“Monsieur Robinson has been asking for you again,” said my concierge, who liked him. “He doesn’t seem to be getting better, does he?” she added. “He was coughing again when he came.” She knew it annoyed me to hear her talk about him.
It’s true that he coughed. “It’s hopeless,” he himself said. “I’ll never get over it …”
“Wait till summer! A little patience! You’ll see … It’ll just stop …”
You know … the kind of thing you say in such cases. I couldn’t cure him as long as he was working with acids … But I tried to cheer him up all the same.
“It’ll just stop?” he’d say. “You give me a pain. Do you think it’s funny breathing like I do … I’d like to see you with a thing like this in your chest … This kind of thing in the chest gets a man down … Take it from me …”
“You’re depressed, you’re having a bad time, but when you feel better … Even a little better, you’ll see …”
“A little better? I’ll feel a little better when I’m eight feet under! I should have got killed in the war, then I’d feel really better! For you there was some sense in coming back! You can’t complain!”
People cling to their rotten memories, to all their misfortunes, and you can’t pry them loose. These things keep them busy. They avenge themselves for the injustice of the present by smearing the future inside them with shit. They’re cowards deep down, and just. That’s their nature.
I stopped answering him. That made him angry.
“You see? You think the same as I do.”
To get him to leave me in peace, I made him up some cough syrup. It seems his neighbors complained that he coughed all the time and it kept them awake. While I was filling the bottle, he went on wondering out loud where he could have caught this stubborn cough. He also wanted me to give him injections of gold salts!
“If the injections killed me, I wouldn’t mind, you know …”
Naturally I wouldn’t have anything to do with this heroic therapy. Mostly I wanted him to go away.
Just seeing him hanging around, I’d lost all my pleasure in life. It was already hard enough for me to keep from drifting with the current of my own failure, from giving in to my impulse to close up shop once and for all. Twenty times a day I’d say to myself: “What for?” So listening to his lamentations in addition was really too much.
“You haven’t any spirit, Robinson,” I finally told him … “You ought to get married, maybe that would give you some zest for life …” If he’d got himself a wife, it would have taken him off my hands. The suggestion made him angry, and he left me. He didn’t care for my advice, especially that kind. On the marriage issue he didn’t even answer me. And I must admit, that was a pretty silly piece of advice.
One Sunday when I wasn’t on duty we went out together. We settled on the terrace of a café at the corner of the Boulevard Magnanime and ordered a small cassis and a diabolo* We didn’t talk much, we didn’t have much to say to each other. What good are words anyway when you know the score? You’ll only come to blows. There aren’t many buses on Sunday. Sitting on the terrace, it’s almost a pleasure to see the boulevard so neat and clean, all rested like the people. The phonograph was playing in the café behind us.
“Hear that?” says Robinson. “His phonograph is playing American tunes. I recognize them. It’s the ones they played at Molly’s place in Detroit …”
In the two years he’d spent there he hadn’t gone very far into American life. Still, he’d been touched in a way by their brand of music, where they, too, try to get away from the weight of routine and the crushing misery of having to do the same thing every day … While it’s playing, they can shuffle about for a while with a life that has no meaning. Bears on both sides of the ocean …
He was thinking so hard about all that that he had hardly touched his cassis. A little dust was rising on all sides. Some children with big bellies and smudged faces were wandering around under the plane trees; they too were attracted by the phonograph records. Nobody can really resist music. You don’t know what to do with your heart, you’re glad to give it away. At the bottom of all music you have to hear the tune without notes, made just for us, the tune of Death.
A few shops still have the obstinacy to open on Sunday … the slipper woman comes out of her shop and parades her pounds of varicose veins from display to display, stopping to chat here and there.
At the newsstand the morning papers hang yellow and limp, an enormous artichoke of news going bad.
A dog takes a quick piss on them, the news woman is dozing.
An empty bus is heading back to its depot lickety split. Thoughts have their Sunday too, come to think of it. We’re even more dazed than usual. Here we sit, empty, bewildered, contented. We have nothing to talk about, because nothing happens to us anymore, we’re too poor, maybe life is sick of us. Why not?
“Can’t you think of something I could do to get out of this job that’s killing me?”
He had surfaced from his reflections.
“I want to get out of that racket, see? I’m sick of working like a mule … I want to roam around too … Wouldn’t you know somebody who needs a chauffeur by any chance? … You know so many people …”
Sunday ideas, gentleman’s ideas had come over him. I was afraid to argue, to insinuate that no one would entrust his motorcar to a man with the mug of an impoverished murderer, that with or without a uniform he would always look too peculiar.
“You’re not very encouraging, are you?” he said. “So you think I’ll never get out of the ditch? … You think there’s not even any point in my trying? … In America you said I was too slow … In Africa I couldn’t stand the heat … Here I’m not intelligent enough … But that’s all a lot of hooey, you can’t tell me different! If only I had plenty of money! … Everybody would think I was adorable … here … there … and everywhere … Even in America … Ain’t it the truth? What about you? … All we need is to own an apartment house with half a dozen tenants paying good stiff rents …”
“You’ve got something there,” I said.
He had come to that major conclusion all by himself, and he couldn’t get over it. Then he gave me a funny look, as if he had suddenly discovered something too-too nauseating about me.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “you’ve got the good end. You sell your hokum to sick people, and you haven’t a thing to worry about … Nobody riding you … You come and go when you like, you’re free … You’re nice enough on the surface but what a bastard underneath!”
“You’re unjust, Robinson …”
“All right, then find me something …”
He was determined to pass on his acid job to someone else …
We started off through the little side streets. In the late afternoon you’d think Raney was a village. The big house door is ajar. The yard is empty, and so is the dog’s kennel. One afternoon like this, years ago, the peasants left their homes, driven away by the city creeping out from Paris. There are only one or two taverns left from those days, unsalable, crumbling away, overgrown by limp wisteria vines, hanging down over walls reddened with posters. The grating hung between two gargoyles has rusted till it can’t rust anymore. All this past—nobody touches it anymore. It’s dying without any help from anyone. The present tenants are much too tired when they come home at night to do anything about the outside of their house. They just pile up, family by family, in what’s left of the common rooms and drink. The ceiling is marked with rings of smoke left by the wobbly hanging lamps of those days. The whole neighborhood is shaken uncomplaining by the continuous rumble of the new factory. Moss-covered tiles crash down on high, humpbacked cobblestones, the kind you’ll find today only in Versailles and in venerable prisons.
Robinson accompanied me to the little town park hemmed in by warehouses, where all the strays in the neighborhood come and misbehave on the mangy lawn, on the senile boules* ground, around the incomplete Venus, an
d on the sandpile for playing and peeing.
The conversation started up again, about this and that. “My trouble is that drink doesn’t agree with me.” A bee in his bonnet. “When I drink, I get cramps, it’s unbearable. Worse!” And by throwing up several times he demonstrated that even our little cassis that afternoon hadn’t agreed with him.
“See what I mean?”
He left me outside his door. “The Palace of Drafts,” he said and vanished. I thought I wouldn’t be seeing him for a while.
That night it looked as if my business might be picking up.
I got two urgent calls from the same house, the one over the police station. On Sunday evening everybody lets go … their sighs, their feelings, their impatience. Human dignity goes on a holiday spree. After a whole day of alcoholic freedom the slaves are stirring, there’s no holding them, they sniff, they snort, they clank their chains …
In the house over the police station two tragedies were in progress at once. On the second floor a man was dying of cancer, on the fourth there had been a miscarriage that was more than the midwife could handle. That worthy matron was giving everybody absurd advice, all the while washing out napkins and more napkins. Between two douches she’d slip away to give the cancer patient downstairs an injection, at ten francs an ampule, of camphorated oil if you please. A good day for her.
Every family in the house had spent the day in dressing gowns and shirt sleeves, lending a helping hand, well reinforced by highly seasoned food. Every stairway and corridor smelled of garlic and other more obscure odors. The dogs were having a fine time, running up as far as the seventh floor. The concierge was determined to keep abreast of events. You couldn’t move without running into her. She only drank white wine, because red wine gives you discharges.
The elephantine midwife in her smock was directing both tragedies, on the second floor and on the fourth, bounding, sweating, delighted, vindictive. My arrival infuriated her. She had been holding her audience since morning, she was the star.
I tried my best to spare her feelings, to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, to approve of everything (when in reality everything she had done was preposterous), but my being there and every word I said went against her grain. It was to be expected. A supervised midwife is as friendly as a hangnail. You can’t think of any place to put her where she’ll do as little harm as possible. From the kitchen the family overflowed through the apartment and out on to the staircase, where they mingled with the relatives of other tenants. And what multitudes of relatives! Fat ones and thin ones gathered in somnolent clusters under the hanging lamps. It was getting late, and more were arriving from the provinces where people go to bed earlier than in Paris. They were fed up. Everything I said to the relatives of those tragedies … upstairs and down … was taken amiss.
The death agony on the second floor didn’t last long. Which had its good side and bad side. Just as his last gasp was coming up, Dr. Omanon, his regular doctor, drops in to see if his patient was dead, and starts bawling me out or pretty near for being there at the bedside. I explained to Omanan that I was on municipal Sunday duty, so my presence was perfectly natural. Whereupon, with dignity, I climbed up to the fourth floor.
Upstairs the woman’s ass was still bleeding. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she too had taken it into her head to die without bothering to wait. A minute to give her an injection, and down again to Omanon’s patient. It was definitely all over. Omanon had just left. But the bastard had pocketed my twenty francs. Another dud. After that I was determined to stick to my post beside the miscarriage. So I ran upstairs as fast as I could.
Her vulva was still bleeding, and I explained a few things to the family. Naturally the midwife disagreed. It almost looked as if she were being paid for contradicting me. But there I was, I had to do something, who cared if she was happy or not? So let’s not fool around! This case was worth at least a hundred francs to me if I handled it right and stuck to my guns. A man of science keeps his temper, damn it! It’s hard work standing up to the remarks and questions steeped in white wine that hurtle implacably through the air over your innocent head … it’s no joke. Belching and sighing, the family impart their opinions. The midwife is waiting for me to make a fool of myself, clear out, and leave her the hundred francs. But the midwife has another think coming. What about my rent? Who’s going to pay it? This labor had been twiddling its thumbs since this morning, I won’t deny it. She’s bleeding, I won’t deny that either, but it’s not coming out, I’ve got to hold my ground.
Now that the cancer patient has died downstairs, his deathbed audience has crept up here. As long as you’re losing a night’s sleep, as long as you’re making the sacrifice, you may as well take in all the entertainment the neighborhood has to offer. The downstairs family comes up to see if maybe this tragedy is going to end as badly as theirs. Two deaths in the same house, on the same night, would be a sensation to last them a lifetime. Nothing less. Everybody’s dogs can be heard tinkling their bells as they scamper up and down the stairs. They come in too. More people from far away pour in, whispering. Some teenage girls have suddenly discovered the “facts of life,” as their mothers put it and now, in the face of tragedy, they’re putting on a tenderly knowing air. The female consoling instinct. A cousin has been watching them since morning. He’s fascinated, he hasn’t stirred from their side. They come as a revelation in his fatigue. Everyone’s clothes are askew. The cousin will marry one of them, he wishes he could see their legs while he’s about it, to make it easier to choose.
The fetus refuses to come out, the passage must be dry, it won’t slip through, nothing but blood. This would have been her sixth child. Where’s the husband? I ask for him.
The husband had to be found if I was going to send his wife to the hospital. A relative had suggested the hospital. She had a family at home and wanted to get to bed on account of the children. But when the word hospital was brought up, they couldn’t get together. Some were in favor, others were dead set against, because of what people would say. They wouldn’t even hear of it. Some very hard words were exchanged between relatives, words that would never be forgotten and would go down in the family. The midwife despised everybody. What preoccupied me was finding the husband, I wanted to consult him, so we could make up our minds one way or the other. He finally emerges from one of the groups, even more undecided than everyone else. But the decision was up to the husband. Hospital? No hospital? What does he think? He doesn’t know. He wants to look. So he looks. I show him his wife’s hole, the blood clots, the glug-glug, his whole wife seeping away. She’s groaning like a big dog that’s been run over by a car. He doesn’t know what he wants. Somebody gives him a glass of white wine to pick him up. He sits down.
He still can’t make up his mind. He’s a man who works hard all day. Everyone knows him in the market and especially at the freight station, where he totes sacks, and no small loads, big heavy things, been toting them for the last fifteen years. He’s famous. His trousers are vast and shapeless, likewise his jacket. They don’t fall off, but he doesn’t seem to be very much attached to his trousers and jacket. He only seems attached to the earth and standing upright on it, with his two feet spread wide as if the earth were going to start quaking under him any minute. His name is Pierre.
We’re all waiting. “Well, Pierre,” they all ask him. “What do you think?” Pierre scratches himself and goes and sits down right next to his wife’s face, as if he had trouble recognizing this woman who was always bringing so much pain into the world, and then he sheds a kind of tear and stands up. We all fire the same question. I make out a certificate of admission for the hospital. “Try and think, Pierre!” everyone pleads. He tries but makes a sign meaning it won’t come. He gets up and staggers out to the kitchen, taking his glass with him. Why wait any longer? That husband’s indecision, everybody realized, was likely to go on all night. We might as well be going.
For me it was a hundred francs lost, that’s al
l. But one way or another I’d have had trouble with the midwife … that was sure. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to risk any surgical manipulations in front of all those people and in my state of fatigue. “Too bad,” I said to myself. “No use hanging around. Maybe next time … May as well resign myself … Let nature take her course, the bitch!”
I’d hardly reached the stairs when they all called me back and he came running after me. “Hey, doctor!” he yelled, “don’t go!” “What do you want me to do?” I asked him.
“Wait, I’ll go with you, doctor! … Please, doctor!”
“All right,” I said, and let him go down with me. I was in the lead, so I stopped at the second floor to say good-bye to the dead cancer patient’s family. The husband went into the room with me, and we came right out again. In the street he fell into step with me. There was a nip in the air. We came across a puppy who was practicing how to answer the other dogs of the Zone with long howls. He was very persistent and very plaintive. He had already mastered the art. He’d soon be a real dog.
“Hey, that’s Egg Yolk,” says the husband, delighted at recognizing him and at changing the subject … “The daughters of the laundryman on the Rue des Gonesses brought him up on a baby’s bottle … Do you know the laundryman’s daughters?”
“Yes,” I said.
As we were walking he told me about ways they had of feeding puppies on milk without its costing too much. But behind those words he was looking all the while for an idea in connection with his wife.
A bar was open near the Porte.
“Coming in, doctor? I’ll buy you a drink.”
I wasn’t going to hurt his feelings. “All right,” I said. “Two coffees.” I took the opportunity to talk about his wife. My talking about her turned him dead serious, but I still couldn’t get him to make up his mind. There was a big bouquet on the bar counter. For Martrodin’s birthday, Martrodin was the owner. “A present from the children,” he himself told us. So we had a vermouth with him and drank his health. The Drunkenness Law and a framed school diploma were hanging on the wall. When he saw that, the husband absolutely insisted on the owner reciting the Subprefectures of the Loir-et-Cher Department, because he had learned them in school and still knew them. Then he claimed it wasn’t the owner’s name on the diploma but somebody else’s, that made the owner sore, so the husband came back and sat with me. He was in the throes of doubt again, so tormented that he didn’t even see me leave …
Journey to the End of the Night Page 31