by Marcel Ayme
“Since he saw nothing, that’s what he said. I don’t see why we should hold that against him.”
Huchemin, Rogier and Naudin assented, at which their leader became rather upset.
“In that case, well, if we only bother about things that are real, there won’t be anything much for us to do,” he said.
Secretly, Antoine had to admit that Frioulat was right and reproached himself for having undermined their leader’s authority. More than anything, he was ashamed of having stood up in defence of common sense, in opposition to those noble imaginations that seemed to constitute the very foundations of heroism. He would have liked to make amends somehow, but as soon as he began to speak, Frioulat laid into him.
“You shut up. Instead of coming and trying to sow mutiny in the gang, you’d be better off going back home to mummy. We’re already fifteen minutes behind schedule, thanks to you.”
“Fine,” retorted Antoine, “I wouldn’t want to keep you. I shan’t be in the gang any more.”
He headed off in the direction of Rue Gabrielle, with Baranquin at his side. The others hesitated. Naudin and Huchemin decided to follow the dissidents, but at a distance. Rogier wanted to join them too, but didn’t dare to break with the leader openly and so shuffled away while trying to look as though he was waiting for him. Frioulat was the last to follow, shouting:
“You bunch of cowards, you can go it alone then! I’m resigning! But you’ll regret it!”
The gang, now split into four factions spaced out over about a hundred metres, was making its way towards the expedition’s goal, which was located on a section of the Rue Élysée-des-Beaux-Arts between two bends in the street. The little side street was dark, narrowly hemmed in and as deserted as the heights of Montmartre.
Nearing the spot, Antoine and Baranquin were walking more slowly and the gang came together again like an accordion. Where it made a first bend, the street was traversed by a deep trench, signalled by a red warning light. The roadworks had been begun in the last two days, for there had been no sign of them before, at the time of the gang’s first expedition. This furnished a creepy element that the gang might have turned to their advantage and it made them regret their split. The trench was only to be crossed by means of a narrow plank, between two ropes that acted as guard rails. In spite of his desire to look down into the hole, Antoine did not pause, afraid the others would think he was waiting for backup.
A few steps on, the six schoolboys found themselves facing a junk shop. It was a cramped little place, from which the paint appeared to have been scratched off and without any nameplate or sign above it. Instead, the window displayed quite a number of signs. The largest of them read as follows: Bargains for connoisseurs. Another: This establishment gives credit only to the wealthy. Each of the objects on display was provided with the most dubious of historic provenances, written on a cardboard rectangle. Rustic desk belonging to Queen Hortense referred to a small kitchen table of pale wood, deeply pitted by bleach. There were also du Barry’s coffee-grinder, Marat’s soap-holder, Queen Berthe au Grand Pied’s bedroom slippers, President Félix Faure’s bowler hat, Queen Pomaré’s pipe stem, the fountain pen with which the treaty of Campo Formio had been signed and a hundred other things each captioned in the same vein—right down to the leather bladder of a football which was designated A fake once owned by Pope Joan. The boys saw no mischief in all this and did not for a moment doubt that the shop’s owner had gathered all the remnants of history into his modest junk shop. They were vaguely surprised by the Campo Formio fountain pen, but the glimmers of knowledge that they possessed about this famous treaty were no more than that. Above all, it never crossed their minds that a merchant might indulge in a little leg-pulling in the exercise of his business. All these handwritten descriptions must be true, as true as anything in print; they were a guarantee of authenticity. But it was not so as to admire these historical souvenirs that the gang had engaged in its lengthy expeditions. A single object in the centre of the display held the six schoolboys’ fervent attention. This object was a pair of boots, likewise assigned their own label, on which could be read these simple words—Seven-league boots; and to which the Campo Formio treaty, Marat, Félix Faure, Napoleon, King Louis Philippe and all the other great figures from history conferred an almost unarguable authenticity. Perhaps the six children did not quite believe that all they need do was don these boots in order to cover seven leagues with a single step. All may even have suspected that the adventures of Tom Thumb were nothing but fairy tales but, not being certain of this, they easily laid their doubts aside. In order not to part ways with plausibility, perhaps also to protect themselves from the potential distress of contradiction by reality, they allowed that the powers of these seven-league boots must have faded or been lost over time. In any case, there was no doubt about their fundamental authenticity. This was history itself and the whole shop was there to vouch for it. What is more, the boots were strangely beautiful, remarkably magnificent amidst the other objects in the window, almost all of which were poor and ugly. Made of supple, delicately polished black leather to fit a child of about their age, the boots were trimmed inside with white fur that spilled over the leather, forming a snowy cuff. The boots had a proud, arched elegance that was somewhat intimidating, though softened by the white fur, which lent them the grace of a mild caprice.
Buge and Baranquin, the first to arrive, stood right in front of the boots, noses to the glass, exchanging no more than the odd word or two. Their rapture was quite impossible to express—it was something like a happy dream during which, every so often, one rather painfully remembers a real life about to resume. Mentally pulling on the seven-league boots, Antoine was living through a confused but heartfelt adventure and, thinking of his mother, of their garret where she had just returned alone, he caught his breath long enough to be sorry, for a vision of the home awaiting him, on this same side of the window, so close to her in the night, in the winter, that her breath made a little patch of mist on the pane.
Now and then, the children would glimpse the shop’s owner, proprietor of all these marvels, silhouetted behind the boots. As with the window display, the shop’s interior was lit by a single, unshaded bulb hanging from a wire whose yellow light left the objects in some obscurity.
As far as could be judged from outside, the owner was a tiny old man whose face was round and smooth, without wrinkles or protruding features. He was wearing a high formal collar, a tightly buttoned waistcoat, short breeches and cyclists’ stockings drawn up high on dry-skinned legs. Although he was alone in the shop, every so often his high-pitched voice could be heard, always raised in annoyance. Sometimes he would pace back and forth in a state of such extreme agitation that he was practically jumping from foot to foot, but mostly he would be sitting under the electric bulb in front of a great stuffed bird, doubtless a heron, with which he appeared to conduct highly animated conversations. Baranquin confirmed that he had even seen the bird move and lean threateningly towards the old man. Everything was possible in this place that harboured seven-league boots.
Once again the gang found itself united, lined up against the shop window, all their eyes fixed on the boots. Frioulat was standing three paces behind the row, which he was contemplating with much irony, all the while sneering and discoursing loudly.
“They can keep on looking at those boots, till tomorrow morning if they want. Who’s the one getting the last laugh? Me. Why me? Cos I’m the one who had a plan. But no more leader, no more plan, no more nothing.”
Antoine, whose mutiny had triggered all the other desertions, was in no doubt that these statements were particularly directed at him. Ignoring them and staying silent seemed wise but insufficient. He would have liked to do something grand and heroic which would have made him, more than any of them, worthy of the seven-league boots. Besides, the row of boys seemed also to be waiting for the very riposte that he was dreaming of. Rogier and Baranquin were watching him hopefully. His heart thumped loudly, but lit
tle by little his resolve grew. Finally, he stepped out of the row, passed in front of Frioulat without looking at him and moved towards the shop door. All were watching him with admiration. The door’s glass panel was broken in two places and covered over by a bedside rug pinned up on the inside and labelled: The Thief of Baghdad’s carpet. Nervous, Antoine turned the handle and shyly pushed at the door. What he saw and heard through the opening kept him pinned to the threshold. In the middle of the shop, hands on his hips, eyes gleaming, the owner was standing before the stuffed bird and talking to it in the tones of a sulky little girl. Antoine heard him squeal:
“At least be honest about your opinions! You make me sick with your habit of insinuating all the time! Besides, I don’t accept the reasons you’ve just given. Show me your papers, show me your proof. Ah, Monsieur, I have you there! Excuse me?”
The old man posed as if listening in haughty silence. Tucking his little, round, apple-smooth head down between his shoulders, he appeared to be retreating inside his starched collar, which encased him right up to his ears. From time to time he would glance at the bird and purse his mouth with an insultingly sarcastic look. Suddenly, he jumped almost on top of the creature and clamped his fist over its beak, shouting:
“I won’t have it! That’s slander! You are maligning the Queen. I won’t hear a word against Isabeau de Bavière, you hear me, not a word!”
At that, he began to stomp around the stuffed bird muttering and gesturing furiously. It was during this circuit that, on looking up, the owner caught sight of Antoine standing in the doorway. After examining him suspiciously, he strode over to the door, head craned forward and shoulders low, as if he were hoping to surprise the boy. But Antoine reclosed the door and signalled to his comrades, raising the alarm in a shaky voice that had their attention straight away.
The gang, which seemed to re-form under Antoine’s authority, joined him in retreat but, keen to ask questions, stopped ten or twelve paces away from the shop. Having first begun to retreat with the others, Frioulat changed his mind and stayed back, alone before the seven-league boots.
His nose to the glass pane, a corner of the rug pulled back from the door, the shop’s owner was peering out at the street, keeping an eye on Antoine’s little group in particular. The schoolboys shot him stealthy glances and conferred in low voices. Then he let the rug drop back and vanished. Frioulat, who had bravely remained standing in the light shed by the window throughout this ordeal, eventually turned to the group (which might once more claim to be a gang) and said scornfully:
“No need to run away, he wasn’t going to eat you. But when there’s no leader that’s what always happens. There’s always someone trying to show off, who thinks he’ll be first through the door, but at the last minute he can’t help chickening out. And in the meantime, I get to laugh myself sick.”
“No one’s stopping you from going in,” remarked Huchemin. “If you’re sharper than us, go ahead.”
“Naturally,” said Frioulat.
He made for the door without hesitation and in one abrupt push opened it almost all the way. But as he was about to step inside, he jumped back instead with a yell of terror. A bird taller than he had just leapt out at him from behind the door, uttering strange squawks with an oddly human tone.
The rest of the gang had already bolted and Frioulat shot off at top speed without a single backward glance. Holding the bird in his arms, the old man himself stepped into the doorway and, with one more squawk to hasten the fleeing schoolboys, he clumped back inside his shop.
As if from a catapult, Frioulat flew to rejoin the gang by the bend in the road. No one remembered the trench that had required a plank to cross it only a quarter of an hour ago. It was only three metres beyond the bend. Rogier saw it when he was almost upon it and tried to stop but could not withstand the pressure of those following him, and Frioulat burst among them at such speed that he thrust those who were still trying to regain their balance into the hole, then fell into it himself. The trench was almost two metres deep and the frozen earth was hard as rock.
Germaine had lit the stove and, not to be wasteful, was keeping a small fire going while she waited for Antoine’s return. The room was tiny but difficult to heat due to its exposed position. The badly fitted garret window let in draughts of cold air. When the wind blew from the north, they could hear it snorting between the tiles and the sloping partitions, which were made of laths covered only in a thin layer of plaster. Sitting on one of the two little iron beds that, along with a garden table, a wooden chair, the cast-iron stove and a few soapboxes, made up all her furniture, Germaine Buge, her body and mind at a standstill, stared into the gas lamp she had set to its lowest flame.
Seeing that it was half-past six, she grew frightened. Antoine was never late when he knew she was waiting for him and at lunchtime she had told him that she would be home no later than five o’clock. Several times she went out onto the landing, in the hope that the sound of footsteps would cut a minute from her anxious wait. She ended up leaving the door half-open. But it was through the window that she heard someone call her name. From far down in the cramped courtyard, her voice rising up like smoke in a chimney, the concierge was shouting: “Eh! Buge … ” She had begun to call her that when a lady coming to enquire if Germaine would take on her housework had preferred not to climb up all seven floors only to reach someone’s hovel.
A policeman was waiting for her downstairs, chatting to the concierge. Seeing him there, she knew he had come about Antoine and her stomach twisted in fear. Her entrance was received with a sympathetic silence.
“Are you Antoine Buge’s mother?” asked the policeman. “Your son has had an accident. I don’t believe it’s very serious. He and some other children fell into a trench meant for piping. I don’t know how deep it was, but in this cold weather the earth can be very hard. They hurt themselves. You son has been to Bretonneau hospital. You may visit him this evening.”
Out in the street, after taking out the purse and handkerchief that were stuffed into her pockets, Germaine pulled off her apron, rolled it up and tucked it under her arm. Her first thought had been to take a taxi, but then she thought that the money for the journey might better be used for Antoine. She went on foot, feeling neither cold nor fatigue. Her distress was devoid of self-pity and, as she thought of Antoine and life in their garret, as she considered all their years of happiness, it seemed to her that she might be guilty of shirking her real destiny. The time had come to make amends and this disaster was setting everything back in order.
“It had to happen,” she thought. “I was so happy.”
At the hospital, they sent her to a waiting room where four other women and three men were engaged in vigorous discussion.
From the first words she heard, Germaine realised that these were the other children’s parents. Besides, she recognised Madame Frioulat, a small, dark-skinned, hard-faced woman who ran an elegant grocery shop on Rue Ramey where Germaine had bought things once or twice. For a second she wished she might join the group and learn more about the accident, but no one had noticed her come in except for Madame Frioulat, who had shot an unpleasant stare at this woman with neither coat nor man, who must therefore be unmarried.
Germaine sat down a little way from the group and listened to their conversation, from which she learnt nothing. All these people seemed no better informed than she.
“How on earth could it have happened, I keep on wondering,” enquired Naudin’s father, a young man wearing a metro ticket officer’s blue uniform.
“It was my husband who first heard about it,” said Madame Frioulat, raising her voice so that Germaine would know she did not live alone. “He was going to fetch the car from the garage, but I told him: ‘Never mind, I’ll go in a taxi.’ He had to stay at the shop, of course.”
Each in turn described how they had heard about the accident. A few minutes’ attention was enough for Germaine to learn from their names which parents were present. All these names, so of
ten repeated by Antoine, were quite familiar to her. She reflected with admiration and deference on these Naudins, these Huchemins and Rogiers with their schoolboy names. They seemed almost like family, though she never forgot the distance between herself and these people who went about in couples, had a profession, relatives, an apartment. As for them, they went on ignoring her, but far from resenting it, Germaine was grateful for their discretion. Only Madame Frioulat frightened her a little, for from time to time she felt that lady’s hostile gaze pause on her meagre person. She felt obscurely that she grasped the reasons for this hostility, and, had anxiety absorbed less of her attention, she should have had no trouble understanding them. Long experience had taught her that certain ladies of superior situation, such as Madame Frioulat, do not much like landing in a situation that puts them on equal footing with pauperesses. The grocer from Rue Ramey’s aesthetic conception of the social edifice was under attack. Her feeling of kinship with a creature only too obviously an unmarried mother was sowing a poisonous doubt in her mind. Even as a shopkeeper and one in possession of a motor car, could she go on believing in the virtue of these categories? Nevertheless, she made an attempt at conversation.
“And you, madame, you too must have come due to this terrible accident?”
“Yes, madame. I am young Buge’s mother, Antoine Buge.”
“Ah, ah! Antoine Buge, of course. I’ve heard of him. It seems he’s the devil incarnate, that little one. You must have heard about him too, Madame Naudin?”
“Yes, indeed, Robert has mentioned him.”
“Ah! As I was telling you, you see, you’ve heard of him too. It seems he’s a wild lad.”
“But no, not at all, I assure you. Antoine is very well behaved,” protested Germaine, but Madame Frioulat did not let her speak.
“He may not be bad at heart, but as with many others, he’s lacking in discipline.”