“At eight?”
“That’s it. A little before eight, let’s say. And again, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Oh, everyone knows you’re a good customer, Monsieur—” “Then it’s settled, my friend. Tomorrow, without fail,” said Cripure, going into the house.
The old coachman was delighted. Finally, a regular!
•
They didn’t seem to be expecting him. Even the little beasts didn’t come out to greet him. But goodness, Maïa, Amédée, the little dogs, everybody was in the kitchen. They’d started eating without him.
He took off his goatskin and his hat, propped his cane behind the door in its usual place and said, “Hello! It’s me.”
No response.
He wandered into the study, threw the goatskin on the sofa, and looked through the glass door for the shadow of the two others. Once he was sure they hadn’t seen him, he went back into the hall—time to settle a question of money, the thousand francs he wanted to give Amédée.
He’d carefully considered how to give the money and concluded that the best way was to slip the bill into the pocket of Amédée’s overcoat, which was hanging in the foyer. It was an old, dirty coat, with blackened stains on the back—from muck or maybe blood? He looked at it for a long moment with a frown, like a consignment dealer, and took from his wallet a thousand-franc bill, which had been ready for days. He’d conscientiously recorded the serial number in a notebook, in case of theft or—simple prudence. He rolled it between his fingers, and hesitated. In his pocket? Too risky. Why not in his wallet? It was there. Cripure opened it to put the thousand-franc note in—letters fell out.
“For God’s sake! What have I done?”
Overwhelmed, he surveyed the disaster. Had they heard him? They’d come and catch him with Amédée’s wallet in his hands, in the middle of going through it. What would they think? Anything but that! He wasn’t one of those species of cowards who listened at keyholes and stole secrets from people around him. He had to put everything back as fast as possible! But his legs were wobbling.
Everything was still quiet in the house, no doors had opened, and he controlled himself and got down to pick up the letters, with infinite care—he who wasn’t capable of tying his own shoelaces. It took a long time. The letters had flown everywhere—even into corners that were hard to reach, under the stairs, behind the bikes, hmm. Were they all there? Yes, he thought, taking another look around him. “Thank God!” He sighed. “Thank God!” he repeated, grasping the letters in his hand, ready to put them back. But how did it happen? At the very moment he was finally putting the letters back in the wallet, he happened to take in a sentence with a single glance. Don’t do anything more than what’s necessary. As your mother I beg you—I can’t live since . . .
Letters from the mother!
He put a hand to his face like a man about to cry. Overcome, he shoved the thousand-franc bill in between the letters, put the wallet back into the coat pocket, and tottering, went back into the study with a look of infinite scorn and pity for the image he recognized in the mirror.
“WHAT THE hell were you doing, eh?” said Maïa, seeing him come into the kitchen like a large black ghost. “Your soup will be frozen. And hey, why didn’t you get your coat off? What’s with you,” she said, seeing his look, “you got the colic?”
He stood in the middle of the kitchen, his arms limp, like he was blind.
“No.”
“Is it that business from this morning that’s bothering you?”
“The bikes? No.” He’d barely thought about that affair.
“Wait a tick and I’ll help you,” she said, getting up, “cause if I don’t get involved you’ll keep your nice coat on and get sauce on it, speaking of decorations!”
He raised his arms and let her skin him, “like a big rabbit,” Maïa said, carefully carrying the coat to the study where she hung it on the back of a chair.
“And now what’s it you need? Your jacket?”
“Yes Maïa—”
“What a layabout!” she cried with a burst of laughter. “Here, sit. Do you need me to tuck in your bib too? Like a kid!”
He let himself be pushed to the table, all the while putting on his jacket, and glancing sideways at the bottles. Was it the good wine?
“How are you doing?” he said, to say something. He looked at Amédée.
“Getting along,” the young man replied.
Cripure ate, absorbed in his food like a sulky, brooding child. Ignoring him, Maïa continued the story she’d been telling Amédée: “And so,” she said, “when Pierre came and found Louise to say that he loved her and he wanted her for a wife, it’s all right she said, but there’s one condition—my sister Ernestine lives with us. And him, he said sure, he didn’t want to separate the twins. You hear me?”
“Yes, Auntie.”
“Fine. So they married. He was an overseer at the brick factory, and the two women did sewing. They did all right. Since they had no babies, they saved and soon they got a little house, see, right next door. The best-kept house you ever saw, and happily too. But gosh that Louise! She was always teasing. ‘Can you imagine, my dear, that it took me more than a year to call Pierre by his Christian name? It’s unbelievable, dear, isn’t it? When he’d get sick, I’d ask if Monsieur needed a hot water bottle for his feet and things like that’—Are you listening?”
“I am, Auntie.”
“Only, after working for forty years at the brick factory, they tossed him out on his ass, since he was too old. And not a scrap of the pension he should of had! They only gave him a stupid medal and then some certificate—‘Would you believe that, my dear,’ Louise said to me, ‘after forty years of service, those bastards! And he cried about it, not over the money,’ she said, ‘but Pierre’s the kind who gets attached. So we put a mortgage on the house. That gives us three francs a day for the three of us,’ she said.”
“They’d better not gorge on that, Auntie, they’d better not like chicken too much. Or ever get sick.”
“Right. That means the poorhouse.”
“To croak a little faster.”
“And worse,” said Cripure. But right away he regretted speaking and bent his nose over his plate.
Maïa continued, “Louise’s a real homebody now. She won’t come out of her corner. Ernestine is the opposite—always on the go. As soon as it’s morning, the littlest ray of sun, she’s up and out.”
“And Pierre?”
“He goes out too. But they go their separate ways. He always carries his medal. About town, if anybody says ‘how does it feel to be a pensioner?’ he takes out his medal and says ‘here’s my pension!’ And he shows ’em the medal. And it’s not easy on him. Oh!” Maïa said, remembering all of a sudden, “I forgot to tell you.” She turned to Cripure.
“What, Maïa?”
“Yesterday morning, I went in, over there, as I was going by, just to say hello. Louise was all alone. ‘Come and have something, a little glass of wine.’ Me, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to upset her so I said ok, only there was no place to put the glasses. The whole table was covered with postcards. There were piles on piles, more than I ever seen. ‘You’re wondering,’ Louise said, ‘Well, I’ll explain. When you’re old, you’ve got to think of everything my dear, you’ve got to have all your affairs in order. Someday everything will get sold. The furniture, God knows, there’s nothing can be done, but the papers? I burned the letters a good while back. But the postcards! I said to myself—there are so many that we’ve got to go through them all three of us, if we want to get done. When they’re divided into hundreds, each one of us will take a pile, and God willing, when it’s winter we’ll sit around the fire and entertain ourselves by burning ’em one by one. By God we started in on ’em the other day it was so cold. I got up a big fire in the grate and we got comfortable with our postcards on our knees. At first it went fine. We laughed, my sister and me, but Pierre, he didn’t, the poor man! Sure as day the te
ars started comin’ down his face! Eh! Pierre, I said to him, what’s got into you? At first he didn’t want to say anything. Then he said, ‘It’s too painful.’ ‘Well then,’ I said to him, ‘since that’s how it is, we won’t burn ’em, Pierre.’ And since then, dearie, the cards have been on the table. No one says anything about ’em and no one can touch ’em either. I’ve got to do the burning all alone, I said to myself, and that’s what I should have done in the first place.”
•
The meal ended, the last one they would have together, him and Amédée. Once again, everything was as Cripure had predicted—all of them with a guilty unease, without acknowledging each other,without tenderness. And it was done. Nothing left for him now but to send his son to death.
A little dulled from having eaten and drunk too much, he sank heavily into his chair, his look empty, and turned to the window where, between two motionless paws, Petit-Crû’s thin snout appeared like a vision of Saint Anthony in his better days.
The Russian soldiers, in their barracks, sang together at the top of their lungs.
Amédée smoked his pipe, his elbows on the table, and chatted with Maïa. He’d removed his jacket and rolled back his shirtsleeves. Maïa got up and was rinsing the glasses, like an old servant who’d be looked down upon if she lazed about before a messy table.
Red-cheeked, her eyes wet in her greasy face that was round and soft as a cheese, she glanced from time to time at the young man, her look filled with a jolly lust that Cripure did not miss. But why not, she could sleep with Amédée, if that’s what would do it for her, yes, no doubt about it! He wouldn’t be jealous!
An odd little laugh went through him at the thought, and Amédée gave his father a questioning look, which Cripure ignored. He took his cup in his hand, and with a smile of childish sweetness that made his face seem confused and modest, he asked, “Another little cup of coffee if you don’t mind, Maïa?”
“Ha, you old wizard!” she laughed, “My God he’s never got his fill! Here,” she said, putting the coffee pot on the table. “And what do you want in your coffee, you wily old man?”
“You know exactly what I want,” he said, in the same sweet voice, like a child who’s owed a treat, “a little drop of rum.”
“A little drop! Hang on, here’s the jug.”
He poured himself some rum, dunked his lip in the cup and didn’t say anything, plunged, as he so often was, into one of those reveries Maïa no longer paid any attention to. She’d learned to respect the mysterious silences of her man, to treat him in these situations as she would have treated a sleepwalker headed toward the edge of a cliff.
The camp chorus was silent, only a lone voice, sweet and impassioned. A soldier longing for his love:
“Ya lyublyu,
Vse lyublyu”
Cripure closed his eyes.
His passiveness was incredible—what else could you call that patience? It made him crazy to think that Toinette existed somewhere, and he knew exactly where. Hadn’t he always known? She had a life, habits, her own place. People saw her and talked to her every day; every morning she went to the market. Yes, or no, had she married the other one, the blond officer? Yes, perhaps, but also perhaps not. The blond officer, whom he hadn’t dared challenge to a duel, maybe he’d gotten himself killed in Champagne or at Verdun, and maybe Toinette was now a widow?
Forgetting for once—just for a moment—his pitiful handicap, he daydreamed of disguising himself. Dressed as a laborer, he’d go back to Angers—fake beard, tinted lenses—he could see Toinette again, maybe even talk to her. The dream barely lasted a second, leaving him suffocated by rage and sadness when he remembered his feet. Two clods. And those feet? And my feet? His chin dropped to his chest in two nods.
“You’ll fall asleep,” said Amédée, still smoking his pipe.
Maïa touched a finger to the young man’s shoulder. “Let him be.” Funny old fart, thought Amédée. But he didn’t care so much, even if this was their last meal together. He shrugged. Queer old bird.
What shocked Amédée most was that they hadn’t gotten beyond formalities. They had tried—but the more familiar words had stuck in his throat. Why? There was nothing wrong with his father being an old fogey, an eccentric. He was really a good fellow. But there was nothing doing—two or even three times in the beginning they’d addressed each other as “Monsieur,” which certainly hadn’t helped matters, and since then, to avoid returning to something so painful, they’d each in turn started to come up with elaborate ways to get around the taboo words father and son. With Maïa, on the other hand, everything had been easy.
“And about that,” Maïa said, pouring herself another finger of rum, “do you think you’ll be there tomorrow? Or the next day?”
“That depends, Aunt. My regiment might be off duty or moved. Got to go to the major’s office to find out, then on foot or by a convoy to the spot for unattached soldiers. There’s one in every sector. They’ll stamp my leave papers, I’ll be squared away, and then they’ll send me to my new regiment. If my unit is sent out, I’ll have to go back to the base to get my fighting gear. That could take a few days—”
“Drop us a line.”
“Count on it.”
“It’s too bad you won’t see your mom before you head out.”
“Yep, Auntie, it’s too far. She’s at Nice for the season, you know, in a hotel. And even if I could go see her, we can’t really spend time together—she wrote me that she’s got too much work, her boss is an ass. But if I’m not killed, I’ll go on my next leave.”
Cripure didn’t seem to hear. It wasn’t the first time they’d discussed the slattern in front of him. They paid him as much attention as they would have paid a deaf man. For them, it went without saying that he remained a stranger to their conversation. They didn’t judge him, didn’t have anything against him, and had he interrupted, they would have expressed only astonishment, as they would if a Chinese person replied when they thought he didn’t understand.
His head lowered, his eyes half-closed behind his pince-nez, he looked like one of those unacknowledged wrecks you’d sometimes find in the back rooms of dirty provincial cafés.
“So it goes—she’s getting older, you know, Auntie. And what’ll she do if I’m blown to bits?”
“Can’t think about it,” said Maïa.
Hmmm, thought Cripure, she must be more beaten down, more worn and slatternly than ever, like one of those cleaning women no one looks at anymore in the street. Would I recognize her?
A slattern! How quick he was to say it! Did he really think then, that there were slatterns who were no longer human? This ugly thought succeeded in making him disgusted with himself. All the perfumes of
Arabia couldn’t sweeten this little hand! He got up wearily and, back bent, arms swinging, he dragged his feet across the cement of the kitchen, back to his study.
They followed him with their eyes. Through the glass door, they watched him drop into his chair and reach blindly behind his pile of books and papers, grabbing a white sheet of paper, starting to write—
A new note for the Chrestomathy?
•
How much he’d thought to scorn the world, how strong he’d been! But the world had gotten its revenge. Cripure realized now how easy it had been to take an adversarial position. From here on out, the pose made no sense. The human experience collapsed into suffering, into blood. And he, who had always pretended, like a nobleman, to live secluded from men and scorn them, he discovered that scorn was no longer possible, except for scorning himself.
In the obscure realm where most of his dreams played out, he searched for proof that he wasn’t entirely cut off from the group, that he could participate in the general grief flowing from everywhere like hysteria, breaking down all the doors, hitting every face, a grief to which he had only the slightest, most delicate, and certainly ridiculous connection—his bastard son Amédée.
Guilty of what? Of believing himself to be guilty—his mistake
was the depression that killed depth, a perpetual hypocrisy inseparable from greatness. Always, even in this moment, the corner of his eye was fixed on the spectacle and a wily smile appeared from beneath his anguish. But all humans want depth—not deep thoughts, but depth of being, which could be given to any old imbecile and even to the Clopper, ignorant depth and plentiful love which surpassed all insults. Toinette.
Twenty years!
In twenty years, how many days could he say were lost, taken from him, maybe, as if that were believable! Days he hadn’t put up a fight.
He got up to escape this torpor and went over to the window, lifting the curtain to look at the empty street with one big blue eye, as if he were dumb. All this . . .
In these barren days, what had still sustained him was the hope that he’d finally write his Chrestomathy, like a speech for the defense, or better yet the prosecution, where he’d spoil the ending, let slip a truth so bitter, something to poison them for a long time. Yes, yes, he’d reveal the password to a universal conspiracy, one of Punchinello’s secrets.[11]
He stretched out on the sofa.
He could certainly doze a little. There was plenty of time to put on his tailcoat, which hung from the back of a nearby chair, displaying a shimmering lining of black silk. He was about to close his eyes when he spotted the corner of an envelope sticking out of the inside pocket of the coat, a white triangle, almost glowing in the gloom. A letter? Yes, a letter he’d forgotten.
He remembered: it was a letter Noël had handed him the last time he needed to wear the coat. What was the occasion? When the Rector had come, it must have been more than two months ago. That letter—he’d accepted it with something like distaste, as always, and he stowed in his pocket unread. Later! Later! What good would it do to throw himself stupidly into something that would deceive him once again? Even in that moment, he hesitated to take it. At his age, he was unchangeable. From the depths of his Siberia, it was still possible to increase his loss—deprived of music, a lack, of love, a lack, deprived of everything—O Toinette!—not the lack and deprivation of letters, that would be too good to be true, but, what made the situation worse, letters that were nothing, as this one surely was, letters that were nothing but prospectuses or junk, the kind of letters sent by parents of his students, or from colleagues who had problems with their theses.
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