i often think of the bureau d'echange de maux and the wondrously evil old man that sate therein. it stood in a little street that there is in paris, its doorway made of three brown beams of wood, the top one overlapping the others like the greek letter pi, all the rest painted green, a house far lower and narrower than its neighbours and infinitely stranger, a thing to take one's fancy. and over the doorway on the old brown beam in faded yellow letters this legend ran, bureau universel d'echanges de maux.
i entered at once and accosted the listless man that lolled on a stool by his counter. i demanded the wherefore of his wonderful house, what evil wares he exchanged, with many other things that i wished to know, for curiosity led me; and indeed had it not i had gone at once from that shop, for there was so evil a look in that fattened man, in the hang of his fallen cheeks and his sinful eye, that you would have said he had had dealings with hell and won the advantage by sheer wickedness.
such a man was mine host; but above all the evil of him lay in his eyes, which lay so still, so apathetic, that you would have sworn that he was drugged or dead; like lizards motionless on a wall they lay, then suddenly they darted, and all his cunning flamed up and revealed itself in what one moment before seemed no more than a sleepy and ordinary wicked old man. and this was the object and trade of that peculiar shop, the bureau universel d'echange de maux: you paid twenty francs, which the old man proceeded to take from me, for admission to the bureau and then had the right to exchange any evil or misfortune with anyone on the premises for some evil or misfortune that he "could afford," as the old man put it.
there were four or five men in the dingy ends of that low-ceilinged room who gesticulated and muttered softly in twos as men who make a bargain, and now and then more came in, and the eyes of the flabby owner of the house leaped up at them as they entered, seemed to know their errands at once and each one's peculiar need, and fell back again into somnolence, receiving his twenty francs in an almost lifeless hand and biting the coin as though in pure absence of mind.
"some of my clients," he told me. so amazing to me was the trade of this extraordinary shop that i engaged the old man in conversation, repulsive though he was, and from his garrulity i gathered these facts. he spoke in perfect english though his utterance was somewhat thick and heavy; no language seemed to come amiss to him. he had been in business a great many years, how many he would not say, and was far older than he looked. all kinds of people did business in his shop. what they exchanged with each other he did not care except that it had to be evils, he was not empowered to carry on any other kind of business.
there was no evil, he told me, that was not negotiable there; no evil the old man knew had ever been taken away in despair from his shop. a man might have to wait and come back again next day, and next day and the day after, paying twenty francs each time, but the old man had the addresses of all his clients and shrewdly knew their needs, and soon the right two met and eagerly exchanged their commodities. "commodities" was the old man's terrible word, said with a gruesome smack of his heavy lips, for he took a pride in his business and evils to him were goods.
i learned from him in ten minutes very much of human nature, more than i have ever learned from any other man; i learned from him that a man's own evil is to him the worst thing there is or ever could be, and that an evil so unbalances all men's minds that they always seek for extremes in that small grim shop. a woman that had no children had exchanged with an impoverished half-maddened creature with twelve. on one occasion a man had exchanged wisdom for folly.
"why on earth did he do that?" i said.
"none of my business," the old man answered in his heavy indolent way. he merely took his twenty francs from each and ratified the agreement in the little room at the back opening out of the shop where his clients do business. apparently the man that had parted with wisdom had left the shop upon the tips of his toes with a happy though foolish expression all over his face, but the other went thoughtfully away wearing a troubled and very puzzled look. almost always it seemed they did business in opposite evils.
but the thing that puzzled me most in all my talks with that unwieldy man, the thing that puzzles me still, is that none that had once done business in that shop ever returned again; a man might come day after day for many weeks, but once do business and he never returned; so much the old man told me, but when i asked him why, he only muttered that he did not know.
it was to discover the wherefore of this strange thing and for no other reason at all that i determined myself to do business sooner or later in the little room at the back of that mysterious shop. i determined to exchange some very trivial evil for some evil equally slight, to seek for myself an advantage so very small as scarcely to give fate as it were a grip, for i deeply distrusted these bargains, knowing well that man has never yet benefited by the marvellous and that the more miraculous his advantage appears to be the more securely and tightly do the gods or the witches catch him. in a few days more i was going back to england and i was beginning to fear that i should be sea-sick: this fear of sea-sickness, not the actual malady but only the mere fear of it, i decided to exchange for a suitably little evil. i did not know with whom i should be dealing, who in reality was the head of the firm (one never does when shopping) but i decided that neither jew nor devil could make very much on so small a bargain as that.
i told the old man my project, and he scoffed at the smallness of my commodity trying to urge me to some darker bargain, but could not move me from my purpose. and then he told me tales with a somewhat boastful air of the big business, the great bargains that had passed through his hands. a man had once run in there to try and exchange death, he had swallowed poison by accident and had only twelve hours to live. that sinister old man had been able to oblige him. a client was willing to exchange the commodity.
"but what did he give in exchange for death?" i said.
"life," said that grim old man with a furtive chuckle.
"it must have been a horrible life," i said.
"that was not my affair," the proprietor said, lazily rattling together as he spoke a little pocketful of twenty-franc pieces.
strange business i watched in that shop for the next few days, the exchange of odd commodities, and heard strange mutterings in corners amongst couples who presently rose and went to the back room, the old man following to ratify.
twice a day for a week i paid my twenty francs, watching life with its great needs and its little needs morning and afternoon spread out before me in all its wonderful variety.
and one day i met a comfortable man with only a little need, he seemed to have the very evil i wanted. he always feared the lift was going to break. i knew too much of hydraulics to fear things as silly as that, but it was not my business to cure his ridiculous fear. very few words were needed to convince him that mine was the evil for him, he never crossed the sea, and i on the other hand could always walk upstairs, and i also felt at the time, as many must feel in that shop, that so absurd a fear could never trouble me. and yet at times it is almost the curse of my life. when we both had signed the parchment in the spidery back room and the old man had signed and ratified (for which we had to pay him fifty francs each) i went back to my hotel, and there i saw the deadly thing in the basement. they asked me if i would go upstairs in the lift, from force of habit i risked it, and i held my breath all the way and clenched my hands. nothing will induce me to try such a journey again. i would sooner go up to my room in a balloon. and why? because if a balloon goes wrong you have a chance, it may spread out into a parachute after it has burst, it may catch in a tree, a hundred and one things may happen, but if the lift falls down its shaft you are done. as for sea-sickness i shall never be sick again, i cannot tell you why except that i know that it is so.
and the shop in which i made this remarkable bargain, the shop to which none return when their business is done: i set out for it next day. blindfold i could have found my way to the unfashionable quarter out of which a mean street runs, where you take the alley at the end, whence runs the cul de sac where the queer shop stood. a shop with pillars, fluted and painted red, stands on its near side, its other neighbour is a low-class jeweller's with little silver brooches in the window. in such incongruous company stood the shop with beams with its walls painted green.
in half an hour i found the cul de sac to which i had gone twice a day for the last week, i found the shop with the ugly painted pillars and the jeweller that sold brooches, but the green house with the three beams was gone.
pulled down, you will say, although in a single night. that can never be the answer to the mystery, for the house of the fluted pillars painted on plaster and the low-class jeweller's shop with its silver brooches (all of which i could identify one by one) were standing side by side.
