Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (32 page)

The bottle of hock that Divver had obtained so proudly stood unopened on the window-sill. On the floor beside the engineer’s chair was an empty bottle of common, Polish beer.

Divver was holding a notebook and pencil. Already, he resembled the privileged amateur satellite who has penetrated the outer circle of a distinguished jazzband, who is known to its members by his first name, and whose mixed demeanour of respect and studied carelessness suggests that he has attained to a dignity whose total dependence on its idols makes inevitable that he should cover his subservience with mannerisms of self-assurance. Of all the people in the room, Divver appeared the least impressed by its atmosphere; his legs were stuck far out in the most negligent way, and on his face was a look that was nearly inane in its extreme sophistication. Morgan regarded
him first with contempt, then with mild horror at the thought of such vulnerability: a precocious instinct told him that no woman could resist the desire to inflict humiliating punishment on such a man, and no male idol accept without suspicion a homage so clearly based on desperate opportunism that it might at any moment decide to achieve the same, vain gratifications through traitorous betrayal. Morgan looked from Divver to the engineer and back again: when he remembered Harriet’s humiliated appearance, angry jealousy came over him; when he looked at Divver, lounging in his vicarious dignity, the jealousy became revengeful: he stared hard at the engineer’s senatorial head and absurd clothes, and he spitefully revelled in a young man’s triumph at the sight of his elders’ capacity for cheap and pompous glory.

The engineer’s eyes passed back and forth between a small map and a page of figures; he was fitting output to area and noting the results on a pad. But by now his isolated, intense concentration had ceased to provoke curiosity; his audience had reached the point where it had abrogated all desire to think about anything. The men’s faces still hung in masks of respect, but their eyes now had the vapid looks of people who are vaguely recalling childish and inconsequential scenes, dreamily safe in the thought that they will be recalled to mature duties by the one personality who is still grown-up.

Outside, the ragged bushes pulled on their thin, tough roots, the brown rocks and slag-heaps glistened with rainwater; the local mill rattled on as usual, its silver trays sheltered under faded awnings cut from the same cloth as the café umbrellas. Gradually, the outside world faded from sight as a grey mist crept up the inside of the window-panes; it was now a full quarter-hour since Streeter had spoken, and one of the waiting men at last lit a cigarette. Soon the room was filled with thick air, smoke and damp; the men began to cough and shuffle.

The engineer went on working. At one end of the room a
miner yawned, a huge yawn framed in jagged yellow teeth and black stubble. In a half-minute the yawn had passed down the row of faces, had come and gone genteelly behind the representative’s white fingers and, skipping the engineer, had reached its last gasp with Morgan. Everyone noticed this, and smiled; but no one laughed or spoke. A few minutes later the room’s fog and seclusion from the rainy world overwhelmed everyone; even Divver’s eyes lost their unnatural nonchalance, his note-book slipped from his fingers, and he slept with the suddenness of a child. The twelve men drooped forward on their chairs; their breathing thickened into snores …

The engineer threw down his pencil with a hard crack. “O.K., Mr. Hovich!” he snapped.

There was a convulsive jumping of limbs; heads shot up straight; the sleepers blinked awake and shook their muzzy heads.

“It seems like everyone decided to fall asleep,” said the engineer. He sniffed disdainfully. “We’d better have that door open, Mr. Hovich.”

He looked slowly down the row of sheepish faces. The representative blushed, and rudely snapped an order to a mechanic, who jumped up clumsily and opened the door. The engineer sighed, and passed his hand over his face, emerging from the gesture weary but resolute. A gust of wet wind whirled through the room, sweeping the cigarette smoke out into the rain. “Much better,” said the engineer. He paused, fingering his pencil, until everyone was quiet but alert, and then said, staring at the man with the theodolite, “Well, we’ll take this surveyor now.”

The surveyor wore rimless spectacles, his face was sharp and pale, his fingers delicate. He gave his report in the manner of a man whose shyness has made him fear his own words: he spoke very precisely, his lips drawing quickly together after each word, like a nibbling rabbit. While he spoke, he clung
to the waist of his long instrument. When the interpreter had translated his words, the engineer looked displeased.

“Is that all he’s done in a week, Mr. Hovich? We’re going to have to move faster than that. Sometimes I think I’m the only person who knows that this country needs gold in a hurry.”

“He says that the old diggings are full of water, sir, and overgrown; the work proceeds slowly.”

“He strikes me as the kind of man who doesn’t like to get his feet wet. We’ll take him out of the shafts, Mr. Hovich, and put him on the road staff. Tell him that, and tell him if he wants to be on our team, he’s got to speed up.”

On being told this, the surveyor stiffened: humiliated, he ran his palms down his trousers, moistened his lips and rose from the table. From his pocket he abstracted a little leather hood, which he fastened, his long fingers trembling, over the head of his precious intrument.

“One of your city men, no?” said the engineer, watching the thin figure walk out into the rain.

“Tutin Department of Public Works,” admitted Mr. Hovich.

“I don’t have to look twice to see that. I’ll take the real peasant any day. He may be short on intellect, but he does his job even if he has to stand in water up to his neck.” He turned suddenly. “That’s something for you to note, Divver. Watch these men and you’ll learn the facts of life; no textbook theories.”

“I guess that’s so,” said Divver, rather nervously.

“No guess about it, sir; just plain is. All right, let’s have the next.”

The next was a miner shaped like a blacksmith. His voice was gruff and resonant, he seemed to speak a thick dialect so disjointedly that the representative was obliged to pull him up short from time to time and make him repeat. But the engineer
suddenly appeared very pleased; he leant back and smiled benignly. A few other people quickly assumed vague smiles too; and at once the engineer looked stern again.

“Take it easy, Mr. Hovich,” he said. “Give the man time. This isn’t a bicycle race.”

The miner mouthed ahead stubbornly, splaying large, meaty hands over the table. He said that the shaft in question had been opened by the late owner’s mother’s cousin, and no good too, all said no good, but late owner’s mother’s cousin wouldn’t hear, not a word, would go on, threw his
zlotys
away all for a freak panning; five men at good pay opened a hole round it, cousin bought pumps even, drained it like a field; but not a speck of gold anyone ever saw out of that hole. And just a child’s-walk distance away, the old hole, with no more than windlass and bucket, twenty feet down, enough to give a plate of mercury three fat feeds every day, like a fine cow. Just the same, he
could
be all wrong about the other shaft; you never know; gentleman from America can do things because he has the education, and drills to work deep down, not just hammer and hand-bit like we silly fellows, so don’t take his word; just a simple fellow without a head, doing his best.

“Ask him where he’s from,” said Streeter, beaming.

“He, too, is a Tutin man, sir.”

“Nonsense! A good, rugged countryman, if ever I saw one. And don’t I know that dialect?”

“He has a disease of the mouth, sir,” said the representative.

Morgan giggled.

“He may have at that,” said the engineer firmly, “but the old stock’s written all over him. Next!”

A very young man came to the table. In age and looks he was enough like Morgan for Morgan to feel sure that he was a decent, high-minded, courageous young man. He was also exceedingly nervous; any fool could see that; but the engineer fixed him with a close stare that instantly made him speechless.

The stare, and the silence, went on for a considerable time.

Why, you cheap so-and-so! thought Morgan. He gave Streeter a deadly look.

At last the engineer spoke. “What’s he been doing, Mr. Hovich?”

“He is a Ministry employee, I regret to say, sir. He was thought fit to report on the condition of all stamps in Section A.”

“A qualified engineer, eh?”

“He was so credited.”

“Why the indignation, Mr. Hovich?”

“He seems to be an imbecile.”

“Now, now, now! What kind of a snap-judgement is that? Do you think that kind of talk will get dollars for your country?”

The representative flushed. The engineer assumed a warm, amiable manner, and asked the young man: “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, sir,” whispered the young man.

“Excellent! Just what I want around here. Did you know he spoke English, Mr. Hovich?”

“I had not thought of it.”

“In my opinion, and in all politeness, it’s just those things you should think about…. Will you tell me your name, please?”

“Klaus Foreddi, Mister-Director.”

“O.K., Klaus. I’ve known some fine engineers named Klaus.”

The young man smiled feebly—and at once Morgan began to despise him.

“Now, Klaus, how long have you been an engineer?”

“In March I was first.”

“April, May, June, July—only four months to get used to the idea. Makes you frightened, eh? Now, first thing I want
you to know, Klaus, is that here we’re all friends.
Freunde,
amis,
mitarbeiter,
see?”

“Thank you, Mister-Director.”

“Second thing is—well, I’m not sure myself what the second thing is, so you see you’re not the only one who can’t always find the right word. Now, Klaus …”

Morgan got up and started for the door.

“Who are you?” asked the engineer.

“I’m Max’s friend.”

“Whose friend?”

Divver said: “The boy I mentioned at lunch.” He looked angrily at Morgan.

“Oh, of course. What did you say your name was?”

“Jimmy Morgan.”

“Well, Jimmy Morgan, I’m very pleased to meet you.” He put his hand over the table with undeniable firmness.

Morgan shook it.

“If you’re in no great hurry, why not wait a few more minutes and we can get acquainted?”

Morgan nodded. He even managed to smile, like Klaus. He returned to his chair, utterly crushed.

“Now, Klaus,” said the engineer vigorously, “as one
mitar
beiter
to another, I want you to tell me in your own words what you found in your section….”

By the time the young man was through with his report his voice was firm, even a little irritating in its self-confidence. Streeter dismissed him with a friendly nod, and the young man turned on his way to the door and gave a cocky order to three of the mechanics, who followed him out obediently.

“He’ll be a good man, Mr. Hovich,” said the engineer, with much pomposity. “Long on brain, short on confidence—that’s something a little tact can always remedy.”

From far away came a high cry, monotonously repeated, and the clanging of a bell. The engineer looked at his watch,
and went back to his papers. The old silence returned. The same melancholy cry now began to come from half-a-dozen points, and soon the thuds of exploding dynamite joined in, sending little tremors through the villa. Miners on bicycles pedalled past, with here and there a foreman, sitting in motionless dignity on his saddle, a tiny engine driving his back wheel. Each of the cyclists threw a glance at the villa as he passed, seeing through the open door to the figure at the table.

The engineer rose and clapped his hands. Everyone stood up. He collected his papers into a brief-case and said to Mr. Hovich: “Enough for today.” Then he turned to Morgan and Divver and said: “I would be pleased if you two gentlemen would do me the honour of joining my good wife and my humble self for dinner.”

*

“He strikes me as a formal old bird,” said Divver, “so maybe we’d better wear tuxedos, much as we may despise the idea.”

By the time Morgan had buttoned himself up with guilty fingers he had lost the edges of both his thumb-nails.

Divver was in fine humour. He whistled in his bath, and cracked his wet towel at a fly. Going through the lobby, he made sarcastic remarks about the manager, and when they stepped into the gold elevator he whistled and said it made him feel like a rich canary.

Ahead of them in the dusky passage of the suites walked old Simon, the attendant, carrying a cocktail-tray. He stood back at the door of the Archduke Suite to let them pass. He looked at Morgan with blue eyes that were moist and weary, but perfectly clear.

Nosey old devil! Will she scream when she sees me?

“Entrez!
”
cried the engineer:
“Awn-tray,
mess-yer!”

His face was ruddy from his bath, his hair beautifully white
and neat. He wore a tuxedo with a red ribbon in one buttonhole, a civil award from the Rumanian Government.
“Chérie,”
he said, “let me present, on my left, Mr. Max Divver; on my right, Mr. James Morgan. My wife, Harriet.”

She was as fresh and nifty as a lambkin. She looked so pretty in her
dirndl
that he forgot her scurrilous hair and saw nothing but her eyes, her white teeth and her soft neck. She showed no wish to scream. “We see so few Americans,” she said, pressing their hands.

“We see them but we don’t know them,” said her husband.

“I hardly know why. It’s always such a pleasure.”

“It takes a man back to the Old Country.”

“It’s a relief from broken English, too.”

Their words were the echoes of mates, the unison of the paired on the entry of strangers; so evocative of harmony grown out of two bodies incessantly passing and repassing, avoiding collisions, furthering tact, as to convince even one who knows better that here at last is an example of the supreme human achievement, the true marital jointure that should be revered and idolized—even though, with the strangers gone or become such close friends as to make a show of unity unnecessary, revenge and mutual cruelty spring into use again, and show most of the harmony to have been an illusion of etiquette. Morgan felt this sense of union and believed at once that it would be too strong for him: Harriet, coolly pressing his hand, was as far away from him as any other woman. But in the middle of his depression and jealousy he found himself thinking that their echoing words had been true, and accurately expressed their loneliness: pity had not been in his thoughts when he thought of them before, and he was upset by its intrusion. The autocratic, pompous figure, seated in his headquarters imposing whatever mood appealed to him at the moment; the childish, curly specimen skipping down Bread Street—apart, each was despicable; together, both were elevated. As he
took his cocktail from Simon’s silver tray he felt thoroughly ashamed of his intrusion into their united unhappiness.