Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 10

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I suppose that it is just looking for trouble on my part, but what are they going to do with all the old Pullman cars when the streamliners come into general use? I hope that they don't try to palm one of them off on me.

I simply couldn't take care of an old Pullman. I haven't got the space, in the first place. It's all I can do to find room for my big bag after I have unpacked it. Imagine trying to crowd a pullman in, too!

Neither have I the inclination. I see no reason why I should be made to take over something that I really don't want, do you? And yet I have a horrible premonition that some day soon they are going to drag around a car named "Gleeber's Falls" or "Angostura" and ask me to give it a home.

* * * * *

The first time I read about the advent of the new type of sleeping car, I said, quick as a flash: "Here it comes! I get the old ones!" They've got to do something with all those "Laburnums" and "Latvias." And I always seem to get things like that. "Give it to old Bob," people say, when they are tearing down their houses. "It will be just right for his room!"

I am to blame, in a way, for a long time ago I set out to furnish a room in a sort of knickknack fashion. I even invited contributions from my friends. But what I meant was contributions that I could use. I didn't mean that I was starting a whaling museum or that I planned to build more rooms. I had more or less in mind a mid-Victorian study of the "what-not" variety. Well, I got my "what-nots."

* * * * *

It began with little articles to line up on top of a bookcase, miniature geese, little men with baskets, shells with eggs in them and broken stags. I also was not averse to hanging oddments on the walls. My friends entered into the spirit of this admirably. Every one had fun but the lady who dusted.

Then people began looking around town for heavier gifts. It got to be a game. Trucks began arriving with old busts of Sir Walter Scott, four-foot statues of men whose shirtfronts lit up when attached to an electric connection, stuffed owls and fox terriers that had lain too long at the taxidermist's. This phase ended with the gift of a small two-headed calf in a moderate state of preservation.

From then on the slogan became: "Send it to Benchley!" Wrecking concerns were pressed into service, and chipped cornices from the old Post Office, detached flights of stairs, hitching posts and railings began pouring in. Every day was like Christmas in Pompeii. The overflow went into the bedroom and I started sleeping under an old spinet, covered over with a set of bead-curtains which had been brought to me from a bordello in Marseille.

* * * * *

The friendly mood in which the game started changed gradually to one of persecution. The idea began to embarrass me and to make it impossible for me to move about. On several occasions it became a matter for the police, and once the Missing Persons Bureau took a hand in it and searched my room for a runaway college girl. They found nothing, however, but three Chinese laborers who had been smuggled into the country and delivered to my place in a caterer's wagon.

So perhaps I have a right to be worried about those out-of-date Pullmans. I have had stranger things foisted on me. I think that this time I will put my foot down. At the first sign of a Pullman being brought up the stairs I will bolt the door, leaving my friends to their own devices with it. I don't want any more truck in this room, much less a full-blown Pullman, and, ungracious as it may seem, I don't intend to have it.