“Calm yourself, Mama, please … The people are laughing at us …”
I begged her to control herself, I implored her amid the kisses, the blowing whistles, the racket … But it was too much for her … I extricated myself from her embrace, I jumped on the step, I didn’t want her to start in again … I didn’t dare to admit it, but in a way I was curious … I’d have liked to know how far she could go in her effusions … From what nauseating depths was she digging up all this slop?
With my father at least it was perfectly simple, he was nothing but a slobbering fool, there was nothing left in his dome but rubbish, pretense, and uproar … a clutter of idiocy … My mother was different … She kept her wits about her, her mind was still in one piece … Even in the lousiest situation … the slightest caress would send her into a tizzy … li..»; some broken machine, the piano of genuine unhappiness that had nothing left but a few sour notes … Even when I was up in the car, I was afraid she’d grab me again … I went in and out, pretending to be looking for something … I climbed up on the bench … I took down my blanket … I stepped on it … I was mighty glad when the train gave a jolt … We pulled out in a roar of thunder … We had passed Asnières before I settled down like everybody else … I was still anxious …
When we got to Folkestone, they pointed out the head conductor, who was supposed to keep an eye on me and tell me when to get out. He was wearing a red shoulder strap with a little bag hanging in the middle of his back. I couldn’t very well lose sight of him. In Chatham he motioned to me. I grabbed my suitcase. The train was two hours late, the people from my school, Meanwell College, had gone back home, they’d given me up. In a way that suited me. I was the only one getting out, the others were going on to London.
It was already dark, the place wasn’t very well lighted. It was a raised station, propped up on piles … like stilts … It was elongated, a big wooden tangle in the mist, all covered with colored posters … When you walked on the platform, thousands of planks resounded …
I didn’t want to be helped anymore, I was sick of it … I left by a side door and then a footbridge … Nobody asked me anything … I couldn’t see my man anymore, a different one in a red and blue uniform who’d been pestering the life out of me. I looked around outside the station, the square was mighty dark. The town began right away. Little streets tumbling downhill, from one dim light to the next. The air was thick and sticky, swirling around the gas jets … The effect was spooky … From way down below came gusts of music … carried by the wind, I guess … Tunes … like a busted merry-go-round in the night …
It was a Saturday when I arrived, the streets were full of people, flocking past the shops. The streetcar, which looked like a fat giraffe, towered over the shanties, compressed the crowd, shook the windowpanes … The crowd moved in dense, brown waves, it smelled like muck and tobacco and anthracite, and also like toast and a little like sulphur for the eyes; it got thick and more enveloping, more suffocating the farther down I went, it closed in after the streetcar had passed, like fish after a dam …
In the eddies the people felt oilier, stickier than our people. My suitcase got tangled up in legs, I passed from one paunch to another. I took a gander at the food piled up in the shop windows. Little mountains of hams … Valleys of bologna … I was mighty hungry, but I was afraid to go in. I had a pound in one pocket and some change in the other.
After a lot of pushing and poking we ended up on the riverfront … The fog was pretty thick … You get used to stumbling … Mustn’t fall in the river … The whole place was rigged up like a fair, with little booths and some regular stages … Thousands of lamps and what a mob! … Peddlers fished for suckers in the crowd … shouting themselves hoarse in their language … There were lots of stands all along the esplanade, to suit every taste … Fish and chips … mandolins, wrestlers, weight lifters, a sword swallower, a bicycle track, little birds … there was a terrific mob around the canary pecking the “future” in a box … There was something for everybody … nougat … whole barrels of currant jelly, dripping all over the place … A dense cloud comes down from the sky … it falls on the fair … for a moment it hides everything … blots out space … You can still hear all right, but you can’t see a thing … neither the man nor his acetylene lamp … Ah, a gust of wind! There he is again … A real gentleman in a frock coat … He exhibits the moon for twopence … for three he gives you Saturn … it’s written on his sign … There’s the mist again, falling on the crowd, spreading out … Everything’s muffled … The guy breaks off his spiel, folds up his telescope, curses, and clears out. The people are all laughing … You can’t even move anymore … People lose each other, then they get together outside the stands where the light is really bright. Music drifts over from all directions … You think you’re right in the middle of it … It’s a kind of mirage … Like you were bathing in sound … That’s a banjo … A nigger on a carpet right beside me, whimpering on the ground … he imitates a locomotive, he’s going to run everybody over. We’re all having a fine time, we can’t see each other.
The fog lifts and blows away … I’m not in a hurry anymore … I can take my time about getting to Meanwell … This place on the riverfront suits me … the fair and the strangers in the haze … There’s something very pleasant about a language you don’t understand … It’s like a fog swirling around in your thoughts … It’s nice, it’s like a dream, there’s really nothing better … It’s fine as long as the words stay in the dream … I sit down for a while quietly on my blanket, against a stone post, on the other side of the chains … I can lean back, I’m pretty comfortable … I watch the whole show passing … A whole string of sailors with lanterns on the end of long poles … They’re funny guys … Confusion! Fireworks! … They’re all dead-drunk and happy … They push and shove and squeal like cats … They throw the whole crowd into a panic. They can’t get ahead … Their snake dance gets tangled up in a lamp post … It winds and unwinds … One of them collapses in the gutter … They’ve knocked the nigger over … Shouts … challenges … insults … Suddenly they’re roaring mad … They want to hang the nigger from the trolley pole … What a racket! … A mean fight starts up … The whole place is steaming and sizzling … The blows fall like drumbeats … terrible grunts and groans … Whistles blow … A troupe of extras come running … A screaming cloud … A whole squad of police, blue with pointed black helmets … They’re in a terrible hurry … They pop out of the streets, out of the shadows, from all over … on the double … And the soldiers who’ve been strutting along the stands, dandling their riding whips, start running too … They plunge into the fray … Catcalls from the sarabande … They stagger and fall … Every color in the rainbow! A battle of samples … Jonquil … green … violet … A free-for-all … a scramble … The women escape into the corners with their acetylene lamps, the lights blend with the fog … all screaming something awful … terrified … skinned alive … Police reinforcements arrive … parrot color … Majestically they join in the dance … They’re toppled over, their clothes are torn off. A battle in a birdhouse … A welter of riding whips and plumes … A charabanc with four horses bounds out of an alley … It stops short in the middle of the riot … Some more bruisers pour out … They fling themselves on the mob like a ton of bricks … they’re giants and they move fast … They nab the most truculent, the drunkest, the ones that are yelling loudest … They toss them into the van, completely upside down … The corpses pile up inside … The battle dies down … The ruckus is swallowed up in darkness … The wagon gallops away … And that’s the end of the riot … The crowd flows back toward the bars, to the mahogany counters … to guzzle harder than ever … The roadway is clear … little carts go by … French fries … sausages … periwinkles … Glasses are clinked … Knives cutting into sausage … The swinging doors are in constant motion … right and left … A drunk stumbles and falls flat in the gutter … The procession circles around him … People dawdle past … A bevy of floozies
… cackling and guffawing … sailors push them into the doorways … They talk … they belch … the bar absorbs them … The Scotsmen dash in …They’d like to fight some more, but they really can’t… .
I follow them in with my suitcase … Nobody asks me anything … They serve me first … A whole mugful of syrup, thick and black and frothy … it’s bitter … it’s beer! It tastes like stewed smoke … They give me back two coppers with the queen on them, the one that just died, with the face like a rear end … the fair Victoria … I can’t finish their brew, it turns my stomach and I’m mighty ashamed. I go back to the procession. We pass the little carts again, with the lamps between the shafts … I hear a regular orchestra … I look around and locate it … It’s right near the landing … It’s coming out of a big tent, a blaring uproar … They’re singing in chorus, completely out of tune … It’s amazing the way they manage to torture their mouths, to dilate them, to blow them up like real trombones … And pull them in again … They’re on their last legs … They’re dying of convulsions … They’re praying and singing hymns … There’s this big tall battle-ax with only one eye, she’s yodeling so hard it’s like to pop out of her head … The way she’s jigging and heaving, her bun starts sliding down over her nose, and her bonnet with the ribbons too … she thinks she’s not making enough noise, she grabs her man’s trombone and blows, she spits a whole lung into it … But it’s a polka she’s playing, a regular hornpipe … The gloom is over … The people begin to dance, they hug each other, they hop, they shake each other up … The guy in the uniform that’s looking at her must be her brother, he looks just like her except for the beard, and besides he’s got glasses and a nifty cap with an inscription. He seems to be sulking … He’s got his nose in a book … All of a sudden he breaks into a fit too! He grabs the horn from his sister … He climbs up on the stool, spits a good oyster … and begins to jabber … The way he’s waving his arms and beating his breast … working himself up into an ecstasy … I can sec it must be a sermon … His words come out sobbing … tortured … it’s unbearable … The characters around them are laughing fit to kill … He defies them, challenges them, nothing can stop him … not even the whistles of the boats stemming the current … He goes right on thundering … Personally, he gives me a pain … He puts me to sleep … I sit down on my blanket … I cover myself, nobody can see me, I’m hidden by the sheds … The Salvation Army guy is still yelling, screeching his lungs out … He makes me tired … It’s cold, but I wrap up good … I feel a little warmer … The mist is white, then blue. I’m right next to a sentry box … It’s getting dark, little by little … I’m going to sleep … Over there, that’s where the music is coming from … It’s a merry-go-round … a barrel organ … From across the river … that’s the wind … the lapping of the water …
A terrible groan from a boiler woke me with a start … A ship was coming up the river … fighting the current … The Salvation Army characters from before had cleared out … Niggers were jumping up and down on the stage … somersaulting in swallowtails … landing in the street … Their lavender coattails spun around behind them in the mud and the acetylene glare. ”The Minstrels,” it said on their big drum … They went on and on … a roll of the drum … a happy landing … a pirouette … A great big enormous siren rips through the echoes … The crowd stops in its tracks … They all move down to the edge to watch the ship landing … I wedge myself into the staircase right next to the waves …
A lot of brats in little boats were whirling around in the eddies looking for the hawser … The launch, the big fat one with the enormous copper boiler in the middle, was rolling like a top … She was bringing the papers. The East Indiaman was having a tough time with the current … She was still in midstream, in the middle of the blackness … She didn’t want to come closer … with her green eye and her red one … Finally the wise guy came in after all, bashing against an enormous bundle of sticks that was hanging from the dock … It cracked like a pile of bones … She had her nose into the current, she roared in the rough water … She churned against the mooring buoy … a tethered monster … She let out one little howl … She was beaten … all alone in the glistening whirling water … We turned back to the merry-go-round, the one with the organs and the mountains … The party was still going on … I felt better after my nap … It was like magic … an entirely different world … fantastic … like a crazy picture … All of a sudden I felt they’d never catch me again … that I’d turned into a memory that no one would ever recognize … that I had nothing more to fear, that nobody’d ever find me again … I treated myself to a ride on the merry-go-round, I held out my change. I took three whole rides with three crazy floozies and some soldiers … They were cute, they had faces like dolls, eyes like blue candies … I was dizzy … I wanted to take another turn … I was afraid to show my dough … I went off a little way into the darkness … I tore open my lining, I wanted to take out my banknote, the whole pound. And then the smell of something frying steered me to a place right near the locks … It was fritters … I could smell them a mile away … on a cart with little wheels.
This kid that was messing with the batter … I can’t say she was pretty … She had two teeth missing in front … She never stopped laughing … She had a fringed hat with a big pile of flowers on top … crushed under the weight … a regular hanging garden … and long muslin veils that hung down into her kettle … She took them out with a sweet smile … She seemed very young to be wearing such a thing even at that time of night … even under those cockeyed circumstances … that lid really sent me … I couldn’t take my eyes off it. She was still smiling at me … The kid wasn’t twenty, with pert little boobies and a wasp waist … and an ass the way I like them, taut, muscular, with a good split … I walked around her to get a good look. She was still absorbed in her grease … She wasn’t proud or standoffish … I showed her my change … She served me enough fritters to stuff a whole family. All she took was one little coin … There was sympathy between us … She could see from my suitcase that I’d just got off the train … She tries to make me understand something … She tries to explain … She speaks very slowly … She pronounces each word separately … Well, then I begin to feel jumpy … I shrivel up … The poison runs through me … As soon as anybody starts talking to me I get mean … I didn’t want any more gabfests … Save your breath! I’ve had enough! … I know what it leads to … you can’t fool me … She gets politer, sweeter, more endearing than ever … Anyway that hole in her mouth when she smiles makes me sick … I make motions to show that I’m going for a walk over by the pubs … to have a little fun … I leave her my suitcase in exchange and my blanket … I put them down beside her camp chair … I make a sign for her to watch them … I go back to the crowd …
With nothing to weigh me down, I head for the shops … I stroll past the piles of grub … But I’m full up, I can’t eat anymore … The clock strikes eleven … Drunks come out in waves and stream down the esplanade … this way and that way, crashing against the wall of the customs house … tumbling, roaring, spreading out, dispersing … The ones that are stewed but still swaggering step into the pub stiffly, rhythmically, buttoned crooked but buttoned, and head straight for the bar … There they stand speechless, transfixed, riveted by the mechanical din, the “valse d’amour.” I’ve got piles of money left … I took two more helpings of beer soup, the kind that makes you piss …
I went out with a little thug and another burper with a little cat under his arm. He was miaowing between the two of us … I didn’t get very far … I retreated into the next pub … I staggered through the swinging doors … I sat down on a bench … waiting for it to pass … with all the boozehounds … There was a crowd of dames in short jackets, in feathers and tarns and hard-brimmed straw hats … They were all talking like animals … barking and belching … They were dogs, tigers, wolves … crabs … I was beginning to itch …
Outside, through the window, fish were passing now … You cou
ld see them clear as anything … They were moving slowly … undulating past the glass … coming out into the light … They opened their mouths, little puffs of fog came out … There were mackerel and carp … They smelled like it too, they smelled of muck, honey, acrid smoke … everything … Another little slug of beer … and I’ll never be able to get up again … That’ll be fine … They drool, they chortle … all those bums … They’re all fighting, they give each other clouts on the ass that would kill a mule … The stinkers!
But then the piano stops, the bartender in the apron throws us all out … I’m in the street again. I unbutton my collar … I feel lousy … I drag myself through the shadows … I can still see the two street lamps a little … not much … I see the water … I can see it lapping … Ah! I can even see the way down. I take the steps one by one … I lean on the rail, I’m very careful … I touch the drink … on my knees … I vomit on it … I make a violent effort … I feel better … An enormous burst comes down on me from above … a whole meal … I can see the guy leaning over … Seconds … A slimy mess … I try to stand up … Hell, I can’t make it … I sit down again … I take the whole business … Oh well … it runs into my eyes … Another retch … Wah! … I see the water dancing … white … and black … It’s really cold. I’m shivering, I tear my pants … I can’t throw up anymore … I lie down again in a corner … The bowsprit of a sailboat passes over me … It just grazes my head … The guys are coming. A whole squadron of them … They’re coming out of the fog. They’re pulling at the oars … They pull up at the dock … The sails are furled at half-mast … I hear the mob coming, stamping along the dock, that’s the fatigue squad …
Death on the Installment Plan Page 23