“How badly people dress, Ferdinand!”.. That’s what struck him.. “Undertakers’ assistants!.. a lot of undertakers’ assistants!.. look at the way they walk! how sinister-looking!
.. Do you mean to tell me that these people are going to win the war?.. ah! tell me another! You’re joking! No! Crying! But they won’t win anything at all! They’re already burying themselves!.. They’re through!.. They’re already dressed in black! They’re done for! Funerals! but they’ll have to be burned!.. have to be incinerated! I’m telling you!.. Bombs! They stink! All of them! Fit for the charnel house!”
A look of disgust!
"Worthless people!.. Clouds of cockroaches! ”
And I who don’t like anyone talking to me about bombs, fire, burning! Ah! take it easy! I cut him short..
“You talk too much, Monsieur Sosthene!.. It seems to me you don’t listen to anything! Come over here, dear Master!”
I drag him into a doorway, he’s got to listen to me, by God! the damned windbag!.. He’s not the only one who’s interesting!
"They’re looking for me!.. You hear me?.. They’re looking for me!.. Monsieur Sosthene!”
I let him have it straight!
"I’m wanted, you understand?.. they’re after me, dear Master!.. Monsieur China! You understand me now? I’m a murderer!.. A murderer! I’ve got to get away!.. They’re searching for me!”
“You?.. Oh! Searching for you?”
Ah! He bursts out laughing! Ah! It’s just too funny! Ah! that’s a good one!.. a real good one! He’s choking with laughter.
“But you’re drunk, young man! That’s the word' Raving drunk!.. A poet! a poet! You’re drunk!.. That’s your lookout! your lookout!”
That’s all he has to say.
"But I haven’t drunk anything!.. haven’t eaten everything!”
I protest! He’s the one who’s raving!
"All the more reason!.. All the more reason!.. Listen to me!”
Now he starts dragging me. He doesn’t want to stay in the doorway. As soon as we get outside he speeds up.. He’s tearing along in his cassock. big rush!.. the whole Strand.. Charing… We race along Villiers Street down below the station. the street that goes down to the Thames. Charing Cross, the station right above it.. the string of pubs… the whole slope. full of low dives.. Ginger. Three Swans.. Star.. Wellington. side by side, each bar an arcade… He heads for the Singapore, the saloon just in front of the tunnel… I still see the place, curlicue mosaics. festoons all over the ceiling. luminous artificial flowers. and the big player piano, a cyclone earthquake, that never stopped day or night, booming all through the street from Regent, Strand, to the bank of the river, it jounced the drinkers, shaking them up at all the bars, making them puke like crashing cymbals, with big hiccups, spin around dancing, falling over, oop! they’re gone, tearing off, wobble, crazy head to foot, from one sidewalk to the other! It’s sticky all along, gooey, sooty, the whole pavement slippery black.. you can’t see a thing, the drunk disappears in the fog. The mists from the river choke and swallow things… You can’t even see in the saloon, need brilliant lights… the bar’s lit by electric. lights shining under the bottles. Have to light up everything!.. Even the waitresses have bulbs, they’ve got little lamps in their hair.. You can see Sosthene’s a regular customer.. He waves hello to everyone..
They sit him down at a table right under the biggest Chandelier. Ah! he starts scowling. Something’s wrong..
"Be careful! the waitress!”
More suspicions.
"Two sodas, Beauty!” he orders.
"Tuppence! ” she answers.
"Lend me the two pennies!”.. Luckily I’ve got ’em!
He changes the conversation.
"I talk English like a pig!.. I grant you, you may say it! I agree!.. I can’t manage to pronounce their the or thou!'
He reminds me of Cascade when it comes to English, he was mulish about the too!
"And yet, young man, it’s not from lack of habit! It’s almost thirty-five years that I’ve been associating with the English!. And with all kinds, let me tell you!.. The good! the awful! the best! the rich! the well-to-do! the gay! the sad! the nabobs! the bums! the whole shebang!. beneath all skies! latitudes! They all say the\ I can guarantee you! In India! In China! in Malaya! Right here!.. The hell with it! I give up! I give up!.. No thou!.. No the… I think in French, I pronounce in French! French is all I talk!.. Got to take me as I am! That’s what I’m like! Nothing to be done about it!.. I’ll never learn their language!.. It’s angry with me!.. That’s it!.. It’s angry with me!.. It’s not the same with Hindustani! Ah! that’s different! I worship it! it’s my mother tongue! That’s another matter! It’s an ancestor… I wish you could hear me!.. I’m Sanskrit in my heart! in my fiber!.. There I’m initiated!.. That’s another matter! The way I talk Hindustani! Intimately!”
And then he leans over to my ear confidentially though he brays like a donkey because of the piano.. You could probably have heard him from the street!.. The piano was playing the Merry Widow Waltz.. cymbals and storm! the whole thunder! It really was the popular tune!.. It was hard to understand what he was confiding, he was trying to outyell the piano… it was a struggle..
"Water alone is propitious, young man!.. You stare at me… I amaze you!.. Propitious, I’ll have you understand!.. Propitious to the great call of the waves!.. Drink lots of water!.. Do as I do!.. We were both born of Amphitrite! Therefore, fish! To be sure, fish! Ah! ah that’s it! Fish and horsemen alike!.. Assuredly! Dolphin! Monsieur Ferdinand! Certainly dolphins!”
He was drunk.
"Dolphins of the mountains!.. Dolphins of the purple clouds!.. dolphins of Tibet!.. I see you!.. look! I see you!”
I was making him dreamy.. visioning..
"Would you go? imagine! Would you go riding the dolphins of the beery sea? The elf of the sticky7 stout?”
He stops.
"Stout!” he orders. "Waitress, two beers! Just between us, isn’t it horrible?”
He continues…
"What a heresy! an aberrant monster!”
He’s taking it to heart.
"Don’t let anything astonish you!.. Everything bogs down, rots in this country because of the heavy stout! That’s the downright truth!.. Hogwash and muck!.. But on the other hand, you see all the water-drinkers galloping everywhere, all around the universe! Take my word for it! I assure you! Just look at me, Sosth£ne! A Knight of the Waves! five and six times around the world! A water-drinker! your humble servant!”
"Waitress! another one! ”
The waitress didn’t bring anything at all, she knew him.. she let him rant.
"No more joking!.. Be careful! No blundering! Washing is another matter! I rarely wash! ”
I suspected so.
"Let me explain… Achille Norbert, for example, washed himself only twice in the course of his entire existence and he lived 102 years! You’ll read about it in his letters! I’ve had them bound with his arms! Master of the King’s Artillery! Let me explain!.. Without any shame! Water? Hmph! Inside? Fine! Wonderful! Outside? No go! That’s a different matter!”
Then another worry starts eating him, another bee in his bonnet! After the way it’s been raining! the awful weather outside.. it’s fogging and raining at the same time! you can’t see three yards away! He’s fed up! he’s going to cry out to the sky! to curse it! he opens the door wide! He addresses the sky!
"Sulphurous and mournful city! City of the wet devil! Demonic city of the weak! but I am strong! Achille! Thank you! ”
The customers are yelling! He closes the door, he comes back to the table.
"All great dreams are born in London, young man! Don't forget it! you don’t know London! From the mirror of its gray waters!.. way down there at the mercy of its river.. Ah! that’s a fact! Didn’t you know that?.. Isn’t there anything you know? The admirable Vega declares it quite expressly! Canto 14! Verse 9-. The Charm!”