Picking apart a perfect short story is like explaining a great joke. The attempt to illuminate its secret is just going to dull its shine.
When introducing a collection of Saki’s short stories (c. 1930), Christopher Morley warned us:
The fact is there are few writers less profitable to write about. Saki exists only to be read. The exquisite lightness of his work offers no grasp for the solemnities of earnest criticism. He is of those brilliant and lucky volatiles who are to be enjoyed, not critic-handled.
I hear Morley’s warning against being too earnest, but I will heed it about as wisely I would as a century-old “No Trespassing” sign. (I’m nothing if not foolish.)
Saki’s “The Interlopers” (1919) involves a property dispute between neighboring landowners. One stormy night, the current defender of a narrow strip of game-rich forest heads into its stormy darkness with his rifle. He’s determined to end the interloper’s trespassing once and for all.
Being a classic story about the follies of man set in a Gothic forest, there is a fateful encounter. A tree falls and pins them both to the ground. There will be no duel. As they helplessly await rescue from their search parties, each assures the other of his interloper status and impending doom.
Says Ulrich, “‘When my men come to release us you will wish, perhaps, that you were in a better plight than caught poaching on a neighbour’s land, shame on you.’”
Counters Georg, “‘I have men, too, in the forest tonight, close behind me, and they will be here first and do the releasing. When they drag me out from under these damned branches it won’t need more clumsiness on their part to roll this mass of trunk right over on top of you.’”
And then, only after escape is revealed to be impossible for both of them, they soften their hostilities. Maybe they should have not held grudges. Maybe they should have forgiven each other long ago.
For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic reconciliation would bring about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful gusts through the naked branches and whistling round the tree-trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring release and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private prayer that his men might be the first to arrive, so that he might be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had become a friend.
What’s slyly effective here is how author has positioned his Gothic Nature as the story’s “I’m calling your bullshit” moral weathervane. It’s only after they are powerless to act do they behave with contrition. Nice try, fellas, but Nature sees you both as “interlopers.” (The title uses the plural form of the noun, after all.)
Freeing either of you from peril isn’t going to lead to a true change of heart. It’s time to silence your insincere death-bed confessions, Nature’s way.
Just how Saki ends this story—with an unrepentantly chosen final word—I cannot tell you. It’s a word choice so good, so “exquisitely light,” you’ll squeal.
Long live Saki’s devious art of the unhappy ending.