The Lynx

by Michel Corday

  Finally, she deigned to notice the jewel-case. Concealing her satisfied cupidity beneath an impassive mask, she took out the admirable string of pearls, weighed it, made an expert appraisal of the luster and ended up attaching it around her neck. The necklace was worth ten times as much as Simone’s.

  “Very nice, very nice!” she murmured.

  Castillan stammered, in an ill-assured voice: “Really? You like it?”

  Negligently, she replied: “Yes, of course.”

  Embarrassed by Mirande’s presence, he dared not insist further. He contented himself with enveloping her with a submissive and burning gaze. But how much it said, that gaze!

  Oh, the mute, frightful confession that Mirande surprised, that deeper plunge into unsuspected depths, into the horror of that monstrous soul...

  That’s all, then? That’s all that you can find? Not a word, not an impulse, not a tender gesture? Never, then? I’ll never retain you, never enchain you, even by gratitude, even by interest? But if you knew what I’ve done for you, to satisfy you, to keep you...

  Oh, if I could speak! How many times have I been tempted? Perhaps the crimes themselves would touch you more than the money I’ve extracted from them: the old man that I had killed, the innocent I’ve sent to the prison colony, all that was for you, to have more money, always, to our out for you. But that wasn’t enough. That money, I had to have to myself, alone, without division, in order to be able to give it to you entirely, without control. And when that unfortunate Simone was struck by catalepsy, it was you, yes, still you, that tempted me. So if I used my authority, my prestige, to keep the official medical examiners away from her coffin. If I signed her death certificate myself, it was for you, it was still for you. For I wasn’t sure…no, I wasn’t sure that she was dead...

  III

  The Ceinture train only deposited one passenger that evening, a woman, on the platform of the Point-du-jour station. One would scarcely have recognized Francette under the great mantle that enveloped her from head to toe, behind the thick dark veil drawn around her face. As soon as she had quit her compartment, she tucked a parcel of old clothes wrapped up in a sheet under her arm, hitched up her skirt and set off deliberately toward the exit. She pushed her ticket to the employee, disapproved of his slowness with a grunt, went down the stairway leading to the foot of the viaduct and found herself outside, on the sidewalk of the Boulevard Exelmans.

  There, a lighted kiosk indicated a cab-stand. She headed for it hastily, consulted the clock, which marked ten o’clock, and dived into the first automobile taxi.

  “Billancourt, Rue de Meudon; I’ll tell you where to stop.” Then, putting her head out of the window, she said: “Go via the quay.”

  When the barrière was crossed, about five minutes remained before reaching the end of her journey. That was more than she needed to transform herself. She unpacked her old clothes, replaced her mantle with a red woolen shawl, took off her hat and veil, which she placed on the seat. She tousled her hair, brought it down over her forehead and covered it with a common mantilla.

  “There’s me decorated,” she murmured. Through the mist-covered windows she tried to peer at the landscape. It was drowned in darkness, which the December mists rendered even more sinister. A recent downpour had filed the gas conduits with water; the street-lights were out. To the right, one divined walls, the foliage framework of a cheap restaurant, the mass of some dormant factory, whereas on the left, there was dense mystery, an entire boulevard of darkness opened by the river, scarcely contained in its bed, where vague reflections played, broken up by the current.

  One might think it was black coffee with eyes on top...

  That poor comparison restored her courage. Coffee led her to think about cheap brandy, and she had faith in brandy coffee. Recently, too, she had consulted a gypsy fortune-teller who, interpreting the pattern of the little black grains at the bottom of a cup, had predicted the success of her enterprise. And that confidence had sustained her for a month during which, to obey her petit patron, she had gone almost every evening, at least one night in two, when fatigue hadn’t overwhelmed her, to run around the riverside dives attempting to unearth the famous pirate.

  Oh, the adventure wasn’t comfortable. First of all, in order to leave the Castillan house in the evening she had had to bribe the concierge, allowing suspicions to weigh upon her virtue that sickened her when she thought of it. Then it required courage to risk herself on the banks of the Seine, to go into drinking-dens, creating abominable frequentations there.

  She had beaten the entire upper reach of the Seine from Bercy to Port-à-l’Anglais. She had retained frightful visions thereof, the impression of having brushed peril at every plunge, especially in the beginning, when she had made contact with a band as an intruder, and sensed that she was suspected of being a police spy. Terrible eyes had interrogated her; muzzles had sniffed; one would not have experienced more terror in a lair of wild beasts.

  At those times, a maladroit gesture would have condemned her. Knives would have fallen upon her pitilessly. But she knew that by making use of her laughter she could tame the most ferocious individuals.

  So, her strategy was invariable. She went into the dive, looked the crowd up and down, sat down at the counter, ordered a drink and dipped her lips in it with evident relish. Then she waited, in the great silence provoked by her entrance. Gradually, whispers rose up; her identity was being discussed. One of the ladies came to sit down beside her, engage her in conversation. Francette didn’t put on any airs, oh no! She immediately told her story, a lamentable barrière odyssey, deploring the arbitrariness of the police, the departure of a friend sent to the Bat d’Af.14 Magic words! They classified Francette, and her confidante immediately introduced her into the circle.

  There was a fine rabble there: boatmen, out-of-work stevedores, and their companions. They drank various kinds of rotgut, corrosive mixtures, devastating absinthes that the neophyte had to accept—unless, as was more frequent, she offered them. But she avoided their deadly effect by washing the parquet with the liquor when the fire of speech permitted her to slip her glass under the table without attracting attention. They even ended up finding her resistance astonishing, and that reputation as a solid drinker would have amused her as much as her subterfuge if her instinct as an economical petty housekeeper had not revolted at spending the petit patron’s viaticum on such largesse.

  She ended up, however, no longer regretting her liberality when, after an hour, she found herself taken in hand by the rabble, being tued and toied along with the celebrities of the bank. Quickly initiated into base pleasantries, even seeming to understand those that she had never encountered, she responded tit for tat. And the obscurity of her repartee passed in the eyes of the brutes for a boldness more emphatic than their own.

  Then there were bursts of gross laughter, warm approval and thunderous admiration when she wiggled the tip of her nose and twitched the rebarbative arch of her eyebrows. They writhed, they thought it hilarious. They could have carried her in triumph. And she clapped those messieurs on the shoulder and arranged the greasy chignons of the ladies. No mistake: for the filthy gallery, Francine was one of the gang, and they no longer hesitated to tell her about their misdeeds, to display the gory of their evil escapades.

  She listened then, avidly. She concentrated her intuition on their boasts, encouraging them, and leading them, as if by chance, to converse about the murder in the Avenue Raphael.

  Alas, so far it had been without result. The men knew the affair well, which was famous. Blowing out the smoke of their cigarettes, they expressed their opinion, always disdainful—for Lacaze, whom they believed to be the murderer, was not one of theirs. They were not interested in him.

  One of them however, might be able to resist the communal boasting, to hide his game. Then, Francette abandoned the collective strategy. Under the menacing gaze of their companions, she interrogated them individually, drew them apart. Had they traveled? Where had they done thei
r time? In order to engage them to confession, she repeated the fable of her friend sent to the Bat d’Af. She enquired as to their health. She talked about the colonies, the evil climate that produced fevers. And she only abandoned her investigation when she had recognized its uselessness.

  But things became complicated at closing time, at about two o’clock in the morning, when it was necessary to get away and repel the affection of a gallant who offered to see her home. To refuse that base protector she had only found one means to begin with: flight, a solitary hectic race through the darkness. She seized the moment of a song or a brawl to reach the door and disappear.

  But those escapes could, at length, have become suspicious. Then she preferred to attach herself to a cavalier servante. One evening, she chose one, as feeble and as unfavored by nature as possible. His name was Popol, nicknamed Asticot15—an appellation justified by his degenerate face, his pear-shaped skull blurred by stringy hair, his extravasated and melancholy blue eyes and his moist mouth, which hung down at one side. As for the silhouette: a skeletal chicken with short legs. Francette had no fear of him; she could have flattened him with one punch. He only had to his credit, moreover, a few petty thefts, during which he had stupidly got himself caught and condemned to minimal punishments.

  Throughout one evening, Asticot had adored her in silence; and she had left him some hope, on condition of quitting her at the threshold of the tavern, never following her and never enquiring as to her domicile. He obeyed. Thanks to that inoffensive companion, she was able to continue her investigation all the way to Alfortville. When she had finished, without result, she arranged one last rendezvous with Asticot and did not go.

  Now, it was downstream of Paris that Francette was operating. She had set her sights on Billancourt first, nearer and more infested than any other shore. But there, people were on their guard. In the three nights that she had been directing her exploration, she had only been accredited with one gang, and she had not discovered anything useful therein. She was rendering one last visit this evening, before passing on to another.

  Suddenly, Francette tapped the glass. The driver had gone past the Rue de Meudon.

  “Where are you going? You’ve missed it, old man. Necessary to go back.”

  Cursing, the man stopped his auto, battled with the gears, turned round and finally resumed the right route.

  “Turn left now. Go as far as the square.” And after a short trajectory: “Stop!”

  Vague streets led away from a crossroads, scarcely illuminated by an anemic light, dormant causeways trailing through the mud. The fog, denser in that spot, limited vision to twenty paces. A tram went past, devoid of passengers, and continued its noisy progress without even stopping at the station.

  “Wait for me here,” Francine said to the driver.

  The other looked at her in surprise. Who was this new client? The transformation did not suggest anything good. He feared not being paid.

  “Hey, little lady,” he said, “you think you’re going to leave me like this, without provision?”

  Francette understood. She took a hundred sous out of her pocket and gave them to him. “You’re afraid of a fare-dodger, eh?”

  “It’s not often that a client gets into my cab like a lady and gets out again like a serving wench.”

  “You worry too much, my lad. I’ll be back shortly.”

  She left him with that. She went around the center of the square, planted with trees surrounded by railings, and went straight ahead. Under the sheet of fog, the place was grim and deserted. She recognized the frontage of the drinking den at a distance, however, three paces from the first street-light. She hastened her steps. Before going in, however, she darted a glance inside through the misty window. It seemed abandoned, as usual, devoid of clients. The proprietor Monsieur Achille, a plump man with his sleeves rolled up over arms with prominent sinews, was indolently plunging his glasses into the sink behind the shiny counter, and then wiping them with the same dirty rag that he had just used to mop his ruddy face.

  But that was only a décor for passers-by, the mask of a second room into which only the initiated penetrated. From that discreet lair such a concert of songs and drunken exclamations was presently escaping that Francette almost obeyed an intimate voice that deterred her from risking herself there that evening. However, she shook off her fear, bravely pushed the door, greeted Monsieur Achille’s smile with a grimace and went into the den. The songs ceased at the sight of her.

  “Why, it’s Casque de Lune!”16 a crapulous voice baptized her.

  “For sure, and it’s a red moon too!” applauded another.

  “It’s true she’s a shapely one!” enthused a third.

  Then Francine joined in the chorus and cried, showing all her teeth: “Hey, you, I’ve got cash. I’ll buy a round for all the mates.”

  She was acclaimed. They moved aside to make way for her, to permit her to reach the back of the infamous hole. By the ruddy light of an oil lamp, one divined that it was borrowed from a small courtyard between two blocks of houses. The walls were scarcely roughcast, covered with coarse inscriptions that betrayed both the sentimentality of hearts and hatred of the police. Death to the Cops! sat side-by-side with hearts pieces with arrows and daggers suspended over ingenuous protestations of eternal love. A glazed roof formed the ceiling. The breach of a broken window let out the tobacco-smoke, the reek of alcohol and the heavy emanations of a cast-iron stove consuming coal-dust in a corner.

  Two greasy wooden tables constituted the whole of the furniture. They were surrounded by twenty equivocal clients: boatmen, stevedores, mechanics, the majority out of work, only adopting a social label to cover their shady exploits. In the three times that Francette had approached them, she had already got to know almost all of them.

  She saluted with a tap on his skull, bald before thirty, Nemeses, alias l’Anguille,17 a tall fellow with a skeletal fame who had no equal for catching a lit cigarette in his mouth when it was tossed into the air. Then there was Jules Crevard, an indolent colossus, whom she greeted with a punch: Crevard, le Rempart de Sèvres, an occasional bargee, but who preferred wrestling at fairs, playing the amateur in the crowd who accepts the trunks and pins down a professional, or is pinned by him, at the discretion of the huckster.

  Francette then imitated, with her used lips, the sound of an engine for Julot le Rossignol,18 a prematurely-aged young man with a pockmarked face and lips perpetually drawn back in a smile over his blunt teeth. He remained faithful to elephant’s-feet trousers, a canine coiffure, and did odd jobs as a mechanics, hired from time to time by an automobile factory but was soon sacked for inveterate laziness. But an invincible success with the ladies was achieved by his voice, a poor falsetto tenor, pierced like his face with numerous holes, in which he warbled with conviction, striking at the heart.

  And others, with whom Francette forced herself to ludicrous familiarities.

  She expended no less effort on the ladies. She sensed, however, that they were venomous, irritated by the empire she had achieved over their companions. The tall Paulette, known as Gloire de Dijon—no one knew why she shared the name of a rose; she scarcely had the bloom, with her faded complexion, consumed, one might have thought, by the furnace of her eyes—assassinated her with a rictus, while Emilie Rouquet, a vast sphere whose three chins dangled over an adipose bosom, spat an insult as she went past, and Marie Lalèque, also known as Bille d’Ivoire19 because of her anemia, had no hesitation about extending her feet to trip their common rival. But Francette was not caught; she avoided the trap, leaping over the legs, and sat down next to an individual she did not know yet, the mere sight of whom made her tremble.

  “It’s Le Crabe that has the honor!” yapped Emilie Rouquet.

  Forteau, alias Le Crabe, was a man of about thirty-five, stoutly built, with a stupid and bestial face, pierced by enormous gray eyes flush with their orbits, whose lids were afflicted by a chronic conjunctivitis. His tawny moustache escaped from an earthen skin,
revelatory of a compromised health. The most impressive thing, however, was his bone-structure, especially his hands. Succeeding wrists as hard as flint, they looked more like the appendices of a crustacean. Enormous and hairy, they developed like formidable pincers. He liked to show them off; they were his ornament, his pride. He owed advantageous triumphs to them, when he displayed them on the counter before a stranger, wagering a pastis that he could bend a ten-sou coin as easily as he could drink that absinthe; and if they took the bet, he twisted the one in order to drink the other. Those exploits had earned him his nickname.

  He did not move aside when Francette slipped in between Julot le Rossignol and him. He expressed his contentment by turning his bloodshot eyes slowly toward her. As she looked at him without apparent fear, he leaned toward his neighbor and observed, in a hoarse voice: “Goes without saying that she’s quite pretty, the kid.”

  “Not too ugly either!” riposted Francette.

  That exchange of courtesies immediately led to intimacy. Le Crabe displayed his pincers and commenced measuring them against a silver coin. Vexed at passing unperceived, Julot le Rossignol also wanted to show off, and prepared his voice by coughing. The eternal instinctive rivalry resurfaced in them.

  “Look, there’s no fakery,” Le Crabe emphasized.

  But Monsieur Achille appeared, bearing liters. He had heard Francette’s offer when she came in, and was not a man to neglect it. He caused his abdomen to pivot through the customers, distributing the blue liquor. Nénesse, alias l’Anguille, grabbed a bottle and juggled with it perilously. Then he uncorked it for the vast Emilie Rouquet, who approved of the nectar with a click of the tongue. Seeing that, Jules Crevard, le Rempart de Sèvres, did not take long to empty his glass. He lifted a liter level with his nose, opened his mouth, and without direct contact with the bottle, swallowed the wine, making a noise like a gurgling tap in his throat. La Gloire de Dijon and Bille d’Ivoire applauded noisily, guffawing.