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'Just write the truth,' said the defence counsel provided for me by the State, 'nothing but the plain, unvarnished truth. They'll fill your pen for you whenever you want.'


It's a week today since the clip on the ear that led to my arrest. According to the evidence I was rather drunk; I therefore find it difficult to describe the (outward) course of events.

'Come with me,' said the customs officer.

'Please don't make difficulties,' I said. 'My train will be leaving any minute.'

'But without you,' said the customs officer.

The way he pulled me off the footboard deprived me of any wish to answer his questions. He had my passport in his hand.

The other official, who was stamping the travellers' passports, was still on the train.

‘Is there something wrong with my passport?’ I asked.

No answer. ‘I’m only doing my duty,' he said several times. 'You know that very well.'

Without answering my question as to what was wrong with my passport—an American passport, with which I had been halfway round the world!—he repeated in his Swiss inflections:

‘Come with me.'

'Now look, officer,' I said, 'if you don't want a clip on the ear, please don't pull me by the sleeve; I can't stand it.'

'Come along now.'

I boxed the young customs officer's ear just as he was telling me, in spite of my polite but unambiguous warning and with the arrogant air of one protected by the Law, that they would soon let me know who I really was. His navy blue cap rolled along the platform in a spiral, and for an instant the young customs officer, now capless and consequently much more human, was so flabbergasted—too much taken aback even to be angry—that I could easily have got onto the train. It was just beginning to pull out, people were leaning out of the windows waving, and one carriage door was still open. I don't know why I didn't jump in. I believe I could have snatched back my passport, for, as I have said, the young man was completely dumbfounded, as though his whole soul was in that rolling cap; and it was not until the stiff cap had stopped rolling that he was seized with understandable rage. I ducked down among the people on the platform, determined at least to brush some of the dust off his navy blue cap with its Swiss cross badge before handing it back to him. His ears were lobster red. It was strange: I followed him as though under some compulsion to behave myself. He didn't say a word and without taking hold of me, which was quite unnecessary, led me to the police station, where I was kept waiting for fifty minutes.

'Please sit down,' said the inspector.

My passport lay on the table. I was immediately struck by the changed tone in which I was addressed, a kind of solicitous arid rather clumsy politeness, from which I gathered that after looking at my passport for an hour the police had no further doubt about my American citizenship. As though to make up for the young customs officer's churlishness, the Inspector even fetched me an armchair.

‘You speak German, I hear,' he remarked.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

'Do sit down,' he smiled.

I remained standing.

'I'm of German origin,' I explained, 'an American of German origin—'

He pointed to the empty armchair.

'Please,' he said, and hesitated for a while to sit down himself . . . If I had not condescended to speak German on the train I might never have found myself in this scrape. Another passenger, a Swiss, had spoken to me in German. The same traveller, who had been getting on my nerves ever since we left Paris, was also an eye-witness to the blow I gave the customs officer. I didn’t know who he was. I'd never seen him before. He got into the compartment in Paris, woke me up by stumbling over my feet, forced his way to the open window with apologies in French, and there said good-bye to a lady, speaking in Swiss dialect. No sooner had the train started than I had the disagreeable sensation that he was staring at me. I took refuge behind my New Yorker, whose jokes I already knew by heart, in the hope that my travelling companion's curiosity would eventually be exhausted. He was also reading a paper, a Zürich paper. After we had agreed in French to close the window, I avoided every unnecessary glance at the passing landscape; meanwhile my unknown companion, who may have been a charming fellow for all I know, was so obviously waiting on tenterhooks for an opportunity to start a conversation that finally there was nothing for it but the dining-car, where I sat for five hours and had a drink or two. I didn't return to the compartment until compelled to by the approach of the frontier between Mulhouse and Basle. Again the Swiss looked at me as though he knew me. I don't know what it was that suddenly encouraged him to speak to me; possibly the mere fact that we were now on his native soil. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked in a rather embarrassed manner, 'aren't you Herr Stiller?'

As I've mentioned, I had drunk a certain amount of whisky. I couldn't make out what he was saying. I held my American passport in my hand, while the Swiss, relapsing into his dialect, turned the pages of an illustrated paper. A couple of officials were already standing behind us, a customs officer and another man holding a rubber stamp. I handed over my passport. I now realized that I had drunk quite a bit and was being looked at with suspicion. My luggage, of which I had little, was in order.

‘Is that your passport?’ asked the other man.

At first I laughed, of course. 'Why shouldn't it be?' I asked, and added indignantly: 'What's wrong with my passport?' It was the first time doubt had been cast on my passport, and all because this gentleman had confused me with a picture in his newspaper . . .

'Herr Doktor,' said the Inspector to this same gentleman, 'I needn't detain you further. Many thanks for your information.'

As the grateful Inspector held the door open for him, the gentleman nodded to me as though we knew each other. He was a Herr Doktor; there are thousands of them. I didn't feel the slightest desire to nod to him in return. Then the Inspector came back and pointed to the chair again.

'Do take a seat. As I can see Herr Stiller, you're pretty drunk—'

‘Stiller?’ I said. 'My name's not Stiller.'

‘I hope,’ he went on unperturbed, ‘you can nevertheless understand what I have to say to you, Herr Stiller.’

I shook my head, whereupon he offered me a smoke, a Swiss cigar. I naturally refused it, since it was obviously offered not to me, but to a certain Herr Stiller. I also remained standing, although the Inspector had settled down in his chair as though for a long chat.

'Why did you get so excited when you were asked whether it was your proper passport?' he asked.

He turned the pages of my American passport.

'Look Inspector.' I said, ‘I can't stand being pulled by the sleeve. I warned your young customs officer several times. I'm sorry I lost my temper and hit him, and of course, I'll pay the usual fine at once. That goes without saying. What's the damage?'

He smiled indulgently. It wasn't quite as simple as that, he told me. Then he lit a cigar, carefully, rolling the brown stump between his lips, leisurely, thoroughly, as though time was no object.

'You seem to be an extremely well-known man—'

'Me?' I asked. 'What makes you think that?’

'I don't know anything about these things,' he said. ‘but this Herr Doktor, who recognized you, seems to have a very high opinion of you.’

There was nothing to be done. The confusion had arisen, and whatever I said was either taken an affectation or genuine modesty.

'Why do you call yourself Jim White?' he asked.

I talked and talked.

'Where did you get this passport?' he asked.

He took it almost good-naturedly and sat back smoking his rather foul-smelling cigar, his thumbs hooked in his braces, since it was a hot afternoon, so that the Inspector, especially as he no longer considered me a foreigner, had undone some of the buttons of his not very suitable jacket, while he gazed at me without listening to a word I was saying.

'Inspector,' I said. 'I'm drunk, you're right, perfectly right, but I'm not going to have some wretched Herr Doktor—'

'He says he knows you.'

'Where from?' I asked.

'From the newspaper,' he said, and took advantage or my contemptuous silence to add: 'You have a wife living in Paris. Is that right?'

'Me? A wife?'

'Julika by name.'

'I don't come from Paris,' I declared. 'I come from Mexico, Inspector.'

I gave him the name of the ship, the duration of the crossing, the time of my arrival at Le Havre, the time of my departure from Vera Cruz.

'That may be,' he said, 'but your wife lives in Paris. A dancer, if I'm not mistaken. She's supposed to be an extremely beautiful woman.'

I said nothing.