The Man Who Walked through Walls

by Marcel Ayme

  12th March

  At six o’clock yesterday evening, went for a glass of cordial with Perruque, who is a member of the Académie Française. As everyone knows, in order not to disprove their reputation as ‘immortals’, the authorities are permitting these geriatrics the privilege of remaining among the living full-time. Perruque was vile with his self-importance, his hypocrisy and spitefulness. We were about fifteen at his place, all among the sacrificed, all down to our last tickets of the month. Only Perruque was a full-timer. He condescended to us, as if to diminished, powerless creatures. He protested our lot with a wicked glint in his eye, promising to defend our interests during our absence. From a certain point of view, he was glorying in being somehow better than us. Had to do my utmost to refrain from calling him a conceited swaggerer and a geriatric old bag. Oh, if only I weren’t hoping one day to take his place!

  13th March

  Had lunch at the Dumonts’. As always, they quarrelled and even insulted each other. With an unmistakable note of sincerity, Dumont shouted: “If only I could use up my life tickets in the second half of the month, so as never to live at the same time as you!” Madame Dumont cried.

  16th March

  This evening Lucette Roquenton vanished into the abyss. Since she was very afraid, I helped her through her last moments. She was already in bed when, at half-past nine, I came up to her room. So as to avoid last-minute agonies, I managed secretly to set back her bedside clock by fifteen minutes. Five minutes before going under, she had a fit of weeping. Then, believing she still had twenty minutes to go, she took the time to redo her make-up with a flirtatious impulse that was quite touching. At the moment of her passing, I took care not to look away. She was in the midst of laughing at something I had said when, suddenly, her laughter broke off and simultaneously she vanished before my eyes, as if an illusionist had conjured her away. I felt the still-warm place where her body had been, and felt the invasion of that silence that death’s presence imposes. I was rather grimly impressed. This very morning, as I write these lines, I sense my distress. Since waking, I am counting the hours I have left to live. This evening, at midnight, it will be my turn.

  This same day, at a quarter to midnight, I am taking up my diary again. I have just got into bed and I would like this temporary death to take me pen-in-hand, in the exercise of my profession. This attitude is, I feel, rather chivalrous. I like this kind of courage—elegant and discreet. As it is, will the death that awaits me be truly temporary; might it not be a question of true death, pure and simple? The promise of resurrection gives me nothing of value. Now I am tempted to see in it a cunning concealment of the sinister truth. If, in two weeks, none of those sacrificed comes back to life, who will file their complaints? Not their heirs, that’s for sure! And should they complain, what consolation could there be? Suddenly I realise that the sacrifices ought to return to life all at once, on the first day of next month, which is to say, the 1st of April. The perfect opportunity for a grand April fool. I sense a terrible panic take hold of me and I …

  1st April

  Here I am, alive and kicking. It wasn’t an April fool. Besides, I don’t have any sense of time having passed. When I woke up in bed again, I was in the midst of the panic I had been in just before dying. My diary was still on the bed and I tried to finish my last sentence, which was still turning in my mind, but my pen had dried up. Finding that my clock had stopped at ten-past four, I began to guess the truth. My watch had also stopped. I thought of telephoning Maleffroi to ask him the date. He did not bother to hide his annoyance at being dragged out of bed by me in the middle of the night and my joy at being revived hardly moved him. But I needed someone to confide in.

  “You see,” I said, “the distinction between spacetime and lived time is not a philosophical fantasy. I am the proof. In reality, absolute time does not exist.”

  “That is quite possible, but all the same it is half-past midnight, and I if I’m not mistaken—”

  “Don’t you find it a great consolation? Those two weeks that I wasn’t alive, that’s not time I missed out on. I fully expect to make it up later on.”

  “Good luck and good night.” Maleffroi cut me off.

  This morning, at around nine o’clock, I went out and I had the feeling of some sudden change. It seems that the season has made an appreciable jump forward. In fact, the trees have already been transformed, the air is gentler, the streets look different. The women too are now dressing for spring. The idea that the world has gone on without me vexed and still vexes me a little. Saw several people also revived last night. Exchange of impressions. Old lady Bordier held on to my leg for a whole twenty minutes to tell me about how, while detached from her body, she had two weeks of sublime, paradisal pleasures. The funniest encounter was without question when I found Bouchardon just leaving his house. The temporary death had taken him while asleep on the night of the 15th of March. This morning he woke up quite convinced that he had escaped his fate. He was making the most of it and going to a wedding that he thought was today but which must actually have been held two weeks ago. I did not disillusion him.

  2nd April

  Went for tea at the Roquentons’. The good man is plainly happy. Having no sense of the period of his absence, from his point of view, the events that filled it have no reality. The idea that, during those nine days living without him, his wife could have been cheating, clearly struck him as purely metaphysical. I am very happy for him. Lucette will not stop gazing at me with those dreamy, languid eyes. I detest impassioned messages conveyed behind someone else’s back.

  3rd April

  I’m still furious from this morning. While I was dead, Perruque has manipulated things so that the inauguration of the Mérimée museum will be on the 18th of April. To mark this occasion—and the old fox is quite aware of it—I was meant to give a very important lecture that could have opened the Académie’s doors to me. But this 18th of April I shall be in limbo.

  7th April

  Roquenton is dead again for a stretch. This time he accepted his fate good-humouredly. He invited me to dinner and at midnight we were still in the dining room, drinking champagne. Roquenton was standing up the moment he dropped into oblivion, and we saw his clothes fall in a heap on the carpet. Really it was quite funny. Nevertheless, I thought Lucette’s fit of giggles inappropriate.

  12th April

  This morning received a staggering visit from a man of about forty, poor, timid and in rather bad physical condition. A sick labourer, married and father of three, he wanted to sell me some of his life tickets in order to feed his family. His wife being also ill, too weakened by privation himself to sustain any demanding work, his allocation was just enough for him to keep them all in a state nearer death than living. His offer to sell me his life tickets filled me with confusion. I saw myself as a fairy-tale ogre, one of those monsters in ancient fables who collect tributes of human flesh. I stammered some objection and, refusing my visitor’s tickets, offered him a sum of money for his trouble. Aware of the magnitude of his sacrifice, he was legitimately proud and did not want to accept anything not paid for by one or several days of his own life. Unable to convince him, I ended up taking one of his tickets. When he had left, I stuffed it into a drawer, determined not to use it. Deducted thus from another man’s life, every minute of this additional day would have been odious.

  14th April

  Came upon Maleffroi in the metro. He explained how the life reduction decree was beginning to bear fruit. The rich finding themselves severely affected, the black market had lost a number of serious outlets and its prices had dropped considerably. There was hope among the top brass that this scourge could soon be at an end. Overall it seemed that the people were now better fed and Maleffroi pointed out that Parisians were looking happier. This observation gave me mixed feelings.

  “No less noticeable,” Maleffroi went on, “is this atmosphere of tranquillity and ease that we enjoy in the absence of those newly rationed. Now we can see j
ust how dangerous the rich, the unemployed, the intellectuals and the whores can be in a society where they sow nothing but trouble, pointless fuss, disorder and longing for what’s impossible.”

  15th April

  Refused an invitation for this evening from the Carterets, who asked me to be so kind as to be present at their ‘agonies’. It’s a fashion that hip types have started—gathering parties of friends on the occasion of their temporary deaths. Sometimes, I am told, these gatherings give way to orgiastic debauchery. It’s disgusting.

  16th April

  I die tonight. No apprehension.

  1st May

  Returning to life this evening, I had a surprise. My relative death (that’s the fashionable expression) caught me standing up and, my clothes having crumpled onto the floor, I came to completely naked. Similar incident with the painter Rondot, who had invited ten or so guests of both sexes, all due for their relative deaths. It must have been rather amusing. The month of May is promising to be so lovely that it hurts me to give up its last two weeks.

  5th May

  During my last life instalment, I thought I noticed signs of tension between those living full-time and the rest. This tension seems to be growing increasingly pronounced and, in any case, there is now no doubt that it exists. In the first place it’s a kind of reciprocal envy. The envy is easily explained among those with time cards. Nor is it surprising to find it goes hand in hand with deep-seated resentment of the privileged. As for the latter, every second brings reminders that they secretly envy us as heroes of the mysterious and the unknown, to such an extent that they are more sensitive to this wall of blankness between us than we, who do not see it. They see our relative death as a kind of holiday and so feel all the more shackled in their daily round. Generally, they tend to sink into a disagreeable sort of pessimism and waspishness. In contrast, the ever-present awareness of time’s speeding away, the necessity of adopting a faster pace of life, inclines the people in my own category towards good humour. I was thinking about all this over lunch today, with Maleffroi. Now disillusioned and sardonic, now aggressive, he seemed to be doing his best to make me downcast about my fate while crowing about his own luck, obviously trying to convince himself of this view. He was talking to me as you might to a friend belonging to an enemy nation.

  8th May

  This morning, a person came to me selling life tickets at two hundred francs apiece. He had about fifty to dispose of. I threw him out unceremoniously and he has only his broad dimensions to thank for missing out on a kick in the backside.

  10th May

  It will be four days ago this evening that, for the third time, Roquenton went into relative death. Not seen Lucette since, but I have just learnt that she is besotted with a vague young blond man. I can see the type from here, a young sheep chasing after the hip crowd. Incidentally, I couldn’t care less. That young woman has no taste, I worked that out long ago.

  12th May

  The black market in life tickets is being organised on a grand scale. Doorsteppers visit the poor and persuade them to sell a few days of life in order to access additional means of subsistence for their families. Old gaffers reduced to their workers’ pensions and the unemployed wives of prisoners are also easy prey. Ticket prices are now stabilising at between two hundred and two hundred and fifty francs. I doubt they can go much higher, for the clientele of wealthy people and even the merely well-off remains limited compared to the numbers of the poor. Moreover, many are refusing to allow human life to be treated in this way, like vile merchandise. For my part, I refuse to make any kind of deal with my conscience.

  14th May

  Madame Dumont has lost her time card. This is very troublesome, since it will take her at least two months to obtain a new one. She is accusing her husband of hiding it in order to be rid of her. I doubt he is so black-hearted. Spring has never been as beautiful as it is now. I am sorry to be dying in two days.

  16th May

  Dined yesterday at Baroness Klim’s. Of all the guests, his Lordship Bishop Delabonne alone was a full-time lifer. Someone having brought up the subject of the black market in life tickets, I spoke out against a practice that I considered shameful. I could not have been more sincere. Perhaps I was also hoping to make a good impression on the bishop, who has several votes in the Académie. Straight away I sensed hostility in my audience. His Lordship smiled kindly, as he might on the confidences of a young priest consumed with pontifical fervour. We turned to other subjects. In the drawing room after dinner, and privately at first, the Baroness engaged me on the subject of the market in life tickets. She pointed out that my immense talent as a writer, the depth of my vision, the great role I was called on to play, all made it my duty, my moral obligation to extend an existence dedicated to the enrichment of our thinking and the greatness of our country. Seeing me swayed, she opened our discussion to the other guests. These were almost unanimous in rubbishing my scruples, which were concealing the true path of justice in a mist of false sentimentality. Called on for an opinion, his Lordship refused to resolve the question, but expressed his thoughts in a highly significant parable—a hard-working farmer is short of land while his neighbours are neglecting theirs. He buys a portion of his negligent neighbours’ land, hoes it, sows seed and gathers in a fine harvest, from which everybody benefits.

  I allowed myself to be persuaded by the brilliant gathering and this morning retained enough conviction to purchase five life tickets. In order to deserve this existential supplement, I am planning some time away in the country, where I shall work day and night on my book.

  20th May

  Been in Normandy for four days now. Apart from a few strolls, my time is completely devoted to writing. The farmers here hardly know about time cards. Even their old folk live twenty-five days a month. Since I shall need one more day in order to finish a chapter, I asked an old peasant to sell me a ticket. On questioning, I replied that in Paris each ticket was worth two hundred francs. “You’re having me on!” he exclaimed. “Offering me two hundred francs, same as we pay for a live pig!” So I couldn’t clinch my deal. I’ll take the train tomorrow afternoon so as to be in Paris by evening and die at home.

  3rd June

  What an adventure! My train being very much delayed, the temporary death caught me a few minutes before coming in to Paris. I revived in the same compartment, but by then the carriage was in a siding in Nantes. And, of course, I was completely naked. Such bother and vexation I have had to go through—it still makes me see red. Luckily, I was travelling with an acquaintance who had my clothes sent home ahead of me.

  4th June

  Met Mélina Badin, an actress from the Argos, who told me a ludicrous story. A few admirers insisting on presenting her with a parcel of life, she found herself on the 15th of May, last month, with twenty-one tickets to her name. Now, she claims to have used them all, to the effect that she must have lived thirty-six days that month. I felt I had to tease her:

  “This May of yours, that can be lengthened for five days at your sole pleasure, now that’s what I call a gallant month,” I said.

  Mélina seemed seriously put out by my scepticism. I’m inclined to think she’s a little deranged.

  11th June

  Drama at the Roquentons’. I only heard about it this afternoon. On the 15th of May, Lucette received her young golden-haired fop at home and, at midnight, they sank into oblivion. On reviving, they returned to their bodies in the bed where they had fallen asleep, but were no longer alone there, for Roquenton revived right between the pair of them. Lucette and her blond piece pretended not to know each other, but Roquenton thinks this highly unlikely.

  12th June

  Life tickets are being sold at astronomic prices; they can’t be had now for less than five hundred francs. One has to imagine that the poor are becoming more miserly over their own lives and the rich greedier. I bought ten at the start of the month, at two hundred francs each, then the morning after this purchase I received a letter from
Orléans, from my Uncle Antoine, sending me nine. The poor man suffers so badly from rheumatism that he has decided to wait for his condition to improve in oblivion. Here I am now in possession of nineteen tickets. The month having only thirty days, I have five too many. I shan’t be short of buyers.

  15th June

  Yesterday Maleffroi came up to see me. He was in an excellent mood. The fact that some people are spending enormous sums in order to live their month from end to end, as he does, has restored his optimism. It required nothing less to convince him that the full-time lifer’s lot is desirable.

  20th June

  I am working hard. If we are to believe certain rumours, Mélina Badin is not as crazy as she appears. Indeed, a number of people claim to have lived more than thirty-one days during the month of May. I have personally heard of several. Of course there is no lack of people gullible enough to believe in these tall tales.