“Ah, Voltaire, we meet again.”
“Oh, hello.”
Voltaire sports the usual bemused look. He passes quickly on, no notice at all taken of Thomas’s outstretched hand. Four others, two men and two women, neither of which is Hélène, brush past Thomas and Gallatin. They are in a rush to catch up with the rapidly moving Voltaire.
“Didn’t recognize you, I guess,” says Jean Gallatin. He is doing a poor job of trying not to laugh.
“Really?” says Thomas sarcastically. His face is momentarily long and sour. Much as he dislikes and envies Voltaire his talent and his fame, he finds himself wondering more about Hélène. He supposes the witty one has cast her off. But where might she have gone? Back to Évreux and its rustic life, or somewhere in Paris with another man?
Thomas and Gallatin step inside the guinguette. What was a hubbub when they were outside is now a roar. Despite the departure of the singing artisans and the group with Voltaire, the place is packed. There’s not an empty table in sight, though that doesn’t much matter to the clientele that Thomas and Gallatin see. Half the place is standing, everyone with a glass or tumbler in hand. Most of the customers are men, but there are a few women. Everyone is shouting just to be heard.
The walls are whitewashed and filled with large sketches, giant cartoons of people and animals. On one wall it’s a soldier brandishing a halberd. On another it’s a lady with a wide skirt. There are also drawings of a minstrel, a duck, a crowing cock, and a naked Bacchus astride a barrel. The last-named has a grapevine sprouting between his legs to hide what he has there. Gallatin points at it and nudges Thomas in the ribs. Thomas has already seen it, but he smiles back as if it’s funnier than it really is. The largest of the many sketches is on the chimney above the hearth that faces customers where they come in. It’s a charcoal drawing like the others, only done with more care. There’s shading and details to make it look like someone real. The caption tells Thomas and Gallatin who it is. It’s Ramponeau himself. His watchful image gazes down on the buxom wench at the counter just inside the door. She’s taking money and pouring drinks for customers as they come in. Thomas and Jean give her the money for their first glass of wine. They make their way through the tumult to find a place to stand.
“Quite the spot,” shouts Thomas near Gallatin’s ear, a worried look upon his face. It was his idea to come, but he’s not sure yet if it’s safe. Neither he nor his friend is ready for a fight, unless it were a debate. Still, he hopes the bookseller is not disappointed with what he sees.
“Every bit of it,” Jean yells back. “Better really.” His expression says he’s delighted that he came.
Thomas hunches his shoulders to show that he too is pleased. It had not taken a lot of convincing to get Jean Gallatin to take the trip. With all the hours the bookseller spends in his shop, reading the books he has in stock and sometimes even making a few sales, he’s ready for an outing once in a while. Even for Gallatin, there is only so much one can say about John Locke, the idea of a tabula rasa, and the superiority of the English government in comparison with absolutist France. As for his hobby of peeping on people above him on the Parisian social ladder, the bookseller is open to diversifying his pastime a little. He accepts as an article of faith Locke’s idea that there is an implied bond or contract between those who govern and those who are governed. He told Thomas on the ride out that this trip to the guinguette is an opportunity for him to learn more about the people on the ladder’s lowest rungs. According to what he’s heard, or so Gallatin told Thomas, aristocrats often go to the Ramponeau just for fun. To mingle with the little people.
“Hey, look.” Thomas gives Gallatin’s sleeve a tug. At the far end of the room two drunken fools are dancing some peasant twirl, bumping into those standing nearby. Oddly, no blows rain down when they do. There is just an exchange of laughter. Thomas and Gallatin do not watch the scene for long. They know that to show too much curiosity might bring a punch to the face. Closer to where they’re standing is a man with a demonic grin and only one good eye. He has a patch on the other. He’s trying to reach up beneath the dark red skirt of a serving girl. The girl, carrying meat pie pastries on a wicker tray, swings round and kicks the one-eyed bloke. She sends him crashing against the wall.
“Not a place for the weak of heart,” observes Gallatin.
“Come on.” Thomas has spied a party of four men getting up from a table. Their early afternoon of drinking is apparently done. Thomas races to stake his claim, Gallatin following after. Another man – the one with the eye patch – arrives at the same table an instant after Thomas. The stranger slaps his hand down on the table whereas Thomas had merely touched the back of one of the chairs.
“Well done, my friend, well done,” says Gallatin, coming to stand behind Thomas to reinforce their claim. He claps Thomas on the shoulder and stares at the third fellow’s one exposed eye. Gallatin thinks his hearty words and gesture of congratulations are demonstrating to the little fellow that he staked his claim but a moment too late. “The table is ours,” Gallatin announces. “Even you can see that for yourself.”
The man with the eye patch barks a noise in Gallatin’s face, a sort of laugh perhaps. At least that’s what Thomas and Gallatin hope the noise means. He gives a wink and a crook of his head, first to Gallatin and then to Thomas. Out of nowhere he brings up a truncheon and slams it on the tabletop. He must have been holding the baton down by his leg, out of sight. Everyone nearby, the standing and the seated, goes silent. The sound of the wooden stick whacking the table for an instant commands the room.
The one-eyed man acknowledges the attention by bowing to his onlookers. He picks up the truncheon and dangles it like it’s a sword and he is a knight twirling it in a strange salute. Next comes a version of a lady’s curtsey, his face bearing a broad smile. There is laughter all round. An instant later, the noise in the Au Tambour Royal goes back to what it was before the slamming on the tabletop. Thomas and Gallatin look at each other then round the guinguette. They appear to be on their own with this one-eyed man.
“You’re sayin’?” says the stranger. His focus is entirely on Gallatin, at whom he points the truncheon. “Even me can see for myself. Was that it?”
The stranger brings the truncheon up to touch his cheek and circle round his one good eye.
“Not mockin’ me, you?” He shifts the truncheon and taps the patch over the hidden eye. “Don’t know how I lost it, you? Been a war? Maybe. Could be a hero. Yes I could. Don’t know, you? Fighting for and not against the old king. Good story that. War ’gainst Spain it coulda been. What say you to that? To the one good eye? Respect, my friend, respect. Not callin’ you tiny cocked am I?” The stranger scrunches up his cheeks and puckers like he’s sucking an invisible lemon.
Thomas cannot stifle a laugh. When this little man speaks he’s an actor on a stage. A ragged ruffian in some comic part. The stranger hears Thomas’s snort of laughter and looks his way. He uses a hand to shield his face so Gallatin can’t see. With his eye he gives Thomas a conspiratorial wink.
“Look,” Gallatin replies, keeping his voice low, “I only meant that my friend Thomas got here first. To the table. You have to admit it. That’s all I want to say.”
“You sure that all you got?” The stranger tilts his head to one side and rubs his chin with the end of the truncheon. “Not a preacher maybe? ’Cause preachers don’t ever shut their gobs.”
Thomas laughs out loud. It’s a bark. “How about,” he says, venturing one hand to tug on Gallatin’s sleeve and the other, palm up, extending out over the table. The open hand beckons the man with the truncheon to lean in closer than he is. “How ’bout we share the table? There are chairs enough. Indeed, there’s one to spare. How would that be?”
“Preacher and peacemaker. Well, I’ll be.”
The one-eyed man sends Jean Gallatin a crook of the head before he lays the truncheon on t
he table. Next, he places one hand across his waist and the other out of sight behind his back. He gives a jerky version of a courtly bow. The gesture completed, the man holds out his right hand to shake with his newfound tablemates. Thomas is the first to accept the offered hand. Gallatin grimaces but follows suit.
“Jacques, that’s me,” the one-eyed man says as he takes his seat. “Though more just call me Prêt à Boire. ’Cause I am.” Jacques taps the tabletop with a small empty tankard he’s just pulled from somewhere. He must have had it in a pocket of his greatcoat. “Don’t often mix with your sort, but it’s All Souls, so why not? End up in the same place so might as well start now. What say you to that?”
“A very Christian sentiment in its way. My name is Thomas.”
“Ah, the doubter, no doubt,” Jacques interjects.
“And I’m Jean,” says Gallatin, reluctance in his voice and on his face. “By the way,” he adds, unable to stop himself, “I don’t hold to what you just said. That we go to the same place in the end. I don’t think we go anywhere after death but into the ground. To the worms is what I say.”
“Eh?” Jacques is squinting at Gallatin.
“Heaven and hell, they’re fabrications of the Church. All that hierarchy, the teachings, all of it. It’s made up, I say.”
Jacques’ jaw twists as Gallatin pauses. The eyes are angered, or are they bewildered, by Gallatin’s little rant. And the bookseller will not leave it at that.
“A sop. A story. A complicated story, to be sure, but still just a story. To confuse us and keep your likes down. If you don’t mind me saying so.”
“My likes? What’s my likes?”
“I didn’t mean anything by that.” Gallatin waves both hands in front of him to erase the words from the air. “I’m sorry. I meant all of us.”
“Got a poker up your back end?” Jacques asks Gallatin.
Thomas explodes with a harsh laugh. “He can’t help it,” he explains, clapping Gallatin on the shoulder. He gets a glare in return. “He doesn’t get out often enough. Works in a bookshop, you know.”
“That’d do it.” Jacques makes a face at Gallatin. “Bend over, preacher, I’ll take it out. Seen worse than the darkness of your ass, I’m sure.”
Gallatin shakes his head in disgust. He looks down at the tabletop. Thomas is smiling broadly at the crudity of this one-eyed stranger: “A joke, it’s a joke, Jean. Our friend Jacques is being funny.”
What Thomas doesn’t say but is thinking is that Gallatin, who has so much to say about governments and the relationship between the higher-born and their obligations to the little people down below, is not doing well with this one-eyed member of that group. Gallatin is face to face with a man of the trades, and he doesn’t know what to say or do.
“So,” says Jacques, grabbing hold of his truncheon once again. He lifts it off the table. “So what brings two gentlemen, oh yes gentlemen, out of the city? And to dear old Ramponeau? See the other half – hell, the other nine of ten – how we riff-raff live? Study trip, is it?”
As if they are attached, Thomas and Gallatin stiffen like someone has indeed just shoved twin pokers up their asses. Jacques puts down the truncheon. He winks at Thomas and unleashes an ungodly bark of a laugh.
“Good to relax.” Jacques holds out his empty tankard in Gallatin’s direction. “Likes rum from the Islands, don’t we now? Off with you, young cock. Don’t forget the name now.” He mouths “Prêt à Boire.” “Got that?” He mouths it one more time. “Fill ’er up, tiny cock.”
Gallatin reluctantly takes the tankard from Jacques’ hand.
While Gallatin is over at the counter paying for Prêt à Boire’s rum and red wines for Thomas and himself, Jacques turns to Thomas.
“A good bunch, you two. I’m looking out for you in here, count on that. It can be dangerous, if you don’t know. But I’m here. You can relax.”
“You’re kind,” says Thomas. “We’ll be fine.”
“’Course. Never mind.”
Over the next few minutes, before and after Gallatin returns to the table with the newly purchased drinks, Jacques launches into an uninterrupted string of tales about a lifetime of adventures travelling around France. The stories come one after the other, like a river over rapids, with no comments sought or questions allowed. Thomas tries a couple of times to get in a word or two, but Jacques waves him off like he’s a gnat. The one-eyed man’s speech reminds Thomas of a clock that’s just been wound. Once it starts ticking, it goes until its time runs out. The one and only pause in the telling of Jacques’ stories comes when the man drains his tankard in a single swallow. That accomplished, he holds it out for Thomas to do the honour of filling the mug the second time around. To Thomas’s own eye-blinking surprise, he does exactly what Jacques bids. He brings out his little leather pouch from its hiding place and selects the required coins. Walking over to the counter to buy the drinks he does a calculation and decides that this set of drinks for the table will be his last. He has to have enough left to pay for the coach ride back into the city and something besides saved for who knows what. He will not turn his hard-earned money into nothing more than another man’s piss.
Thomas listens to more tales from Jacques with wide-eyed fascination. Gallatin does the same, but with a pinched and doubting face. More than a few times Jacques swears that what he’s about to say is the honest to God truth, may he be struck by lightning if it’s not. He tells his tablemates that he’s a glazier by occupation, a Parisian by birth and upbringing. He’s just back from an eighteen-month tour of France where he earned his master’s status in his trade. Along the way, in a dozen towns and cities, beginning north and circling west and south, then east and north again advancing alongside and up the Rhône, he’s worked on a dozen jobs. He’s been in and out of money more times than he can count. And that’s all right by Jacques because coins are made for spending, so spend them fast he does. As he travelled, or so he claims with many a wink, he found women willing to lift their skirts wherever he went. Thomas lifts his head at such a claim while Gallatin looks away. Can it be true? This Jacques, so short and homely with scars and pocks upon his dirty face, the scruffy hair tied back and a patch upon his eye, can he have delved as often as he claims? His clothes are not so bad, yet they are a mixed sort to say the least. To Thomas they appear to have come from here and there, likely auctions or thefts in every town he’s been to. Can this man really get sex for free, that for which Thomas until recently has had to pay? Of special note, Jacques says, were the bosses’ wives. He had them now and then and once even their daughters too. More commonly, the tale goes on, he favoured farmers’ wives. Even a gypsy woman in the woods. Only once, he says, the voice going deep and filled with pretend regret, did he bed a fellow glazier’s betrothed. He wishes now that he had not. “Brothers in trade, you know,” he explains with a downcast face. He stops and looks away as if his storytelling just might be through. “Still, it was in the two of us, her as much as me. So we, well....” Jacques holds out an open palm, smacks it with a fist and makes a rolled-eye face.
Thomas and Gallatin turn to face each other. The same thought is in both their gazes. Is this finally it? Can they at last say good day to little comic Jacques and slip away?
“Enough ’bout me, thank you much,” says Jacques. “Your turn it is. Where you two been and what you two done?”
Thomas’s and Gallatin’s eyebrows arch up in unison, but they resist exchanging glances this time. Instead, each one looks over at the door of the guinguette. It’s time to leave.
“Nothing, eh?” says Jacques. “So sad.”
“It’s not really any of your…” mutters Gallatin, but then shuts his lips.
“No business?” Jacques reaches for the truncheon. “Try this. Try speaking to the stick.”
Thomas’s and Gallatin’s heads recoil.
“Joke, a joke,” s
ays Jacques. He drops the truncheon on the tabletop. “Relax. Just making conversation.”
Thomas and Gallatin each slowly finds his feet. Jacques makes a face as they rise, but it’s a grimace that says he’s trying to understand. He too stands and holds out his hand for his tablemates to pump. The shaking over, the glazier gives them a trademark tilt of the head along with one more wink.
“Paths could cross again. Think on that.”
“Of course,” says Thomas, lingering. Gallatin gives him an elbow in the ribs and the two are off.
Neither Thomas nor Jean hears Jacques’ footsteps following them as they wend their way through the crowd and its din. As they emerge from the Au Tambour Royal, out where a quilted blanket of grey cloud cover is darkening overhead, they think their guinguette adventure is done. They’ve had some laughs and seen the place. Now they need to locate a coach to carry them back into the city.
—
Marguerite Salles stands by the freshly upholstered bright green chair as her visitor scurries into the room. The ruffling sound of her cousin’s full silk dress fills the salon as the aging woman shimmers past. Marguerite silently mouths “Hail Mary full of grace” three times before she moves at all. With her cousin seated on the matching green chaise longue, Marguerite reaches out to close the door. An instant later, she hears the footfalls of Simone, the diminutive servant originally from Le Puy, down the hall. The seated cousin, the widowed Madame Dufour, nods approvingly. She knows from sorry experience how servants love to listen in and then exaggerate with each telling what they think they’ve heard. Her cousin, the even longer widowed Marguerite Salles, is wise to take precautions. Whatever she and Marguerite will say during the visit is none of Simone’s or any other servant’s business.
Madame Dufour still wears the mourning ring and black veil to honour the custom of marking the memory of a late husband. The ring and veil are the last of her widow’s apparel. She can’t wait to shed them as she has shed the black dresses. A few more weeks she tells herself, only a few more weeks. Monsieur Dufour was a large, wheezing man who paid little attention to her when he was alive. His preference was to see her at table and almost nowhere else. More to his liking were the women he met outside the marital state. Monsieur engaged in as many affairs as his pocketbook and libido could stand. It was a reality Madame Dufour put up with for over twenty-two years. Relief came six months ago when a tumour in his throat took Monsieur away in a matter of weeks. “Poor soul,” she said when the doctor told her the news at the end. That was the full extent of her expression of sorrow. The man’s passing meant only that she had to alter her attire for six months. The ring was handed down to her from her mother. Soon enough, she’ll put it back into its box for safekeeping. She’s not likely to ever wear it again, unless she is to remarry and outlive the next one as well.
Thomas, A Secret Life Page 25