Aliens. William McFee
to me is home—a secondhand book-store. For I mark my passage about this very wonderful world by old book-stores. London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Genoa, Venice, New York, Ancona, Rouen, Tunis, Savannah, Kobé and New Orleans have in my memory their old book-stores, where I could browse in peace. And here in Alexandria I found one that might have been lifted out of Royal Street or Lafayette Square. A ramshackle wooden building, bleached and blistered by many a dust-storm and torrid sun, its cracked and distorted window-panes were curtained with decayed illustrated papers in many tongues, discoloured Greek and Italian penny-dreadfuls, and a few shelves of cheap curios. Over the door a long shingle displayed on one side the legend Librairie Universelle, while the other bore the word ΒΙΒΛΙΟΠΩΛΙΟΝ, which you may translate as it please your fancy. Inside the narrow doors were craters and trenches and redoubts and dug-outs of books. They lay everywhere, underfoot and overhead. They ran up at the back in a steep glacis with embrasures for curios, and were reflected to infinity in tall dusty pier-glasses propped against the walls. High up under the mansard roof hung an antique oriental candelabrum with one candle. Hanging from twine were stuffed fish of grotesque globular proportions, and with staring apoplectic eyes. A stuffed monkey was letting himself down, one-hand, from a thin chain, and regarded the customer with a contemptuous sneer, the dust lying thick on his head and arms and his exquisitely curled tail. And out of an apparently bomb-proof shelter below several tons of books there emerged a little old gentleman in a brilliant tarbush, who looked inquiringly in my direction. For a moment I paused, fascinated by the notion that I had discovered the great Library of Alexandria, reported burnt so many centuries ago. For once within those musty, warped, unpainted walls one forgot the modern world. I looked out. Across the street, backed by the immense and level blaze of an Egyptian sunset, blocks of Carrara marble blushed to pink with mauve shadows, and turned the common stone mason's yard into a garden of gigantic jewels. The hum of a great city, the grind of the trolley-cars, the cries of the itinerant sellers of nuts and fruit, of chewing gum and lottery-tickets, of shoe laces and suspenders, of newspapers, and prawns, and oysters, and eggs, and bread, the rattle of carriages and all the flashing brilliance of the palaces of pleasure, were shut out from that quiet street near the Greek Patriarchate. I had the sudden notion of asking for permission to sit in that Universal Library, and write. And Mr. Bizikas, the little old gentleman in the vivid tarbush, who was lighting a very dirty tin lamp to assist the one candle in the oriental candelabrum, had no objection. I have a feeling occasionally that here I topped the rise of human felicity, as I conceive it. Perhaps I did. Anyhow, Aliens grew.
I must be brief. It came to pass, after certain days, that Aliens grew to accomplishment, and I made my way into the city through one of the many gates of the harbour. I sought the office of the Censor in a large building with a courtyard. It was a large room on the top floor, with a long table occupied by busy orderlies opening and stamping letters with astonishing rapidity. At the back, flanking an open balcony over whose balustrade I could see the blue Mediterranean and a flawless sapphire sky, were two roll-top desks concealing two officers whose polished bald heads shone above stacks of papers. At the deferential insistence of an orderly, one of the heads rose, and a large, ruddy Yorkshire face examined the intruder. In some diffidence I explained the delicate nature of my mission. I opened my parcel and displayed, with the pride of a parent, how Aliens had grown. The officer rose to his feet, a tall, strong, north-country figure, and looked keenly at me over his glasses. Was I a British subject? What was the nature of the manuscript? What was the name of my transport? What was my rank? And so on. To all of which I gave courteous and, I hope, truthful answers. "Well, there's a great deal of it, you know," he remarked. I bowed. I knew, having written it. "Well, call in a week's time." I retired, silently blessing the British Army Officer for his blunt courtesy, his admirable brevity and matchless common sense.
And I called in a week's time. It appeared that the Captain had gone through Aliens and was satisfied that it divulged nothing of military importance, nor did it provide any comfort for the King's enemies. An orderly, a fattish person with a fine mustache and scorched knees, was commanded to secure, seal and register the parcel. The tall officer with the good-humoured country-gentleman's face came to the balcony and discussed for a moment the production of literature under difficulties. "You know, we have very strict orders," he remarked, looking down thoughtfully. "We must be most careful … h—m … Neutral countries … America." He seemed to regard the idea of America with misgiving. I agreed that America was food for thought. "And you write books at sea?" he inquired. Yes, I said, anywhere, everywhere. He nodded. "It is, you know," I added slyly, "our national art." He looked grave at this and said he supposed so. By this time the orderly had tied and sealed Aliens in so many places that I pitied anyone who tried to tamper with it; and so, with an expression of my profound appreciation, I retired. The officer bowed, and the orderly and I clattered down stairs and made our way into the Rue de la Poste. He was a Londoner, and professed great interest in literature, having a brother a news agent. We had some beer together, when Aliens had been safely bestowed. He was getting his leave soon, he said, and I informed him I hoped to get mine in a month or so. We drank to our three years' active service and to our safe trip home. He was much impressed by this coincidence, as he called it, and begged me, if I happened down Deptford way at all, to call and see him over his brother's shop. I asked him if he knew a certain old book-store in Deptford, where I had once gotten a Bandello's Novelle for four shillings, and he said he knew it well. But I think he only said this to please an obvious bibliomaniac. We parted with mutual good wishes, and I went back to the ship.
And so I send it to you, trusting to my good fortune to get it through. It may never reach you, and I shall have had my labour in vain. It may be, also, that ere it see the light I shall have gone away myself, an aggrieved participant in one of the trivial disasters of the sea-affair. But whatever betide, I shall have had my shot at the alluring yet ineluctable problem of human folly.
William McFee.
Port Said, Egypt, April 14, 1917.
ALIENS
CHAPTER I
The "Scaldino"
Long before any of us three had seen him we had become aware of his existence, and our brains were continually busy about him. His appearance, his age, his gait, his history, his voice, even his ultimate destiny, we conjectured over and over again as one by one the evidences of his existence accumulated and developed in our consciousness. It grew to be quite a game with us, this collection of data, and filled in much of our leisure before we became acquainted with many of our neighbours.
I think Bill was the first to notice something unusual about the family next door, something neither English nor American. "What do you think!" she exclaimed, coming in one morning as I was busy writing. "She's got a little iron grate on legs, and there's charcoal burning in it."
"Who? Where?" I asked, coming out of my work with a start. I was composing an advertisement at the time.
"Mrs. Carville," said Bill, pointing to the window.
From the window, across the intervening plot of ground, we saw our neighbour stooping over one of those small portable affairs so popular in Italy and known as scaldini, mere iron buckets in which coke or charcoal burns without flame, and which are carried from room to room as occasion arises.
"I thought," I said, "that she was Italian. That is a scaldino."
"Is it?" said Bill. "They'll set the house on fire if they use that here."
My friend is rather hard on the Mediterranean nations, giving as a reason "they are so dirty," but meaning, I imagine,