He pushed the door of the little shop and was happily surprised by the rather vulgar cosmetic odour that reigned. For the half-hour to be absolutely complete and good, that strongly sweetish odour was necessary. He was also happy to be the only customer in the barber’s shop at that hour: Monsieur Liechti would have plenty of time, would spoil him, would coddle him. Jean Calmet was going to be able to give himself up to his pleasure without witness. Another prerequisite: no impatient gaze in his back. No newspaper nervously rustled or shaken, no warning cough, no throat-clearing over his shoulders… Seated on a wicker armchair in the middle of his little shop, Monsieur Liechti was reading an Italian magazine. He brightened up, rose, and Jean Calmet experienced a comforting sense of tranquillity at seeing once more the long, wide-set teeth, the sunken cheeks and the high, bald forehead of the old barber. A whitish comb emerged from the little pocket of his blue smock. With a theatrical movement, he invited Jean Calmet to be seated in one of the two worn leather chairs. Jean Calmet sat down, tipped himself backwards slightly, his neck met the coolness of the headrest. He was immediately overwhelmed by a pleasure that announced the coming of more complete happiness. But there could be no haste. Monsieur Liechti’s movements were slow, meticulous, and Jean Calmet was enchanted by those preliminaries in the silent shop where the sharp emanations of the eau de cologne floated.
It was not by chance that Jean Calmet had become accustomed to abandoning himself on these premises. Old-fashioned, foreign, the shop had few customers. What is more, an unceasingly valuable advantage for the person who wants to sink uninterruptedly into himself, Monsieur Liechti was not one of these barbers who bore their victim with sports chitchat. He was silent, and only one brief question: “No haircut today? Just a shave?” came legitimately from his thin mouth.
He tied a towel around the neck of Jean Calmet, who once again marvelled at the transformation that this simple piece of cloth immediately brought about in his face. In the mirror, which was somewhat moth-eaten at the corner where it joined the shelf of artificial marble, his features were curiously sunken, prominent. Their clarity was striking against the immaculate sheet, and Jean Calmet looked at himself, for once, without severity and without ill temper.
Monsieur Liechti took a glass box from a shelf and shook it over an aluminium bowl which began to fill with a slightly granular flour. He added tepid water, and, with little strokes of the shaving brush, he raised in the receptacle a lather that sparkled over the wood panelling of his shop. For several minutes, the shaving brush turned round and round in the thickening foam. Then Monsieur Liechti raised the instrument into the light and gauged the consistency of the cream with satisfaction. Only then did he begin to apply it to Jean Calmet’s face, in wide, flat bands whose order he soon disturbed with a stiff brush, soaping for a long time the face of his customer, who closed his eyes, his head thrown back under its strong, steady pressure. The lathering filled Jean Calmet with a calm and coolness that sent shivers down to his knees.
Now Monsieur Liechti took hold of his razor and honed the long blade on the leather, broad as an army belt, which he pulled and stretched with his left hand. It was a knife of steel, gleaming, with a yellow horn handle, whose blade made a quick, regular whispering on the strop.
Then, with a thumb, he tested the edge:
“Let’s get to work, Monsieur Calmet!” he said, smiling with his wide-set teeth. And with his left hand, taking up the shaving brush, he revivified the suppleness of the cream on the cheeks and chin.
The razor began to run over the patient’s skin with prodigious delicacy. First, around the sideburns, the line of which he marked accurately, then along the cheeks, respecting the symmetry with exact movements: razor stroke to the left, squeaking slide, immediately followed by a pass on the right cheek, return to the left and extension of the operation to the outlines of the lips; the razor immediately moved to the other side, the mouth twisted a little to stretch the skin, which in this way gave itself up flatter and more readily to the keen blade. As if he wished to leave nothing to chance, Monsieur Liechti came back once more to the summit of the cheeks and ran the blade carefully, but without pressing, over the clear zone.
His eyes closed, Jean Calmet experienced new bliss. He felt deep, light peace; each caress of the razor was a delicate attention that overwhelmed him. He no longer remembered his solitude or weariness. He abandoned himself to those hard, adept fingers, to that dry blade, to the acidulated odour of the smock and the shop, to the regular little sound of the razor, the gentle scraping, hissing, sliding which lulled him, benumbed his memories, roused on the surface of his whole skin a delight that spread out. Now Monsieur Liechti firmly tilted the head back and attacked the chin with tiny circular touches: the blade moved with greater circumspection, turned, came back flat under the lip, tarried again, while the barber’s index finger and thumb pinched the skin over and over, held it back, fashioned it over to suit the razor which unceasingly increased and improved its effect.
Then the edge went down along the Adam’s apple and followed the collar of the towel, it climbed back up the throat with short strokes, the left slope, the right slope, reached the ear, came back down, dallied in a small, untouched zone, ran anew up to the sideburns, returned to the nostrils, scratched, gnawed with its rounded point, polished the cheeks, sanded the chin.
Peaceful bliss haunted Jean Calmet.
Monsieur Liechti set his razor on the shelf of fake marble.
He added a little lukewarm water to the lather, rotated the shaving brush in the bowl, coated Jean Calmet’s cheeks and neck once more, took up the razor, honed the blade anew and, very slowly, as if to remove the foam from the skin, ran through all his strokes again: the face seemed smooth, and gleamed slightly in the mirror.
Monsieur Liechti raised a section of the towel, placed a warm sponge there, touched Jean Calmet behind the ears and under the jaw. He immediately unstoppered a large frosted-glass bottle and splashed all of his skin with stinging eau de cologne, tart as a sourball; his whole face suddenly burned and quickly grew cold almost as soon as the alcohol evaporated. Monsieur Liechti shook the towel, fanned Jean Calmet; a shudder went over his whole body.
“Now for the comb!”
Monsieur Liechti combed Jean Calmet’s hair carefully.
It was finished.
Jean Calmet paid, shook Monsieur Liechti’s extended hand, paused for an instant on the doorstep of the shop. The air was good, the light golden, September was nearing its end, the afternoon sun was turning the old street russet… Jean Calmet drew in a deep breath and went on his way, dawdling around the windows of small shops. He thought of the pleasure that he had just known, he was still relaxed, borne by a special joy: it was in his fibre like a force that tried to make itself known, make itself loved, new power. Jean Calmet also looked at the passers-by with new confidence, studying their faces and clothes, examining their bearing, admiring the women most of all, scrutinizing their eyes, marvelling at the diversity of their appeal and at the gleam smouldering at the bottom of their pupils. Several of them gave him back a look that burned Jean Calmet right to the depths of his skull. So could he be happy, too? He could count for something, be noticed, be stared at in the crowd by a woman. People were interested in him, people recognized him. It seemed to him that one wench peeked at him, feigning innocence, that salesgirls crossed his eye through shop windows and did not turn away immediately. Jean Calmet stopped, he greedily studied their hair, their skin, their movements, he guessed their desires and disillusion, he sniffed at trails, he made up rendezvous and affairs, he imagined intelligent, voluptuous liaisons, a whole autumn of uninterrupted tenderness and trust.
He did not hurry. His lessons for the next day were prepared; thinking about them gave him another reason to rejoice. In honour of the Metamorphoses, he dubbed twin sisters Photis and Psyche; blonde and tanned, the girls were stepping out of a pop fashion boutique laden down with huge multicoloured plastic bags. He ate a hot dog in the open air and dra
nk a mug of beer at the Café du Pont, from where he became engrossed in watching the throngs at the doors of the department stores.
The street lights went on.
The mildness of September made a kind of halo around people and things that the street lamps illuminated in the pink light of evening.
It was when he came back to the little Place de la Palud that he staggered, thought he was fainting, had to lean against a wall to keep from falling: his father was walking placidly on the other side of the square. His father! Covered with sweat, Jean Calmet dug his nails into the sandstone of the Hôtel de Ville. His eyes popping, he stared at the ghost in desperation: it was the doctor all right, there could be no doubt about it, the heavy footfalls peacefully taking possession of the pavement, the breadth of the shoulders, the profile red and satirical under the tilted hat. The apparition stopped before a café, one hand extended towards the doorknob… Terrified, Jean Calmet ran his fingers over his dripping brow. He was not thinking, he trembled, he was breathing wildly; and, on the other side of the square, twenty yards away, that horrible slow-motion film: his father pushing the café door, the big horrifying silhouette going inside, the door closing behind it.
Consciousness came back to him with a feeling of bitter cold that chilled him from head to foot. A truck with a trailer went by, hiding from him the café where the ghost was now drinking his white wine, a cigar in his hand, his hat lying on the table before him. Jean Calmet made up his mind suddenly, ran across the square, plunged into the Café du Raisin: no doctor. Four or five solitary customers were sipping their drinks, and, at the back of the room, under the clock, a big fellow, vaguely ruddy, round-shouldered, his eyes shot with fatigue… Was this the man that he had taken for his father? Unthinkable… barely a minute or two ago, the doctor had gone by slowly on the cobbled pavement; Jean Calmet had recognized his profile perfectly, his lumbering stride; the doctor had his hat at a rakish angle, his trousers full of twisted wrinkles, his thick, hard strength seeming to radiate… Jean Calmet went home. Now a sharp pity replaced his fear: his father was dead and he came back among the living like a wanderer because he was unhappy, restless, perhaps desperate. Who would help him? What aid was he calling for from the beyond? Disgust gripped Jean Calmet’s stomach. Then he would never be at peace. No respite. The autumn dampness fell on his shoulders. He shut himself up in his lair, shivering, and stuffed himself with sleeping pills to be certain of getting some rest.
The disgust lasted into the next day. His classes over, Jean went back home and began answering the pile of condolence letters which had been cooling off on his table for a week. “…Profoundly touched by your solicitude… moved by your sympathy…” – he lined up the formulas, distracted from his writing by the faces of his correspondents, colleagues, former students, classmates from the University: between his letter and him, a whole gallery of ironic judges who saw through the emptiness of his clichés as he used them over and over. More insidiously, fear and doubt had crept into him in the afternoon and had not ceased to grow since he had opened the black-bordered envelopes, read the funereal notes, begun himself to write his replies. He thanked people for having written to him on his father’s death. But yesterday, at the Place de la Palud, the ghost… Was the doctor really dead? All morning Jean Calmet berated himself for his ridiculous visions. He had allowed himself to fall into the trap all afternoon, the trap of the deceptive sweetness of life; and to punish him, there had been the apparition, that ghost, that grotesque hallucination. On his tongue, the bitter taste of the sleeping pills, and remorse in his heart, reprobation that would not be stilled the whole morning; he swore to himself that he would not again be taken in by that phantasm. The doctor roaming around the city! He had to be overemotional and weak to allow himself to be taken in by the first vague resemblance that came along unexpectedly. He could not find enough words to reproach himself, to belabour himself. That evening, things were simpler, uneasiness stole over him. “…Since your father died, my dear Jean…” He pushed away the last note with anger and, from his briefcase, took a treatise on public health which he had borrowed from the library of the Gymnase that very afternoon, making sure that no one had seen him.
He opened it to page 215 and read with the utmost attention the article that he had hastily glanced at in the bays lined with books. It was entitled ‘The Signs of Death’, and Jean Calmet studied it word for word:Aside from the cessation of respiration, the signs of death are the following:1. Cessation of heartbeat.
2. Absence of pupillary and corneal reflexes; the darkening of the eyes.
3. Drop in body temperature: below 20° centigrade, death is certain.
4. Onset of bodily rigidity.
5. Onset of bodily spots: bluish-red spots on the lower parts.
6. Bodily decomposition.
Immediately, Jean Calmet was ashamed of having borrowed that stupid book. His childishness oppressed him like a physical defect: he saw himself again at the library, uneasy, furtive, nervously slipping the book into his open briefcase… His father had died on 17 September. They had burned him at the crematorium on the twentieth. In the intervening time, and since the first moments that followed the death, Dr Gross had had to sign the certificate after determining death. Proper death. Undeniable death, from which no one ever returns. Jean Calmet began to muse over the red and blue spots of corpses. The lower parts. The big white thighs mottled with red streaks like imitation marble. It grieved Jean Calmet to think vulgarly of Gorgonzola, soft cheese; it, too, was stained bluish, with verdigrised dough like dead veins in rigid flesh. Dirty specks at the calf of the leg and on the knees. Wounds, purplish-blue ocelli, sanguine bruises. On the knees! Jean Calmet remembered a detail that was commonly related about crematoria: the kneecaps withstood fire. The attendant had to remove them from the ashes with a small shovel; then he threw them into a burlap bag that soon resembled a bag of marbles, clicking funereally. Childish vision! But, for a moment, this legend amused Jean Calmet, distracting him from the anguish that had gripped him for hours. His mind wandered around the torture rack of St Lawrence, the flames of the Inquisition, the ovens of Auschwitz. Good deal, thought Jean Calmet. Really the final solution. Take a heretic, beat him, lock him up, fine him, banish him, catch him again, beat him once more, resolutely he refuses to keep still, he stubbornly persists, he speaks again! Burn him. That’s silence. You remove him shape and all. Fire! The beautiful purifier! Your man is no more than a few ashes to be thrown in the river or to be abandoned to the wind. And he had never heard ashes speak! Jean Calmet thought with contentment, grasping at once the whole scope of his error. It’s just the opposite! he flung at himself in a hard, ironic tone. The cruder the torture, the more the ashes speak. The remains of the persecuted are not reduced to silence. The crosses of the Inquisition, the fires of St John’s Eve, the piles of shoes, the heaps of gold teeth at Auschwitz proclaim victory. Ashes are alive, loquacious, vindictive; they are reincarnated, they return to the charge, they teach, they triumph, they persecute in their turn! The saint’s torture grill has more power than the tools of his executioners. Those who die by the flame come back and speak. And the bodies destroyed in the fire… The vision of his father in the oven of the crematorium of Montoie shocked Jean Calmet. The doctor’s flesh had cracked in the fearsome heat, fissures had yawned, belching fat, spitting water, holes were gaping, bounded by bloated edges, the sweat had smoked in the faults, the whole tortured body came asunder, collapsing, and, in the end, it had melted at the bottom of the oven, a horrid, gluey incandescence that dwindled, flattened out, then had cooled slowly, a greyish mass of bone and viscera, then cinders, meagre sand, a thin layer of dust tamped down in the obscurity of the oven, whose heating units also grow cold and contract, buzzing… Sadness gripped him. A weariness born of remorse and horror compressed his thorax. He had trouble remaining seated at his table, overloaded with books and students’ homework papers; it was as if some violent blow had broken his spine at the level of the collarbones, and t
he pain gripped his trunk, crushed his lungs, made his heart leaden. His lamp cast a double light, white at the bottom, red on top, over the walls lined with books and etchings of his study. His study! One more term that he had acquired in Lutry just as one might catch a disease. “Papa is in his study. Papa is calling you in his study. Hurry! Jean, what are you standing there for? Papa wants to see you in his study!” He had to drop everything, run, go rushing down the echoing steps, push open the door of the den where the red doctor gleamed in the light of his lamp, behind his file cards and folders, while the shadow of his gestures moved, enormous, on the bookcase. And his voice. At once an aggressive tone, perhaps because the doctor was too rushed by his work to soften, to explain, to listen to others who submitted to him at once. Jean Calmet remembered his humiliation: he was standing before his father, just waiting for the moment when he might flee, but he had to listen to orders, submit to the torrent, the laughter, the rage, the joking, all that concentrated strength that burst like a storm on his head. Overbearing tone. The eyes that burn your heart. The wounding words rained down:
“Little moron, imbecile, you’ll never amount to anything. When I think that I’m killing myself for all of you – for you in particular, for your schooling, for your pleasure – and what reward do I have? A cringing, muddle-headed weakling who goes around sulking all day long. If at least you worked hard at school! But nothing at all. Nothing doing. Monsieur puts off his exams, plays truant from his seminars and spends most of his time in the cafés of La Cité. Drinking wine. And with whom, if I may ask? With little buggers like himself, ship’s lawyers, parasites, flops, chatterboxes. Nice company, my friend. Your books? Your classes? Your fine Latin? Nothing doing. Monsieur loafs about, Monsieur hangs around, Monsieur talks, Monsieur writes poetry. And meanwhile, what am I doing? I’m working – yes, Monsieur! I run, I operate, I make calls, I see patients, I’ve got the hospital, all the red tape, the insurance forms and all that, I don’t have a minute for myself, I eat fast, I don’t sleep any more, I’m on the go night and day, I sacrifice myself for you, I give you my sweat and blood, I’m killing myself, I tell you seriously, my Benjamin, I’m killing myself for all of you, I’m killing myself for you!”
The Tyrant Page 4