Hobohemians

11Nothing turned up that day. Willy in the dusk coolness tramped again the hated lizard paths manacled by jailor hills. Viktor was resplendent: “Your father has made a great winning on the English horses. He sends you a good percentage. English horses. They are the best in the world. We will buy several when I sell some of my pictures and take them with us to Africa. The horses there are very ignoble, nude of pedigree. We will organise big races and win acres of rubber. Perhaps in Venice a tired English lord with plenty of horses will exchange one, two horses a picture. I can give him the worst, he won’t know. Also some money for our piccaninny jockeys.”

12Next morning while Viktor in vigilance committee of one inspected villas and bungalows newly occupied on Monte Verita, Willy sat on benches everywhere in Locarno, shamefacedly effacing himself from possibly inquisitive suspicion of policemen. We have seen this unshaven foreigner before. Every day in fact, doubtless on the look-out to pester tourists. Willy was haunted.

13At three in the afternoon he stopped an obvious Englishman with ulster and wife. “Can you give me, lend me, two francs?” he asked simply. A dead fish eye, dead dropping jaw, and simply: “I haven’t any.” Willy walked on. Then he looked back. Both English, I English. This is the British Empire in Switzerland. Willy felt the structure of the world had become incomprehensible. He would follow and explain. Just two francs for a letter. Even one. Here is my address in English. My mother will give it you with interest of teacake and tea, roast beef, pudding. There are pounds waiting for me in the office there.

14He followed on the other side keeping out of sight, formulating trilogies of novels edifying all sides of situation to dullwits. May not have francs, can exchange anything, show you good bank. Right down to the pier where the steamboats for the lake villages take in their money. Everyone handling money carelessly. He kept just in sight of the ulster. He could not be recognised from there. Near the pier he hurried. Man and wife, baedeker and ulster, paying fare money for steamer. Willy watched the ulster far over the lake. Englishman on that boat touring for Italy. Weakly he leaned on the wall. In England with thousands of pounds he would search out ulster. Your business is decaying. Allow me to invest little twenty thousand on note of hand. Now let me explain about those two francs in Locarno. Or chase him from one ruined business to another, underselling him across the street, buying up his houses, turning him out, taking his jobs at lower wages.

15Next day Willy sat on a seat with choked voice, tearful eyes. The shame of the starving man before the well-fed, the consciousness of belonging to a thinner and inferior world, trickled from his eyes. A startled, astonished, then shocked, then amused, cadaverous jowl regarded Willy. The continental edition of the Daily Mail remained open on the bench. Willy told what he could remember of his immediate story. Hopeless and humiliated grew his voice. Uncaring now fell his face. Kladderadatsch Englishman gave him, he never afterwards knew, three or six shillings.