcan could not even afford to pay for the damage done to William’s bicycle, so if he has not succumbed to his injuries, I imagine some prison or other holds him yet. All I can say is that the local press keeps silence on the subject. A young English acquaintance of mine saw the wrong side of a Palma jail not long ago; he was charged with being drunk and in possession of a lethal weapon. When the Captain General released him, in return for some obscure favour from the British Consul, I heard a lot about that jail. A prisoner could earn a day’s remission of sentence for every full day of voluntary work (this meant plaiting the palm-leaf baskets, which have ‘Souvenir of Majorca’ and a few flowers stitched on in coloured raffia, for tourists), also two days’ remission for overtime on Sundays and national holidays. The only other inmate, besides the Englishman, who refused to work was a Valencian pickpocket, found guilty of several delinquencies and sentenced to a stretch totalling a hundred and eighty years. From my friend’s description, it seemed a very old-fashioned jail as regards bedding, plumbing, and social arrangements – ‘pure eighteenth-century, a regular collectors’ piece’. But card-playing, drink, unimproving (i.e., non-devotional) books, and American cigarettes were forbidden. No Majorcans figured among the eleven criminals with whom he shared the cell – they had to occupy the only three beds in four shifts – because Majorcans seldom commit crimes (unless smuggling be so regarded, which must remain an open question) and can always raise bail from near or distant relations.
Well, when the bicycle case comes up, perhaps even this year, and the
Minorcan is given a ten-year sentence, he will already have cleared it off and be a free man again, with a trade at his fingers’ tips, and money in his pocket – accumulated payment at one cent for each and every basket plaited, less deductions for an occasional coffee or shave. Meanwhile, we have repaired the bicycle, which had lost a pedal bar, and fitted it with a Spanish lamp and a Spanish front mudguard, the original ones having become casualties. The three-speed gear is hardly what it was, but the bicycle still runs, despite other accidents soon to be related.
Now, to speak of Juan’s own bicycle, also legally imported – or very nearly so. We chose one of pillar-box red, for conspicuousness, because the wave of prosperity was mounting and we did not want it stolen. Being a perfectionist, Juan treasured that bicycle like the apple of his eye, treating it daily with oily rag, duster, and saddle soap. In an evil hour we entered him at – let us call it San Rococo – reputedly the best boys’ school in Palma. Juan is a Protestant, and the worthy priests who run San Rococo hoped to steer him into the Catholic fold, as they had just steered in a little Dane, two little Germans, and another little Englishman. But Juan, who has inherited bitter black Protestant blood from both sides of his family, remained obdurate. The baffled priests withdrew their fatherly protection, and Juan was soon assaulted by a group of his classmates. It happened that England had just beaten Spain at association football, four goals to one, so these patriotic lads accused the English forwards, and Juan, of foul play. They kicked out two of his bicycle spokes, threw the top of his bell over a wall, wrecked his lighting dynamo, and made away with his pump. It should be explained that they were not Majorcans but sons of wave-of-prosperity Galicians, recently come to Palma, and that Spain’s goalkeeper had been a Galician.
‘Juvenile high spirits,’ sighed Father Blas when I complained. ‘It would be virtually impossible to discover the names of the culprits, because in San Rococo we do not encourage tale-bearing. Besides, your son’s lack of cooperation in our Christian devotions…’