As I left, I heard the door closing with the noise of a scraping mudguard.
•
I have to go past the dairy where my neighbour works. This embarrasses me, because I am sure she has not kept my declaration of love to herself. People must be laughing at me.
So I walk quickly, picking out in a rapid glance pats of butter scored with wire, pictures of the countryside on the lids of the Camembert and a net put over the eggs, because of thieves.
III
When a longing for luxury comes over me I go and walk around near the Madeleine. It is a wealthy district. The streets smell of wood-block paving and exhaust-fumes. The swirling air behind the buses and taxis buffets my face and hands. In front of the cafes the rapid rise and fall of voices seem to come from a revolving megaphone. I look at the parked cars. The women leave a trail of scent behind them in the air. I only cross the road when a policeman is holding up the traffic.
It seems to me that the people sitting at tables on the terraces notice me in spite of my shabby clothes.
Once a woman sitting behind a tiny tea-pot eyed me from head to foot.
Happy and full of hope, I retraced my steps. But the customers smiled and the waiter looked at me hard.
For a long time I remembered that unknown woman, her throat and her breasts. I undoubtedly pleased her.
When I was in bed and heard midnight striking, I was sure she was thinking about me.
•
Oh, how I should love to be rich!
Everyone would admire the fur collar of my overcoat, especially in the suburbs. My jacket would be open. A gold chain would hang across my waistcoat; my purse would be attached to my braces by a silver chain. I should carry my wallet in my revolver pocket,as Americans do. I should have to make an elegant gesture in order to look at the time on my wrist-watch. I should put my hands in my jacket pockets, with the thumbs outside, and not, like the nouveaux riches, in the arm-holes of my waistcoat.
•
I should have a mistress, an actress.
We should go, she and I, to have an aperitif on the terrace of the largest cafe in Paris. The waiter would roll away the pedestal tables like barrels to make way for us. Ice-cubes would float in our glasses. The cane of the chairs would not be coming to bits.
We should have dinner in a restaurant where there were table-cloths and flowers elegantly arranged.
She would go in first. Polished mirrors would reflect my form a hundred times, like a row of lamp-posts. When the manager bowed his greeting to us, his starched shirt-front would bulge from the waist to the collar. The solo violinist would sway backwards and forwards as if on a spring-board, balancing his body. Locks of hair would flop over his eyes, as if he had just come out of a bath.
•
At the theatre we should have a box. I should be able to touch the curtain if I leaned forward. All round the auditorium people would look at us through opera glasses.
All of a sudden the footlights behind their zinc screen would light up the stage.
We should have a sideways view of the stage-set and, in the wings, actors not moving a muscle.
A fashionable singer, with jet buttons, would throw us a glance after each couplet.
Then a dancer would spin round on her pointes. The yellow, red and green spotlights which followed her would fall unevenly like the colouring of a picture by Épinal.
•
In the morning we should go by taxi to the Bois de Boulogne.
The driver’s elbows would move.
Through the shuddering glass of the windows we should see people standing still and others who seemed to be walking slowly.
Skidding round a bend, the taxi would throw us from our places and then we should kiss.
When we arrived, I should get out first, lowering my head, then I should give my companion my hand.
I should pay without looking at the meter. I should leave the door open.
Passers-by would watch us. I should pretend not to see them.
I should receive my mistress in my bachelor’s flat on the ground floor of a new house. The building’s plate-glass door would be protected by flat, wrought-iron palm-branches. The bell-push would glitter in the middle of its bronze surround. The mahogany of a lift at the end of the corridor would be visible from the doorway.
I should have had a shower in the morning. My linen would smell freshly ironed. Two of my waistcoat buttons would be undone, making me look relaxed.
My mistress would arrive at three o’clock.
I should take off her hat. We should sit on a sofa. I should kiss her hands, her elbows and her shoulders.
Then we should make love.
My mistress would throw herself back, drunk with passion. Her eyes would become glazed. I should unfasten her dress. To please me, she would be wearing a chemise with lace on it.
Then, murmuring endearments, she would give herself up to me, moistening my chin with her kisses.
LUCIE DUNOIS
Sometimes I eat at the soup-kitchen in the fifth arrondissement. Unfortunately it does not suit me because there are too many of us. We have to arrive in good time. Then we queue up for I don’t know how long, beside a wall, on the pavement. The passers-by stare at us. It is very disagreeable.
I prefer the little wine-shop in the rue de la Seine, where I am known. The owner is called Lucie Dunois. Her name, in enamelled capital letters, is stuck on to the glass of the shop-window. Three letters are missing.
Lucie has a beer-drinker’s figure. An aluminium ring — a souvenir of her husband who died at the front — decorates the index finger of her right hand. Her ears are flabby. Her shoes have no heels. She keeps blowing at the wisps of hair which have escaped from her bun. When she bends over, her skirt splits open at the back like a chestnut. Her pupils are not in the middle of her eyes; they are too high up, like those of alcoholics.
The room smells of empty barrels, rats and slops. Above the gas-mantle there is an asbestos fan which does not turn. In the evening the gas-lamp throws its light right under the tables. A notice—Regulations on the Control of Drunkenness — is nailed to the wall, where it can be seen clearly. A few pages are sticking out of the printed slab of a street-directory. A stained mirror, scratched on the back, decorates the partition wall.
I eat at one o’clock, to make the afternoon seem shorter.
Two masons in white smocks, their cheeks smudged with plaster, are drinking coffee, which, by contrast, seems absolutely black.
I settle myself in a corner, as far as possible from the entrance: I hate sitting near a door. Some workmen have been eating at my place. The table is littered with the wrapper of a petit suisse and some egg-shells.
Lucie is nice to me. She serves me with a steaming bowl of soup, some fresh crumbly bread, a plate of vegetables and sometimes a bit of meat.
When I have finished my meal, grease congeals on my lips.
Every three months, when I receive my pension, I give Lucie a hundred francs. She cannot make much out of me.
In the evening I wait until all the customers have gone, because I am the one who shuts up the eating-house. I always hope Lucie will keep me.
Once she did tell me to stay.
•
When I had lowered the metal shutter with a pole, I crawled back into the cafe on all fours. Finding myself in a shop which was closed to the public felt very strange. I did not feel at home.
My excitement soon got rid of these feelings.
Now I gazed more indulgently at the woman who would certainly become my mistress. She would not please most men, but all the same she was a woman, with big breasts and hips wider than mine. And she must like me, because she had asked me to stay.
Lucie uncorked a dusty bottle, washed her hands with household soap and came and sat down opposite me.
Grease was still shining on her ring and round her nails.
In spite of myself, I was listening to the noises in the street.
We were embarrassed bec
ause we were not as well acquainted as the all too obvious object of my presence there suggested.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ she said, wiping the neck of the bottle with her apron.
We chatted for an hour.
I should have liked to kiss her, if I had not had to go round the table to do it. It would be better to wait for a more favourable opportunity, especially for the first time.
Suddenly she asked me if I had ever seen her room.
Of course I replied:
‘No.’
We stood up. A shiver made me hug myself. She lit a candle before she put out the gas. The drops of wax which fell on her fingers hardened at once. She flicked them off with a nail, without breaking them.
The candle-flame wavered in the kitchen, and then flattened as we climbed the stairs, as steep as a ladder, which led to her bedroom.
With nothing in my mind I followed her, instinctively walking on my toes.
She lowered the candle to light up the key-hole, then she opened the door.
The shutters of her room were closed, as they had been all day no doubt. The bed-clothes were hanging on the back of a chair. I could see the red-striped mattress. The wardrobe was half open. I thought Lucie’s savings must be there, under a pile of underclothes. I looked tactfully in another direction.
She showed me the enlargements of photographs decorating the walls and then she sat down on the bed. I joined her.
‘How do you like my room?’
‘Very much.’
Suddenly, as if to prevent her falling, I clasped her to me. She did not defend herself. Encouraged by this I kissed her a thousand times, while I undressed her with one hand. I wanted to rip her button-holes and tear her clothing, as great lovers do, but I was afraid she would have something to say about it if I did.
Soon she was in her corset. The whale bones were twisted. It was laced up at the back. Her breasts were touching.
I trembled as I unfastened her corset. Her chemise stuck to her body for a moment and then dropped.
I had difficulty in taking it off, because the narrow neck would not go over her shoulders. I left her with only her stockings on, because I think that looks more attractive. Besides, in the papers, the nudes always wear stockings.
At last she was naked. Her thighs bulged out over her garters. Her spine dented her skin in the small of her back. She had been vaccinated on the arms.
I lost my head. Shivers like those which make horses’ legs tremble ran up and down my body.
•
The next morning, at about five o’clock, Lucie woke me. She was already dressed. I did not dare meet her eye because I do not look my best early in the morning.
‘Hurry up, Victor, I must go down.’
Although I was half asleep, I understood at once that she did not want to leave me alone in her room: she did not trust me.
I dressed quickly and, without washing, followed her on to the stairs.
She locked her door.
‘Go and raise the metal shutter.’
I did as she said then I sat down, hoping she would offer me a cup of coffee.
‘You had better go, the customers will be arriving.’
Although she was now my mistress, I went away without asking for anything.
•
Since then, whenever I go there to eat, she serves me just as she always has done, no better and no worse.
HENRI BILLARD
I
Being alone is hard to bear. I should like to have a friend, a real friend, or else a mistress to whom I could tell all my troubles.
When you wander about all day without speaking to anyone, you feel so tired in your room in the evening.
For a little affection, I should share everything I possess: my pension money, my bed. I should be so considerate of any one who showed me any friendship. I should never contradict them. All their wishes would be mine. I should follow them everywhere, like a dog. I should laugh at all their jokes; if anyone grieved them, I should cry.
I am endlessly kind. But the people I have known have never appreciated this fact.
Billard no more than the rest.
I got to know Henri Billard in a crowd in front of a pharmacy.
Crowds in the street always make me nervous. This is because I am afraid of finding myself in the presence of a corpse. Nevertheless, a necessity which does not come from curiosity drives me forward. Even though I am afraid of what I may see, I force my way through, in spite of myself. Not a word those onlookers say escapes me: I try to find out what is happening before I look.
One evening, at about six o’clock, I found myself in a throng of people, so close to the policeman who was holding them back that I could make out the ship of the city of Paris on his silver-gilt buttons. The people behind me were pushing, as always happens when a crowd is gathering.
Inside the shop, next to the scales, a man was sitting, unconscious, but with his eyes open. He was so small that the nape of his neck rested on the back of the chair and his legs hung down like a pair of stockings drying toes down. From time to time his eyes swivelled in their sockets. The front of his trousers was covered with a great number of shiny stains. His jacket was fastened with a pin.
The chemist’s air of concern, the low opinion the onlookers had of the poor man’s clothes and the interest which he was arousing struck me as unusual.
A woman wrapped in a thick shawl looked about her and murmured:
‘It’s a fainting fit.’
‘Don’t push . . . don’t push,’ advised an elderly man.
A shop-keeper who was keeping an eye on the open door of her establishment said for the information of all and sundry:
‘Everybody knows him in this district. He’s a dwarf. Really poor people are proud; they don’t draw attention to themselves. There’s nothing remarkable about that man: he drinks.’
It was then that my neighbour, to whom I had paid no attention before, remarked:
‘If he drinks, he’s right.’
This opinion pleased me, but if I agreed it was barely enough for this unknown to notice it.
‘That’s what comes of over-indulgence,’ said a gentleman holding a pair of gloves with beautifully smoothed-out fingers.
‘Until the revolution cleans up modern society there are bound to be unhappy wretches about,’ declared an old man quietly, the one who had just been advising people not to push.
The policeman, whose cape made him look rather odd because it hid his arms, turned round, and the onlookers exchanged glances which showed that they did not share the opinions of this Utopian.
‘They all end up like this,’ mumbled a housewife whose false teeth had momentarily come out of place.
A man who, without knowing it, was imitating the grimaces of the dwarf, nodded approvingly.
‘Why don’t you send him to hospital?’ I asked the policeman.
I could have obtained the information from one of my neighbours; but no, I preferred to question the officer. It seemed to me that, in this way, the rigour of the law was relaxed for me alone.
The dwarf had closed his eyes. His stomach heaved with his breathing. His sleeves and shoe-laces were agitated by regular shudders. A trickle of saliva ran down his chin. Beneath his half-open shirt a small, pointed nipple could be seen, looking as if it were wet.
The poor man was certainly going to die.
I cast a sidelong glance at my neighbour. His moustache was curled. His shirt collar was fastened with a gilt stud. Thin, small and energetic, he very much appealed to me, because I am tall, lazy and emotional.
Night was falling. The gas-lamps were already lit, but not yet giving any light. The sky was a cold blue. The map-like markings of the moon stood out clearly. My neighbour went off without saying good-bye. His hesitant manner seemed to give an indication that he wanted me to join him.
I held back for a second, as anyone in my position would have done, for, after all, I did not know him; the police could easily be looking for hi
m.
Then, without thinking, I caught him up.
The distance had been so short that I did not have time to prepare what I was going to say. Not a word came from my mouth. As for the stranger, he was not bothering about me.
He walked in a curious way, putting his heel down before his sole like a black man. There was a cigarette behind his ear.
I was vexed with myself for having followed him; but I live alone, I do not know anyone. Friendship would be such a great comfort to me.
Now it was impossible for me to leave him, because we were walking along next to each other in the same direction.
All the same, at a street comer I wanted to run away. As soon as I was gone, he could have thought what he liked of me. But I did not do anything.
‘Have you got a cigarette?’ he asked suddenly.
I glanced instinctively at his ear but quickly lowered my eyes in order not to offend him.
In my opinion he should have smoked his own cigarette first. Of course he could have forgotten about it.
I gave him a cigarette.
He lit it without enquiring if I had any left and went on walking. I still followed him, his lack of attention making me embarrassed in front of the passers-by. I wished he would turn towards me or ask me a question, which would have enabled me to know how to take him.
The cigarette I had given him had established a relationship between us. I could no longer go away; besides I prefer to put up with embarrassment rather than be rude.
‘Come and have a drink,’ he said, stopping in front of a bar.
I refused, not out of politeness, but because I was afraid he would not pay. This trick had been played on me before. It is important to be careful, especially with strangers.
He insisted.
I had a little money with me, should he slip away; so I went in.
The proprietor, who was sitting down like a customer, quickly went back behind the counter.
‘Good evening, gentlemen.’
‘Good evening, Jacob. ’
My Friends Page 2