What was more serious—was one evening when he’d come home to find, not the young man from the parlor, but the blond officer, in person, become a friend of the family. What did it matter that the blond officer should be there? He’d been there many times before. But in response to an insignificant question Cripure had raised—about a pair of curtains—Toinette had smiled such a crooked, calculating smile, and she’d given him so many useless explanations. He’d been horrified, unable to speak. It was certainly a question of curtains!
Then, later on, a colleague had talked to him, one of those officious people charged with the comedy of opening eyes, that’s to say, gouging them out. Cripure had left. He’d left that very evening—it seemed like yesterday. Fled. And without challenging the blond officer to a duel. Maybe he’d only fled so quickly to avoid having to fight a duel and being killed. And maybe Toinette hadn’t betrayed him after all, maybe nothing had happened between her and the blond officer, and his colleague had lied?
•
He picked up his pen once more and wrote:
Another note: Once again I find in my heart, without the slightest surprise, without even the shadow of disgust, feelings that I truly believe I would hate in others—a kind of fear that might be called cowardice, and confronted with those whom I’ve always thought were my enemies,
a certain flattery, and worst of all, a flattery that borrows the mask of irony and independence.
A pause.
He wrote again: But that cowardice, that flattery, these are things in me that are foreign to myself. Not feelings I need to be ashamed of—but equations considered and contemplated among others.
He crossed out contemplated and wrote confused.
He put down the pen.
He raised his eyes, rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers, adjusted his pince-nez—the tic. “Hum!”
In that room, where the mirror-covered walls looked like an aquarium, there was no face, no object, which could persuade Cripure in some decisive fashion that he should honestly get up and leave.
Another look around. The manille players were still there. Who were they?
And who was he to them? Nothing but poor Cripure, ill and crazy, inept lover of a sailor’s lass. But if they only knew—
If only!
“Waiter!”
“Ready, aim—”
“A glass of Anjou!”
“Fire.”
If they only knew how I envied them!
It was simply as though he’d never existed. Once more his spirit had renounced and humiliated itself for nothing. No use—no one needed a fourth player for manille.
•
Leave? Go home? What for and what good would it do? Here or elsewhere—“forever and always lower,” he murmured, emptying his glass. Rolling to the deepest depths of vulgarity, down where the last human ties finally unravel and rot—maybe there he’d find an equivalent—this drunkenness is starting to interfere, he thought with a smile, pointing a finger at himself. There were good times when I figured out how things would go for me—crafting stories for myself, lying, lying to others! How
I lied to her! ‘Where were you? I was worried sick . . .’ ‘Oh, here and there,’ and I’d smile sweetly as if to show her, ‘See how I am, a real dreamer, a poet! What do the hours matter, why does it matter where I go? I myself couldn’t tell you—’ In truth, I knew all too well. If she happened to complain, I’d kiss her, saying, ‘This is how I am—Would you rather have a husband instead of a lover?’ Me, a lover! She would listen and I’d smile. ‘How easy it is to fool her,’ I’d be thinking. And I unspooled my lies. What joy in lying! What a lovely cord to hang myself with! I threw myself into her arms, feeling a weight on my heart, as if I were maybe about to cry, and in fact I’d only muster a little hiccup. ‘My sweetheart, my dear!’ she’d say to me, running her fingers through my hair. Then I’d often feel an irresistible desire to laugh, which I’d try to stifle. And she’d think I was sobbing! ‘My sweetheart, darling!’ My head rolled on to her breast, living it up in style, throwing myself at her feet. ‘Forgive me, oh, forgive me for everything’—‘what’s wrong with you? but what is it? What do I need to forgive you for?’ she asked me, weeping. I was starting to feel better. ‘I must go out again.’ Sadly, she’d hand me my overcoat—the goatskin came later. And outside, everything would be different, I’d light a cigarette. I could smoke without getting a migraine in those days. ‘Eh, what does it matter,’ I’d say to myself, ‘what does it matter to me, what do I matter to me?’ I’d feel a dirty smile on my face and I’d go drink just like I am now. I’d snicker: ‘Forgiveness! Who gives a damn about anyone’s forgiveness!’ And I’d gather myself in, taking a vain pleasure in what I called my ‘ largesse.’ At least I wasn’t a fool. Oh my God, is it possible? Is it really possible, having been that person, is it possible that I’m not deluding myself today as I did then? Did things really happen that way? No, no, it wasn’t all true. I remember other things. But everything’s mixed up, everything’s lost—and, and—
“Waaaiiter!”
“Ready, aim—”
“A—glaaass of Annnnjou, if you please.”
This is starting to get interesting, thought the waiter, bringing over the wine.
It was maybe his eighth glass.
Cripure frowned at his glass without sipping it yet.
Half past noon.
The café was emptying. One after another, they were going home. Lunchtime was no joke and precision was—what? “I’m not here anymore—”
He raised his head—facing him was a mirror.
“Hey, look!”
•
Was it the smoke from when the room was full or the fog on his lenses? He couldn’t really see the person who was talking to him. He heard a sharp, unexpected noise, but somehow he wasn’t startled.
“Excuse me,” said the man, “but this coincidence is just too funny.”
Cripure smiled. “Have a seat,” he replied. It’s odd, he thought, you would think he had stolen my hat.
“Yes? Why thank you,” said the man, slipping onto the stool.
He put his glass on the table, lifted his eyepiece, rubbed his temples, and murmured a few words that Cripure couldn’t quite hear—something about solitude. He talked too, about something that had hit him “right in the face.”
“What?”
“But—my love, you see!”
“Very odd,” Cripure replied.
And the other man said, “You’re a good person. I can see it in your eyes. It was a woman who killed you, huh?” he said, winking.
“Killed?”
“You and I both know what I mean. Her name was Toinette too,” he continued in a whisper, turning his head right and left to make sure no one overheard this confidence, barged in on this holy secret. Cripure copied him, looking around, and an ecstatic smile lit up his old face.
“My friend!”
“They didn’t hear us?”
“No. Come closer. Say it one more time—”
“Toinette,” said the voice, very low.
“Toinette, Toinette—”
Cripure closed his eyes.
•
“What’s come over him?” the cashier asked.
“Dunno. He’s plastered,” said the waiter.
“He’s not actually going to fall asleep here and start snoring?”
“It’s already happened once, not too long ago. I had to put him in a cab. What a chore. I wouldn’t want to be one of the pallbearers who carries his coffin. Especially since people weigh more dead than living, that’s a fact.” He yawned. He was hungry.
•
Cripure reopened his eyes. The other was still there.
“That’s how it was for me. I was afraid of being killed. And I ran away.”
“To Paris, you too?”
“Exactly. And got involved in a thesis on Turnier—you know, that other befuddled one.”
“I know!”
“In truth, I wro
te a bomb—”
“I have to say—I felt like I was imprisoned in a dungeon, and I had a companion chained to me, some kind of dwarf—I don’t know why I’m telling you this—sometimes he wore one face and sometimes another—revenge, revenge—”
“Eh! Eh!”
“Taking stock of the fallen world—alone and criminal. I shouldn’t have fled,” Cripure muttered.
Silence.
“I—I saw the pope in a dream. Yes, His Holiness. He looked like Louis XI in my little history primer, when I was a kid. And he was drinking a ton, like a Viking, my friend, to the health of a hanged man. I could only see the feet of the person who’d been hanged, feet in very elegant dancing shoes. Yes. And then later on in the dream, I realized that the person I thought was the pope was really only the nuncio, old friend. As for the hanged man, he wasn’t dead, not dead at all. They’d taken him down, laid him down on a bed, and a young woman gently wiped the sweat from his pale, pinched face. Do you follow?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said the other.
“Well then, let’s not dwell on it. Would you like anything else?”
“A little glass of Anjou.”
“Waaaaiter!”
The waiter didn’t budge, and for good reason. Not even the smallest sound had come out of Cripure’s mouth. And anyway, Cripure hadn’t touched the glass in front of him. He must have thought the waiter had just brought it, since he seemed satisfied.
The other continued, “Know yourself!”
Cripure jumped. “But for the love of God! Does self-knowledge ever go beyond—the, the facts of life?” he said in a changed voice. “It’s not that we die, it’s that we die cheated.”
A pause.
“Yes,” said the other, “But they kiss the blade that kills them. And that reminds me, how’s the Chresto?”
“Bah!”
“In your place, I wouldn’t say bah, I’d write the Chresto. You have to tell the truth, my dear, even if the truth is your poison. Are you afraid of dying?”
“Indifferent.”
“Liar!”
“I can’t hide anything from you,” said Cripure. “But what’s the point of writing the Chresto? Depicting dead souls, isn’t it, or more precisely: murdered ones, and we should count ourselves among them, all arrogance aside.”
“I was going to say that! Listen, I’ve got a new title, Bouclo et Pécu-porte, otherwise known as Boucri et Pécupure.[10] Our dear brethren! Otherwise called: The Shades of the Prison. Yes. I’ll write that clunker. I’ve never held back my intellect.”
He burst out laughing. “Oh, ha, ha! I’m dying—”
“And what will become of Toinette in the work?”
“Don’t think, though, don’t think I’ve forgotten her suffering. Every
day. Every hour of every day, the poor woman, and for so many years! A whole life without her and I’m still faithful.”
“Are you leaving something out?”
“Why would I?” Cripure stammered. “Intellectually, you know, we’re not the cowards.”
“So talk to me about the alimony!” And he banged his hand on the table.
“Oh, they hit you with that too?”
The man lowered his head. He replied in a sad voice, “Yes, they dealt me that blow. I lost the divorce suit, go figure. Excuse me, I’ll explain,” he said, in response to a gesture from Cripure, who looked like he might be about to interrupt. “Having lost the divorce case, I was ordered to pay alimony, because of the child—”
“The legitimate one?”
“Oh, so you know about the other one—I see you’re up to date on everything. So, after the divorce—”
“You’re going to tell me that—that she never stopped hounding you, demanding that the alimony increase in proportion to your salary. Was that it? You’re a teacher, right?”
“Philosophy.”
Cripure sat up straighter and gently touched the brim of his hat. “My dear colleague—”
“My dear colleague,” the other repeated, straightening up and touching the brim of his hat exactly as Cripure had just done.
“A pleasure.”
“A pleasure.”
Cripure continued, “Philosophology, jokeology, hypocrisology—European philosophy—between us, my friend, what an idea to spend a whole life with that bucket of shit at the end of your arm! Enough! But tell me—do I take you to be a Clopper?”
“Why not at all! Come on!”
“I can prove to you without a doubt,” Cripure’s wheezing voice continued, “that all the notary’s letters are fakes. Yes. All of them.” And his hand banged the table in just the same way the other’s had, just a moment ago.
“Did you send the money? Yes or no.”
“That’s not the question.”
“Good. Excellent. Back then, I suspected as much. But it’s better this way.”
“Ghosts have a favorable instinct,” said Cripure, quoting Rivarol, “they only appear to those who believe in them. Think on that.”
“I’m not fooled, not onnne seconnnd,” said the other, “Goodbye. I’m going home to Maïa. Let me go, don’t try to take me with you. No, I said I’m not going! Get your paws off me or I’ll call the police!”
“But Monsieur Merlin,” said the waiter, “It’s almost one in the afternoon. Madame Merlin will be worried. Be reasonable. Do you want me to call a cab for you?” And without waiting for a response from Cripure, whom he was moving heaven and hell to lift, he jerked his chin at Père Yves’s waiting cab, murmuring in the busboy’s ear, “dead as a doornail—go fetch a hearse.”
DRUNKENNESS was nothing but a question of consent, and the fresh air, the wind in Père Yves’s cab, succeeded in sobering him up. No way to escape, even in wine! Always a spectator of his own life. As for these games he played with imaginary friends, he knew what that was about. An old habit. The cab rolled.
It was an old cab, a real relic, a ruin of a carriage, the only vehicle of its kind seen rattling down the streets, driven by Père Yves, this old man with teary eyes, with a soft, dreamy little voice. The cab was dirty enough to be repulsive. Not only had it been years since anyone painted it, but, more importantly, it had also been years since anyone had brushed the seats. You could guess that once upon a time they’d been blue, but the dust from streets and boulevards had made them gray and black for eternity. Seeing how rust had eaten the iron parts of the cab, you could understand that Père Yves’s business had declined and that it was useless to ask if he spent most of his time stationed at the town square or the railway station.
In spite of all that, it was an excellent cab, not too bumpy, and if you weren’t afraid of dirtiness (as Cripure wasn’t), you could relax as you took a nice little drive. Pompon, who pulled the carriage, had nothing in him of the classic cab horse. Quite the opposite—he was a young, energetic animal, well fed and cared for, capable of the occasional frisk.
Cripure let himself sink into the back of the carriage and, since he couldn’t play with his imaginary friend anymore, he played “Monsieur” another way of pulling the wool over his eyes, but taken down a notch.
The same way soldiers who have no one to write to will send themselves letters, Cripure, who had no one to confide in, created a phantom confidante whom he called “Monsieur.” And from time to time, when the fancy came over him, when he wasn’t drunk enough to play with his imaginary friends, he’d ask “Monsieur” a few questions.
“What do you think, Monsieur?”
The horse trotted, the coachman clacked his whip.
“I’m considering. It would be so easy to leave, to live out the rest of my life in the sun, among simple savages, far from this garbage.”
“Java, again?”
“You’ve thought about it all your life.”
“But my dear sir, I’d kill myself getting there! Java! Might as well be Eden. But that’s not possible anymore, no point in thinking about it. Let’s talk about something else—let’s talk, for example, about punish
ments for the guilty—what a joke history plays! Unbelievable hypocrisy. And all this will end how, by figuring the allies will be victorious? Well then, old friend, they’ll probably send Kaiser Wilhelm to write his memoirs in Java, that paradise! The world is going to die from morality, I should say moralicide, old friend. What would Nietzsche say? And what can we say, as others, the Antis?
Monsieur didn’t respond. Cripure was getting tired, he recognized it, and his game wasn’t as fun. He forced himself to tell Monsieur, “You’re not getting any more accustomed to being alone, are you?”
“But I’ve always lived alone,” he replied, “completely alone. I wouldn’t be less alone among the Eskimos.”
“Will you die alone?”
“I’ll die alone.”
•
Sober now, he stopped playing with Monsieur. He recited poetry:
“As I flowed down impassive rivers
No longer guided by the crew
Garish redskins used them for target practice,
]Nailed them naked to their colored poles”
And the carriage rolled on with a sound of harness bells.
What a joy to let himself drag along like this, to forget his body, his feet of clay! Yes, he would do it, he’d make a deal with this old coachman, he’d go everywhere in this old rig. To hell with the money. And when the carriage pulled over to the sidewalk and stopped, Cripure, before getting down, asked Père Yves, “What would you say, my friend, what would you say to us making a little deal? Eh? You’d come tomorrow morning at eight to drive me to the lycée, for example? Eh? And then each day after that? What do you say?”
The coachman turned on his seat, whip in hand, and nodded. “That can be done,” he said.
“Good, good,” said Cripure. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he added, getting down. He paid him. “Until tomorrow, old friend.”
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