Railroad Harvest

AN ATLANTIC STORY

by GEOFFREY HOUSEHOLD

WE, the French, — said Maitre Braillard, stretching his feet under the table and swallowing a draught of the acid white wine which was all the cafe had to olTer, — are ever ready to accept tradition. I speak to you as a lawyer and perhaps I exaggerate. But in my opinion the worst that the occupation did to us was to destroy our sense of continuity with the past.

This wine is revolting, but will do while we wait for better. There will — said Braillard, with as keen satisfaction as if he himself would taste by the palate of a descendant — there will be good wine again for our children.

It is customary — he went on — to prophesy that the revolution we are undoubtedly about to suffer will be more drastic than our revolution one hundred and fifty years ago. I do not believe it. We wish to order our lives by the law. We accept immediately the law. It is only when we know not what the law is that we become a little difficult.

Tiens! I will tell you a story. It has a slight piggery, but we are after dinner — if indeed we may dignify by the name the small portions of antique horse and salad that we have just consumed.

Do you know the municipality of Saint-Valerysur-Marne? No? I am not surprised. Saint-Valery is ten kilometers from the fortificat ions, and remarkable only for its ugliness and its extensive railroad yard. If you travel round Paris from the Gare du Nord to the Quai d’Orsay, your train will inevitably . pass through Saint-Valery. But why should you be in it? You will of course spend some hours in Paris, and will pick up your train again at the Quai d’Orsay.

Saint-Valery has a black canal, and some small industries without any permanence, built of cement and corrugated iron. There is no architecture. There are only hoardings, and houses of the most melancholy. It is quite evident that, one is compelled to inhabit Saint-Valery: one does not choose it.

In the middle of this tasteless wilderness are the railroad tracks, and in the middle of the tracks is a little terwer of dirty brick. The tower is old. I do not know how old, nor what it was for; it might have been the base of a round dovecot. But now the interior has been rearranged — you understand — for the convenience of the railway men.

It stood, this tower, upon a triangle of blackened gravel between the canal sidings and the main loop line round Paris. In spite of this little-promising situation, the brickwork was covered by a resplendent vine. There was no other green thing within three hundred meters; not even a dandelion could live in such a waste of steel and cinder’s. But the vine was older than the railroad, and its roots were far down in good French soil. It was well nourished by the iron that filtered in solution through the gravel, and had, no doubt, some other excellent sources of fertility.

In this August of 1945 the vine was superb. It rejoiced in its liberation. The walls and parapet of the tower were jeweled with bunches as long as my forearm. The grapes were of that indescribable tint which is purple, yet not quite purple. All the station staff of Saint-Valery were agreed that it needed hut twenty-four more August hours for fifty bunches to be at their perfection.

Mme. Delage, who was the wife of the stationmaster and impatient, for good morsels as befitted an admirable housekeeper who was tormented by the impossibility of a decent table, was the first to lose her self-restraint. One had not yet decided upon the ultimate destiny of the grapes; one had perhaps deliberately avoided so delicate a subject. Mine. Delage, however, had set her heart upon a bunch, already and indubitably ripe, which hung on the south wall immediately above the window of the tower.

I knew her well. She had a black mustache, and her rotundities, though massive, were more square than round. She had no reason to hope for those attentions which traditionally await the wives of stationmasters. She wore high-heeled shoes, as was proper for the consort of an important functionary, but they did not become her ankles. She resembled, I thought, a hippopotamus on skates. Nevertheless M. Delage was a model husband. She had fine brown eyes, one must admit, and then he was very afraid of her.

At six in the morning Mine. 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 her 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! ” lie 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 a 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 Dieul” 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, paiatal And before anyone knew of the quarrel, Mine. Delage was off to swear a proces-verbal against Cortal for insult and contumely, and Cortal had gone to complain to the local secretary of the union.

2

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 Cafe de la Gare, where Charles Cortal was expressing his opinions over a glass of very bad eau de vie. Before them all he accused Cortal of sabotaging the transport system of France. Cortal, without hesitating an instant, called him a collaborator, a Petainiste, 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 of the most murderous; but it was expressly cultivated. In manner lie 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 most 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, lie pulled out the railroad regulations and made the secretary read the powers of the stationmaster: how lie 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 Cat holic 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 wit h the shunters. They disagreed entirely with the claim that Charles Cortal had put forward for the drivers and firemen. The shunters had an excellent 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 station ma ster and the locomotive engineers. In that argument the engineers were right, and Delage, the so-called station master, 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.

Eh bien, 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 proBoche. 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 t he 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.

3

I HE 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 t he 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 mucked about by 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 ot hers.

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 Frenchwoman in distress. No, it was not for herself that she asked justice, but for her husband.

Oelage 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 Helene 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 d added to sit in the upstairs hall of the Cafe dc 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 slat ion.”

“That I forbid absolutely!” shouted Delage.

Eh hien, one will be instructed to make whatever arrangements one can, said the General IManager in his most conciliatory manner.

T cannot say that: the commission was a success.

S he hall had not been used for a long time. We could not expand in an atmosphere which recked of mice and the ancient smoke of locomotives. And thenwe could not create tradition where none existed,

W e 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 thev 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 legally-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.

1 he 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.

Between the shunters and the drivers the military were compelled to take a little promenade. As for us, the visitors, we argued courteously and from an academic point of view; but it was not difficult to see that strong words would be used if we permitted ourselves to take the affair seriously. The Resistance man had already described Mme. Delage to the General Manager in terms for which I had to persuade him to apologize.

4

No ONE noticed the man with the wheelbarrow. He arrived unobtrusively. He was so much a part of France that one did not question his right to be in the railroad yard. He was a little old peasant, bent by labor in the fields, and with the long, gray mustache of an ancient Gaul. He was wheeling a barrow with a ladder on it.

He stopped at the tower and looked benevolently at Grande Vitesse, who was on the roof counting bunches, and at Petite \ itesse, who was performing the feats of an acrobat through the window. He knew at once that their intentions were honest — they understood each other, those children of old France.

They are just right, my grapes! ” said the ancient, rubbing his hands. “Ah, how I know you! You have not changed in the war.”

And he patted the trunk of the vine as if to congratulate it upon so punctual a response to the season. v

He was quite unaffected by the crowd. I doubt if he even noticed us. Or perhaps he thought that we had come to watch. He had the face of a man who enjoys all the protection of his conscience and the law. I hastened to his side before everyone could speak at once.

“Is it your vine?” I asked him.

He sat down on the wheelbarrow and drew from his vast pocket a portfolio. The documents were imposing. They dated from the time of Napoleon III. Paper like that is not made nowadays. And he read them aloud, on and on — that the said Sieur Henri Duval sold to the railroad company the property as set forth in the accompanying schedule with all buildings and land and produce growing thereon with the exception of the said vine, and the said Sieur Henri Duval should have access at all times for the purpose of cultivating the said vine and the fruit of the said vine should belong to him and his heirs and assigns, and the said railroad company on their part —

“I am Francois Duval, voyez-vous,” he declared, “son of Henri Duval, and I have here my birth certificate and copy of the will of Henri Duval.

“ But 1 he grapes are his! ” grumbled Charles Cortal, who, you will remember, was a communist and did not believe in private property. “Why worry about the damned documents? He can just as well leave them for us in the tower.”

He shrugged his shoulders and strolled off to prepare Lulu for the road. We returned to Paris.