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152
stone; not the history of the battlefield that is laid bare for the historians, but that more intimate history, that of the drawing room, where, after all, the real ashes of empire are sifted.
The Old Tomato Man
I can picture him as he first appeared to me standing beside his round cart heaped with tomatoes, his greasy clothes shiny in their unkemptness, the rather glassy single eye that had looked from one side of his face staring at nothing in particular, but giving you the feeling that it was seeing all, the bottled nose with the network of veins spelling dissipation. I remember how I used to stand around and wait for him to shout his wares. His method never varied. There was a sudden twitching convulsion, and he leaned to one side, trying to straighten out the other as he did so, and then, taking into his one good lung all the air it would stand, he would let forth a clattering, gargling, asthmatic high pitched wheeze, a series of sounds which defied interpretation.
And he was still there. Through summer suns and winter snows he had stood and was standing. Only a bit more decrepit, a bit older, more dyspeptic, his clothes greasier, his shoulder rounder, his one eye rather filmy and not so all seeing as it once was. And I waited. But he did not shout his wares any more. Even the good lung was failing. He just stood there inert in his ageing. And somehow the tomatoes did not look so good as they once were.
Cami and Chariot
He is coming to me and we are both smiling broadly as we open our arms to each other.
"Cami!"
"Chariot!"
Our greeting is most effusive. And then something goes wrong. He is talking in French with the rapidity of a machine-gun. I can feel my smile fading into blankness. Then I get an inspiration. I start talking in English just as rapidly. Then we both talk at once. It's the old story of the irresistible force and the immovable body. We get nowhere.
Then I try talking slowly, extremely slowly.
"Do — you — understand ? "
It means nothing. We both realize at the same time what a hopeless thing our interview is. We are sad a bit, then we smile at the absurdity of it.
He is still Cami and I am still Chariot, so we grin and have a good time anyhow.