Dream Factories and Radio Pictures Read Free

came in. “At ease,” said Marcel, nodding to the enlisted men who copied orders by hand at their desks. He went to the commanding officer’s door, knocked. “Entre.” said a voice and he went in.
    “Cadet Proust reporting, mon capitaine ,” said Marcel, saluting.
    “Oh, there’s really no need to salute in here, Proust,” said Captain Dreyfus.
    “Perhaps, sir, it will be my last.”
    “Yes, yes, ” said Captain Dreyfus. “Tea? Sugar?” The captain indicated the kettle. “Serve yourself.” He looked through some papers absent-mindedly. “Sorry to bring you in on your last day—sure we cannot talk you into joining the officers corps? France has need of bright young men like you!—No, I thought not. Cookies? Over there; Madame Dreyfus baked them this morning.” Marcel retrieved a couple, while stirring the hot tea in his cup.
    “Sit, sit. Please!” Dreyfus indicated the chair. Marcel slouched into it.
    “You were saying?” he asked.
    “Ah! Yes. Inspections coming up, records, all that,” said the captain. “You remember, some three months ago, August 19th to be exact, we were moving files from the old headquarters across the two quadrangles to this building? You were staff duty officer that day?”
    “I remember the move, mon capitaine . That was the day we received the Maxim gun tricycles, also. It was—yes—a day of unseasonable rain.”
    “Oh? Yes?” said Dreyfus. “That is correct. Do you remember, perhaps, the clerks having to take an alternate route here, until we procured canvas to protect the records?”
    “They took several. Or am I confusing that with the day we exchanged barracks with the 91st Artillery? That also was rainy. What is the matter?”
    “Some records evidently did not make it here. Nothing important, but they must be in the files for the inspection, else we shall get a very black mark indeed.”
    Marcel thought. Some of the men used the corridors of the instruction rooms carrying files, some went through the repair shops. There were four groups of three clerks to each set of cabinets. . . .
    “Which files?”
    “Gunnery practice, instruction records. The boxes which used to be—”
    “—on top of the second set of wooden files,” said Marcel. “I remember them there. I do not remember seeing them here . . . . I am at a total loss as to how they could not have made it to the orderly room, mon capitaine .”
    “They were checked off as leaving, in your hand, but evidently, we have never seen them again.”
    Proust racked his brain. The stables? The instruction corridor; surely they would have been found by now. . . .
    “Oh, we’ll just have to search and search, get the 91st involved. They’re probably in their files. This army runs on paperwork—soon clerks will outnumber the generals, eh, Proust?”
    Marcel laughed. He drank at his tea—it was lemon tea, pleasant but slightly weak. He dipped one of the cookies—the kind called a madeline—in it and took a bite.
    Instantly a chill and an aching familiarity came over him—he saw his Grandmother’s house in Balbec, an identical cookie, the same kind of tea, the room cluttered with furniture, the sound of his brother coughing upstairs, the feel of the wrought iron dinner table chair against the back of his bare leg, his father looking out the far kitchen window into the rain, the man putting down the burden, heard his mother hum a tune, a raincoat falling, felt the patter of raindrops on the tool-shed roof, smelled the tea and cookie in a second overpowering rush, saw a scab on the back of his hand from eleven years before. . . .
    “Mon capitaine!” said Marcel, rocking forward, slapping his hand against his forehead. “Now I remember where the box was left!”
    II. Both Hands
    R OUSSEAU WAS PAINTING A TIGER .
    It was not just any tiger. It was the essence of tiger, the apotheosis of felis horribilis . It looked out from the canvas with yellow-green eyes through which a cold emerald light