On Leave

by Daniel Anselme

  “I’m applauding Lady Love! I mean the True and Only Lady Love: the one that comes to a man free of obligation!” He raised his index finger. “Free of military obligation, that is. Discharged from duty!”

  The balding man smiled.

  “You’re not being kind to your soldier friend.”

  “Oh, him,” Lasteyrie responded, glancing at Valette. “He’s fighting the Hundred Years’ War.”

  “What about you?” the bald man asked. “You got fallen arches or something?”

  “I’ve finished!” Lasteyrie declared, laughing for no obvious reason.

  The waiter came with glasses of rum.

  “What about the basketball?” Valette said. “We’d better get a move on.”

  “We’ve got time,” Lasteyrie said. “These things always start late. Then there’s the anthems.”

  It seemed a good enough reason, and Valette quieted down.

  “Come here,” Lasteyrie suddenly said, putting his hand on Valette’s shoulder. “Closer. I’m not going to shout. You see this bar? Well, you can bring a chick here. Between six and eight on weekdays the back room’s usually empty. But I’m going to show you something. You sit on the bench like the guy and his girl, only on the other side. From there you can see in the mirror if anyone’s coming in from behind you, from the billiard room, and through that gap there you can see if the boss or anyone is coming through the main door. Got that?”

  “Yes,” Valette said. “What are you telling me that for?”

  “No reason,” Lasteyrie said. “Just a handy tip. Gratis and for free.

  “I hope you know the taxiphone trick, at least?” he went on in a whisper. “Come closer, both of you. It’s worth knowing … You put in the token, you dial, and when it rings, instead of pressing button A, you hit the box on the left. Guaranteed result: your token comes back out, but you get the call. That trick gets you free calls for life for just thirty francs.”

  Valette opened his eyes wide.

  “Want me to show you?” Lasteyrie said.

  “Wow!”

  “So who are we going to call?” Lasteyrie asked.

  They sat opposite each other with dreamy eyes, trying to think whom they could call. Lachaume tried as well, to help them out, as if he were joining in a children’s game. And suddenly Paris seemed so unknown to him that his heart shrank. Lasteyrie saved the day.

  “The talking clock,” he said. “That’s the whore we need. She says yes to everybody.”

  “Watch my kit bag,” he added, to Lachaume. “It’s got all my worldly wealth inside.”

  So off they went to call the talking clock.

  To keep better watch on the suitcase—at least that was his excuse—Lachaume hauled it up onto the bench. “I see,” he said to himself. “It’s heavy.” He took the thought no further. At any rate, he didn’t admit to doing so, except to say to himself, in these exact words: “If anyone knows how to go underground in Paris, then it’s Lasteyrie.”

  They were already back from the phone trick.

  “It’s incredible, what he does!” Valette whispered to Lachaume.

  “You can show him later,” Lasteyrie said so seriously that Lachaume was suddenly sorry he hadn’t thought it worth getting up to see. After all, they’re twenty-year-olds, just kids, he said to himself. But he was at sea.

  “Work out how much I’ve already saved you!” Lasteyrie said insistently. “And don’t say I’m not a brother.”

  “Whoever said you aren’t a brother?” Lachaume said.

  Lasteyrie shrugged and waved two fingers in a strange gesture the others didn’t recognize. It looked like an incomplete salute.

  “Come on!” Lachaume repeated. “Who said that?”

  “All right, all right,” he drawled. “Don’t get upset on my account … Keep your eyes peeled instead.” He nodded toward the girl and the bald man.

  What was happening was quite manifestly the slow start of a love affair. When each lent a light to the other, they stroked hands. You could reckon the time it would take (Lachaume thought so, anyway) to get from stroking a hand to stroking a neck, and the next, and the next. The man wasn’t in a hurry. Perhaps he was relying on time to improve his fat face in the girl’s eyes and to change the golden fang gleaming on one side of his mouth into a delicate pearl. Perhaps he was shy and awkward. But what Lachaume thought beautiful about this almost ridiculously ill-matched pair was the amount of time they had before them, and between them. For the gentleman had no military obligations!

  Astride his chair Lasteyrie raised a finger and lectured:

  “Forty years old. Bachelor. Strong as an ox. Watch out, my good man! Five or six years down the road and you’ll still be good enough to serve in the Desert TA and patrol the highway somewhere between Tank 5 and Aïn Séfra. So watch out! Hurry up and get married and have lots of kids. Because,” he added, turning to the young woman, “each child is worth two years’ deferment of military service. Look to it, ladies and gentlemen! Get to work ASAP!”

  “Take a taxi!” Valette added, trying to be witty.

  The man was furious.

  “You think that’s funny?” he yelled, making as if to stand.

  “No,” Lasteyrie said, with a half-bow. “I wasn’t joking. Just giving friendly advice. Word of honor.”

  The owner opened the door a chink and, like a good manager, tried to quiet things down without taking sides.

  “All right, all right,” Lasteyrie sighed. “You’re just an ungrateful…”

  “And just who are you talking about?” the bald one shouted.

  “I was referring to Paris,” Lasteyrie said. “I was saying Paris is thankless.” And he hummed an old Maurice Chevalier refrain:

  Adieu, Paree!

  I’m leaving for the countree …

  He couldn’t keep still, and his black eyes darted all over the place.

  “By the way,” he said, “you can forget about the basketball. It’s ten-thirty-five.”

  Lachaume and Valette moaned and groaned and checked the time twice over, but Lasteyrie was right. They were saying farewell to the game they had loved and played—Lachaume for Paris University, Valette for the Workers’ Sports Federation (Lasteyrie always added an obscenity, as he’d played for the Olympic Club at Billancourt). Three clubs and three logos that had been the subject of passionate arguments not so long ago. And wasn’t basketball the very basis of their friendship? They remembered that day in Koblenz, long ago, when they’d got all the basketball players together. Now they talked about the game as if it were someone who’d introduced them to each other and then died; they lowered their voices as if they were leaving a cemetery.

  “And we became proper buddies!” Valette nodded. “Buddies like most people don’t have…”

  There was a special quality to the silence that reigned between them at that moment. Lasteyrie put his head in his hands and stroked his sideburns without thinking.

  The young woman and the man stood up and left the room. As she went out, she gave Lasteyrie a smile. And as soon as the door swung closed behind the couple, he shouted, “Forward march! She’s all wrapped up.”

  “What about the guy?”

  “She’s going to give him the slip, obviously … Forward march! Forward march!” he repeated, seizing his case by the handle.

  Lachaume and Valette fell in, but at the last moment Lasteyrie seemed to hesitate. His eyes swept the room, then he drummed two fingers on the aging leatherette of the bench seat, shrugged, and with the same two fingers made that half-salute that his friends still didn’t really understand.

  “Forward!” he said as he kicked the door open.

  They followed the couple at a distance as far as Boulevard de Grenelle. The dark façades of the buildings were illuminated by lights from the windows of the elevated metro thundering past over their heads. It was drizzling, and the streets were empty as they usually are on the day after a bank holiday.

  Lasteyrie gave Lachaume his case to carry and
put himself between his two chums, putting his arms in theirs, making them speed up or slow down, and now and again he put all his weight on them so as to emphasize what he was saying by stamping the pavement with the heels of his gray sealskin moccasins.

  “Just you wait,” he would say. “They’ll part, she’ll pretend to go into the metro station, and as soon as the bloke is out of sight, she’ll come back out in a flash … And what’s she going to say when she sees my mug?

  “What she will say,” he went on in falsetto, “is this: I forgot my gloves … And, like a greenhorn, you’ll just have to go…”

  “Where to?” Valette asked.

  “To fetch her gloves,” Lasteyrie said. “No way out of it.”

  “Why should he?” Lachaume asked.

  His early suspicions had been reawakened. It sounded like a put-up job.

  “Milady has her dignity to consider! Her gloves must be retrieved!”

  “But why does Valette have to go and get them?” Lachaume asked.

  Lasteyrie stood still.

  “My oh my, are you thick!” he said, with his fists on his hips. “I am making a supposition,” he went on pedagogically, “that the chick, once she’s given her bloke the slip, will toddle back. I’m telling you, she’ll invent absolutely anything so as not to have to say she came back for you. Got it?”

  “Okay,” he continued, leaning on his buddies’ arms. “When a bird gives you that kind of blarney, the trick, don’t you see, is to come over all eager, Duke of Windsor–style. You go look for the glove like you’re sure you’re going to find it. When I was a kid and just beginning, I tried to be smart. I would put my arm around the bird’s waist and say, Who cares about your glove or your scarf (it was one or the other) since we’re together now, and other rubbish of that kind, and I got a slap in the face more than once, I can tell you! Oh! Paris chicks!” he said, stamping his heels. “What a pretentious bunch! They’re not nice! You just can’t imagine … If you marry one, she’ll go on pretending she really had lost her glove, and on her dying day she’ll still insist it was true. But maybe it’s better that way, isn’t it? Anyway, I used to like it,” he concluded hoarsely. He stopped to clear his throat.

  “What did you like?” Lachaume asked.

  “The whole lot of ’em,” he said, with half a salute. “Basically, you’re a pair of novices,” he went on, taking them by the arm. “Don’t argue, I know what I’m talking about. You had your nose in your books, and you, boy-o, you were in the Scouts.”

  Valette protested.

  “I’m not saying that to be unkind,” he said, forcing them to walk on. “But it comes to the same thing. You don’t know a thing about … all that!” And with a nod of his head he pointed to the Boulevard de Grenelle and the elevated metro. “I could have shown you a thing or two! We should have got together more often these last few days…”

  “Loads of tricks to pass on,” he went on, his voice now rasping. “Because you’re chums … Strange to say, I used to really like hanging out of an evening with my chums. Didn’t you? I bet you didn’t. You’re not the sort as wastes time hanging out.”

  “I grew out of it,” Lachaume said. “Wasting time doesn’t really matter.”

  “You’re making progress,” Lasteyrie said cheekily. “But watch out! If you carry on the same way, your career as a teacher will hit the rocks…”

  He suddenly stopped and gave a short burst of laughter.

  A tramp emerged from the shadows and saluted Valette at three paces.

  “Corporal!” he said. “Have you got anything for an ex-Legionnaire?”

  Valette pulled some coins out of his pocket and tried to make out what they were by the light of a streetlamp.

  “It’s for a former Legionnaire,” the guy insisted. “The genuine article. I’ve got the tattoos. Wanna see?”

  “No,” Valette replied.

  “Yes,” Lasteyrie said. “Show me everything.”

  The guy rolled up the sleeves of his parka and in the light of the streetlamp showed off two faded bluish tattoos on his forearms: one side of each design was marked Verdun and the other Sidi Bel Abbès.*

  “That’s impressive,” Lasteyrie said.

  The guy nodded agreement and glumly held out his hand. When he saw he had an alloy coin worth 100 francs, he suddenly put his hand over his face, shot a sideways glance at Lasteyrie as if to stifle a laugh, and whispered, “There’s something wrong with those as come from Brittany. Something missing. How come we all end up at the bottom of the pile?” He moved even closer to Lasteyrie, rubbing his cheeks, still seeming to be stifling a laugh behind his hand.

  “He’s Breton, all right,” Lasteyrie said. “Do you see how he covers up a laugh? It’s a habit they all have.”

  “I’m from Brittany! Yes, I’m a Breton, from Avranches,” the man said, thumping his chest.

  “You’re a churchie,” Lasteyrie said.

  “No, I am not!” He added less loudly: “I hate the men in black frocks. The other day I went into Notre-Dame, I crossed myself [he crossed himself as he said this] … It comes naturally to Bretons…”

  “Let’s go,” Lachaume said.

  “Give him a chance!” Lasteyrie said, seizing him by the arm.

  “So I crosses myself [he crossed himself again] … and I sees a confession box, you know what I mean … So I goes in and has a nap. But at six in the morning he comes in and puts on the light and I asks myself, How do I get out of here? So the watchman says to me, What are you doing there? You just wait! I understood—he was off to fetch the cops … So I says to them, What’s the fuss? I had a little prayer, then I had a snooze. They go through all my pockets and then say, No, he didn’t steal nothing. So what’s the fuss? I did my little prayer and then dozed off … Ah! But in the night I saw loads of banknotes—big ones, too.”

  “You had a dream?” Lasteyrie asked.

  “No, no, in the … What are those things called?… for the poor! I saw thousand-franc notes, but I didn’t take none. Just had a nap … It’s a crying shame, ain’t it? Us Bretons aren’t allowed to sleep anymore!”

  “Notre-Dame would make a great hotel, wouldn’t it?” Lasteyrie said. “You could make heaps of rooms out of it.”

  The tramp suddenly moved closer to him, hiding his face behind his hand.

  “Yes, you could!” he whispered. “You could turn it into a hotel!… If someone like Robespierre came back, like they had in the old times, they would! Yes, they would! And what about the Foreign Legion, eh?” he added, with a malicious wink in one of his little eyes. “What would we do with the Foreign Legion then?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lasteyrie whispered.

  “The Revolution!” he said with a giggle, stroking his cheek. “The Revolution! First thing, the Legion would expel all the foreigners … The French don’t know what’s going on! And Bretons have got a screw loose. Something missing…”

  “That must be why you’ve got spare room for a crate of plonk,” Lasteyrie said.

  The tramp laughed behind his hand and then shook his head. “We’ve got a screw loose! How come we all sink to the bottom of the pile?”

  “Because of the plonk,” Lasteyrie said casually.

  “Yes, that’s right! Because of the plonk!” the man responded with anger and conviction. “That’s what’s wrong with us! Drink!”

  “You got it!” Lasteyrie said.

  Meanwhile, the couple had vanished. The three friends looked for them in neighboring streets, then returned to shelter under the elevated metro from the rain that had started to come down.

  “Now we have to make a decision,” Lasteyrie said. “We’ve got just enough time left. Montparnasse or Clichy?”

  Lachaume and Valette looked at each other with doubt in their eyes.

  “I’m taking charge now. Forward march!” Lasteyrie said.

  “Where to?” Valette asked.

  “Clichy. It’s more…” He made a gesture with his hand.

  “More wh
at?”

  “It’s a better prospect for a threesome. Up there the chicks parade in flocks. Forward!”

  “But it’s farther away,” Lachaume said.

  “Farther than what?” Valette asked.

  “Farther than Montparnasse,” Lasteyrie answered. “It’s true, it’s a longer walk. Okay. Montparnasse it will be!”

  “No,” Lachaume said. “Montparnasse turns my guts.”

  “True, it is squalid,” Lasteyrie said.

  “So why do you want us to go there, then?” Lachaume said in a burst of anger.

  “Don’t blame me! It was your idea.”

  “We’re off to a fine start!” Valette said.

  “Forward march, Clichy-bound!” Lasteyrie said.

  They walked a few steps. Lachaume stopped and said, “What the fuck are we supposed to do when we get there?”

  “It’s for tourists,” Valette said.

  “Oh, you are thick!” Lasteyrie shouted, putting his fists on his hips.

  “Honestly,” Lachaume said, “do you really like going to Clichy, Pigalle, Barbès, and so forth? All those garish lights and ghastly colors, those ugly barkers outside the clubs putting on an act, a whole crowd that would sell their fathers and mothers, tarts showing off in bars, all in slow motion, without the slightest conviction … Honestly, do you like it?”

  “Shut up!” Lasteyrie said. “I can hardly hold myself back.”

  Lachaume came back at him in a state of icy fury. “If you’d grown up in the provinces like I did, if you’d been to a music-hall show in the Municipal Theater at Arras, then you’d never want to set foot in Pigalle! But you Paris folk, you don’t recognize shams, because you only see outsize versions! Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Well, well, just listen to that,” Lasteyrie said mockingly. “You guys from the backwoods make me laugh. Tell me, Prof, where have you seen anything that wasn’t a sham? Everything is a sham! All of this”—nodding toward Boulevard de Grenelle. “Forward!”

  They started walking again.

  “Look lively!” he said. “After midnight all girls are fair game.”

  He took their arms and made them move on.