Exercises in Style (8 page)

—Was there any sequel to this incident?

—Less than two hours later.

—In what did this sequel consist?

—In the reappearance of this person across my path.

—Where and how did you see him again?

—When I was passing the Cour de Rome in a bus.

—What was he doing there?

—He was being given some sartorial advice.

omedy

On the back platform of an S bus, one day, round about 12
noon
.

THE CONDUCTOR
: Fez pliz.
(Some passengers hand him
their fares.)

(The bus stops)

THE CONDUCTOR
: Let ’em off first. Any priorities?
One priority! Full up. Dring dring dring.

(Same set.)

FIRST PASSENGER
:
(young, long neck, a plait round
his hat)
It seems, Sir, that you make a point of treading on my toes every time
anyone goes by.

SECOND PASSENGER
:
(shrugs his shoulders)

(A third passenger gets off)

FIRST PASSENGER
: (
to the audience
) Whacko! a
free seat! I’ll get it before anyone else does.
(He precipitates himself on to
it and occupies if)

(The Cour de Rome)

A YOUNG DANDY
:
(to the first passenger, now a
pedestrian)
The opening of your overcoat is too wide. You ought to make it a
bit narrower by having the top button raised.

On the S bus, passing the Cour de Rome.

FOURTH PASSENGER
: Huh, the chap who was in the bus with
me earlier on and who was
having a row with another chap. Odd
encounter. I’ll make it into a comedy in three acts and in prose.

sides

The bus arrived bulging with passengers.
Only hope I don’t miss it, oh good, there’s still just room for me.
One of them
queer sort of mug he’s got with that enormous neck
was wearing a soft felt hat with a sort of little plait round it instead of a ribbon
just showing off that is
and suddenly started
hey what’s got into him
to vituperate his neighbour
the other chap isn’t taking any notice of him
reproaching him for deliberately treading
seems as if he’s looking for trouble but he’ll climb down
on his toes. But as there was a free seat inside
didn’t I say so
he turned his back and made haste to occupy it.

About two hours later
coincidences are peculiar
he was in the Cour de Rome with a friend
a fancy-pants of his own sort
who was pointing with his index finger to a button on his overcoat
what on earth can he be telling him?

arechesis

On the butt-end of a bulging bus which was transbustling an abundance of
incubuses and Buchmanites from bumbledom towards their bungalows, a bumptious buckeen
whose buttocks were remote from his bust and who was buttired in a boody ridiculous
busby, buddenly had a bust-up with a robust buckra who was bumping into him:
“Buccaneer, buzz off, you’re butting my bunions!” Rebuffed, he did a
bunk.

But bussequently I buheld him with a buckish buddy who was busuading
him to budge a button on his bum-freezer.

pectral

We, gamekeeper of the Monceau Plain, have the honour to report the
inexplicable and malignant presence in the neighbourhood of the oriental gate of the
Park, property of his Royal Highness Monsieur Philippe, the invested Duke of Orleans,
this sixteenth day of May one thousand seven hundred and eighty three, of a felt hat of
an unwonted shape and encircled by a sort of plaited cord. We subsequently observed the
sudden apparition under the said hat of a man who was young, endowed with a neck of an
extraordinary length, and dressed how they dress, doubtless, in China. The appalling
aspect of this
individual froze our blood and prevented our flight.
This individual remained immobile for several instants, and then began to make agitated
movements, muttering the while, as if pushing aside other individuals in his vicinity
who were invisible but perceptible to him. Suddenly he transferred his attention to his
cloak and we heard him murmuring as follows: “A button is missing, a button is
missing.” Then he started to move and took the direction of the Nursery Garden.
Attracted in spite of ourself by the strangeness of this phenomenon, we followed him out
of the confines attributed to our jurisdiction and we all three, we, the individual and
the hat, reached a deserted little garden, which was planted with cabbages. A blue sign
of unknown but certainly diabolical origin bore the inscription “Cour de
Rome”. The individual continued to move about for some moments, murmuring:
“He tried to tread on my toes.” Then he disappeared, first himself, and,
some time after, his hat. Having drawn up a report of this liquidation, I went to have a
drink at the Little Poland.

hilosophic

Great cities alone can provide phenomenological spirituality with the
essentialities of temporal and improbabilistic coincidences. The philosopher who
occasionally ascends into the futile and utilitarian inexistentiality of an S bus can
perceive therein with the lucidity of his pineal eye the transitory and faded appearance
of a profane consciousness afflicted by the long neck of vanity and the hatly plait of
ignorance. This matter, void of true entelechy, occasionally plunges into the
categorical imperative of its recriminatory life force against the neo-Berkleyan
unreality of a corporeal mechanism unburdened by conscience. This
moral attitude then carries the more unconscious of the two towards a void
spatiality where it disintegrates into its primary and crooked elements.

Philosophical research is then pursued normally by the fortuitous but
anagogic encounter of the same being accompanied by its inessential and sartorial
replica, which is noumenally advising it to transpose on the level of the understanding
the concept of overcoat button situated sociologically too low.

postrophe

O platinum-nibbed stylograph, let thy smooth and rapid course trace on this single-side calendered paper those alphabetic glyphs which shall transmit to men of sparkling spectacles the narcissistic tale of a double encounter of omnibusilistic cause. Proud courser of my dreams, faithful camel of my literary exploits, lissome fountain of words counted, weighed and chosen, describe thou those lexicographic and syntactic curves which shall graphically create the futile and ridiculous narration of the life and opinions of that young man who one day took the S bus without suspecting that he would become the immortal hero of the
present writer’s laborious toil. O coxcomb with thy plait-girdled hat projecting over thy long neck, O cross-grained, choleric and pusillanimous cur who, fleeing the skirmish, wentest to place thy behind, harvester of kicks on the arse, on a bench of hardened wood, didst thou suspect this thy rhetorical destiny whilst, before the gare Saint-Lazare, thou wast listening with exalted ear to the tailoring counsel of a personage inspired by the uppermost button of thine overcoat?

wkward