III: MY CAPTOR
The footsteps came up to the door of the room in which I lay. The door opened to reveal a truly remarkable figure; plump, short, with a tousled mop of reddish-grey hair and a wide, pleasant, weather-beaten face. This figure was clad in a loose blue coat and Bulgarian trousers, very baggy about the hips and tight about the calves; not at all an unbecoming costume, though it both puzzled and pained me. So much so that I pretended to be asleep, for I was averse to being made to speak to this strange object. A woman’s voice addressed the man with the knitting and asked him how I was. He replied that I had come to my senses and gone to sleep again. As luck would have it, the food I had eaten so hastily began just then to cause me acute discomfort, and my body, escaping my control, relieved itself after its fashion. Thereupon the woman, perceiving that I was malingering, fell upon me and shook me until my teeth rattled and delivered herself of an oration upon the deceitfulness of man. I was still suffering acutely and could offer no resistance, though I cried out that I was an American citizen and neutral and should have the matter brought to the ears of my Government.
“In this country,” said my assailant, “men are men and are treated as such, and we do not recognize the existence of any other country in the world. You will get up now and place your superior strength at the service of those who feed you and as far as possible justify your existence.”
The man with the knitting had crept from the room. He returned with a shift, a kilt and stockings like his own. I was made to put these on, the woman, in defiance of all decency, watching me and talking shrilly all the time. Then she drove the man and myself out of doors and set us to work at hoeing in a field of turnips, while she whistled to a dog that came bounding over a hedge, and trudged off in the direction of a wood.
“Who is she?” said I. “Is she your wife?”
“Wife?” answered he. “Wife! There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage. She is a farmer, and I, who was once a Professor of Economics, am her labourer. Intellectually I am in despair, but physically I am in such rude health that I cannot entertain the thought of self-destruction long enough to commit the act. She is my niece, and when the change came she undertook, as all women did, to provide work for her male relatives above a certain age.”
“Change?” I whispered. “What change?”
“Have you not heard?” he said. “Is the country severed from the civilised world?”
I informed him of the expedition which I had joined. He gave a long hopeless sigh and fell into a great silence which moved me far more than his words had done. We plied our hoes in the immense field which was situated in a desolate region of slight undulations the outlines of which were blurred with rank growth.
Presently I broke in upon his silence to ask his name.
“I was,” he murmured, “I was Professor Ian Baffin.”
“Can it be possible?” I cried, for the fame of that great man was world-wide, and during the notorious Anti-Trust elections in my country his works had been in every cultured home. I told him this, but it brought him no comfort.
“At the time of the change,” he said, “I and fifty other Professors and Fellows of Colleges published a manifesto in which we pointed out the disasters that must ensue, and we even went so far as to promise them degrees at the major universities, but the change came and the universities were destroyed.”
“What change?” I asked again.
He leaned on his hoe and gazed toward the setting sun.