Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

  How many not even half-read letters lurked in the bottoms of his pockets or between the pages of his books! Those with some white space he filled with notes for the Chrestomathy, but more often than not, Maïa used them to light her fire. This one here would be like all the others, except for a little disappointment all the same, a little bit of curiosity quashed. He reached out an arm, took the letter: unknown handwriting, unreadable postmark. He ripped the envelope, unfolded the paper—

  One simple look—the “Ah!” of someone who has been mortally wounded, his arm dropped back to the sofa, numb and heavy. The letter slipped from him. He picked it up, as if the contact of his fingers with the paper was a signal that all ties weren’t broken, that there was still a solution.

  Certainly, not everything was greatness of mind—he’d often played with imagining Toinette aged and ugly, transformed into one of those bourgeois women all in black with a white velvet ribbon around her neck to hold up her drooping jowls. One of those women in a bonnet and wool gloves, who didn’t even have enough energy to applaud the lecturer from Annales on tour at the Municipal Theater. In his darkest hours when revenge got the best of him, he’d even played at imagining her dead. But how different this was from the blow of reality! There was no past, no future outside this sadness that seemed to have no beginning, which seemed to do nothing but open its floodgates.

  Something was stuck in his throat. He wanted to loosen his collar—his swollen fingers couldn’t grasp the button. He didn’t fight. He let his hand fall back. His mouth opened. This will pass—I only have to—he only had to make himself small, give in, let go the cord—run away. But his throat tightened again. His hands, his arms, his whole body started to tremble. It’s nothing, I’ve got to slip away, pass under it. Everything in him wanted to bow his head. I’ve run away all my life.

  But all of a sudden—he wasn’t expecting it—tears came. He felt their presence on his face before understanding they were coming. They flowed from beneath his closed eyelids, wet his face. How many years had it been since he’d cried? He’d lost the habit. He trustingly let the tears fall, but quickly they became bitter and were accompanied by little groans which surprised him, since he didn’t right away recognize them, hallucinating for a moment that these groans didn’t come from him but from some wounded person who had entered the room—Maïa or maybe Amédée? But there was no one else there.

  Next door, in the kitchen, Maïa and Amédée were talking, paying no attention to him. I’m the one sobbing—

  His sobs doubled. I mustn’t, I don’t want to! The idea that they’d hear and come in made him sit up and open his eyes. Not for the world! They won’t come, they won’t know! Not now! He well knew he’d betray himself one day, that one day, something in him would reveal it all. But not now!

  That Maïa might be jealous wasn’t an issue, of course, but she could come in, see him and judge, that thought made him tremble. His eyes watering, fully open, he stayed seated, repeating to himself, I don’t want to. And all of a sudden, he collapsed, grabbing a cushion in both hands and burying his face in it.

  Then he was free to sob as much as he liked. His huge back heaved in the murk like the carapace of an enormous turtle, and around him the little dogs growled, wanting, with their paws and snouts, to take the cushion from him. Doubtless in the kitchen they would think he was playing with them.

  He worried about the nasty side of grief—vomiting. He was afraid he’d throw up, that he’d have to call for help, and that Maïa would make fun of him with a child’s words and jibes, as she once had long ago when he’d started sniveling in front of her. He didn’t remember why. He only knew that he was capable of comedy—strange! But nothing acted alone, and the comedy of sadness was yet another sadness. But this time, no, there was, and there would be no comedy. It’s getting stronger.

  This time, his hand shook so much that the letter escaped him completely and slipped under the sofa. He felt the worst come on and prepared himself, tensing his whole body like an athlete. Wait. And definitely keep your eyes closed. Maybe at the moment he killed himself or was put to death he’d discover nothing so cruel. And killing himself was possibly easier after all—throwing himself under a train, for example, gritting his teeth, or swimming out to sea as Turnier had done. But even that thought was barely formed, and soon he didn’t formulate anything more. He had no more need for language, unless you counted the cries, but he stifled them.

  On his sofa, he was silent, heavy as a stone and slowly, he dug his nails into the goatskin. All his thoughts floundered in a pit of overwhelming light, suffocating, without compensation. Why mattered little now. And could he even understand where such a moment had come from? That somewhere he’d have his moment of recompense, as he hoped? No. Nothing. Death, which he didn’t want—

  But this wasn’t death yet. Soon, his clenched hands opened and stopped trembling. He took a deep breath and a kind of vague smile sketched itself on his face. He made a little movement with his arms like a sleeper who wakes, and the little beasts wiggled. He petted them. They wagged their tails. Mireille licked his hand.

  In the murk, only the face of the alarm clock glimmered. Cripure searched for a comfortable position on his sofa. There was nothing left in him but a great lassitude without thought, without dreams, without anything, only the feeling of no longer suffering quite so much. He finally got up with the clumsy, weighted movements of a man who has done a task that crushed him.

  He shouldered the tailcoat and tiptoed forward to the glass door. It was open a crack—he pushed it. In the kitchen, they didn’t move. Maïa was sitting beside Amédée, and his head was lowered. They weren’t saying anything to each other. At the encampment, the sad singer had stopped, and the choir had returned.

  Though he couldn’t see Amédée’s face, Cripure guessed he was crying. He retreated silently towards the door, but not fast enough to avoid hearing: “I’m sick, sick of, it’s sick—”

  “But what’s that, my poor Amédée, what’s sick?” asked Maïa.

  “It’s sick, me leaving her.”

  “Who? Your mom?”

  “Who else did you think it was?” said Amédée, raising his head. Cripure turned the doorknob, pretending he was just coming in, but he looked away. To hide his face, Amédée pretended to tie one of his shoelaces, drying, for better or worse, his face on the fabric of his pant leg.

  “There you are,” said Maïa. “Come, let’s clink. It’ll be leaving time soon.”

  He returned to his place at the table.

  “Let’s make a toast,” he said.

  They raised their glasses, drinking to Amédée’s health, to the end of this filthy war, and ate a cake that Maïa had made herself, a pound cake that was golden at the edges. Maïa dipped her cake into her glass, brought it to her lips and sucked it without biting. It made an irritating slurping between her lips. But she didn’t know any better and there had never been a parting without pound cake. A habit which must come from a long way back, from her childhood maybe, or at least her first marriage, since she had been with another husband.

  What made him think of that? Because of the cake no doubt, which must have had pride of place on Sundays and holidays in that little household of laborers. He watched Maïa dismantling it. The wench’s mouth opened to engulf the cake and a little bit of wine dribbled from her lips. Did she think of him sometimes? Why wouldn’t she? Why not, like I think of Toinette?

  Everything, after a moment, had passed as though through mist. He no longer wondered about the retreat of his sorrow. He was practically free of suffering.

  “Want another little piece?”

  Maïa, offering him an extra bit of pound cake. He took it. She was delighted he liked it so much. She offered some to Amédée too. “You won’t get cake like this out there where you’re going!”

  Why did she say that? thought Cripure. It was sad to see the two of them eating the little ends of cake. Well, and what about me then?

  When Maïa’s first
husband died, the neighbors had joked a lot. They had a tough time putting him in the ground, they said, because his cuckold’s horns didn’t fit in the coffin. What jokes would they make when it was his turn to die? But more importantly, what ugliness had surrounded Toinette’s death?

  He jumped up, putting a hand to his mouth as if something had gone down the wrong pipe. “One moment!”

  He hid in his study, closing the door behind him, and gripping the bookcase with one hand, he closed his eyes and didn’t move. I wasn’t there!

  How long did he stay like that? He didn’t lift his head until he heard them moving in the other room. They’d finished eating and drinking. It was time to go. Come on now!

  And to cover it up, in case Maïa or the other one came in, he stood before the mirror and pretended to arrange his tie.

  All dressed up. It was foreboding. And what an outfit! What a tailcoat. He wasn’t missing anything, there was even a decoration in his buttonhole. It wasn’t, thank God, that Legion of Honor which so disgusted him, which he couldn’t see on someone without wondering what evil deeds had paid for it. He was satisfied with the little purple ribbon from the academy, obtained when he was promoted into the old farts club. All the same, he was decorated. Not with a spitball—just a little drool.

  He looked at himself once more, as if he doubted that the image was really his, and he frowned. All in black! From head to toe, except for his collar, cuffs, and shirt front. I look like an undertaker—

  •

  “God’s good name! What’s he been burrowing around in now? Would you look here, Amédée? What a pig! Come here so I can brush that coat. You weren’t gonna go like that, were you, dirty as a dishrag?”

  He turned. “What’s all this about?” he asked in a sweet voice, rolling his eyes.

  “What’s the fuss! He asks! What with him all covered in hair from those blessed ungodly dogs, that Judas who’s shedding all of his fur. Come here!” She picked up a brush and brandished it. Amédée came in, his hands in his pockets.

  “Turn around!”

  Cripure arched his back to straighten out the cloth and startled, grimacing, at the first blow of the brush, harsh as a punch. Maïa grumbled. The tailcoat had fewer hairs stuck to it than the pants, but there were plenty to go around, and it was God’s thunder getting them off. Worse than anything. Got to pick them off one at a time, finger and thumb. “And when I had so much trouble makin’ him presentable this morning and just look what he does. Some schoolmaster he is.”

  “Tsk, tsk, Maïa.”

  “No ifs or buts. This is worse than the chalk.”

  “Come! Come!”

  Why did she need to bring up the chalk! He was well enough aware, without her, that the damned pack of urchins amused themselves by making big chalk marks on the back of his jacket. He was so distracted, and they were so quick! They’d drawn a cartoon of him one day; another day they’d pinned a card to his ass with a bargain price—Cripure on sale.

  “Bend over now. It’s the seat of the pants that’s the filthiest. And lift the coattails.”

  He obeyed. She did it with a good heart, Maïa! She dared them to say that she didn’t take good care of him. Everything else, but not that. They could say she was an old whore, fair enough, and why not keep at it, I’ll outlast you. But to say she didn’t know how to keep him clean, nor her house, or that her cooking wasn’t better than those who bragged to high heaven—no way! And she scrubbed and brushed, Cripure suffocating, his pince-nez dangling into emptiness at the end of their thread like a fishing line.

  He asked for mercy. “Won’t it do like that?”

  “Hang on a minute!”

  “It’s just that—all the blood’s rushing to my head, Maïa.”

  “That’ll cool off your rump. Give you some fresh ideas.” And she kept brushing. “Ok, that’s it,” she finally said. “Get yourself up.” She gave him a hearty whack on the ass, and Cripure straightened, out of breath, putting his pince-nez back on, and preening like a big rooster.

  “I’d pay two more sous for you,” she said, stepping back to admire him. She squinted, as though he were a family portrait—nice paintings shouldn’t be looked at up close.

  All of a sudden, she pursed her lips. “For God’s sake! There’s a button ready to jump right off!”

  Ah! Here we go again! “No, Maïa, no!”

  “It won’t take long.”

  “Let it go—”

  “Won’t take two minutes.”

  “But we’ll be late, Maïa.”

  “I told you it won’t be long—you’d better believe it!”

  No argument.

  The workbasket that had rolled on the ground this morning—but neither of them remembered it—was summoned as if by an enchantment into Maïa’s hands. In the blink of an eye, she pulled out thread, a needle, a thimble. She certainly kept her promise—it wasn’t long, and soon she bit off the thread between her teeth.

  “There! It’s done.”

  But then she noticed something else—his shoes.

  It was what was most noticeable about Cripure’s clothing, a real sticking point. Since she wanted them to shine! This morning, she’d spent a half-hour polishing them. But since then! The rain had tarnished them, the mud had stained them. And he’d said nothing, the idiot. What was he thinking? “You’ve got no pride. Come here! Put your foot there—”

  Why argue? He sat in a chair, and there was Maïa, shining his shoes.

  “Give me a hand, Amédée.”

  On their knees before Cripure. Each with a boot to speed things up. Since Maïa ignored Science and Industry’s progress—the luxurious polishes you put on with a strip of wool—there was nothing for her but the rough barracks polish every artilleryman smeared on his boots with the tip of a knife, and which he spat on. Maïa spat too, saying with a laugh that it was the balm of her heart. Amédée did the same.

  This way and that, they got the mud off, brushed, covered his massive boats in polish and spit, brushed, brushed again, panting like runners.

  “That’ll do,” she said, “dropping her brush. Show me your tie?” She adjusted his tie and now that she was on a roll, wanted to touch up his mustaches with the iron.

  “It’ll take just a sec—” She burned him.

  “Owww!”

  “Calm down! Beauty don’t know pain. What if you see a nice little chickie on your way?” Finally, she let him go. But! “And the errands?”

  Quick, a scrap of paper and a pencil. She had to make him a list.

  “Write down: Potatoes, red ones, not too stubbly. A pound of butter. A bottle of nice wine. That’s everything? Ok, off you go!”

  She kissed Amédée. “Watch yourself, ok!”

  “It’s the wheel of fortune, you know that, Auntie.”

  “Hang back as much as you can. Make like you’re sick.”

  “They’d shoot me, Aunt. They’re all pigs, you know.”

  Cripure lifted the curtain. It was raining for a change. Well then: the goatskin.

  BASQUIN, from behind his blinds, watched Cripure’s house. He smoked a cigarette, thinking about business.

  The camp in back, it wasn’t such a bad deal. Because of the Croats. A hundred and fifty of those scarecrows there, who let themselves get picked up at Le Havre, since the start. They were coming from America. They thought to return to their country. Those idiots, they didn’t even know France was at war! And what’s more, they’d booked passage on a French ship. Naturally, they were trapped like rats at the port. They bundled them away in a fortress for two months, then brought them to the camp. Almost all of them were big hearty fellows who had worked in the gold mines of Illinois, Alaska, Ohio, odd little spots. The interpreter said they didn’t know German but they did just fine in English. As for French, zilch. But they knew enough for Basquin’s purposes. He had understood right away they were a good thing. And he hadn’t been mistaken. On weekdays they wore work clothes, blue coveralls and vests that came right up under their arms with matchi
ng suspenders and endless numbers of pockets. For Basquin, it was astonishing, he’d never seen anything like it. And on Sunday they put on their nice suits, which cost from thirty to fifty dollars. They bought drinks for the poilus, and they weren’t cheap about it. A little while after they arrived, two representatives from the bank had come to change their American and Austrian dollars. Basquin had watched from close by, out of the corner of his eye, but still carefully. And he’d figured out the exchange rate. For twenty dollars, they gave ninety francs, for two crowns, eight francs. The Croats, who hadn’t been able to buy anything with their money before, since the French banks hadn’t changed it, had rushed over to the canteen and gotten drunk as skunks, and afterwards one of them was joking with an watchman and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder, and the poor fellow, armed to the teeth as he was, had panicked and run all the way back to the base shouting “Help! Help!”

  Basquin laughed again, thinking of it.

  Afterwards things had quieted down a bit. Some of them had found a way to get passage back to America, but most of the herd had stayed. And this was Basquin’s personal gold mine.

  He had a stake in the canteen. And then there was the whorehouse. It had gone unnoticed for the three years it had been running. What had almost put all of this in jeopardy was the arrival of the Russians. Those ones! He couldn’t make a profit off them. The fraidy-cats who didn’t want to fight anymore. So what! There was only one way to fix that! Was it our job to hold the line all alone? And while we’re at it, feed and house them? What dopes they were, no joke! What idiots! If only he’d been more of a greaser in the government, he would have put a stop to it, yes he would. The ones who yelled the loudest up against a wall, the rest in the training camps, en route for the front, and if that’s tough on you, too bad! Ah! He’d have beaten the rebellion out of them. With his rifle butt, mm-hm. Instead of that, they’d had to make room for them here, kick others out to put them up since they didn’t have enough space, basically to make a big ruckus for a bunch of backstabbers. The whorehouse had almost gone under in the takeover, and he’d been very conniving to save it, oh so tricky! In the end it wasn’t too bad. The little business had its following, but no thanks to them! Those dummies. After all, they were allowed to go around town like princes finding their own lovey-doveys here and there. They could do anything they felt like, even fuck for free. Oh, it was all terrible management. They should have given him free rein over the camp—and then, pow! First, they wouldn’t be allowed to go out. Second, they wouldn’t be allowed to howl from dawn till dusk, sitting in a circle in the courtyard. What an idea! Singing, always singing! Couldn’t they leave people in peace? Even if just for the sake of poor Cripure. Basquin was sleeping with Maïa, sure, but that wasn’t a reason Cripure should be kept awake by the Russians. A man who worked so much in his head, not to mention his hat, needed his rest. He had to understand everything, to make it accessible to everyone. And then, and then there were the rows! Those imbeciles over there weren’t always getting along. Sometimes, instead of singing, they gave each other whacks on the nose and big ones too. No, they needed a tighter rein.