Complete Short Stories by Robert Graves
With this little prologue I shall present you to the students who have crowned themselves with glory by passing with distinction their Baccalaureat. Let the presentation take the form of a few distinct interviews:
Alonzo García
I found Alonzo rolling dice, left hand against the right, in the Hall of Seraphic Youth. He is a serious adolescent in white trousers and khaki shirt, as absorbed in his game as when he played goal last spring in our football team that knocked such lumps of flesh out of our rivals of St Dominic’s.
‘Tell me, Alonzo – to what career will you dedicate yourself ?’
‘Well, at the moment, I shall respect my good Uncle’s desire that I should join him as a humble assistant in the business which has given him so portly a belly.’
‘Of course: he is a director of the Madrid Bull Ring management, is he not?’
‘Exactly: he contemplates to present to the public more valiant and dependable cornupeds than ever were seen before in the history of Spain, and more valiant and brilliant artists of killing. If, in some modest way, I can contribute to the glories of the National Fiesta…’
‘You have chosen well, Alonzo. Moreover, I greatly applauded your organization of the end-of-term bullfight, which was full of colour and passion. Everything for the Fatherland… Perhaps there will be reduced fees for your old teachers.’
We parted smiling.
Diego Vásquez
Diego was discovered in a romantic corner of the cloisters. He explained to us that he had his eye on a career which would be not only momentarily profitable, but would lead to a splendid future: that of interpreter-guide to tourists visiting the public buildings of our city.
‘I think you have chosen well, Diego. Although one cannot occasionally repress a feeling of disgust at a sight of these ill-mannered sightseers, especially young women who often do not hesitate to enter sacred edifices without decently shrouding their heads, or their upper arms, or their semi-bare bosoms, and who even wear tight shorts like footballers, it is necessary to forgive them. They are doubtless Protestants or Jews and therefore totally without culture. It will be your duty and privilege to instruct them, with true Spanish courtesy, in decent comportment. After all, the tourist trade is most necessary to the national economy, as the Ministers of State never fail to remind us.’
‘I will try to feel no resentment towards these savages.’
‘Noble boy!’
Jaime and Cayetano Bobadilla, also Antonio Alemán
The three new bachelors who are about to enter the Royal Military Academy were found in the Health and Faith Gymnasium, tossing the medicine-bag one to the other.
As I entered unexpectedly, the said bag happened to strike me on the side of the head and I fell prostrate. The three comrades made the most chivalrous excuses and explanations…
It appears that the Bobadilla brothers intend to follow in the footsteps of their illustrious ancestors and carve a way to Fortune with the shining sword. Both are super-aces in the Gymnasium referred to; but Antonio Alemán, though the son of an historical professor, almost excels them in the flame-like loyalty which he consecrates to the military life.
‘I dedicate myself to repairing a historical injustice nearly three centuries old.’
‘You refer to Gibraltar?’
[An audible gnashing of resentful teeth.]
‘If I have to tear down the alien flag with fingers ensanguined from scaling that truly Spanish crag, I will do so.’
‘May God go with you, Antonio!’
The Bobadilla brothers echo this correct sentiment fervently.
Francisco Maura
As I entered the Library, where Francisco, a dwarfish but brilliant student, was consulting a new work of algebra recently set upon the shelves, I uncovered myself; for I knew that I stood in the presence of a future Atomic Physicist!
‘And the cobalt bomb ?’ I asked.
‘It will not be long before we Castilians are able to construct bombs of transcendental power from even the cheapest materials, which Spain and her colonies can supply in prodigal quantities. Nothing can then hold back our glorious march of scientific progress…’
‘Among these materials… ?’
‘I will begin with tin-plate, of which this country has an excess, owing to the growing and natural preference of the public for aluminium coffeepots and galvanized iron watering-cans.’
‘May the noise of your explosions reach this Library only as a distant reverberation from the evil cities of Moscow and Leningrad – the Sodom and Gomorrah of today!’
Francisco’s good-natured grin nearly halved his cherub’s face.
Mauricio Venturoso
I had envisaged Mauricio, our exalted young philosopher, as a future occupant of the Chair of Logic at the Central University, not to mention making complimentary visits to Oxford, where he would expound Hegel and Kant or refute the theories of the late Ortega y Gasset. But this is not to be, he tells me, philosophically enough.
‘What alternative profession, Mauricio?’
‘The simple one of entering my father’s business: the fabrication of innumerable plastic novelties.’
‘Demark a few, if you please.’
‘What shall I say…? Plastic flower-pots, plastic infantile night-vases, plastic back-scratchers for export to the Moroccans, plastic cock-spurs.’
‘Did you say “cock-spurs”?’
‘Yes, indeed, they are very necessary in the cock-fighting industry, since the humanity of the present regime forbids the use of metal ones; but they serve very well, being not only sharp but resistant.’
‘Perhaps, after all, it is better that you should consider the nation’s material interests, Mauricio, than waste your inherited talents on such difficult problems in philosophy as often entice to views incompatible with true belief.’
‘Ah, flaming youth! Each to the conquest of his own ideal!’
Curiosities
An Appetite
The American soldier Chester Salvatori costs the Army authorities large sums on account of the quantity of alimentation which is a daily necessity to him. Although the aforesaid soldier weighs no more than 158 lb (or say 70 kilos), he is accustomed to breakfast off 40 eggs, eight rashers of bacon, a ration of oatmeal, with three litres of milk and one of coffee. On a certain occasion he devoured a 16-1b (or say 71/2 kilos) turkey at a sitting. On another he disposed of 38 pork chops. What about posting him to the Commissariat ?
A unique training programme
A prisoner in the Santé at Paris has evolved a very original training programme. His mattress was infested with bed-bugs, and he decided to train a large-sized spider to hunt them. He succeeded remarkably well, and the spider devoured the bed-bugs with such expedition that he soon was able to pass a few excessively tranquil nights.
Cure for seasickness
A Portuguese diplomat was so subject to seasickness that he feared that he would never reach the country to which he was destined. In the midst of his anxieties he threw himself from his bunk, whereupon it occurred to him to look at himself in a mirror – which cured him instantly. He made diverse proofs with sundry other seasick passengers, all with the same success.
The remedy is both cheap and easy.
Congratulations! His Excellency the Civil Governor and Provincial Chief of the Falange, Comrade Lorenzo Jurado Hurtado, has personally presented the First Prize of the Juvenile Pigeon-Shooting Championship to Felipe González, alumnus of this College. He felled not less than ten of the enemy in twelve discharges.
Notice: It is with sorrowful anger that the Reverend Father charged with the Direction of this Sacred College spews out the scandalous and painful charge that the Mercedes-Benz automobile, in which he takes his needful journeys, was purchased with College Funds. It is sufficiently well known that this splendid vehicle – impudently and blasphemously nicknamed ‘The Sandals of St Modesto’ – was won, equally with the Vespa motor-scooter possessed by the College Librarian, in a bona fide publi
To conclude this little bulletin, collegians! You must apply yourselves seriously to your studies in the present autumn. If you do the contrary, you will be a hazard and disturbance to your companions; a despair to your professors; a disgrace to your family and country. And how to explain your miserable frowardness to our Patron, who watches over us all and whose hot tears fall reproachfully on all unworthy heads?
Treacle Tart
THE NEWS TRAVELLED from group to group along the platform of Victoria Station, impressing our parents and kid-sisters almost as much as ourselves. A lord was coming to our prep-school. A real lord. A new boy, only eight years old. Youngest son of the Duke of Downshire. A new boy, yet a lord. Lord Julius Bloodstock. Some name! Crikey!
Excitement strong enough to check the rebellious tears of home-lovers, and make our last good-byes all but casual. None of us having had any contact with the peerage, it was argued by some, as we settled in our reserved Pullman carriage, that on the analogy of policemen there couldn’t be boy-lords. However, Mr Lees, the Latin Master (declined: Lees, Lees, Lem, Lei, Lei, Lee) confirmed the report. The lord was being driven to school that morning in the ducal Rolls-Royce. Crikey, again! Cricko, Crickere, Crikey, Crictum!
Should we be expected to call him ‘your Grace’, or ‘Sire’, or something? Would he keep a coronet in his tuck-box? Would the masters dare cane him if he broke school rules or didn’t know his prep?
Billington Secundus told us that his father (the famous Q.C.) had called Thos a ‘tuft-hunting toad-eater’, as meaning that he was awfully proud of knowing important people, such as bishops and Q.C.s and lords. To this Mr Lees turned a deaf ear, though making ready to crack down on any further disrespectful remarks about the Rev. Thomas Pearce, our Headmaster. None came. Most of us were scared stiff of Thos; besides, everyone but Billington Secundus considered pride in knowing important people an innocent enough emotion.
Presently Mr Lees folded his newspaper and said: ‘Bloodstock, as you will learn to call him, is a perfectly normal little chap, though he happens to have been born into the purple – if anyone present catches the allusion. Accord him neither kisses nor cuffs (nec oscula, nec verbera, both neuter) and all will be well. By the way, this is to be his first experience of school life. The Duke has hitherto kept him at the Castle under private tutors.’
At the Castle, under private tutors! Crikey! Crikey, Crikius, Crikissime!
We arrived at the Cedars just in time for school dinner. Thos, rather self-consciously, led a small, pale, fair-haired boy into the dining-hall, and showed him his seat at the end of the table among the other nine newcomers. ‘This is Lord Julius Bloodstock, boys,’ he boomed. ‘You will just call him Bloodstock. No titles or other honorifics here.’
‘Then I prefer to be called Julius.’ His first memorable words.
‘We happen to use only surnames at Brown Friars,’ chuckled Thos; then he said Grace.
None of Julius’s table-mates called him anything at all, to begin with, being either too miserable or too shy even to say ‘Pass the salt, please.’ But after the soup, and half-way through the shepherd’s pie (for once not made of left-overs) Billington Tertius, to win a bet, leant boldly across the table and asked: ‘Lord, why didn’t you come by train, same as the rest of us?’
Julius did not answer at first, but when his neighbours nudged him, he said: ‘The name is Julius, and my father was afraid of finding newspaper photographers on the platform. They can be such a nuisance. Two of them were waiting for us at the school gates, and my father sent the chauffeur to smash both their cameras.’
This information had hardly sunk in before the third course appeared: treacle tart. Today was Monday: onion soup, shepherd’s pie and carrots, treacle tart. Always had been. Even when Mr Lees-Lees-Lem had been a boy here and won top scholarship to Winchester. ‘Treacle. From the Greek theriace, though the Greeks did not, of course…’ With this, Mr Lees, who sat at the very end of the table, religiously eating treacle tart, looked up to see whether anyone were listening; and noticed that Julius had pushed away his plate, leaving the oblong of tough burned pastry untouched.
‘Eat it, boy!’ said Mr Lees. ‘Not allowed to leave anything here for Mr Good Manners. School rule.’
‘I never eat treacle tart,’ explained Julius with a little sigh.
‘You are expected to address me as “sir”,’ said Mr Lees.
Julius seemed surprised. ‘I thought we didn’t use titles here, or other honorifics,’ he said, ‘but only surnames?’
‘Call me “sir”,’ insisted Mr Lees, not quite certain whether this were innocence or impertinence.
‘Sir,’ said Julius, shrugging faintly.
‘Eat your tart,’ snapped Mr Lees.
‘But I never eat treacle tart – sir!’
‘It’s my duty to see that you do so, every Monday.’
Julius smiled. ‘What a queer duty!’ he said incredulously.
Titters, cranings of necks. Then Thos called jovially down the table: ‘Well, Lees, what’s the news from your end? Are the summer holidays reported to have been wearisomely long?’
‘No, Headmaster. But I cannot persuade an impertinent boy to sample our traditional treacle tart.’
‘Send him up here,’ said Thos in his most portentous voice. ‘Send him up here, plate and all! Oliver Twist asking for less, eh?’
When Thos recognized Julius, his face changed and he swallowed a couple of times, but having apparently lectured the staff on making not the least difference between duke’s son and shopkeeper’s son, he had to put his foot down. ‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘let me see you eat that excellent piece of food without further demur; and no nonsense.’
‘I never eat treacle tart, Headmaster.’
Thos started as though he had been struck in the face. He said slowly: ‘You mean perhaps: “I have lost my appetite, sir.” Very well, but your appetite will return at supper time, you mark my words – and so will the treacle tart.’
The sycophantic laughter which greeted this prime Thossism surprised Julius but did not shake his poise. Walking to the buttery-table, he laid down the plate, turned on his heel, and walked calmly back to his seat.
Thos at once rose and said Grace in a challenging voice.
‘Cocky ass, I’d like to punch his lordly head for him,’ growled Billington Secundus later that afternoon.
‘You’d have to punch mine first,’ I said. ‘He’s a… the thing we did in Gray’s Elegy – a village Hampden. Standing up to Lees and Thos in mute inglorious protest against that foul treacle tart.’
‘You’re a tuft-hunting toad-eater.’
‘I may be. But I’d rather eat toads than Thos’s treacle tart.’
A bell rang for supper, or high tea. The rule was that tuck-box cakes were put under Matron’s charge and distributed among all fifty of us while they lasted. ‘Democracy’, Thos called it (I can’t think why); and the Matron, to cheer up the always dismal first evening, had set the largest cake she could find on the table: Julius’s. Straight from the ducal kitchens, plastered with crystallized fruit, sugar icing and marzipan, stuffed with raisins, cherries and nuts.
‘You will get your slice, my dear, when you have eaten your treacle tart,’ Matron gently reminded Julius. ‘Noblesse oblige.’
‘I never eat treacle tart, Matron.’
It must have been hard for him to see his cake devoured by strangers before his eyes, but he made no protest; just sipped a little tea and went supperless to bed. In the dormitory he told a ghost story, which is still, I hear, current in the school after all these years: about a Mr Gracie (why ‘Gracie’?) who heard hollow groans in the night, rose to investigate and was grasped from behind by an invisible hand. He found that his braces had caught on the door knob; and, after other harrowing adventures, traced the groans to the bathroom, where Mrs Gracie…
Lights out! Sleep. Bells for getting up; for prayers; for breakfast.
Bell: Latin. Bell: Maths. Bell: long break. Bell: Scripture. Bell: wash hands for dinner.
‘I never eat treacle tart,’ said Julius, as a sort of response to Thos’s Grace; and this time fainted.
Thos sent a long urgent telegram to the Duke, explaining his predicament: school rule, discipline, couldn’t make exceptions, and so forth.
The Duke wired back non-committally: ‘Quite so. Stop. The lad never eats treacle tart. Stop. Regards. Downshire.’
Matron took Julius to the sickroom, where he was allowed milk and soup, but no solid food unless he chose to call for treacle tart. He remained firm and polite until the end, which came two days later, after a further exchange of telegrams.
We were playing kick-about near the Master’s Wing, when the Rolls-Royce pulled up. Presently Julius, in overcoat and bowler hat, descended the front steps, followed by the school porter carrying his tuck-box, football boots and hand-bag. Billington Secundus, now converted to the popular view, led our three cheers, which Julius acknowledged with a gracious tilt of his bowler. The car purred off; and thereupon, in token of our admiration for Julius, we all swore to strike against treacle tart the very next Monday, and none of us eat a single morsel, even if we liked it, which some of us did!
When it came to the point, of course, the boys sitting close to Thos took fright and ratted, one after the other. Even Billington Secundus and I, not being peers’ sons or even village Hampdens, regretfully conformed.