Tales of Adventurers (20 page)

At six in the morning Mme. Delage, with a basket and a pair of scissors, waited before the door of the tower. I say she waited, for the tower was occupied; and she could only reach the chosen
bunch through the window from the inside. After a while she permitted herself to hammer on the door.

This intemperate gesture being without effect, she approached Lulu, who was waiting on the track, and climbed upon her footplate and blew her whistle loudly. It was Charles Cortal, the driver,
who had christened his locomotive Lulu. He loved little else but Lulu and all humanity, for he was a communist. But humanity is too large to love with enthusiasm. His true affection was for
Lulu.

Charles Cortal launched himself in a fury from the tower.

“Madame!” he cried. “It is forbidden by the regulations of the company to climb upon a locomotive!”

“It is also forbidden,” Madame replied, “to leave a locomotive unattended.”

I was not present, you understand, but I can imagine what Cortal retorted. I have had dealings with him. He answered, with a beautiful selection of obscenities, that there were times when
locomotives had to be left, above all when his cretinous fireman had gone to pour coffee into his filthy guts, and that if he had known Madame so urgently required the tower he would have made
other arrangements.

To this Madame replied, with the exasperating calm in which she was accustomed to address the angry proletariat, that he knew very well she desired only to gather a bunch of grapes.

“Then gather them,
nom de Dieu!
” shouted Charles Cortal. “But without disturbing me!”

“One can reach the grapes only from the inside,” answered Madame.

She was, you will agree, in the wrong. And to Cortal she exhibited plainly, immediately, the shocking inhumanity and acquisitiveness of the bourgeoisie. He therefore demanded why Madame should
gather grapes which had been the property of the company’s drivers and firemen as long as the Third Republic existed. Then Madame began to tell him what she thought of this right he had so
brilliantly invented. And Cortal said that for one old cow she made more noise than a whole veterinary surgeon’s back yard.

And
patati, patata!
And before anyone knew of the quarrel, Mme. Delage was off to swear a
procès-verbal
against Cortal for insult and contumely, and Cortal had gone to
complain to the local secretary of the union.

Meanwhile Lulu remained where she was as a protest. M. Delage and the signalmen might say what they liked, but not a driver would move her. The loop line was blocked, and on the telephone from
Paris were jolly things to be heard.

After a hasty breakfast, M. Delage placed upon his head the gold-braided hat of office and visited the Café de la Gare, where Charles Cortal was expressing his opinions over a glass of
very bad
eau de vie.
Before them all Delage accused Cortal of sabotaging the transport system of France. Cortal, without hesitating an instant, called him a collaborator, a
Pétainiste, and a pro-Boche. After that there was no more to be said.

M. Delage was a man of duty. It was his business to see that trains ran, and he saw that they did run, even during the occupation. He did not understand the Resistance; he was paid, he said, by
the company. All the same, he looked the other way when it was required of him, and he kept his mouth closed. I would never call him a collaborator, but he was narrow.

At midday arrived from Paris the general secretary of the union. He was a reasonable man. True, he had the hungry and
farouche
appearance of a revolutionary assassin; but it was
expressly cultivated. In manner he was tactful as a director of funerals. Though his sympathies were naturally with Cortal, he was determined to restore discipline at Saint-Valery.

After he had wholly failed with the drivers and firemen, he took it upon himself to make Delage laugh at this petty affair – as between men of the world, you understand. But Delage was in
no laughing mood; there was, he said, a question of principle involved. He pulled out the railroad regulations and made the secretary read the powers of the stationmaster: how he was responsible to
the company for all property, movable and immovable, in or upon the station and the yards, and in the event of any attempt upon such property might call upon the civil power – and so on.
Delage was prepared to admit that he might have no right to eat the grapes. A court of law, he said, would settle that. But as to his right or that of his wife, acting as his agent, to pick the
said grapes at maturity there could be no doubt at all.

The secretary was inclined to agree, but to excuse Cortal, he suggested that an overworked and honest driver, disturbed in a moment of tranquillity, might permit himself expressions which
–

“Monsieur,” said Delage gravely, “she waited a reasonable time.”

“But, Monsieur, consider the impropriety!”

“Monsieur accuses my wife of impropriety?”

“Of no such thing, I assure you. I wished to say that Madame with her delicate susceptibilities would not have desired to gather grapes had she been aware—”

“Madame is above such petty considerations. And then, I repeat, she waited a reasonable time.”

“Monsieur would be good enough to define a reasonable time?” asked the secretary, who was beginning to forget his tact.

“Ah,
par exemple!
Let us say five minutes!”

“It is in the regulations, perhaps?”

“It is in the regulations that a driver shall not leave his locomotive unattended.”

“When France mourns for so many missing sons,” said the secretary sharply, “one cannot manage labor by red tape, especially at 5.00
A.M
.”

“It was six, Monsieur.”

“In any case, Monsieur, it was a suspiciously early hour that Madame chose to sneak her grapes.”

“Monsieur, I forbid any criticism of my wife!”

To which the secretary, at last under the infectious influence of the vine and angry as lesser men, replied by a pleasantry in the poorest taste. And then M. Delage slapped his face.

They were separated by the chief clerks of the Grande Vitesse and the Petite Vitesse. Those two were invaluable. They were calm, you see. They voted for the Catholic center and had all that was
necessary to their convenience upon the station. They had thus no conceivable right to the grapes.

It was quite otherwise with the shunters. They disagreed entirely with the impulsive claim of Charles Cortal that the fruit had always been the perquisite of drivers and firemen. The shunters
had just as good a case in all respects; two of them had even pruned the vine.

The solidarity of the working class vanished altogether when the shunter, Hippolyte Charvet, took it upon himself to remove Lulu while she still had steam. He made a speech from the footplate
explaining that the act he was about to perform must not be interpreted as having any bearing upon the future of France, and had nothing to do with the dispute between the stationmaster and the
locomotive engineers. In that argument the engineers were right and Delage, the so-called stationmaster, was a fascist who would shortly receive his deserts. No, comrades, he removed the locomotive
merely because in its present position it kept the afternoon sun from the shunters’ grapes.

He thereupon returned Lulu to the sheds. I think he is still in the hospital. Charles Cortal did not even permit the oiling of Lulu by any but himself.

To hear the arguments, you would have thought that every man remembered exactly what had happened before the war. Even Cortal’s claim, which he had obviously invented merely because he was
angry, was taken seriously. But nobody in fact remembered any tradition at all. For five years the Boche RTO in charge of the yards and his Boche staff had eaten the grapes themselves and allowed
no one else to approach them. That alone was certain.

I will now give you the intelligence summary for Saint-Valery at nightfall. M. Delage was prostrated, partly by answering telephone calls from Paris and partly because he feared to be shot as
pro-Boche. Mme. Delage was at her lawyer’s for the third time. The drivers and firemen were on strike. Charles Cortal was summonsed for the attempted murder of Hippolyte Charvet. The shunters
had a peaceful picket round the vine. Grande Vitesse was occupied in composing an apology for the union secretary, who had not the least wish in the world to fight a duel, and Petite Vitesse was
doing the same for Delage. And Saint-Valery yards were just as idle as when all the employees used to pretend they heard an air-raid warning.

The next day it was hot. But how hot! Only to think of it gives me a thirst even for this wine. We descended, a horde of officials, upon Saint-Valery. I was among them, being the union’s
attorney. There was the undersecretary of the Ministry; there were two big men of the Resistance; there were all the union officials and the company officials. There were even some soldiers. In
these days one can never have a row between civilians without soldiers desiring to be present.

First of all we held a quite informal conference at the station. We arrived at the facts. And then we protested that the whole affair was ridiculous. The Resistance men laughed. That started us
off. A complainant had only to mention the tower for us to giggle like boys, all of us and uncontrollably. On a hot day one laughs easily. One’s companions are themselves comical. They mop
their faces. The poor railway men of Saint-Valery were more furious than ever.

It was Charles Cortal who imposed more gravity upon us. He mounted on a barrow and addressed the union officials.

“We,” he bellowed, “we, the drivers and firemen, we were the heart of the Resistance in Saint-Valery. A month after the liberation we were thanked. And now, a year after the
liberation, observe how they allow us to be stuffed up with insults from a sort of pig of a collaborator! Comrades, one steals our birthright!”

And then he called Delage by the names of various animals, and commented, without any regard for zoology, upon his probable descent from others.

This wiped the smiles off the faces of the company officials; they were about to be nationalized, and it would do no good to their salaries to have the reputation of capitalist tyrants.

Mme. Delage had dressed herself like a pretty countrywoman, but in surprisingly good taste. She chose her moment to direct a few words to the General Manager. Everybody listened.

She was going, she said quietly, in the freshness of the dawn to cull a bunch of grapes.

Our chivalry leaped to our hearts. She had a fine voice, and she made one see French Womanhood, all pure and laborious, going about its simple tasks at sunrise.

She had been insulted, she sighed, but that was nothing. There were gentlemen in plenty to defend a French-woman in distress. No, it was not for herself that she asked justice, but for her
husband.

Delage was in his best cap and uniform, looking handsome and pale and very much the old soldier. Of course she touched that string too. His service in the last war. Wounded for France. Twice
mentioned. And now to be called a collaborator!

She picked up Delage’s hand and kissed it passionately.

“That is what I think of him!” she cried. “And I – will anyone dare to say that I, Susanne Hélène Delage, am a collaborator?”

That wiped the smiles off the union officials too. Lack of discipline, inability to appreciate the plight of the country, incitement to rebellion against the government – those were the
accusations they saw coming.

It was time to treat the affair with all the dignity of public men. One whispered. One formed lobbies. One admitted the need of subcommittees. And at last we constituted ourselves into a
commission and decided to sit in the upstairs hall of the Café de la Gare. We summoned all witnesses and representatives to accompany us.

There was a yell from Charles Cortal.

“And leave these camels here to steal our grapes while we are away?” he asked. “These thieving sons of mackerels?”

Two of the shunters were still unobtrusively picketing the tower. A third was inside. We formally ejected them. Grande Vitesse and Petite Vitesse were called upon to stand guard.

“And if one wishes to enter?” asked Grande Vitesse timidly.

“It cannot be permitted,” the General Manager ordered. “One can find everything necessary on the station.”

“That I forbid absolutely!” shouted Delage.

“
Bien!
One will be instructed to make whatever arrangements one can,” said the General Manager in his most conciliatory manner.

I cannot say that the commission was a success. The hall had not been used for a long time. We could not expand in an atmosphere which reeked of mice and the ancient smoke of locomotives. And
then – we could not create tradition where none existed.

We suggested that the grapes be given to a hospital. Not one of the railway men agreed. They said that next year and for all the years we liked they would send enough grapes to hospitals to
resurrect the dead; but this year it was unthinkable. There had been insults. There was a question of principle to be decided – though heaven alone knows what cursed principle it was.

So we offered a third to the drivers and firemen, a third to the shunters, and a third to the stationmaster. No takers! Each wanted a half, and the other half to be divided.

The property of the company, then? Delage, being legal-minded, agreed to this, but the engineers and shunters would not have it. They explained with superfluous precision their right to the
grapes, and demanded whether a company which had, in the immortal phrase, neither soul to be saved nor backside to be kicked could in any way be held responsible for the vine’s
luxuriance.

It was, I think, one of the big men from the Resistance who at last proposed that we should analyze the problem more closely by counting the bunches to be divided. He was used to the open air
and desired an excuse to return to it. He was very bored by the commission.

The suggestion was ridiculous, but really we could think of nothing useful to do. So Grande Vitesse and Petite Vitesse were put to counting bunches, while we, the others, broke into groups,
according to age and political inclination, up and down the yard. The heat was abominable. I sympathized with Eve. One heard the tempter merely by looking at those grapes. They were magnificent,
and the last twenty-four hours had brought them to perfection.