“Just kiss me, and let’s not mention it again,” replied the good woman. “I’m not proposing to keep you—for a start, I can’t; the times are too hard. I’m saying that if you haven’t found work, instead of going, tomorrow or the day after, to collapse on a bench or throw yourself in the river…I’m telling you that you’d do better to come and find me at two o’clock in the morning at the corner of the boulevard and the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre; I’ll have made the thousand-and-one paces, but I’ll always have found the means to have something to eat. You know, what I’m saying, I don’t say to everyone—but I like you; it seems to me that I’ve always known you, I respect you. Look, tell me the truth: you weren’t a curé?”
In spite of his poignant preoccupations, Charles Balin could not help laughing.
“Well,” he admitted, “You’re not too far off; I must once have been something similar.”
“Then it’s understood,” aid Mariette, getting up in her turn.”
“That whether I find work or not, I’ll come back; but what if...” He hesitated, feeling a blush rising to his cheeks.
“If what?”
“If you meet someone who wants to take you away?”
“That’s my business. In any case, I never bring anyone here—but again, you don’t have to worry about that; I’m offering sincerely, you’ll pay me back when you can.”
“Well, then Mariette, until tonight,” he said, kissing her.
She called him back. “Hey, what are you going to do for grub all day?”
“Oh, I’m solid now, I won’t get hungry,” he affirmed, in spite of the pangs in his stomach. “I’ll catch up tonight, if I don’t have any luck.”
“Come on, don’t be proud—you’ll pay me back, I tell you.” And Mariette gave him a twenty-sou piece, which he did not have the courage to refuse.
Chapter XII
The tranquility of soul with which he devoured, a little while later, the bread and sew of a cheap eatery, did not fail to surprise him.
“Damn,” he murmured. “Have I a ready-made disposition for the role that Mariette wants me to play?”
He left, and stopped in front of a shop window in order to contemplate his reflection for a few seconds. “Charles Balin, chemist and pimp,” he sniggered, as if introducing himself to himself.
In fact, did he not have the costume of the employment? He remembered the mistake made, a few days before, outside the Café d’Harcourt and cursed the eccentric garment that the necessity of being completely different from his former self had caused him to choose. That jacket, as intolerable as the shirt of Nessus, was not unsuited to all these frustrations. Perhaps he owed the sympathy of a registered prostitute to it? And to think that, “from the height of his final heavenly abode,” Dr. Albin was watching him wallowing in the mire. Oh, the fellow would be well content: his enemy was on the right road, already living on immoral earnings!
He quickly regretted his sardonic reflections. A wretched but good woman had had an impulse of pity, perhaps mingled with a little perversity. At any rate, whether it was caprice, sentimental whim or veritable delicacy, she had offered with a touching simplicity to come to his aid; why should he refuse? Because the help she was offering had an infamous origin? But had he had a choice? Did he now? Did not all considerations disappear before the necessity of living? Had he made any effort to create the dubious situation in which he found himself? Had it not been imposed upon him by pitiless hazard? Shame and dishonor were in the intention far more than the fact. What relationship was there between the abject individuals who deliberately exploited prostitution and him?
He had looked for work and had not found any; he had asked for alms and had not received any; at the moment when he was at the end of his tether, when he had felt will and life slipping away from him, help had unexpectedly appeared; ought he not to take it, since he wanted to live? Could he debate quibbles, indulge in the slightest objection? Was it not necessary, now, to accept the consequences, bonds and duties created by that primary fact? Was he not a new person, outside all the prejudices and all the sentimentalities of yore?
It was therefore better to receive as given, that which he was determined to repay in the most generous fashion; that was the surest means of liberating himself rapidly, since that acceptance would permit him to find employment.
What employment?
That interrogation, already made so many times, put his mind to the torture. He felt lost in the immense labyrinth of the Parisian hive. Buried alive in inextricable catacombs, he gazed indecisively at the thousand gaping holes open before him. By what route could he climb back to the light? He did not lack physical vigor or intellectual capacity; his lack of success came from the fact that, all the links attaching him to the past having been broken, all the social sanctions destroyed, he was solely reliant on his own strength, and, great as it was, he had learned by harsh experience that one cannot isolate oneself with impunity.
It was therefore necessary to reenter, one way or another, the bosom of society, even if he had to pick the lock of the door, wriggle through the hole of a drain. If not, death, from which a prostitute of the lowest class had snatched away its prey the previous evening, would fall upon him again with a new rage.
Had he not made his first searches with too many scruples? Had he not been wrong to scorn the dubious opportunities that had been the only ones offered to him?
It was necessary to choose between life and death, and once again, since it was necessary to live, he ought to have less delicacy.
He promised himself, putting more method into his new steps, first to visit all the establishments closely or remotely related to the legal fraternity.
The results of his first encounters were as discouraging as those of previous days; it was a bad time of year, the clients were in the country, there was no supplementary work, they had been obliged to sack all the clerks etc.
Nightfall found him careworn, it is true, but his discouragement was far from having the black intensity of the previous day. The interest that Mariette had shown in him, the support that he was almost certain to rediscover, was like a lifebelt to which a shipwreck victim clings desperately.
He had just entered the philanthropic restaurant and had scarcely begun to eat when a young man of about twenty, with long chestnut-colored hair, a nascent beard, blue eyes, an elongated face, refined features and prominent cheekbones, after having looked attentively in all directions, came to sit down facing him. In the ensemble of his physiognomy there was something dolorous and enigmatic. His forehead was broad and high; the curl of his lip, both ironic and bitter, contrasted with the softness and sadness of his gaze. Attracted by a sympathetic curiosity, he could not help looking at him and smiling.
Emboldened, the young man spoke to him. “Do you know someone who is looking for work, Monsieur? I’ve come here almost certain of finding companions of misfortune.”
Charles Balin experienced a quiver of joy.
“Do I know someone?” he said. “But that someone is me.”
I was sure of it, the young man’s smile signified. “Well, Monsieur,” he said, “the owner of a copy agency, Monsieur Lampe, 122 Rue des Petits-Carreaux, has asked me to find him a employee. I warn you that it’s poorly—very poorly—remunerated.”
“No matter.”
“Then present yourself at this address tomorrow morning at seven, on the part of Monsieur Raphael. You can write legibly and rapidly, I assume?”
“As rapidly and as legibly as an educated man can.”
“He’ll employ you in copying addresses. He’s a maniac—he’ll put you through a kind of petty examination and ask you various more-or-less indiscreet questions. Don’t contradict him in anything.”
“I won’t forget the recommendation.”
“Once again, you’ll be poorly paid; if you earn two francs a day, that will be all.”
“I’m not in a position to be difficult.”
“Good luck, then, Monsieur, and it will
be a pleasure to see you again. I’m employed in the house that you’re probably going to enter.” The stranger bowed and disappeared.
Two francs a day! But that was the Pactolus!
The distracted man uttered a profound sigh of satisfaction. He perceived a glimmer of light. He would finally be able to live on his work; with his iron constitution and frugal habits, he would even be able to make savings. He went out with his soul inundated by joy; it seemed that his miseries has suddenly vanished. He had never felt so bold, to audacious, so ready for the struggle; a foot in the stirrup and the beast was soon straddled. Another service that Mariette had rendered him; without the twenty sous slipped into his hand, no such windfall would have been presented to him. He hesitated over going to meet her, but was it not to give her the good news? He would make it a duty to go.
He wandered at random for hours, delightedly clinging to the flowery branch of hope that a sympathetic stranger had just held out to him. For the first time since Dr. Albin’s funeral, his tormented mind enjoyed a little clam. Wellbeing was a very relative thing, then? A meager hope had sufficed to dissipate the blackest despair.
As he was crossing the Pont Neuf a bare-headed man emerged slowly from the shadows and held out his hat with a trembling hand. He had suffered too much the day before to refuse his obol today. He threw the two sous he still had left into the hat; the beggar raised his head abruptly and started laughing...
He realized that, believing he was playing a farce, he had bitten a hook. He recognized the apologist for mendacity who, his face lit up with libations and the pleasure of having proved his know-how, was still guffawing.
“Two sous,” remarked the former ministerial officer. “Wonderful—you must have had good luck since the other day?”
“No, but I have work for tomorrow and I’ve given you everything I had left.”
The old man looked at him in surprise. “That’s folly, prodigality—you’ll die in the straw,” he predicted, laughing.
“Those two sous might have been indispensable to the person asking for them,” he replied, thinking about the terrible anxieties of the previous day.
“If I’d really needed them, I wouldn’t have known how or been able to ask you for them in the same fashion, and you doubtless wouldn’t have given them to me. I’ll keep them all the same, but I’ll pay for a glass.”
Charles Balin excused himself: he was not thirsty; it was necessary to conserve is resources; he would accept another time.
“I see how it is,” the fake hawker suggested. “You’re afraid of embarrassing me. Don’t worry—I’ve made eight francs today, and, as the claptrap says, it isn’t over yet.”
He persisted in his refusal.
“All right, all right,” the individual growled, abruptly turning his back on him. “Play the proud man, and good luck to you!”
That’s how I should have maneuvered yesterday, thought the previous day’s starveling, watching him go away and solicit further alms. That slow walk, so as not to surprise and frighten the passers-by, that lowered head, that humble attitude, suppliant and respectful, that hand trembling with weakness and alcoholism! The lesson is well worth the two sous it cost me; it ought to have been given to me two days earlier, and I would have profited from it. Eight francs! He’s extracted eight francs’ worth of it from the hard hearts of fortunate people, and I, who was dying of hunger, couldn’t get a single liberating sou! That old thief was right, begging is a métier. A man has to be flattered and duped to soften his heart; that’s an apprenticeship that the true poor haven’t had time to make, and because of that, the crooks and the experienced live at the expense of the genuinely unfortunate.
Bah! He had nothing to regret. First of all, those two sous repaid the glass of wine that he had accepted before; and then, he had believed that he was saving a poor devil from hunger. His action, in itself, was consequentially good and praiseworthy; it would be held to his credit in the mysterious book of Providence.
A painful observation crossed his mind: since he had changed his identity, all the good sentiments he had had before had turned against him. The rare good luck that had come his way had come from an impure source. It was a malevolent impulse that had obtained three francs from the clothing dealer, and it was the produce of prostitution that had saved his life.
Would he be compelled henceforth, armed by suspicion, to envelop himself in lies, expel all pity from his heart, show his teeth and claws, and use all possible means to live? It was impossible that misfortune would change him completely; Dr. Albin had never employed and of those shady and inhumane methods to arrive at fortune and honors. It was true that that anterior self, born in clover, profiting from collective injustices and hypocrisy, had had no great merit in retaining his personal dignity; the society in which he moved had taken charge of accomplishing all the infamies necessary to his success, while today, the orders of the factors was inverted. Left to his own devices, outside that corrupt organization, deprived of its support and assent, obliged by that fact to defend himself against it, he could not see things from the same angle and actions in the same moral context. Dr. Albin, individually virtuous, had had his share of the collective criminality; but for the time being, he was only responsible for his individual actions. He was their sole judge, and if fatality had caused him to fall into the mud, and he could not get out of it without being splashed, he would be no more culpable or vile than fatality!
It was nearly midnight. He was thinking about his rendezvous, and idly drawing toward it when he suddenly saw Mariette coming down the Boulevard Sebastopol at a rapid pace. He was about to go toward her when the prostitute made him a signal of intelligence and changed course swiftly to avoid him. Surprised by the maneuver he turned round...
Shame turned his face crimson. Some provincial or foreigner, a colossus with a flowing beard wearing a broad-brimmed hat with a stout umbrella under his arm and a satchel slung over his shoulder, had just accosted the streetwalker.
They had stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. The trapper seemed to be haggling over the price; he even made as if to beat a retreat, but Mariette caught him by the sleeve and seemed to make up his mind with more seductive offers. Now, arm in arm, they headed hastily for a sleazy hotel in a small side-street.
He stayed there, bewildered, his feet stock to the asphalt, his eyes fixed on the wan lantern under which the licensed prostitute, accompanied by the giant, had just disappeared.
“It’s me you’re waiting for,” said a streetwalker, approaching him. “Come in, I’ll be very nice and not demanding, you’ll see how naughty I can be. Come with me—I don’t live far away—or to the hotel you’re looking at...”
Thinking that her propositions were insufficiently explicit, she started whispering the filthiest promises.
He emerged from his stupor, and the calm that he had briefly recovered immediately fled from his soul, the appeasement vanishing before the infamous reality. So, he was about to be obliged to kiss those soiled lips, on which vile contacts had left their traces! Yesterday, he had seen nothing, he could, if necessary, maintain an illusion. But now that his eyes had witnessed, now that his will was no longer annihilated by hunger, could he accept the degrading situation? No, a thousand times no. He would not see Mariette again; he would write to her to apologize; he would repay her generously for the first occasion.
He hastened his steps, muttering and gesticulating. People grouped around a bench caused him to slow down. He drew nearer; policemen were shaking a vagabond, giving him an order to move on and threatening him with the lock-up. The man drew away, his eyes heavy with sleep, tottering.
That simple incident served to shake his resolution; the previous night’s situation reappeared to him in all its horror. Where would he sleep if he scorned Mariette? Would he wander all night, at the risk of no longer being presentable when he went to solicit the job of copyist? Would he not be arrested for vagabondage? Did his distress permit him to have excessively delicate instincts?
Certainly, the situation could not last long; tomorrow, he would think again, but tonight, he would go to find Mariette, and since it was necessary for him to purchase a little repose and security by means of a new shame, he would drain the chalice to the dregs.
It was a holiday, the night was warm, the boulevard was full of animation, of joyous groups carrying armfuls of wild flowers descending from the Gare de l’Est, seemingly leaving behind them a wake of amour and pleasure. A leaven of perversity that he had never suspected was suddenly fermenting throughout his being, carnal desires rising to prickle his skin; an unhealthy appetite invaded him, and he was in haste to see the whore again, hungry for debauchery and avid with lust. He felt almost proud of being preferred by the woman who was, at that very moment, ignobly parodying amour and who would soon enlace him with a sincere embrace, cover him with disinterested caresses—him, the old man, the wretch, the accursed!
Then another frisson of disgust and fear shook him: was he about to wallow voluntarily in the mire, accept with a glad heart the exceedingly dubious role that fate as causing him to play? Into what monstrous avatar was his dignity about to sink?
He approached the rendezvous; he had one last impulse of retreat. Mariette who was looking out for him, ran radiantly to meet him, hung on his arm, and, without giving him time to say a single word, explained to him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, while mingling vague excuses therein, the reasons she had had for avoiding him. It was necessary: a wonderful type, a man returning from America, a gold-prospector, had followed her for half an hour; she had scented prey and could not miss such a good opportunity, windfalls were so rare, provincial clients so coarse and Parisians so demanding!
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 13