Читать книгу Torch for a Dark Journey - Lionel Shapiro - Страница 7

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When he braked his car at the frontier post Channing’s attention was sharply arrested by what he saw through the dusty windshield. Two things leaped, as the French would say, to the eye. The first was that the road barrier did not bar the road. It sat on its base, perpendicular like a flagstaff, and it was locked in this position by a strand of heavy wire which was fastened to the thatched roof of the customs hut. The wire was rusted and the post itself was naked of paint. Patently the barrier was not intended to be lowered.

The second item that engaged Channing’s attention was a curious relationship between the customs officer and a cow. They stood in the dirt road about fifty meters beyond the frontier line. Of the cow he could see only the bulge of her sides, her rear parts twitching against the summer flies, and an enormous milk sack swinging gently between her legs. The customs officer had his hand on her back and was slapping it decisively as if making a conversational point, and the way his head moved he might have been talking or laughing. Finally he cuffed her flank with the back of his hand and she plodded down the road by herself.

He was indeed laughing as he turned toward the customs hut, but the merriment fled from his face when he spied Channing standing beside his Citroën.

“What is it you want?” he grumbled. He shuffled forward, dragging one foot after the other like a lazy boy on a thankless errand. His pouting attitude was the more noticeable because he was a very old man of bizarre appearance. He was so short and slight that his full white mustaches seemed ridiculously wide. Beneath the mustaches his mouth was retracted and the skin was tight and brittle on his pointed chin. His cheekbones protruded and were red like a pair of crabapples. White hair flowed generously from under the sides of his uniform cap. The neckband of his blue tunic was unbuttoned.

“Well, what is it you want?” he repeated as he faced up to Channing. “I suppose you want to enter France. What’s wrong with Belgium that you should leave it? One eats well there. One sleeps well, too, if one is young enough and has a full pocket of money. You are not bad-looking, which is also an advantage. Take off your black spectacles. How can I know who you are when your face is covered? Perhaps you are a murderer, an absconder, a spy. How do I know?”

Channing removed his sunglasses and smiled broadly.

He said, “You will pardon me, m’sieu le douanier, for interrupting your little tête-à-tête with the cow.”

The aged officer jerked up his head, spearing the breeze with his tiny chin.

“Do not call me a douanier,” he said derisively. “Here I represent France—like an ambassador. I can keep you out or let you in, just as it pleases me. I can examine every stitch of your clothing or I can be trusting and generous. It depends on my liver. Why do you come here anyway? Why didn’t you pass through Sedan like everyone else?”

“Because I am going to the Spa Bonnar.” Channing indicated the imposing, modern structure which sat on its hill just beyond the frontier line.

“Ach,” the other grunted. “You could have passed through Sedan like all the tourists.”

“Why should I?” Channing argued. “It was easier to come directly through here. Isn’t this a frontier post?”

The old man kicked at a pebble in the road. “Nobody passes through here except the local farmers. I know them all by their first names.”

“But you are an official. You are empowered to pass me through.”

“Empowered?” The officer gave his mustaches a vicious pull. “Of course I am empowered. So far as this little patch of frontier is concerned, I am an absolute monarch. No one comes through here except by my nod. This is France, and this”—he trudged a few steps across the shadow of the barrier—“this is Belgium and I am the king of this line. One could perish waiting to cross until I give the nod. You see?”

Channing was enjoying himself hugely. “Then could you find it in your heart to give me the royal nod?”

The other shook his head dolefully. “Ah, you do not come by my nod so easily. This is not utopia. You must have papers. Everyone must have papers. If one has the right papers one may roam the earth as if it were a legacy from God Himself. If one has the wrong papers one can be denied the ownership of a single blade of grass. Where are your papers?”

Channing wished he had brought along a camera. He wanted to remember the little man. If he told the story in the seventh-floor bar at 21 Rue de Berri, where the Paris correspondents congregated, they wouldn’t believe such a person existed.

“My passport, m’sieu. As you will see, it has all the correct visas.”

The man grabbed the passport and waved it in his hand to emphasize a point. “Now take my friend Caro—she is that cow. She might easily be a problem to me. She does not recognize any frontiers except those made by the good God. Does she care that she is a Belgian cow? It so happens she prefers the herbs on the riverbank, so she comes through here every day after she is milked. Mind you, they are French herbs she eats and it is Belgian milk that she gives. She has no papers. What does one do? I bow to her superior claim as a connoisseur of nature. I assure you if I put it up to the Quai d’Orsay it would have them in a whirl. It is indeed a great problem. But humans? There is no problem. One has the right paper or one has not.”

Channing nodded with mock humility. “I trust, m’sieu, you will find I have the right paper.”

The old man turned the passport in his bony fingers.

“Of course you have the right paper,” he grumbled. “An American passport will give you entrance everywhere except into the kingdom of heaven—and maybe there too if the plumbing is suitable.”

He examined Channing’s picture on the second page of the passport, then looked up into his face.

“You have vanity,” he said. “I can tell by the way you posed for this picture. Are you an actor?”

Channing said, “You are reading the wrong page——”

“My dear man,” the other cut in testily, “authority never reads the wrong page. You must be a nihilist.”

When he stopped laughing Channing said, “Almost. I’m a journalist.”

The old man consulted the passport once more.

“Ah yes. Philip Channing. Journalist. Born Erie, Pennsylvania, April 23, 1915. Six feet. Blue eyes. Brown hair ...” His voice trailed off to a mumble. “And I suppose a black heart. It doesn’t say, however.”

Finally he snapped shut the passport and shoved it at the American.

“Go ahead and don’t trouble me,” he said petulantly, and shuffled across the dusty road to his shack, slamming the door decisively behind him.