Part 12 (1/2)
CAFARD
It is mid-January, snowing, blowing, the thermometer below zero. We have done no flying for five days. We have read our most recent magazines from cover to cover, including the advertis.e.m.e.nts, many of which we find more interesting, better written, than the stories. We have played our latest phonograph record for the five hundred and ninety-eighth time. Now we are hugging our one stove, which is no larger than a length of good American stove-pipe, in the absurd hope of getting a fleeting promise of heat.
Boredom, insufferable boredom. There is no American expression--there will be soon, no doubt--for this disease which claims so many victims from the Channel coast to the borders of Switzerland. The British have it without giving it a name. They say ”Fed up and far from home.” The more inventive French call it ”Cafard.”
Our outlook upon life is warped, or, to use a more seasonable expression, frozen. We are not ourselves. We make sarcastic remarks about one another. We hold up for ridicule individual peculiarities of individuality. Some one, tiring of this form of indoor sports, starts the phonograph again.
Wind, wind, wind (the crank) Kr-r-r-r-r-r-r (the needle on the disk) La-dee-dum, dee-doodle, di-dee-day (the orchestral introduction)
Sometimes when I feel sad And things look blue, I wish the boy I had Was one like you--
”For the love of Pete! Shut off that d.a.m.n silly thing!”
”I admire your taste, Irving!”
”Can it!”
”Well, what will you have, then?”
”Play that Russian thing, the 'Danse des Buffons.'”
”Don't play anything.”
”Lord! I wish some one would send us some new records.”
”Yes, instead of knitted wristers--what?”
”And m.u.f.flers.”
”Talking about wristers, how many pair do you think I've received?
Eight!”
”You try to head 'em off. Doesn't do any good. They keep coming just the same.”
”It's because they are easy to make. Working wristers and m.u.f.flers is a method of dodging the knitting draft.”
”Well, now, I call that grat.i.tude! You don't deserve to have any friends.”
”Isn't it the truth? Have you ever known of a soldier or an aviator who wore wristers?”
”I give mine to my mechanician. He sends them home, and his wife unravels the yarn and makes sweaters for the youngsters.”
”Think of the waste energy. Harness up the wrist-power and you could keep three aircraft factories going day and night.”
”Oh, well, if it amuses the women, what's the difference?”
”That's not the way to look at it. They ought to be doing something useful.”
”Plenty of them are; don't forget that, old son.”