He went on like that for a while.
Of course, beyond this psychology, born from it, there had been great hours of idealism mixed with unconditional love, but his feeling was above all that man was abandoned in an agonized world. Since, in the end, he always found the same anguished beating of the heart in each person’s chest, the same horror of death, not only for himself, but for his love—to be separated!—what else was there to do but hold out your arms, if not to a God that he no longer believed in (or thought he no longer believed in) than to a brother who was just as unhappy as you were? He’d tried a few times, discovering to his amazement that his own unhappiness diminished at the knowledge that he wasn’t suffering alone, that he could share it with others. But they weren’t the least bit interested! And yet more mysterious: though they could also sense it—to a greater or lesser degree—it didn’t matter to them, they continued to act as though everything was normal, as if the secret were foreign to them. For the same reason Cripure thought of the mystery of this language and its infallible transmission, his instinctive conviction was that no one—from the dumbest idiot to the greatest genius—was entirely deaf to it. That painful beating of the heart, he was sure that everyone in the world felt its presence, guessed its meaning. But then, how could the cradle of that suffering produce so much hate, and not only hate but idiocy, how could it create not only the war, but also the platitudes of these gentlemen, especially Babinot, even though Babinot had a certain grandeur to his madness like the Clopper? Since they didn’t know how to question these Punchinello’s secrets they all wore around their necks like medals, how, how could they stand it, not to live, but to live like that? With that leaden anchor in the bottoms of their hearts, how could they be so dry and hard, sending their sons to the charnel house, their daughters to the brothel, renouncing their fathers, cursing at their wives who, at the same time, were manipulating them—an unending battle—chipping away at the wages of the maid who went out too much, was too “pretentious,” all the while thinking about the progress of the fiscal year and the next funny film they’d go see at the Palace, if they could get free tickets? And then many other things, since this was only the surface level, and underneath was that suffering which Cripure wanted everyone to have in common, they had ideas, they wanted things. There was no hope. To love them? Ah, God no! To love them, that would mean Nabucet and the little Chinese man could join in the bottom of his heart in the same forgiveness. No, no, and no! Since he had to admit it: these idealist daydreams always lent themselves fatefully to forgiveness. Nabucet was forgiven, and his sinister little cane was redrawn as the instrument of divine anger or justice, an ominous sign of shared unhappiness, and therefore exempt from disdain and revenge.
“But once again, no! I don’t want to forgive!”
And he walked heavily towards the door. Moka watched him leave without a word. Just before closing the door behind him, Cripure had a moment of hesitation and turned back.
“Excuse me,” he said, vanishing from sight.
•
Having closed the door behind him, with care and an escapee’s smile, he felt an attack of vertigo, like a blow, and lifting his hand to his forehead he leaned against the doorframe, with the look of a hunted man.
He stayed like that for a long time, then he let fall his arm and stared in front of him, fascinated, like someone who perceives a monster. Nothing there but the spacious opening of a stairwell, a wall, green and rotting, a skylight the rain had battered. Familiar surroundings. Familiar smells, too—of furniture polish and mold, a known silence, nothing out of the ordinary.
Suddenly the silence was troubled. Doors slammed, voices came to him, still far away. There was a burst—a loud racket of feet on wood like a dull drum roll. It was the others leaving, the party had ended, running along the muffled corridors like big rats, circling Babinot, who he heard whining, “Nah, nah, I told him, let’s not unbuckle our armor!”
Cripure tore himself from the door, quickly going down the iron-rung staircase, his hand dragging along the railing. On his way! But it was only as a memory of himself, as if he were a character he’d once known and loved to whom he had given a task, a mission he hadn’t dreamed of accomplishing except through a feeling of loyalty and honor, since love was dead.
“The spell is broken,” he murmured. And, not really knowing why, “Crybaby!” he scolded himself, “crybaby!”
He passed by the concierge’s lodge without seeing anything, passed through the door and the grate, finally found himself outside, astray, as if the view of the town had ceased to be recognizable. Where had he gotten to? What new discovery had he made in his sorrow? After pausing a long moment, he shook from head to toe, his jaw clenched, his eyelids trembling, and, moving his cane like a officer’s sword, “advance!” he murmured, wrenching himself off the stone of the sidewalk. He lurched forward in one movement.
Never had his leaden feet been so agile, his face more open, his chin more thrust out, his eyes heavier, his lip more tremulous—never had his cane battered so furiously the air around his calves.
IF MOKA’S hobby was decorating plates with stamps, Glâtre’s less innocent one was to cut out images from fashion catalogs that he picked up or sent for, and from magazines like La Vie parisienne, which the waiter in Café Machin saved for him from time to time. He glued the images into magnificently bound albums, bought on sight and for next to nothing at the auction house. They told him they came from a poor curate who had died not long before. There were at least twelve of them. But out of the ten he bought, barely four of them had been filled, since the curate had died a bit too soon. It must be said, in the curate’s defense, that if he’d been struck by the same scrapbook disease Glâtre had, the subjects he’d chosen from newspapers and magazines had nothing in common with the ones Glâtre found so seductive. The lovely gold letters which adorned the luxurious bindings declared nothing more than Picturesque Family Scenes, Military Themes, and Comics—containing all the caricatures which the holy man had been able to get his hands on, in the course of however many solitary years which, apart from this little hobby, were entirely given over to worshipping God. Glâtre had patiently peeled off the pious priest’s pictures to glue in his own, delighted with the irony that the gold titles were labeled as such, delighted also that he’d created a little profanation, since he didn’t hesitate to spend whole hours looking for ways to glue his images into the most extravagantly erotic scenes possible. This was how he made up for the bitterness of never being able to set foot in the biggest Paris brothels (too expensive), which, along with his hope to smoke opium at least once, and his wish to assist at the closed trial for a sex crime (if possible: the rape of a young girl) constituted more or less the essential things he wanted in life.
Pausing in the middle of the staircase, his hat over his ear, busy rolling a cigarette, he was dreaming of the long chunk of scrapbooking he had to look forward to at home, when, hearing Moka, he turned:
“Hey! We looked for you everywhere. Where were you hiding out?”
“Oh, my friend, I beg you, leave me alone. Please!”
“Hey, hey, hey . . . here’s something new. Monsieur is in a bad mood? What happened to you, princeling?”
“Leave me alone . . .”
“But,” Glâtre cried, “you’re not even being polite. Oh! Go on, friend, run along, go, trot! I’ll tell you my impressions some other time. I hope it won’t be too late.”
Moka stopped.
“What impressions?”
“Go on, go on, don’t be long.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Go . . . it can wait until tomorrow. You’ll be in a better mood then, I hope. Don’t worry about it . . .”
“But come on, what’s it about?”
“Your museum, my friend,” Glâtre replied, joining him at the foot of the stairs. “This will interest you a little, I think?”
“My museum?”
“Come on. Where’s your head? Yes. Your mus
eum . . .”
“But, Glâtre, it’s not my museum. It was your idea, you know. We should say your museum. Anyway, it’s all the same!” Moka shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, cracked his knuckles. “What do you have to say to me about the museum? Hurry up, hurry up. This is no day to . . .”
“Some kind of fly bite you too?”
“Fly?”
“Ok, what is it, what’s gotten into you? If you’re in a rush, once again, run along. This can wait.”
“No, tell me.”
“Oh, careful now! I’ll tell you if I want to. No, but my dear Moka, have a care for your manners with those who are thinking about what’s best for you, who look after your soul . . . You’re becoming disrespectful. Enough, enough, I forgive you. Listen, I’ve thought a lot about this: what’s the point of this museum?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” scolded Moka. “Are you keeping me hanging here to ask questions like that? You’re playing with me, my friend! Come on, we’ve talked for more than eight hours about the museum. The point is clear, it seems to me.”
“Say it anyway.”
“No.”
“Ah! Well then, goodbye.”
“But come now, Glâtre . . .”
“No, no, no, no.” Glâtre advanced resolutely toward the door. Moka joined him.
“Come now, my friend, the point is to serve the country . . . do I really need to say it?”
“Ah!” said Glâtre. “In the end, you make up your mind. But that’s exactly the question, my friend, that’s just what the problem is.” He stared Moka straight in the eye: “You can’t see farther than the end of your nose. If I wasn’t here to enlighten you, I don’t know what would happen to you, my poor boy . . .you want to serve your country, but in what way? A war museum! Which is to say you want to encourage naive young people to enlist, meaning, Moka, to encourage them to die. Hush! Let’s be quiet!” said Glâtre—and his two hands joined together like a preacher’s—“Let us not speak of it, Moka. For the peace of your soul, I forbid you to work on this museum. I’ll take care of it myself. It’s a task fit for a miscreant like myself, nonbeliever and patriot. But you! I don’t want you to have a single one of those young men’s deaths on your conscience. You couldn’t handle it, you’d go crazy . . .”
“Crazy?”
“Yes. Crazy. And so, Moka, God, what does he do with crazies in the afterlife? No, no, dear friend, for you, God comes before country. Don’t forget that, you pious idiot!”
“God?”
“Yes, God. Don’t you get it?”
“As if there was a God!” Moka cried. “Ah! ah ah . . . no, dear friend, no, go peddle that to other people. Not to me!”
Glâtre’s jaw dropped so far that his cigarette fell. He just barely caught it against his stomach, in a rain of sparks. “That’s new . . .very new . . .what happened?”
“Leave me alone for God’s sake!” Moka cried in a shrill voice. “Leave me alone in the name of God, or you’d better watch out!” He went into Noël’s lodge, where, without a word to anyone, not even to poor George, stretched out in his chair, he untied his dog. He ran out, grumbling.
“What’s with him?” Noël asked. “Is he sick or what?”
Glâtre relit his cigarette. “Dunno . . . blind belief.”
“Or maybe . . . champagne?”
“Ah! Perhaps.”
He might have had a few too many. And since he was never all that sensible . . .
“No big deal,” said Glâtre, throwing away his match. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
And he calmly went down the steps.
Ah! If he had to go through all that every time Moka lost his faith it would go on forever. One day yes, the next, no. He didn’t know what Moka wanted. It would end badly—he’d really turn loony.
Five o’clock: the streets were coming to life a little. Soldiers were wandering around, Sammies, Italians, artillerymen with heavy gaiters, little Vietnamese with flat feet, shrill as parakeets, herculean Senegalese, shivering and wide-eyed, walking in pairs, linked together by their pinky fingers, Arabs employed at the powder factory, yellow as lemons, tubercular, half-crazed with nostalgia and proud to the point of throwing in your face the box of cigarettes you offered out of patriotism.
Glâtre was watching the women. On the whole he wasn’t unhappy with his afternoon. Everything had been pleasant, and he’d eaten and drunk so much that there was no point in going to the pension for dinner. He always did that to save money. If he got hungry in the evening, he’d make himself a nice hot chocolate on his burner and that would be that.
That Moka! He was annoyed all the same. What a pity! They could have had a good laugh. Maybe it would be better tomorrow. Maybe Moka would still turn up his snout at him, like he had after that brothel business. He’d tried one day to invite him “au voyage” as a surprise—where there were so many lovely girls now, at least three times as many since the war began. The attempt had failed.
•
In front of him, a young woman who seemed poor was wandering about. She wore a long gray dress that fell all the way to her heels and a fitted, multicolored jacket. There were as many colors as there were pieces. Her little black straw hat was decorated with a green ribbon. She held a basket in her hand, and when she thought no one was looking, she gathered whatever she could find: little bits of wood, shoelace ends, paper. From time to time, she exchanged a few words with a passerby before retreating, loitering in front of store windows: candy stores, mainly, and dress shops. There’s Henriette making her rounds, thought Glâtre. He wondered if he would approach her.
Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time. She was dumb, and dirty, but no uglier than the next girl. He should really bring her home with him sometime. It would be even funnier because the poor little idiot, he knew, had a crush on Moka.
He went over to her: “Good evening, Mademoiselle Henriette.”
“Oh! Good evening, sir,” said the young woman, holding out her little round hand. He held it in his for a while.
“You’re taking a walk?” she said.
“Yes. And yourself?”
“I’m looking in the stores. It’s pretty isn’t it? Oh! They’re full of beautiful things. But all that’s for the rich folks.”
“You’re not poor.”
“Oh! But I am . . . Mama is rich, but she’s stingy. She doesn’t do anything with it,” said Henriette. “She’s afraid of dying.”
“Is she sick?”
“No.”
He took her arm. “Would you like to walk a little with me?”
“Sure.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Me? No. I have a bad temper, you know.”
“Is it your mother who says that?”
“Papa too.”
“They don’t know what they’re saying.”
“They do. But they’re sad.”
“Why, you’re wearing face powder,” cried Glâtre.
“Oh! It’s nothing.” She quickly rubbed her cheeks.
“Coquette!”
“No, no, no, it’s nothing.”
“Do you want to sing?”
“A little love song?”
“Yes.”
“Or a hymn?”
“I like love songs better.”
“No. Better be the hymn.”
In a frail little voice, a child’s voice, she started to warble a hymn:
“In heaven, heaven, heaven
I’ll go see her one day
I’ll see my mother Mary . . .”
“You started too high.”
“Yes. I don’t know how to sing.”
“What did you eat today? Rice?”
“Oh, no! We don’t eat rice in our house. Papa likes it too much.”
“And what did you find in the streets?”
“Shoelace ends.”
“No wood?”
“A little.”
Glâtre bent down to Henriette’s ear, so close that the end of his nose ruffled the young woman’s
pretty black hair. He whispered, “Someone told me you were getting married?”
“Oh!” she cried, beaming, “someone serious said that to you?”
“A priest.”
“His confessor?”
“No.”
“Do you know his confessor?”
“No.”
“And my fiancé?”
“A little.”
“He’s very pious,” she said. “He kisses the priest’s ring, but he’s shy. He holds back. And me, I don’t know how to say it. That’s too bad, isn’t it? But if we got married, though . . . I know how to do everything, it’s true, except for cooking. It seems like he doesn’t know how to manage a budget? We’ll go well together.”
“Have you known him for a long time?”
“More than a year. Since the day he picked up my umbrella at church.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s it?”
“He’s shy. But it depends on the day. Sometimes he jumps. Like this!” and she did a little caper on the sidewalk. “And other times,” she continued, “he talks! He talks! He gives me a headache.”
“But then . . .where do you see him?”
“At his place,” she said.
“His place?”
“I have a key. I go whenever I want. Usually in the evenings. Papa and Mama go out when it gets dark. That way, they don’t need to burn the lamp. So I go out too.”
“And where do they go?”
“For a walk. Picking up what they find.”
“Wood?”
“All kinds of things.”
“And your . . . fiancé, he’s never kissed you or anything?”
“Oh no!”
His arm circled her waist. “Do you like it when people kiss you?”
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