On an Odd Note Read online

  “That was the time when everybody knew all about everything. You remember: Hitler, Goering and Co. were drug fiends and drunkards and lunatics; and there weren’t any real generals in the German Army because Hitler had shot them all and put cocaine addicts and perverts in their places; and how the German Army was mostly propaganda—Goebbels had one crack company of infantry march past a camera and ran the same reel six times over. Even my charwoman used to wake me up in the morning with the impregnability of the Maginot Line and gallant little Belgium. . . . Of course old Bohemund Raymond was a thousand times worse than anybody else, especially since old Lovejoy had put him onto writing that famous series of editorials that always ended: What Are You Going To Do About It?—like Cato’s: Carthage Must Be Destroyed! He was having the time of his life, old Bohemund, prophesying to his heart’s content. We had to cut the juiciest bits; but even what was left took a gloomy, frightening turn. Lord Lovejoy was able to say, ‘I told you so’ later on; but those editorials didn’t make us very popular at the time.

  “And all the while Bohemund was drinking like a drain. He went on steadily till three o’clock in the Pig’s Head; knocked off for a quick sandwich, and was at it again in the Press Club until about an hour before his deadline. He’d just about manage to get to the office and flop into his chair. Then it was marvelous to watch him: he got steady as a rock—couldn’t see an inch in front of him, he was so pickled, but he didn’t have to; he’d snap in a sheet of copy paper and rattle off a thousand words of perfect prose, touch-typing like a conjurer, and staring into space with those big shiny eyes so as to give you the creeps. It would be all over in forty-five minutes. The boy would pick up the copy and Bohemund would fall into a taxi and go home. Well, one day Lord Lovejoy sent him to France to look at the Maginot Line. He locked up his old typewriter Rataplan as usual and gave me the key of the cupboard to hold; and when he was gone, I got this wicked idea of mine. . . .

  “I went to a typewriter mechanic, a pal of mine, and I said to him, ‘Alf, there’s a little job I want you to do for me, just for a lark. Take all the letters off the type-bars on this machine, and put them back all jumbled up. Leave the keys as they are, only mix me up all the letters; so that, for instance, if somebody hits an A, he’ll get a question-mark, and so forth. Only you’ve got to be ready to put that type back exactly as it was before, overnight, at an hour’s notice. There’s a fiver in it for you,’ I said. And so he did. I locked old Rataplan back in her cupboard and waited. Couple of days later Bohemund turns up again in the Pig’s Head, full to the gills with armagnac, and went straight onto gin. He took his key, and when we asked him, ‘What news, Bohemund? What do you know?’ he simply turned round and said, ‘You wait and see!’—nothing more. But his eyes were full of something more dangerous than brandy; I thought: Either he’s drunk himself off his rocker at last or he’s in a bad fever.

  “Now I had to go out of town for the afternoon. I kept thinking about the trick I’d played, and at last I phoned the Press Club to warn him to use some other machine. But he’d left already, having told a few fellows that he was going to astound the world with the greatest prophecy of all time. I buzzed the office: Bohemund had staggered in, got out Rataplan, touch-typed his piece as usual and reeled out, shouting, ‘It is achieved! I’ve done it!’ As soon as I got back to town late that night, I went straight to the office, where there was some little excitement about Bohemund’s copy. . . . When the Editor saw the piece he yelled blue murder for Bohemund, but he was nowhere to be found. It appears that instead of going home he’d gone to the Turkish bath in Jermyn Street, where they had to call the police; seems he wrapped himself in towels and made a veil of a check-loincloth, and stood in the hot room screaming gibberish. When they hauled him out, finally, he said he was the Princess Ayesha, prophesying. They recognized him at the station and didn’t charge him, so he went and slept it off. Meantime I got Alf to fix up the machine again, having, of course, had a duplicate key made for the cupboard; and put it back as Bohemund left it.

  “First thing in the morning Lord Lovejoy phoned him and told him to come around to the office, immediately if not sooner; which he did. Now what was said at that interview I never quite knew, but knowing old Lovejoy I can pretty well guess. So I didn’t feel easy in my mind when I went to the Pig’s Head for a pie at noon; but when Bohemund came in I was absolutely appalled by his face—it was always pale in a creamy kind of way; now it was like curds and whey. The barmaid reached automatically for the gin, but Bohemund said, ‘A ginger-ale, if you please, Miss Broom.’ She nearly dropped the bottle, she was so surprised. He said to me, ‘Morris, I’m on the wagon—I’m on the wagon for life. Look at this.’ And he fished out of his pocket some copy paper, crumpled into a ball. ‘Lovejoy chucked it in my face,’ he said. ‘He threatened to fire me, as usual, but when I saw this stuff, for the first time in my life I could only apologize. I said something must have gone wrong with my typewriter. Then Lovejoy asked me, well, what was this famous leader I had been shouting about? And for the life of me I couldn’t remember a word of it! I went back to look at old Rataplan. Morris—there is nothing wrong with my typewriter! I must have gone out of my mind. Chuck this stuff away, Morris, and promise me you’ll never breathe a word of this to a soul.’

  “I promised, and I kept my word. But Alf squealed in the end and, as Bohemund had prophesied, I was responsible for making a bigger hissing and mockery of him than anyone else in the Street. But before he found out, he didn’t touch a drink for close on a year; so perhaps he was the better for it, after all.”

  “Swindle-sheet” Morris opened a drawer and rummaged in a litter of souvenirs—racing cards, autographed menus, and what not—and took out some crumpled yellow flimsy copy paper. He said, “I didn’t chuck it away; I kept it. I’m funny about mementos. Can you imagine old Lovejoy’s face when he saw this?”

  I took the copy and read:

  Waf iakh er aaumqa Ibala ssad tunsabal mash naqatal ruma niyaa andzu hooralhi lalalga deed.

  O ulanya squtay uhuma. Hak azac at taraal qadar.

  Way a tazauag alhila lwal sa leebta khtb urgad dubzee al alf rigl waya temzali kfeea amda mual ginse eal ass faree.

  Way a tazauag assal eebalkhu ttafmaa ssal eebalma akcof feel nari waldami khennayal tahermua lkhamlual assad takhtal qadeebwa ifas wassal eebal maksoor.

  Way a ssaadual assa dubaadi zali kmaalni srwatu alaq alduf daamin aqda miha.

  Waf eehazi hialsa na alsa natalkham soonmin kharbal alfazya assoo duassala amqem mamana alatwar tafa at fau qaalkhar abiwa alaanqa adialar dalmah rooka.

  “I can just imagine,” I said. “Mind if I take a copy?”

  “If you like, Gerald,” “Swindle-sheet” Morris said gloomily. “Only if you write the yarn and sell it to a magazine, you might remember to give me a twenty-five per cent cut, old man?”

  I might never have written it if my old friend, Dr. Marengo, had not come to my house to wish me bon voyage when I was leaving for America in April, 1955. Dr. Marengo is best known, of course, as Kem, the cartoonist; but he is also famous as a political scientist, an expert on international law and a linguist: he speaks and writes seventeen European and Oriental languages with perfect fluency and accuracy. While we chatted as old friends will, I was turning over an old box-file full of unconsidered scraps of paper. And there, among hieroglyphic notes which had lost their meaning and newspaper clippings the significance of which I had forgotten, I found my copy of Bohemund Raymond’s leader.

  I handed it to Kem and said, “You’re good at cryptograms. What do you make of this one?” He took the paper, put in his monocle and stopped eating salted peanuts for several minutes while he concentrated on the words before him.

  Then he said, “But my dear Gerald, this is not a cryptogram at all. It is, actually, pure Arabic written phonetically, as far as that is possible, in Roman letters—only some of the words are broken up and others are run together. One needs only to read it aloud, and it becomes quite clear.”

/>   “Arabic?” I said. “Did I hear you say Arabic?”

  “Certainly—

  Wafi ákher aa ’uam qalf al ássad túnsab al mashnaqat’ al rumaniya aand zuhoor al hilál gadeed.

  Oulan yasqut ayuhuma. Hákaza sáttara alqãdar . . .

  . . . means, in English:

  In the last year of the heart of the lion, the Roman gallows must stand against new moon.

  Neither may fall. So it is written . . .

  . . . That is the accurate pronunciation, and a fair translation, of the first paragraph, for example. Shall I—”

  “Roman gallows?” I cried. “That’s the cross! New moon—Mohammedan crescent! Last year of the heart of the lion—the crusade, in which Richard the Lion-Hearted died!”

  “Exactly, Gerald, in 1199,” said Kem. “And what do you make of the second paragraph? . . .

  Wayatazduag’ alhilál wal’ saleeb takht búrg ad’dúb zee al alf rigl, wa yátem’ zalik fee aam dámu al ginsee al assfáree . . .

  . . . This says, in English:

  Cross and crescent moon shall be married under the symbol of the bear with 1,000 legs. This is in the year of the blood of the yellow men . . .”

  I said, “Why, Kem, obviously this refers to the U.S.S.R.! The bear with a thousand legs is Russia—cross and crescent moon is meant to be hammer and sickle! Go on!”

  Kem said, “Freely translated, the third paragraph says—

  Cross and crook shall wed crooked cross in fire and blood when lion is devoured by lamb under rod and axe and broken cross . . .”

  I shouted, “The Russo-German Pact! Hammer and sickle shall wed swastika when lion (that’s Britain) is devoured by lamb (Hitler’s astronomical sign was the Lamb) under Mussolini’s fasces and the Nazi swastika!”

  Kem said, “The next paragraph is rather interesting—

  Wayassá ’adu al ássadu ba’adi zálik maal ’nisr, watu’-alaq dufda’a min aqdámiha . . .

  It means:—

  “Then the eagle shall rejoice with the lion, and the frog shall be hung by the feet . . .

  Surely, Gerald, the Eagle is the United States. That bit must refer to the victory of the Allies and the death of Mussolini, ‘the Bull-Frog of the Pontine Marshes.’ They did hang him up by the feet, you know.”

  “Go on! Go on!” I pleaded.

  Kem went on: “The last piece is the most interesting of all, really . . .

  Wáfee házihi alsána, alsánat’ al khamsoon min kharb al alfaz, yassoodu assaláam qemmáman aalat wa ’rtafáat fáuqa alkhárabi waala anqáadi al ard almahrooka . . .

  This says, in effect:—

  In this year, the 50th year of the war of words, peace shall come in high places above burned earth . . .”

  I said, “The fiftieth year of the war of words—that might mean the cold war will last half a century, until, say, 1995. But the next bit about the burned earth; is that H-bombs, or cobalt bombs, or something even worse?”

  Kem said, with a shrug, “Where did you get this remarkable document, Gerald?” I told him, then, “Swindle-sheet” Morris’s account of the trick he had played on Bohemund Raymond. Kem laughed and said, “Yes, poor Morris loved a joke. If you don’t mind my asking—does it occur to you that he might, perhaps, have been playing a trick on you, Gerald?”

  “What, in Arabic?” I said. “That would have been too subtle for ‘Swindle-sheet’ Morris. Besides, remember, this was before the war, back in 1939.”

  “Of course,” said Kem, “I must take in consideration the fact that you, also, are a bit of a joker, and might be playing a trick on me.”

  “I give you my word of honor I am not!”

  “Well, really,” said Kem, “all I can say is that it’s very strange. . . .” He passed me a piece of paper upon which he had been making notes. “Here is what you gave me translated back. It is, unquestionably, pure Arabic. I suggest we regard this as a Fleet Street hoax, Gerald; it will be healthier that way.”

  And so let it be regarded.

  . . . But I wish I knew exactly what Bohemund Raymond, or whatever spirit it was that possessed him, meant exactly by those last two lines. . . . We must wait until 1995, and see. . . .

  THE BEGGARS’ STONE

  The monotony of the plain becomes so heartbreaking that you would thank God for the sight of a withered tree. The land lies flat. The road forks and runs away into the unknown distance. Look east, look west; there is nobody, nothing but dust and grass and a dry, melancholy wind which twists the clouds into tortured shapes. The plain is mournful and legend-haunted.

  Dig in it and you may find strange things: skulls scored with scars, bits of metal, defaced coins, weapons which at a touch fall to green powder. It swallows men like a sea. The Tartars passed this way, with the flat-faced riffraff of the Bad Lands. “Where my horses’ hoofs have passed no grass grows.” But grass has grown; the grass always wins in the end, and it covers everything, humbly bending before the wind, but savagely clutching the earth with its roots—bitter, gluttonous Puszta grass that devours the soil.

  I say the road forks and is terribly lonely. But a few paces away from the point at which it divides there stands a stone, incalculably ancient, roughhewn into a rectangular shape, bury­ing itself by its own weight . . . “digging its own grave,” as they say in these parts.

  It used to lie flat. Now it stands erect. In the place where it used to lie there is a deep hole. Grass has begun to encroach on the stone itself. The hard, pale surface sprouts sparse tufts like an old man’s chin. These tufts somehow make the stone look older. By moonlight they give it an appearance of something grotesquely like life.

  Three sides of the stone are marked with inscriptions. Bend sideways and you may read initials, names and broken phrases in all the languages of the earth: J. H.; M. B. Hunyadi; several crosses; “GOD WILL PUNISH THEM,” in ancient Slavonic. In one corner somebody has laboriously hacked out a heart and an arrow. Roman, Greek, Russian, Tartar, Georgian—all alphabets may be found there. There is even the name of one FA’OUZI, beautifully carved in curling Arabic. To whom did these names and symbols belong? Only God knows.

  The time will come when even these desolate marks will have been rubbed away by the rain and the dust, and then there will be nothing but the tired old stone, imperceptibly disintegrating atom by atom in the loneliness of the plain at the fork of the dreary road.

  Why was the stone dropped there? For centuries nobody knew. Tramps used it as a seat, a bed, a kitchen and a meeting place. The friction of their bodies alone had worn little hollows in it. Their weight had helped to press it down. Their names were cut into it. They had nothing but names to leave. Some of them, no doubt, were so poor that they had no names. Men and women who lived and died up and down the interminable roads of Europe; people beyond society; lost souls; the forgotten of God; men without hope; eaters of garbage; beggars for charity; people who lived on their sores and deformities; bear trainers, lone bandits, wandering musicians and contortionists—they all rested on that stone, left their marks if they had marks to leave, and went their ways to their unknown graves.

  The plainsmen call it The Beggars’ Stone, to this day.

  One evening in 1906, two men met at the stone. The first had only one leg. He was a short, squat fellow, wrapped in rubbish, crowned with a cowman’s round hat which pressed his ears down, and bearded until he resembled a gray mildewed vegetable rather than a man. The other had an air of crime and misery. Life had crushed him dry and flat, like a grape in a press. His face was a Rosetta Stone of bygone violence—it bore the cuneiform scars of a hatchet, the hieroglyphics of a knife, and the queer marks of broken glass. People had tried to kill that man. He was beyond hope and fear.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  “Good evening.”

  “Cold.”

  “Bitter,” said the one-legged man, nursing his stump.

  “Come far?”

  “Far enough. And you?”

  “Far enough. Where are you heading for?”


  “Buda, maybe. You?”

  “Maybe Buda. What’s your name? They call me Bicskas.”

  “Probka.” The one-legged man sighed. “Well, the stone still lies here. Many’s the night I’ve slept here.”

  “Me too. See that dent? It fits my head. It might have been made for me.”

  “Nice soft stone,” said Bicskas, grinning. “It’s kind of them to let us have even this much. Ha! A stone. I see you pick the south side. You’re no fool. You know the ropes. Good. Have you got any food?”

  “I’ve got some bread,” said Probka.

  “I’ve got some bacon,” said Bicskas.

  “I’ve got some wine,” Probka pulled out a bottle.

  “We can have a banquet,” muttered Bicskas, grinning again. “Look at this.” He displayed the stumps of five cigars.

  “Things were not always like this, Bicskas, my brother-in-law.”