A Cunning Gendarme

A Cunning Gendarme - ©2010 lou savage - 310-418-9561 - [email protected] 


Milomir showed an abundance of resourcefulness at Police Academy. He was always first to come up with a novel solution to a seemingly impossible problem. When other cadets were baffled by the riddles of crime solving, Milomir had already uncannily worked out one or two angles. 

Upon graduating, he had just been given the post of Police Chief in the small town, a new stage upon which he could display his skills. People would be dazzled.

To celebrate his newfound position, he’d taken up the habit of smoking cigarettes with a cigarette holder, a slender tube made of bakelite – a precursor of plastic – with a mouthpiece like a pipe and an opening at the other end into which one would tuck a cigarette. 

For the most part, cigarettes didn’t have filters before World War II, other than Viceroys which had cork filters as early as 1936. But those weren't the norm, so a holder was a good accessory that eliminated the need to spit out loose bits of tobacco from a bare cigarette. 

It also added a classy, metropolitan touch, so Milomir naturally acquired one. It made him appear polished and refined. After all, he was Chief of Police.

Lucky for him, he was assigned to a town not far from his boyhood home, the mountain village of Mokra Gora. He could have spent the rest of his life herding sheep like the rest of them up there, but he was deserving of better things, he thought. He was different. With this new job, he could be close enough to his family to see them if he wanted, but far enough away to live his life the way he chose.

He patrolled the street that night as he usually did, looking for things out of the ordinary, things that needed to be made to conform. He liked it when things conformed. It gave him peace of mind. But there was nothing on this night that seemed to be out of order. Nor did it require Milomir’s cleverness. There was a stray dog, but dogs always wandered the streets. Nothing unusual.

Sometimes there was a fight between a couple of drunken villagers that would require that  Milomir be extra resourceful; a fight between two drunks being a very delicate thing. A typical policeman… actually… he and his colleagues were referred to as gendarmes in this part of the world. A typical gendarme would be almost helpless trying to communicate with a drunk. Milomir however, a cunning gendarme, and was quite skilled and cagey when dealing with drunks. Rather than simply clonking them on the head with a baton like a typical gendarme, Milomir was able to somehow enter the hallucinatory world of the drunk and speak to him as a peer. There he could bend words into concepts that drunks could understand, causing the drunks to become  cheerfully compliant.
Milomir was like one of those storied people that can talk to animals, and a drunk was like one of those animals. He was a Dr. Doolittle to the inebriated, you might say. He could, in a manner of speaking, get the drunk to sit still and beg for a morsel, like a puppy. The most difficult thing, though, was to get this creature to figuratively walk on his hind legs. That’s because, ironically, drunks have been known to move about on all fours... a by-product of their drunkenness.

What concerned Milomir more than anything on his route was the curfew. It was important for people to conform to the curfew, otherwise chaos would certainly follow. It was 1936 and there were things to worry about. There was mischief for people to get into. But to then use the term mischief here is to severely understate the general social and political climate of the region. These were turbulent times, and southeastern Europe has always been prone to turbulence as history has shown.

The less pressing, yet still essential concern in terms of mischief, was keeping tabs on the vexatious, vagabonding Gypsies. Ironically, Gypsies were both admired and scorned at the same time. They were admired for their free spirit, their earthy customs, and their infectious music. Yet they were spurned because of their habitual inclination toward grift and thievery.

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So at the end of any given night, most revelers would simply stumble home before curfew. But not everyone. There were always stragglers, but on this night, there was no fight, no celebration, just rustling leaves behind Milomir's footsteps. He chose a cigarette from the stylish, gold-colored cigarette case that he kept tucked in his vest pocket. The moon was about three quarters full, illuminating the engraved letter M on the case. Stars peeked down from behind the clouds that glided across the sky. The moonlight made their edges glow silver. "Never was there a better time to be alive," he thought to himself as he tilted his head back, taking in the night air.

He sat down on a bench in front of a large oak tree on the side of the street. He pulled a pocket knife from his side pocket, and carefully, using the inside of his open cigarette case as a cutting surface, he divided the cigarette in half. It would be healthier to smoke only half of a cigarette at a time, he thought, and economical as well.

With his cigarette case still on his lap, he carefully folded up his knife and slipped it back into his pocket. He was quite proud of his pocket knife. He was able to hone it to such a degree of razor-sharpness that a person could practically shave with it. In fact, he used to cut his nails with it as perfectly as a professional manicurist.

He put half of the freshly cut unused cigarette half under the clasp in the cigarette case to save it for later. Then he pulled the black cigarette holder from the case and carefully worked the half-cigarette in his hand into its end. He pulled out a match, struck it and lit the cigarette. Just as the first puff of smoke cleared, he saw a movement in the distance.

It soon became obvious that it was a person... a drunken person. Every step the person took was a near-fall, and every subsequent step was a recovery from that near-fall. Milomir was fascinated that a person could travel any distance at all with his body continuously tilted at a 45 degree angle. The stranger would tip this way, then that, quickly changing course to recover just before landing in the dirt.

Milomir felt for his pistol, still in its holster. “Halt!” he ordered, with his cigarette holder poised in his left hand. The stranger stood at attention and saluted Milomir while swaying like a tree in the wind. Milomir, with his right hand still resting on his pistol, stepped closer to the stranger. “A damned Gypsy!” he thought to himself.

“Forgive me Your Honor,” slurred the Gypsy. “But I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

“Don’t you know that there’s a curfew?” asked Milomir.

“I am terribly sorry, Your Honor. But if you don’t mind, I believe I must sit down now.” And with that, the Gypsy toppled to the ground with a thud. He managed to sit himself up after a few seconds, reorienting himself there in the dirt, patting the dust from his coat. 

“You know I could arrest you,” snapped Milomir. “The curfew was an hour ago.”

A sudden sound came from down the street. They both twisted around to look. “Another straggler,” Milomir thought, “One is bad enough.” 

He pulled the pistol from its holster and pointed it at the Gypsy in front of him. “Lie down in that ditch over there and don’t move! Now!” he whispered. “And if you do, so help me…”

At the sight of a gun, the Gypsy immediately became surprisingly sober and scuttled over to the ditch and laid face down, quivering in the wet grass. "Not a peep!" Milomir ordered as he turned toward the newcomer. "Who goes there?" he bellowed with his cigarette holder still in hand.

The second stranger froze in his tracks. "Come closer!" commanded Milomir. The stranger cautiously edged forward, close enough for Milomir to look into his terrified eyes. The stranger was also a Gypsy.

"Who are you and why are you out after curfew?" demanded Milomir.

"I... I... I...," stuttered the second Gypsy. Milomir could see that the poor fellow had a loaf of bread in his hand and some potatoes in a sack hanging from his shoulders. "Speak!" demanded Milomir.

"I went to buy some bread for my family in town. My cart broke down. I tried to fix it. Really! It's still back there. My family's waiting. My children haven't eaten all day!" pleaded the Gypsy.
Normally, a Gypsy would tell you anything just to pull something over on you. For all Milomir knew, this guy had just stolen the bread and snatched the shopkeeper's pocket watch in the process. He might even be wearing the shopkeeper's coat, and there might even be a gun in the pocket.

But this man seemed earnest, and Milomir wasn't a bully. He noticed a wedding ring on the Gypsy's hand. It pinched his ring finger the way a ring does when it’s been worn for many years, bent and scratched from hard work. Not stolen.

"Where are you staying? Where is your family?" 

"Just outside of the village," said the stranger. "Not far from here."

"I'll tell you what. I'll give you to the count of ten to get out of here. And I don't want to see you out after curfew again. Understand?"

"Yes sir!" said the second Gypsy.

"And if I see you again after curfew..." Milomir warned. "You see that guy in the ditch?" waving his pistol toward the first Gypsy.

The second Gypsy recoiled when he saw the motionless, seemingly dead body of the man in the ditch. Milomir looked him sternly in the eye. "If I see you out here again after curfew, the same thing will happen to you as it did to him. I’m going to count to three." Milomir paused for a moment, then counted, "One..."

And with that, the second stranger bolted into the darkness. The night was silent once again, except for the sound of rustling leaves... and the man snoring in the ditch.

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