Where can he go? His feet are bruised; he can scarcely walk. He takes a few steps in the direction of the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and collapses on a bench almost directly opposite the Barbedienne foundry. His eyes mist over; he vaguely distinguishes shadows coming and going before him; a seizure grips his throat; he needs all his will-power not to faint.
Suddenly, a brutal hand falls on his shoulder, and shakes him awake.
“You’re still here,” complains the policeman. “Go to bed, or I’ll take you to the station.”
The wretch opens his eyes wide.
“Go to bed, you old drunk,” the policeman repeats, “and quicker than that. Come on! Up! Move along!”
“I can’t,” he murmurs. “I haven’t eaten. I’m hungry.”
His voice is extinct, his face livid, his gaze tearful. The policemen, slightly disconcerted, exchange a few words in whispers.
“Leave him there,” says one of them. “It’s too late, they can’t give him anything at the station.”
The two agents resume their round at a slow pace, and a few passers-by, brought together by curiosity, disappear without saying a word. Then a whore sits down beside him.
“Is it true that you haven’t eaten?” she asks him.
The unfortunate looks at her without replying; two large tears trickle slowly down his cheeks.
“Wait for me,” she said. “I’ll buy you some buttered bread over there.” She disappears rapidly and comes back a moment later.
“Here, eat.”
The man falls avidly upon the pasture that hazard had sent him, and devours it dazedly without saying a word. Two or three other women have joined the first, and contemplate him with pitying expressions.
“Are you still hungry?” asks a newcomer.
“Oh, yes,” he murmurs, in a low voice. The prostitutes club together, boldly soliciting contributions from passers-by, and Mariette, whose benevolent impulse has just saved the life of the starving man, soon comes back with victuals and wine.
“We can’t leave him to eat all that on the bench,” she says. “The cops will come back again to move him on.”
“Where do you live?” asks another whore.
“Nowhere,” the man replies, still in a low voice.
“You’re doubtless out of work. What do you do?”
“I’m a professor.”
The women look at him curiously, and confer again.
“You don’t have a lover—give him a bed,” one of them proposes. “A professor’s a toff!”
“Do you want to come with me?” says Mariette. “You can eat all that at the house.”
“I’d be putting you out, Mademoiselle.”
“Putting me out? Oh, at this hour I’m not risking anything by going to bed, for all that there is to do.”
“That’s true,” approve the others, in chorus.
“Let’s see—can you walk?”
“Yes, I feel a little better now.”
“Come on, then, we’ll sort it out. You can’t spend the night on a bench.”
With the docility of a small child, the unfortunate, vanquished by fate and disorientated, drawn by the odor of warm bread and meat, takes the arm that Mariette offers him and heads toward Montmartre with her.
The air is fresher; a pale light is already announcing that dawn is not far off. The little nourishment he has had has sufficed to render him courage and strength, the certainty that he will eat more on going inside causes him to forget the bruising of his feet.
They have scarcely exchanged a few words during the journey; here they are at the “Hôtel de la Dordogne et du Calvados,” where Mariette lives.
The whore rings, lights candle-matches, and the poor devil, after having climbed two flights of stairs, finally lets himself fall, with manifest gladness, on to a threadbare sofa.
“Don’t get impatient, my dear,” his companion hastens to announce. “I’ll light the candle and we’ll eat.”
The good woman has quickly set out her provisions on the table.
“No cutlery, plates or napkins here, you know; one’s furnished—necessary not to be difficult.”
The guest scarcely thinks about such details. The slices of ham and larded veal disappear rapidly into his mouth. Mariette, who is nibbling, watches him eat with a veritable contentment.
“Well, truly,” she murmurs, “if someone tells me tomorrow that you’re a fraud, I’ll tell him he’s lying. That’s an appetite! How long is it since you’ve eaten?”
“About thirty hours.”
“That’s not too much!”
“Yes, but I’d eaten so little in the days before.”
“Poor dear. You’re a professor, then?”
“Yes.”
“I thought professors were rich people.”
“As you can see, not always.”
“Why are you calling me vous? So I won’t say tu to you, perhaps?”
“No, my dear Mariette,” he exclaims, already feeling better and almost cheerful. “You’re a good, a lovely girl, and I thank you cordially for the service you’ve just rendered me.” This time he addresses her as tu.
“That’s nice—we’ll have to clink glasses on that—to the health of my poor old man!”
“To yours, Mariette, to the luck that will permit me to repay my debt to you worthily.”
“You don’t owe me anything—one can’t let people die of starvation.”
“Without your good heart, however, that’s what would have happened to me.”
He considered her with a keen gratitude. A slight blush colored the prostitute’s cheeks.
“You must have suffered a good deal,” he added, after a pause, “to have taken pity on a stranger like that.”
Mariette’s expression darkened. “Bah!” she murmured, by way of response. “A woman like me, a slut, can always find something to eat; if it’s not one way, it’s another. You’ve lost your place suddenly, then? After all, you don’t seem like a poor man. You’re well-dressed, you have nice shoes—without the hat, one could take you for an Englishman.”
“I’ve lost everything, Mariette, from one day to the next. I found myself on the streets of Paris without work and without a sou in my pocket.”
She continued to gaze at him attentively. “I don’t know why,” she ended up saying, “but it seems to me that we’ve known one another for a long time.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Well, there are faces like that, which come back to you, and people with whom you’re old acquaintances right away. What’s your name?”
“Charles Balin.”
“Charles, Charlot! I like that. Will it annoy you if I call you by your first name?”
“It will give me the greatest pleasure,” he affirmed, like a well brought-up man.
They had finished eating; there was a long pause. The rising dawn caused the candlelight to pale.
“Shall we go to bed?” Mariette interrogated, in a caressant voice.
“It would indeed by a good time to rest,” her companion admitted. “Go to bed, then; I’ll sleep on the sofa. Don’t be afraid to undress—I won’t look.”
“Do I frighten you? Silly!”
“No, my dear; it’s a matter of discretion.”
The prostitute looked at him, surprised.
“Discretion?” she said. “Oh yes, I understand.” She started to laugh while getting undressed. “It’s the first time a man has said that to me,” she added.
After a few moments, seeing that he was no longer moving, she went on: “What are you doing? Don’t you understand? Get undressed, I tell you—there’s room for two in the bed.”
“But that would be indiscreet on my part,” he stammered.
“Since I tell you no! One can sleep like that en camaro, as mates—unless I disgust you?”
“How can you think that, Mariette!”
Be quick, then; it’s getting light and you need sleep.”
She blew out the candle, and got into bed. He und
ressed in haste and slid in beside her.
“Good night,” she said. “Or rather, good morning, and sleep well.” She laughed softly, and pressed herself against him.
“Not going to give little Mariette a kiss before going to sleep?” she sighed, seductively.
He put his arms around her and held her for a long time in a chaste embrace. Then carnal desire invaded him, and he tried to hold her more tightly, but the young woman pushed him away gently.
“You’re too tired, my dear; go to sleep—until tomorrow,” she murmured, turning toward the wall.
When Charles Balin woke up, the sunlight was flooding through the curtains. A profound astonishment gripped him. Where was he? The events of the previous evening returned rapidly to his mind.
Beside him, Mariette was still fast asleep; he contemplated her, invaded by a instinctive sadness. She was a brunette, meager and slender, with drawn features, rings around her eyes, a straight nose and a delicately oval face. She might have been twenty-three or twenty-four, and was not ugly. Her uncovered forehead did not lack nobility, the nape of her neck was elegant, her long hands and fingers delicate, but the stigmata of debauchery, the precocious wrinkles, the residues of make-up brightening her cheeks, contrasting with the morbid pallor of her complexion, the black harshly accentuating her eyebrows, the thinness of her hair, the cracked and discolored lips, and the mouth vitiated by specific treatment, initially produced an impression of pity and disgust in him.
He turned his head and looked at the miserable room in the poor lodging-house in which he had just awoken. The dazzling light brought out its disorder and bareness.
The bed, an old wooden-framed bed in the Empire style, was garnished with dirty linen. Wallpaper with blue flowers, now torn, stained and discolored, had once covered the walls.
A dressing-table surmounted by a commonplace mirror was cluttered with utensils of intimate usage. A bucket and a pitcher of water were on the floor beneath it. The battered sofa that had seemed so soft the night before testified to the innumerable assaults to which it had been obliged to submit. Opposite, a glass-fronted cupboard in varnished walnut contrasted by virtue of its newness with the general obsolescence of the furniture. In the middle, a table covered with a faded cloth presented a heap of disparate objects: dirty glasses, a withered bouquet, a coverless novel soiled with stains, the debris of the evening meal, a spirit lamp, a small iron saucepan, candle-stubs, scattered cigarettes, lumps of sugar, etc.
On the mantelpiece there was an old clock with twisted columns that no longer had any hands, and small objects brought back from fairgrounds: chipped porcelain, roses in brightly-colored paper, toy trumpets, Japanese screens, spiced-bread rigs, cockades and fairground insignia. On the walls there were incomplete and discolored chromolithographs: a Monk confessing a Spaniard, a Portrait of Monsieur Thiers and a Drunkard imbibing a glass of wine.
He turned his gaze back to the sleeping Mariette. He saw her in profile now, and found her less repulsive. His adult life had passed in the continence of an ascetic scholar; there had been months on end when his desire had not awakened on contact with other flesh. An ardent blood ran in his veins, however; involuntarily, and wretched as he was, he was not indifferent to the woman. The feverish overexcitement of the last few days even seemed to have exasperated his senses. Slightly troubled by that unaccustomed itch, he sought to master himself by considering the abjection of the common prostitute, but sentiments of compassion and gratitude came to the rescue of his suddenly-unleashed appetite.
Had she not saved his life? Had he not eaten her bread and slept in her bed? Would he make her the supreme insult of disdain? Certainly, Dr. Albin had never lowered himself to such impure contacts, but Charles Balin did not have the right to the same scruples. Had he not already, perhaps..?
His memories became more precise; the simultaneously tender and delicate refusal before sleep returned to his mind, and moved him; he considered her with a more tender indulgence. Poor Mariette! She was faded, withered like that bouquet of red roses etiolating on the table, and yet, gratitude had just transfigured her in his eyes; he forgot the defilement, he wanted to ennoble her by means of sincere kisses.
Certainly, he knew that he was not going to love her with a veritable amour; he even thought that this idyll of the gutter, born of his pitiful misery, would be of brief—very brief—duration; but one day, might he be able to lift her out of the mire, redeem her, provide for her needs? What joy he would experience in rendering her, a thousand times over, the aid that she had given him, the hospitality that she had offered him!
Gradually, his sentiments and desires excited one another. He had been about to die; at the very moment when he had sworn that he wanted to live, a prostitute had snatched him from the jaws of death, and he dared to analyze her features coldly, debate her charms, and appreciate her morality with the prejudices and delicacies of old! He must be stupid and ingrate; she was good beautiful, desirable; she was worthy of being loved!
He leaned toward her and deposited a long and tender kiss on her pale lips. Mariette slowly opened her eyes, smiled at him silently, and put her arms around him...
She told him about the lamentable beginnings of her crapulous existence; her first stigmata, when she was scarcely out of childhood, her precocious amours with louts of her own age, then the flight from the paternal house, the long poverty of the braid-seamstress, her successive relationships, the ever-descending sequence of falls that had brought her to the sidewalk, her reiterated troubles with the moral police. Now, for six months she had been tranquil, she no longer had anything to dread: she had her number; she was registered.
Charles Balin suppressed a shudder of dolor, and made an effort to master his chagrin.
“You’re a Parisienne?” he asked, by way of diversion.
“I was born in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. What about you—where are you from?”
“I’m not from anywhere, Mariette. I understand that that astonishes you, but I can’t explain.”
“You’re in hiding, perhaps?”
“Yes, but the reasons I have for hiding aren’t dishonest.”
“Oh, I’m not curious, me—nothing delights me more. I know that such extraordinary things happen. How old are you?”
“Forty-seven.”
“Liar—that’s not true, you’re younger than that,” she affirmed, laughing. In a low voice, as if speaking aside, she added: “I’d like you to be even older. I like gaiety, noise too much. I’m still very young, though—twenty-three. I could be your daughter! Many of those years, it’s true, I could count double.” She sighed, sadly. “And to think they call that having a good time! Oh, this is nice, it really is a good time.”
“That’s nicely said, Mariette—it fills me with joy. So, this life of hazard, of misery and debauchery disgusts you; you’d like to become and honest woman again?”
“An honest woman, my poor dear—how you say that! An honest woman! But you’re crazy. A slut like me can’t become an honest woman again—there’s the number. That’s not what I’d like. I’d like to live, but not today’s slog. I’d need clothes and money to act as I pleased, to send the disgusting ones packing and choose the ones that please me, and have a lover at my convenience that I could maintain well and with whom I could go for walks in the country.”
Charles Balin had a surge of nausea; repugnance, momentarily overcome, began to invade him again.
“Unless,” she added, with a sigh, “someone was really able to love me...”
“And then?” he asked.
“Then, I’d do anything he wanted. I’d steal, I’d kill—it even seems to me that I’d have the strength to go back to work.” She pronounced those words in a passionate tone that surprised him. “But all that’s stupid,” she added, after a moment’s silence, as if to chase away an old dream. “Things like that only happen in feuilletons or plays. I’ve never had any luck, and when one’s started badly...”
“One ought to finish well.”
/>
“That’s stupid.”
“I’m not joking. Look, I whom am speaking, started too well, and that’s why I’m afraid of finishing badly.”
“It’s a fact that yesterday you weren’t doing very well.”
“And without you, my dear Mariette, I’d be in a sorry state,” he acknowledged, affectionately recalled by that memory to less lofty sentiments. What did the vulgarity and decadence of this poor creature matter to him? Was he not bound to her henceforth by that moment of pity? Had he not just held her in his arms, kissed her lips, murmured amorous words to her?
The viler she was, the more she needed his help!
Prideful and insensate, he was already thinking about helping her, and tomorrow, perhaps this evening, he was going to be at grips with hunger again!
Both delivered to their reflections, there was a long interval of silence. But what was he doing there, wasting precious time? Ought he not to be thinking about finding work? He leapt out of bed abruptly.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mariette, surprised.
“Time’s passing, my dear. I need to look for work.”
“And if you don’t find any?”
“If I don’t find any,” he relied, disconcerted, “well…” He stopped dead, gripped by a sentiment of anguish.
“Well, you’ll come back and find your little Mariette, silly!”
“That’s right.” He laughed, sardonically. “I’ll come to live at her expense, I’ll eat the money she earns by...”
“You ate it gladly yesterday!” she retorted, carried away by a surge of anger. “That’s how you take it, is it? Well, as you like—do as you please.”
“Mariette!” he exclaimed, humiliated. “Excuse that impulse of self-esteem; I’m wrong, a thousand times wrong! You speak to me, moved by your good heart, and I respond with sentiments to which I have no right: I ought to be blessing you, putting myself at your knees, and I dare to offend you!”
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 12