“Oh! Meussieu Taupe, you will have your little joke. Look Florette, I’ve already told you not to put your elbows on the table.”
“Mme. Cloche does,” retorts the child.
“You’ll get your face slapped in a minute!” yells her mother.
“I’m setting your child a bad example, Madame Pic, aren’t I?”
“Oh! but not in the least, Madame Cloche.”
“Ideal ... ideal ...” Meussieu Taupe mumbles, absent-mindedly.
“It’s true, how can we live without ideals?” Themistocles feels obliged to say. “Without ideals, we live like animals.”
Mme. Pic casts him the grateful glance of a bitch being allowed to keep one puppy. But Dominique, on the other hand, makes no concession to her.
“Eating, drinking, sleeping, that’s my ideal, and I’m not budging.”
“And women,” adds Themistocles, abruptly deserting Mme. Pic’s camp.
“Materialism is the scourge of our society,” groans the latter.
“Sanctimonious old cow,” says someone, in a sufficiently low voice for everyone to hear without looking as if they do.
Mme. Pic’s eyes become bloodshot; Meussieu Pic’s become atrocious.
“Do you know the story about the Englishman and the sack of flour?” Themistocles suddenly asks, with a presence of mind of which his brother thought him incapable.
“That’s right, tell us a story,” says Mme. Dominique, backing him up.
“Oh yes, let’s have a little laugh,” sighs Suzy.
“Ah! the story about the Englishman and the sack of flour,” says Meussieu Pic, who has finally disengaged his teeth from his teaspoon, “I have a feeling I know that one. It’s not the story of an Englishman who buys a sack of flour from an Armenian, is it?”
“From a Greek,” Themistocles corrects him.
“In my story, it’s an Armenian who sells a sack of corn.”
Themistocles lowers his nose in his plate in disgust, and lets the dealer in dried and salted goods finish the story. He congratulates himself on having done so, however, because it doesn’t have the slightest success. It’s more a strategic retreat than a defeat, and that wit, old Pic, in the end only wins an emPyrrhic victory.
—oooooo—oooooo—
Meanwhile, the two waiters lent by the Restaurant des Alliés are putting the fruit on the table and inquiring as to everyone’s wishes with reference to coffee and liqueurs. Mme. Cloche, who has drunk eighteen glasses of wine, scorns the fruit, folds her napkin meticulously, and orders a Cointreau. She sighs. The two children have disappeared; nobody takes any notice. Most of the guests look like tomatoes drying in the sun. Suzy and Peter are even closer to each other than they appear to be. Mme. Pic, having a care for her dignity, suppresses some tendentious hiccups. Through the open windows comes a little fresh air, with an aftertaste of coalsmoke.
“You’ll let us see your tricks soon, Meussieu Peter, won’t you,” says a lady.
“As soon as I’ve drunk my brandy, I’ll be at your disposal.”
“Why don’t we sing something?” suggests Suzy.
Now there’s a good idea. Ernestine and Suzy each comes on with a nice sentimental tune. Dominique sings of the baneful effects of the gaming table; Themistocles, more gayly, assures them that he’s got a good scheme, and Meussieu Pic makes a big hit with a little song relative to the planting of bananas. Taupe declares he doesn’t know anything. Mme. Pic declines. Mme. Cloche, requested to show her talents, bellows out a lugubrious tale about a crippled sailor whose fiancée prefers to marry a young man who is quite a gentleman to start off with but who later becomes an alcoholic and goes mad; the fiancée then tries to find the crippled sailor, but his comrades have eaten him one day when there was a west wind, and all that’s left of him is a little bit of his calf preserved in brine. Choking with emotion, Mme. Cloche does away with the contents of her glass of Cointreau before she goes on: the fiancée takes the little bit of his calf and eats it, and then throws herself down from the top of a lighthouse into the homicidal Ocean, singing: ’Tis the tale of a sailor boy, a sailor boy of France ...
This lugubrious adventure makes a considerable impression.
“You might have sung us something a bit more cheerful,” says Dominique.
“I yonly know two songs; that one, and then the one about the tragic guillotine. I chose the one that wasn’t so sad.”
“It’s Mme Belhôtel’s turn, now,” says Suzy.
Ernestine gets up and goes over to the window.
“Smatter?” asks Suzy.
“Don’t feel so good.”
“You ill?”
Ernestine doesn’t answer.
“Well well, certainly are some stars, this evening!” says she, then takes a few unsteady steps.
Peter gets up to help her.
“Go ahead without me. I’ll go and lie down for a few minutes. You stay there, Taupe.”
Suzy escorts her; they both go out. They wait in silence. Mme. Cloche leans out of the window. Suzy comes back with the two children.
“It’s nothing. She’s lying down in her room.”
“She duh want anything?”
No, she doesn’t want anything.
“Snot serious, is it?”
No, it’s not serious.
“Where’ve you been, Florette?” Mme. Pic asks severely.
“I was playing with Clovis.”
“Hm! why weren’t you playing here?”
“Ida know.”
The two children sit down again. They look at each other without laughing. Just no way of being left alone, thinks Florette. She agrees with Peter: the ideal is for people to damn well leave you in peace. That day will come; when she’s grown up. And how she’ll put her elbows on the table. And how she’ll have fun with the boys in the dark. And how she’ll go home just when it suits her. They’ll see! As for Clovis, he feels slightly embarrassed where Suzy is concerned; the thing is, Suzy, she isn’t a little girl, she’s a woman, a real one. And furthermore, his uncle, who is giving him an amused look, terrifies him more than his father, who’s frowning at him. In short, he is slightly embarrassed.
“What are you looking at over there, Aunt Sidonie?”
“Getting a bit of fresh air, dear.”
After a silence:
“It’s true, what Ernestine said; certainly are some stars this evening.”
One by one, the assembled company leaves the table; some of its members verify Mme. Cloche’s statement. Dominique hands around some cigars.
“There’s the Great Bear,” says Themistocles, pointing to something or other with the tip of his cigar.
“And there’s the polestar,” adds Meussieu Pic, doing ditto.
“It’s funny, all those little lights,” says Mme. Cloche pensively.
“Those little lights, Madame, are big suns, only they’re so far away from us that they seem no larger than a pinhead,” pontificates the dealer in dried and salted goods.
“Well I never!”
“And there’s some that’s so far away that you can’t see them,” adds the sergeant major.
“Howd we know they exist, then?” asks Mme. Dominique.
“You can see them through glasses, and the bigger the glasses are, the more you can see. Astronomers count millions and millions of them like that,” replies Meussieu Pic, who has been very well informed on this subject by the Abbé Morue.
“Isn’t science wonderful!” exclaims Suzy.
“I want to be an astronomer!” exclaims Clovis, fired with sudden enthusiasm.
“Don’t spose the gents in that profession get very rich,” Dominique thinks aloud.
“In the old days,” says Mme. Pic, who’d managed to keep quiet for ten whole minutes, “no one counted all those stars, and they were much happier.”
“Sgot nothing to do with it,” Peter declares.
“Yes, woss use of astronomy?” questions Mme. Cloche, following this new line.
“It’s absolutely
no use,” Saturnin answers.
“There, you see!” Mme. Pic triumphs.
“It’s been useful enough to show that the sun doesn’t go around the earth, like they say in the Bible,” Peter throws at her, sure of this effect.
Mme. Pic, who has no hope of converting the professor of white magic, registers this blow by abstracting all the remaining petits-fours from the table.
“Astronomy is useful in the navy, too,” adds Themistocles.
“I remember that my grandfather, who was a master mariner, knew all the stars by name,” says Meussieu Pic.
“Have all the stars got a name?” asks Mme. Cloche, thunderstruck.
“Every one.”
“Well I never!”
Mme. Cloche, much affected, opens her bag and extracts a large checked handkerchief; she makes immoderate use of it, and then puts it back in its receptacle.
“What are you doing with that dove?” Peter asks her.
“What dove?”
“The one that’s in your bag.”
“I’ve got a dove in my bag?”
“Take a look.”
She obeys, and a dove escapes from the open bag, flutters about a bit, and then alights on the frame of a color print. Applause.
“That’s just nothing,” says Peter. “Child’s play! Child’s play! The performance is really going to begin, now.”
“Why don’t we ask Ernestine to come,” Suzy suggests.
“That’s right! Maybe she’s better.”
“No, she isn’t better,” says old Taupe, emerging from the corridor. “She looks ill.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Dunno.”
Old Taupe sits down, in a daze.
“Have to get a doctor,” he adds.
Then they really get going. Suzy and Mme. Belhôtel go up to Ernestine’s room. The men, no point in their going. What could be the matter with her? Indigestion? Migraine?
Mme. Cloche then starts anxiously contemplating the turnip watch she’s holding; she’s beginning to get worried, to be afraid. Taking advantage of the confusion, Florette tickles Clovis, but the latter is in no mood for fun and games. He shares the avuncular anxiety. Then the heavy tread of Mme. Dominique is heard.
“Dominique! Dominique! have to go and get a doctor!”
—oooooo—oooooo—
When the doctor had gone, the members of the wedding party sat in silence around the table, which was soiled with cigar ash and wine stains. Bits of vegetables or meat, which had jumped out of the dishes like absurd acrobats, were scattered all over it, wilting in little pools of gravy. Pips and pieces of peel were mixed up with this debris; a flower petal was transfixed by a huge fishbone, for a bunch of flowers was shedding its petals in the midst of this dilapidation. Upstairs, they could hear Suzy walking up and down in Ernestine’s room; old Taupe was there too, and Mme. Dominique. The rest of the wedding party were hanging around in the dining room, their eyes vacant, their stomachs full. The two children were pinching each other with violence, but in silence. Mme. Cloche, very pale, was scratching the tablecloth with the nail of her index-finger, her favorite gesture; but the others didn’t budge. Camélia came as far as the door to sniff, looked at the silent assembly, and then went back into the shadows. The two waiters lent by the Restaurant des Alliés had gone. Dominque coughed every so often. Suddenly, he noticed that Mme. Pic wasn’t there.
“Huh, where’s your missis then?” he said to Pic.
“Ursule? Huh, where is she then? She may be upstairs, I don’t know,” replied Meussieu Pic, who was falling asleep.
“I think she went out,” said Mme. Peter.
But they didn’t press the point.
Then, five minutes later, Peter stood up and exclaimed:
“It’s rotten, though, just sitting here and not doing anything. Not being able to do anything. Absolutely nothing.”
He sat down again, his eyes moist. Dominique coughed.
Saturnin, irritated by his sister’s habit, said to her:
“Stop scratching like that. You’re not a mouse.”
Mme. Cloche stopped; she was getting paler and paler, and seemed to be thinking hard. Her tuberous nose was throbbing, her eyes were passionately animated; with despair, rage, hope and anger.
Florette, who had been pinched a bit too brutally by Clovis, started sniveling. Meussieu Pic took her on his knees, mumbling poor little thing, pore lil thing, pawlthing, pawlthing, pawlthing.
“Ah, shurrup,” said Dominique, exasperated.
The dealer in dried and salted goods shurrup, and advanced once more toward sleep. A few moments later, Mme. Dominique came down, poured herself out a large glass of wine and gulped it down.
“She’s getting worse,” she said abruptly, and then went upstairs again.
Themistocles, who had discovered a stray bit of bread on the table, was modeling a little ball into the shape of a phallus.
A bell rang. It was the doctor coming back. He climbed the stairs with speed, like a dead leaf raised by the wind. Then, five minutes later, he came tumbling down to the door and disappeared, his shoulders hunched. Mme. Dominique came down again.
“Well, what did he say this time?” asked Dominique.
“Znothing he can do, he says.”
“Znothing he can do,” Peter repeated, automatically.
“But what is it she’s got?” asked Mme. Cloche.
“He said the name of an illness, but I can’t remember it,” replied Mme. Belhôtel. “Tsan illness you don’t get better from, tswot he said.”
The company shivered.
“Isn’t there any way of saving her?” asked someone.
“No, the doctor, znothing he can do, tswot he said.”
No one spoke; then someone again asked:
“Has she got long?”
“Quarter of an hour, twenty minutes at the most, tswot he said.”
No one spoke; then someone again asked:
“She in pain?”
“No. Zjust gently fading away. She’s near her end, tswot he said.”
“How extraordinary,” said someone, pensively.
Mme. Cloche, with a backhander, flattened a fly that was shitting on the tablecloth. Themistocles, with a flick, ejected his bread phallus through the window. Mme. Dominique poured herself out another large glass of wine, and went up again to watch over the deathbed.
“Isn’t it a shame,” says someone, “dying at that age.”
“Alas, we die at every age,” says Meussieu Pic.
“She was a good girl, a good girl,” says Dominique, deeply moved.
“Isn’t it a shame,” says someone, “dying at that age.”
“And they can’t do anything for that illness.”
“We don’t even know what it is.”
“We don’t even know what it’s called.”
“She’s forgotten what the doctor said.”
“Isn’t it a shame to die at any age,” says someone else.
“All the same, when you’re young, when you haven’t had anything out of life.”
“All the same, what a shame, all the same, what a shame.”
“We don’t even know what she’s dying of.”
“The doctor said a name, but we don’t know.”
“And us, we can’t do a thing, we can only wait till it’s over.”
“What a shame, all the same, what a shame.”
“Ole Taupe now, you could understand him dying, but Ernestine ...”
“Why’d she marry him? Why youth with an old man? Why?”
“And why is it the young one that’s dying, and not the old one? Why Ernestine and not Taupe?”
“How should we know? how should we know?”
“What a shame, all the same, to die at that age,” says someone.
Then, once again, no one spoke. They aren’t crying; after all, they aren’t children. Ernestine—but who is she? She is about to disappear, so they say. She’s upstairs in bed, and it will soon b
e as if nothing has happened. Ernestine—but who is she? “My sister,” one will answer. “I’ve hardly seen her three times in the last ten years. We were the same age, us two brothers, she was just little; we went away to earn our living, more or less well; Ernestine, we didn’t really know how she was getting along. We sent New Year’s cards, and birthday cards. We were fond of her.” But who is she—Ernestine? “A little waitress I made pregnant,” Dominique will answer. “She worked well; not a lot, no, but she wasn’t afraid of hard work. Day and night, I used to go to her room. Like with Germaine, like with Camille, like with Marguerite, like with the other one too, the one with straw-colored hair. She knew how to keep the customers, an she never complained. The kid, no one ever saw it. The river’s looked after it all right. Ernestine—I was very fond of her.”
But who is she—Ernestine? “Dominique’s waitress,” Saturnin and Meussieu Pic answered. But who is she—Ernestine? “My sister-in-law,” answers Mme. Peter. But who is she—Ernestine? “The bride,” answers Florette. But who is she—Ernestine? “My accomplice,” answers Mme. Cloche. But who is she—Ernestine? And they are all thinking: She’s something that’s upstairs and that’s dying. Ernestine—that’s not me. Ernestine is someone else, someone else that we don’t want to be, that we don’t want to see. Some of them might perhaps want to know how it’s happening. She isn’t in pain, it would appear. But is she talking? Is she delirious? Does she know she’s going to die? Because we know we aren’t going to die. She can’t have much more than ten minutes now. That’s not much. At least we have the whole night, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow; well—days. Days and days. And old Taupe, what’s he got to say about all this? What could he be thinking? Because really, it’s a little peculiar, marrying a young woman and then she goes and dies on her wedding day. No, that’s never been known. Old Taupe, what could he have to say? Zno getting away from it, it’s all very sad.
The members of the wedding party are becoming a sort of worried and amorphous magma. Their anxiety weakens and dissolves them; it makes putty of them. Because it’s a minor anxiety, something very ordinary and a bit degrading. Not an anxiety that’d get you rolling on the floor, not for the moment, at any rate.
For the moment, they’re bored. They are waiting—it’s almost as if they’re waiting for a train. But this particular train, they’re not the ones that are going to take it. It’s the person that’s up above.
The Bark Tree Page 21