It was early spring when I went to the bungalow. On the road still lay
last year’s darkened leaves. I was unaccompanied; and alone I wandered
through the still empty bungalow, the windows of which reflected the
April sun. I mounted the broad bright terraces, and wondered who would
live here under the green canopy of birch and oak. And when I closed my
eyes I seemed to hear quick, cheerful footsteps, youthful song, and the
ringing sound of women’s laughter.
I used often to go to the station to meet the passenger trains. I was
not expecting any one, for there was no one to come and see me; but I
am fond of those iron giants, when they rush past, rolling their
shoulders, tearing along the rails with colossal momentum, and carrying
somewhither persons unknown to me, but still my fellow-creatures. They
seem to me alive and uncanny. In their speed I recognize the immensity
of the world and the might of man, and when they whistle with such
abandon and in so imperious a manner, I think how they are whistling in
the same way in America, and Asia, maybe in torrid Africa.
The station was a small one, with two short sidings, and when the
passenger train had left it became still and deserted. The forest and
the streaming sunshine dominated the little low platform and the
desolate track, and blended the rails in silence and light. On one of
the sidings under an empty sleeping-car fowls wandered about, swarming
round the iron wheels, and one could hardly believe, as one watched
their peaceful, fussy activity, that it would be much the same in
America, in Asia, or in torrid Africa.... In a week I became acquainted
with all the inhabitants of this little corner, and saluted as
acquaintances the watchmen in their blue blouses, and the silent
pointsmen with their dull countenances and their brass horns, which
glittered in the sun.
Every day I saw at the station a gendarme. He was a healthy, strong
fellow, as are they all, with broad back, in a tightly stretched blue
uniform, with enormous arms and a youthful countenance, upon which,
from behind a severe official dignity, there still looked out the
blue-eyed naïveté of the country. At first he used to scan me all over
with a gloomy suspicion, and put on a look of unapproachable severity
without a touch of indulgence, and when he passed me would clank his
spurs in a peculiarly sharp and eloquent manner. But he soon became
used to me, just as he had become used to the pillars which supported
the roof of the platform, to the desolate track, and to the discarded
sleeping-car under which the fowls kept running about. In such quiet
corners a habit is soon formed. And when he left off observing me, I
perceived that this man was bored—bored as no one else in the world. He
was bored with the wearisome station, bored by the absence of thoughts,
bored by his strength-devouring inactivity, bored by the exclusiveness
of his position, somewhere in the void between the station-master, who
was unapproachable to him, and the lower employés to whom he was
himself unapproachable. His soul lived on breaches of the peace, but at
this tiny station no one ever committed a breach of the peace, and
every time the passenger train departed without any adventure there
passed over the face of the gendarme the expression of annoyance and
vexation of a person who has been deprived of his due. For some minutes
he would stand still in indecision, and then with listless gait walk to
the other end of the platform without any aim or object. On his way he
might stop for a second in front of some peasant woman who had been
waiting for the train—but she was only a peasant woman like any
other—and so knitting his brows the gendarme would pass on his way.
Then he would sit down stout and listless, as though he had been boiled
soft, and felt how soft and flabby were his useless arms under the
cloth of his uniform, and how his powerful body, created for work, grew
weary with the torturing fatigue of doing nothing. We are bored only in
the head, but he was bored in every part of him, from head to foot: his
cap, cocked on one side with youthful lack of purpose, was bored, his
spurs were bored and tinkled inharmoniously and irregularly as though
muffled. Then he began to yawn. How he yawned! his mouth became
contorted, expanded from ear to ear, grew broader and broader, till it
swallowed up his whole face, it seemed that in another second, through
the ever enlarging aperture, you would be able to see down his throat,
choke-full of greasy soup. How he yawned! He went away in a hurry, but
for long that awful yawn seemed to put my jaw-bone out of joint, and
the trees were broken and bobbing about to my tear-filled eyes.
Once from the mail train they took a passenger travelling without a
ticket, and this was a very festival for the bored gendarme. He drew
himself up, his spurs jingled with precision and austerity, his face
became concentrated and angry; but his happiness was but short-lived.
The passenger paid his fare, and with a hasty oath got back into the
car, and in the rear the metal rowels of the gendarme’s spurs gave a
disconcerted and piteous rattle, as his enervated body swayed feebly
over them.
And at times when he yawned he became to me something terrible.
For some days workmen had been busy about the station clearing the
site, and when I returned from town after a stay of a couple of days,
the masons were laying the third row of bricks; a brand-new building
was arising. These masons were numerous, and worked quickly and
skilfully; and it was a strange pleasure to watch the straight, even
wall springing up out of the ground. When they had covered one row with
mortar they laid on a second row, adjusting the bricks according to
their dimensions, laying them now on the broad side, now on the narrow,
and cutting off the corners to make them fit. They worked meditatively,
and though the course of their meditation was evident enough, and their
problem clear, still it gave an additional charm and interest to the
work. I was looking at them with enjoyment when an authoritative voice
at my elbow shouted:
“Look here, you. What’s your name! Why don’t you put this right?”
It was the voice of the gendarme, squeezing himself through the iron
railings, which separated the asphalt platform from the workmen; he was
pointing to a certain brick and insisting: “You with the beard! lay
that brick properly. Don’t you see, it’s a half-brick?”
The mason with the beard, which was in places whitened with lime,
turned round in silence—the gendarme’s face was severe and imposing—in
silence he followed the direction of the gendarme’s finger, took up the
brick, trimmed it, and in silence put it back in its place. The
gendarme gave me a severe look and went away; but the seductive
interest in the work was stronger than his sense of dignity. When he
had made a couple of turns on the platform, he again came to a
standstill in front of the workmen, adopting a somewhat careless and
contemptuous pose. But his face no longer showed signs of boredom.
I went to the wood, and when I was returning through the station it was
one o’clock, the workmen were resting, and the place was empty as
usual. But some one was busying himself about the unfinished wall; it
was the gendarme. He was taking up bricks, and finishing the fifth row.
I could only catch a sight of his broad, tightly stretched back, but it
was expressive of intent thought, and indecision. Evidently the work
was more complicated than he had imagined. His unaccustomed eye was
playing him false; he stepped back, shook his head, stooped for a fresh
brick, striking the ground with his sabre as he bent down. Once he
raised his finger, in the classic gesture of one who has discovered the
solution of a problem, such as might have been used by Archimedes
himself, and his back once more assumed the erect attitude of greater
self-confidence and certainty. But immediately it became once more
doubled up in the consciousness of the undignified nature of the work
undertaken. There was in his whole, full-grown figure something
secretive as with children, when they are afraid they will be found
out.
I carelessly struck a match to light a cigarette, and the gendarme
turned round startled. For a moment he looked at me in confusion, and
suddenly his youthful countenance was illumined by a slightly
solicitous, confiding, and kindly smile. But the very next moment he
resumed his austere, unapproachable look, and his hand went up to his
little thin moustache—but in it, in that very hand, there still lay
that unlucky brick! And I saw how painfully ashamed he was of that
brick, and of his involuntary, compromising smile. Apparently he did
not know how to blush, otherwise he would have become as red as the
brick which he still held helplessly in his hand.
They had carried the wall up half way, and it was no longer possible to
see what the skilful masons were doing on their scaffolding. Once more
the gendarme oscillated from end to end of the platform, yawning, and
when he turned round and passed me I could feel that he was ashamed—and
that he hated me. And as I looked at his powerful arms listlessly
swinging in their sleeves, at his inharmoniously jingling spurs and
trailing sabre, it seemed to me that it was all unreal—that in the
scabbard there was no sabre at all with which he might cut a man down,
in the case no revolver, with which he might shoot a man dead. And his
very uniform, that too was unreal, and seemed as though it was all just
some strange masquerade taking place in full daylight, in the face of
the honest April sun, and amidst ordinary working people, and busy
fowls picking up grains under the sleeping-car.
But at times—at times I began to fear for some one. He was so terribly
bored....