Drifting a Vau-L'eau (Dedalus European Classics)
Page 6
Their friendship went no further than that. Once they were back out on the pavement, they would shake hands and go their separate ways; nevertheless, M. Folantin was saddened when he eventually lost sight of this kindred spirit.
So it was with pleasure that he saw him again.
“Well, well, Monsieur Martinet,” he said. “How are things?”
“Monsieur Folantin! And how have you been keeping since those long-lost days when we used to see each other?”
“Ah, you were a fine one, deserting me like that,” retorted M. Folantin. “Tell me, what the devil happened to you?”
And so they brought each other up to date. M. Martinet was now the assiduous client of a table d’hôte and he immediately began to vaunt its supposed merits: “Ninety to a hundred francs a month; it’s clean and well run; you can eat your fill there, and you’re in good company. You should come and have dinner there…”
“I don’t much care for tables d’hôtes,” said M. Folantin. “I’m a bit of a loner, as you know. I can’t bring myself to talk to people I don’t know.”
“But you’re not forced to talk. It’s very relaxed. You don’t all sit around one table, it’s just like being in a big restaurant. Come on, try it, come this evening.”
M. Folantin hesitated, alternating between the pleasure of not having to eat alone and the fear that communal meals inspired in him.
“Come on, you can’t say no,” insisted M. Martinet. “It’ll be my turn to call you a deserter if the one time I run into you, you abandon me.”
M. Folantin was afraid of seeming rude and so he meekly followed his companion through the streets.
“Here we are… let’s go up.” And M. Martinet stopped on the landing, in front of a green swing door.
The loud clattering of plates could be heard over an uninterrupted hum of voices; then the door opened and there was a wild hullaballoo as men in top hats rushed downstairs, rattling their canes against the wrought iron banisters.
M. Folantin and his companion stood to one side, then pushed open the door in their turn and entered a billiard hall. M. Folantin choked and recoiled. The room was engulfed in a thick cloud of tobacco smoke, sliced by occasional cue thrusts. M. Martinet dragged his guest into another room where the smoke was, perhaps, even fiercer still, and here and there, amid the gurgle of blocked pipes, the clatter of dominoes and bursts of laughter, bodies moved around, almost invisible, their presence divined only by the displacement of smoke they caused. M. Folantin stood there, dazed, groping around for a chair.
M. Martinet had abandoned him. Vaguely, through the haze, M. Folantin glimpsed him emerging through a door.
“We have to wait a little,” said M. Martinet, “all the tables are full, but it won’t be long.”
Half an hour went by. M. Folantin would have given a lot to have never set foot in this café, where you could smoke but couldn’t get a bite to eat. From time to time M. Martinet would run off and check if all the seats were still occupied.
“There are two gentlemen who are on their cheese,” he said, with a self-satisfied air, “I’ve reserved their places.”
Another half-hour went by. M. Folantin wondered if it wouldn’t be better to slip downstairs while his companion was watching out for a table. Finally, M. Martinet returned, announced the departure of the two cheeses, and they entered a third room where they sat down, squeezed together like sardines in a tin.
Onto the still-warm tablecloth, amid breadcrumbs and spatters of gravy, their plates were flung down, and they were served a tough, leathery piece of beef and tasteless vegetables, a roast beef whose rubbery flesh bent under the knife, a salad and dessert. The room reminded M. Folantin of a boarding house refectory, and a poorly run boarding house at that, where bawling and shouting at table went unchecked. All that was really missing were mugs with bottoms reddened from overflowing wine, and dinner plates turned upside-down in order to give you a cleaner space to eat prunes or preserves.
The food and the wine were certainly wretched enough, but what was even more wretched than the food and more wretched than the wine, was the company in the midst of which you were consuming it; there were the emaciated waitresses who brought the dishes, wizened women with unfriendly eyes and features that were sharp and severe. A feeling of complete powerlessness came over you as you looked at them; you felt conscious of being watched and you ate uneasily, with circumspection, not daring to leave gristle or skin for fear of a reprimand, and apprehensive about taking a second helping beneath those eyes that sized up your appetite, forcing it back into the depths of your belly.
“Well, what did I tell you,” said M. Martinet, “it’s jolly, isn’t it? And you get proper meat here.”
M. Folantin didn’t breath a word; around him, the tables hubbubed with an awful noise.
The seats were filled with all the races of Southern France, spitting and sprawling and bellowing. All these men from Provence, from Lozère, from Gascony and from Languedoc, all these men with bearded cheeks as black as ebony shavings, with hairy nostrils and fingers, with booming voices, were talking and laughing like madmen, their accents emphasised by epileptic gestures that chopped up their words and stuffed them, all mangled up, into your eardrums.
Almost all were young men from the Grands Écoles,33 gilded youth whose second-rate ideas ensured the governing classes had a neverending supply of half-wits; M. Folantin heard paraded before him every cliché, every piece of twaddle, every out-of-date literary opinion, every tired paradox worn thin by a century of use. He reckoned the wit of a labourer would have been more delicate and that of a draper’s assistant more refined.
And to make matters worse the heat was stifling. Steam covered the plates and misted the glasses; roughly banged doors carried in the stale exhalations of a smoking room; herds of students continued to arrive and the sight of them waiting impatiently harassed those still eating. Just as in a buffet at a railway station, you had to take huge mouthfuls and gulp down your wine in a hurry.
‘So, this was the famous table d’hôte that in days of yore doled out grub to our would-be politicians,’ thought M. Folantin; and the notion that these people filling the room with their revelry would become, in their turn, sombre men of distinction, loaded with honours and high office, made him feel sick.
‘Stuffing your face at home with a pork pie and a glass of water, anything, would be better than dining here,’ he thought.
“Would you like some coffee?” asked M. Martinet amiably.
“No thank you. I’m suffocating. I’m just going out for a breather.”
But M. Martinet wasn’t in a mood to let him go. He caught him up on the landing and seized his arm.
“Where are you taking me?” asked M. Folantin, his heart sinking.
“Come now, my dear friend,” M. Martinet replied, “I noticed you didn’t think much of my table d’hôte…”
“But I did… I did… for the price it’s even surprisingly good value… only it was so hot,” M. Folantin explained timidly, afraid he’d offended his host with his frowning face and hasty departure.
“Well, we don’t see each other often enough for me to let you go off with a bad impression,” said M. Martinet cordially. “So how are we going to spend the evening? If you like the theatre, I suggest we go to the Opera-Comique. We’ve got plenty of time,” he added, looking at his watch. “They’re playing Richard Coeur de Lion and the Pré aux Clercs34 this evening. Well… what do you say?”
“Whatever you like.” ‘After all,’ thought M. Folantin, ‘perhaps it might distract me, and besides how can I refuse an offer from this good man when I’ve already pooh-poohed all his other enthusiasms?’ “Allow me to offer you a cigar,” he added, going into a tobacconist’s.
They exhausted themselves in vain trying to light these Havanas, which had an aroma of cabbage and wouldn’t draw. ‘Another pleasure down the drain,’ thought M. Folantin, ‘even when you’re prepared to pay, you can’t get a decent cigar nowadays.’
Richard was just beginning; the hall was half empty.
During the first act, M. Folantin experienced a strange sensation: this series of songs for the spinet reminded him of the musical box in a wine shop he had occasionally frequented. When one of the workers jerked the handle, an old tune would come tinkling out, something very slow and very sweet, with an occasional high, crystalline note rising above the mechanical plucking of the refrains.
In the second act, another sensation came to him. The song ‘A Burning Fever’ evoked in him the image of his grandmother, who would warble it in her Utrecht velvet armchair; and for a brief moment he tasted in his mouth the rusks she used to give him, whenever he’d been a good little boy.35
He ended up not following the performance at all; besides, the singers had no voice to speak of and merely protruded their round mouths over the footlights, while the orchestra dozed off, weary of trying to beat life into this dusty old music.
Then, in the third act, M. Folantin thought neither of the musical box in the wine shop, nor of his grandmother, but suddenly he had the smell in his nose of an antique box he had at home, a vague, musty smell in which something like a hint of cinnamon could be detected. ‘My God, it’s all so old!’
“It’s a jolly comic opera isn’t it?” said M. Martinet, nudging him with his elbow.
M. Folantin fell back to earth, the spell was broken; they stood up, and the curtain was lowered to salvos of applause from the hired claque.36
Pré aux Clercs, which followed Richard, appalled M. Folantin. In the past, he’d been enraptured by its familiar tunes; now all these sentimental airs seemed lifeless and old-fashioned,37 and the singers irritated him. The tenor stood on stage like a floor polisher,38 and he sang with a nasal twang, whenever the thin stream of his voice chanced to escape from his mouth. Costumes, scenery, everything was in keeping; if it had been in any other town, whether abroad or in the provinces, the audience would have booed, because nowhere else would they have put up with a singer as ridiculous, or an ensemble as absurd. And yet the theatre had filled up and the crowd was applauding the passages indicated by the implacable claque.
M. Folantin was truly suffering. Now Pré aux Clercs, which he had cherished such happy memories of, was ruined too. ‘Everything’s going to hell,’ he thought, and he let out a big sigh.
And so when M. Martinet, delighted with his evening, suggested that they should resume these little outings from time to time, that if he fancied it they could go together to the Theatre-Français, M. Folantin grew indignant, and forgetting the restraint he’d promised to observe, he violently declared that he certainly wasn’t going to set foot in that theatre.
“But why not?” asked M. Martinet.
“Why not?” cried M. Folantin. “Well, first of all because if a lively, well-written play existed – and personally I don’t know of any – I’d read it at home in an armchair, and secondly because I don’t need to hear ham actors, most of whom are uneducated, trying to interpret the thoughts of some bloke who’s hired them to hawk his wares.”
“But all the same,” M. Martinet argued, “you have to admit that the actors of the Theatre-Français…”
“Them!” exclaimed M. Folantin, “Get away! They’re the Palais-Royal equivalent of Vatel the cook,39 sauce makers and that’s all. The only thing they’re good at is smothering any dish that’s given to them – with an invariable white sauce, if they’re acting a comedy, and with an unchanging brown sauce, if it’s a tragedy. They’re incapable of inventing a third sauce, and besides tradition wouldn’t allow it.
“Ah, they’re right sticklers for convention, that lot. But to do them justice, they know how to advertise, because they’ve adopted the same practice as the big clothes stores, who have a man with a legion d’honneur in his lapel ostentatiously wandering around the shelves in order to raise the store’s prestige by his presence and to draw in the customers.”
“Oh, come on, Monsieur Folantin…”
“There’s no ‘Come on’ about it, that’s the way it is, and to be honest I’m not sorry to have had this chance to give my opinion on M. Coquelin’s40 theatrical ‘boutique’. But this, my dear Sir, is where I must leave you. I’m delighted we met, and I hope I’ll have the pleasure of seeing you again soon.”
The consequences of that evening were salutary. At the memory of how tired, how embarrassed he’d been, M. Folantin considered himself lucky to be able to dine where he pleased and to spend the rest of the evening in his room; he reckoned that solitude had its advantages, that to mull over old memories and recount idle gossip to oneself was still preferable to the company of people with whom one shared neither convictions, nor sympathy; his desire to be sociable, to rub shoulders with others, evaporated and, once again, he repeated this depressing truth: that when old friends disappear, one should resolve not to look for others, but to live apart, to habituate oneself to isolation.
Then he tried to focus his mind, to take an interest in even the smallest of things, to extract some consoling lessons from the lives of those he observed near his table; for a while he went to dine in a small chop house near the Croix-Rouge.41 This establishment was generally frequented by the elderly, by old ladies who came each day at quarter to six, and the tranquillity of the small dining room made up for the monotony of the food. One would have said they were people with no family, no friends, who had searched out an obscure corner in which to expedite a necessary chore in silence; and M. Folantin found he was more at ease in this world of the disinherited, of polite, discrete people who had no doubt known better days and more fulfilling evenings. He knew them almost all by sight, and he felt an affinity with these strangers who hesitated before choosing a dish from the menu, who picked at their bread and drank next to nothing, who, with their ruined stomachs, evinced the painful weariness of those shuffling through life with neither hope nor purpose.
Here, there were no noisily-shouted orders, no yelling: the waitresses consulted their customers in lowered voices. But if none of these ladies and none of these gentlemen exchanged a single remark, they nevertheless bowed politely to one another when coming in or going out, bringing the manners of the drawing room to this humble eatery.
‘I’m more fortunate, at least, than all these people,’ thought M. Folantin. ‘They’re probably pining for children, for wives, for a fortune lost, for a life that was once full and is now empty.’
In pitying others he came to pity himself less: he would return home thinking that his problems were, after all, more superficial and his troubles much less profound. ‘How many individuals at this very moment are walking the streets with no home to go to; how many would envy me my big armchair, my fire, and a tobacco pouch that I can dip into whenever the fancy takes me?’ And he would stoke the fire in the grate, toasting his slippered feet, mixing up golden hot toddies. ‘If one could find some genuinely artistic books in the bookshops, life would, on the whole, be quite tolerable,’ he concluded.
Several weeks passed by in this way and his colleague at the office declared that M. Folantin seemed to be looking younger. He would make conversation now, listening with angelic patience to all the office gossip, even taking an interest in his friend’s ailments; added to which, when the weather began to turn cold his appetite became more regular, and he attributed this improvement to creosote wine42 and the manganese preparations43 he was imbibing. ‘I’ve finally found a remedy that’s less unreliable and more effective than the others,’ he thought. And he began recommending it to everyone he met.
He made it through to winter; but with the first fall of snow his feeling of depression returned. The chop house in which he’d ensconced himself since the autumn bored him and he started grazing haphazardly here and
there. Several times he crossed the river and tried new restaurants; but amid the bustle of people the waiters would rush by, ignoring his attempts to order, or else they would fling his plate onto the table and fly off again before he could ask them for some bread.
The food wasn’t any better than on the Left Bank and the service arrogant and derisory. M. Folantin took the lesson to heart and from then on stayed in his own arrondissement, determined not to decamp again.
His lack of appetite returned. He realised once more the inutility of all tonics and digestive aids, and the remedies he’d praised so highly joined the others in a cupboard.
What was he to do? The week continued to drag by, but it was Sundays that really oppressed him.
In the past he had sauntered around the deserted quarters of Paris; it amused him to stroll along these forgotten alleyways, these poor, provincial streets, to be amazed at the secrets its humble households revealed, glimpsed through ground-floor windows. But now these calm, silent streets had been demolished, the curious passageways razed to the ground. Impossible now to look through the half-open gates of old buildings, to make out a patch of garden, the coping stone of a well, the end of an old bench; impossible now to tell oneself that life would be less ill-tempered, less pretentious, in a courtyard such as this, to dream of a future in which one could retire to its silence and comfort one’s old age in its milder air.
Everything had vanished: no more clumps of foliage, no more trees, but interminable barracks stretching out as far as the eye could see; and in this new Paris M. Folantin suffered a sensation of unease and anguish.44
He was a man who loathed expensive shops, and nothing in the world would persuade him to set foot in a stylish hairdresser’s or in one of those modern grocer’s whose windows gleamed with gaslight; he liked only simple old shops, where one was received without ceremony, where the owner didn’t try to pull the wool over your eyes or humiliate you by showing off his wealth.