by Paul Gallico
“Why,” she exclaimed carefully, “Carrot Top doesn’t want to be told what to do. He made me promise before he let me come along that I was never to interfere with him. And besides,” she concluded after a moment of reflection, “he doesn’t really love Gigi at all, because . . .”
She broke off in alarm for Capitaine Coq was staring at her, his face now flushed dark with rage.
“What makes YOU think you know who Carrot Top loves or doesn’t love, you milk-faced little fool?”
For a moment Mouche thought the red-headed man was about to hurl his plate of food in her face . . .
Mouche said, “I . . . I’m sorry. I really don’t know . . . I suppose I just guessed. I won’t do it again.”
The fury did not abate from the countenance of Coq, but he did not speak to her again and instead took it out on Golo, shouting at him, “What are you lingering for, you black monkey? Haven’t you stuffed yourself enough? Get away back to the car before everything is pilfered . . .”
They continued to eat and drink in heavy silence again until Mouche gathered the courage to speak to him again. In her simple, gentle way she asked, “Monsieur le Capitaine, why are you always so angry?”
He laid down his knife and fork and stared long at her out of his cold, hard eyes. “Because you are a fool,” he replied finally, “and I have no time for fools, particularly women.”
Mouche was not hurt, for she was used to living where men were outspoken. And besides she did not think she was clever, or, since the disasters that had happened to her, even talented any longer. Impulsively she reached over and placed her hand oupon his in a sweet conciliatory gesture saying, “Dear Capitaine Coq—why cannot you be as kind and patient with me as Carrot Top, Dr. Duclos and Mr. Reynardo. I am sure they thought I was very stupid at times today, but they never showed it.”
The touch of her gentle fingers seemed to sting Capitaine Coq and he snatched his hand away. “Because your staring eyes and whining innocence make me sick.”
The attack was so savage that the tears came to Mouche’s eyes and she nodded her head silently.
“As for them,” Capitaine Coq continued, draining his glass, “it is no concern of mine what they do. Get along with them if you know what is good for you, during working hours. And keep out of my way at other times. Understood?”
Mouche nodded again. “I’ll try.”
Yet in spite of the harshness of Capitaine Coq which had the effect only of moving her to a kind of pity for him, for he seemed to be so wretched in his furies, the week of the street fair in Rheims was one of the happiest times Mouche had ever known.
The warmth of her relationship with the seven puppets seemed to grow by leaps and bounds and soon she was familiar with their characteristics, their strengths and weaknesses, the striving and ambitious little Carrot Top with the soaring imagination which always wished to brush aside earthbound obstacles, and yet was tied down by the responsibility for all the others and the running of the show; the pompous, long-winded, fatuous Dr. Duclos, the prototype of every self-satisfied stuffed shirt, who still in his bumbling way was kind, and the vain, foolish, self-centred ingenue Gigi who of all the little dolls, was not.
Most dependent upon her was Alifanfaron, the giant who frightened no one and was so kind-hearted and slow-witted that everyone took advantage of him. He looked pathetically to Mouche for help and protection and some of the most charming passages took place between the ugly, fearful-looking monster and the young girl who mothered him.
She got on the best with Mme. Muscat, for the Madame was a woman who had seen life and buried husbands, understood men and felt that women should stick together for mutual protection. She was always Mouche’s ally with advice or an aphorism, or a bit of useful gossip as to what was going on backstage, or below the counter, that mysterious domain where the puppets dwelt.
But if Mouche had had to select a favourite of them all, it would have been Mr. Reynardo. He touched her most deeply because he was sly, wicked, not quite honest, knew it and wished and tried, but not too fervently, to be better.
He amused her, too. He baited and teased her and sometimes worked up little intrigues against her with the others, but when it came right down to it he also seemed to love her the most and feel the deepest need for her affection. Much of his yapping was bravado and the moments when Mouche felt almost unbearably touched and happy was when from time to time cracks appeared in his armour of cynicism and through them she caught glimpses of the small child within wanting to be forgiven and loved.
Though he was her friend and counsellor, Mouche remained a little in awe of Monsieur Nicholas, the mender of toys, for he was a dispenser of impartial justice as well as kindness. His glance through his square spectacles always seemed to penetrate her and reach to her innermost secret thoughts.
Child-like, too, but in the primitive fashion backed by the dark lore of his race, was Golo. He was indeed the slave that served the puppets and now that Mouche had become as one of them, hers too. He was versed in the mechanics of the show, yet they meant nothing to him. One moment he could be behind the booth assisting Capitaine Coq in a costume change for one of the puppets, handing him props, or hanging the dolls in proper order, head down so that Coq could thrust his hands into them quickly for those lightning appearances and disappearances of the characters, and the next, out front with Mouche, he looked upon them as living, breathing creatures.
The belief in the separate existence of these little people was even more basic with Mouche for it was a necessity to her and a refuge from the storms of life with which she had been unable to cope.
If fundamentally she must have been aware that it was Coq who animated them, she managed to obliterate the thought. For how could one reconcile the man and his creations? And further she rarely saw Capitaine Coq enter or leave the booth, for he was moody and mysterious in his comings and goings. Sometimes he would sit inside for as long as an hour in the early morning, or even late at night, without giving a sign of his presence there, until suddenly one or more of his puppets would appear onstage.
All orders were given, all business directed through Carrot Top, all rehearsals conducted, new songs learned, plots and bits of business discussed with the puppets until conversing with them became second nature to Mouche and it became almost impossible for her to associate this odd family of such diverse characters with the pale, bitter man who was their creator.
When the week of the fair was at an end in Rheims, they moved on to Sedan for three days and thence to Montmedy and Metz, for that year it was Capitaine Coq’s intention to tour north-eastern France and Alsace, until the cold weather drove them south.
One night, without warning, Capitaine Coq emerged from the tap room of the sordid little inn on the outskirts of the city, where they were quartered, half drunk and amorous.
It was late. There were no women about, the regulars having long since paired off or disappeared. He bethought himself then of a piece of property he considered belonged to him, the thin girl asleep upstairs in the narrow bedroom under the eaves.
It was time, he thought, as well, that the little ninny learned something and became a woman. And besides, since they were travelling together, it would be cheaper if henceforth they occupied one room—and perhaps, if she was not a stick, convenient too.
But there was yet another darker purpose that sent him prowling up the stairs that led to the attic chamber. It was the fact that her gentleness, innocence and purity of heart were a perpetual affront to him, the kind of man he was and the life that he led. It had been worming him ever since he had first laid eyes on her. Now he could no longer bear it unless he pulled her down to his level and made her as he was.
He tiptoed to her door, bent and listened for a moment, then, turning the handle swiftly, he whipped inside with the furtive speed of one of his own puppets and closed the door behind him.
When Mouche awoke the next morning, the sunshine was pouring in through the dormer window as if to deny the
nightmare that had happened to her. She had thought she would not sleep that night, or ever sleep again. Yet, somehow, oblivion had come, and now the day.
She got out of bed and went to the window which looked onto the rear courtyard of the Inn where a dog lolloped, a pig lay in the mud, chickens picked at the ground and ducks and a goose waddled through puddles of dirty water.
They reminded her of her childhood and the farmyards of her village in Brittany and she wondered how she could stand there so calmly contemplating them and the memories they aroused, she who would never be as a child again.
Mouche had neither protested nor resisted Capitaine Coq’s act of darkness. Out of the darkness he had come, in darkness taken her and to darkness returned, leaving her bruised, defiled and ashamed.
Startled out of her sleep by his presence, she had recognised him when a shaft of moonlight had fallen across his pale face with the crinkled nose, draining the red from his hair, turning it to purple.
For an instant, her heart had leaped, for she thought that perhaps he loved her, and she would not have denied him.
But there was no love in his eyes or in his heart; no whisper came from his lips and too late she knew what was afoot. It would have been of no use to cry out. Besides, where could she have escaped to, naked, alone, friendless and penniless in a strange inn? He was there before she could make a move, intruding himself into her room, her consciousness, her bed, and then her person.
The brutality of his passion brought her close to a climax of her own, one of seemingly unbearable grief, anguish and pain, and once she murmured his name, “Michel,” piteously. She thought that surely she would die.
Then he was gone at last, leaving her shamed to death because he had abused her so callously without loving her, weeping miserably with humiliation and hurt because of his cynical contempt for her, the disgusting arrogance and carelessness of his possession of her person. He had not given her a single kindly glance, or caress, or kiss; no word, no gentleness. He had left not a solitary ray of hope to illuminate the despair that engulfed her, that within his strong, imprisoning, goatish body there beat a human heart.
And she was the more shamed because of the instinct that told her that despite the horror and brutality, she had yielded and the act and the moment might make her for ever his.
These were the black memories, her thoughts and fears that morning as she washed and clad the body that was no longer a citadel, and prepared to face what the day would bring.
And yet the miracle occurred again, for that day was yet like any other, except if anything the troupe was still kinder and more friendly to her.
Carrot Top greeted her with a shrill cry of delight when he arrived at the booth. “Hey, Mouche! Where you been? Do you know what? There’s sausage for breakfast. Golo! Give Mouche her sausage.”
As the Senegalese appeared from behind the booth with garlic country sausage and fresh bread on a paper plate, Mr. Reynardo popped up from below with a large piece in his jaws and thrust it at her, saying, “Here. I saved a piece of mine for you. And you know how I love sausage . . .”
Mouche said, “Oh Rey. Did you really. That was sweet of you . . .”
From below a protesting rumble was heard and as Carrot Top vanished Alifanfaron appeared. “Say, who stole that piece of sausage I was saving for Mouche?”
Shocked at such affrontery Mouche cried, “Rey, you didn’t . . .” But the attitude of guilt of the fox condemned him. She said severely, memory of all her own troubles fading, “Rey, give it back to Ali at once. There. Now, Ali, you may give it to me.”
The giant presented it. “It’s only because I’m so stupid. Rey said he just wanted to borrow it to see if it was as big as his.”
Mouche took it from him, leaned over and kissed the side of his cheek. “Poor, dear, Ali,” she said. “Never you mind. It’s better to be trusting than to have no principles at all like some people around here . . .”
Reynardo had the grace to look abashed and flattened himself like a dog at the end of the counter. He said, “I tried to save you a piece of mine, honestly, I did, Mouche, but it got eaten.”
The girl regarded him ruefully. “Oh, Rey . . .” she cried, but there was tenderness in her voice as well as reproof. How had it happened so quickly that the iron bands that had clamped about her heart were easing, the sadness that had weighed her down was lifting? The play was on again.
Like a flash, at the first indication that she might be relenting, Reynardo whipped across the stage and with a hang-dog look snuggled his head against her neck and shoulder. Madame Muscat made a brief appearance at the far side of the booth with a small feather duster and dusted the proscenium arch vigorously.
“I warned you, didn’t I? You can’t trust him for a minute.” But she did not say who was not to be trusted. “When you’ve buried as many husbands as I have . . .” she began, and then vanished without concluding. Carrot Top reappeared, clutching a pale blue thousand franc note.
“For you, Mouche,” he said. “Salary for last week.”
Mouche said, “Oh Carrot Top, really . . . ? But ought you? I mean I never . . .”
“It’s all right,” the leprechaun replied. “We held a meeting this morning and voted you a share. Dr Duclos presided. His speech from the chair lasted forty-seven minutes . . .”
A crowd began to collect at the sight of a young girl in earnest conversation with a doll—the day’s work began . . .
All that summer and into the fall they trouped through Eastern France and Alsace, slowly working southwards, moving from town to town, sometimes part of a street fair, carnival or kermess, at others setting up the booth in the market place or square of small villages en route in the country without so much as a by-your-leave from the police or local authorities.
When these officials came demanding permits they found themselves disconcertingly having to deal with Carrot Top, Mr. Reynardo, Madame Muscat, or Dr. Duclos with Mouche endeavouring to help with the explanations, and usually their charm won the day and they were allowed to remain.
Since, by virtue of Mouche’s advent, the lean days were over, there was always a bed in an inn, cheap hotel, or farmhouse with a room to spare and sometimes the luxury even of a bath at night after a day spent in the hot sun. Only now Capitaine Coq no longer bothered to engage two rooms but simply shared one and the bed in it with Mouche.
Thus Mouche, without realising it, was possessed by him both by day and by night.
The days continued to be an enduring enchantment, the nights an everlasting torment, whether he used her for his pleasure, or turned his back upon her without a word and fell into heavy sleep, leaving her lying there trembling. Sometimes he came to the room in a stupor, barely able to stand after hours of drinking in the tap room. When this happened, Mouche looked after him, undressed him, got him into bed and when he cursed or moaned and tossed during the night she got up to give him water to drink or place a wet cloth upon his head.
Capitaine Coq was drinking to excess because he had impaled himself upon the horns of a strange and insoluble dilemma, and he did not know what to do, except consume wine until all sensation and memory was gone.
On the one hand he was taking all that he wanted or needed from Mouche. She was a growing asset to the show and he was beginning to make money. Further, she was a captive bedmate for whom he need feel no responsibility. But on the other he had made the discovery that while he had indeed been able to ravage her physically, he had never succeeded in destroying her innocence.
He hungered to annihilate it even though at the same time he knew that this was the very quality that drew the audiences and communicated itself to them. Wishing her as soiled and hardened as he was, he debauched her at night and then willy-nilly restored her in the daytime through the medium of the love of the seven dolls, so that phoenix-like she arose each day from the ashes of abuse of the night before, whether it was a tongue lashing, or a beating, or to be used like a woman of the streets. She was rendered each ti
me as soft, and dewy eyed, as innocent and trusting as she had been the night he had first encountered her on the outskirts of Paris.
The more cruelly he treated her, the kindlier and more friendly to her were the puppets the next morning. He seemed to have lost all control over them.
As for Mouche, she lived in a turmoil of alternating despair and entrancing joy.
One night, in Besançon, in a horrible, culminating attempt to break her, Coq appeared in their room with a slut he had picked up in the tavern. They were both drunk.
He switched on the light and stood there looking down at her while she roused herself and sat up. “Get up and get out,” he commanded.
She did not understand and sat there staring.
“Get out. I’m sick of you.”
She still could not understand what he meant. “But Michel . . . Where am I to go?”
“To the devil, for all I care. Hurry up and get out. We want that bed . . .”
That night Mouche reached a new depth of shame and humiliation as she dressed beneath the mocking eyes of the drab and went out of the room leaving them there. She thought again of dying, but was so confused she no longer knew how to die. For a time she wondered about in a daze through the streets, not knowing where she was going.
Then she came upon the Citroën. Golo was sitting at the wheel smoking a cigarette, his white patch standing out in the light of the street lamp. He appeared to be waiting for her. He got out and took her by the arm.
“You come here and rest, Miss Mouche . . .” he said. He had seen Capitaine Coq go in with the woman and Mouche emerge from the inn, and had followed her. He opened the rear door and she climbed in unseeing and slumped onto the seat. Golo drove to the nearby fairgrounds and parked. The chimes of the musical clock of Besançon announced the hour of three. Mouche began to weep.
Golo reached back and took her small thin hand in his calloused mahogany paw with the fingers hard and scaly from the steel strings of the guitar. But his grip was infinitely tender and his voice even more so as he said, “Do not cry, my little one . . .” only it sounded even more beautiful and touching in the soft Senegal French, “Ne pleurez pas, ma petite, Ca fait vous mal aux jolies yeux.”