Brideshead Revisited(68)

Lamplight and a dark face appeared at the grating. The consular porter spoke peremptorily; bolts were withdrawn and we entered a small courtyard with a well in its centre and a vine trained overhead.

‘I wait here,’ said the porter. ‘You go with this native fellow.’ I entered the house, down a step and into the living-room I found a gramophone, an oil-stove and, between them, a young man. Later, when I looked about me, I noticed other, more agreeable things — the rugs on the floor, the embroidered silk on the walls, the carved and painted beams of the ceiling, the heavy, pierced lamp that hung from a chain and cast soft shadows of its own tracery about the room. But on first entering these three things, the gramophone for its noise — it was playing a French record of jazz band — the stove for its smell, and the young man for his wolfish look, struck my senses. He was lolling in a basket chair, with a bandaged foot stuck forward on a box; he was dressed in a kind of thin, mid-European imitation tweed with a tennis shirt open at the neck; the unwounded foot wore a brown canvas shoe. There was a brass tray by his side on wooden legs, and on it were two beer bottles, a dirty plate, and a saucer full of cigarette ends; he held a glass of beer in his hand and a cigarette lay on his lower lip and stuck there when he spoke. He had long fair hair combed back without a parting and a face that was unnaturally lined for a man of his obvious youth; one of his front teeth was missing, so that his sibilants came sometimes with a lisp, sometimes with a disconcerting whistle, which he covered with a giggle; the teeth he had were stained with tobacco and set far apart.

This was plainly the ‘thoroughly bad hat’ of the consul’s description, the film footman of Anthony’s.

‘I’m looking for Sebastian Flyte. This is his house, is it not?’ I spoke loudly to make myself heard above the dance music, but he answered softly in English fluent enough to suggest that it was now habitual to him.

‘Yeth. But he isn’t here. There’s no one but me.’

‘I’ve come from England to see him on important business. Can you tell me where I can find him?’

The record came to its end. The German turned it over, wound up the machine and started it playing again before answering.

‘Sebastian’s sick. The brothers took him away to the Infirmary. Maybe they’ll let you thee him, maybe not. I got to go there myself one day thoon to have my foot dressed. I’ll ask them then. When he’s better they’ll let you thee him, maybe.’

There was another chair and I sat down on it. Seeing that I meant to stay, the German offered me some beer.

‘You’re not Thebastian’s brother?’ he said. ‘Cousin maybe? Maybe you married hith thister?’

‘I’m only a friend. We were at the university together.’

‘I had a friend at the university. We studied History. My friend was cleverer than me; a little weak fellow — I used to pick him up and shake him when I was angry — but tho clever. Then one day we said: “What the hell? There is no work in Germany. Germany is down the drain,” so we said good-bye to our professors, and they said: “Yes, Germany is down the drain. There is nothing for a student to do here now,” and we went away and walked and walked and at last we came here. Then we said, “There is no army in Germany now, but we must be tholdiers,” so we joined the Legion. My friend died of dysentery last year, campaigning in the Atlas. When he was dead, I said, “What the hell?” so I shot my foot. It is now full of pus, though I have done it one year.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s very interesting. But my immediate concern is with Sebastian. Perhaps you would tell me about him.’

‘He is a very good fellow, Sebastian. He is all right for me. Tangier was a stinking place. He brought me here — nice house, nice food, nice servant — everything is all right for me here, I reckon. I like it all right.’

‘His mother is very ill,’ I said. ‘I have come to tell him.’

‘She rich?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why don’t she give him more money? Then we could live at Casablanca, maybe, in a nice flat. You know her well.? You could make her give him more money?’

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘I don’t know. I reckon maybe he drink too much. The brothers will look after him. It’s all right for him there. The brothers are good fellows. Very cheap there.’

He clapped his hands and ordered more beer.

‘You thee? A nice thervant to look after me. It is all right.’ When I had got the name of the hospital I left.

‘Tell Thebastian I am still here and all right. I reckon he’s worrying about me, maybe.’



The hospital, where I went next morning, was a collection of bungalows, between the old and the new towns. It was kept by Franciscans. I made my way through a crowd of diseased Moors to the doctor’s room. He was a layman, clean shaven, dressed in white, starched overalls. We spoke in French, and he told me Sebastian was in no danger, but quite unfit to travel. He had had the grippe, with one lung slightly affected; he was very weak; he lacked resistance; what could one expect? He was an alcoholic. The doctor spoke dispassionately, almost brutally, with the relish men of science sometimes have for limiting themselves to inessentials, for pruning back their work to the point of sterility; but the bearded, barefooted brother in whose charge he put me, the man of no scientific pretensions who did the dirty jobs of the ward, had a different story.