The High-Life

by Jean-Pierre Martinet

  At that time I was living on rue Froidevaux, across from the Montparnasse cemetery, on the sixth floor of a building in danger of falling down. From where I was I had an unrestricted view of the graves. For over fifteen years, rue Froidevaux had been my prison. I was a model prisoner. If I often bemoaned my station, I never rebelled. I didn't try to escape. To tell the truth, I didn't want much. My rule of conduct was simple: live as little as possible so as to suffer as little as possible. Maybe not very exhilarating as far as precepts go, but very effective. Try it, you'll see. What I liked most was to go unnoticed. I'd have gladly given everything I had to be an invisible man or a ghost. By dint of hugging the cemetery walls, I had ended up taking on their color. My father, Rene Marlaud (1902-1953), was buried on the other side of the street. Fourth Division West. Allee Raffet. I could see his grave from my window. It was tiny, crushed between two baroque chapels. My mother, Anne Marlaud, née Jacob (1920-1943), was gassed at Auschwitz. I was about a year old when she went up in smoke. Rue Froidevaux was ugly, like a second-class waiting room in some lost suburban station where the trains come so infrequently that people go there to sleep, just to sleep, amidst the litter and the scraps of ham sandwiches and beer bottles lying so miserably, so lonely, in the urine, confetti, glitter, and vomit, and the sadness of dogs looking for death along walls soiled by so many filthy fingers. It was always freezing cold on that street, even in August. Passersby looked like late chrysanthemums, and November dragged on forever. Ivy clung desperately to the cemetery walls, but it looked like it didn't really believe in what it was doing, as if some depressive set designer had taken the trouble to place it there. In the summer, the graves grew green again, and the wall moved forward, imperceptibly. At times I heard something cracking at night, and that gave me terrible panic attacks. Pathetic imitation of life. You felt so alone in that desert. Rue Froide. Cold Street, with all that the name evoked: cold room, morgue, abandoned corpses, partially decomposed young girls, mauve and green and white, calves murdered with the blows of a cleaver, at dawn, under a drizzling sky. How is it possible to have such a horrible name? Froidevaux! Oh, how cold your streets are, messieurs, and how slowly one dies there, over a low flame, a little at a time, from boredom and grief! How heavy one's heart grows in your deserts! You could spend a lifetime wandering there in exile. Strange winter journey.

  I met Madame C. as I was making my way, as I do every afternoon, to the funerary shop where I worked part time, at Monsieur Rameau fils, at the corner of rue Froidevaux and rue Boulard. I didn't go on duty until two o'clock. I greeted customers, I would briefly praise, in a dry, professional tone of voice, the magnificence of our ceramic flowers, tulips, violets, roses, dahlias, the charms of our wreaths, the grandeur of our marble statues. I liked my job. It suited my secretive nature, me being a lover of shadow and silence. The afflicted lot who crossed the doorway of the shop were so calm, so resigned. They spoke so low, they almost whispered, as if in a dream. Their gestures were stereotyped, operatic. Almost dead already. On the other hand, as soon I saw a young woman in mourning, I'd emerge from my torpor. Her pale complexion, her reddened eyes, her funereal makeup did things to me. I felt very peculiar with the twenty-year-old widows. I felt this urge to drink their tears. If they were burying their husband, I imagined that they had poisoned him. At any rate, I was convinced that they were putting on an act, like everyone else who came there, for that matter. But I desired them so, those disquieting actresses in black! I became unctuous, dull. I forgot my timidity. I sank into redundant chatter. They would cast me weary glances. I knew they did and those glances gave me pleasure. I loved coming off like a pompous idiot. High-flown commonplaces didn't scare me. I quoted Bossuet, my favorite author. I was irksome, I circled about my victims while reveling over phrases from the "Sermon on the Mount," or the "Funeral Oration for Henrietta of England." I laughed inwardly. I got fabulous erections. One time, one of these young ladies in mourning mischievously retorted that I would do much better to reread the "Treatise on Concupiscence." I was overwhelmed. How was such intelligence in a woman possible? That "truth in one soul and one body" Rimbaud speaks of: was that it, then? Joy, joy, tears of joy, my vision blurred, my heart beat wildly, my very words intoxicated me. Were her undergarments also black? This idea made me ill. Black panties, black bra. Tears of desire on that funereal lingerie. She wept, that grief-stricken woman, she wept, she was all sweaty, all limp, she was melting away, and me with her, lost between her balmy thighs smelling of rotting fish, kelp, an oyster bed caressed by a warm wind blowing from Andernos, when the Arcachon Bay is nothing more than a paradise of silt, at low tide, in the intense light of noon. I could have talked forever, the young woman didn't know how to get rid of me, my tongue swelled in my mouth, it swelled enough to choke me, and my boss was obliged to chase me off into the back room, giving me little kicks, like I was some poodle that had had an accident in the living room. I'd have given up several years of my life just to spend an evening with that ravishing, witty widow. Another time, a kid, about twelve years old, in black jeans and black T-shirt (her breasts had to be bare under the light cotton, I could sense them softly throbbing, their tips looked like they were already as hard as early buds) had sent me scurrying through the shop under the pretense that she was looking for a plaque made out of some rare material for her mother. She had an insolent look on her face. He, green eyes were buried under mascara. The mauve shadows around her eyes fascinated me. I was convinced she was putting on an act for me, and that all she was interested in was laughing at my expense. None of the plaques suited her. "Awful, they're all awful," she kept repeating to me, giving me contemptuous looks. I had a crazy urge to ask her if she masturbated a lot, and if so, how many times a day. She was already a good head taller than me. She was walking on the gravestones, every now and then passing a tiny, greedy kittenish pink tongue over her purple-coated lips. Luckily, my boss wasn't there. "This place is ugly. I've never seen such hideous stuff." She gave the ceramic flowers some kicks, she had some fun knocking the crucifixes off the wall, every now and then her T-shirt lifted and I saw her tanned skin, so soft, so warm, probably, with that light blond, angelic down. I was in ecstasy. I really didn't have the courage to scold that charming little girl. Unconsciously, like a sleepwalker, I approached her, my hand caressed the nape of her neck, my body pressed against hers so that I could show her a particularly rare item we had in stock in the back room but yes, come, mademoiselle, come on, a superb object, wonderfully sculpted, I think you'll like it, your mom will be happy, you love your mom very much, don't you, that's good, you should love your mom, and your dad too, death is a sacred thing, after you, this way. A tremendous jab of her elbow sent me flying into the funeral wreaths. The kid dashed to the door, laughing. "You're a slug!" she yelled at me before disappearing, "a big, slobbery slug. You make me want to squash you." I was happy even so. I wished that little girl all the happiness in the world. But the question was still hanging: do those mourning women wear black underwear? I found this question so unsettling! At times it kept me from sleeping. To be utterly frank, it was a question I rarely asked myself when, every afternoon, at five minutes to two, I went past the concierge of 47 rue Froidevaux, who had been in mourning for her husband for years, and who seemed to be inconsolable. Madame C., that mass of darkness, the devourer. She had been lying in wait for me for a while already, behind the dirty windows of her little lodge, among her geraniums and her green plants. Dark, yawning grave, ogre's vagina, tomb of sleep and night, night of marshes, marshes of silence, silence of death. Every time I passed number 47, she would give me a friendly little wave. It went on for months. I never responded. On the contrary, I hurried on. I've always been pathologically shy. Moreover, I was afraid of getting to the shop late. My boss was a strict man, who wouldn't tolerate my being even a second late. Our punctuality, my little fellow, is the tribute we pay to the dead. A tribute they very much pay us in turn, believe you me." He often repeated these two sentences to me, looking deep in
to my timid eyes with his black gaze, without any affection. I was always the first to look away, just as in the street, if someone is heading toward me, I'm the first to make way, all the while apologizing to the boor who almost knocks me over. I never really understood what that second sentence meant. He sometimes uttered it in such a solemn tone of voice that it sent a shiver through me. In the evening I would help him on with his coat. If it were a bit dusty, I'd flick the dust off. I really think that Monsieur Rameau looked down on me for my servility. He never tnanked me. Every day, at two o'clock, with a worried look on my face, I would ask after his health. Invariably, he would answer in an irritated tone: "It's good, my friend, it's good. Good breeding always tells. Yes. Good breeding. Heh heh." His last words weren't very clear to my humble employee's mind. As for the little throaty laugh that inevitably punctuated the good breeding, it got on my nerves. I forced myself to laugh as well, though. Heh heh. Deep down, I thought: "Good breeding, good riddance." What insolence, what courage. Sometimes my audacity frightened me. I dreaded Monsieur Rameau breaking into my subversive thoughts. For almost ten years these were our only exchanges. My boss never inquired after my health. He didn't seem to care in the slightest. I found that a tad humiliating. After all, I was a human being just like him, and my urinous complexion, my concentration-camp scrawniness, the asthma attacks that sometimes affected me in the office, these all should have managed to draw a bit more solicitude from a man with the humanist beliefs I knew him to have (he had responsibilities in the 14th arrondissement branch of the Socialist Party). But no, nothing. Good breeding. You're telling me. Good breeding makes for good veal. Yes, Monsieur Rameau, yes, Monsieur Rameau, very good, Monsieur Rameau. Heh heh. Goodbye, Monsieur Rameau. Give my best to your wife, and to your daughter, Jacqueline. What a beautiful young girl, Monsieur Rameau, what a beautiful young girl. She is going to make some man very happy someday. Yes.

  So one day in the month of August, Madame C. was no longer content with giving me a little wave of her hand. She invited me to come have a little drink at her place. A twenty-year- old calvados. I didn't respond and quickened my pace, trying to look casual. Unfortunately, I can't walk very quickly in my lifts, I lose my balance. Madame C. had run up behind and wasn't long in catching up, and her enormous hand swooped down on me. The shock nearly made me collapse to the ground. Once, when I was little, I was almost snapped up by a crane as I was taking a walk along the Port of Bordeaux with my father. The operator had quickly realized his mistake and after a few minutes returned me to terra firma, gesticulating and yelling. My father held me tightly to him, and the horrible sense of terror that had come over me for a few moments faded. That evening, I had such a bad asthma attack that I thought the slightest cubic inch of air would never again make its way into my lungs. It was a bit of that sensation that I rediscovered as the concierge brought me back to her lodge. I held back my tears as she set me down onto a Formica stool, in her kitchen, before a glass of calvados. I didn't dare admit that I couldn't stand alcohol. I remained still, my eyes lowered, looking stupidly at the oilcloth where a fly was struggling without conviction in a little pool of wine. "So, my little man, pretty women scare you? ..." I still wasn't answering. I was thinking of Monsieur Rameau and his good breeding, heh heh. Instead of the glass of calvados, I saw a horrible slice of cold veal, surrounded by cold noodles. My life, there, in front of me. I suddenly burst into tears, and Madame C. tore me from my seat and huddled me between her enormous breasts. I felt a strange sense of well-being. She covered me with kisses. Her breath stank of alcohol. Her lips sucked my nose volt,tuously. I had never seen such a big mouth. An abyss. A gluttonous glottis. Gummily gluey. Drooly. The tongue enormous, wriggling, purplish, the beautiful uvula, rising, dropping, twisting like a snake in a red cave. Madame C. gurgled loving words. "You shouldn't cry, baby, you shouldn't cry." She cradled me and sang. "My little cat is blue. / If he's blue, / I love you; / If he's gray, / Another day." Her breasts smelled like sweat and eau de Cologne. She set me back down on the floor. I wondered with some anguish how such a colossus was able to live in such a small lodge. I felt afraid again. The concierge made me drink my glass of calvados. "Drink, my little blue cat, it'll give you strength. Come on, make a bit of an effort. You must. YOU MUST!" She got stern. She opened my mouth, she pried it open by force. The amber liquid burned my stomach and I retched. Madame C. arranged to meet me that evening. Seven o'clock, after the shop closed. There was no question of my not coming. "You are my little blue cat. I like you. You're the kind of man I need. This is the first time I've fallen in love since my husband died. He was a little like you, not very tall, but a good-looking man. You'll spend all your evenings with me, except on Sunday when I visit my mother. We'll make love. It isn't much fun for a big woman like me to live all alone in such a small apartment. You'll be free around ten, ten-thirty. You'll be able to sleep at your place. When people love each other the way you and I do, it's better not to share the same bed. See you tonight, my little man."

  I ran out of the lodge. I was bathed in sweat. I turned around in spite of myself. Madame C. was watching me leave, her hands on her hips, a broad smile on her bloated red face, a smile like a hideous wound in her flabby, water-swollen flesh. I wasn't going to go back. It was a hostage situation. Maybe Madame C. was part of a Palestinian commando group. After all, maybe she had learned that I was Jewish through my mother. As I pushed open the door of the shop, I was hit by an asthma attack. Monsieur Rameau watched me choke with an irritated look on his face. He invited me to look at the clock: it was two-twenty. In ten years of service, I had never been late. I was disgusted with myself. I wasn't worthy. When the asthma attack passed, I started filing some documents that were needed for the August bookkeeping. Luckily, there were no customers. Monsieur Rameau came over to me and very curtly inquired why I hadn't asked after his health today. I humbly asked him to forgive me. I complied with a trembling voice. Suppose he dismissed me, right there on the spot? What would become of me? I didn't know how to do anything, other than read and go to the movies. Luckily, the good breeding was still telling, heh heh. What a relief!

  Around four, I went to vomit against the cemetery wall.

  I spent the whole afternoon thinking over my horrible situation. My dull life, my poor life sleeping under a mossy stone, was now turned upside down, at one go, Madame C. wouldn't give up her prey now. The little blue cat would no longer have the right to go play anywhere else but her place. I shouldn't have let myself get cornered so easily, of course, but how could a little runt, a four-and-a-half-feet tall (in heels) runt barely weighing eighty-five pounds resist a mass of over two hundred pounds swooping down on him with the suddenness of a ground swell? It's like how a crab can sleep peacefully in a rock crevice, and then the fisherman drives it out and sentences it to mill about among its peers before being boiled alive. Leave rue Froidevaux? It was out of the question. I could never live anywhere else. Yet I hated that street; but I walked along it as if within myself. It was the joyless street. It was my prison, walled in on the right by the horrible place Denfert-Rochereau, the ugliest square in Paris, with its stupid greenish lion squatting for all eternity. Unless I was going to the movies, I never went beyond square Georges-Lamarque and the statue of Ludovic Trarieux (1840-1904). To the left, avenue du Maine, its racket, its flashy vulgarity, and, all the way at the end, that Tour Montparnasse, whose ugliness chilled my heart every morning, and which I often imagined in flames, at night, before falling asleep. Facing it, the cemetery, that cemetery Strindberg had so loved. I had my routines on that street. Every morning, around ten o'clock, I would pace up and down, in both directions, rue Emile-Richard, which divided the cemetery in two. I called it boulevard Ossements, in homage to Leo Malet. I tended my father's grave with the utmost care. The flowers were replaced regularly. I wouldn't tolerate any animal coming to walk within this sacred area. Especially cats. They should not allow cats in cemeteries. I had bought a marine telescope to watch the beloved grave from my place
. My plan was to acquire a rifle with telescopic sight before long, the latest model, equipped with a silencer, to shoot down any animal that might come along and soil the grave of Rene Marlaud (1902-1953). To that end, I put aside a considerable portion of my salary every month. I wouldn't have any problem getting a gun license, thanks to a friend of my father who became my guardian after his death. Rene Marlaud (1902-1953) deserved nothing less. He'd been a model state servant. It was from him that I'd gotten this almost pathological taste for a job well done. He had taken part in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, in 1942. A police officer highly rated by his superiors, he had taught me what it was to be a man with a sense of duty. I was nine when he died, in 1953. Some years later, they gave me to understand that he'd killed himself, but it was never proven. I basically didn't know my mother. I don't even know what she looked like, because my father got rid of every photo of her. I've been led to believe that he gave her up to the Gestapo. At least that's what some people have long insinuated. I don't know what to think myself. What's certain is that he divorced her in 1942, in the middle of the Occupation, and that my mother had had to take back her maiden name, Jacob. "Just to teach her some manners," my father said, because she had had an affair and hadn't hid it from him. "Your mother was a whore," he'd simply say when I'd ask some overly insistent questions about she to whom I owed my life. He'd add nothing, and, throughout my childhood, the word "mother" was linked to the word "whore." Years later, I'd repeat this sentence to myself every now and then, in the office, and it filled me with shame. On the other hand, the vile act in which my father had taken part didn't really gall me. I condemned it, of course, but it didn't turn my stomach. My indifference struck me as a sign of an underlying moral defect. The Jewish blood that flowed through my veiu, and of which I should have been justifiably proud, was not something I accepted; but the ignominy of my father: that I took on completely, to the point of defending his memory every time someone attacked it in front of me, and of watching over his burial place for years like a loyal dog. On the other hand, when someone mentioned my mother's martyrdom in my presence, I only pretended to sympathize. But deep down, I felt nothing. And I thought to myself that what happened to her was normal for a whore.