Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

  “Hehehehe!”

  Was he laughing?

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I . . . No,” said Moka, turning around.

  “Hm.” Cripure frowned. “It’s no laughing matter.”

  Moka really didn’t find it funny either. He said so. Still biting his nails, he asked, “Because of the little Chinese man?”

  Cripure couldn’t remember right away what Moka was referring to.

  “Come on, don’t you remember!”

  “What Chinese man?”

  “The cane . . . the menacing little cane?”

  “Ah! Yes, yes.” But there had been a lot of other things. The affair of the bikes, the riot . . . everything, really.

  “That . . . and then, in general,” said Cripure. “I smacked him, you know, gave him a real whack, my friend! A whack . . . A first-class whack, world-class, that’s the word. Ah, ha, ha, ha!” He started to laugh softly, his stomach moving so little you could barely see, then the heaves became bigger, then it wasn’t only the stomach but the thighs, then the shoulders, until he was crazed with laughter, which Moka found contagious, doubling over, a hand on his spleen, sickened.

  When they came to their senses they didn’t dare look at each other right away—they were too ashamed.

  “Let’s get out of here, my friend,” said Cripure.

  “One moment.” They turned their backs to each other, drying their tears of laughter.

  “Wait,” said Moka, putting his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Your other second, my dear professor, we’ll find him at Madame de Villaplane’s. But before we go, if you don’t mind . . .”

  And from under the eiderdown he pulled his little dog, who had been peacefully sleeping there in the warm.

  “What am I going to do with him?”

  Of course, bringing him was out of the question. Cripure didn’t say anything. He looked at the plates one more time. They were starting to get on his nerves, those plates.

  What to do with the dog? What to do with man’s faithful little friend?

  “Ah! Goodness me!”

  Suspicious that Moka was trying to get out of it already, Cripure scowled. “What is it, my boy? Something stopping you? What is it?”

  “No . . .a difficulty . . .about the puppy.”

  Ah! That was another matter. Ah! If it had to do with the puppy, he couldn’t argue. “Ah! That’s understandable. In truth, that’s a delicate matter. Poor little fellow,” said Cripure, rubbing the dog’s head. He was thinking of his own. “What now?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” said Moka.

  “You don’t have anyone you could . . . It’s clear as day! He can’t just leave him all alone.”

  “No, there’s no one.”

  “He’s got such good eyes.”

  “Angelic,” said Moka. “Oh, I have an idea!” Moka ran to the door, bent over the banister, and shouted, “Henriette!”

  And turning to Cripure: “If she hasn’t left, I’ll leave him with her. You understand, she’s got no place to go, poor girl, so sometimes she comes to see me, and she asks permission to stay in the parlor. She spends hours there, all alone, sitting in a corner. Henriette!”

  “Yes!”

  A door slammed.

  “She’s there,” said Moka, winking at Cripure. “This’ll all work out.”

  Cripure gave him an accomplice’s smile. “You understand,” he started to say. But he was interrupted by Henriette’s arrival.

  She stayed in the doorway, not daring to enter despite Moka’s encouragement, and she shook her head, plucking at her dress.

  “Oh! What a little savage,” said Moka. “And since you wouldn’t like to come in Mademoiselle . . . since you’re so shy,” he said, delighted to be tenderly scolding her in front of Cripure, who was tortured by the idea that he was nothing more or less than a specter to this pretty young girl, and so he stayed silent.

  “Well then, my little Henriette,” Moka continued, “see here—could we put this little fellow in your care?” he asked, pointing to the dog.

  Cripure picked up the dog in his arms and held him out to her, smiling. Perhaps he’d seem less hostile that way?

  “You don’t want him anymore?” said Henriette, becoming very pale.

  Moka wanted to play a game, no doubt for purposes of flirtation. The idea came to him to pretend he didn’t want his dog.

  “That’s it, I don’t want him anymore.”

  “Is that true?” said Henriette, in a tone she might have used to ask if it was true that he was going to cut off the dog’s head.

  “Very true. Do you want him?”

  “Oh! I certainly do, but . . .” And poor Henriette melted into tears.

  “What’s this!” said Moka, hurrying over to her. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying all of a sudden?”

  He took her hands, which she let him do, very tenderly. Cripure, embarrassed and also the intruder, or at least, one person too many—when was he not one person too many?—put the dog down on the chair and went over to the window, turning his back to the younger ones. What did she have to cry about, the little one? I don’t understand anything anymore . . .

  Moka took his handkerchief out of his pocket and softly dried the tears that were flowing abundantly down Henriette’s cheeks.

  “Come now,” he said, “what’s wrong, why are you crying? Tell me.”

  “I . . . I . . . I,” said Henriette, sobbing, “I understand that it’s because . . .” Her tears fell even harder.

  “What? What’s this you understand?”

  “You . . . You . . . You’re . . .going to get married,” she said.

  Moka, taken aback, stopped drying Henriette’s tears. “Why do you say that? What an idea!”

  “Yes!”

  “But no! It’s not true, you understand! You well know it’s not. Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re giving away your dog.”

  She told a story, still crying, of how she’d seen it before. There was a man like that, whom she’d known, who also had a dog. He loved his dog very much, as much as Moka loved his own. Well, it didn’t stop him from giving it up, yes, he simply got rid of it, as soon as he had a fiancée—Monsieur’s fiancée didn’t like animals. And so . . . and so . . . there you have it.

  “But I’m telling you it’s not true.”

  “Oh! Yes it is.”

  “Why so stubborn!”

  “But I don’t want a dog. The other man, he didn’t give it to . . . to . . .” And her tears flowed once more.

  “To whom? To you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You loved him?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Let’s hurry!” said Cripure, tapping his finger on the windowsill, “let’s move along, my dear Moka! It’s getting late. If possible, let’s speed things up a bit.” What was this about? You didn’t fight a duel every day. There were perhaps more important things in the world than the nonsense between these two . . .

  “Oh, Lord!” groaned poor Moka. “Listen, Henriette—I swear in Christ’s name . . . Wait.”

  He bent down to whisper in her ear. What was he saying? She stopped crying, suddenly radiant.

  “Oh! Really?” she cried. “Oh, oh!”

  “Run along now, go! Take the dog and run along.”

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Taking the dog in her arms, she went down to the parlor.

  “There, that’s settled,” said Moka, turning toward Cripure. “We can go.”

  “Ah! At last.”

  Henriette had disappeared. Passing by the parlor, Moka opened the door. Cripure caught sight of the young girl. She was sitting on a Louis XV armchair, holding the little dog in her lap, petting it with an ecstatic smile.

  “And bring him to me tomorrow at school, at eight, ok?”

  “Oh! Yes.”

  Stranger and stranger, Cripure thought to himself, remembering the horrible hunchback with her haggard little yellow dog. Stranger and stranger! Mok
a’s house was etched in his memory between two women and two dogs, like two sentries on guard at the door. Yes, these are mysteries. All that can’t happen by chance. Funny set of signs . . .

  “Hurry, let’s go!”

  THERE was no more passionate collector of antique weaponry known to man than Monsieur Babinot. For years, he hadn’t missed a single Wednesday expedition to the auction house, to look over what was on offer in the way of sabers, pikes, old rifles and pistols. He even owned a blunderbuss. He also had a drum, which he thought had once belonged to a brigadier in the Italian Army—even better if it might have been Arcole’s drum!—and which probably came from a company of firefighters. No matter! The most beautiful piece in his collection wasn’t a rifle or a drum, but a real suit of armor, placed upright at the bottom of his stairs. The curved helmet, which the iron man held between his gauntleted hands, received the incoming mail.

  Monsieur Babinot owned such a profusion of weapons, and he liked so much to see them, that after decorating the walls of his living room, he had decorated the walls of several other rooms and the foyer. It gave his house the curious atmosphere of a museum or an antique store. But it was his pride and joy.

  All the weapons shone with grease and cleanliness. The pickiest sergeant who passed by in review would not have been able to find, even with the aid of a magnifying glass, the slightest speck of rust. It went without saying that Monsieur Babinot, when he wasn’t writing poems, spent most of his spare time taking apart his weapons, showing them off, putting them back together, checking their mechanisms, oiling them, searching, on his walls, for the spots where they would be displayed to best advantage like an amateur painter with his canvasses.

  One time in particular, unable to stop himself, he’d dressed up in the suit of armor and appeared in the middle of a dinner he was giving for some friends. People still talked about it. What he would have given to wear the suit to a ball! Unfortunately, it was too heavy, and however much he loved the Middle Ages, for a ball he wanted something more fitting, a musketeer’s outfit for example, or, the ultimate joy!—a uniform from one of Napoleon’s officers. Ah! To be able to recite one day, at a party, in that uniform, Victor Hugo’s immortal lines:

  Onward! Call in the troops!

  And lancers, grenadiers in high twill gaiters,

  Dragoons that Rome could take for legionnaires . . .

  His collection grew endlessly. If the auction house had nothing, he’d make a circuit of the antiques fair, making a point to visit the second-hand stalls. Those poor fellows understood so little that you could sometimes get magnificent pieces for the price of a heel of bread. He’d found poisoned arrows a sailor had brought back from Africa and sold, an Australian boomerang, a little Venetian dagger, a beauty, made more for the hand of a woman than a warlord. Monsieur Babinot used it to cut the pages of the Revue des Deux Mondes.

  Like any true collector, Monsieur Babinot was a man plagued with want in the midst of a treasure trove. He was missing the unique artifact, the object of his dearest dreams, the unfindable rarity. He had told himself many times that this object wouldn’t be found at the market, that these kinds of things didn’t belong to private individuals, but this reasoning was powerless—and he invented a thousand arguments for why it wasn’t crazy to believe that one day he’d put his hands on it.

  History could give all the details of what happened in war, but it couldn’t tell everything, for the simple reason that it couldn’t know everything. In the course of numberless battles fought between the French and the Germans over the years, how many flags had they torn from each other! People knew approximately which ones and in what circumstances. Approximately: that approximately was where he based all his hopes.

  It wasn’t impossible that one day, a little kid from our side had taken the enemy flag, that he’d hidden that flag inside his jacket, and there . . . but there Monsieur Babinot, in order to keep hoping, had to undertake a violent conflict with himself. What would he have done, in the place of that little French boy? Duty demanded that he bring the flag to the colonel, so that the glory of the capture could shower the whole regiment. But modesty could also counsel silence, modesty or passion, both against the rules, of course, but how noble! There was also chance, fatality, like in railway accidents. And finally, finally, the war was over, the kid sent home with one leg fewer, an eye smashed in, bullets everywhere, his stomach hollowed, but a flower in his teeth and his trophy in his pouch. He lovingly guarded the trophy all his life, and upon his death he consigned it, weeping, to his children assembled around his deathbed, like the farmer in the fable. Disasters followed. The children, to whom the heroic father had left only this treasured flag but no fields to till, were reduced to the deepest poverty. Once the children scattered, the flag fell into the hands of some ignoramus who sold it. And that’s how, one day, with luck on his side and God willing, Babinot would get his mitts on an Imperial standard. Ah! God willing, on that day, the larger-than-life copy of Detaille’s The Dream, which occupied a whole panel, would move elsewhere. Or maybe not, he’d switch its placement, but it was there, in the spot now occupied by The Dream, that he’d put the eagle ripped from the hands of the Teutons, like you stick an owl, to protect against evil, over a door. What an impression that would make! People would talk, his house would become famous. He’d give a speech for the Society of Inscriptions and Fancy Calligraphy. Researchers and curious people would write to him. He’d give his life to piecing together the history of the trophy and publishing a monograph.

  But since he hadn’t yet gotten his hands on an imperial standard, it was once again the Dream, the armor, the sabers, the pikes and the stakes, the blunderbuss and the drum, which greeted Nabucet’s eyes as soon as the maid ushered him into the foyer. Everything wrapped in the good smell of cooking and polish.

  What a lovely contrast, what delightful opposition, what charming juxtaposition was created, in the middle of the pistols and pikes, this grand scene, that tomb-like armor, by the pink and white complexion of the little maid! Oh how these military trophies made her sweet, virgin’s look more precious than ever, her forehead resplendent with innocence, that young breast he couldn’t begin to imagine! What delicate hips, like one of Jean Goujon’s sculptures, far superior to anything antique!

  The little maid backed away fearfully, looked for a doorway to escape. The bearded villain! How she hated him! How he frightened her. How wicked he seemed!

  “Hello, my child, hello! I hope Monsieur Babinot is home. Tell me my dear child?”

  “Yes, Monsieur . . .”

  How her voice shook!

  Cute enough to nibble, he thought, taking off his raincoat with a disinterested air. Delicious. A fearful porcelain look beneath smooth black hair. What white skin! Not sixteen yet, I’m sure of it . . .

  He handed her his raincoat and hat with a look that made her blush to the neck.

  “Excuse me,” he said in his most caressing voice. She took the garments without saying anything and hung them on the coat rack. “Thank you, my child. It doesn’t offend you that I call you ‘my child’? You’re so young! You haven’t been in town long, is that right?”

  She nodded her head.

  “There! You must be quite careful,” murmured Nabucet, in a fake-scolding voice, waggling his finger under the little maid’s nose. “Very, very careful! Town is the downfall of pretty girls.”

  She looked down and started twisting the strings of her apron. What an evil gentleman he was! He came nearer himself.

  “Oh!”

  “You don’t ever go to the movies?”

  “. . .”

  “You never go out at all?”

  “. . .”

  He whispered in her ear, “Not a little boyfriend somewhere, eh? Pretty! A little sweetheart, who puts an arm around your waist like this . . .eh? Who touches . . .”

  “Let go of me.”

  “Come, come, come! You didn’t understand me at all. You can’t be a prude, can you, with a little face like
that, with eyes like that, eh? How is he, your little boyfriend? He’s brown-haired, isn’t he, a dark-haired one?”

  The little maid backed away to the foot of the stairs.

  “Oh you’re a brat! Go on then, Mademoiselle. Show me in, since you scorn my advice. Let’s go up!”

  So he could pinch her ass as he followed her upstairs like the last time? She didn’t move.

  “Show me up.”

  She rushed away, ran straight up the stairs in one go, to the second floor where Babinot’s office was, and knocked on the door as if there were a fire.

  It was so quick that Nabucet barely had the chance to glimpse a bit of calf.

  What a brat, he thought, astonishing for a welfare child. He asked himself where she’d learned to be so prickly? Not on the farm where she was brought up, that was for sure!

  He prepared a death glare for the moment when they’d cross on the staircase, a look that would tell her she didn’t need to put on airs with him, in her situation! What were the Babinots paying her? Thirty francs a month?

  But the clever girl escaped him. As soon as Babinot opened the study door, she sprinted up to the third floor instead of going back down.

  •

  More weapons! They’d be hanging from the ceiling before too long. At the top of an assortment, pinned to red cloth, swords and sabers crossed over a pointed helmet, among a bunch of pistols. Here and there, portraits of Generals that L’Illustration had published, Scott’s drawings—an alpine hunter kissing an Alsatian girl. Of course there were postcards from the front, pinned with little flags. And on the mantel, between two shiny shell casings, Joan of Arc and her standard beneath a glass dome. A military-issue revolver served as a paperweight for Babinot, whom Nabucet found in a policeman’s cap and an old infantryman’s cloak, worn like a bathrobe. A fresh bandage wrapped around his head. He was in slippers and holding, between his fat fingers, a cheap, shoddy fountain pen. A drop of ink escaped from the pen’s tip and sank into the parquet.

  Delighted that Nabucet had surprised him in costume, Babinot stuck the pen behind his ear and jokingly saluted.

  “At ease, at ease!” Nabucet commanded, extending his elegant hand. And Babinot shook it for a long time, bursting into his nasal laugh.