A Fable

‘It’s all right,’ the Iowan said. ‘That’s how I thought it would look.’) to where an American military policeman standing beside a sort of basement areaway was signalling them with a flashlight. The car shot up beside him and stopped. He opened the door, though since the Iowan was now engaged in trying to refold his map, the American private in the front seat was the first to get out. His name was Buchwald. His grandfather had been rabbi of a Minsk synagogue until a Cossack sergeant beat his brains out with the shod hooves of a horse. His father was a tailor; he himself was born on the fourth floor of a walk-up, cold-water Brooklyn tenement. Within two years after the passage of the American prohibition law, with nothing in his bare hands but a converted army-surplus Lewis machine gun, he himself was to become czar of a million-dollar empire covering the entire Atlantic coast from Canada to whatever Florida cove or sandspit they were using that night. He had pale, almost colorless eyes; he was hard and slender too now though one day a few months less than ten years from now, lying in his ten-thousand-dollar casket banked with half that much more in cut flowers, he would look plump, almost fat. The military policeman leaned into the back of the car.

‘Come on, come on,’ he said. The Iowan emerged, carrying the clumsily-folded map in one hand and slapping at his pocket with the other. He feinted past Buchwald like a football half-back and darted to the front of the car and held the map into the light of one of the headlamps, still slapping at his pocket.

‘Durn!’ he said. ‘I’ve lost my pencil.’ The third American private was now out of the car. He was a Negro, of a complete and unrelieved black. He emerged with a sort of ballet dancer elegance, not mincing, not foppish, not maidenly but rather at once masculine and girlish or perhaps better, epicene, and stood not quite studied while the Iowan spun and feinted this time through all three of them—Buchwald, the policeman, and the Negro—and carrying his now rapidly disintegrating map plunged his upper body back into the car, saying to the policeman: ‘Lend me your flashlight. I must have dropped it on the floor.’

‘Sweet crap,’ Buchwald said. ‘Come on.’

‘It’s my pencil,’ the Iowan said. ‘I had it at that last big town we passed—what was the name of it?’

‘I can call a sergeant,’ the policeman said. ‘Am I going to have to?’

‘Nah,’ Buchwald said. He said to the Iowan: ‘Come on. They’ve probably got a pencil inside. They can read and write here too.’ The Iowan backed out of the car and stood up. He began to refold his map. Following the policeman, they crossed to the areaway and descended into it, the Iowan following with his eyes the building’s soaring upward swoop.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It sure does.’ They descended steps, through a door; they were in a narrow stone passage; the policeman opened a door and they entered an anteroom; the policeman closed the door behind them. The room contained a cot, a desk, a telephone, a chair. The Iowan went to the desk and began to shift the papers on it.

‘You can remember you were here without having to check it off, cant you?’ Buchwald said.

‘It aint for me,’ the Iowan said, tumbling the papers through. ‘It’s for the girl I’m engaged to. I promised her——’

‘Does she like pigs too?’ Buchwald said.

‘—what?’ the Iowan said. He stopped and turned his head; still half stooped over the desk, he gave Buchwald his mild open reliant and alarmless look. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with pigs?’

‘Okay,’ Buchwald said. ‘So you promised her.’

‘That’s right,’ the Iowan said. ‘When we found out I was coming to France I promised to take a map and mark off on it all the places I went to, especially the ones you always hear about, like Paris. I got Blois, and Brest, and I’ll get Paris for volunteering for this, and now I’m even going to have Chaulnesmont, the Grand Headquarters of the whole shebang as soon as I can find a pencil.’ He began to search the desk again.

‘What you going to do with it?’ Buchwald said. ‘The map. When you get it back home?’

‘Frame it and hang it on the wall,’ the Iowan said. ‘What did you think I was going to do with it?’

‘Are you sure you’re going to want this one marked on it?’ Buchwald said.

‘What?’ the Iowan said. Then he said, ‘Why?’

‘Dont you know what you volunteered for?’ Buchwald said.

‘Sure,’ the Iowan said. ‘For a chance to visit Chaulnesmont.’

‘I mean, didn’t anybody tell you what you were going to do here?’ Buchwald said.