The Second Life of Doctor Albin

by Raoul Gineste

  He hastened to change the painful subject.

  “I’ve mainly come,” he affirmed, “to tell you some good news; I’ve been promised work for tomorrow.”

  “How much will you earn?”

  “Oh, almost nothing, perhaps two francs a day, but in my situation, I consider that sum welcome—besides which, I’m not spoiled for choice.”

  “Well, I’ve found you a marvelous place!”

  “You, Mariette! Speak, quickly.”

  “The lover of one of my mates, Valentine, is a café waiter; they live in the room next to mine and I saw them after you left. Naturally, we talked about you, and we told Émile that you looked respectable and were still solid. ‘We need an extra hand at my place,’ he said. ‘I’ll see about it this evening, and if I get the go-ahead, I’ll take charge of getting the job for him. I’ll lend him a coat and linen to begin with. Just think: if you take that, you’ll get four or five francs a day and you’ll be well fed.”

  In spite to the prospect of earning such a considerable salary, the proposal scarcely made him smile. He did not, however, want to offend Mariette with an immediate refusal, although he promised himself that if he had the choice he would prefer the position with the copying agency.

  “Now,” Mariette continued, taking his silence for an acceptance, “let’s go get a quick glass at the Avenir.”

  He protested that he was not thirsty, that it would be better to return tranquilly to the hotel, and that the cafes were about to close.

  “The Avenir stays open until three,” she affirmed, “and that’s where Émile will come to meet us.”

  Chapter XIII

  They walked a short way along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, went through a large coaching entrance, traversed a narrow courtyard, at the back of which the brasserie was located, and sat down near the entrance. The vast room was overflowing with a noisy and variegated crowd. Soldiers on leave, workers on the spree, provincials and curiosity-seekers were rubbing shoulders with specimens whose eccentric jackets, gaudy cravats, flashy rings and attitudes that were simultaneously masculine, pretentious, arrogant and suspicious brazenly betrayed their means of existence. The businessman of the quarter had nicknamed the place “the brasserie of the backbones,” the journalists opposite called it “the Aquarium” and the regulars, who found themselves very much at home there, called it “the workshop.”

  That evening, as every evening, the majority were playing billiards or interminable hands of manilla. A few others, the cream of the crop, off-course bookmakers or noted burglars, were proudly affecting to comprise a company apart, distinguished by ratting dogs or mastiffs, emptying glasses of champagne and causing the diamonds they wore on their fingers to scintillate. From time to time, women in garish costumes, leaving trails of violent perfumes as they entered, came to whisper a few words in their ears, took a hasty glass, and went out again. Here and there, other women, alone or in groups, awaited opportunities, simpering at consumers facing them, had successes, took out their cards, called out to people coming in or going out, changed tables, softening up the waiters for the saucer for which some recalcitrant pigeon had refused to pay. Sometimes, the commencements of disputes rose up in a corner, but the manilla-players, standing up, turned toward the disputants, the billiard-players, the Jupiters of the establishment, frowned, and order was restored. The caravan of flower-sellers, cockle-merchants, olive-vendors, professional deaf-mutes, dealers in fake jewelry, etc., did business there casually, is if in a familiar oasis.

  Mariette had ordered two glasses of brandy.

  “Are we going to stay here long?” asked her companion, who was ill at ease.

  “Émile won’t be long,” she said. “Here’s Valentine, Lucie Pognon and Nini—this is general headquarters.”

  The three newcomers sat down at their table, looked curiously at the man they had seen half-dead of hunger the previous evening, made maladroit allusions to the service that they had rendered him, and, as before one of the gang from whom nothing is hidden, started recounting the evening’s encounters, their arguments over prices with bad-tempered provincials, their refusals to give in, without a supplementary fee, to some filthy caprice, the affectations they had put on and the malicious tricks they had played.

  Nini Nichon, a plump flaxen blonde with a low forehead, thick lips, small eyes and overflowing enticements, a Flanders slattern or Norman milkmaid, had had no luck—not a single dirty swine had wanted her!

  “What do they have in their eyes, then, all those tools?” she exclaimed, bouncing her breasts. “That’s not socks or cotton, that. What about you, Mariette, did you get a bite?”

  Mariette was momentarily embarrassed. “Oh me,” she ended up replying. “I was lucky tonight, very lucky.”

  Lucie Pognon, a tall stiff brunette of about forty, and old warhorse who had been wearing away the Parisian pavement for twenty years, addressed herself directly to the previous evening’s unfortunate, pointing at Mariette.

  “I told her,” she proclaimed, with the authority of a matron. “Get a lover; it’ll bring you luck, you’ll see; there’s nothing like it to pep a girl up; it forces you to get moving. You don’t waste your time any longer gossiping or playing bezique. When it’s necessary to earn for two...”

  Charles Balin, horribly humiliated and embarrassed, told himself privately that it would be best to face ill-fortune with a stout heart and take things ironically.

  “For two?” he queried. “Better say three, Mademoiselle, for I alone have an appetite for two. I’ve already eaten twenty francs of Mariette.”

  “He’s a liar, don’t listen to him,” said the latter, laughing. “Not everyone’s as demanding as your Git-le-Coeur.”

  “Fortunately,” added Valentine de Volaille, a stout redhead with milky skin, a turned-up nose and a bulbous forehead invaded by pretentious golden curls, “demanding men aren’t essential. If Émile wanted to rake off my earnings, I’d soon give him a shove in the back.” While saying that she looked at her neighbor with a menacing expression.”

  “So you don’t give your Mimile gifts, then,” insinuated Nini Nichon.

  “Oh, gifts, I don’t say no—one has to maintain amity. Then again, I don’t like to go out with a man who’s poorly dressed—but I want a man who works, or else: Out!” She was still looking at the unfortunate with an instance that made him lower his gaze.

  “Finally, here’s Émile,” announced Mariette, annoyed by the almost aggressive attitude of her friend.

  A short young man with a smiling face, a heart-shaped mouth, pomaded hair, a thin black moustache and hooded, almond-shaped eyes—a vulgar specimen of brunet good looks—had just come in. He shook hands with the manilla-players and seemed to want to join in their game.

  “Over here, Mimile,” shouted Lucie Pognon.

  Émile, doubtless to give himself importance, or out of the old habitude of a playboy, did respond to the first appeal, but gestured with his hand to indicate that he had seen and was about to come. A few moments later, observing that he was no longer being summoned, he left the card-players and came to join them.

  “What’ll you have?” Mariette asked. “Come and sit here.”

  They made room for him on the bench, and the Don Juan of the brasserie ordered a small glass of Benedictine. Charles Balin found himself directly opposite, and the waiter finally deigned to look at him. He considered him for a few seconds, with a surprised expression, and then started laughing.

  “This is the man Mariette told me about—the one who was dying of hunger on a bench?”

  “Yes, what’s the matter?” asked the astonished prostitutes. “Do you know him?”

  “Oh, no, it’s too good, let me laugh. Good God in Heaven! I’ll have a good laugh tomorrow with the boss.”

  “Come on, Émile, what does that mean?” asked Valentine, looking at him hard. “You’re laughing like a guttersnipe.”

  Bewildered, Charles Balin considered him anxiously.

  “Necessary to p
ut gloves on for an individual who took you for a mug not long ago, is it?” said the fop.

  An exclamation emerged from all mouths.

  “You know him?” Valentine repeated.

  “Of course I know him. It’s the Englishman I told you about, the pickpocket of the Café Mansard, who had a seventeen-franc blowout, and the boss sent to the police station.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s me who served him—no tip and three fifteen-sou cigars into the blue. I don’t care about the boss, but the cigars were on my account—I’m the one who danced, dirty old thief.”

  The man caught in the trap, at a loss, fearing a scandal, incapable of defending himself, bowed his head again. The women frowned, and the waiter continued to twist the knife.

  “And you all chipped in yesterday evening, on the bridge—you paid for the stuffed galantine, and it’s Mariette who, after having taken him in, proposes that I get him a job as an extra at the Mansard! Oh, no, it’s superb! What a laugh we’ll have tomorrow at the joint!”

  Extremely pale, Mariette had risen to her feet.

  “It’s true, then, what he says,” she said, hoarsely. “You’re a swindler, a liar, a thief, and it’s me who nourished you, me who gave you a bed, me who paid for your drink. Hypocrite! Swine! Here, this one won’t do you any harm!” And the furious prostitute, seizing the glass in which her lover of a day had scarcely moistened his lips, threw its contents in his face.

  Rumors rose up; curious individuals arrived from all directions. The dazed man, wanting at all costs to avoid a more prolonged fuss, instinctively took flight, followed by the jeers and laughter of customers delighted with the incident.

  Mariette, her fists clenched, her eyes haggard and her lips pursed, had collapsed on the banquette.

  “Well done,” said Valentine de Volaille. “You were warned, but you’re incorrigible—you persist in picking up stray dogs. It was bound to happen to you sooner or later.”

  She emerged from her prostration. “What was bound to happen to me, then?” she demanded, with a surprised expression.

  “That you’d pick up a thief, whom you paid to eat and swindled you out twenty francs from you into the bargain.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “He told us so himself!”

  Mariette shrugged her shoulders. “Where has he gone?” she asked.

  “He didn’t leave his address and didn’t settle his bill,” said the waiter, laughing. “I’ll bet he’s still running.”

  Mariette looking askance at Émile and fell back into silence.

  “Bah!” observed Nini Nichon. “One rabbit more or less, it’s no big deal.”

  “It’s humiliating, all the same, to be turned over by an old man,” remarked old Lucie.

  “An old man who can’t be very appetizing,” sniggered the harsh Valentine.

  “Well, maybe that’s why she had luck this evening,” suggested the fat Nini.

  “Say, if he gives you a kid I’ll adopt him!” cried the café waiter. The three women burst into loud laughter.

  All heads turned toward them. Again, Mariette went pale; tears came to her eyes. “Look,” she ended up mumbling, dully, “you’re annoying me, you’d do better to shut up.”

  “That’s a bit much,” Valentine recommenced. “She’s crying! I’ll wager she’s missing him.”

  “What’s it got to do with you, you dirty redhead. Do you want me to talk about the things you do, you who are so disgusted by old men?”

  Émile hastened to intervene. “Shut up Valentine—that’s enough. Come on, Mariette, don’t get upset over that smooth talker.”

  Git-le-Coeur, holding his billiard-cue like an eighteenth-century cane, his head round, his hair russet, his eyes like lotto-balls, his moustaches turned up, looking like a bulldog ready to bite, had come to find out what was going on, and grunted in a significant fashion. He claimed that Émile was a police informer, and never lost an opportunity to express his horror of the police.

  “Well, what’s all the racket? Why is Mariette peeling the onion?”

  Lucie Pognon told him the story in brief,

  “Well, what does that prove?” he declared, in his thick voice, not without menace. “That some poor old bugger pulled a fast one to get a meal. So what? So you think the chap, if he had cash, would be amusing himself taking a nap on benches and risking getting pinched up by the cops? You think it’s funny, you lot, to have sod all to chew on? And what do you think he’s done to Mariette? He didn’t ask her for anything, promise her anything. If she let him sleep over, it’s because she wanted to, because she has a kind heart.”

  “He’s a pickpocket,” hazarded Émile.

  “Did he pinch anything from you?” Git-le-Coeur demanded of Mariette.

  “Oh, as to that, no!”

  “I tell you he’s a thief,” affirmed Valentine’s lover, again

  “And you’re a nark, you little rat.”

  Émile, who knew the other, thought it prudent not to insist. Mariette sensing that she was supported, held her head up boldly. “Who are you to call other people swindlers and thieves?”

  “She’s mad,” stammered the mongrel, held at bay by the bulldog.

  “Yes, what are you?” she continued, “you who filch by short-changing customers, and brag about it.”

  “Oh, that’s not the same thing,” claimed the waiter, proudly. “The rich are exploiters; when one finds an opportunity to take revenge, it would be stupid to miss it!”

  Git-le-Coeur had drawn away, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully. Mariette took out a fifty-franc bill and paid for the drinks. All the women eyed the hundred-sou coins that the waiter gave her in change.

  “Those are some back wheels,” observed old Lucie. “It’s no joke, you’re old colonist brought you luck. Say,” she added, “Since you’re in pocket, you could give me back the ten sous I gave you for the fraudster.”

  “Here, there’s your ten sous. Who else chipped in?”

  “Me,” cried Nini Nichon, “but I’m not asking for anything, I don’t begrudge them.” Enticed by the well-garnished purse, she added: “Come on, my little Marion, you’re a widow, I haven’t made anything; we could go for a stroll, and then you could give your big cat a stroke, couldn’t you? I don’t like letting mates down, myself.”

  “Especially when it’s a matter of drinking or whining,” muttered the redhead.

  “That way, we can stop quarreling,” hazarded the handsome Émile. “Come on, Mariette what do you say?”

  The irritated prostitute’s only response was the word that saved Cambronne from oblivion.

  After leaving the brasseries, Charles Balin had walked at a rapid pace, pursued by the jeers that were still ringing in his ears, trembling like a guilty man caught in the act by the police. Seeing that the Rue Richer was deserted, he turned into it furtively, slowed his pace and recovered a little of his composure.

  After all, perhaps the humiliating scene of which he had just been the victim was a fortunate event; it had saved him from the real danger, had put a end to a situation that was more than dubious, in which he was in the process of allowing himself to be ensnared. The first money that he earned would serve him to pay Mariette back, and everything would be settled. He would have done better to follow the good impulse that had urged him to break off the crapulous liaison immediately. The scene that he had witnessed in the Boulevard Sebastopol gave him the right to do so, and the duty. Where would his procrastinations and laxities have ended? With the supreme insult that had just been hurled in his face, and which debased him a little more.

  He had been afraid of a sleepless night? Was he not obliged to pass it? The sole appreciable result of the adventure was that he was rid forever of that strange prostitute whose sudden inexplicable tenderness had not left him indifferent. Was it the sentiment of gratitude, excited by burning kisses and sudden appetites? Was it the promises of debauchery he had made himself few hours earlier? His heart, belying his reason,
experienced, now that it was all over, a vague regret for the unforeseen rupture.

  With his only handkerchief, in tatters, he wiped away the drops of alcohol that were still trickling down his face, turned mechanically into the Rue d’Hauteville, reached the Boulevard Sebastopol and followed the market gardeners’ carts that were descending heavily toward Les Halles. The animation of that quarter would help him pass the time, and, when the time came, he would not be far away from the copyist.

  The peasants were already beginning to unload their carts full of flowers, vegetables or fruits. Porters were passing bales or baskets, forming a chain, and the last in line was staking them methodically in the indicated spot.

  What if he were to follow the example of those men and earn a few sous? He asked for directions; an overseer showed him with a gesture the place where men were forming a queue. He joined the end of it; his turn arrived; he helped to unload a few carts, every time receiving the meager habitual salary.

  Daylight had arrived rapidly; the vast market was swarming with people. Whores and bon viveurs, exhausted by partying and emboldened by drunkenness were mingling casually with the crowd of workers, who were not sparing with their gibes.

  He was in the process of unloading a cartload of cabbages when two women who were the butt of the filthiest mockeries attracted his attention. A shiver ran through him; it was Mariette and Nini Nichon, hats askew, hair in disorder, their gait uncertain, their eyes lit up by drink, who were riposting with insults as vitriolic as they were colorful to the gibes of the market gardeners amused by the spectacle.