The worst thing was that Maïa didn’t stop. She seemed to be in the grips of an exclusively physical sorrow, like a wild toothache or a liver malfunction. It was strange to see how much the sorrow seemed to come from her body—in all her big bulk, not a bit seemed to be at rest.
He didn’t dare approach. The idea of even touching her in that moment inspired an insurmountable horror. And finally since she didn’t stop, he turned his back to her and covered his ears.
His two pointed hands opened, climbed, in the gesture of a soldier turning himself in, slipped slowly down his cheeks, and with the grimace of someone hearing nails on a chalkboard, his two index fingers stuffed themselves into his ears. Everything then seemed to rumble like a flood—it was the blood beating hard in his head.
A BURNING smell, a snuffling of gas in the kitchen. Maïa stopped moaning. “My lentils!”
She jumped out of her chair and rushed to her stove. Cripure, who still had his fingers stuffed in his ears, his head facing the window, didn’t see or hear anything. For a long time, he stayed in that ridiculous, grimacing pose, until his attention was finally caught by the smell of burned lentils and he turned, realizing he was alone. So he took his long fingers out of his ears, letting his arms fall slowly back against his body, catching himself in a gesture of shock.
Perfect. The lentils had burned. Thanks to this fact, he found himself alone, rescued. Perfect! Perfect! But he didn’t know what to do with himself, almost like an interrupted dreamer whose dream has vanished without leaving something else to contemplate, except, like someone capsized, the emptiness left inside him that may be eternal.
Maïa went back and forth in the kitchen like she had every day for so many years. A noise of dishes, the bang of a poker against something iron, the rumbling of water boiling in a pot, all those familiar reassuring noises, as if that life of objects expressed some guarantee that he wouldn’t die, as if everything that frightened him was just some flimsy construction of his spirit.
Dumbly, he took shelter in this thought: despite everything, they would eat soon.
Soon. But in the meantime?
An idea! He went back to his desk, bent down, rummaged in the cubbyholes by the chimney, where he kept his dictionaries. With care, he grabbed a volume of his old Littré, which he put on the table. His fingers flipped ably through the pages. He adjusted his pince-nez, pursed his lips, and with a familiar movement, groped behind him for a chair, without taking his eyes off the dictionary.
Everything happened as if he were behind his lectern at the lycée, as if he were preparing to read his students a page chosen from some philosopher.
“Let’s see, let’s see,” he murmured, turning the pages, “let’s take a little look: ductile, ductility, ductilometer, due . . . ah! here we are: ‘duel (du-el), n. individual combat between two men. “She loves in this duel his want of experience.” —Corneille, Le Cid.’ Let’s go on. See a little more. Judicial duel. Judicial duel—no entry. Moving on. Philippe le Bel . . . no. All that’s useless. Let’s take another look. Hmm . . . duel with pistols and swords. No question about the swords. Duel to first blow . . . Ah, what might that mean?”
He bent over the dictionary and, passing his finger below the lines to keep his eye on them, he read on, ignoring the beating of his heart: “duel to first blow: a duel which must end with the first injury, even minor, of one of the combatants.” He read the entry again. “Even minor,” he murmured, raising his head. There was a chance he wouldn’t be killed, that it would all end with a minor wound and stop there? A bullet in the arm maybe or the leg, at worst in the shoulder? If he ignored all the rules of dueling, he’d remember this one!
“Hmm . . . hmm . . .” he said, looking at the ceiling, drumming on the dictionary, “if I escape . . .”
If he escaped—one chance in a thousand—well then, he’d marry Maïa!
This time, he didn’t tap on the dictionary but gave it a good whack with the flat of his hand, as if he were concluding a trial. I’ll marry her! She certainly deserved it, especially after everything that had just happened, and the way he’d seen her racked with sorrow on the chair. I’ve been a bastard . . . He’d buy her a nice outfit to replace the one he’d torn, he’d bring her to the town hall in front of everyone. It would be a great triumph for her, and at least then he wouldn’t have to think about making a will if another duel came along or whatever it was that finally . . . Yes, he would marry her. Why not? He had no other way of showing his appreciation for so many years of good care, good food . . . etc.
He closed his eyes, thinking of her groans from a moment ago. How horrible they were! He’d marry her, but he wouldn’t tell her about it just yet, he’d wait until tomorrow, after the duel, if he lived. A duel to first blow: a duel that must stop after the first injury, even minor, to one of the combatants . . .
He vowed: if he didn’t die, he would bring a new Madame Merlin into the world. It would go like this: he’d hire Père Yves’s cab, recommend that the man rent a top hat somewhere for the occasion. Ask him to tie a pretty ribbon on the handle of his whip, to pamper Pompon nicely, and if possible, to put little decorations on her mane and tail. A little brushing of the seats and everything would go splendidly. At the stroke of ten one morning, they’d get in the carriage, he and Maïa, and on their way, on their way to a new life! Tsk, tsk, Pompon! The whip would clack, Maïa would carry herself with pride in the back of the cab, her parasol open and slung carelessly over one shoulder. She’d ask him not to go too quickly, that they take their time, since she wanted to be seen, and also because the marriage was a special moment and she wanted her money’s worth. He could see it as if it were already happening. He could hear Maïa: “You’d say he’s got a fire under his ass, that Pompon. What’s the rush? The town hall’s not going anywhere.” And he’d lower his little straw hat over his eyes and press the whole of his large back into the seat, saying nothing.
This time, scorn would reign, completely inseparable from parody. What an idea! Maïa playing, at his side, what was once Toinette’s role on that luminous wedding day of long ago. Toinette in white with her veil and crown of orange blossoms, turned to Maïa, his new fiancée, soon to be his legitimate bride by virtue of a “yes” spoken in front of a scarf. “Will you take, to be your lawfully wedded wife . . .” It would cause a good laugh in town, they’d talk about it for a long time! What a defeat. Look at him now, they’d say, that champion of anarchy, that impossible enemy of society. Look at him now, getting down on his knees for mercy, burning what he adored, adoring what he burned. Submitting! They’d say lots of other things too. But so what . . . After the yes, they’d gorge somewhere no doubt, perhaps by the sea? “Son of a bitch!” he muttered to himself. It didn’t matter. They’d bring the witnesses. Who would they be? Basquin, of course. And the others? The first to arrive, it didn’t make a damned bit of difference. On the contrary, the more wretched they were the better it would be. The guests shouldn’t clash with their symphony, the carriage’s squeaking wheels setting the scene. He should choose witnesses that were as dusty as the seats themselves. The real stroke of genius would be to lay his hands on a few vagabonds, those old beggars in clogs the police harassed, and for whom a good feast would be the luck of a lifetime. It would be something to see them all coming back together. Would they sing? Perhaps . . .
•
In this reverie he almost forgot the duel, pushed for the moment to the far horizon of his consciousness, not without some images of slow and silent cabs, full of the wounded and dying, but enveloped in a fog so that it wasn’t yet the moment to unload them. It didn’t make him less convinced that all these fancies of marriage and feasts with vagabonds (the only kind of man, in addition to mercenaries, that he’d ever been able to love) were nothing, in the end, but a way to deny or stave off the duel. In promising to marry Maïa, he was making a bargain with the gods, like a peasant or a good wife would take a grievance to a saint. So as not to be in the carriage where the mortally wounded roll
ed, he promised to be in the cab where Maïa would be displayed as a fiancée, and he in the role of future husband. “Maïa’s hand if I’m not killed!” Was that enough of a price? Who would be fooled? The gods, Maïa, or himself? Everyone. When it came down to it, it was a farce, which would really take place one day, if he escaped the duel, outside of his imagination, in what they called “the concrete.” And continuing to dream of this farce, he realized that if one of Maïa’s witnesses had to be Basquin, his could be no other than the Clopper, in person.
Again! The Clopper again! Him! To the devil with the Clopper and all his complacent musings about this character of night and grime, so little a character and barely a person, barely a cheap mirror, as false, as frozen and fragile as glass. That he dreamed of him as a witness to his marriage, or as the coachman, having taken Père Yves’s place on the day of the ceremony, or that he’d fasten, on that black mummy, Monsieur mayor’s scarf . . . enough! Enough! Enough scaring himself for fun, wallowing in the shadows.
Since, in the end, what did it matter! It wasn’t him, Merlin-Cripure, who was the Clopper. The Clopper was, in spite of everything, a person of his own. Another “other.” It was clear as day—a funny thing to say when you thought about that man—it was clear as day that it wasn’t the Clopper who would fight tomorrow at twenty paces. The hour when the voice of one of the seconds would pronounce the fatal “one, two, three—fire!” it would be high time for the Clopper to return to his cave or his garret, full of shadows, to sleep on his mattress of straw.
•
Maïa opened the door. “Eat.”
And understanding that he hadn’t heard, she repeated louder, but without impatience, “Come eat.”
He raised his head. His look grasped that there were traces of tears on the wench’s face. He frowned in a reproving way, more annoyed than compassionate. “Eat?”
She backed away without answering.
Cripure got up. In fact, he had to eat, even if she had nothing to offer him but burned lentils. An absurd saying, about certain soldiers—obviously Napoleon’s—who fought better on an empty stomach came back and irritated him. What idiocy! Who came up with such ridiculous garbage? And to think he had remembered it. He would eat, eat well, even, drink well, and sleep well, so as to be at his best on the field. Which general was it—these historical anecdotes kept coming to him—who slept so well the nights before battle? Turenne or Condé? Probably Condé. Turenne was a trembler like me. You tremble, carcass . . .[17] Not ruling out that he was fair and square a . . . Oh! I’m not demanding so much of myself . . . spirit even? Irony about myself? Oh! Charming. I could continue, argue, for example, that this whole story is such buffoonery that I wouldn’t give up my spot for a cannonball, etc. Easy. This is tired thinking. Good sense would be to go eat.
He decided to push the door he’d been standing in front of since a moment ago, and go into the kitchen where everything seemed so calm and orderly, so much like other days that he doubted it was true he was going to fight a duel, as if that whole novel, including the domestic spat, the battle with Maïa, the groans and all that, were nothing but a pure imaginative invention, a dream, or simply the beginnings of madness. Was it possible that he had made it all up, a not-inconceivable hypothesis, which would seem to correspond with Maïa’s composure, if, at any rate, he couldn’t see her face?
Where was that feathered hat he’d torn from her and catapulted into the middle of the kitchen, that lace blouse that was so ridiculous, that sumptuous white dress, in short that splendid bride’s outfit she’d emerged in just a little while ago with the furious air of a bourgeois mother? There was no trace of any of it. Instead of those marvels, Maïa was wearing her ordinary clothes, her big black skirt, her jacket, clogs and apron, and, as usual, she went about her cooking. No, truly, there was nothing to raise an eyebrow at. Even the smell of burned lentils had vanished. He’d taken a big sniff of the air, searching for a trace of that acrid smell, and it had been in vain. He breathed only the fresh perfume of the night beginning, the smell of the garden—wet earth, grasses and leaves, which came through the window like a flood.
And in the rectangle of that kitchen window, what an overwhelming profusion of stars, which—through what new consideration?—seemed virginal to him. And what depth brought towards the sky this reverent gesture of his arms? In the frame of the window, the night was crystal, pure and noble between the leaves of trees. Maïa saw him approach the window and once again hold out his hand to the night, a gesture that was incomprehensible and foolish to her—did he want to know if it was raining? As for rain, they’d had quite enough of that. He stayed on his feet in front of the window, unfortunately too short to kneel in, and suddenly, as they did every evening around this time, the young, grave, and moving chorus of Russian soldiers lifted their voices, slow and muted at first, which bit by bit filled the night.
“AND IF you said you’re sorry?”
She snuck a look at him with her head lowered, measuring the effect of her words. She was completely limp in her chair, like a woman overcome with weariness at the end of a day when eating will be just another chore.
The spoon Cripure was lifting to his mouth stopped moving. But try as he might to catch Maïa’s look, his eyes met only her lowered forehead, the wench’s disordered gray mane. She dropped her head as if she were absorbed in searching for something that had fallen into her soup. A fly?
“You could say something to him,” she went on, timid. “You could send him a little note?”
The spoon at the level of his mustache still didn’t move. Was Maïa going to say something else?
Still without lifting her head she in fact said, “You don’t want that?” No answer. Cripure’s mouth did open eventually. But it was for the spoon. She’s crazy . . . He resented her for reminding him of that shameful and secret temptation.
“Apologize? Never!”
“Whyever not, kitty cat? It would be over . . .”
If she persisted, he’d start to get angry. Already his hand was trembling, even though he wanted to seem calm, resolved, unshakable. And in order to seem all those things, what else could he do but eat his soup as usual?
“You won’t say something?”
“Leave me alone.”
She didn’t press him. Nothing for it. But not playing at bravado, not even thinking to, she didn’t begin to eat her soup. Immobile, her arms resting on the table and her forehead bent over her plate.
Outside, the Russian soldiers were still singing, but their songs had gotten louder, and Cripure listened, as if those splendid and incomprehensible songs were, for him, more than songs, as if they contained some mysterious reference to the drama of his life and death.
Of course, they probably knew nothing about him, they were singing for themselves. But to believe that was another unworthy thought. They were singing for everyone, and though they trilled for his death and his burial, they were also singing for life.
“Life!” murmured Cripure. And one after another, he downed two big glasses of wine. “Listen, Maïa!”
She still didn’t move, seeming not to hear anything. What a pity! It was so beautiful. And with the warmth of the wine aiding him, he turned an ecstatic face toward the window. “Cripure salutes you!” he cried, raising his glass. He emptied it in one gulp. “To the health of living men!”
Maïa didn’t even raise her head. He put down his glass. She still didn’t move. He fixed a heavy gaze on her and perceived that tears were falling one by one into the wench’s soup, fat tears that hit the soup with little splashes.
It was the first time he’d seen Maïa cry. They’d lived together for a number of years, and never, at least in front of him, had she shed a tear. Once the initial moment of surprise had passed, he scowled and carefully considered this old woman whose eyes he couldn’t see, eyes that were shedding tears for him. Maïa’s tears! No, no, and no!
“No!” The fury that took hold of him at first seemed to come out of nowhere. For once it was
an overwhelming emotion that left no room for spectators. A second time, with building violence, he repeated, “No!” And he was shocked to feel the same desire return: to hit her. If she doesn’t stop this instant, I’ll slap her.
He pushed his plate away. But on the table, his tapping hand didn’t reach for the bottle anymore. She made a vague gesture of threat and supplication.
“Maïa!” What did that cry carry—tenderness or anger? “Maïa! I don’t want you to . . .” He said, “to cry.” But he thought to love me.
For a moment, his relief at having stopped himself in time hid the horror of that thought, but an instant later, the truth eviscerated him. Ah! If it were Toinette asking him to make his apologies! He would have done it posthaste. For the love of Toinette, what wouldn’t he have done! He would have left with her, laughing in their stupid faces. But this Maïa!
“For the love of God!”
She finally looked up. But whether it was cowardice on Cripure’s part or something else, he turned his eyes away.
“Just look at him, mouthing off at a moment like this,” murmured Maïa in a faraway voice.
This way of speaking about him without addressing him was strangely touching, and in a gentle voice, he said, “It’s not worth crying over . . .”
“So why do you . . .”
“It’s not worth it, I say!” Cripure interrupted. “Ah, ah, ah, ah! It’s no use. No use,” he finished with a sigh. He jerked his head. “Listen!” he said, his forefinger raised.
He looked towards the window—the singing went on in the depths of the night.
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