Foreign News: Roger Goes to His Funeral

Things were bad all around for chubbily cheerful Roger Lamy, a truck driver of Douai. Three months ago his wife had died, leaving him six children to care for. Four weeks ago he learned that he would soon be out of a job: the municipal project on which he was working was closing down. Nevertheless, Roger set off on the vacation still due him, determined to keep his spirits high. Last week he returned to Douai. If his mood could be described in a phrase, that phrase was “never say die.”

His eyes twinkling brightly, the returned vacationist strode happily into his favorite café, expecting a joyful greeting. The first man to see him shuddered, sputtered and sagged into a chair. An old friend at the other side of the barroom hastily stamped out a cigarette and reverently removed his hat. Madame Labbaye, the patronne, peered from behind a potted palm. “What is wrong?” cried Roger. “Have I lost a child?” Roger couldn’t make out the woman’s excited answer.

Confused and distressed, Roger raced from the café into another, where he always ate breakfast. A pretty barmaid took one look and shrieked: “My God, it’s Roger! But you are dead. They pulled your body from the river and we are all going to your funeral tomorrow.”

No Time for Jokes. Roger Lamy hurried to a telephone and told a friend: “It’s me, Roger Lamy.” “It is a poor time for jokes,” replied the friend. “Roger is dead.” The local police, when he called them, were equally unamused; “Funny business is not funny when it concerns the police,” a cop growled. He agreed at last, as a public service, to transmit the dead man’s message to his sister. The first real partisan Roger found in his fight for life was a Professor from the Lycee. “I would never leave a man alone in a situation like this,” said the brave academician.

It was early on the morning of the funeral by the time Roger and a few friends had persuaded the police and other authorities that he was still alive. “It is Roger Lamy, in the flesh and standing before me,” Roger’s old boss had thundered tellingly to the captain of gendarmes. “He can no longer be considered to be in that coffin of yours.” The captain agreed, but it was much too late to call off the funeral. In honor of the great day, one of the cafés gave Roger a free breakfast. Roger set off for the cemetery. As one old friend after another recognized him, there were many touching embraces at the graveside. When Roger himself learned that many of them had chipped in to buy him a handsome gravestone, he was deeply moved. “The thought of that tombstone,” he said, “made it all become real. I thought of my poor children who had lost both father and mother. I wept. It moved me even more than the death of my own wife.”

His emotion finally under control, Roger asked his friends how the mistake could have occurred. The explanation was simple enough—for Frenchmen, anyway. A suicide had been found in the river. His clothes were like those Roger wore, and Achille Quiret had identified the body. “But Achille hasn’t seen me for nine years,” shouted Roger. Only one of Roger’s sisters had expressed a doubt. “How,” she asked another sister, “did they stuff someone as fat as Roger into that little coffin?” “Perhaps,” sobbed the elder and wiser sister in her grief, “during the autopsy, they cut him into small morsels?”

And who was the suicide? Nobody knew.