“But what does this have to do with the bad girls?” the captain interrupted, disappointed. He had been expecting something a little racier.
“What do you mean, what does it have to do with them? She stole.”
“That’s it?”
“My dear Paul, stealing is also a vice.”
“Sure. But it wasn’t proven.”
“So I said. But anyway, that’s not the issue. The real problem was, you see, that they had thrust her into a situation where she might have been contaminated.”
“They shouldn’t have put her in there!”
“That’s exactly what I said to his grace, not in so many words, of course, but I made it understood that we had perhaps made a mistake, and that mistake might be taken back if he would only let me intervene. A delicate affair. You can see our laws are not perfect. She had already been sentenced. It became, after the fact, very difficult, not to say impossible, to spring the girl from her jail. It’s not too much to say it would have taken the banner and the cross for my plan to succeed. But finally, thanks to the concerted effort of his grace, of my friend the public defender, of the prefect, of the inspector of public welfare . . .” (“Hm!” went the captain) “I was able to bring into my service, as a maid, this poor, unfortunate girl.”
“But I never saw her at your house!” Plaire cried, getting red in the face.
“Wait! Wait for the rest. No, you didn’t see anyone but my old Anna. A heart of gold, that one.”
The captain didn’t say anything.
“A simple heart, as Flaubert would say. Such a dear, a jewel of a woman. She doesn’t trust anyone but me. She even came to me for advice about where to invest her little savings . . . Anyway, to get back to the story, when she saw the child arrive, my brave Anna threw up her hands. ‘What can we possibly do with that poor little girl? She doesn’t look strong enough to hold a broom.’ I made it clear to Anna that it wasn’t about that. This little one was unhappy. We needed to take care of her, to give her some trust in the world. For, after all, my dear Paul, what is real kindness anyway? The kindness that changes things, or the kindness that doesn’t? ‘The pretty one! The pretty one!’ Anna kept saying. As it happens, the girl was quite pretty, but prickly,
you know. It seemed like she was afraid of me. She didn’t speak, lowered her eyes as soon as I looked at her, ran away if I so much as brushed her cheek with a caress . . . oh! Of course you understand, in a fatherly way!”
“Yes, yes. Go on.”
“I was always afraid she would run away. I even wondered, seeing the way she lurked by the door, if she had a real mania for flight. She was really quite feral.”
“And then?”
“We tried for fifteen days to civilize her. All in vain. She wouldn’t eat. She was wasting away right before our eyes, despite our best efforts. She would only say one thing—that she wanted to leave, return to her home.”
“But she had run away three times!”
“That’s what we told her. She would reply that she wanted to go back anyway, and that this time, she’d be good, she wouldn’t budge. But that was impossible. Anyway, she became ill, and we had to take her to the hospital.”
“You didn’t care for her at home?” “See here, my dear Paul, and what if she had died there?”
Plaire hadn’t considered that. He made a face. “Fair enough!” “What would people think?” said Nabucet. “Wasn’t I progressive enough, taking a girleen into my home, under those circumstances? It’s true that Anna was there and who cares about gossip anyway, but all the same!”
“But did she really die?”
“Alas, my friend!”
“At the hospital?”
“It was a horrible affair. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong. Medicine is a poor science, and doctors poor scientists! They couldn’t understand her wasting sickness. I told them to warn me if her condition worsened. Just think—she had no one but us! But me! And one night—it’s hard to think about, my dear Paul—one night, the doorbell rang and they brought me a note to say the girl was dying and had called for me.”
“Oh! Really?”
“In my . . . sorrow, it was a comfort, I’ll admit. She had finally felt a moment of understanding. I got up, dressed, and—” Nabucet didn’t say anything else. Plaire glanced at him and was surprised to see him wipe something off his cheek. A tear?
“You came too late?”
“It wasn’t that . . . it was something completely unexpected. Once I was ready to leave, I found I couldn’t.”
“Huh?”
“I couldn’t make up my mind. I . . . I was . . .”
“Afraid?”
“No, not afraid. But I couldn’t leave the house.”
“That’s strange.”
“I was completely bewildered. But I couldn’t even take a step. I couldn’t make myself open the door.”
“Never heard anything like it.”
“Indeed. I still can’t make sense of it.”
“And so what did you do?”
“Nothing. For a long time, I did nothing. I dawdled . . .”
“But in the end, you went?”
“Yes, I went eventually. I don’t know how.”
“Was she dead?”
“No, that’s exactly it, she wasn’t dead yet. When I went in, I wondered if she really had called for me. She made a little movement to refuse . . . poor girl! But then yes, it must have been true, because she let me come closer.” He paused for a long moment. “She died in my arms.”
They didn’t say anything more. That was the end of the story. Why had he told it?
“Some kids are dealt a miserable hand,” said the captain.
“Oh that one could have been helped, if she’d only let me. I wonder what she died of,” Nabucet said through his teeth, as if talking to himself.
The captain was thinking.
If picking up little maids from public welfare brought on stories like that one, he might need to reconsider. “You don’t always know what you’re getting yourself into,” he said.
And Nabucet replied: “Life is a matter of . . . tact. You see, my problem is that I’m too kind-hearted. Just because I wanted to save that girl from tragedy, God knows what they could say about me. And no doubt, they’ve not missed their opportunity.”
That was true, but it had no practical importance. Everyone in town knew that Nabucet was a bit weird, a bit creepy, but that didn’t at all prevent bourgeois mothers from sending their daughters to his theater company, which periodically put on big productions like Edmond Rostand’s Pierrots. It was Nabucet himself who did stage makeup for the young ladies. From time to time, he got slapped. “You know what I want?” he said. “I want everyone to be happy.”
This declaration met with no response.
“You don’t agree?”
“It’s impossible.”
“Well, I have my own opinion on the matter. Yes, my friend, it’s possible. All over the world, we’ve got to undertake a great crusade to show people the light, the pure, simple light of the sun that no one knows to look for. The light! Sometimes I spend whole hours just looking at the light.”
“Didn’t you write verses when you were a kid? You’re a bit of a poet, you know, when you’re lost in thought.”
“I’ve stuck with it. You see, my dear Paul, I have my fun. When I’m retired, I’ll amuse myself by composing an epic poem. And do you know what the title will be? The Sun. I want to encourage mankind to rediscover the light. Humans have sunny dispositions or they have nothing at all—I’m sure of it. That’s what will bring on a revolution! They make me laugh, those others with their so-called demands. All that’s just for profiteers. Let’s go back to the old myths.”
“How much further to the square?”
“Not far at all. We’ll be there in a moment. I have to take you through a neighborhood where you’ll need to . . . hold your nose. Then we’ll be at the Square.”
As they went on, the streets became dirtie
r and less well kept. Some had no sidewalks, and the rain shower, instead of pooling there, had flowed into whole streams in the center of the streets. Here and there, the houses were old, run-down, dark. But Nabucet said they weren’t lacking charm. A few of these houses were big tourist attractions, and as a member of the Public Improvement Society, he had done all he could to make sure some of them were classified as historic sites. The loveliest ones, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
“If you’re not afraid of the stench, let’s stop a moment,” he said, pointing a finger at a ruined structure. The ground floor was occupied by a baker, and colorful tatters hung from his windows. The captain stopped and looked.
The street smelled of sewage, fish, and smoke, but there were other scents mixed in—fresh bread, laundry someone was ironing, a smell of resin. There must be a carpenter close by. They could hear him manning his saw, as Nabucet’s own father would once have done. And from the cobbler’s shop came the pounding of a hammer on a stone—the whole street echoed with it. The captain raised his nose, looked at the house, and found nothing to say, except that it was dirty and even unsanitary, and that everything inside, humans and objects alike, must be rotting as if it were a cave. The sounds of working mixed with the shrieks of a gang of urchins, the calls of women who ran errands, fetching water from the public taps, or bread from the baker. It was strange, this noise of life, after the prayers of a moment ago.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Nabucet.
“That house?”
“Yes.” “You know . . . it’s not really for me.”
“It’s quite remarkable to a connoisseur.” And with the same teary tone he’d used for the girl: “I hope to save it.” He would use all of his devotion.
“That one maybe,” said the captain, “I wouldn’t know. But the rest . . .”
“Oh, you’re absolutely right, this neighborhood will be demolished. The town’s going to buy all of this, and these houses will be razed. It’s part of the town’s improvement plan.”
“You’re on the town council?”
“Oh! No, no. I leave politics to others . . .”
He expanded on this theme—these lower streets were an eyesore, a breeding ground of infection, of epidemics. All the diseases came from there. Besides, “these people” lived in a repulsive, shameful state of filth. You knew it just by looking at them.
“Take a passing glance at the state of one of these . . . interiors.”
“Slums.”
“That’s the word.”
“But where are all of these people going to live, once they’ve torn down their houses?”
“They’ll find other houses, my friend. Like everyone else. What are we supposed to do about it?”
Good sense told the captain that it would have been fair to build somewhere else for them to live.
“It would be just as dirty as this after a month,” Nabucet replied.
They kept on walking.
“Not that way,” said Nabucet, lightly touching the captain’s arm. “That street has a bad reputation.”
“Oh? Yes?”
“We’re in a sort of . . . ghetto, even though there isn’t a single Jew here. We’re walking this way because it’s the fastest. But that way would lead us God knows where . . .”
“How many are there here?” asked the captain, who had seen only a single red lantern.
“Three.”
And the silence continued.
No use asking Nabucet how they were. And what good would that be anyway, when the captain couldn’t set foot there. One of the annoying things about these provincial towns was that you really couldn’t make the rounds when you were a captain or a teacher. And there were no refined brothels, as there were in bigger cities. Toulouse, for example, or Lyon. As for the cafés, there was nothing to hope for. They were all devoid of women. So how was he to enjoy himself?
The captain asked the question in the abstract, with the air of wondering about people other than himself.
“That, my friend,” replied Nabucet, “touches on a subject that is completely unfamiliar to me. I’m not up to speed on those matters.”
“But if one wanted to spend an evening there . . . ?”
In the past minute, Nabucet’s air had totally changed. His steps became more rapid, as if to distance himself as quickly as possible from that disreputable street, and instead of looking around, his eyes were lowered. He’d kept this position, like a crick in his neck, since he’d violently turned his head away at the sight of the lanterns, and his voice had shifted. “There aren’t all that many who like to ‘spend an evening,’ as you say.”
This astonished the captain. Nabucet expanded upon his thought. Most people settled down very quickly. It was a mistake to think they really wanted sex that much, after a certain age, which was sometimes very young—around thirty. For the most part, they became indifferent. A drink and a night of cards sufficed. Others, in large numbers, were simply gourmets.
“They don’t sleep with other men’s wives?”
“Not as much as you’d think.” That too, was a myth. Naturally, there were affairs here and there, but very rarely. Once again, people were more indifferent to these matters than one would think.
Nabucet turned red, sashaying and skipping as he walked. “You’ll laugh at me, my dear Paul—” he giggled shiftily, the fake laugh of a confused little boy—“you’ll laugh, but I’ve never set foot in that country.”
The captain, who was no longer wondering about the red lanterns, had the naiveté to ask where.
“But . . .you know. You know what I’m trying to say.”
“Never?”
“Never. It’s the truth.”
“You mean to say, here.”
Nabucet shook his head. The captain asked, “You mean to say you’ve never been to one? Anywhere?”
“Never.”
A moment passed.
“But what about—what about when you were younger?”
“Never.”
“That’s unheard of. Why didn’t you?”
“Because that’s not what I’m looking for.”
“What, then?”
“Tenderness.”
The captain burst out laughing. If it was tenderness he wanted . . .
“But the women in Paris? No mistresses?”
“Not those either.”
“You’re a saint, old friend.”
Nabucet didn’t seem to hear. He was still talking, “You were speaking of happiness . . . Well then, true happiness is what one gives.” And he continued, talking to himself as if he were alone, not bothering or perhaps not able to form complete sentences, “Little child you rock . . . not a grown woman . . . to make her die of love . . . simpler than that, love . . . to take her whole self, even make her cry . . .”
The captain was beginning to understand that, in the ten years he’d been widowed, Nabucet hadn’t slept with a woman, and he hadn’t become a gourmet either. And as he reflected on that he found himself among the shops in the Square.
AT SCHOOL, in the large but poorly lit lodge, near a window with dirty glass panes looking out on an alley, a girl who was clearly the older sister walked back and forth, rocking a baby in her arms. The mother was ironing. Below the window, a young man stretched out in a wheelchair and Madame Marchandeau, the principal’s wife, stayed beside him, sitting in an armchair.
She was the only visitor who still came to sit with the crippled boy. At first, they would stop by to visit him, bring him sweets, books, newspapers. But people had gotten tired of it. He had so little to say to them!
The baby quieted—he was about to fall asleep. Nearby, in the cloakroom, two teachers were talking.
“Have you read the papers, Moka?”
“Oh, I glanced at them.”
“You’re not so curious, my friend. Even the war doesn’t interest you? And the revolution in Russia, that’s nothing too? If you had read the paper this morning, you would have seen proof that Lenin ha
s sold himself to Germany. What do you make of that?”
Apparently Moka had nothing to say about it, since there wasn’t a response.
The crippled boy turned to Madame Marchandeau. “It seems like they make very good mechanical legs now. I saw it in the Excelsior. Is it true?”
“Of course it’s true.”
“Legs you can walk with?”
“No doubt . . . have faith, my dear Georges, get totally healed, and don’t worry about anything else for now. Isn’t that right?”
“It’ll never be like before.”
“Come, come . . . if it’s nice out later, they’ll take you out into the courtyard, and you can visit with the other wounded men. You know Roques the shepherd?”
“Yes.”
“Well I’m teaching him to read. He’s happy as a clam.”
The mother walked up to the girl and bent over the baby. He wasn’t yet asleep. She smiled at him, tickled him under the chin with the tip of her finger, kissed his little hand. In the next room, the conversation continued:
“In the first place, the name isn’t Lenin, it’s Oulianoff. He’s a fugitive from justice like the rest of his crew. Smugglers and forgers. But they’ve been unmasked—just think—they’ve seized the account books with all the names and amounts!”
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