The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3)

by André Couvreur

  “Him!... Him, here!... He’s killed himself!... Is it credible? Am I mad?... It’s not possible!... Why has he done it? My Jacques!... My Jacques!...”

  She threw herself on my body, calling to me desperately, begging me to come back to life, not to leave her here alone, henceforth without any reason to live. Her hand, not frightened by the dried blood, caressed my face. Her mouth inclined toward mine, utterly icy. Incapable of weeping, she finally suffered a crisis of nerves, which extended her by my side.

  Around her, the spectators reacted differently. Mélanie made the sign of the cross. Maria imagined her picture in the newspapers. The locksmith caressed his goatee, like a man undisturbed by a corpse, who has seen many others during the war, while clearing the trenches, and also as a proletarian, summoned too frequently to ceremonies of the same nature, and who is able to be paid for his disturbance.

  And me, in the meantime?

  Perched on an armchair in order to enjoy a good view of the spectacle, I was no more emotional than the locksmith.

  Enough play-acting! I growled. I admit the initial surprise, but not the dolor and the attack that succeeded it. Showing off. I don’t believe it.

  As it was necessary for me to participate in the event, however, I started barking. My howls were addressed neither to Floriane nor to her entourage, but to the rigid imbecile lying on the ground, my ex-individual. A comprehensible psychology, at the memory of all that I had given to that woman of my confidence, my generosity and my labor, and the fashion in which she had thanked me.

  Mélanie’s pity brought the scene to an end. Aided by the locksmith, she transported Floriane into her bedroom, in order that she could complete her spasmodic performance there. I did not feel the urge to go and console her with a little lick. I was waiting for my rival. He was missing the ceremony. He had promised his farewells for ten o’clock, and the clock was already marking eleven minutes past.

  The sound of the doorbell made me think that it was him. I ran into the antechamber. But it was only the Commissaire of Police. Alerted by Maria, he arrived in a very good humor, his face replete, smoking a cigar like a Grand Duke before Bolshevism. He was accompanied by his dog—I mean the Commissaire’s “dog,” not one comparable to me: a little man, pale and thin. He barely took of his hat in the presence of my remains. He had the discovery explained to him by Maria. She narrated it to him with a prolixity that denoted her delight at being mixed up in the story.

  “The reason for the suicide? The marriage wasn’t going well?”

  “I daren’t say—but you know, Monsieur, with men...”

  “No, I don’t know,” the Commissaire cut in. Then, in a low voice, to his secretary: “We’ll find out later.” By way of a conclusion, he added: “Cuckolds overreact, decidedly. One might think that the police were made for them!”

  After which he went away, without asking to see the lady of the house.

  Georges did not arrive until midday.

  By his contrite air, I could see that he had already been brought up to date, doubtless by the gossip of the concierge. The event authorized him to cross the sacred threshold, and it was to Floriane’s bedroom that he went. I followed him there.

  They remained silent at first, contenting themselves with a long pressure of the hands.

  He spoke first: “What got into him?”

  “I’m still wondering.”

  “His business affairs were going well, though?”

  “Very well. His feuilleton was a success. He was well paid…for a novel that isn’t a policier, it was reasonable. In addition, Monseigneur Bellême, the day after Claude Alaire’s funeral, had told him that the moment had come to offer himself for his armchair. He even added, jokingly, that he’d soon be wearing a green coat. And now he’s shot himself! Isn’t it stupid?”

  “You, personally...you haven’t given him any reason…?”

  “You know very well that I haven’t, Georges. Nothing that could have made him anxious…not that!”

  “Then it’s incomprehensible.”

  “Let’s go see him,” she said, resolutely.

  I retained from that curt dialogue that she called Georges by his forename and that she had conducted herself in such a fashion that I could not suspect anything.

  I expected, however, still more confirmation of their common salvation by the death—but their visit did not shore up my conviction, and that was my fault. When I saw, instead of the greeting that any visitors might have given me, Floriane content herself with a cold gesture, and Georges only respond with a shrug of the shoulders, a sudden, cold, invincible anger precipitated me at him in order to bite him.

  If only I had had the solid jaw of a wolf that grabs a thigh and feasts upon it! If only I had possessed, in my gums, the virus of rabies before Monsieur Pasteur!

  Unfortunately, my lap-dog jaws only succeeded in ripping the trousers of my rival’s beautiful uniform—which resulted in my being taken back to the kitchen by Maria, and receiving there one of those corrections that a dog remembers, and then being locked in a cupboard where I purged my tongue without being fed, without being taken downstairs, without breathing any other air than my own—a captivity that lasted for three days.

  With the result that I knew nothing more of that happened subsequently: whether Georges returned to Toulon immediately; whether my coffin was comfortable; whether my wife had the requisite attitude of grief; nor whether my funeral was embellished by the presidential rhetoric of the various literary societies to which I belonged.

  The only thing of which I was perfectly sure a priori was that Floriane would wear a ravishing outfit, and that her mourning would render her even more desirable.

  Chapter VI

  It was decided, immediately after my burial, that Floriane would go to spend the first phase of her widowhood at Les Bolois, her parents’ property in the Eure.31

  I loved that corner of nature, where the old folk let their years flow gently by, by courtesy of a modest but secure income. My father-in-law, Monsieur Firmin Pastel, initially rented it in order to send his family there for vacations. Later, he bought it, once he had handed over his cement business to his principal employee.

  It was a large estate of a hundred hectares, cultivable land and woods favorable distributed for exploitation and hunting. A stream, emerging from the flank of the nearby hill, wound sinuously through it, also permitting battles of wits with trout. Here and here, the green-tinted roof of a farmhouse inhabited by agricultural workers protruded. Meadows extended around it in which abundant variegated livestock idled somnolently. Incapable of idleness, Monsieur Pastel spent his sixties running his estate personally.

  The most cheerful location, however, was still the one where the main dwelling stood. Constructed in the style of the Second Empire, it was discreet in its importance. High enough to dominate the landscape, it was nevertheless invisible from the distant national highway, to which an avenue of magnificent poplars led. In front of it was a vast lawn, caressed by a tranquil expanse of water, which extended as far as the foliage of a centuries-old park.

  It was for that refuge that Floriane embarked, the day after the funeral, in company with her family: her father, her mother and her brother Louis, still a bachelor. They occupied the four corners of a first-class compartment. A small coat dressed me in black, like everyone else. They had also bought me, for the occasion, one of those little wicker cases which spare dogs from traveling in a special kennel in the luggage wagon. It also served to by-pass the orders of the employees, as well as the train conductor, who, when he came to punch the tickets, had the indulgence not to notice me on the knees of the Mother. I was part of the family.

  I want to stress the exquisite generosity of dear Madame Pastel, who treated me subsequently as if she had an intuition that I was something other than a banal dog. She still bore under her gray hair the residues of a beauty that must have been resplendent when she was twenty—a beauty so faithfully transmitted to her daughter that I could imagine
what Floriane would look like at the same advanced age. Only their eyes, although they were the same color, were dissimilar. The candid blue of the one was sharpened in the other by a cheerful malice, to which I had been subjected since the first day, but for whose seduction I now deemed that I had paid dearly.

  The mother and I had always got on well, even before I became her daughter’s fiancé. She had brought forth arguments in favor of our marriage that had vanquished Papa’s hesitations. She had not changed her mind because of the abrupt denouement of a marriage she had always believed to be perfectly solid. Being unable to admit that Floriane had strayed from a conjugal dignity of which she had provided the example, she wanted to attribute my cooling to a sudden crisis of madness provoked by an excess of intellectual labor. What was astonishing, she said in my defense, in the cerebral mechanism breaking down by dint of incessantly searching for words, sentences and stories?

  My father-in-law’s character was in complete contrast to his wife’s. Noble, serious, categorical in business, endowed with a practical sense that had brought success in all his enterprises, he only departed in family life from his principal qualities as a head of industry; then he gladly became jovial, and even humorous. He turned all the minor events of his hearth into jokes. One would never have thought he was the same man, seeing him in his office and at his dining table—for he liked good food and, without excess and as a dilettante, as much for others as for himself, vintage wines. His cellar was a temple. He donned a smock to put his wine in bottles. I loved to see his benevolent face radiant when he entertained friends. Once he had raised his glass to their health he would plunge his nose therein to breathe in the incense. As when hunting, his grumbling was satisfied when he saw his prey fall.

  His Epicureanism did not prevent him worrying about his children. He had sent his son to the École Polytechnique, and then into civil engineering. For his daughter he had wanted a husband who was totally secure, so he had resisted Floriane’s inclination toward me. She had told me about their first conversation in my regard, on the day when, with an abandon that he was able to inspire in her, she had declared our intention to unite our lives.

  “You’re mad.”

  “Yes, Papa, I’m mad about him.”

  “A journalist!”

  “The most beautiful of professions. But Jacques, although he writes articles for the newspapers, isn’t only a journalist. He’s already a reputed man of letters. His first novel was awarded a prize by the Académie Margoulin.”

  “He writes novels! That’s even worse! I refuse.”

  That bourgeois suspicion was attenuated when he learned that my pen already assured me material security, and that the inheritance of a little family wealth permitted me, as he put it, “to butter the parsnips.” His resistance collapsed completely on the day when Madame Pastel revealed to him the tidy emoluments that had honored my voyage to Italy in order to conduct an enquiry into the social evolution of that country.

  “He’s a fellow with a future. And Floflo’s losing weight.”

  “She’s losing weight?”

  “You haven’t noticed? Five kilos in three months!” She was exaggerating the three.

  “I accept!” the worthy man said, fearfully.

  Subsequently, he became prouder of me than of his son. He came to see all my plays. Eyebrows wide, he announced that I was headed for the shore of the Pont des Arts.

  My sudden suicide bewildered him as much as his wife. He did not put the blame on the excess of my labor; he applied the principle of cherchez la femme. Poor Floriane had lost weight again. It could only be that. Decidedly, these novelists, what a breed!

  I judged the state of mind of the family quartet—since I no longer counted for the quintet—by their various attitudes while the train carried us away. But it was Floriane that I observed most of all. Believe it or not, she was reading the latest work of one of those creators of nonsense now held in such low esteem by her father. And her thoughts might have been absorbed by it!

  Sometimes, however, a return to decency extracted her from her reading. Then she directed at the fleeting landscape a gaze charged with melancholy, which my disillusionment pushed as far as Toulon, rather than arresting it in the corner of Montparnasse cemetery where I had been buried the day before. I could only interpret her feigned sadness, in accord with her costume, as the apparel of a new seduction.

  She had thrown back her mourning veils. Her face was as carefully made up, her blonde hair as coquettishly distributed. Her ungloved hands were not devoid of the crimson nail-varnish that I deplored. Delightful black deerskin brodequins espoused her dainty feet. From what high-class manufacturers, from what luxury boutiques, had those artifacts emerged? My consolation was that I would no longer see the bills.

  We arrived at Evreux at about six o’clock in the evening. Mélanie, whom Floriane had kept on after letting Maria go with a generous severance payment, quit her second-class compartment, next to ours, to help with the luggage. I noticed her red eyes and weary gait. She carried me to the antique limousine that was waiting outside the station. The luggage was loaded on to the kind of gallery that automobiles no longer have, and we set off for Les Bolois. Floriane had replaced her mourning veils. Monsieur Pastel, who was well known in the locality, ordered the gardener, who was also the chauffeur, to make a detour.

  “We’ve become curious beasts,” he grumbled.

  Indeed, when we arrived at the estate, the people of the village, assembled by the roadside to lie in wait for us, watched us pass by with a commiseration that irritated my father-in-law. Ordinarily cordial with those humble folk, he scarcely acknowledged their salutations.

  He was more kindly disposed toward the frantic welcome of Castor, his hunting dog. I shall have occasion to return to that animal, which St. Peter gave me as a principal companion. He was sympathetic to me from the start, manifesting no annoyance at my intrusion. It’s true that I was such a little thing by comparison with him...

  Floriane went up to her bedroom immediately. I knew the way well enough to have preceded her there. A young woman’s bedroom that had become our conjugal nest, it was filled with memories of our love, principally photographs, which were scattered almost everywhere, on the walls, the mantelpiece and the nightstand.

  I saw us there in the nudity of a sunlit beach, in our wedding outfits, emerging from the church, and also among the guests at a literary banquet where the magnesium flash had taken her by surprise while she as showing her teeth, which rendered her provocative. Dear evocations of our concluded tenderness, what would become of you? Would you now be relegated to an album, in order for Georges to triumph officially in my stead?

  Floriane took me in her arms and, holding me in front of the photograph of the church, said: “Look, Zizi, that was him. How genteel he was then.”

  She unpacked with a hereditary care. She took from her trunk newly-acquired dresses, presaging her eventual abandonment of her mourning. She redid her hair and make-up, and then we went down for dinner.

  They chatted about everything at that meal, in which they ate, I remember, trout meunière and partridges. They talked about everything except me. It was necessary, to bring back my shade, for the wireless to intervene. The chambermaid had switched on the apparatus, as she did every evening during the meal, while the Eiffel Tower was broadcasting the daily current affairs item. Well, immanent justice determined that the waves should be occupied with me at that moment. The sympathetic voice of a speaker, which I knew well, was commenting on my death, reporting on my funeral.

  “Switch it off! Switch it off!” cried Floriane.

  “No!” protested Monsieur Pastel. “On the contrary, we need to know what people are saying.”

  The dead are quickly gone, and very little would have been said, but for the abrupt fashion in which I had quit the world. The reporters had found pasture therein. An interview with Maria, who attributed my final act to a gallant neurasthenia, nourished newspapers avid for petty scandals in that sl
ack season.

  The speaker therefore insisted more than decency permitted on my dramatic end. He then handed the microphone over to a literary critic for a ten minute lecture on my works. I expected that dear colleague, a novelist himself who caressed the same green ambition as me, to renew a malevolence that he had scarcely hidden in his previous articles. To my surprise, he covered me with flowers. He deplored the loss of a great servant of art. He demonstrated the repercussion, so favorable to French renown, on my trilogy, Probity, Courage and Charity, being careful to pass over the frivolities that had preceded it. He focused on my dramatic work in the second place. Certainly, I imagined that the satisfaction of no longer having me as a competitor had encouraged such eulogies, but I was flattered nevertheless. So were those around me.

  “Look how the pooch is listening,” Monsieur Pastel observed. “One might think that he understands.”

  “Here, Zizi,” said Floriane, offering me a slice of the partridge that she was savoring in the manner of a widow whose appetite is not been diminished by grief.

  I neglected her offering on hearing a third speaker, returning to the subject of my funeral, say that the Minister of National Education, after having inclined over my grave, had kissed Floriane’s hand. A minister’s kiss is of no great value nowadays, but Floriane must have been proud of it even so. I, on the other hand, refused to take the meat from that hand at that moment. A minister’s kiss… that could hardly be of any interest to the nation!

  I relate all these details, which will doubtless be thought unimportant, in order that my confidants will not judge me a somber Othello, obsessively carried away by his jealousy without appreciable reasons. It is an ensemble that, without being such striking proof as having surprised Floriane in the arms of a handsome naval officer, constituted a symptomology on which I had the right to base my suspicions.