“That wasn’t necessary,” said Moka.
“Not necessary?”
“Why the bloodshed?”
“But in God’s blighted name, this has nothing to do with anyone but me, do you understand! Only me! You wanted to save my life and in that way you have betrayed me. Life!” he continued, overcome, looking Moka straight in the eyes. “The hell with life, do you understand?”
He shook Moka and the last traces of the rose unraveled at their feet.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes,” stammered Moka.
“Ah, all the same!” said Cripure, letting him go.
They didn’t say anything more for a long moment, then, in a low voice, Cripure continued: “Soon, everything will be settled.”
“But everything is settled, my dear professor. All that’s left is your signature.”
“That’s not what I was thinking of,” said Cripure.
“What was it then?”
“That’s my business.”
This brusque response sharply offended Moka. Cripure perceived it and apologized. “I’m a bit harsh, is that it? I’m aware of it. What do you want from me?” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “I . . . at the point where I am!”
Moka took his hand. It was such a clumsy gesture that Cripure didn’t immediately understand what Moka wanted from him, and with a look, he searched for what Moka must have found on his sleeve where there were no stains or wandering flies.
“My dear professor,” said Moka, raising supplicating eyes toward Cripure, “promise me that you won’t do that?”
Cripure frowned, but he didn’t remove his hand. “What are you thinking about?” asked Cripure. “The same thing you are,” Moka replied. He squeezed Cripure’s hand more tightly.
“Ah, truly?”
“You won’t do that?”
“What does it matter, Moka?”
“No!”
“What does it matter! Come now,” said Cripure, roughly pulling back his hand “come now! Let’s be done with this. The comedy has gone on long enough, Monsieur Moka, it’s time to move on to serious things. Where is your paper? Come, I’ll sign it! All that has no importance. But hurry up, hurry up, Monsieur Moka. The paper right away!” continued Cripure, agitated once again. “Take advantage of my good humor, since I feel it won’t be difficult to go back on my decision and refuse to sign. I can feel it! The paper, Monsieur Moka. Ah! There it is,” cried Cripure, “there’s the famous paper of liberation,” he cried, seeing Moka skip over to the desk and put the agreement down on it, keeping it nicely flattened, erasing the folds with the palm of his hand and raising towards Cripure eyes full of goodness and hope. Was Cripure saved, beyond a doubt?
Perhaps. He rushed over to the desk with such recklessness, made such an ugly grimace bending over the paper, that Moka was completely annoyed, like Étienne had been the day before, witnessing Cripure’s cries about the bicycles.
“Where?”
With his pointer finger, Moka indicated the spot where Cripure had to sign.
The pen splashed, scraping into the inkwell. He made a blot, of course, and grumbled. Then, in one movement, he angrily swiped the pen across the paper, swiftly putting a tall sharp signature on the bottom of the document, which he underlined with a long, dark mark ending in a rain of little stains the pen flicked and spit. He stood up in the same gesture and threw the pen far away from himself, and it bounced off the wall, falling to the floor and sticking there like a knife. Cripure panted.
All this was very surprising to Moka, watching out of the corner of his eye. Cripure slumped into a chair, took his head in his hands and groaned. Moka grabbed a blotter, dried the fresh ink and put the sheet of paper in his pocket as he retreated. Strange, he thought.
Cripure wasn’t the quietest crier in the world, and his groans were nothing if not badly stifled cries of anger, as Moka understood when Cripure uncovered his face and stood up, shouting, “Fooled! Fooled again!”
“Come now!”
“Like an ambush in a corner of the woods!”
“Me?” said Moka, touching his chest with his finger.
Cripure didn’t seem to see.
“You pitied me, but it’s the other one’s life you’ve saved. I would have brought him down, yes. That’s to say . . .”
It was the opposite. It was the other one who would have “brought down” Cripure. Three times in the same day, they’d taken away his death. He continued, “First of all, we must consider the question of pistols. You will point out to me that in asking that question, I lose all recourse to the formula of the arrangement, and that I was forced to duel with swords . . . and if I refused the arrangement, I’d once again be forced to duel with swords, and that—”
“But it’s no longer a question of fighting!”
“What then is it a question of, Monsieur Moka? Of locking me up?”
“Jesus Christ!”
“But if they want to put me in with the crazies, everyone will say that’s the proof I’m right,” he cried.
“Jesus Christ almighty!”
“I would think it’s a . . . unique case in the annals of dueling.”
“Come, come, come!”
“See here, would I be dishonored in choosing the pistol? Tell me the truth,” said Cripure, opening his hands.
“But everything is finished!”
Cripure gestured toward his feet.
“Me, fight with swords! It’s like making someone with no legs into a swordsman.” Fury overcame him. “Madness, madness,” he cried, “but all the exits are hidden. Ah! Man’s justice is good. Settled, my friend. The augers will have a good laugh. What did I decide to undertake?” he groaned. “I didn’t know how to undertake anything, and it’s too late. Everything is wasted, everything ruined. Oh,” he said, turning to Moka, “it’s not you I blame.”
His gesture meant that since Moka was too little a character for anyone to worry about him and his role in such an affair, what was most likely then was that he’d been duped too, and by extension . . .
Cripure said it from across the room, “They fooled you too.”
Moka wanted to protest.
“Excuse me, my boy, a thousand excuses,” Cripure interrupted, banging his fingertip on the desk as he did in class to keep silence, “you saw nothing but clear skies. It was so easy. So easy! That Faurel, whose presence at least got this whole business started . . .”
“Faurel now?”
“The chief traitor.”
“Him?”
“You won’t defend him will you?”
“But if you had heard him . . .”
“Enough, Monsieur Moka. That’s enough. An explanation can never erase what’s been done. But as for that Faurel . . .” And he made a gesture of aiming a revolver.
Moka was furious. “No!”
“Absolutely,” said Cripure. “To the end.”
Moka lowered his head while Cripure continued: “He stole my death from me. Try hard to understand—the task was complete, wasn’t it? I barely had to get mixed up in it. While as it stands now . . . But not before bringing him down,” he cried, shivering, “ah, in God’s name, no!” and his hand waved in the empty air.
A vague simile floated on Moka’s lips as he raised his head. And to his great surprise, Cripure heard him say in a sweet voice, “You won’t do either of those things.”
“Ah?”
“No.”
Moka shook his head, seeming to listen to some interior voice.
“No, my dear professor, you won’t kill yourself, and you won’t kill Faurel either.”
“Ah?”
“No. Not a chance.”
“Ah? And why is that?”
“Because . . . I don’t believe you,” said Moka.
“Well now!” said Cripure . . . they looked each other in the eyes, and Moka still smiled. A smile darted over Cripure’s face too.
“Do you know what I think?” said Moka.
“I’m listening.”
“Well then . . . I don’t think you believe it either.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, yes. It’s comedy. Admit it. You wanted to frighten me?”
He came toward the desk, bending towards Cripure, who was still standing on the other side.
“Admit it?”
“Perhaps,” said Cripure.
Moka raised his pointer finger in a gesture of affectionate scolding. “It’s not very nice of you to say perhaps. Come, tell me yes?”
“Well fine then,” said Cripure, “yes.”
“Hurrah!” cried Moka, seized with a crazy excess of joy. “Everything’s settled. Hurrah!”
His success went to his head. He started clapping and, as he usually did when happiness filled him, he danced. Then he took Cripure’s two hands and squeezed them for a long time.
“You won’t hold it against me?”
“Hold what?”
“What I just said about comedy? You’re not angry with me?”
His voice was low, barely perceptible.
“No,” said Cripure, “not at all, come now.” And he looked away.
“It was when you threw the pen away, you know, after signing!”
“Yes.”
“That seemed funny to me.”
He still held Cripure’s hands.
“Well I must say,” Cripure smiled, “that you’re a hell of a good fellow.” He burst out laughing, “Ah, ah!” and he squeezed his hands. “You, don’t you know, that’s to say, with you, one never suspects. Ah! By God, I take back what I said a moment ago: you, you’re not fooled.”
Now it was Cripure who didn’t let go of Moka’s hands. “It’s priceless, all the same! There’s some good in this sublunary sphere. Isn’t it so, dear boy? Oh it’s too much, too much . . .”
SOMEONE was singing in the neighborhood, some early riser—they couldn’t tell if it was the voice of a man or a woman. In any case it was someone who saw this new day as a day of happiness. And that too was annoying in that moment, as annoying as the song itself, a stupid refrain, some “Paimpolaise”[20] or other. Tired stuff.
“Shh . . . shh,” said Cripure, “can this go on for much longer?”
Moka looked through the glass door. He stammered, “Isn’t that . . .” He didn’t dare finish his sentence and blushed, as if Cripure had guessed his thought. And in fact Cripure asked: “Maïa?”
“One might think . . .”
They listened: Maïa was the one belting.
Finding that she was really putting herself down, obeying Cripure’s orders and letting herself be treated like a servant once again, Maïa, shivering with cold in her cellar, made her resolution. Since he threw her out of her house, he must really be messing with her, wasn’t that true? Well then, tit for tat: she’d mess with him as well as she could too, and let him know it. He was afraid she’d be listening at the door? Well then! She’d make it clear as day she wasn’t listening. She’d sing.
Her mind made up, she climbed out of the cellar and once she got to the garden she sang the first song that came into her head: the “Paimpolaise.” That’s what they’d first heard, thinking someone was singing in the street. Now, she was singing in the kitchen as she emptied the ashes from her stove to make a fire and prepare the coffee. Oh yeah? Fight or don’t fight, old man, sign or don’t sign, that’s your business!
Cripure knocked softly on the glass. She saw who was bending down.
“Maïa . . .”
She looked at the air and belted louder than ever:
“It takes more than greenhorns
To fight the English fleet . . .”
Behind Cripure, Moka appeared—the white face of a clown. But that one didn’t say anything, his lips didn’t even budge, he contented himself with looking hurriedly back and forth between them with wide eyes.
Tap, tap, tap.
It was Cripure once again.
“Maïa!”
Keep going! Maïa thought. Reaching the end of her song, she started over:
“Leaving behind the flowering trees
When the Bretons go off to sea . . .”
Like the day before, when she twisted so sorrowfully in the armchair, he could have simply covered his ears. Even without doing that, he could have ignored her. What was it that forced him to pay attention to Maïa? Nothing. Really nothing at all. Did one give consideration to a whore? Why then was he so exasperated, why did Maïa’s absurd song come and disrupt everything, why did it seem to him that in order to go any further he absolutely must make her be quiet?
He wrenched open the door and burst into the kitchen. Moka planted himself in the doorway—it was already plenty to have to bear witness to that scene without becoming an actor in it.
Cripure lifted his pince-nez and scowled.
“That’s quite enough!” he said.
She doubled her enthusiasm, and without looking at him, she sang at the top of her lungs:
“With all due respect to Saint Yves,
There’s no color in his skies
As blue as the Paimpolaise’s eyes . . .”
He grabbed her by the sleeve of her robe.
“Did you hear me?”
“Hey! What’re you doing there?”
“What does this mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“You’re singing, at a moment like this?”
“And why can’t I be singing?” she said. “I can sing if I want!”
Nothing for it. She would have the last word.
“Painful,” said Cripure, lowering his head.
“Everybody’s got their own problems, isn’t that right?” she replied, plunging a bit of newspaper into the stove and setting it on fire.
“Pre-cise-ly.”
He played with his pince-nez.
Moka, for the past few moments, had been making a great effort to get Maïa’s attention. Difficult. Since she was very busy with Cripure, she constantly had her back to him, and Moka wasn’t even totally sure she had perceived his presence. In desperation for the cause, he whistled: “Huuuuit!”
She understood. Cripure undoubtedly did too, but he had the prudence not to turn around, and Moka could signal to Maïa at his leisure.
He winked, not once, but an innumerable quantity of times, with incredible speed, as if he wanted to get a little fly (a real one this time) out from under his eyelid. At the same time, he maneuvered his arm to point at Cripure in such a way that Maïa wasn’t totally convinced at first that this whole mime show wasn’t designed to get her riled up against her man. Since she was prudent too, she kept quiet, but seeing that she didn’t understand him, Moka stopped pointing to Cripure and waved his hands in a grand gesture of starting over. No, no, no it’s not what you think! And standing on tiptoe, his hands cupped around his mouth, he prepared to whisper something. Alas! It was impossible. He could speak very softly, but Cripure would still hear him. So Moka uncovered his face, and without the slightest whisper, his lips moved, articulating: He signed it! And to be better understood, he made a gesture of writing, of scribbling something at the bottom of a page. And pointing to Cripure once again, him . . .yes, yes his lips silently said, and he smilingly winked three times, nodding his head back and forth. If that wasn’t enough!
It was. Maïa hid her laughing face. She was scared silly she would burst out laughing right under Cripure’s nose, and to keep him in the dark she busied herself around her stove.
Then she turned all at once and let go of her poker.
“Kiss me,” she cried, in a burst of joy and tenderness. She threw her arms around his neck. “You lucky old madman,” she said, “I had my doubts, I had my doubts . . .”
A great explosion of tears followed. But the effect they produced was the opposite of what she’d counted on. Cripure became cold. He didn’t push her away, but he didn’t respond to her embrace. This time, they were tears of joy that she wiped. She took on a sort of beauty, almost like total honesty.
“Ah,” sneer
ed Cripure, “you doubted . . .” He neglected to mention that he too had doubted something of the sort. “What did you doubt?” he said.
“Eh? That you’d sign . . . since you didn’t want to?”
“Tsk . . .tsk . . .”
“Huh?”
“Oh! You know me well.”
She didn’t know how to say that she loved him well too. But her eyes spoke for her. Could he see that? Was that the reason he turned away once more? In any case, the tender scene was over, and Cripure was grateful to Moka for the way he made prolonging it impossible by declaring theatrically with a handsome bow, but this time no pirouette, that his mission was over.
“I’ve played my part, my dear professor. It’s time for me to retire. Farewell,” he said, looking for his hat out of the corner of his eye.
“What!” cried Maïa. “He’s leaving!”
Cripure sulked. What! Of course Moka had to leave. She wasn’t thinking of taking him in as a lodger? To replace Amédée, perhaps, in the attic?
“Like that, without a drop?” she said.
“Madame—” said Moka.
“I wouldn’t like to see that,” interrupted Maïa. “Without having anything? We’ll drink something, of course, what’d you say kitty cat?” She looked at Cripure.
He didn’t say no. He didn’t say yes either.
“No time,” said Moka.
“This won’t take long.”
“Another time, another time!”
“It won’t take two minutes.”
“Impossible, a thousand apologies,” he said, with a new bow, and grabbing his hat which he spied on Cripure’s sofa, he got ready to go out, saying, “Another time, another time, Madame, I promise.”
She grabbed him by the sleeve and brought him back into the middle of the kitchen by force.
“When I’ve got an idea in my head . . .”
“Hmm . . .” said Cripure.
“Sit down there,” she said, pushing him hard into a chair. “Yesterday evening he brought back a nice bottle of wine . . .where’s it got to? Don’t go, don’t go, come on now!”
Moka wasn’t thinking of leaving anymore. Worn out, looking uncomfortable, he thought that he still had to change before he continued his service. And then he also would have liked to go into a church, to pray, to give serious thanks to God, as he should for the happy resolution of the affair.
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