On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (12 page)

I know very well what the cabman did. He looked through the trap-door
in the top of the roof to see if I had left anything behind. It was
in Vigo Street, at the corner, that the fate struck. He looked and
saw a sheet or two of paper—something of no value. He crumpled it up
and threw it away, and it joined the company which men have not been
thought worthy to know. It went to join Calvus and the dreadful books
of the Sibyl, and those charred leaves which were found on the floor
where Chatterton lay dead.

I went three times to Scotland Yard, allowing long intervals and
torturing myself with hope. Three times my hands thought to hold it,
and three times they closed on nothingness. A policeman then told me
that cabmen very rarely brought him written things, but rather
sticks, gloves, rings, purses, parcels, umbrellas, and the crushed
hats of drunken men, not often verse or prose; and I abandoned my
quest.

There are some reading this who may think me a trifle too fond and
may doubt the great glory to which I testify here. They will
remember how singularly the things we no longer possess rise upon
the imagination and enlarge themselves, and they will quote that
pathetic error whereby the dead become much dearer to us when we can
no longer smile into their faces or do them the good we desire. They
will suggest (most tenderly) that loss and the enchantment of memory
have lent a thought too much of radiance and of harmony to what was
certainly a noble creation of the mind, but still human and shot
with error.

To such a criticism I cannot reply, I have no longer, alas! the best
of replies, the Thing Itself, the Achievement: and not having that I
have nothing. I am without weapons. Who shall convince of
personality, of beauty, or of holiness, unless they be seen and
felt? So it is with letters, and if I am not believed—or even if I
am—it is of little moment, for the beloved object is rapt away.

Its matter—if one can say that anything so manifold and exalted had
a mere subject—its matter was the effect of the piercing of the
Suez Canal upon coastwise trade in the Mediterranean, but it is
profane to bring before the general gaze a title which can tell the
world nothing of the iridescence and vitality it has lost.

I will not console myself with the uncertain guess that things
perished are in some way recoverable beyond the stars, nor hope to
see and read again the artistry and the result whose loss I have
mourned in these lines; but if, as the wisest men imagine, there is
a place of repose for whatever most deserves it among the shades,
there either I or others worthier may read what will never be read
by living eyes or praised by living lips again. It may be so. But
the loss alone is certain.

There was once a man called Mahmoud. He had other names, such as
Ali, Akbar, and Shmaeil, and so forth, with which I will not trouble
you, because in very short stories it is important not to confuse
the mind. I have been assured of this by many authorities, some of
whom make a great deal of money by short stories, and all of whom
know a great deal about the way in which they ought to be written.

Now I come to think of it, I very much doubt whether this is a short
story at all, for it has no plot so far and I do not see any plot
developing. No matter. The thing is to say what one has to say
humbly but fully. Providence will look after the rest.

So, as I was saying, there was a man called Mahmoud. He lived in a
country entirely made of sand. There were hills which on the maps
were called mountains, but when you came to look at them they were
only a lot more sand, and there was nothing about them except an
aspect of sand heaped up. You may say, "How, then, did Mahmoud build
a house?" He did not. He lived in a tent. "But," you continue, "what
did he do about drinking?" Well, it was Mahmoud's habit to go to a
place where he knew that by scratching a little he would find bad
water, and there he would scratch a little and find it, and, being
an abstemious man, he needed but a drop.

The sun in Mahmoud's country was extremely hot. It stood right up
above one's head and looked like the little thing that you get in
the focus of a burning glass. The sun made it almost impossible to
move, except in the early morning or at evening, and even during the
night it was not particularly cool. It never rained in this place.

There were no rivers and no trees. There was no grass, and the only
animal was a camel. The camel was content to eat a kind of scrub
that grew here and there on the sand, and it drank the little water
Mahmoud could afford it, and was permanently happy. So was Mahmoud.
Beneath him the sand sloped down until it met the sea, which was
tepid on account of the great heat, and in which were a lot of fish,
pearls, and other things. Every now and then Mahmoud would force a
son or domestic of his to go down and hoick out a pearl, and this
pearl he would exchange for something that he absolutely needed,
such as a new tent or a new camel, and then he went on living the
way he had been living before.

Now, one day there came to this part of the world a man called
Smith. He was dressed as you and I are, in trousers and a coat and
boots, and he had a billycock hat on. He had a foolish, anxious
face. He did not keep his word particularly; and he was exceedingly
fond of money. He had spent most of his life accumulating all sorts
of wealth in a great bag, and he landed with this bag in Mahmoud's
country, and Mahmoud was as polite to him as the heat would allow.
Then Mahmoud said to him:

"You appear to be a very rich man."

And Smith said:

"I am," and opened his bag and showed a great quantity of things. So
Mahmoud was pleased and astonished, and fussed a good deal
considering the climate, and got quite a quantity of pearls out of
the sea, and gave them to Smith, who let him have a gun, but a bad
one; and he, Smith, retained a good rifle. Then Smith sat down and
waited for about six months, living on the provisions he had brought
in his bag, until Mahmoud said to him:

"What have you come to do here?"

And Smith said:

"Why, to tell you the honest truth, I have come to protect you."

So Mahmoud thought a long time, smoking a pipe, because he did not
understand a word of what Smith had said. Then Mahmoud said:

"All right, protect away," and after that there was a silence for
about another six months, and nothing had happened.

Mahmoud did not mind being protected, because it made no difference
to him, and after a certain time he had got all he wanted out of
Smith, and was tired of bothering about the pearls. So he and Smith
just lived side by side doing nothing in particular, except that
Smith went on protecting and that Mahmoud went on being protected.
But while Mahmoud was perfectly content to be protected till
Doomsday, being an easy-going kind of fellow, Smith was more and
more put out. He was a trifle irritable by nature. The climate did
not suit him. He drank beer and whisky and other things quite
dangerous under such a sun, and he came out all over like the
measles. He tried to pass the time riding on a camel. At first he
thought it great sport, but after a little he got tired of that
also. He began to write poetry, all about Mahmoud, and as Mahmoud
could not read it did not much matter. Then he wrote poetry about
himself, making out Mahmoud to be excessively fond of him, and this
poetry he read to himself, and it calmed him; but as Mahmoud did not
know about this poetry, Smith got bored with it, and, his irritation
increasing, he wrote more poetry, showing Mahmoud to be a villain
and a serf, and showing himself, Smith, to be under a divine
mission.

Now, just when things had come to this unpleasant state Mahmoud got
up and shook himself and began skipping and dancing outside the door
of his tent and running round and round it very fast, and waving his
hands in the air, and shouting incongruous things.

Smith was exceedingly annoyed by this. He had never gone on like
that himself, and he did not see why Mahmoud should. But Mahmoud had
lived there a good deal longer than Smith had, and he knew that it
was absolutely necessary. There were stories of people in the past
who had felt inclined to go on like this and had restrained
themselves with terrible consequences. So Mahmoud went on worse than
ever, running as fast as he could out into the sand, shouting,
leaping into the air, and then running back again as fast as he
could, and firing off his gun and calling upon his god.

Smith, whose nerves were at the last stretch, asked Mahmoud savagely
what he was about. To this Mahmoud gave no reply, save to twirl
round rapidly upon one foot and to fall down foaming at the mouth.
Smith, therefore, losing all patience, said to Mahmoud:

"If you do not stop I will shoot you by way of protecting you
against yourself."

Mahmoud did not know what the word protected meant, but he
understood the word shoot, and shouting with joy, he blew off
Smith's hat with his gun, and said:

"A fight! a fight!"

For he loved fighting when he was in this mood, while Smith detested
it.

Smith, however, remembered that he had come there to protect
Mahmoud; he set his teeth, aimed with his rifle, fired at Mahmoud,
and missed.

Mahmoud was so surprised at this that he ran at Smith, and rolled
him over and over on the ground. Then they unclenched, both very
much out of breath, and Smith said:

"Will you or will you not be protected?"

Mahmoud said he should be delighted. Moreover, he said that he had
given his word that he would be protected, and that he was not a man
to break his word.

After that he took Smith by the hand and shook it up and down for
about five minutes, until Smith was grievously put out.

When they were friends again. Smith said to Mahmoud:

"Will you not go down into the sea and get me some more pearls?"

"No," said Mahmoud, "I am always very exhausted after these
attacks."

Then Smith sat down by the seashore and began to cry, thinking of
his home and of the green trees and of the North, and he wrote
another poem about the burden that he had borne, and of what a great
man he was and how he went all over the world protecting people, and
how brave he was, and how Mahmoud also was very brave, but how he
was much braver than Mahmoud. Then he said:

"Mahmoud, I am going away back to my distant home, unless you will
get me more pearls."

But Mahmoud said:

"I cannot get you any more pearls because it is too hot, and if only
you will stop you can go on doing some protecting, which, upon my
soul, I do like better than anything in the world."

And even as he said this he began jumping about and shouting strange
things and waving his gun, and Smith at once went away.

Then Mahmoud sat down sadly by the sea, and thought of how Smith had
protected him, and how now all that was passed and the old
monotonous life would begin again. But Smith went home, and all his
neighbours asked how it was that he protected so well, and he wrote
a book to enlighten them, called
How I Protected Mahmoud
.
Then all his neighbours read this book and went out in a great boat
to do something of the same kind. And Smith could not refrain from
smiling.

Mahmoud, however, by his lonely shore, regretted more and more this
episode in his dull life, and he wept when he remembered the
fantastic Smith, who had such an enormous number of things in his
bag and who had protected him; and he also wrote a poem, which is
rather difficult to understand in connection with the business, but
which to him exactly described it. And the poem went like this;
having no metre and no rhyming, and being sung to three notes and a
quarter in a kind of wail:

"When the jackal and the lion meet it is full moon; it is full moon
and the gazelles are abroad."

"Why are the gazelles abroad when the jackal and the lion meet: when
it is full moon in the desert and there is no wind?"

"There is no wind because the gazelles are abroad, the moon is at
the full, and the lion and the jackal are together."

"Where is he that protected me and where is the great battle and the
shouts and the feasting afterwards, and where is that bag?"

"But we dwell in the desert always, and men do not visit us, and the
lion and the jackal have met, and it is full moon, O gazelles!"

Mahmoud was so pleased with this song that he wrote it down, a thing
he only did with one song out of several thousands, for he wrote
with difficulty, but I think it a most ridiculous song, and I far
prefer Smith's, though you would never know it had to do with the
same business.

One day Peter and Paul—I knew them both, the dear fellows: Peter
perhaps a trifle wild, Paul a little priggish, but that is no matter
—one day, I say, Peter and Paul (who lived together in rooms off
Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, a very delightful spot) were talking
over their mutual affairs.

"My dear Paul," said Peter, "I wish I could persuade you to this
expenditure. It will be to our mutual advantage. Come now, you have
ten thousand a year of your own and I with great difficulty earn a
hundred; it is surprising that you should make the fuss you do.
Besides which you well know that this feeding off packing-cases is
irksome; we really need a table and it will but cost ten pounds."

To all this Paul listened doubtfully, pursing up his lips, joining
the tips of his fingers, crossing his legs and playing the solemn
fool generally.

"Peter," said he, "I mislike this scheme of yours. It is a heavy
outlay for a single moment. It would disturb our credit, and yours
especially, for your share would come to five pounds and you would
have to put off paying the Press-Cutting agency to which you
foolishly subscribe. No; there is an infinitely better way than this
crude idea of paying cash down in common. I will lend the whole sum
of ten pounds to our common stock and we will each pay one pound a
year as interest to myself for the loan. I for my part will not
shirk my duty in the matter of this interest and I sincerely trust
you will not shirk yours."