Asylum Piece

THE SUMMONS

R is one of my oldest friends. Once, long ago, we used to live in flats in the same building, and then, of course, I saw a great deal of him. Afterwards the circumstances of our lives altered, wider and wider distances divided us, we could only meet rarely and with difficulty — perhaps only once or twice in a whole year — and then only for a few hours or at most for a weekend. In spite of this our friendship — which was purely platonic — continued unbroken, although it was naturally not possible to maintain quite the original degree of intimacy. I still felt that a close and indestructible understanding existed between R and myself: an understanding which had its roots in some fundamental character similarity and was therefore exempt from the accidents of change.

A particularly long interval had elapsed since our last encounter, so I was delighted when we were at length able to arrange a new meeting. It was settled that we should meet in town, have dinner together, and travel by train later in the evening to the suburb where R was living.

Our appointment was for seven o’clock. I was the first to arrive at the restaurant, and, as soon as I had put my bag in the cloakroom, I went upstairs to the little bar which I often visited and where I felt quite at home. I noticed that a waiter was helping the usual barman, and in the idle way in which one’s thoughts run when one is waiting for somebody, I wondered why an assistant had been brought in that evening, for there were not many customers in the bar.

R appeared almost immediately. We greeted each other with happiness, and at once fell into a conversation which might have been broken off only the previous day.

We sat down and ordered our drinks. It was the waiter and not the barman who attended to us. As the man put down the two glasses on the table, I was struck by his ugliness. I know that one should not allow oneself to be too much influenced by appearances, but there was something in this fellow’s aspect by which I couldn’t help feeling repelled. The word ‘troglodyte’ came into my head as I looked at him. I don’t know what the cave dwellers really looked like, but I feel that they ought to have been very much like this small, thick-set, colourless individual. Without being actually deformed in any way, he seemed curiously misshapen; perhaps it was just that he was badly-proportioned and rather stooping. He was not an old man, but his face conveyed a queer impression of antiquity; of something hoary and almost obscene, like a survival of the primitive world. I remember particularly his wide, grey, unshaped lips which looked incapable of anything so civilized as a smile.

Extraordinary as it seems, I must have been paying more attention to the waiter than to my friend, for it was not until after we had lifted our glasses that I noticed a certain slight alteration in R’s appearance. He had put on a little weight since our previous meeting and looked altogether more prosperous. He was wearing a new suit too, and when I complimented him upon it, he told me that he had bought it that day out of a considerable sum of money which he had received as an advance on his latest book.

I was very glad to hear that things were going so well with him. Yet at the same time a small arrow of jealously pierced my heart. My own affairs were in such a very bad way that it was impossible for me not to contrast my failure with his success, which seemed in some indefinable manner to render him less accessible to me, although his attitude was as friendly and charming as it had ever been.

When we had finished our drinks we went down to the restaurant for dinner. Here I was surprised, and, I must admit, rather unreasonably annoyed, to see the same waiter approaching us with the menu. ‘What, are you working down here as well as upstairs?’ I asked him, irritably enough. R must have been astonished by my disagreeable tone, for he looked sharply at me. The man answered quite politely that his work in the bar was finished for the evening and that he was now transferred to the restaurant. I would have suggested moving to a table served by a different waiter, but I felt too ashamed to do so. I was very mortified at having made such an irrational and unamiable display of feeling in front of R, who, I felt sure, must be criticizing me adversely.

It was a bad start to the meal. All on account of this confounded waiter, the evening had acquired an unfortunate tendency, like a run of bad luck at cards which one cannot break. Although we talked without any constraint, some essential spark, which on other occasions had always been struck from our mutual contact, now withheld from us its warmth. It even seemed to me that the food was not as good as usual.

I was glad when the waiter brushed away the crumbs with his napkin and set the coffee before us. Now at last we should be relieved of the burden of his inauspicious proximity. But in a few minutes he came back, and putting his repulsive face close to mine, informed me that I was wanted outside in the hall.

‘But that’s impossible — it must be a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here,’ I protested: while he unemphatically and obstinately insisted that someone was asking for me.

R suggested that I had better go and investigate. So out I went to the hall where several people were sitting or standing about, waiting to meet their friends. I could see at a glance that they were all strangers to me. The waiter led me up to a man of late middle age, neatly and inconspicuously dressed, with a nondescript, roundish face and a small grey moustache. He might have been a bank manager or some such respectable citizen. I think he was bald headed. He bowed, and greeted me by my name.

‘How do you know who I am?’ I asked in amazement. I was positive that I had never seen him before: yet how could I be quite certain? His was one of those undistinguished faces which one might see many times without remembering it.

In reply, he began to reel off quite a long speech; but all so fast and in such a low voice that I could only catch a word here and there and these did not make sense. Totally unable to follow what he was saying, I only vaguely got the impression that he was asking me to accompany him somewhere. Suddenly I saw that the suitcase standing on the floor near his feet was my own.

‘What are you doing with my bag? How did you get it…? The attendant had no right to let you take it out of the cloakroom,’ I said angrily, stretching down for the handle. But before I could reach it he picked up the bag himself with a deprecating smile, and carried it out of the door.

I followed him, full of indignation and eager to reclaim my property. In the street, pedestrians came between us and I was unable to catch up with him until he had turned the corner into a narrow alley full of parked cars. It occurred to me that the man was out of his mind: I couldn’t believe he intended to steal the suitcase; he looked far too respectable for that.

‘What’s the meaning of all this? Where are you taking my bag?’ I said, catching hold of his sleeve. We were just beside a large black limousine which stood in the rank of waiting cars. My companion rested the bag on the running board.

‘I see that you haven’t understood me,’ he said: and now for the first time he spoke clearly so that I could really hear what he was saying. ‘Here is my authorization. It was merely out of consideration for you that I refrained from producing it inside where everyone would have seen it.’ He took a pale blue form out of his pocket and held it towards me. But in the uncertain cross light from the street lamps and the cars I only had time to make out some unintelligible legal phrases, and my own name embellished with elaborate scrolls and flourishes in the old-fashioned style, before he hastily put the stiff paper away again.

I was opening my mouth to ask him to let me look at it properly, when the chauffeur of the black car suddenly climbed out of the driving seat and picked up my case with the clear intention of putting it inside the vehicle.

‘That belongs to me — kindly leave it alone!’ I commanded, at the same time wondering what I should do if the man refused to obey my order. But, as if the whole matter were of perfect indifference to him, he at once let go the handle and returned to his seat where he immediately appeared to become absorbed in an evening newspaper.

Now for the first time I observed the official coat-of-arms emblazoned on the glossy black door panel of the car, and I saw too that the windows were made of frosted glass. And for the first time I was aware of a faint anxiety; not because I thought for an instant that the situation was serious, but because I had always heard what a tedious, interminable business it was to extricate oneself from official red-tape once one had become even remotely involved with it.

Feeling that there was not a moment to be lost, that I must make my explanations and escape before I became any further entangled in this ridiculous mesh of misunderstanding, I began to talk to the elderly man who was standing patiently beside me. I spoke quietly and in a reasonable tone, telling him that I was not blaming him in the least, but that a mistake had certainly been made; I was not the person mentioned on the document he had shown me which probably referred to somebody of the same name. After all, my name was not an uncommon one; I could think of at least two people off-hand — a film actress and a writer of short stories — who were called by it. When I had finished speaking I looked at him anxiously to see how he had taken my arguments. He appeared to be impressed, nodded his head once or twice in a reflective way, but made no reply. Encouraged by his attitude, I decided on a bold move, picked up my suitcase and walked rapidly back to the restaurant. He did not attempt to stop me, nor, as far as I could see, was he following me, and I congratulated myself on having escaped so easily. It seemed as if boldness were what was most needed in dealing with officialdom.

R was still sitting at the table where I had left him. My spirits had now risen high, I felt cheerful, lively and full of confidence as I sat down — bringing my bag with me this time — and related the peculiar incidents that had just taken place. I told the story quite well, smiling at the absurdity of it; I really think I made it sound very amusing. But when, at the end, I looked for R’s smile of appreciation, I was astonished to see that he remained grave. He did not look at me, but sat with downcast eyes, drawing an invisible pattern on the cloth with his coffee spoon.

‘Well — don’t you think it was funny that they should make such a mistake?’ I asked, trying to force his amusement.

Now indeed he looked up at me, but with such a serious face and with eyes so troubled, that all my assurance and good spirits suddenly evaporated into thin air. Just at that moment I noticed the ugly waiter hovering near, almost as if he were trying to overhear our conversation, and now a feeling of dread slowly distilled itself in my veins.

‘Why don’t you say something?’ I burst out in agitation as R still remained silent. ‘Surely it’s not possible that you think — that there was no mistake…? That I am the person they really wanted?’

My friend put down the spoon and laid his hand on my arm. The affectionate touch, so full of sympathy and compassion, demoralized me even more than his words.

‘I think, if I were you,’ he said slowly and as if with difficulty, ‘I think I would go and find out just what the charge is against you. After all, you will easily be able to prove your identity if there has really been a mistake. It will only create a bad impression if you refuse to go.’

Now that I have so much time on my hands in which to think over past events, I sometimes wonder whether R was right: whether I would not have done better to keep my freedom as long as possible and even at the risk of prejudicing the final outcome of the affair. But at the time I allowed him to persuade me. I have always had a high opinion of his judgment, and I accepted it then. I felt, too, that I should forfeit his respect if I evaded the issue. But when we went out into the hall and I saw the neat, inconspicuous man still impassively, impersonally waiting, I began to wonder, as I have wondered ever since, whether the good opinion of anybody in the whole world is worth all that I have had to suffer and must still go on suffering — for how long; oh, for how long?