Oh, why couldn’t he let it go! Break his chains! But for a long time he’d been beaten down, bound like the others. Very unlikely he’d ever have the guts to break away. Here, nothing encouraged happy, liberating bravery—everything pushed for a more desperate courage, or death coincided with the end of captivity. A finite world. Worn until threadbare. Ah! Yes, to escape! To shove off for the Dutch East Indies or elsewhere—To study Your blue, o equatorial sea!—to burn away the politeness of this so-called civilization, the Just War and all this reverential muck. To escape, to forget, to start over!
Others he admired had that courage. From one day to the next, they had broken the bonds of disgrace, had cut the mooring that tied them to a present, a past, a future, all equally dishonest. Free, they had placed their bets. As for him . . . But me? Does one escape? Java is far! He’d never get farther than his little cottage by the sea, where all day he’d hunt, go shell fishing, browse for books if the fancy struck him. He swam alone, untroubled, but for how much longer? The water would be warm . . . Free man, forever you’ll treasure the sea . . . Another year before retirement.
How many weeks until break? Before he could go roll in the sand and chase curlews, he had to put one foot in front of the other and dispense lies! And to top it all off, to really toss in the anchor, he had to give those little gentlemen their exams, poor robbed kids, shamefully duped. He’d lent his efforts to this comedy, he wasn’t exempt. And he even made money from it. He didn’t mean only the laughable sum of a few francs allotted for each corrected test—not ever a huge amount of money, but in the end, always good to have—but an even bigger bonus: he would, as usual, take a room at The Alcazar. Every year at the end of term, when he had to go to Sernen to administer a few days of oral exams, he would take a room at The Alcazar, which was to say, at the brothel. He’d write to the Madam in advance so they’d save him a room, and he’d spend the three or four days in the company of girls who, it was true, had a primordial advantage over other women and over so-called civilized society: that of being absolutely real. He didn’t sleep with them much. What he liked was the atmosphere, the smell of the brothel, the brotherly rapport he had with the women who didn’t think of mocking him or pitying him. Nowhere else was as restful as The Alcazar. For him, it was a Java within reach. A break from their way of life. Cripure openly took a cab there after the exam sessions, sometimes with one of his colleagues, another woodlousy philosophy teacher, who also, in his faraway hole, limped from one end of the year to the other and looked forward to the exam season in much the same way Cripure did.
Would that big brunette from last year still be there, the one who had really wanted him to explain what “true philosophy” was, the one he’d bought a glass of champagne for? If she was, he’d tell her about the bikes, just to see—
•
These streets. He stopped on the sidewalk, reciting this dictionary definition to himself: Woodlouse. Vulgar noun applied indistinctly to isopod crustaceans of the family oniscidea. Almost always land-dwellers (in temperate climates), living at the edges of the ocean, under stones and in rock-crevices or in damp, dark places—caves, cellars, under moss and old bark. Many have the ability to roll into a ball at the slightest appearance of danger.
Was there anything truer? More relevant? Since he’d paused there like that, the little hunchback and her yellow dog appeared at the end of the street. She skipped along, seeming to lead a procession of recruits who were singing arm in arm, a huge flag batting their heads—or were they chasing her? Cripure recoiled, hiding in a doorway. Oh what a sight!
The conscripts swarmed over the pavement, apparently harassing the hunchback and shouting from under their cockaded hats, flamboyantly ribboned—they also wore ribbons in their buttonholes. What he wouldn’t give to stuff a spring of parsley up their noses! Oh evil herd, you deserve your fate! All those young people who let themselves be fooled. How ugly and foolish humans are! Why didn’t they revolt? And burning with anger, Cripure left his doorway and came down the sidewalk as if to meet them. Alas! His pince-nez fell off. Shadows.
Lost, he waved his arms in the air, dropped his cane. The recruits passed him shouting wildly:
“We will get them
When we want them.
Dirty Kraut You’ll come out
Of your stinkhole like a rat.”
A gust. Cripure swung his arms, feeling around with an uncertain hand for those idiotic pince-nez that never did anything but fall off—the conscripts were already far away and he was still there, like a swimmer in great danger, stuck in an undertow. A hand grasped his—a hand that was at least as energetic as Maïa’s had been earlier, and without a word he was back on the sidewalk, his pince-nez in one hand and his cane in the other. “Thank you, thank you!” he stammered, putting his pince-nez back on. There was no response, and to his amazement, Cripure, able to see again, discovered that his mute and mysterious savior was none other than the mayor himself, who had come gravedigging this way. The mayor clearly didn’t have time to stop. He gestured as he hurried away, a little movement of his fingers to say “No time, my friend, not a minute to spare . . .” And he went off in the same direction as the hunchback. A curious carousel. Very odd clockwork. “If it goes on too long like this,” Cripure said to himself, “I’ll be crazy before the end.” And he marched on, waving his cane furiously, whipping the monsters at his heels more fiercely than ever.
Already beat, after at most a half-hour’s walk. For a while now he had been putting on weight, but not what you’d call healthy fat, a pale flabbiness that had started to look suffocating, sickly, giving him more trouble than ever as he went along the streets. He sweated under his goatskin. A sort of pale sun emerged through the humid, almost lukewarm air. And the goatskin stuck to his back. The few woodlice whose shadows shyly appeared now and then in the strangled streets seemed to look at Cripure with an astonished amusement that was different from usual. Were they spying on him? They wanted to know where he was going? Hmmm . . .why should they need to know if he had money or not? That wasn’t their fish to fry. It was hard enough for him to discuss such . . . intimate details with some employee or other without everyone else spying and poking fun at him right under his nose. Oh that old anarchist, he’s got savings in the bank and owns property no less! And so what? What then? Did he owe them anything? Wasn’t he free to contradict himself? Oh, anyway, it was crazy how prickly they were on the topic of money and real estate, as if that had anything to do with being upstanding and honest.
He gave a careful glance around him before going into the bank, deserted, polished, silent, despite the whispering of a few woodlice at the teller’s booths. He didn’t need to see their faces to recognize them—he knew who they were by their backs. People he’d never spoken a word to in his life were like intimate friends to him. He knew so much about them! By what strange path had they reached him, these revelations about lives that were always so sad? Was it impossible for people to conceal the secret that everyone was his own best snitch? He sat down at a table and put his satchel in front of him. Murmurs like prayers or confessions. A temple? Oh, that was a little too easy. A Temple of Gold. An idea which often ran through the little anarchist pamphlets he read in his youth. What fools! Ah! To no longer be a poor sucker, but a king of finance, at the top of the world like a few were—a Rockefeller, a Zaharoff, a Pierpont Morgan, aces, those men, fellows making a difference, magnificent specimens, weren’t they, handsome predators, not at all in the same class as this Monsieur Pinche who came toward him asking what was new. How was his health? Very well, thanks, and yours? This Monsieur Pinche had the head of an old mangy bird, sunk into a long neck. He was coming back from the market, a net bag full of groceries on his arm. Oh and glasses, he wore them too! He had turned sixty-seven years old yesterday, ha! But solid as the Pont-Neuf, you know! Ha! As for that . . . since he’d been retired, he kept himself fit. What did he do before? Worked for a registrar.
“Between us, I’ve been writing, I’m put
ting together a little novel. It entertains me to make up characters.”
He had also written a long poem in the style of Jerusalem’s Deliverance, but shorter, about a thousand lines.
“I write for my own amusement. My heirs can do what they like with it, you understand?” A pause and Monsieur’s mouth opened wide, his cigarette butt sticking to his lip. What a sad look! At the end of his arm, the bag seemed to weigh on him like an iron. “You’ve got to be protected against circumstances.” And forgetting that he only wrote for his own pleasure: “I’d have liked to make a little printing of my poem.” It wasn’t expensive—two thousand francs for an edition of a hundred. Did Cripure think that was a good rate, since he was in the business? Cripure didn’t know, couldn’t say. He’d published a volume a long time ago, on a fellow named Turnier, and another on the Medes but . . .“not the sort of volume paid for by the author.” Really, for what it was worth, Monsieur Pinche would have published his poem if his wife had let him.
“But it’s always the same story, my friend, it’s hard to avoid—the intellectual vs. the stewpot, you know. Madame Pinche said to me, ‘Write verses if it amuses you, I’m even glad about it, and it doesn’t bother anyone, but to spend our pennies on that! Go chase your tail somewhere else.’ ” Another pause. Another yawn. The cigarette butt looked like a huge wart. “But if I’m ever on my own again,” said Monsieur Pinche. And that was all Cripure heard. Monsieur Pinche disappeared like a ghost, burying his head in a teller’s booth like an old horse at his feed trough.
Just as well. There was nothing to say. It would continue. That Monsieur Pinche must have been married for forty-odd years—married love was a beautiful thing, the kind of love which, of course, went unspoken between them, but which was understood to lie below the surface, just as death lies below the slab. What made them stay together for a whole life? A fascination.
“Your turn, Monsieur Merlin.”
Deliverance. Time to put his own head in a teller’s booth. And so? Had the market been good? Nothing much to complain about? As often as he had done it, he never went up to a teller’s booth without trembling. But for once, it was fair to be pleased. Sales had gone well. He’d made about a thousand francs. A thousand points higher! Bono, bono, that would put a little heart in him. He deposited his titles and the bills he had in his satchel, gave instructions for new trading, and left the bank almost festive. A thousand francs, that wasn’t a huge sum, but it was quite a bit. You could do a lot with it, get pretty far. A ticket for Marseille didn’t cost that much, and those were expensive.
Time to hit the road! But to school.
THE HABIT of these gentlemen teachers in the short recess periods between classes—which Nabucet called “a bit of air, a little breath of oxygen”—was to meet beneath one of the galleries in the Honor Court and stroll there, chatting. They went along at a calm, measured pace, as they did on the post road, usually in one line, but in pairs if they were all together. In the second case, the two lines faced each other, as if they were doing a quadrille. They called it “doing the Lanciers.” They’d all known each other for so long, they were so used to each other’s steps and gaits, that the Lanciers formation was executed with unhesitating precision, without a word or even a glance. Another formation, which wasn’t quite the same as the Lanciers but evolved from it, was the Drum Major. When there weren’t quite enough gentlemen for two lines, but too many to walk under the gallery in a single row without crowding, one of them, usually the one who was speaking, would step out of the line and keep talking while he walked backwards, which would give him the air of a drum major, especially if it was Babinot.
It amazed the schoolboys that there were never any accidents, that Babinot never stepped on Nabucet’s feet or Cripure’s, that the dean never fell on his ass, and neither did the principal. Nothing like that ever happened. Instead, everything was so orderly that even the unfortunate Cripure could take part in these little strolls without worrying, on the condition that he never had to walk backwards. His colleagues modeled their economical steps on his hobbling ones, and though he couldn’t walk two feet in the road without remembering his disability, he was able to forget it almost entirely here.
Cripure shook hands and joined the rank. Monsieur Babinot was playing the role of drum major. With his huge nose, his goatee rusty as an old lance, his authoritative mustache cutting a straight line across his face like the hilt of a Gaulish sword, his hands folded under his coattails, a bowler hat tipped back down his neck, he made his iron-soled shoes resound on the stone slabs, holding forth in a nasal voice:
“In France we have so many heroines behind the lines, masses of them, from all walks of life. On the one hand, Madame Faurel, who will soon be given her due recognition. But let’s not forget the poorer women who work tirelessly, day and night, at the rough, sometimes very rough, jobs in munitions factories. I read somewhere recently, such a moving story you know . . .”
The gentlemen slowed their steps.
“Yes,” Babinot continued, “I read a story about four hundred young women in a factory somewhere or other in the provinces, whose job it is to manufacture, you know,” he winked, “that explosive chemical called picric acid. Whoever is around it for a few days turns yellow as a lemon. Well that little detail didn’t frighten away our pretty workers. The most beautiful girls in the area, you know, made a point to push forward with the war effort, to do the work that left them ‘saffron’ for six months after fighting had ended. What’s more—they were proud to have gained something in common with their faraway Japanese allies, and their cute little joke was to call themselves—can you guess?”
No one answered.
“The canary club!” cried Babinot, laughing delightedly. “See, see!” said one of the gentlemen, scratching his nose. It was the rhetoric teacher, Monsieur Robillard. “That’s heroic spirit. A wholesome pride.”
Babinot agreed.
Robillard went on: “Do you know what I gave my class for French homework? No? Well it was just this kind of thing about pride. Comment on these lines from our great Alfred de Musset:
“pride
it is the little beauty in life that remains for us,
the modesty of the poor and the greatness of kings.”
That was just it. They all agreed. That was right in tune, wasn’t it . . . Monsieur Babinot took his hands from under his coattails and applauded softly. “I say, bravo!”
“Oh,” said another, “it’s remarkable. Anything more would take it too far.”
“But that’s it, that’s just it,” said Monsieur Robillard. “The important thing is to . . . insinuate. Not to attach too much importance to some fact or other but to open their minds, make them curious.”
“And to guide them,” someone said.
“But of course. Listen, for next time, I’ve got two lines in reserve:
“Let us defy fate and be on our guard
after the victory is won . . .
“what do you think of that, Monsieur Babinot?”
“Why,” said Babinot, “it’s excellent. Our young men will be in charge, leaders of men. It’s good to help them develop healthy ideas.”
The principal passed by the group looking depressed, already dressed up and ready for the afternoon’s party. He walked over to the little group and shook hands.
“Have you heard anything, Monsieur Principal?”
He shook his head. “Still nothing.”
“Ay, ay!” cried Babinot.
“Terrible,” murmured Monsieur Robillard, but aware he had misspoken, he continued: “but see here, Monsieur, it’s no good to believe too quickly that he . . .” He was about to say the worst possibility. Another error. “My son,” he said, “went two months without writing. Well, he’d simply lost track of time.”
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