A Fable

‘All right,’ Picklock said. ‘Get it inside. One of you get the hammer out of the lorry.’ Luckily their orders had been not to drive the nails home but merely to secure the lid temporarily (apparently the body was to be transferred to something a little more elegant or anyway commensurate with its purpose when it reached Paris) so they could draw them without difficulty. Which they did and removed the lid and then recoiled from the thin burst, gout of odor which rushed up at them almost visibly, like thin smoke—one last faint thin valedictory of corruption and mortality, as if the corpse itself had hoarded it for three years against this moment or any similar one with the gleeful demonic sentience of a small boy. Then the old woman returned, clasping two bottles against her breast, still running or at least trotting, panting now, shaking, almost as though from physical exhaustion because she couldn’t even climb the steps when she reached the door, so that two of them dropped to the ground and lifted her bodily into the carriage. A third one took the bottles from her, though she didn’t seem to notice it. For a second or so she couldn’t even seem to see the coffin. Then she saw it and half knelt half collapsed at the head of it and turned the tarpaulin back from what had been a face. They—the speaker—had been right; she could have told nothing from the face because it was no longer man. Then they knew that she was not even looking at it: just kneeling there, one hand resting on what had been the face and the other caressing what remained of its hair. She said:

‘Yes. Yes. This is Theodule. This is my son.’ Suddenly she rose, strongly now, and faced them, pressing back against the coffin, looking rapidly from face to face until she found Picklock; her voice was calm and strong too. ‘I must have him.’

‘You said just to look at him,’ Picklock said.

‘He is my son. He must go home. I have money. I will buy you a hundred bottles of brandy. Or the money itself, if you want it.’

‘How much will you give?’ Picklock said. She didn’t even hesitate. She handed him the unopened reticule.

‘Count it yourself,’ she said.

‘But how are you going to get it—him away from here? You cant carry it.’

‘I have a horse and cart. It’s been behind the station yonder ever since we heard yesterday what you were coming for.’

‘Heard how?’ Picklock said. ‘This is official business.’

‘Does that matter?’ she said, almost impatiently. ‘Count it.’

But Picklock didn’t open the reticule yet. He turned to Morache. ‘Go with her and get the cart. Bring it up to the window on the other side. Make it snappy. Landry’ll be back any minute now.’ It didn’t take long. They got the window up; almost immediately Morache brought the cart up, the big farm-horse going at a heavy and astonished gallop. Morache snatched it to a halt; already the others in the carriage had the sheeted body balanced on the window sill. Morache handed the lines to the old woman on the seat beside him and vaulted over the seat and snatched the body down into the cart and vaulted to the ground beside it; at that moment Picklock inside the carriage tossed the reticule through the window, into the cart.

‘Go on,’ Morache said to the old woman. ‘Get the hell out of here. Quick.’ Then she was gone. Morache re-entered the carriage. ‘How much was it?’ he said to Picklock.

‘I took a hundred francs,’ Picklock said.

‘A hundred francs?’ another said with incredulous amazement.

‘Yes,’ Picklock said. ‘And tomorrow I’ll be ashamed I took even that much. But that will be a bottle apiece.’ He handed the money to the man who had spoken last. ‘Go and get it.’ Then to the others: ‘Get that lid back on. What are you waiting for, anyway: for Landry to help you?’ They replaced the coffin lid and set the nails in the old holes. The absolute minimum of prudence would have dictated or at least suggested a weight of some kind, any kind in the coffin first, but they were not concerned with prudence. The ganymede returned, clasping a frayed wicker basket to his breast; they snatched it from him before he could even get into the carriage, the owner of the corkscrew opening the bottles rapidly as they were passed to him.

‘He said to bring the basket back,’ the ganymede said.