Fable, A - William Faulkner [135]
But that was a quarter of a century away yet, as the caller of ten minutes ago had prophesied; now he lay beneath his own peaceful tears while the nurse bent over him with a folded cloth, saying, weak but indomitable still, obdurate, incurable and doomed with hope, using the two 'he's' indiscriminately, as though the nurse too knew: 'Yes, he was a man. But he was young then, not much more than a child. These tears are not anguish: only grief,'
The room was now lighted, candelabrum, sconce and girandole. The windows were closed now, curtain and casement; the room seemed now to hang insulate as a diving bell above the city's murmur where the people had already begun to gather again in the Place below. The jug and bowl were gone and the old general sat once more flanked by his two confreres behind the bare table, though among them now was a fourth figure as incongruous and paradoxical as a magpie in a bowl of goldfish-a bearded civilian sitting between the old generalissimo and the American in that black-and-white costume which to the Anglo-Saxon is the formal regalia for eating or seduction or other diversions of the dark, and to the Continental European and South American the rigid uniform for partitioning other governments or overthrowing his own.
The young aide stood facing them. He said rapid and glib in French: 'The prisoners are here. The motorcar from Villeneuve Blanche will arrive at twenty-two hours. The woman about the spoon,'
'Spoon?' the old general said. 'Did we take her spoon? Return it,'
'No sir,' the aide said. 'Not this time. The three strange women. The foreigners. His Honor the Mayor's business,' For a moment the old general sat perfectly still. But there was nothing in his voice.
'They stole the spoon?'
Nor was there anything in the aide's cither-rigid, inflectionless: 'She threw the spoon at them. It disappeared. She has witnesses,'
'Who saw one of them pick up the spoon and hide it,' the old general said.
The aide stood rigid, looking at nothing. 'She threw a basket too. It was full of food. The same one caught it in the air without spilling it,'
'I see,' the old general said. 'Does she come here to protest a miracle, or merely affirm one?'
'Yes sir,' the aide said. 'Do you want the witnesses too?'
'Let the strangers wait,' the old general said. 'Just the plaintiff,'
'Yes sir,' the aide said. He went out again by the smaller door at the end of the room. Though when in the next second almost he reappeared, he had not had time to get out of anyone's way. He returned not swept but tumbled, not in but rather on because he rose, loomed not half a head nor even a whole head but half a human being above a tight clump of shawled or kerchiefed women led by one of a short broad strong fifty-ish who stopped just at the edge of the white rug as if it were water and gave the room one rapid comprehensive look, then another rapid one at the three old men behind the table, then moved again unerringly toward the old generalissimo, leading her group, save the aide who had at last extricated himself beside the door, firmly out onto the blanched surface of the rug, saying in a strong immediate voice: That's right. Dont hope to conceal yourself-not behind a mayor anyway; there are too many of you for that. Once I would Wednesday Night have said that the curse of this country is its forest of mayorial sashes and swords; I know better now. And after four years of this harassment, even the children can tell a general on sight-provided you can ever see one when you need him,'
'A third miracle then,' the old general said. 'Since your first postulate is proved by the confounding of your second,'
'Miracle?' the woman said. 'Bah. The miracle is that we have anything left after four years of being overrun by foreigners. And now, even Americans. Has France come to that sorry pass where you must not only rob us of