“No, alas. I’m not crazy for the absolute like that Turnier, whose ghost hasn’t decided to appear . . .”
Bit by bit, his voice returned to its normal tone. The usual Kaminsky came back.
“It’s true that . . . I’m not Mercédès,” said Simone, still with the same smile. “I won’t abandon you.”
Marcelle and Francis, embarrassed by this exchange, were happy with a direction that would let them reenter the discussion.
“Don’t forget that they conspired against him,” said Francis. “Mercédès was whisked away.”
“What do you mean whisked away?” asked Marcelle, in a particularly sugary voice, implying that if she had been in Mercédès’s place, she wouldn’t have let it happen. She stubbed out her cigarette butt in her saucer and brought her hands together under her chin.
“Popped straight into a car and from the car onto a train,” Kaminsky replied.
Marcelle replied, “That’s the plot of a bad movie. Nowhere but in bad movies do families dare to whisk away young women in love like that.” She gave a tiny shrug.
“Are you condemning Mercédès, Marcelle?”
“Yes.”
“And you Simone?”
“You have to ask?”
“Our young student, do you condemn her too?”
Francis condemned her too. In his view, the two lovers should have run away together as soon as they realized their love. Anyway, they were to be pitied.
“Pity?”
“Yes, pity.”
Kaminsky turned toward the empty chair. “My friends, it was here that Turnier lived his last hours. It was this very armchair where he sat, biting his fists, I imagine, while he waited again for Mercédès, the second day. I propose, whatever your feelings about him and about Mercédès, we drink a toast to his memory, since we are all his comrades.”
He lifted his glass first, holding it between his fingers, and the others followed.
“To unhappy lovers,” he said, formal and grand.
“In that case,” said Francis, “we must also drink to Monsieur Trémintin.”
“To Monsieur Trémintin,” said Kaminsky.
“And to Cripure . . .”
“To Cripure!”
They clinked their glasses.
After emptying his, Kaminsky, without sitting back down, continued:
“Do you know what I think? Well then,” he said, “oh! Of course, I don’t want to give a lecture, but in the general way, in the social structure, psychologically, well then, we find ourselves right smack in the middle of imperial Russia, my friends. Your Christian petty bourgeoisie, it’s the bourgeoisie of Tolstoy. And your peasants are real serfs. Yes, I’m serious. Believe me,” he went on, “the finest characters, in, for example, Chekhov—I’ve run into them here trait by trait, minus the samovar.” He stopped, his tone closer to anger than irony, then went on:
“A great Russian writer devoted a whole book to the portrait of a man who spits in the curtains because he’s bored.”
“Oh!” Simone cried, “my father doesn’t spit in the curtains. He’s too busy stealing from other people for that. But as soon as he gets the chance, he writes anonymous letters and cuts up borrowed books.”
“Not bad,” said Kaminsky. He continued, “all the same, they’re missing that streak of madness that possesses even Gogol’s vilest characters, and which always stopped me from totally scorning those individuals. I understand Gogol and the others better since the Bolsheviks won. The revolution ripped off all the covers and brought everything to light. Hmm . . . Yes, this could be Minsk, or Rostov, or Novgorod, or Yaroslav. You understand that we have our pick. The houses would be wooden instead of stone, and there would be domes with a few orthodox crosses. But you also have quite a few churches and quite a few convents. Yes, Minsk, that’s to say . . .” And he stopped with his mouth wide open—Cripure and Moka were standing in the doorway.
“Fascinating! What you say is extremely relevant. And so, for you, the connection . . .” and Cripure closed his eyes, lifted his pince-nez, and passed his index finger slowly over each eyelid, without letting go of his cane all the while. “The similarity,” he continued, “is so absolute . . .yes, yes.” And he put his pince-nez back in place, murmuring, “their souls are dead.” And he was quiet.
A bitter wrinkle curled his lip.
Everyone was standing.
“Monsieur Merlin!”
They hadn’t seen him come in. He stayed there for a moment, and Moka, at his side in his nice suit, a white flower in his buttonhole, had the air of an impresario about to present his troupe’s best number to the public. He didn’t give Cripure his arm (impossible because of the grocery bag he was still carrying) but, in a delicate gesture, he took his elbow, and holding out his hat as if begging, the red forelock more vivid than ever on his chalky forehead, he smiled at each one in turn, as if to say that they hadn’t seen anything yet, and that this was just the beginning.
“Excuse me,” said Cripure.
“Excuse us,” said Moka.
“We didn’t dare to interrupt you. And what you were saying just then—it was a revelation for me, you understand . . .” He played with his pince-nez again.
“The business which brings us here,” Moka said. “Yes, yes, that will suffer no delays.” “And,” said Moka, “there was no one to announce us. There you have it. We barged in.”
“We’re looking for a Monsieur Bourcier.”
Kaminsky decided to leave the table. He went over to Cripure, his hand held out. “But come, you are welcome here. You are my guests, gentlemen.” He looked inquiringly at Moka. “Monsieur?”
Moka bowed. “They call me Moka.” No use pining after lost time!
“Monsieur Moka,” said Kaminsky, “would you please accept . . . and you Monsieur Merlin . . .whatever the importance of the business that brings you here, you must certainly have a few minutes and wouldn’t refuse to sit down with us? It’s a farewell party . . .”
“A strange coincidence,” muttered Cripure.
“Shall we accept?” said Moka.
“But come, my boy! An invitation made with such good will, isn’t it? Let us sit. I . . . permit me only,” he said turning to Kaminsky, “to put down these . . .”
He held up his cane and his grocery bag.
“Right away!” said Moka, taking them out of his hands.
He put them down on a side table, along with the little cloth hat that it had just occurred to Cripure to remove.
“Have a seat,” said Kaminsky, pointing to the armchair that was still empty, since Monsieur Trémintin hadn’t decided to turn up, and since Turnier’s ghost had wisely remained invisible. “That seat has been waiting for you,” he said, sending Simone a conspiratorial look.
“If I understood you right, you’ve lived in Russia?”
Moka pulled his sleeve. “Let’s speak first about our business.”
“In just a moment, my friend, just a moment . . .”
“Until the revolution,” Kaminsky replied, filling two champagne glasses himself, and holding them out, “I was a Russian subject. I completed all my studies at Varsovie. I traveled widely in Russia, and for two years I lived in St. Petersburg.”
He spoke standing up, a glass of champagne in his hand. Something in Cripure’s look seemed to fixate on Kaminsky. He burst out laughing, in a way that made everyone jump. It was a short laugh, sharp, which stopped all of a sudden, as if chopped off. Cripure settled into his chair, sagging, his vague hands on the edge of the table, head slumped into his shoulders, as if he had fallen into one of his singular trances which sometimes lasted so long. Kaminsky looked around the table, a look full of questions to which the others replied with wide eyes, doubtfully biting their lips. Moka alone winked at Kaminsky, as if to say that Cripure’s reverie wasn’t important, that he knew all about it, that he knew what was going on under there, and that in any case it wasn’t serious. Try as he might to communicate through gestures the reason they had come, it
was impossible to guess what he wanted to say with his manner of holding out an arm or sticking his fist beneath one eye and pointing his index finger.
What was up with him? All his miming strangely resembled the gestures of children hooting during a game.
Cripure shook himself like a fat dog who’s just woken, and got to his feet, saying, “Let us drink while we may!”
They all stood and clinked their glasses.
“Let us drink,” said Cripure again, “for tomorrow may be too late. At last, Messieurs, and you, Mademoiselles, it is time I told you the reason for our visit. Tomorrow, we’re fighting a duel,” he said, raising his glass.
And Moka, who had been waiting only for this moment, got up and made a grand gesture, his glass in one hand and his hat, which had been on his lap, in the other. And as if he’d worried they would doubt what Cripure was saying, “It’s the complete truth,” Moka said. “We have a duel on our hands.”
They looked at each other. A duel! It was unbelievable!
“A duel!”
“An affair of honor,” said Cripure.
“A real duel?” asked Simone.
“Mademoiselle, how can you ask!” cried Cripure. “Of course it is. A duel . . .yes, a real duel.”
Kaminsky himself was shocked. Which one of them had to fight? Since when it came down to it . . .
“But which one of you?” he asked. “Is it you, Monsieur Moka?”
Cripure waggled his finger. “By no means.” And he pointed to himself. “It’s on my honor.”
The whole group was silent. Cripure broke the quiet to specify, “A duel with pistols.”
“At twenty paces,” said Moka. He was repeating what Cripure had told him on the way over. “I’m Monsieur Merlin’s witness. And we came to find a second witness, Lucien Bourcier. And Monsieur Bourcier is a friend,” he said, waving. “Do you know him?”
“Do you know him?” said Cripure.
“Do we know him?” asked Kaminsky, coming to, and discovering with joy the vaudevillian aspects of the situation. “Yes, we know him. He’s the young man who arrived this morning, and who, it seems to me, hasn’t gone out since.” He clapped his hands. “Ernestine!”
Ernestine appeared.
“Monsieur?”
“Your new boarder, Ernestine?”
“He’s in his room, sir.”
“Bono, bono,” said Cripure.
“If you please,” said Moka, “Would you please, Mademoiselle, tell him that he is needed below? It’s on behalf of Monsieur Merlin . . . It’s very important. Tell him . . . tell him it’s about a . . . No, don’t tell him anything. I’ll go myself. The way, if you please?” He looked at Cripure and winked. “I’ll have him convinced in two minutes.”
“Second!” said Cripure, with a slow movement of his arms, “Do your duty!”
FOR THE whole day, Lucien Bourcier hadn’t left the boardinghouse. He’d stayed in his room, sometimes pacing, sometimes lying down on his bed. At noon, he’d gone down to the dining room and found himself alone, Madame de Villaplane having decided to eat in her room. And once lunch was over, he’d gone back upstairs.
What else could he do? He’d learned to control his impatiences, large and small.
He was writing when Moka knocked.
“Come in!”
And stunned, he saw the tutor enter.
“How the devil . . .” said Lucien, getting up.
“Hush!” said Moka. “Excuse me, my friend. When you know what brings me here . . . ay!”
And mysteriously, he placed a finger to his lips.
“But how on earth did you find me here?”
“Very simple—Francis Montfort told me.”
After all, Lucien hadn’t sworn Francis to secrecy.
“You’re here on behalf of my father?”
“No.”
“Ah! Very well then.”
He offered Moka a chair, but he refused. “No, no, my friend, it’s not about sitting, it’s not about . . .well, it’s not a social visit. I came to ask you to do a great service, not for me, but for one of our mutual friends, a great friend.”
“Tell me.”
“You can’t guess who?”
“Tell me!”
“Cripure!”
Moka held himself very straight in the middle of the room and spoke with an odd lack of gestures, his hands linked over his stomach, his hat under his arm. He looked straight into Lucien’s eyes, which darkened at the mention of Cripure.
“What does he want with me?”
“He wants . . . that’s to say . . . He has to fight a duel, you see!”
Moka lifted his arms and the hat fell to the floor. He picked it up.
“What do you mean?” said Lucien. “Is this a joke?” Cripure, fighting a duel? Had the poor old man gone crazy? “You can’t be serious?”
“I didn’t believe it either,” Moka replied, “but alas . . .”
“A duel! Against whom?”
“Nabucet. He slapped him.”
“Slapped? Why?”
“It was a . . . universal slap, Cripure told me. When it comes down to it, he hit him. At the train station. Oh, it’s been building for a while, this business. For a long time, Cripure and Nabucet . . .”
“But come on, it’s idiotic. It’s completely stupid. We can’t let them do this. It’s . . .grotesque.”
“He’s asking if you’ll be his second.”
“Me?”
“With me. You won’t refuse?”
“Of course not.” Too bad, he’d delay his departure if it came to that, but he couldn’t deny Cripure this service.
“Bravo. He’s downstairs, you know.”
“Cripure?”
“Yes, with a bunch of other people. Montfort. A certain Monsieur Kaminsky, two young girls . . .”
“What do all these people have to do with the duel?”
“Nothing . . . But they invited us to join their little party and we accepted.”
“In what senseless world . . .”
They scrambled down the stairs as fast as they could.
•
Downstairs, around the table, they seemed to be occupied with other matters than the duel. Kaminsky, in finer form than ever, fiendishly excited by Cripure’s presence, offered yet another toast, and Cripure, standing, held his glass towards Simone’s.
Moka and Lucien’s appearance didn’t seem to bother them.
“Just as you were arriving, or perhaps a little before,” Kaminsky was saying, “we were talking about Turnier. You’re aware, of course, my dear sir, that this was where he lived.”
“But how can you ask!” cried Cripure. “They should really put a marble plaque up, don’t you think, to teach future generations how to die for a woman!” He burst into laughter. “Ah! Ha! Poor, poor man!”
“And so, in your opinion, he was a wronged man?”
“A very wronged man, Mademoiselle,” replied Cripure, turning toward Simone.
“And Mercédès?”
“Mercédès?” Cripure dreamily replied, all traces of a smile vanishing from his lips, “oh! Mercédès—that’s another thing.”
“Should we also drink to Mercédès?” asked Kaminsky.
Cripure didn’t answer the question. He murmured again, “Mercédès . . .”
He raised his head and everyone could see that his eyes were full of tears.
Kaminsky watched him out of the corner of his eye. Lucien, standing next to Moka, didn’t dare come forward. The two young women exchanged a look. Cripure put back his glass without sipping it. He sat down.
“Mercédès refused,” he said, in a sullen voice. “But why are we talking about Mercédès again? This morning already . . . Leave it! Let’s forget it.”
And he slumped brokenly into his chair.
Moka bounded over to him, bent down and whispered in his ear, “He accepts.”
“Who?” said Cripure.
“Lucien.”
“Ah! Bono, bono. With Faurel as
a referee. That my friend, that’s first-rate. Don’t you think so?”
“That’s how it’s done.”
Moka went over to Lucien, and Kaminsky went on, “Back to the subject of Mercédès . . .”
But at that instant, the door slammed open, and Madame de Villaplane appeared, pale with anger. All the faces turned towards this unexpected apparition.
She gasped.
“I find,” she said in a snapping little voice, “that you have the audacity to condemn Mercédès without hearing her side.” And doing her part for the general atmosphere of shock, she added, “I am Mercédès!”
Her words dropped into a solemn silence, and for a few moments, it seemed to everyone that the silence would continue for some time. Cripure, stooped in his chair, shot Madame de Villaplane a look of surprise, astonishment, and possible collusion, mixed to great effect. Kaminsky’s laugh rang out.
“But come now, my dear Madame,” he cried, “your name isn’t Mercédès!”
“Fool!” Madame de Villaplane shouted, advancing on Kaminsky. She must have wanted to slap him with her fan, but she had to content herself with miming it. “Fool!” she said again, “That was my name before. But because he alone had the right to call me by that name, I changed it after his death.”
And to their astonishment, the good little woman hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
Kaminsky winked and, gesturing “no” with his finger, he touched it to his forehead.
“You think so?” murmured Cripure
The question made Kaminsky laugh. “Devil take me,” he said, approaching Madame de Villaplane, “but the old lady’s still tempting.” He rubbed the nape of her neck: “Go on my little dove . . .”
“Oh!” said Madame de Villaplane. And her little porcelain hand smacked Kaminsky’s oily cheek.
Cripure tugged Moka’s sleeve. “Let’s go, my friend, let’s get out of here . . . fly the coop, if you know what I mean! I think this . . .”
“You’re right,” said Moka, “I think this is just heating up.”
“Do you think you’re some kind of conquistador?” cried Madame de Villaplane, glaring proudly at Kaminsky. “Brute!”
Moka quickly gathered up the bag of groceries, the cane, and the little hat, and, with a thousand apologetic grimaces towards Lucien and Francis, who had also stood up, ready to leave, he followed Cri-pure, who was already out the door.
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