The Man Who Walked through Walls

by Marcel Ayme

  The following morning, Dutilleul was annoyed to wake up with a nasty headache. It did not bother him badly and he wasn’t going to let such a minor thing keep him from his next rendezvous. Still, when he happened to find a few pills scattered at the back of a drawer, he gulped down one that morning and one in the afternoon. By evening, his headache was bearable and in his elation he managed to forget it completely. The young woman was waiting for him with an impatience fanned by memories of the night before, and that night they made love until three o’clock in the morning.

  When he was leaving, while walking through the partitions and walls of the house, Dutilleul had the unfamiliar feeling that they were rubbing on his hips and at his shoulders. Nevertheless, he thought it best not to pay much attention to this. Besides, it was only on entering the outer wall that he really met with considerable resistance. It felt as though he were moving through a substance that, while still fluid, was growing sticky and, at every effort he made, taking on greater density. Having managed to push himself right into the wall, he realised that he was no longer moving forward and, horrified, remembered the two pills he had taken during the day. Those pills, which he had thought were aspirin, in fact contained the powder of tetravalent pirette that the doctor had prescribed him the year before. The medication’s effects combined with that of intensive over-exertion were now, suddenly, being realised.

  Dutilleul was as if transfixed within the wall. He is still there today, incorporated into the stonework. Night-time revellers walking down Rue Norvins at an hour when the buzz of Paris dies down can hear a muffled voice that seems to reach them from beyond the tomb and which they take for the moans of the wind as it blows through the crossroads of Montmartre. It is Werewolf Dutilleul, lamenting the end of his glorious career and the sorrows of a love cut short. On some winter nights, the painter Gen Paul may happen to take down his guitar and venture out into the sonorous solitude of Rue Norvins to console the poor prisoner with a song, and the notes of his guitar, rising from his swollen fingers, pierce to the heart of the wall like drops of moonlight.

  SABINE WOMEN

  ON THE RUE DE L’ABREUVOIR in Montmartre there lived a young woman named Sabine who had the gift of ubiquity. She could, at will, multiply herself and exist simultaneously, in both body and mind, in as many places as she pleased. Since she was married and this rare gift would only have worried her husband, she had been careful not to reveal it to him and hardly used it except at home, and only when she was there alone. In the morning, for example, while doing her make-up, she would double or triple herself in order better to inspect her face and body in various attitudes. The inspection over, she would hurriedly gather herself together again, that is she would merge back into one single person. Some wintry or very rainy afternoons when she had little desire to go out, Sabine might also multiply herself into ten or twenty, which would allow her to hold a lively, animated conversation that was, after all, no more than a conversation with herself. Her husband, Antoine Lemurier, deputy director of litigation at the SBNCA, had no reason to suspect the truth and firmly believed that, like every husband, he possessed an indivisible wife. Only once, coming home unexpectedly, had he found himself in the presence of three strictly identical wives, right down to their expressions, all looking back at him with their six equally blue and limpid eyes, at which he was struck speechless, his jaw gaping a little slackly. Sabine came together again straight away and he thought he’d had a funny turn, in which opinion he was confirmed by the family doctor, who diagnosed hypophyseal deficiency and prescribed some expensive remedies.

  One April evening, after dinner, Antoine Lemurier was going through invoices at the table and Sabine was sitting in an armchair reading a cinema magazine. Looking over at his wife, he was surprised by her attitude and the expression on her face. Head leaning to one side, she had dropped her magazine. Her wide-open eyes were shining with a soft light, her lips smiling, her face glowing with ineffable joy. Amazed and moved, he tiptoed to her and leant over her devotedly, and did not understand why she pushed him away impatiently. Here is what had happened.

  Eight days earlier, at the bend in Avenue Junot, Sabine had met a black-eyed youth of twenty-five. Deliberately blocking her way, he had said: “Madame” and Sabine, her chin high and gaze fierce: “But, monsieur!” Such that a week later, in the last hours of that April evening, she found herself simultaneously at home and with this black-eyed youth, whose name genuinely was Theorem and who claimed to be a painter. At the same moment that she was rebuffing her husband and sending him back to his invoices, Theorem, in his studio on Rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre, was clasping the young woman’s hands and calling her “My dear heart, my wings, my soul!” and other charming things that come easily to the lips of a lover in the first flush of passion. Sabine had vowed to reunite herself by ten that evening at the latest, and without having consented to any significant sacrifice, but at midnight she was still with Theorem and all that remained of her scruples were regrets. The following day, she only returned to herself at two in the morning, and on the days that followed, later still.

  Each evening, Antoine Lemurier was able to admire on his wife’s face the same reflection of a joy so beautiful that it seemed quite unearthly. One day, speaking privately with a colleague at work, in an emotional moment he even said: “If you could only see her when we stay up of an evening, in the dining room—one would think she were speaking with the angels.”

  For four months, Sabine continued to speak with the angels. Her holiday that year must have been one of her best. She was at once by a lake in the Auvergne with Lemurier and at a little beach in Brittany with Theorem. “I have never seen you look so beautiful,” her husband told her. “Your eyes are as soulful as the lake at half-past seven in the morning.” To which Sabine responded with an adorable smile that might have been dedicated to the invisible spirit of the mountain. Meanwhile, she was sunbathing with Theorem on the sand of their little Breton beach, both of them almost naked. The black-eyed youth said nothing, as if sunk in sensation so profound that mere words could not express it; in truth because he was already tiring of repeating the same things over again. While the young woman was wondering at his silence and all the inexpressible passion it must conceal, Theorem, replete with animal contentment, was happily coasting between mealtimes while reflecting with satisfaction that his holiday wasn’t costing him a penny. For Sabine had sold some of her older jewellery and begged her companion to let her cover the cost of their stay in Brittany. A little surprised at her efforts to persuade him over something which to him seemed perfectly natural, Theorem had consented with the best will in the world. He thought that an artist should never give in to idiotic prejudices, himself less even than others. “I do not concede my right,” he would say, “to give way to my scruples if they could prevent my creating the work of an El Greco or a Velázquez.” Living on a basic allowance from his uncle in Limoges, Theorem did not expect to earn a living from painting alone. An arrogant and unshakable idea of what true art was prevented him from painting without the compulsion of inspiration. “If I have to wait ten years,” he would say, “I shall wait.” This, more or less, was what he was doing. Most days he could be found working on his receptivity in Montmartre’s cafés or refining his critical eye by watching his friends paint, and when the latter asked him about his own painting, he had a way of replying, with a preoccupied air: “I am looking inside myself ”, that commanded respect. Moreover, between the Rue Caulaincourt, the Place du Tertre and the Rue des Abbesses, the great clogs and vast velvet trousers that made up his winter costume had secured his reputation as a very fine artist. Even his greatest detractors agreed that he still had terrific potential.

  One morning, towards the end of their holiday, the lovers were getting dressed in the bedroom of their Breton inn. Five or six hundred kilometres away in the Auvergne, the Lemuriers had already been up for three hours and, while her husband rowed her about the lake, extolling the beauty of the surroundings, Sabine
would now and then utter a monosyllable in reply. But in the Breton bedroom she was looking out at the sea and singing. She sang: Fine white fingers have my loves. Body and soul are hands in gloves. Picking up his wallet from the mantelpiece, before slipping it into the back pocket of his shorts, Theorem pulled out a photograph.

  “Look at this, I’ve found an old photo. It’s me, last winter, by the Galette windmill.”

  “Oh my love!” said Sabine and her eyes were dewy with passion and pride.

  In the photograph, Theorem was wearing his winter outfit and, contemplating his clogs and voluminous velvet trousers so prettily gathered in at the ankles, Sabine had no doubt that he was a true genius. She felt a pang of guilt and reproached herself for having kept a painful secret from this dear boy who was such a fond lover and had such a sensitive artistic nature.

  “You are handsome,” she told him, “so tall! Those clogs! Those velvet trousers! That rabbit-skin cap! Oh my darling, you are so pure, an artist of such insight, and I, who have been so lucky to find you, my dear heart, my beloved, my sweet treasure, I have kept my secret from you.”

  “What nonsense is this?”

  “Darling, I am going to tell you something that I swore never to tell anyone—I have the gift of ubiquity.”

  Theorem burst out laughing, but Sabine said:

  “Look.”

  At the same time, she multiplied herself into nine and for a second Theorem thought he was losing his mind as he saw spring up around him nine Sabines, all alike.

  “You aren’t angry?” one of them asked, anxiously.

  “Not at all,” replied Theorem. “On the contrary.”

  He smiled happily, as if in gratitude and, reassured, Sabine kissed him passionately with her nine mouths.

  At the beginning of October, about a month after their return from the Auvergne, Lemurier noticed that his wife was no longer speaking with the angels. He thought her preoccupied and melancholy.

  “You seem less gay,” he told her one evening. “Perhaps you aren’t going out enough. Tomorrow, if you like, we’ll go to the cinema.”

  At that very moment, Theorem was pacing up and down in his studio, shouting:

  “How am I to know where you might be right now? How do I know you’re not in Javel or Montparnasse, in the arms of some crook? Or in Lyon in the arms of a silk-merchant? Or in Narbonne in bed with a brewer? Or in Persia in bed with the Shah?”

  “I swear to you, my darling.”

  “You swear, you swear to me! … And what if you were in the arms of twenty other men, would you swear to them too, hmm? It’s enough to drive a man mad! My head’s exploding. I feel I could do anything now—a tragedy!”

  At the word tragedy, he looked up at a Balkan sabre he had bought the year before at the flea market. To prevent an imminent crime, Sabine multiplied herself into twelve and stood poised to stop him reaching the sabre. Theorem calmed down. Sabine reunited herself.

  “I am so wretched,” the painter was moaning. “Now I must add this new affliction to cares that already weigh me down!”

  He was referring to cares of a nature both spiritual and material. By his own account, Theorem was in a tough position. His landlord, to whom he owed three quarters’ rent, was threatening to confiscate his belongings. His uncle in Limoges had just brutally suspended his allowance. As for spiritual concerns, he was in the midst of a crisis that although painful was also richly promising. He could feel the creative potencies of his genius bubbling and jostling inside him and it was precisely lack of money that was preventing him from acting on their prompting. You try and paint a masterpiece with the bailiff and starvation knocking at your door. Shaking, in terrible distress, Sabine felt sick. The week before she had sold the last of her jewellery to pay off a debt of honour Theorem had run up at a coal merchant’s on the Rue Norvins, and now she despaired, having nothing left to sacrifice to his burgeoning talent. In reality, Theorem’s situation was no better nor any worse than usual. As ever, the uncle in Limoges would lovingly bleed himself dry to allow his nephew to become a great painter and the landlord, naively hoping to profit from the poverty of an artist with prospects, always willingly accepted payment in the form of a third-rate canvas hastily botched together. However, apart from the pleasure of playing at poète maudit and bohemian hero, Theorem was confusedly hoping that the sorry scene of his distress would inspire this young woman to the boldest of resolutions.

  That night, afraid to leave him alone with his anxieties, Sabine stayed with her lover and did not reunite herself back home at the Rue de l’Abreuvoir. The next morning, she woke up beside him with a fresh and happy smile.

  “I just had a dream,” she said. “We were running a little grocery on Rue Saint-Rustique, hardly two metres across the frontage. We had only one client, a schoolboy who had just bought barley sugar and boiled caramels. I was wearing a blue pinny with big deep pockets. You had on a grocer’s apron. In the evening, in our back room, you would write in a great book, ‘Takings of the day: caramel—six sous.’ When I woke up, you were in the middle of telling me: ‘For our business to run perfectly, we shall need another client. I can picture him with a small white beard … ’ I was about to object that with another client we should be run off our feet, but I didn’t have time. I was waking up.”

  “In short,” Theorem said (giving a very bitter, nasal laugh, and his smile too was bitter)—“In short,” he said (and, mortified, sickened to the point of outrage, a furious flush rising to his ears and, already, his black eyes were flashing)—“In short,” Theorem said, “when all’s said and done, your ambition is to make a grocer out of me?”

  “Not at all. I’m just telling you my dream.”

  “That’s exactly what I said. You dream of my becoming a grocer. In a smock.”

  “Oh darling!” Sabine protested, affectionately. “If you had only seen yourself! It suited you so well, your grocer’s smock!”

  So violent was his indignation that Theorem sprang out of bed yelling that he was betrayed. It was not enough that his landlord was throwing him into the street, that his uncle in Limoges was refusing him the right to eat, at the very moment when something inside him was about to blossom forth. No, on top of that, the woman he loved most in the world had to make a mockery of this grand but fragile work that he was carrying inside him, and was dreaming of its abortion. Himself, she destined for grocery. Why not for the Académie? Marching around the studio in his pyjamas, Theorem was screeching hoarsely, his voice full of pain, and several times gestured as if tearing his heart out and scattering it between his landlord, his uncle in Limoges and his beloved. Stricken, a trembling Sabine was discovering the depths of suffering an artist can reach and recognising her own unworthiness.

  When he came home for lunch, Lemurier found his wife quite distraught. She had even forgotten to reunite herself and, when he went into the kitchen, he saw her there as four distinct individuals, all busy at different chores, though their expressions were equally clouded with misery. He was extremely vexed.

  “Oh dear me!” he said. “Now my hypophyseal deficiency has come back. I shall have to start taking my medication again.”

  His fit having passed, he began to worry about the terrible sadness into which Sabine plunged more deeply every day.

  “Binette” (such was the diminutive that fine sentiments had led this good and loving man to choose for his young wife, whom he adored), “Binette,” he said, “I can’t stand to see you so miserable any longer. I shall end up being downcast myself. Outside in the street or at the office, thinking of your unhappy eyes, my heart sinks all of a sudden and I have even found myself crying over my blotter. Then the lenses of my spectacles mist up and I am obliged to wipe them, and the operation represents a considerable amount of time wasted, not to mention the bad impression that the sight of my tears could produce, among my superiors as well as those junior to me. After all, I would even say ‘above all’, this sadness that fills your bright eyes with a charm that is, indeed, indefi
nable, I wouldn’t disagree, but painful—this sadness, I deplore its inevitable repercussions on your health and I expect to see you react with vigour and celerity against a state of mind that I believe to be dangerous. This morning, our senior executive Monsieur Porteur, a charming man by the way, of perfect education and whose skills require no further praise, Monsieur Porteur was particularly thoughtful in giving me a card for the races at Longchamp, since his brother-in-law, who it seems has very Parisian habits, has a substantial investment in the horses. Since it appears that you require distraction … ”

  That afternoon, Sabine went to the races for the first time in her life, at Longchamp. Having bought a racing paper on the way, she lingered over the name of a horse—Theocrat VI—which presented an onomastic similarity with her dear Theorem that obliged her to consider it a good omen. Dressed in a cape of fine blue samarkaz trimmed with amorish, Sabine was wearing a Vietnamese hat with a half-face birdcage veil, and she caught the eyes of more than a few men. She didn’t care much for the first few races. She was thinking of her beloved painter suffering the torments of frustrated inspiration, and was vividly imagining his black eyes flashing as he laboured in his studio, wearing himself out in the struggle against the incursions of a sordid reality. She thought of doubling herself, so as to appear instantaneously at Rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre and lay her cool hands on the artist’s burning forehead, as is usual among lovers in distressing situations. Fear of disturbing him in the midst of his quest stopped her from acting on her thought, and thank goodness, for far from being in his studio, Theorem was draining a glass of cheap red at a bar on Rue Caulaincourt and wondering if it wasn’t too late to go to the cinema.