It should be noted that, after their journeys, the subjects of “transportation” were smeared with a reddish liquid that stained their clothing, for no ascertainable reason. This was the only inconvenience of these otherwise harmless adventures. After about two months they ceased, to be followed by a new and still stranger series which began with the famous episode of the “Two Couples.”
THE “TWO COUPLES” EPISODE
The first of the two famous couples was a French one, living in a small house close to Paris, in Neuilly. The husband, Jacques Martin, was on the teaching staff of the Lycée Pasteur, a sporting and scholarly young man, and the author of a remarkable biographical study on Paul Morand. He and his wife had four children. On July 3, toward midnight, Mme. Martin had just fallen asleep when she heard that steamlike whistling which we have already mentioned, felt a slight shaking, and had the impression of being very rapidly raised into the air. Opening her eyes, she was stupefied to see that the pale light of the moon was flooding her room, a whole wall of which had vanished, that she was lying on the edge of a bed cut in two, and that on her left hand, where her husband had been lying a few second before, there was a bottomless gulf, above which the stars were glittering. She flung herself in terror toward the still solid edge of the bed, and was amazed (and at the same time reassured) to find that it did not wobble, although it was left with only two legs. Mme. Martin felt that she was rising no higher, but was being moved very fast in a straight line; then she was made aware, by a feeling in the heart like that which one has in a lift descending too quickly, that she was dropping. Imagining that her fall would end with a crash, she had already closed her eyes in anticipation of the final shock. But it was gentle and elastic, and when she looked around her, she could see nothing. The room was dark. Her own narrative continues:
“I put out my arm; everything was solid. The abyss had apparently closed up again. I called my husband’s name, thinking that I had been passing through a nightmare and feeling anxious to tell him about it. My groping hand felt a man’s arm, and I heard a strong unknown voice say in English, ‘Oh, my dear, what a fright you gave me!’ I started back and wanted to turn on the light, but I could not find the electric switch. ’What’s wrong?’ said the unknown. He himself turned on a light. We both uttered simultaneous cries. In front of me was a fair-haired young Englishman, with a small short nose, rather shortsighted, and still half asleep, in blue pajamas. Down the middle of the bed ran a crack; sheets, mattress and bolster were all cut in two. There was a difference of three or four inches in the level of the two portions of the bed.
“When my bedfellow had recovered his wits, his demeanor in these difficult circumstances gave me a high opinion of the British race. After a short but very excusable moment of confusion, his correctness was as complete and natural as if we had been in a drawing room. I spoke his language and told him my name. He told me that his was John Graham. The place we were in was Richmond. Looking around, I saw that the whole of one half of my own room had accompanied me; I recognized my window with its cherry-colored curtains, the large photograph of my husband, the small table with books beside my bed, and even my watch on top of my books. The other half, Mr. Graham’s, was unknown to me. On the bedside table there were a portrait of a very pretty woman, photographs of children, some magazines, and a box of cigarettes. John Graham looked at me for a very long time, examining the background against which I had appeared to him, and then said with the utmost seriousness, ‘What are you doing here?’ I explained that I knew nothing about it, and, pointing to the large portrait, I said, “This is my husband.’ Pointing likewise, he answered, “This is my wife.’ She was delightful, and the disturbing thought came to me that she was perhaps at that very moment in the arms of Jacques. ‘Do you suppose,’ I asked him, ‘that half of your house has been transported to France at the same time as half of ours has come here?’ ‘Why?’ he said. He annoyed me. Why, indeed? I knew nothing about it at all.... Because this affair had a sort of natural symmetry of its own.
“ ‘A queer business,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How can it be possible?’ ‘It isn’t possible,’ I said, ‘but it has happened.’
“At this moment cries were heard apparently coming from upstairs, and the same thought struck us: ‘The children?’ John Graham jumped out of bed and ran barefoot toward a door, the door of his half. He opened it, and I could hear cries, the sound of coughing, and then the Englishman’s powerful voice mingling oaths with words of comfort. I made haste to rise, and looked in the mirror. My face looked just as usual. I then noticed that my nightdress was décolleté and looked around for my kimono; but I remembered having hung it in the half of the room which had stayed behind. Standing there in front of the mirror, I heard a pitiable voice behind me.
“The cries in the nursery were redoubled, weeping and appeals mingling with them.
“ ‘Come and help me,’ he said in a beseeching tone.
“ ‘Of course I will . . . but have you got your wife’s dressing gown, and slippers?’
“ ‘Oh, yes, of course. . . . ‘
“Handing me his own dressing gown he showed me the way to the nursery. The children were splendid. I managed to soothe them. It was the youngest, a lovely fair baby, who seemed to be suffering most. I comforted him as best I could, and took his hand; he accepted my presence.
“In this way we spent a couple of hours in that room, both in a state of mental anguish, he thinking of his wife, and I of my husband.
“I asked if we could not telephone to the police. He tried, and found that his telephone had been cut off; his radio aerial had also been cut; the house must have been looking extremely odd. When dawn appeared, Mr. Graham went out. The children had fallen asleep. In a few minutes he returned for me, saying that really the front of the house was well worth looking at. And it was! The unknown contriver of this miracle had evidently wanted to pick two houses of the same height divided in the same way, and he had succeeded; but the styles were so different that the combined effect took one’s breath away. Our house at Neuilly was of brick, very plain, its tall windows framed with stone; the English house was a small black and white cottage, with wide bay windows. The juxtaposition of these two utterly different halves formed a most ludicrous ensemble—like a harlequin of Picasso’s.
“I urged Mr. Graham to put on his clothes and send off a telegram to France to find out what had happened to his wife. He told me that the telegraph office did not open till eight o’clock. He was a stolid creature, apparently incapable of conceiving that in such peculiar circumstances one could infringe on regulations and awaken the telegraph clerk. I shook him energetically, but in vain. All I could get out of him was ‘It only opens at eight.’ In the end, about seven o’clock, just when he was going out, we saw a policeman arriving. He was gazing at the house in amazement, and had brought a telegram from the head of the Paris police, asking if I was there and announcing that Mrs. John Graham was safe and sound at Neuilly.”