The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [39]
“Make a French translation of these instructions,” he said. “Subsistence Allowance is frais d’alimentation. Here is paper – and a typewriter, should you use one. Alternatively, here too is la plume de ma tante.”
Smiling not unkindly, he shut me in. I settled down to examine the printed sheet handed to me. It turned out to be an Army Form, one specifying current regulations governing issue, or non-issue, of rations to troops in the field. At first sight the prose did not seem to make much sense in English; I saw at once there was little hope of my own French improving it. Balzac on provincial typesetting was going to be nothing to this. However, I sat down and worked away, because I wanted the job badly.
Outside, on cornices and parapets of government buildings, starlings in thousands chattered and quarrelled. I was aware of that dazed feeling that is part of the impact of coming on leave. I read through the document again, trying to compose my mind to its meaning. This was like being “kept in” at school. “… the items under (i) are obtainable on indent (A.B.55) which is the ordinary requisition of supplies … the items under (iii) and other items required to supplement the ration so as to provide variety and admit of the purchase of seasonable produce, and which are paid for with money provided by the Commuted Ration Allowance and Cash Allowance (iii above) … the officer i/c Supplies renders a return (A. F. B. 179), which shows the quantities and prices of rations actually issued in kind to the unit during the month, from which their total value is calculated …”
The instruction covered a couple of foolscap pages. I remembered being told never to write “and which,” but the mere grammar used by the author was by no means just most formidable side. It was not the words that were difficult. The words, on the whole, were fairly familiar. Giving them some sort of conviction in translation was the problem; conveying that particular tone sounded in official manifestos. Through the backwoods of this bureaucratic jungle, or the like, Widmerpool was hunting down Mr. Diplock, in relentless safari. Such distracting thoughts had to be put from the mind. I chose la plume de ma tante in preference to the typewriter, typescript imparting an awful bareness to language of any kind, even one’s own. For a time I sweated away. Some sort of a version at last appeared. I read it through several times, making corrections. It did not sound ideally idiomatic. French; but then the original did not sound exactly idiomatic English. After embodying a few final improvements, I opened the door a crack.
“Come in, come in,” said the captain. “Have you finished? I thought you might have succumbed. It’s dreadfully stuffy in there.”
He was sitting with another officer, also a captain, tall, fair, rather elegant. A blue fore-and-aft cap lay beside him with the lion-and-unicorn General Service badge. I passed my translation across the desk to the I. Corps captain. He took it, and, rising from his chair, turned to the other man.
“I’ll be back in a moment, David,” he said – and to me: “Take a seat while I show this to Finn.”
He went out of the room. The other officer nodded to me and laughed. It was Pennistone. We had met on a train during an earlier leave of mine and had talked of Vigny. We had talked of all sorts of other things, too, that seemed to have passed out of my life for a long time. I remembered now Pennistone had insisted his own military employments were unusual. No doubt the Headquarters in which I now found myself represented the sort of world in which he habitually functioned.
“Splendid,” he said. “Of course we agreed to meet as an exercise of the will. I’m ashamed to say I’d forgotten until now. Your own moral determination does you credit. I congratulate you. Or is it just one of those eternal