“Bizarre! Bizarre!” the magistrate repeated. “What’s your name?” he asked, abruptly.
“Jacques Liban.”
“Where do you live?”
“I’ve just arrived from Marseilles.”
“Which hotel are you staying in?”
“None; I arrived his morning at eight o’clock.
“Where do you live in Marseilles?”
“I arrived from Tonkin on the steamer Indo-China.”
“From Tonkin!” said the astonished magistrate. “What were you doing out there?”
“Correspondent for the American newspapers.”
“Which ones?”
Caught out unexpectedly, the unknown had a fatal moment of hesitation, and then cited at random the titles of two or three newspapers of the New World.
“Where do you live in America?”
“New York.”
“That’s a long way away. Do you have papers establishing your identity? Do you know anyone who can answer for you? Have you a friend or acquaintance who can settle your debt?”
The pseudo-correspondent answered no to all those questions.
“What proof do I have, then,” the magistrate went on, “assuming that you had a parcel containing five hundred thousand francs, firstly that the money belonged to you, secondly that it was stolen from you, and thirdly, that the pretended theft isn’t simply a pretext to avoid paying for the copious meal that you had.”
“My word as an honest man, Monsieur.”
“Your word? You’re joking, I think.”
“Monsieur!” exclaimed Jacques Liban, revolted. “You don’t have the right to doubt it.”
“Say rather that I don’t have the right to believe you. If I accepted words of honor, all the crooks and scoundrels I interrogate would be the most honest men in the world.”
“But I’m not a crook!”
“Don’t shout so loud, or pay what you owe.”
The unfortunate made a desolate gesture
“Search this man,” ordered the Commissaire.
Agents searched him from head to foot. His pockets contained, in total, some newspapers, two handkerchiefs, blue-tinted spectacles, a luggage-ticket and, in a leather bag, the letter found n the legionnaire.
The magistrate read the letter, and looked at the enigmatic individual, frowning.
“Oho!” he said. “Here’s a document that doesn’t lack interest.”
“It’s a letter I found in Tonkin,” Jacques Liban hastened to declare. “It’s addressed to some legionnaire. I don’t know what it signifies.”
“It will, however, be very interesting to the law to find out. I’m arresting you.”
The unknown became suppliant.
“I swear to you, Monsieur, that I’m an honest man.”
“That’s up to others to decide,” said the Commissaire. “If you are who you say you are, prove it to the court. No papers except for his luggage-ticket and this letter, which requires to be clarified. In addition, a fraud, wads of false bills, and not the slightest reference—and you expect to walk out of here tranquilly?”
He adopted a friendly manner and put on his most engaging smile. “Come on, play the game. You’ve been caught; your explanations don’t hold up; admit the truth. Aren’t you, by chance, one of those light-fingered gentleman who practice theft in the American fashion, with a magisterial impudence?”
Suddenly gripped by rage, the accused drew himself up to his full height. “What you’re saying is imbecilic,” he protested. “If I were a thief I wouldn’t have got myself caught in such a stupid manner. I’d have papers, a domicile and answers for everything. You’re accusing me of an infamy of which I’ve been the victim. It’s shameful.”
He advanced toward the magistrate menacingly, but the two burly fellows who had searched him, after a volley of punches, held him solidly by the arms.
“Insulting the authority,” mocked the agents. “That’s all that was lacking.”
“Put him in handcuffs, since he’s ill-disposed,” said the magistrate. “Send him to the lock-up as soon as possible.”
A terrible anguish gripped the heart of the accused.
“Appearances, I admit, seem to condemn me,” he said, “but I swear to you again that I’m a honest man, and if I haven’t satisfied your legitimate curiosity, it’s because a mystery that I can’t reveal envelopes me, because...”
“Good, good,” interrupted the incredulous magistrate. “We’re not at the Ambigu, and it’s one reason more—the court loves mysteries! Take him away.”
“Joker,” he murmured, on seeing him disappear. “He claims that someone’s stolen half a million francs from him, and doesn’t even think of lodging a complaint!”
Taken to the police cells, Jacques Liban spent his first night back in Paris prey to the most bitter reflections. Was it really him, a former député, a former minister, who had just taken a beating like the most infamous of hooligans?
No, he had to admit, the powerful man of old no longer existed; the individual who had fallen victim to his lack of foresight, whom the law had legally arrested, was no longer anyone but Jacques Liban, the enigmatic unknown devoid of resources, devoid of a roof, devoid of a fatherland, devoid of any civil estate. Why hadn’t he thought that a theft or some other hazard might deprive him of his fortune? What was he going to do? How could he defend himself?
Confess the truth? But that would be to sink into general reproof, to become legendary, the butt of the entire world’s mockery, to play the role of an unintelligent knave. His action, if it were not redeemed subsequently by an indisputable glory, could only be considered as the criminal fantasy of an unhinged mind. It was even impossible for him to complain about the major theft of which he was suffering the unfortunate consequences.
To what would that complaint lead? Dangerous investigations that might lead to the discovery of his identity. It would be necessary to indicate the provenance of the large sum, justify its possession, etc., etc. On the other hand, the indications that he could furnish to the police were too vague; he would not even be able to recognize the man who had stolen it! It was, therefore, necessary to support as stoically as possible the catastrophe that had just overwhelmed him. What did he have to fear, after all? A few days or a few weeks in prison...
A fatal stupidity had backed him into such a dark and dangerous corner, when it would have been so easy for him at least to create a domicile and obtain papers! Was it his instinctive confidence in his lucky star that had prevented him from preoccupying himself with those trivial details?
The next day, after being given a preliminary shower, Jacques Liban submitted to the infamous formality of anthropomorphic measurement,16 and Monsieur Bertillon, his former pupil, scarcely suspected, in not sparing him any detail, that he was applying them to one of the most ardent investigators of that incontestably useful institution. The operation did not, any case, furnish any information regarding the mysterious accused. It was merely observed that he had dyed hair and an artificially tanned face, which he made no difficulty about admitting.
“And yet, I know that face,” the anthropometrist affirmed. “It’s surely not the first time I’ve seen it.”
The legionnaire’s letter found on the delinquent of the Café Mansard had attracted the attention of the examining magistrate, who brought an insistence and unaccustomed skill to interrogating him without being able to obtain the slightest clue as to his identity. It was only after many interrogations that the magistrate, despairing of removing the mask, had sent him to court for the minor offence.
There, between two gendarmes, on the bench soiled by so many ignoble contacts, the torture did not last long. The judge had swiftly consulted the file.
“You don’t want to admit your identity, so far as I can see. You claim to be named Jacques Liban?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Président.”
“You say that five hundred thousand francs was stolen from you, and it transpired as a result of enquires that
that sum had indeed been withdrawn that day from the Crédit International by Jacques Liban. Where did that sum come from?”
“It belonged to me; I had earned it honestly.”
“Yes, but when?.... You have nothing to say? You arrived from Tokin—that fact has been ascertained to be correct. What is the significance of his letter, addressed, you affirm, to an unknown legionnaire?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get away! You doubtless have the greatest interest in hiding it. The legionnaire is you!”
“No, Monsieur le Président.”
“Then what were you doing in Tonkin?.... You remain mute, and for good reason! You say that you’re a correspondent for the American newspapers. But no one, either at the legation or at the editorial offices of the newspapers you cited, knows your name. You lied, then?”
“I admit that.”
“You had dyed your hair and darkened your skin artificially; in brief, you were disguised.”
“That’s correct.”
“The examining magistrate has not been able to discover anything, in spite of the interest that we have in knowing who you are. Do you persist in concealing your true identity from us? By doing so, I warn you, you’re exposing yourself to the severity of the law.”
“Reasons of great importance oblige me to do so, but I’m an honest man.”
“Or a deserter, a spy, a criminal—what do I know? Your obstinacy permits all suppositions. In any case, you refused to pay for the meal you had.”
“I couldn’t pay. You know why. As soon as I can. I’ll settle the debt.”
“Nothing obliges me or encourages me to believe you. You admit the fact of the accusation?”
“Alas, yes.”
“If would be difficult to deny it.”
The police commissaire, a fundamentally generous person, had dropped the charge of insulting the authority. After muttering a few lines from the penal code, the tribunal condemned the anonymous individual to three months in prison. He had already been detained for two months, and as ill luck would have it, the prisons of Paris were overflowing, so he was transferring to a suburban jail.
After the shame of the Mazas and the petty sessions, he endured the promiscuity of the exercise yard, subjected to the interrogations and the familiarities of the rabble. To complete the misfortune, the governor, shocked by the sight of his renascent hair, whose roots were black and the summit blond, had his head shaved on the pretext that it was dirty. Thus travestied and in the gray penitentiary uniform, he had the ignoble appearance of a veritable criminal.
The thirty days passed in a kind of despairing stupor empty of all thought. It was like an uninterrupted series of the kind of bad dream in which incoherent and inconsequential ideas tumble from one precipice to another without being able to cling on to the walls of the abyss.
He wanted to reflect, to analyze his situation, to think about the future, but it was impossible. During his sojourn in the Mazas he had been solicited by the need to defend himself, and his mind, absorbed by that concern, had found a meager aliment therein. Now his mind was floundering in a kind of nauseating marsh, darkened by thick fogs. He had been condemned to prison! He had a criminal record! He had allowed himself to be caught in the gears, and what was going to become of him?
He would have no more money and domicile when he got out than when he came in. He was employed sowing school notebooks, but would a single sou of that problematic pittance remain to him? How would he live? How would he escape further pursuits, further inquisitorial tortures? The police were not going to lose sight of him; they were interested in removing his incognito. What would become of him if they succeeded?
He muttered incoherent phrases and bit his fingernails, huddled for long hours on his iron bedstead.
Chapter VI
Those who are vowed to misfortune at birth; those whom vices or infirmities lunge into the mire of social life; even those whom bad luck pursues stubbornly: the poor in spirit, the pariahs and the undisciplined—all those, in sum, who live in the constant practice of misery—quickly acquire a kind of experience of which they make use to soften their fate.
They know all the shelters, all the refuges, all the soup kitchens, all the bureaux of assistance, all the charitable institutions. They know the times when the barracks, the big restaurants, the educational establishments and convents dispose of their surplus and the remains of their meals. They divine the door that opens, the heart that is moved, the hand that gives, the places where people are laughing, the places where people are weeping, the instant when people become compassionate. They do not disdain the temple where conversion is rewarded, the confessional where the penitent is helped. They sense the baker who gives good weight to the purchaser of a morsel of bread, the grocer who consent to sell a sou’s worth of cheese, the butcher who is not miserly with his bones. They sniff out the debris of markets and the damaged goods of Parisian alimentation. They know the street-corners where genuine offers of work are posted on the walls.
They also know the thousands of petty métiers to which public circumstances and the dunghill of civilization spontaneously give birth. They are the merchants of festival insignia, the street-traders of every sort, the sandwich-board men, the newspaper hawkers, the openers of carriage-doors, the collectors of cigar-butts, the finders of lost dogs, the sellers of groundsel, wild flowers or wild birds; they are the improvised moving-men hired by the day, the auxiliary street-cleaners of Paris on snowy or muddy nights, the distributors of prospectuses, the weepers in funeral corteges, the clowns that surge forth in the vicinity of weddings, the poor who smile at new-borns. They are on the lookout for suitcases to carry, vehicles to unload, shop windows to wash, chairs to bring out or take in, saleable places in bank queues on issue days, theaters whose plays in vogue, free spectacles or sensational trials. They are, in sum, the anonymous artisans of those innumerable tasks that municipal statisticians ignore and Bottin does not register.
All of those people contrive to live, sometimes with greater ease than veritable workers. No easy prey escapes their jackal flair. They seek, divine, enquire, assist one another, and almost end up grouping together. They have their respective districts, their specialties, their meeting-places, their customs, their conventions and their verbal laws. They know the way to the drinking dens of the Barrières and the suburban taverns; the pigeon-trap and the fricassee of the Seine are not myths, and they never really suffer from hunger.
But those whom an unexpected event precipitates suddenly from opulence into distress; those who, rich and powerful one day, wake up poor and disarmed the next; the inexperienced, the improvident, the ignorant, the debutants of poverty; those who are only educated in political discourse or humanitarian books; those who, for the first time, find themselves literally without a sou, will have to sustain a pitiless and murderous struggle in order not to die of starvation.
Now, not only is Jacques Liban one of the latter, but the cruelty, plenitude and lightning rapidity of the disaster that he had not had the sagacity to anticipate seem to have struck him a mortal blow on the head. The triumphal arch elevated by pride has collapsed; he is lying under the rubble, which is crushing him, hiding the light from his eyes, preventing him from crying out and only giving him just enough air for him to support a longer agony.
What is going to become of him? What is he going to do? The prejudices, the pride and the delicacies of old still enlace him and paralyze him; ignorance of the milieu into which Fate has thrown him leave him at the mercy of hazard, with his hands and feet bound. His head is empty, his will almost extinct; his intelligence, a formless larva, is crawling painfully in the dark; instinct alone might be able to save him.
Here he is, out of prison. Instead of fleeing immediately and disappearing, as all the others do, he stops, bewildered, for a few minutes outside the door, and seems to make a considerable effort to arrive at a decision.
The shopkeepers opposite observe him with suspicious and mocking expressions. A g
roup of schoolboys stop and direct their curious eyes at the “thief.”
A uniformed policeman accosts him. “Let’s see, now! One would think you were missing the box? Well, at least one’s always sure of bean soup, eh? Move along—it isn’t here that you’ll find work.”
He shrugs his shoulders and flees, in the direction of Paris. What is he going to do? The twelve sous remaining from his pittance, which he was given on leaving, will suffice for today, but tomorrow? He’ll sell his dust-coat and look for work.
He reaches open country; the June sun that warms and comforts him almost makes him forget his distress. He breathes in the morning air, gladly; he knows now the real and direct value of the word “liberty.” A ray of hope gives him illusions.
“I’ll find work,” he murmurs, confidently, looking at the tall chimneys of a factory vomiting smoke. “I’ll do no matter what; I’ll accept the most menial tasks while waiting for something better, and that necessary, inevitable humiliation will be the very crucible from which my soul will emerge more noble and better tempered. A man of my worth can’t remain in difficulties for long!”
Anguished, he mutters: “My worth! My worth! Can’t it be said that that vanished with the identity of Dr. Albin?”
He strives to react against the enervating uncertainty that has paralyzed him for three months. His pride rears up. A banal misfortune, a monetary loss, a severity of the blind law, won’t put an end to a man like him. The fabulous wellbeing of the past hasn’t turned his head; he won’t allow himself to be crushed by a vulgar catastrophe; and even if he has to pass through all the stages of poverty, even if he has to bruise his feet and hands, he’ll march without flinching!
A placard pinned to the door of a worksite attracts his attention. Good workers wanted.
“Why not?” he mutters, with a bitter snigger. Dr. Albin once supervised masons when he had his villa at Trouville built. Jacques Liban will serve them.
He goes into the site, where buildings are beginning to emerge from the ground. The laborers are working at a fast, steady pace. A foreman approaches and asks him what he wants.
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 6