Fountains in the Sand by Norman Douglas

Author:Norman Douglas [Douglas, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780436132056
Google: nrs1AQAAMAAJ
Publisher: Secker & Warburg
Published: 1985-01-15T00:17:43+00:00

"By the way, how does it come about that you, being a Pole, should have a

Russian family name?"

The question seemed to astonish and perplex him. At last he said:

"Oh, it's about the same thing, isn't it? Nowadays, I mean," he added, with grandiloquent pathos, "ever since the misfortunes of my unhappy country."

At the entrance to the town we separated, and I watched for some time his bowed form as it crept along the wood-market in the direction of the Kairouan road.

This is one of the figures that will persist in my mind very clear and pathetic, and I shall long remember those plaintive remarks about poverty that welled up, surely, from the bottom of his heart. How far, I wonder, is such a man the author of his own calamities, and how far have they made him? Academic questionings, based on out-of-date philosophy! Our vices, he said, are distilled for us beforehand in the dim laboratory of the past. His vice, evidently, is to hate work of every kind; his faculties, therefore, never undergo the rhythmic joy of reaction, for he is too well nourished to live the vita minor of a starveling, to endure Arab acquiescence in non-production.

"I am only trying to explain myself—to myself." Half-truth, I imagine. He is probably conscience-stricken, or at least dissatisfied with his conduct for one reason or another, and endeavouring to justify some base plan of action by re-stating ethics in terms of hunger; a specious line of argument, since hunger is not the rule but the exception.

And then I shall think of his red nose and watery little eyes, his absurd jewellery—a fine presence, none the less, when he pulls himself together; there is about him an air of faded distinction that softly symbolizes the history of his adopted country.

The Count!

Why a count? Because all Poles are counts—those that are not princes. But why a Pole? Well, perhaps from the convenience of vagueness, inasmuch as there is something international about a Pole—international, and yet neither equivocal nor vulgar; every one sympathizes with them, for they all possessed, once upon a time, vast estates whose loss is borne in cheerful resignation, and never so much as alluded to; they know everybody, and everybody worth knowing is related to them, by marriage or otherwise, in this or some other century; as men of the world, they are ready to talk upon any subject with tolerance, geniality and a pleasingly personal note that withers up the commonplace, smoking, meanwhile, innumerable cigarettes out of mouthpieces which display a complex escutcheon contrived in gold and rubies upon the amber surface. Yes, his choice was good: Poles are gentlemen. But why caricature them? And why, above all things, select an inappropriate Muscovite name? That argues a lack of general intelligence and might easily spoil everything; so true it is, as a legal friend once observed to me, that "it takes a wise man to handle a lie. A fool had better remain honest."

What can be the meaning of this unlovely comedy? Some defalcation or forgery? Likely enough.

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