A Fable

The aide paid no attention whatever. He strode to the window and thrust his whole upper body out as he reached for the outswung casement and began to swing it in. Then he stopped. He said in French, not loud, in a sort of rapt amazement, dispassionate and momentary: ‘It looks like a crowd at a race track waiting for the two-sou window to open—if they have such. No, they look like they are watching a burning pawnshop.’

‘Leave it open,’ the old general said in English. The aide paused again, the casement half closed. He turned his head and said in English too, perfectly, with no accent whatever, not even of Oxford, not even of Beacon Hill:

‘Why not have them inside and be done with it? They cant hear what’s going on out there.’

This time the old general spoke French. ‘They dont want to know,’ he said. ‘They want only to suffer. Leave it open.’

‘Yes sir,’ the aide said in French. He flung the casement out again and turned. As he did so one leaf of the double doors in the opposite wall opened. It opened exactly six inches, by no visible means, and stopped. The aide didn’t even glance toward it. He came on into the room, saying in that perfect accentless English, ‘Dinner, gentlemen,’ as both leaves of the door slid back.

The old general rose when the two other generals did but that was all. When the doors closed behind the last aide, he was already seated again. Then he pushed the closed folder further aside and folded the spectacles into their worn case and buttoned the case into one of his upper tunic pockets, and alone now in the vast splendid room from which even the city’s tumult and anguish was fading as the afternoon light died from the ceiling, motionless in the chair whose high carven back topped him like the back of a throne, his hands hidden below the rich tremendous table which concealed most of the rest of him too and apparently not only immobile but immobilised beneath the mass and glitter of his braid and stars and buttons, he resembled a boy, a child, crouching amid the golden debris of the tomb not of a knight or bishop ravished in darkness but (perhaps the mummy itself) of a sultan or pharaoh violated by Christians in broad afternoon.

Then the same leaf of the double door opened again, exactly as before, for exactly six inches and no hand to show for it and making only the slightest of sounds, and even then giving the impression that if it had wanted to, it could have made none and that what it did make was only the absolute minimum to be audible at all, opening for that six inches and then moving no more until the old general said: ‘Yes, my child.’ Then it began to close, making no sound at all now that sound was no longer necessary, moving on half the distance back to closure with its fellow leaf when it stopped again and with no pause began to open again, still noiseless but quite fast now, so fast that it had opened a good eighteen inches and in another instant who or whatever moved it would of necessity reveal, expose him or itself, before the old general could or did speak. ‘No,’ he said. The door stopped. It didn’t close, it just quit moving at all and seemed to hang like a wheel at balance with neither top nor bottom, hanging so until the old general spoke again: ‘Leave them open.’