After dinner Madelon would devote herself to her “little Léon,” as she called him. She read the newspaper out loud. He was wild about politics at the time, and the papers in the South pustulated with politics, of the juiciest kind.
Around us in the evening the house would sink into the dilapitude of the centuries. That’s the time, after dinner, when the bedbugs come out for the corrida and also the time to test the corrosive formula which I hoped to sell to some pharmacist at a small profit later on. A modest racket. My invention amused Grandma Henrouille, and she helped me with my experiments. Together we went from nest to nest, from crack to cranny, and sprayed their swarms with my vitriol. They scurried and vanished in the light of the candle that Grandma Henrouille conscientiously held for me.
While at our work, we talked about Raney. Just thinking about the place gave me the collywobbles, I’d have stayed in Toulouse for the rest of my life. What more did I want, after all, than my daily bread and some time to myself? Happiness in short. Still, I had to think about going back to work. Time was passing, and so were the Abbé Protiste’s bonus and my savings.
Before leaving, I thought I’d teach Madelon a thing or two, and give her a bit of advice. Of course it’s better to give money when you can afford it and you want to help. But you can also do good by warning a person, telling them exactly what’s what and especially about the risks of fucking right and left. That’s what I said to myself, because I was really worried about Madelon catching something. She was a smart little number, but no one could have been more ignorant about microbes. So I started explaining in great detail that she should take a close look before responding to advances. If it was red … if there was a drop at the end … In short, the classical and exceedingly useful things that everyone should know. After listening attentively and hearing me out, she protested for the sake of form. She even made something of a scene, assuring me … that she was a “respectable” girl … that I should be ashamed of myself … that I had a foul opinion of her … because she’d done it with me … that I despised her … that all men were beastly …
Anyway, the kind of thing they say in a case like that … I might have expected it … Window dressing. What mattered to me was that she had listened carefully to my advice and grasped the essential. The rest didn’t mean a thing. After hearing what I had to say, what really saddened her was that you could catch all those things I’d been telling her about just from affection and pleasure. Even if nature was to blame, she thought I was fully as disgusting as nature, and that offended her. I carried the matter no further, except for a few words about condoms, which are so convenient. After that we played psychologist and tried to analyze Robinson’s character just a little. “He’s not exactly jealous,” she said to me. “But he has his difficult moments.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” I said, and launched into a description of Robinson’s character, as if I knew his character, but I noticed right away that I didn’t know Robinson at all, except for a few obvious and glaring features. Nothing more., It’s amazing how hard it is to imagine what can make one person pleasing to another … You want to do someone a favor, to be helpful, and all you do is make a fool of yourself … It’s pitiful, the moment you open your mouth … you flounder.
Nowadays it’s not easy to be La Bruyère.* The whole unconscious skedaddles the moment you go near it.
Just as I was about to buy my ticket, they got me to stay … for another week, we agreed. The idea was to show me the country around Toulouse, the cool banks of the river I’d heard so much about, and especially they wanted me to see the beautiful vineyards on the outskirts, that everyone in town seemed to take pleasure and pride in, as if they were all part owners. They wouldn’t think of letting me leave like that, when I hadn’t seen anything but Grandma Henrouille’s corpses. It was unthinkable! Well anyway, soft soap …
I was paralyzed by so much kindness. I didn’t dare seem too eager to stay, because of my intimacy with Madelon, which was getting kind of dangerous. The old woman was beginning to suspect something between us. A strain in the air.
But the old woman wasn’t coming with us on this excursion. In the first place she didn’t want to close her crypt, not for a single day. So I agreed to stay on, and one Sunday morning we set out for the country. Robinson walked between us, we held him by the arms. At the station we took second-class tickets. Even so, the compartment smelled strongly of sausage, just the same as third class. We got off at a place called Saint-Jean. Madelon seemed familiar with the region, and right away she began meeting acquaintances from this village and that village. It looked like a fine day coming on. As we walked along, we had to tell Robinson everything we saw. “Here there’s a garden … That’s a bridge over there, and on top of it there’s a man fishing … He’s not catching anything … Watch out for the bicycle …” But the smell of French fries gave him his direction all right. In fact it was he who dragged us to a bar where they served French fries for fifty centimes a portion. I’d always known that Robinson was fond of French fries. So am I. It’s a Parisian taste. Madelon preferred vermouth, dry and straight.
Rivers aren’t happy in the South. They seem to be sick, always drying up. Hills, sun, fishermen, fish, boats, ditches, wash troughs, vines, weeping willows—all want some, all clamor for water. Much too much water is demanded of them, so there isn’t much left in the riverbed. In places it looks more like a badly flooded road than a genuine river. Seeing we’d come for pleasure, we had to hurry up and find some. When we’d finished our French fries, we thought we’d take a little boatride before lunch, that would be fun, me rowing of course, the two of them, Robinson and Madelon, facing me, hand in hand.
So off we go, merrily down the stream as they say, scraping the bottom here and there, she letting out squeals and he not quite easy in his mind either. Flies and more flies. Dragonflies everywhere, watching the river out of their big eyes and giving frightened little flicks of their tails. Amazing heat that makes the surface steam. We glide over the water from those long flat eddies back there to this tangle of dead branches … We hug the burning bank, looking for whiffs of shade that we grab as best we can under a few trees not too riddled with sunshine. Talking makes you even hotter, if that’s possible. On the other hand, you’re afraid to admit you’re not comfortable.
Robinson, naturally enough, was the first to be fed up with navigation. I suggested landing near a restaurant. We weren’t the only ones to have that little idea. Every fisherman on that reach of the river was already settled at the bistrot before us, jealously nursing his apéritif, entrenched behind a siphon. Robinson didn’t dare ask me if this café I had chosen was expensive, but I set his mind at rest by assuring him that the-prices were posted and perfectly reasonable. It was true. He never let go of his Madelon’s hand the whole while.
Now it can be told that we paid our bill at the restaurant as if we had eaten, but we had only tried to eat. The less said of the dishes they served us the better. They’re still there.
After that, to spend the afternoon, it would have been too complicated to arrange a fishing party, and it would have made Robinson unhappy because he wouldn’t even have seen his float. As for me, I was sick and tired of rowing, just from the morning’s effort. That had been plenty. The training I’d had on the rivers of Africa was far behind me. I had aged in that as in everything else.
For a change of exercise, I suggested that a little walk along the bank would do us a lot of good, at least as far as the tall grass you could see up there less than a mile away, not far from that line of poplars.
So there we went, Robinson and I arm in arm, and Madelon a few steps ahead of us. It was easier that way through the grass. At a bend in the river we heard accordions. The sound came from a barge, a beautiful barge moored at that point in the river. The music attracted Robinson. Which was understandable in his situation, and besides he had always had a weakness for music. Glad to have found something that amused him, we parked right
there on the grass, which wasn’t as dusty as on the slanting bank nearby. We could see that it wasn’t any ordinary barge. It was neat and well turned out, not meant for hauling anything, more of a houseboat, than a barge, with flowers all over it and even a spanking little kennel for the dog. We described the houseboat to Robinson. He wanted to know all about it.
“I’d like to live on a clean little boat like that myself,” he said then. “How about you?” he asked Madelon …
“I see what you mean,” she replied. “But that’s an expensive idea you’ve got, Léon! I’m sure it would cost you a lot more than an apartment house …”
We all started reckoning how much that kind of a houseboat might cost, and we couldn’t get together … Each of us insisted on his own figure … Regardless of what we were counting, our class of people used to do it out loud … Meanwhile, the accordion music came over to us as caressingly as you please, we could even hear the words of a song they were singing … Finally we agreed that the houseboat, just as it was, must be worth at least a hundred thousand francs … A figure to set you dreaming …
Close your lovely eyes, for the hours are short …
In the wonderful land, the beautiful land of drea-eams …
That’s what they were singing inside the boat, men’s and women’s voices mixed, a little out of tune, but very pleasant all the same because of the setting. It went with the heat and the country and the time of day and the river.
Robinson persisted in driving his estimates sky-high. The way we’d described the houseboat, he was sure it would cost a lot more … Because it had a big glass window to let in more light and brass fittings all over, luxury in short …
“Léon, you’re knocking yourself out.” Madelon tried to quiet him. “Why don’t you stretch out on this nice thick grass and rest a while … A hundred thousand or five hundred thousand, who cares? … You haven’t got it and neither have I … So really there’s no sense in working yourself up …”
He lay down, but he kept working himself up about the price all the same, he wanted to know for sure, and he wanted to see this houseboat that cost so much …
“Has it got a motor?” he asked … We didn’t know.
Just to please him, since he insisted, I took a look at the stern, to see if I’d see the exhaust pipe of a small motor.
Close your lovely eyes, for life is a dream …
Love is a fan-ta-sy …
Close your lovely eyes!
The people in there went on singing. We were drooping with fatigue … They were putting us to sleep.
Suddenly the spaniel came bounding out of the kennel and stood on the gangplank barking in our direction. We woke with a start, and we gave the spaniel hell. He had frightened Robinson.
So then a character who seemed to be the owner came out on deck through the little cabin door. He said he wouldn’t stand for anybody shouting at his dog, and we talked back. But when he noticed that Robinson was as good as blind, the man calmed down and felt foolish. He changed his mind about bawling us out and even let us call him a few names to get even. To make up for his rudeness, he invited us to come and have coffee on his boat, to celebrate, he added, his birthday. He wouldn’t hear of our baking out there in the sun, and so forth and so on … And besides it was lucky we’d turned up, because they were thirteen at table … He was a young, man, an eccentric … He liked boats, he explained … We could see that. But his wife was afraid of the sea, so they had moored their boat out here, on the beach, so to speak … We went aboard, and everybody seemed glad to have us … First of all his wife, a fine-looking woman, who played the accordion like an angel. Anyway, it was nice of them to have us over for coffee. We could have been almost anybody. It was trusting of them … We realized right off that it wouldn’t do to shame our charming hosts … Especially in front of their guests … Robinson had his faults, but as a rule he had a certain fine feeling. Just by the sound of their voices he realized that we had to behave and abstain from bad language. True, we weren’t very well dressed, but we were neat and clean. The owner of the houseboat, I looked him over, must have been about thirty, with poetic brown hair and a nice sailor-type suit, but custom-made. And his attractive wife had really “velvety” eyes.
They had just finished lunch. Plenty of leftovers. We didn’t say no to a piece of cake, certainly not. Or a glass of port to go with it. I hadn’t heard such high-class voices in a long time. High-class people have a certain way of talking that intimidates you and frightens me personally, especially their women. It’s really just a lot of half-baked, pretentious phrases, but as highly polished as antique furniture. Meaningless as they are, their phrases are terrifying. When you try to answer, you’re afraid of slipping up. And even when they take the tone of the gutter and amuse themselves singing the songs of the poor, they hang on to that high-class accent, which inspires suspicion and antipathy. That accent always has the kind of whiplash that’s needed for talking to servants. It’s sexy, but it makes you want to tumble their women, just to see their dignity, as they call it, melt away.
In a whisper I told Robinson about the furniture, all antiques. The place reminded me a little of my mother’s shop, except naturally it was cleaner and more orderly. My mother’s shop always smelled of old pepper.
The walls all around were hung with paintings by the owner. A painter, as his wife told me with lots of simper and gush. His wife loved her man all right. He was an artist, nice penis, nice hair, nice income, everything needed to make a woman happy; in addition, she had her accordion, her friends, her reveries on the meager, swirling water, she was quite content never to go anywhere … Here they had all that plus all the sweet coolness in the world, enclosed between the half-curtains and the breath of the ventilator. And God-given security besides.
Seeing we were there, we thought we might as well make ourselves at home. Iced drinks, then strawberries and cream, my favorite dessert. Wriggling and simpering, Madelon accepted a second helping. She too was improving her manners. The men were taken with Madelon, especially the rich father-in-law. He seemed delighted to have Madelon beside him and went to no end of trouble to give her pleasure. He ransacked the whole table for delicacies just for her, and she lit into them with such enthusiasm that the tip of her nose was soon covered with whipped cream. To judge by the conversation, the father-in-law was a widower. If so, he’d forgotten it. Soon, what with the liqueurs, Madelon was tipsy. The suit Robinson was wearing and mine, too, showed signs of fatigue, of seasons and more seasons, but maybe in that dim light no one would notice. Still, I felt rather humiliated among those people, so comfortable in all respects, as clean as Americans, so well washed and well groomed, fit for a fashion parade.
Once liquored up, Madelon didn’t behave so well. Aiming her little profile at the pictures, she started talking rubbish. The hostess noticed and took to the accordion again to gloss it over. Everybody sang, the three of us joined in under our breaths, but listlessly and out of tune, the same song as we’d been listening to outside, and then another.
Robinson had managed to strike up a conversation with an elderly gentleman who seemed to know all there was to know about growing cacao trees. A splendid subject. A get-together between colonials. To my amazement I hear Robinson saying: “When I was out in Africa—I was working for the Compagnie Pordurière in those days as their agronomist in chief—I used to mobilize a whole village to harvest the crop …” And more of the same. He couldn’t see me, so he gave himself free rein … The sky was the limit … Phony memories … He really gave the old gentleman an earful … A pack of lies … Anything he could think of to put himself in the class of the old gentleman, who was really an expert. It exasperated and dismayed me to hear Robinson, who had always been rather reserved in company, shooting off his mouth like that.
They’d given him a place of honor in the depths of a big scented sofa. In his right hand he held a glass of brandy, while his left hand, with sweeping gestures, evoked the majesty of
the untamed forests and the fury of the equatorial tornado. He was launched, well launched … Alcide would have had a good laugh if he could have been there in the corner. Poor Alcide!
I can’t deny it, we were very comfortable on their houseboat, especially as a light breeze had come up on the river and, framed in the windows, the fluted curtains began to flutter like merry and cool little flags.
More ices were served and then another round of champagne. It was the owner’s birthday, he told us so a dozen times. For once he had decided to give everyone, even the wayfarer, pleasure. For once that was us. For an hour or two or possibly three, we would all be reconciled under his aegis, we’d all be pals, the known, the unknown, even strangers, even we three whom they had picked up on the riverbank faute de mieux, so as not to be thirteen at table. I was going to start singing my little song of good cheer, but then I changed my mind, suddenly too proud, too conscious. At that point, to justify their invitation that lay heavy on my mind, I saw fit to reveal that in my person they were entertaining one of the most distinguished physicians of Greater Paris! They could hardly have suspected it from my dress! Or from the low estate of my companions for that matter! But the moment they knew who I was, they declared themselves delighted and flattered, and every one of them started telling me about his very special little ailments. I took the opportunity to make friends with a tycoon’s daughter, a sturdy young cousin of the skipper’s, who suffered from hives and developed acid stomach on the slightest provocation.
Journey to the End of the Night Page 41