Size Matters

Patapoufs et Filifers . . . until recently, that onomatopoeic title was all I remembered of a book my parents brought back from Paris the spring I turned 9. Over a succession of bedtimes, its twelve chapters were read aloud to my little sister, my brother and me by our father, unusually, not our mother. The story it tells had particular significance for him, something we three didn’t discover until years later.

Fattypuffs and Thinifers, to cite the equally euphonious title of its English translation, was written by all-round man of letters André Maurois to entertain his 10-year-old son. It was published in 1930, midway between two world wars, which is pertinent since the often absurd and always tragic reasons humankind finds to wage war are at the heart of the tale. Two young brothers, skinny Thierry and plump Edmond, stumble across an opening in the ground hidden among rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where they’re picnicking with their parents. They venture in and find themselves by an escalator like those in the Paris Métro. They can’t resist. Their slow descent terminates in a hall full of people being sorted according to which of two ships they’re boarding, one bound for the Republic of the Thinifers, the other the Kingdom of the Fattypuffs. The Thinifers are thin as string. They eat to live, grudgingly picking at bare essentials twice a day. The Fattypuffs are as fat as tractor tyres. They live to eat, joyfully dispatching three-course meals every hour, with snacks in between for the peckish. Thins walk when they can’t run, Puffs run when – actually they don’t run, they walk. That is, if sitting’s not an option. Once checked in, the two boys proceed to the waiting ships. One, sleek and built for speed, is part of the Filiport Line’s fleet; the other, broad beamed with a paddle wheel either side, belongs to the Pataport Line. Twiggy Thierry boards the Filiport’s racer, ample Edmond the Pataport’s slow-boat. The vessels then depart in opposite directions. The normally inseparable boys are now officially enemies since that’s what the Thins and the Puffs have been for centuries. Even worse, tensions between the two nations are again at breaking-point. As ever, the problem is which of them should control an island in the sea between them, known by the Thins as the Island of Thinipuff and by the Puffs as the Island of Fattyfer. Previous wars haven’t settled the matter and another is brewing. Our lads are too young to know that ’tis and ’twas ever thus in our world above ground: Greece and Turkey, for example, at each other’s throats about Kypros/Kibris (Cyprus to you and me), or Britain and Argentina at war over islands known by one side as the Malvinas and the other as the Falklands. Writing almost a century ago, it could very well be that Maurois had Alsace-Lorraine in mind, annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War only to revert to France fifty years later in 1920 (to be followed by another round of back-and- forth during the Second World War). Thierry’s ship comes to the maritime equivalent of a screeching halt in Filiport, and in due course Edmond’s tub paddles to its berth in Fattyport. Each boy is agog at what he beholds on shore. Every building in Filiport is as slim and pointy as a pencil. So too its citizens, who appear to exist in perpetual motion. Whereas in Fattyport, whose buildings are stout and sans energy-sapping staircases, the locals seem possessed of scarcely more oomph than a cushion. The boys are taken to meet the highest dignitaries in their respective lands: President Rugifer and King Plumpapuff XXXII, Generals Tactifer and Sappapuff, Professors Dulcifer and Ramfatty, and oth ers. The countries’ capitals are Thiniville and Fattyborough; topo- graphical features include the Iron Needles and Cape Nailhead on one coast, Mount Bulge and Cape Pat-a-Cake on the one opposite. In every Thin classroom the same lesson is taught at precisely the same hour, as reputedly was the case in post-Napoleonic France. Puff schools, we must presume, are unconstrained by timetables. The Thins’ principal industry is spaghetti-manufacture; the Puffs make wheels and tyres. Hard to believe. Wouldn’t whatever capacity they have be devoted to food production 24/7? Thierry and Edmond look on as the leaders of their respective countries plan a conference to decide whether or not there’ll be war. Deliberations will be con ducted at a table wonderfully imagined by Jean Bruller, illustrator of our book’s French edition. The Thins will sit on hard chairs, set against the table’s ruler-straight edge. Opposite them, the Puffs will sink into generous armchairs, their bellies accommodated in semi-circular recesses cut into their food-laden half of the table. The conference has hardly started before it folds. Yet again, the parties can’t get past the island’s name. War is declared, patriotic fervour roused in each camp by the anthems of Thinnish composer Flutifer and Puffian Tumski-Korsapuff. The two armies dig trenches, but the Puff troops are so slow exiting theirs that the war – which Maurois hints is as hellish as 1914–18, barbaric on both sides – is won by the nimble Thins, who quickly occupy the Puff kingdom. Surprisingly, the outcome is peace and harmony. The nations adapt to each other and gaunt skyscrapers soon rise above green and restful parks; buses acquire barrel-shaped lower decks with seating for the Puffs and tall upper decks where Thins can stand when they’re obliged to use transport; in symphony orchestras, Puffs sit tootling on piccolos while Thins are on their feet behind them bashing the living daylights out of bass drums. At long last, the blob of land in the sea is found a name both peoples can accept. Thanks to its glorious flora, henceforth it will be known as Peach Blossom Island. And finally, the former enemies merge to become the United States of Underground. A happy note, then, on which Maurois brings to an end Thierry’s and Edmond’s ten-month sojourn below earth. They take the escalator back up to the surface, where they’re greeted by their father. He’s only just thought of checking on their whereabouts since, they’re astounded to hear, they’ve been gone for less than an hour. The clock, they conclude, runs 7,000 times faster in the underworld. It wasn’t until my late teens that I learnt why my father had wished his children to hear Maurois’s fable of war and peace. A conscientious objector, he’d spent the Second World War either in prison or teaching or working on the land, and as much as getting us off to sleep, he’d wanted to introduce his quarrelsome offspring to the idea that, except on the field of sport, fighting resolves nothing.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 89 © Martin Sorrell 2026