Short Stories in French

by Richard Coward

  Agricole Palaneuve et la vingtaine d’infirmes qu’il avait réunis venaient de quitter le bas-côté de l’avenue qu’ils avaient gagnée avec leurs moteurs de tous les coins de la capitale et, les gaz coupés, poussant à la main leur roue, avançant à deux bras l’un de l’autre sur une seule file horizontale, ils bouchaient la moitié montante18 des Champs-Élysées. Devant eux le flot compact des voitures s’éloignait tandis que derrière, dans l’impossibilité de doubler les paralytiques, les véhicules commençaient à s’agglutiner, à caler, à reprendre difficilement à deux kilomètres-heure, à mugir, à donner de l’avertisseur sur tous les tons, rythmes et rages. Le vacarme prenait la densité, la force de la mer en furie et, comme la mer, le bruit avait des retombées subites, des reprises, un nouvel élan formidable et perdu. Maintenant, devant la ligne des fauteuils roulants, l’avenue était presque dégagée. Les lampadaires s’allumaient. Les Anciens, là-haut, s’aventuraient sur la chaussée pour regarder la manifestation, et des promeneurs commençaient à descendre vers Palaneuve, surpris de marcher en sens inverse sur la voie libre, sans le moindre sifflet d’un sergent de ville, sans rappel à l’ordre. Le bas de l’avenue était noir de carrosseries à touche-touche et l’on devinait que la masse augmentait. Des voitures de police arrivèrent des rues adjacentes et de la partie descendante où les véhicules n’obéissaient plus aux feux de circulation, la curiosité des conducteurs l’emportant sur leur presse habituelle. Agricole, le Casanier, les autres peinaient avec délice, le visage pâle jusqu’à l’os. Certains se demandaient s’ils tiendraient le coup jusqu’à la Flamme, mais ils roulaient, le poitrail couvert de décorations, le calot en éperon. Ils arrivaient au milieu de leur peine, à mi-chemin du triomphe, leur souffle les enveloppant de buée, lorsque Agricole Palaneuve, sentant faiblir les muscles de sa troupe et non point sa ferveur, s’avisant aussi que les piétons allaient par bonhomie, amusement, gentillesse ou farce leur barrer la route et l’élan, lança l’ordre que ses compagnons attendaient.

  – Moteur!

  Ils remirent les gaz. Le concert des klaxons un instant surpris reprit de plus belle et les suivit tel que jamais Agricole ne l’eût espéré. Ce n’était plus des quolibets, du moins le pensait-il, mais une aide. Qu’importe le motif! Tous ces gueulards étaient les décorateurs du théâtre qu’il régissait. Ils ajoutaient maintenant les lanternes et les phares. A la hauteur des Anciens, les porte-drapeaux se faufilèrent entre eux et les voitures. Agricole demanda aux siens de ralentir. Le service d’ordre sur la place de l’Étoile les attendait. Les seules voitures qui roulaient se faufilaient à la périphérie. Les responsables des gardiens et des Anciens prenaient cette manifestation imprévue pour organisée sans qu’ils en aient eu vent et donnaient aux fauteuils roulants l’aisance qu’il leur fallait. Au beau milieu de la place, à cent pas de l’Inconnu, Agricole arrêta sa machine et sa troupe fit cercle autour de lui. Un banc de Japonais, des reporters amateurs photographiaient à tout clac, couraient entre les étendards. Les klaxons devenaient hystériques. La ville hurlait.

  – Et alors? cria un brigadier.

  – Avancez! lança un autre.

  Les agents de la circulation entouraient maintenant les infirmes, mais Agricole Palaneuve ne bronchait pas. Il tira solennellement d’une sacoche de sa machine un œuf et le laissa tomber sur le pavé.

  Le responsable des Anciens s’approcha de Casanier:

  – Qu’est-ce que c’est? demanda-t-il. De quel régiment êtes-vous?

  – Allez devant, dit Agricole, maintenant on vous suit.

  La musique militaire massée sous l’Arc attaquait Le Chant du départ.19 On les attendait tous. Les avertisseurs s’éteignirent. Dans le grondement de la circulation reprise un clairon lança un cri d’une tristesse infinie comme venu d’un autre temps. Le Casanier penché vers Palaneuve lui pressa la main.

  – Nous lirons tout cela demain dans le journal, dit Agricole, et tant pis pour ceux qui ne croient à rien!

  De leurs petites voitures ils regardaient la flamme vouée au bleu que la nuit cuivrait. Pour Agricole la porte du Ciel devait être ainsi, en forme de lance et transparente. Il serra les accoudoirs de son fauteuil car il sentait monter des larmes.

  – Casanier, dit-il comme le clairon s’évanouissait, dispersion! Chacun sa route comme prévu et tous à la pergola! Vos lampes en brassard! J’ai fait mettre au frais du vin d’Alsace.

  Le Café des Chasseurs était devenu silencieux. Les consommateurs qui s’étaient groupés regagnèrent leurs tables en rapportant leurs chaises.

  – Alors, dit Montfavert d’une voix tragique, Palaneuve n’aurait pas pu me faire signe?

  – Certes! dit une voix faible. Un ami est d’abord un homme qui pense à vous, mais peut-être a-t-il voulu t’épargner le déplacement?

  Montfavert tapa sur les accoudoirs de sa machine.

  – Je peux traverser la France avec ça!

  – Oui, c’est un coup rude! L’outrage est aussi pour toi. Évidemment, tu laisses tomber cette publication?

  – J’ai envoyé mon chèque de souscription ce matin, répliqua Montfavert, dès l’ouverture de la poste. Pour moi l’amitié, c’est aussi d’oublier tout un côté de l’ami.

  The Hunters’ Café

  Montfavert had transformed his kitchen into a carpenter’s workshop and lived in his war invalid’s tricycle. He moved only around the ground floor of his house, which looked on to Jules-Taupin Walk. The first floor and the attic were his paradise. He was always thinking about them and could not get up there. When he had turned the wood to make doll’s-house furniture, the proceeds from which supplemented his invalidity pension, and when he had fed the spiders that he was breeding in a sideboard with glass doors, the inside of which he lit with a neon strip light, he changed seats and set off to go round the town in a motorized wheelchair. His horn could be heard everywhere and people were glad that he never went about at night; he would have woken even the dead. This almost daily noise scarcely made him liked, although talking to him was a most enriching experience. He knew all the battles in history, and you merely had to call out to him for him to stop the din made by his machine and tell you the date of a counter-offensive in Jutland or in Cyrenaica, troop numbers and the names of the leaders. He lived the feat of arms to the point where he could be seen changing colour, and it even came about that you learnt the true source of this pain, which you begged him to forgive you for having caused.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘On the contrary, it’s a pleasure. You see me shaking because of Angèle. She died last night.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘She would have been two. A spider which answered whenever I called, which ran up to greet me, which danced, I’ll say. Solid and supple on her star-shaped feet, she let herself be bounced like a ball.’

  ‘You’ve got others!’ people said to console him.

  ‘What creature can replace another? Please!’

  He was allowed to turn his engine back on and drive to the Hunters’ Café, where he had his quarters for relaxation. There, without getting out of his wheelchair, he settled down at the regulars’ table to play games of chance that would give way to conversations about the army, his memories, his transformations, his future, his reading of old combatants’ newsletters or war magazines. Montfavert had subscriptions to various publications, not including brochures and encyclopaedias of which he had received the specimen copy and the accompanying subscription letter. Moreover, not a week went by without him giving in to a mail order, and his memory was comforted by those rows of stories of every sort which bled his finances dry. One day he arrived at the Hunters’ in a state of utter confusion.

  ‘Montfavert! You look in a real state!’

  ‘I’m jealous,’ he merely said, ‘and annoyed. I’ve often talked to you about an old comrade: Agricole Palaneuve! We were in the same hospitals! But he’s a Parisian through and through! Only Paris counts! Always Paris! Ange did not even give me a hint! As if I was buried in this hole!’

  ‘What are
you talking about?’

  ‘Of a historic deed!’

  ‘So, what are you complaining about?’

  Montfavert took a magazine out of one of the bags of his tricycle.

  ‘A new publication. The first edition. Very expensive, too expensive. Still, the paper is glazed. And right in the middle I come across Palaneuve! Am I still his friend? I’ll let you be the judge of that.’

  ‘We’re listening.’

  ‘It’s called “The Outrage”.’

  The landlord brought some white wine.

  ‘An extra-special Alsace,’ he said gleefully. ‘From a new supplier. You’ll never drink anything else!’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Montfavert, pushing the bottle away, ‘not today. A bottle of red, please.’

  Everyone around the table was amazed, but the hand of the paralysed man remained authoritative. The red wine arrived, and he began:

  The outrage

  When he read that a Scandinavian had cooked himself an egg over the flame dedicated to the Unknown Soldier, Agricole Palaneuve let his newspaper slide to the ground, closed his eyes as he sat in his wheelchair, and his hands went white from pain, so hard was he squeezing the armrests. It was a very long time since he had shed his last tear, over there, in the depths of his war, and if other misfortunes since then had befallen the country, no deed came close in baseness to the act of sacrilege that had just been told, in peace-time, the day before the procession to commemorate the Armistice. He picked up his telephone to call the minister who gave him his pension. He was passed from office to office by officials, but he could not get hold of the secretary-general, whom he knew sufficiently well to describe his indignation to in the name of all those who had not dared to call, but the employees, who all knew what had happened, for they spent the morning reading the newspapers, scarcely seemed to be moved. Agricole had even thought that he had made out someone sniggering at the other end of the line. ‘There’s nothing worth waiting for any more,’ he sighed, ‘nothing either in the long or the short term.’ He found himself under the flow of water from a Providence relieving itself and he recalled the ants on which, in days gone by, he liked to urinate as he chanced to walk by and as the need arose. ‘It’s all fitting into place,’ he thought, and he added: ‘Since they do not want to hear me, they’re going to see me!’

  The caretaker of his block of flats came to take him out of his fifth-floor flat and pushed him into the lift. Agricole Palaneuve found himself in the street once more and started the little motor on his wheelchair. The busiest streets, the crossroads, did not frighten him any more, for he was aware of the danger he posed to car drivers, and in spite of his despair he always counted on inspiring pity, and thus attention. Jeers and insults never failed, however, to rain down upon him, together with advice of this sort: ‘Stay with your nanny!’, ‘Plonk yourself in the sun and it will grow back!’ Ah, he could indeed talk about human nastiness and boorishness! He retained certain expressions of spite, the most apt obscenities, in order to relate them to friends in the same condition as him, and he compared them with those that they too had heard. They even got the giggles about them. Their meetings always took place on the Champ-de-Mars and, when it rained, in the nearby cafés of the École Militaire. They were pushed beyond the back room where billiards were played into a sort of windowless pergola, where the general public scarcely went and from where they could follow the games that the players were playing or watch television programmes on the screen reserved for the staff. The waiters took their meals in there at the quiet times of the morning and the afternoon. There were sometimes four or five invalid carriages, but Agricole Palaneuve could always count on finding Jacques Mouchelin’s, for he rarely left the room, lived in the area, turned his wheels only with his hands and was nicknamed Casanier by his friends. That day, Agricole had decided to put the problem to them, to think up a response to the blasphemous gesture of the Scandinavian and to begin by all signing a letter to the minister in order to show him that they did not intend that the outrage should go unpunished. They were comforted by the sight of a game of tennis played by disabled people in small wheelchairs. It was taking place in America and, at the end of the broadcast, the winner of the tournament seemed to throw his racket to them, bursting with joy just like players who run about on two legs. A breath of freedom passed through the pergola and the high windowless wall which enclosed it echoed their cheers.

  Agricole posted the letter. Days went by without a reply, until it arrived two weeks later. In the pergola the friends listened to Palaneuve, who read it out in his fine voice. The minister allowed himself to be moved, expressed his understanding, but made it clear that it was best to forget an act of madness. Everyone could remember, he added, more unworthy acts in this sacred place, which was not, of course, a reason to use the Flame as a kitchen stove. The Scandinavian was Danish. After a heavy fine he had been sent back across the border. The letter ended with a call for vigilance ‘although in this respect as in others, no being and no temple could be protected from such a filthy deed. The mentally ill are at every street corner.’

  ‘It is not a question of a street,’ said Casanier, ‘but of the most beautiful avenue in the world.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said the others.

  ‘They should double the number of guards!’ shouted Agricole. ‘Money is never wasted when it is a matter of honour.’

  They could hear the click of the billiard balls in the nearby room, the muffled noise from the other rooms, so very like the din that comes out of hen-houses.

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said Agricole, whom the others had been looking at for quite some time. ‘We’re going to get you an engine and you’re going to do your bit, Le Casanier.’

  ‘I don’t need one,’ exclaimed the man, who moved his chair by hand.

  ‘It’s vital,’ said Palaneuve. ‘You would regret not having one and thus not being in with us! Even though you’re a lone wolf, in a sense.’

  ‘I’m here much more often than you!’ exclaimed Le Casanier. ‘It’s always me who waits for you!’

  ‘This time, all six of us will be on time, and together, and in the same row, and with others as well! Let me add that we shall all have an engine, for before and afterwards.’

  ‘Before and after what?’ asked the others.

  ‘My friends …’

  And he laid before them the plan that was to make the one who had done his cooking over the Unknown Soldier think, and to revive the affair that everyone was suppressing, from the minister to the last passer-by. Beneath the pergola, convolvulus-like, the peculiar silence of the plotters spread over everything and over the six invalids, and the many questions that no one dared utter, and which waited to be asked for the breath of the bravest amongst them, fluttered above them like as many pale flags. Casanier began:

  ‘Surely, there aren’t enough of us?’

  ‘We’re going to gather every last one of us together,’ said Agricole, ‘and assemble them, without explanation, for this important matter which concerns them. I will speak to them. Today is Monday. I want us all to be here in two days and we’ll draw up our plan of attack.’

  Although he had never been promoted above the rank of sergeant, Agricole Palaneuve spoke with complete authority, like a generalissimo, and the others accepted that he was the most resolute and the most adept of their number. Agricole took all this on board and hence scented victory with his every command. He returned home and, for once, Casanier went part of the way with him, substituting for the engine which he still did not have, and for which he now felt the need, a grip of steel. His steering bar in one hand, he had seized Agricole’s armrest with the other and allowed himself to be towed through the arrondissement. It was with regret that he let go of Palaneuve and watched him drive off into the distance, building up to maximum speed and overtaking even the quickest pedestrians.

  If we asked our fellow men what they would like to save from a total disaster, most would reply that it would be a picture or a le
tter, the photograph of the person most dear to them or the declaration of affection made by their most loved one. The signature might be infinitely variable in appearance, from that of a child to that of a mother, from that of a wife to that of a leader. Agricole did not make his decisions or create his dreams without having before him a note signed by General de Gaulle. He had put it under glass, framed it with a strip of horse hide, and hung it above his bedside table.

  He looked at the prestigious signature and smiled: the General would approve of the event that Agricole was telling him about as he moved his lips, letting out a word now and then, as though to apologize for the farcical side of it that some might see, but he became serious again and slept deeply for all of one night, as he had previously done only on the eve of attacks, emptying himself, as it were, and getting ready a new and alert man.

  It was a Friday when Agricole and his companions brought the attention of the world back to the devotion of those who had died so that others might live. He did not think that washing away the stain of an insult is to remind people of it and that holding someone like that up to public obloquy is to rank him highly. The Scandinavian was going to get roasted again, if such an image is permissible. The oblivion that is preferable is not just difficult, it is impossible.

  Following the custom of this daily ceremony, the Old Soldiers from a regiment had gathered that day towards the top of the Champs-Élysées, filling the pavement before parading on the road, flags at the head of the column, towards the Étoile and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, on whose grave they were to put flowers. A difficult problem was always posed by an increase of the ever-dense traffic at that time and in that spot, in spite of the greater number of policemen, quick-thinking and efficient, in the merry-go-round of the cars. The men, wearing their medals, berets and forage caps, were stamping their feet and exchanging news, for they had come from all over France. In spite of the cold, the traces of snow, the frost on the bare trees, everyone was in good humour for they were talking about life, about births and marriages, about the pranks of those who had left them since the last gathering at the Flame, about the simple, basic pleasure of being together, still manning the fort. The ceremony assumed a secondary importance and in small groups they thought about the reunion dinners, well supplied with wine, which would follow before they all went home. Suddenly, a hubbub could be heard coming from the roundabout, lower down, a chorus of horns which was reaching the avenue and stealthily covering all Paris in the advancing evening.