Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore (jenna bush book club .txt) 📗

from disappointment, I concluded. "Never mind, I'll pay you as much as a refugee—within reason."

"You are a follower of reason, sir?"

I tried hard to make out more of his still obscured face for there was a note of irony in his voice. "I believe we'd all be better off if everyone were to accept things philosophically. Responsible people will find a way to end our troubles eventually and in the meantime madness and violence—" I waved my hand to the French coast behind—"don't help at all."

"Ah," he said without pausing in his rowing, "men alone, then, will solve Man's problem."

"Who else?"

"Who Else, indeed?"

The smuggler's answer or confirmation or whatever the equivocal echo was irritated me. "You think our problems can be solved from the outside?"

He managed to shrug his shoulders without breaking the rhythm of his arms. "Perhaps my English is unequal to understanding what you mean by outside. All the forces I know are represented within."[321]

I was baffled and switched the subject to more immediate themes. "Are we about halfway, do you think?"

The light now exposed him fully. His hands were small and I doubted if the arms extending from them were muscular, but he radiated an air of great vitality. His face was lined, his eyes fierce under outthrust eyebrows, his lips—where the crisp waves of his beard permitted them to show—stern, but his whole demeanor was not unkindly.

"It is easy to measure how far we have come, but who can say how far we have to go?"

This metaphysical doubletalk annoyed me. "I don't know what is happening to people," I said. "Either they act like those over there," I gestured toward the Republic One and Indivisible, "or else they become mystics."

"You find questions without immediate answers mystical, sir?"

"I like my questions to be susceptible to an answer of some kind."

"You are a man of thought."

It amused me to speak intimately to this stranger. "I have lived inside myself a great many years. Naturally my mind has not been idle all the while."

"You have not married?"

"I never had the time."

"Ah." He rowed quietly for some moments. "'Never had the time,'" he repeated thoughtfully.

"You think marriage is important?"

"A man without children disowns his parents."

"Sounds like a proverb."

"It is not. Just an observation. I suppose since you have not had the time to marry you have devoted your life to good works."

"I have given employment to many, and help to the pauperized."

"It is commanded to be charitable."

"I have given millions of dollars—hundreds of thousands of pounds to philanthropies."[322]

"Anonymously, of course. You must be a godly man, sir."

"I am an agnostic. I do not know if there is such a thing."

He shook his head. "Beneath us there are fish who do not know it is the sea in which they swim; above us there are birds unaware of the reaches of the sky. The fish have no conception of sky; the birds know nothing of the deep. They are agnostics also."

"Well, it doesnt seem to do them any harm. Fishes continue to spawn and birds to nest without the benefits of esoteric knowledge."

"Exactly. Fish remain fish in happy ignorance; doubt does not cause a bird to falter in its flight."

The sun was pushed into the air from the waters as a ball is pushed by the thumb and forefinger. The chalkcliffs were outlined ahead of me and I calculated we had little more than an hour to go. "You have chosen a strange way of earning a living, my friend," I ventured at last.

"Upon some is laid the yoke of the Law, others depend upon the sun for light," he said. "Perhaps, like yourself, I have committed some great sin and am expiating it in this manner."

"I don't know what you mean. I am conscious of no sin—if I understand the meaning of the theological term."

"'We have trespassed,'" he murmured dreamily, "'we have been faithless, we have robbed, we have spoken basely, we have committed iniquity, we have wrought unrighteousness——'"

"Since the rational world discarded the superstitions of religion halfacentury ago," I said, "we have learned that good and evil are relative terms; without meaning, actually."

For the first time he suspended his oars and the boat wallowed crazily. "Excuse me," he resumed his exertions. "Good is evil sometimes and evil is good upon occasion?"

"It depends on circumstances and the point of view. What is beneficial at one time and place may be detrimental under other circumstances."

"Ah. Green is green today, but it was yellow yesterday and will be blue tomorrow."[323]

"Even such an exaggeration could be defended; however, that was not my meaning."

"'We have wrought unrighteousness, we have been presumptuous, we have done violence, we have forged lies, we have counseled evil, we have lied, we have scoffed, we have revolted, we have blasphemed, we have been rebellious, we have acted perversely, we have transgressed, we have persecuted——'"

"Perhaps you have," I interrupted with some asperity, "but I don't belong in that category. Far from persecuting, I have always believed in tolerance. Live and let live, I always say. People can't help the color of their skins or the race they were born into."

"And if they could they would naturally choose to be white northEuropean gentiles."

"Why should anyone voluntarily embrace a status of inconvenience?"

"Why, indeed? 'We have persecuted, we have been stiffnecked, we have done wickedly, we have corrupted ourselves, we have committed abominations, we have gone astray and we have led astray....'"

We both fell silent after this catalogue, quite inapplicable to the situation, and it was with heartfelt thanks I distinguished each fault and seam in the Dover Cliffs as well as the breaking line of surf below.

I presumed because of what I'd said about legal entry he was not avoiding the coastguard, but with a practiced oar he suddenly veered and drove us onto a minute sandy beach at the foot of the cliffs, obviously unfrequented and probably unknown to officialdom. A narrow yet clearly defined path led upward; this was evidently his customary haven. Were I an emotional man I would have kissed the little strip of shingle, as it was I contented myself with a deep sigh of thanksgiving.

My guide stood on the sand, smoothing the long, shapeless garment he wore against his spare body. He had taken a small book from his pocket and was mumbling some unintelligible words aloud. I was struck again by the nervous vigor of the[324] man which had given him the strength to row all night against a harsh sea—and presumably would generate the energy necessary for the return trip.

I pulled out my wallet and extracted two £100 banknotes. No one could say Albert Weener didnt reward service handsomely. "Here you are, my friend," I said, "and thank you."

"I accept your thanks." He bowed slightly, putting his hands behind him and moving toward his boat.

Perversely, since he seemed bent on rejecting my reward, I became anxious to press it upon him. "Don't be foolish," I argued. "This is a perilous game, this running in of refugees. You can't do it for pleasure."

"It is a work of charity."

I don't know how this shabby fellow conceived charity, but I had never understood that virtue to conflict with the law. "You mean you ferry all these strays for nothing?"

"My payment is predetermined and exact."

"You are foolish. Anyone using your boat for illegal entry would be glad to give everything he possessed for the trip."

"There are many penniless ones."

"Need that be your concern—to the extent of risking your life and devoting all your time?"

"I can speak for no one but myself. It need be my concern."

"One man can't do much. Oh, don't think I don't sympathize with your attitude. I too pity these poor people deeply; I have given thousands of pounds to relieve them."

"Their plight touches your heart?"

"Indeed it does. Never in all history have so many been so wretched through no fault of their own."

"Ah," he agreed thoughtfully. "For you it is something strange and pathetic."

"Tragic would be a better word."

"But for us it is an old story."

He pushed his boat into the water. "An old story," he repeated.

"Wait, wait—the money!"

He jumped in and began rowing. I waved the banknotes[325] ridiculously in the air. His body bent backward and forward, urging the boat away from me with each pull. "Your money!" I yelled.

He moved steadily toward the French shore. I watched him recede into the Channel mists and thought, another madman. I turned away at last and began to ascend the path up the cliff.

91. When I finally got back to Hampshire, worn out by my ordeal and feeling as though I'd aged ten years, there was a message from Miss Francis on my desk. Even her bumptious rudeness could not conceal the jubilation with which she'd penned it.

"To assuage your natural fear for the continued safety of Albert Weener's invaluable person, I hasten to inform you that I believe I have a workable compound. It may be a mere matter of weeks now before we shall begin to roll back Cynodon dactylon."

[327]

SIX Mr Weener Sees It Through

92. Whether it was from the exposure I endured on that dreadful trip or from disease germs which must have been plentiful among the continental savages and the man who rowed me back to England, I don't know, but that night I was seized with a violent chill, an aching head and a dry, enervating fever. I sent for the doctor and went to bed and it was a week before I was myself enough to be cognizant of what was going on around me.

During my illness I was delirious and I'm sure I afforded my nurses plentiful occasion to snicker at the ravings of someone of no inconsiderable importance as he lay helpless and sick. "Paper and pencil, you kep callin for, Mr Weener—an you that elpless you couldnt old up your own and. You said you ad to write a book—the Istory of the Grass. To purge yourself, you said. Lor, Mr Weener, doctors don't prescribe purges no more—that went out before the first war."

I never had a great deal of patience with theories of psychology—they seem to smack too much of the confessional and the catechism. But as I understand it, it is claimed that there exists what is called an unconscious—a reservoir of all sorts of thoughts lurking behind the conscious mind. The desires of this unconscious are powerful and tend to be expressed any time the conscious mind is offguard. Whether this metaphysical construction be valid or not, it seemed to me that some such thing had taken place while I was sick and my unconscious, or whatever it was, had outlined a very sensible project.[328] There was no reason why I shouldnt write such a history as soon as I could take the time from my affairs. Certainly I had the talent for it and I believed it would give me some satisfaction.

My pleasant speculations and plans for this literary venture were interrupted, as was my convalescence, by the loss of the Sahara depots. When I got the news, my principal concern wasnt for the incalculable damage to Consolidated Pemmican. My initial reaction was amazement at the ability of the devilgrass to make its way so rapidly across a sterile and waterless waste. In the years since its first appearance it had truly adapted itself to any climate, altitude, or condition confronting it. A few months before, the catastrophe would have plunged me into profound depression; now, with the resilience of recovery added to Miss Francis' assurance, it became merely another setback soon to be redeemed.

From Senegal, near the middle of the great African bulge, to Tunis at the continent's northern edge, up through Sardinia and Corsica, the latest front of the Grass was arrayed. It occupied most of Italy and climbed the Alps to bite the eastern tip from Switzerland. It took Bavaria and the rest of Germany beyond the Weser. Only the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal—a geographical purist might have added Luxembourg, Andorra and Monaco—remained untouched upon the Continent. Into this insignificant territory and the British Isles were packed all that was left of the world's two billion people: a blinded, starving mob, driven mad by terror. How many there were there, squirming, struggling, dying in a desperate unwillingness to give up existence, no matter how intolerable, no one could calculate; any more than a census could be taken of the numbers buried beneath the Grass now holding untroubled sway over ninetenths of the globe.

Watchers were set upon the English coast in a manner reminiscent of 1940. I don't know exactly what value the giving of the alarm would have been; nevertheless, night and day eyes were strained through binoculars and telescopes for signs[329] of the unique green on the horizon or the first seed slipping through to