“What’s the exact address of the shelter?” he asked, dreading some new digression on the part of the enthusiastic talker.
“I’ve forgotten the number—ask a cop.” The mendicant added: “You have no domicile, then? Your situation is grave, very grave, and I don’t want you to have any difficulty with the police. Look—a piece of advice before we part; go without food, go without drink, but always have a domicile.”
Jacques Liban was about to draw away, but the tenacious old man was not ready to quit.
“You won’t go to bed without having accepted a little glass? I’ll pay, and I’ll take you to my regular place.”
“Might as well,” he murmured, sheepishly. “He won’t let me go otherwise.” Aloud, he said: “I’d like that, on condition that you let me pay.”
“Oh, if your self-respect is at stake, I won’t object,” said the dirt-stained old man, who took him by the arm in a familiar fashion and drew him toward a den in the Rue Galande.
Shady individuals—whores and pimps of the lowest rank—were at the tables. The mendicant’ arrival was acclaimed.
“Hey, Père La Glue, the redhead’s been waiting for you for two hours—what a dance, old boy!”
An ignoble woman of an uncertain age had stood up in her corner, furious. “This is how you pay for dinner, you old sot!” she complained.
The former ministerial officer, winking, pointed to the stranger and made her a sign to keep quiet. “I haven’t made ten sous,” he told her, in a low voice, by way of excuse. “And no music—I have business with Monsieur.”
That pompous declaration seems to calm the pitiful whore.
“Come and have a glass,” the beggar said. “It’s Monsieur who’s offering.”
Sickened, Jacques Liban was in haste to get away, but he made a sign of acquiescence, paid for the three glasses that had just been served, shook the hand that the man held out to him, and uttered a sigh of satisfaction when he found himself back in the street.
Those, then, were the degraded beings with whom he was going to rub shoulders and to be constantly subjected. Not that it could last—that bird of ill-omen had lied. Vice and debauchery had surely caused the abortion of all the former ministerial officer’s attempts, but a man of his knowledge and worth would easily find a place in the sun.
Before anything else, he had to shake off the kind of idiotic torpor that had weighed upon his intelligence since the catastrophe, and prevented him from fixing and immediate and practical goal.
He counted his wealth; he still had forty sous. He promised himself not to repeat the sumptuous meal he had just had; twelve sous a day would suffice. He therefore had three days ahead of him to look for work. At dawn tomorrow he would set out on campaign and visit the various institutions of the quarter.
He had wandered at random, and suddenly found himself, as if some mysterious will had led him there, facing his former dwelling.
The old house had a forbidding appearance that he had never noticed, and which surprised him dolorously. Nevertheless, everything there respired calm and comfort. Although the high windows and the laboratory doors were closed, the windows of the drawing room were joyously illuminated, and his old concierges, whom he could see, plump and shiny through the curtains, were still at table, digesting, and supping a small glass of liqueur. The man, an old soldier, was making energetic gestures to his wife and making chopping gestures with his hand. Doubtless he was explaining the tragic death of his master to her for the hundredth time.
Although his memory seemed to have been abruptly attenuated since the day of the funeral, and the past no longer agitated before him except in a confused fashion, as if through a veil, chagrined comparisons came in a host to assail him.
A man in a hurry, elegantly dressed in mourning, who brushed past him without apology and rang the bell at the coaching entrance interrupted his dolorous meditation. It was Dr. Larmezan, who slammed the heavy door behind him, as if he wanted to shut it in someone’s nose.
He fled rapidly, with a kind of resentment and promised that he would henceforth avoid the placed that had been witness to such a fabulous prosperity.
At the street corner, an old pauper that Dr. Albin had had the habit of helping emerged from a corner and put out his hand. Instinctively, he dug into his pocket and gave him two sous.
He quickly regretted his unthinking generosity bitterly. Alms were a luxury that he no longer had the means to offer. Two sous! That was now life, independence, perhaps honor for an entire day. He had never suspected that such a minimal sum could acquire that relative value. He, who had once philosophized on so many subjects, given brilliant lectures on social deprivation, already glimpsed the almost insurmountable abyss that separated the benevolent, but rich and fortunate, theoretician from the poor devil really at grips with poverty and hunger.
It was about nine o’clock. He spotted two uniformed policeman whose heavy and regular tread made their boots ring on the sidewalk, and asked them for the exact address of the night shelter.
“At the top of the Rue St-Jacques,” replied one of them. Addressing his colleague, he added: “Do you know the number?”
“No,” grunted the other. “Let him ask.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” the questioner pointed out.
“Go to the top of the Rue St-Jacques. The locals will tell you.”
He set off in the direction indicated.
“Hey!” called the grumpy policeman. “Come here a minute, with your exact address. What’s your name?”
“Jacques Liban.”
“So you don’t have a domicile, since you’re asking for the exact address of the night shelter?” He emphasized the word exact as if he saw it as a reproach to his ignorance.
“Yes,” the vagabond replied, striving to laugh, “but I’ve fallen out with my landlord over a slight delay...”
“That’s all right, go on,” the policeman eventually said, after looking him in the face carefully.
That incident proved to him that he ought to avoid the slightest contact with the authorities in future, and that, Jacques Liban having a criminal record, it would be prudent to assume another identity. Anagrams of Albin—since he was absolutely intent on retaining an anagram of his old name—being numerous, he was spoiled for choice. After a few seconds, he settled on Balin.
“The life of Jacques Liban was brief and unfortunate,” he murmured. “Five hundred thousand francs lost and ninety days in prison in five and a half months! May Charles Balin have better luck!”
He reached the Boulevard Saint-Michel, exhausted by fatigue, and crushed by discouraging memories. It was there that he had once been saluted by the crowd, acclaimed by the students, and passed for someone triumphant; and now, a problematic unknown, he was dragging himself along the same street in search of a little rest in a night shelter!
The cafés were inundated by light, the terraces full of noisy customers; an unaccustomed turbulence reigned outside all the fashionable establishments. Groups of policemen posted at every street corner were ready to reestablish order.
At the height of the Café d’Harcourt and the Place de la Sorbonne the agitation was in full swing; rowdy students were going in and out incessantly; some were singing, others shouting at one another or proffering threats. Shrill female voices dominated the racket.
He had stopped momentarily to take account of that effervescence. He had not read a line of newsprint since the day of his arrest. What could be the reason for all this fuss? Probably some scandal at the School of Medicine or Law, perhaps a political demonstration.
A woman tugged on the sleeve of his jacket and drew him to one side.
“They’ll fall on you,” she murmured, in a horse voice. “Get away.”
He thought it was some joke and looked at her, smiling.
“Why do you think those young people would fall on me, Mademoiselle? For that, there’s have to be a reason.”
“Oh, pardon me, Monsieur, I’m mistaken. I thought you we
re Fanny Tripette’s lover—she’s a mate from the Bullier. It’s the check suit that caused the error. All the same, Monsieur,” she added, “believe me, get away. The students have been up in arms for three days—they see pimps everywhere.”
The passer-by thought that the advice was not to be disdained. In fact, he thought, humiliated, this check suit, glabrous face, short-cropped hair, dirty hat and red neckerchief must give me a singularly shady appearance, if even a professional was able to mistake me for one!
He took an oblique route to the Rue St-Jacques, crossed the hospitable threshold of the night shelter, registered under the name of Charles Balin, represented himself as an unemployed teacher just out of the hospital, made the compulsory ablutions, and slid into the narrow bunk, where a reparatory slumber came to extract him from his sufferings for a few hours.
Chapter VIII
Equipped with letters of recommendation that the director of the shelter had spontaneously offered him, Charles Balin set out ardently in quest of employment. The head of the first institution to which he addressed himself sent the response via the porter that the vacant position had just been filled. A second looked scornfully at the note of recommendation and grimaced.
“You’ve come from the night shelter! A poor reference, Monsieur. Anyway, my staff has been complete since yesterday.”
The mere fact of emerging from a shelter is, in fact, enough to make these people suspicious, he thought. I’ll take due note of the observation.
A third schoolmaster received him in his study; he made his request.
“What are your qualifications?”
“Doctor in medicine and sciences,” he replied, modestly, announcing a few of his former official titles
The master started humming in an insolent fashion. “Well, Monsieur,” he ended up declaring, “I have no place for you in my establishment. It’s not a well of knowledge I need, it’s a good master of studies, thirty francs a month, food and lodging.”
“My God, Monsieur,” the naïve petitioner relied, “the situation isn’t, in fact, the height of my ambition, but necessity has no law and if you care to take me, I’ll accept the place you’re offering.”
“Very good, Monsieur. Show me your certificates and diplomas.”
The disconcerted solicitor stammered that he had no papers or parchments on him, but that he would come back.
“Ta ta ta,” the pedant interrupted, brusquely. “No point in lying, you won’t come back! You don’t have the titles you claim. You want me to swallow that with all those diplomas you’d accept a place as a junior! But that’s stupid, implausible—or you’d have had to have murdered your father and mother and be just out of prison, and no one wants to see you any more, in the flesh or in painting. Doctor of sciences! But if I were a doctor of sciences I’d have been a professor of the Faculty for ten years! Go away—I don’t like frauds.”
Charles Balin went out, discouraged. The man was right; why announce that he had titles he could no longer justify?
Those three attempts, the long walks and the hours of waiting had absorbed the whole of the first day. He went back to the night shelter, where he ruminated various projects during tedious hours of insomnia.
As soon as daylight appeared he recommenced his way of the cross. He had obtained several addresses from a Bottin, and presented himself there at hazard. Some were not yet up, others had a complete staff, and would not in any case have taken on a new employee on the eve of the vacation.
One of them was looking for a good professor of physics and chemistry; he thought that luck was finally smiling on him; the man, caught in need, having numerous pupils to represent for the examinations, received him with open arms.
“Monsieur,” he admitted, frankly, “I have the most serious qualifications for the position I’m soliciting, but I can’t show them to you, having lost them in a fire and not having had time to procure duplicates. If you’d like to take me to your laboratory, question me or take me on trial for a few days, you’ll be astonished, I can confidently announce, by the extent of my knowledge.”
“Do you imagine that I’m going to test all the teachers who present themselves?” observed the fabricant of baccalaureates, probably conscious of his own ignorance. “To do that, I’d have to have time to waste. If you have qualifications, go look for them, If your parchments are destroyed, bring me a simple certificate from the Sorbonne or the Faculty that received you. Simply show me attestations from honorable and well-known men, and I’ll be content—I’m pressed for time—but how can I take a teacher without a guarantee, a certificate or a reference? It’s impossible. My institution is a reputable one, frequented by an elite. One doesn’t come in without a recommendation, without proof of honorability and knowledge.”
Toward the end of the day, the director of a suburban bedlam gave him a better welcome. He was an enormous fat man enveloped in an immense dressing-gown with a green foliage pattern on a red background, coiffed in a grenadine velvet bonnet. With the rubicund face of a heavy drinker and carrot-colored hair, he would have cut an excellent figure in a German tavern.
“You’re looking for a place as a teacher?” he asked, before the solicitor had opened his mouth. “Sit down, please, my dear Monsieur.”
“I’m a bachelor of letters,” the postulant began, “but...”
The hundred kilos interrupted swiftly. “That doesn’t matter. What good are all those university diplomas to me? None, my dear Monsieur—keep your parchments in your pocket, I’ve no need to see them. I need a study-master who can teach the kids to read, that’s all. I won’t insult you by supposing you incapable of doing the job. In consequence, in principle, I’ll take you on—if you accept the conditions, of course.
“I’m not one of those headmasters insistent on discipline who make their institution a branch of Mettray.17 No, I leave my pupils a certain liberty; I excuse the natural thoughtlessness and turbulence of youth. I close my eyes to a good deal of mischief. But in order that that paternal liberty doesn’t degenerate into intolerable license, I need schoolmasters both firm and flexible, who can master the pupils without employing violence or brutalizing punishments. No caning, no detentions, no lines! It’s not easy, you can imagine, to maintain good order without that arsenal dear to pedants, so I only take my professors on trial. I lodge them and nourish them for the first month, and if they possess the necessary qualities I give them fifty francs for the second. Fifty francs!” he repeated, in order to emphasize the enormity of the salary.
Food and lodging alone were a meager perspective, but it was the certainty of sleeping under a roof, of not dying of hunger, of being able to wash his only shirt. It was the hope of acquiring payments later that would help him to get out of the rut. Charles Balin accepted, and was introduced to “the ladies,” Madame and Mademoiselle Béguinard, two thin, hypocritical individuals as stiff and yellow as quince paste. The ladies greeted the new schoolmaster with a scarcely-dissimulated grimace; there was a long conference in a corner in low voices. The imposing head of the institution seemed to make the most of his reasons of necessity, and they ended up acquiescing.
He was immediately informed of the usages, conducted to the study and solemnly enthroned in his functions as a junior master. One thing that struck him was that he was the unique teacher in the Béguinard school; Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle Béguinard directed the first three classes, and he found himself charged with general surveillance and teaching twenty brats to read.
From the very first day, the patience of the new martyr was subjected to the most ridiculous proofs: papier-mâché pellets, projectiles in the back, pins embedded in the chair, itching powder in the sheets, etc.—nothing was spared him. Once a day pupil in one of the great lycées of Paris, he had only known the backlash of the laxity of childhood by hearsay; he could now meditate upon that pitiful subject at his ease and in ample knowledge of it.
It was necessary to have one’s back desperately to the wall in order to endure that imbecilic an
d odious suffering. Many a time, in that ridiculous pulpit of black fir-wood, where he served as the target for the malevolence and scorn of the little suburban grocers, he thought about the magisterial lessons of the eloquent Professor Albin, to which a crowd avid or instruction listened in silence and admiration. A week of that degrading ordeal did more to teach him to master his anger than twenty years of his past life.
At the end of the first fortnight, Monsieur Béguinard, who had never ceased for an instant to lavish smiles full of encouragement and beatitude upon him, asked to speak to him for a few minutes.
“My dear Monsieur Balin,” he said, “you’re not perfect, it’s true, and you don’t yet have experience in the métier, that’s obvious, but I’m nevertheless satisfied, even delighted, with your services. Except that—don’t take offence at the observation—the ladies find your check suit a little…how shall I put it?...extraordinary for a house of education. Without demanding a severe costume, a puritan aspect, our profession requires a certain bearing, a correction that you’re far from having, it’s necessary to admit. You look like an American tourist! They’ve also remarked that your linen isn’t always irreproachably clean. You even, it seems, went a whole day shirtless. The children notice all that; your lack of authority stems from it; it’s necessary not to give leverage to their mockeries. Quit this eccentric dress, then, suitable at the most for a Yankee steamboat, and change your underwear, damn it, change your underwear! At your age, one ought to look out for personal cares!”
“Monsieur,” the junior master confessed, painfully, “I have no other clothes than these, and I was obliged to separate myself from my only shirt to wash it. If you would be kind enough to advance me the five or six francs necessary to reclaim a trunk left on deposit at the Gare de Lyon three months ago, I can satisfy you.”
“Damn!” muttered the soup-merchant. “Damn! Not even underwear! If I’d known...”
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 8