He’s talking to me.
"Let me have a look at your sweet little papers! May I?”
I take mine out. He unfolds them, hands them back to me.. He frowns..
"But you’re not in velvet either, Monsieur Jinx! They came looking for you, too!. All right. Let me explain!. They want you at the Consulate!.. Sure! Sure!.. You can see why!”
"Have you seen the posters?. You who read all the Mirrors.. That’s all they’re talking about at Berlemont’s. All men in the class of 1912. They’re all being called back!.. rejected or not!.. And what about you, my dear Clodovitz? Dear doctor! dear scientist!”
He spots him.
"Let me have a look at your rags!.. Ah! I’ve already seen them, of course! Ah! but so long ago that’s all!.. I miss them! I miss them!. They were so funny two years ago!. Do you still have them with you? Fine! You're hatching them, so to speak!. They’ve made little ones! Clodovitz!”
Clodovitz dives down, his linings were full of them, some a bit genuine. some all fake!. Erasures everywhere. his passports were a scream! flim-flams! jokes! He himself admitted it!
"They’re too scratched up, that’s all!”
He explained the reason..
"Well, fatheads! You’re getting along all right! You’re going to be taught another tune! Artists! that’s a fact! But as for the fake papers!.. Ah! Mother of God! my ass could do better!.. Some people think that’s going some! Proof? Clients! amateurs and serious ones!.. Take Matthew, he wants you! There’s the amateur! He’s been asking for you everywhere!.. He’s all worked up about your fake papers! He came back to see me day before yesterday!. on purpose!.. just for that! I welcomed him in! ’Inspector!’ I said to him just like that. I’m not shy. ‘You look preoccupied!’ I took the liberty of saying. I know he’s as phony as a rat. and when he comes in good humor it’s even worse!. It’s a trap!.. I go straight to the point… I take out the Calva… He sips it. he sits down. That’s all!.. Still not a word. I want him to warm up!.. I take out the cognac. and then the big glasses!.. It’s coming along!.. I see his head!.. He says 'Myum! Myum!’ He sucks his tongue!. Hell, I’m in a hurry!. I look as if I’m trying to find the corkscrew!. the little one in my pocket.. I rummage around!.. I search in my pockets!.. all just an act!.. I take out a handful of pound notes. bang! like that! on the table!. I get up.. I start going. ’I’m going to take a leak!’ I say. I come back.. they’re not there!.. The conversation gets easier right away!. It loosens up!. There’s confidence.. A lot more ease!.. Ah! I’d done the right thing! He had a thing or two to tell me!.. I might have thought he wanted to bluff me!.. But he shows me his warrants. It was a serious matter. It concerns you, and in detail!. Better get a load of what I say!
You, Jinx, he wants to see you again. The Consulate’s asking for your certificate. right away!. and fast!. it’s getting hot!.. And you, Clodo, it’s the Home Service, they’re fed up with your mug. And that makes two!. you’ve got to go back to Folkestone!.. to the Polack quarantine!.. that’s where you belong and not elsewhere!. And you, Monsieur du Boro, who are so delicate! It’s the 'Scots’ who want you. and the Yard besides and right away!. They’re disgusted the way you act up!. That’s the way they talk! You’ve got to get your junk and beat it within five days!.. They don’t want to see you again!. If not, you’ll get it in the balls.. and overalls with a number on them!. maybe a touch of the cat too!.. That’s the news!”
I hoped that Cascade was stringing us along, that he was handing us a line like that just to throw a scare into us.. just to give us an idea of his connections, all the same it wasn’t just talk!. There must have been some danger. no doubt the cops were nervous, and greedy and shrewd. Ah! but we mustn’t let ourselves be taken in!. Both of us started getting excited too!.. We squawked about violating our rights!.. unheard-of injustice!.. that you could see the streets of London full of worse-looking bums than us. much more suspicious and dirty! hoodlums!. terrors!. out and out apaches!
.. that there was no name for such downright unjust dishonesty!
And then we had to stomach the fact that probably he was the one who was squealing to the cops.. that he was getting rid of us treacherously!.. We weren’t feeling so hilarious!.. It’s true that he looked pleased, as if he were wiping his hands of us!.. Ah! it was fishy!
"You’re jealous, that’s all! Admit it!”
That’s what we said.. and then his whole pack of nonsense! that he seemed to be getting a kick out of the jam we were in! That he seemed to be damned cynical! That he didn’t have much honor!
Oh! my, oh my! the way he shot back!
"Me! you fags! me listen to that?”
He was choking.
"They’d have been whipped to death! Croaked in jail! sausage meat! if I hadn’t greased Matthew only yesterday! They keep ruining me!. And I keep saving their lives!. They’re meat for the police and in cahoots! That’s the way they treat me!”
More indignation, he takes out a package of pounds, sterling and tens.. only big bills, a whole fortune! He crumples them in his fist. wipes the whole table with them! on purpose in disgust!.. just to show us! He sponges up everything! the liquor spots!
"There! you rats!. Is that what you want?”
He throws them at us like a dishmop. like a red rag..
"Are you satisfied?”
He’s humiliating us.
"No, Cascade. No!. Look. Just think about it!”
"It’s all thought about, God damn it! Your papers are toilet-paper! They’re recruiting you, they’re locking you up! It’s only natural! It’s all thought out! And they damned well mean it!
.. There’s a war on!.. Ought to hear the way they talk!.. I’m not the only one, you know, who gets ’em sore.. Everything’s getting their goat!. Even dough!. You can shove it down their throats! just like that!.. They’re back again.
They show their teeth again!.. It’s crazy, there’re no more limits!.. ‘There’s a war on!’ all they can blurt out!. The war!.. A fat lot of good it does you! Just a lot of crap! Cop or not!.. Pimp or jerk!. God-damned crazyness! Those who can stay out of it don’t stay out! You get rough with them? they’re not satisfied! They don’t know what they want!. Shit!
No more good manners! Lousiness by the yard!”
Ah! all the same he was just kidding!.. You could see he was teasing.. that he was stringing us along… A bogeyman! A natural-born rascal!
In spite of everything, I wasn’t sure… I only had a half hard-on!.. Boro was grinning green around the gills.. Clodo couldn’t find his eyes the way he was goggling behind his glasses! he was so jittery that his glass kept jumping out of his hands!.. all because of the terror of being kicked out of London! Damn it all! It wasn’t a dream!.. We all had good reasons for staying in London! serious and personal ones!.. It made Boro stammer!
‘‘You?.. You?.. think so, Cascade?”
‘‘I don’t think so.. It’s as if I were there! ”
It was a horrible kind of joke..
Around us the customers weren’t a bit worried.. They were taking advantage of the windfall, they were having a free drink! Cascade was treating!.. They didn’t understand the reasons, why we were getting so excited!.. Why we were so worked up about the posters! about cops’ gossip!.. why we were on pins and needles!.. You couldn’t explain it to them.. we kept repeating that there was a war on. The war, that didn’t bother them! They’d never have signed up. They were only good for the docks! The rest of it was none of their business…
Load.. unload!.. that was all! Period! and that’s that!..
Dockers! Dockers! That was all!.. Commercial or war goods.. No other job! That was what their destiny was like!.. They wouldn’t have changed it for anything in the world!.. They seemed like vagrants, pigs, drunks, pitiful, dazed, in rags, yet we were the real bums after all! The real outcasts of circumstance! Suckers and cannon fodder! Nobody was asking the English guys for anything.. The army? out of the question!.. All they had to do was continue sordid and comfortable, lugging their load! and that was all! Gentlemen, to the hold! No one asked them for anything. Us, that was a horse of a different color! We were on the ‘‘French-frog” lists marked riff-raff everywhere! Men of original sin! born for battle! numbered clowns the whole carcass! Donkeys, scrap iron! Pretty bad! Bad I say!.. A fellow’s only five liters of blood!