“Have you known him long?” they ask us… They’re inspectors… The meanest of the two pulls out his card… We tell them quick that we’ve got nothing to do with it!… Absolutely nothing! The padre is still wriggling… still struggling… He manages to get up on his knees… He starts snivelling… “Forgive me!… Forgive me!…” he begs us… “It was for my poor… My blind… My poor little deaf-mutes…” All he wants in life is to go on collecting funds…
“Shut up! Who’s asking you!… The dirty bastard’s nuts!… When are you going to stop horsing around?…” The one who had shown us his card gives the priest such a clout that he goes “quack!”… and folds up! He wasn’t talking any more!… They put the handcuffs on him right away… They wait a minute… They catch their breath… They kick him to make him get up. It’s not over yet. Courtial still has to sign a statement and then some other paper… on both sides… One of the bulls, the one that’s not so mean as the other one, tells us a little about this weirdo… He really was a priest… he was even an honorary canon!… The Reverend Canon Fleury!… That’s what he called himself… This wasn’t his first fling… or his first run-in with the law… He’d already taken every member of his family for thousands and thousands of francs… His cousins… his aunts… the Little Sisters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul… He’d touched everybody… the churchwardens of the diocese… the beadle and even the chair attendant… He owed her at least two thousand francs… All for nutty schemes without any rhyme or reason… Lately he’d been burglarizing the sacraments chest… They’d caught him at it twice… with his hand in the chest. They’d found the whole of Joan-of-Arc’s-Pence in his room, broken open with a chisel… He had treasure on the brain… They’d noticed it too late… Now they were going to lock him up… His bishop in Libourne had insisted on having him interned…
There was a crowd under our arcades… They were having a hell of a good time, enjoying the show… There were plenty of comments… A lot of thinking was going on… They saw the loot scattered around the place… But I’d seen it too… I’d had presence of mind… I’d already saved four or five bills and a fifty-franc piece… They let out a lot of “Ah! Aha! Oh! Oho!” Those lugs outside the window had been watching me!… The bulls pushed our priest into the gymnasium… He was still resisting… They had to go round the back to load him into a cab… He held on with all his might… He just didn’t want to go…
“My poor! My poor poor!…” he kept yelling. Finally, after a lot of trouble the cab came…
They hauled him in… They had to tie him down, to rope him to the seat… Even so, he didn’t keep still… He threw us kisses… It was shameful the way they tortured him!… The cab couldn’t get going, the people were standing in front of the horse… They wanted to look inside… They wanted to have the canon brought out… Finally, with the help of some more cops they managed to get the carriage clear… So then the whole crowd of pests stream back in front of the shop… They couldn’t make head nor tail of it! They kept cursing at us…
All those insults got the old cutie’s dander up… She wasn’t going to stand for it another minute… She didn’t think twice… She leapt to the door… She opens it, she goes out, she stands there facing them…
“Well?” she says… “What’s the matter with you?… You lousy suckers! You creeps! You’re a lot of crummy snotnoses! Go chase yourselves! Louts! Hoodlums! What have you got to complain about?… Was that crook a friend of yours?” She had guts all right… But it didn’t work… They hurled abuse at her even worse!… They bellowed harder than ever. They spat all over our window. They threw gravel… It looked like a massacre coming on… We had to beat it out of there quick… by the back way!…
* * *
After that Trafalgar we didn’t know what to do… How were we going to quiet those lunatics now? This deep-sea-diving-bell contest was getting as wild as our perpetual-motion runaround… The place was humming all day long… Often they’d wake me up in the middle of the night with their screeching. A procession of nutters with their eyes popping out half a mile, ripping their shirts off outside the door, swollen, bloated with certainties, with implacable solutions… It wasn’t a pleasant sight… More and more of them kept coming!… They were blocking the traffic… A saraband of lunatics!…
There was such a seething mass of them in the shop – tangled up in the chairs, clinging to the junk piles, submerged in the papers – that you couldn’t get in when you needed something… All they wanted was to hang around and argue a little more, to bowl us over with some new and conclusive detail…
If at least we’d owed them something! If they’d all coughed up an advance, a rake-off, or a registration fee, we could have understood maybe what they had to be unhappy about, why they were peevish and disgruntled!… But that wasn’t the case!… For once in our lives we didn’t owe them a penny! That was the pay-off! Couldn’t they give us credit?… Couldn’t they see we weren’t out for lucre? That all we cared about was honour and fair play!… Pure and simple! That we were quits… But nothing of the kind!… It was exactly the opposite! They were rioting for the hell of it, just to get us down!… They were a thousand times angrier! A thousand times crummier, gripier, than on previous occasions when we’d bled them white!… They were regular demons!… Every single one yelled like at the Stock Exchange in honour of his gadget!… And all of them together!… The racket was something awful!…
None of them could wait!… Every damn one wanted us to get his wacky invention under construction this minute! This second!… Hurry, hurry!… Get it working!… Christ, were they impatient to dive to the bottom of the ocean!… Each for his own private treasure!… They all wanted to be first! They said it was in the rules! They brandished our prospectus!… We shouted back that we were sick of their stinking shenanigans and listening to their racket!… We told them it was all a lot of hogwash!… Courtial climbed up on the winding staircase to tell them the whole truth… He shouted at the top of his lungs… The occasion was so solemn he’d put his topper on… He made a clean breast of it, I was there… He was perfect, a show like that could only happen once!… He told them straight from the shoulder that we’d lost our backer! That the whole contest was dead and buried… No more millions than butter on his arse!… He explained that the bulls had locked him up… this fellow we were expecting to… this priest… that he’d never get out, they’d put him into a straitjacket, that the whole business was gone overboard!… “Overboard, overboard!…” At these words they stamped with enthusiasm… They took up the chorus: “Overboard! Courtial! Lower the bell!…” They kept coming back. There were more of them every time, bringing new projects… They laughed in your face if you tried to reason with them… It didn’t take… Their minds were made up… They all knew that you’ve got to suffer if you’ve got the faith! The faith that moves mountains, that upsets the seas… Theirs was sensational… When it came to faith, they were in a class by themselves! Besides they were convinced we wanted to keep all the mazuma for ourselves instead of sharing it with them!… So they camped outside the door… They watched the exits… They settled down along the fence… They lay down, they made themselves at home… They weren’t in any hurry… They had their conviction… it was solid rock!… No use trying to shake it… They would have massacred us on the spot at the slightest sign of contradiction… They were getting more and more ferocious… The slyest and sneakiest of the lot came around the back… They slipped in through the gymnasium… They’d motion us to join them… Whispering with us in the corner, they’d suggest terms, an increase in our cut… forty per cent instead of ten for us on the first spoils raised… if we’d take care of them right away, ahead of the rest… They thought we were mighty greedy!… They tried to bribe us… They held out prospects of golden grease!
Courtial refused to look at their stuff, he wouldn’t say a word or even listen to them!… He didn’t even feel like going out any more… He was afraid they’d spot him… The b
est place as usual was the cellar.
“You’d better take the air!…” was his advice to me… “They’ll rub you out! Go sit under the trees… on the other side of the fountain… They better not see us together… Let them wear themselves down!… Let them holler till they’re blue in the face!… It’s just a momentary riot… It’ll die down in a week or ten days!…”
He was way off. It went on much longer…
* * *
Luckily we’d saved a little nest egg… what I’d swiped off the canon… almost two thousand francs… Our idea was that once the storm had subsided we’d take a powder one night with our dough… We’d take our stuff and give ourselves a change of air!… Move to a different neighbourhood!… Around here it was getting too hot… We’d start another Génitron along entirely new lines… with different inventors… We wouldn’t even mention the diving bell… It seemed perfectly feasible… why not?… The hard part was putting up with their guff for two or three weeks…
Meanwhile I had a rough time convincing the old cutie that she’d better stay home in her cottage in Montretout… and wait for the storm to blow over!… She wouldn’t listen, she didn’t see the danger!… I knew our customers… She riled them up with her manner, her pipe, her veil… I heard them passing mean remarks… Besides, she stood up to them… You couldn’t tell what would happen… They were perfectly capable of skinning her alive… Inventors get terrible waves of fury, they see red… They disembowel everything in their path! She wouldn’t have chickened out, that was sure… She’d have fought like a lioness, but why ask for trouble?… We had nothing to gain!… That wouldn’t save their cottage!… In the end, after a lot of gulping and heart-rending sighs, she saw it my way…
She hadn’t come that day… Courtial was snoozing in the cellar… We’d had lunch together at Raoul’s Escargot on the corner of the Faubourg Poissonnière… not bad, I’ve got to admit. We hadn’t skimped on anything… I didn’t hang around the shop… I came right out and settled down as usual at a healthy distance on a bench across the way, behind the rotunda… From there I could watch the approaches… I could even step in if the situation got really rough… But it was a quiet day… Nothing special… Just the usual ferment… groups talking things over, chewing the fat… that’s how it had been since the beginning of last week… Really nothing out of the way!… No call to be scared… no fireworks… They were only simmering… At about four o’clock a kind of calm settled!… They sat down in a straggle… Their talk was no louder than a murmur… They must have been all in… They were strung out in a line along the shopfronts… You could sense how tired they were… They’d have to give up pretty soon… I was beginning to think of the prospects… we’d have to move and dream up another racket!… Find a fresh batch of suckers!… Start up a new line of business!… We had our little nest egg… but how long could it last? Hell! Two thousand francs melt away easy!… If we wanted to start the paper up again and make the payments on their cottage!… Actually it wouldn’t be possible to do both at once!… Anyway, I was off in my daydreams… really absorbed… when far in the distance… in the Impasse du Beaujolais… I see a big lug all by himself making a terrible uproar!… Waving his arms in all directions!… He comes charging up right in front of our joint… He grabs the handle… He shakes the door like an apple tree… He yells for des Pereires!… Say, that boy is stark raving mad, he’s off his rocker!… He raises hell a while… Nobody answers… He takes a brush and daubs the whole shopfront with green paint… Smut, I guess!… He shoves off, still raving… Oh well, that didn’t amount to much!… I’d feared a lot worse…
Another hour or two go by… The sun was beginning to go down… The clock strikes six… That was the nastiest time, the time I dreaded most… the stinking hour, made to order for riots and disturbances… especially with our customers… the crummy time of day when all the shops disgorge their little maniacs, their extra-clever employees… That’s when the lunatics are on the loose!… The spawn of the offices and factories… They come out in droves, bareheaded… they run after the bus!… The artisans stung by the radiations of Progress!… They take advantage of the last few minutes of daylight!… They leap, they bound!… They’re the sober kind, water-drinkers… They run like zebras. This was the battle hour!… I could feel them coming, it gave me a bellyache!… This was the time they regularly landed on us… we were their aperitif!…
I pondered a little while longer… I began to think about our dinner too… I’d go and wake Courtial up… he’d asked me for fifty francs. But suddenly I give a start!… A terrible noise is coming at me! Through the Galerie d’Orléans… swelling, coming nearer!… It was more than a hum… It was a rumble! A storm!… Thunder under the glass roof!… I jump up!… I run over to the Rue Gomboust, where the worst of the ruckus seemed to be coming from… I bump into a horde of haggard maniacs, roaring frothing brutes… There must be at least two thousand of them bellowing in the chasm!… And more keep gushing out of the adjoining streets… They’re compressed, squeezed against a big heavy cart… looks like a gun carriage… Just as I get there, they’re busy demolishing the double garden fence… They uproot it at one blow… That flat cart made a formidable battering ram… They smash both arcades… Blocks of stone are falling like marbles… crashing, collapsing, bursting into smithereens right and left… It’s terrifying… They come down like thunder, harnessed to their infernal machine… The earth is trembling half a mile away!… They’re bouncing in the gutters… They’re all delirious… bobbing and jumping around their catafalque, carried on by the fury of the charge!… I don’t believe my eyes!… They’re berserk!… There’s at least a hundred and fifty of them pulling at the shafts!… Galloping under the arches with that enormous load behind them!…
More lunatics roaring, tangling, tearing each other apart, trying to get a better hold on the shaft… the keel… the axles!… I come closer… Christ! It’s our inventors!… I see pretty near all of them!… I recognize them one by one!… There’s de la Gruze, the café waiter… he’s still got his slippers on!… And Carvalet the tailor… He’s having trouble running! He’s losing his pants!… There’s Bidigle and Juchère, the two who do their inventing together… who spend their nights at Les Halles… carrying baskets… I see Bizonde! I see Gratien, the one with the invisible bottle! There’s Cavendou… There’s Lanémone with his two pairs of glasses!… The one who invented the mercury heating system!… I see the whole gang of punks!… All yelling blue murder! Christ, are they mad!… I climb up on the fence! Above the tumult!… I get a good look at the character in the driver’s seat, the big guy with the curly hair that’s egging them on, the ringleader!… I see the monumental contraption!… It’s a cast-iron shell… a fantastic mess!… It’s Verdunat’s diving bell! Armoured to the hilt!… That’s it all right, I’ve seen the model a hundred times! His famous project!… I’d know it in the dark! With the luminous portholes and the diverging searchlight beams!… Hell’s bells! There’s Verdunat himself, half-naked!… Riding his monster!… He’s climbed up on top of it! He’s shouting! Mustering his lousy troops! Haranguing them! Getting ready for a new charge!…
I have to admit that he’d warned us. He’d told us categorically that he was going to have it built at his own expense, in spite of our opinions!… He was going to put all his savings into it!… We refused to take him seriously… He wouldn’t have been the first to hand us a line!… The Verdunats were cloth-dyers in Montrouge, from father to son!… He’s brought the whole family along!… There they are, the whole lot of them, dancing around the bell!… Holding each other’s hands… doing a square dance… mama, grandpa and the small fry… They’ve brought us their invention… He’d promised… and we wouldn’t believe him!… They’d hauled the monster all the way from Montrouge! The whole crazy tribe! The unholy alliance!… I patch up all my courage… I foresee the worst!… They recognize me… They howl at me!… The fury is general!… They have it in for my guts!… They all sp
it up at me… They vomit at me!…
“I beg your pardon!” I say. “Please listen to me just a minute!…” Silence… “You don’t seem to understand!”
“Come on down, you little stinker!… So we can knock the shit out of you once and for all!… Cocksucker! Chameleon! Baboon! Where’s the old wise guy? We just want to twist his guts a little…”
Death on Credit Page 51