Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 9

«Fine!» said the blessed madman, sent by God.

Back they went. In came Arago, Guis, Vigne, all as honest as the day. The deposit was paid, the wine was opened, the stranger called for more, others crowded in; those who were not allowed in stood outside to listen to the laughter. You'd have thought there was a wedding going on, or some wickedness in the house. In fact, Foiral's old woman went and stood in the doorway every now and then, just to let people see her.

There was no doubt about it, there was something very magnificent about this madman. Next day, after he had gone, they talked him over thoroughly. «To listen,» said little Guis, «is to be drunk without spending a penny. You think you understand; you seem to fly through the air; you have to burst out laughing.»

«I somehow had the delectable impression that I was rich,» said Arago. «Not, I mean, with something in the chimney, but as if I — well, as if I were to spend it. And more.»

«I like him,» said little Guis. «He is my friend.»

«Now you speak like a fool,» said Foiral. «He is mad. And it is I who deal with him.»

«I thought maybe he was not so mad when he said the house was like an old skull looking out of the ground,» said Guis, looking sideways, as well he might.

«Nor a liar, perhaps?» said Foiral. «Let me tell you, he said also it was like a die on a desert. Can it be both?»

«He said in one breath,» said Arago, «that he came from Paris. In the next, that he was an American.»

«Oh, yes. Unquestionably a great liar,» said Ques. «Perhaps one of the biggest rogues in the whole world, going up and down. But, fortunately, mad as well.»

«So he buys a house,» said Lafago. «If he had his wits about him, a liar of that size, he'd take it — like that. As it is, he buys it. Thirty-five thousand francs!»

«Madness turns a great man inside out, like a sack,» said Arago. «And if he is rich as well —»

« — money flies in all directions,» said Guis.

Nothing could be more satisfactory. They waited impatiently for the stranger's return. Foiral whitewashed the house, cleaned the chimneys, put everything to rights. You may be sure he had a good search for anything that his wife's old man might have left hidden there years ago, and which this fellow might have heard of. They say they're up to anything in Paris.

The stranger came back, and they were all day with the mules getting his stuff from where the motor truck had left it. By the evening they were in the house, witnesses, helpers, and all — there was just the little matter of paying up the money.

Foiral indicated this with the greatest delicacy in the world. The stranger, all smiles and readiness, went into the room where his bags were piled up, and soon emerged with a sort of book in his hand, full of little billets, like those they try to sell for the lottery in Perpignan. He tore off the top one. «Here you are,» he said to Foiral, holding it out. «Thirty thousand francs.»

«No,»said Foiral.

«What the hell now?» asked the stranger.

«I've seen that sort of thing,» said Foiral. «And not for thirty thousand francs, my friend, but for three million. And afterwards — they tell you it hasn't won. I should prefer the money.»

«This is the money,» said the stranger. «It's as good as money anyway. Present this, and you'll get thirty thousand-franc notes, just like those I gave you.»

Foiral was rather at a loss. It's quite usual in these parts to settle a sale at the end of a month. Certainly he wanted to run no risk of crabbing the deal. So he pocketed the piece of paper, gave the fellow good-day, and went off with the rest of them to the village.

The stranger settled in. Soon he got to know everybody. Foiral, a little uneasy, cross-examined him whenever they talked. It appeared, after all, that he did come from Paris, having lived there, and he was an American, having been born there. «Then you have no relations in this part of the world?» said Foiral.

«No relations at all.»

Well! Well! Well! Foiral hoped the money was all right. Yet there was more in it than that. No relations! It was quite a thought. Foiral put it away at the back of his mind: he meant to extract the juice from it some night when he couldn't sleep.

At the end of the month, he took out his piece of paper, and marched up to the house again. There was the fellow, three parts naked, sitting under one of the ilex trees, painting away on a bit of canvas. And what do you think he had chosen to paint? Roustand's mangy olives, that haven't borne a crop in living memory!

«What is it?» said the mad fellow. «I'm busy.»

«This,» said Foiral, holding out the bit of paper. «I need the money.»

«Then why, in the name of the devil,» said the other, «don't you go and get the money, instead of coming here bothering me?»

Foiral had never seen him in this sort of mood before. But a lot of these laughers stop laughing when it comes to hard cash. «Look here,» said Foiral. «This is a very serious matter.»

«Look here,» said the stranger. «That's what's called a cheque. I give it to you. You take it to a bank. The bank gives you the money.»

«Which bank?» said Foiral.

«Your bank. Any bank. The bank in Perpignan,» said the stranger. «You go there. They'll do it for you.»

Foiral, still hankering after the cash, pointed out that he was a very poor man, and it took a whole day to get to Perpignan, a considerable thing to such an extremely poor man as he was.

«Listen,» said the stranger. «You know goddamn well you've made a good thing out of this sale. Let me get on with my work. Take the cheque to Perpignan. It's worth the trouble. I've paid you plenty.»

Foiral knew then that Guis had been talking about the price of the house. «All right, my little Guis, I'll think that over some long evening when the rains begin.» However, there was nothing for it, he had to put on his best black, take the mule to Estagel, and there get the bus, and the bus took him to Perpignan.

In Perpignan they are like so many monkeys. They push you, look you up and down, snigger in your face. If a man has business — with a bank, let us say — and he stands on the pavement opposite to have a good look at it, he gets elbowed into the roadway half a dozen times in five minutes, and he's lucky if he escapes with his life.

Nevertheless, Foiral got into the bank at last. As a spectacle it was tremendous. Brass rails, polished wood, a clock big enough for a church, little cotton-backs sitting among heaps of money like mice in a cheese.

He stood at the back for about half an hour, waiting, and no one took any notice of him at all. In the end one of the little cotton-backs beckoned him up to the brass railing. Foiral delved in his pocket, and produced the cheque. The cotton-back looked at it as if it were a mere nothing. «Holy Virgin!» thought Foiral.

«I want the money for it,» said he.

«Are you a client of the bank?»

«No.»

«Do you wish to be?»

«Shall I get the money?»

«But naturally. Sign this. Sign this. Sign on the back of the cheque. Take this. Sign this. Thank you. Good-day.»

«But the thirty thousand francs?» cried Foiral.

«For that, my dear sir, we must wait till the cheque is cleared. Come back in about a week.»

Foiral, half dazed, went home. It was a bad week. By day he felt reasonably sure of the cash, but at night, as soon as he closed his eyes, he could see himself going into that bank, and all the cotton-backs swearing they'd never seen him before. Still, he got through it, and as soon as the time was up, presented himself at the bank again.

«Do you want a cheque-book?»

«No. Just the money. The money.»

«All of it? You want to close the account? Well! Well! Sign here. Sign here.»