by Marcel Ayme
“Children, they have to be kept in line,” said the ticket collector.
Relieved to be able to lay the blame on someone and settle on some explanation for the accident, the parents began loudly swapping notions about children’s education and, while they were content to generalise, their comments were clearly aimed at Germaine Buge. In their distress, all the couples entertained a wealth of indulgent feelings towards their own sons, whose misfortune thus swaddled them in innocence, and not one of them doubted that Antoine had led his comrades astray.
“I don’t hold it against you,” said Madame Frioulat to Germaine, “I haven’t the heart to go accusing people at such a time, but still, the truth will out. You have to admit that if you had kept a closer eye on that child, we wouldn’t be here today. Now what’s done is done, there’s only one thing we can hope for and that’s that this little adventure be a lesson to you, young lady.”
Flattered to be called to second her and that Madame Frioulat had spoken on their behalf, the other mothers welcomed this peroration with a murmur of assent. Germaine, whose profession had accustomed her to such dressings-down, accepted this one without protest and, uncomfortable with all those eyes fixed on her, could only look at the floor. A nurse came in.
“Please don’t worry,” she said, “it’s nothing serious. The doctor has just been in to see them. All he found was a few broken arms and legs and some minor grazes. In a few weeks they’ll all be right as rain. As they did have quite a shock, they’re rather weak and it will be better for you not to see them this evening. But tomorrow there should be no problem. Please come at one o’clock.”
The five children were gathered in a small square room, along with three other invalids of about their age who had already been in hospital three weeks.
Antoine’s bed was between Frioulat and Huchemin and opposite Rogier and Naudin, whose beds were next to each other. Their first night had been wakeful and the first day was also difficult. Still in pain and feverish, they hardly spoke and scarcely paid attention to whatever was going on in the room. Antoine apart, they endured their parents’ first visit without much pleasure or emotion. As for Antoine, he had been anticipating his visitor since the night before. He had worried about how his mother had fared during her night of distress in that cold garret room, and how she would cope through the nights to come. When she came into the room, he was shocked to see her face lined with fatigue and sleeplessness. She understood his anxiety and her first words were of reassurance.
In the bed to his left, between one moan and the next, Huchemin answered his parents in a doleful voice intended to discourage further questions. To the right, Frioulat was being fractious with his mother, whose fussing he thought ridiculous. She called him “my beloved little angel” and “my little mummy’s darling”. This made a good show for those of his comrades within earshot. The nurse had asked that, on this first occasion, the visits should be kept short. The parents stayed no more than fifteen minutes. In this unfamiliar institution, both beyond the parents’ jurisdiction and, due to their accident, enjoying a new sense of entitlement, the children were rather intimidating. Conversations became somewhat difficult. Germaine Buge, who alone did not have this trouble with Antoine, nevertheless did not dare stay on and left along with the other parents.
Little Baranquin, alone of the gang to have emerged intact from the trench, arrived shortly after the parents’ departure, and his visit was the more reassuring. He was sincerely aggrieved at Fate’s lenience towards him.
“You’re lucky, you lot, to have broken something. Yesterday evening I’d’ve much rather been in your shoes. I really copped it when I got home. My father was already home. He had to put his shoes back on so he could wallop me one on the backside. He went on and on at me, all evening, that I would finish up in the nick and I don’t know what else. And at lunch he started again. Tonight’ll be the same, for sure. He always goes on for at least a week.”
“Same with mine,” said Rogier. “If I’d had the rotten luck to go home without something broken, I’d never have heard the end of it.”
Were it not for their injuries, each would have been delighted to find themselves in hospital. Only Antoine, who couldn’t remember ever being scolded by his mother, remained unconsoled by this aspect of their luck. Even Frioulat, who was known to be spoilt by his parents, felt that it would have tested the limits of their indulgence to have come home, like Baranquin, with a coat torn from top to bottom and not a scratch on his body.
The days that followed were livelier. The sprains and dislocations grew less painful and the limbs in plaster caused no further concern. The boys’ immobility meant that reading and talking were their only entertainments. They discussed the expedition frequently, and each in turn grew animated as they relived every second of it. There were passionate arguments that could not be defused even by the head nurse.
Extracting the adventure’s moral, Frioulat extolled the principles of order and authority and maintained that nothing would have happened if the gang had kept its leader.
“That wouldn’t have stopped you from getting scared,” the others objected.
“I was the last to run away,” Frioulat countered. “And I had to by then—you’d all gone already, you bunch of sissies.”
The discussions grew all the more impassioned now that everyone was forced to lie still and there was no risk of action following the threat of a thumping.
Peace returned when the discussion moved on to the seven-league boots. It was widely feared that they might have found a buyer. Consequently, Baranquin’s visits were anticipated eagerly. The boys quaked in expectation of bad news. Baranquin knew it and would hasten to reassure his company as soon as he came in. The boots were still in the window and every day that passed, he reported, they grew handsomer, shinier, their white fur trim silkier. In the afternoons, at dusk, before the lamps were lit, it was not difficult to imagine that the boots had retained all their original virtue, and the boys came to believe this almost unreservedly. Besides, nothing was more enjoyable, or more soothing, than to lie in bed daydreaming about those prodigious seven-league strides. Each dreamt aloud about the ways they would use the boots. Frioulat liked the idea of beating all the world records for sprinting. Rogier was, on the whole, more modest. When they sent him to fetch a pat of butter or a litre of milk, he would go and buy them in a Normandy village where they would be cheaper, and he would keep the difference for himself. As for the others, all agreed they would spend their Thursday afternoons in Africa or the Indies, waging war on the savages and hunting big game. Antoine was no less tempted by such adventures than his friends. However, other dreams, which he kept secret, were dearer to him. His mother would no longer have to worry about their food. On the days when the household was short of money, he would slip on his seven-league boots. In ten minutes he would have been all round France. In Lyon he would pick up a hunk of meat from a butcher’s display, in Marseille a loaf of bread, in Bordeaux a vegetable, a litre of milk in Nantes, a bag of coffee in Cherbourg. He allowed himself to dream that he would also pick up a good coat for his mother, which would keep her warm. And perhaps a pair of shoes, for she had only one pair left, and that already rather worn. On the day the rent fell due, if they happened to be short of the one hundred and sixty francs, that too would need seeing to. It would be easy. He would stroll into a shop in Lille or Carcassonne, some well-heeled place where the customers didn’t come in clutching the cash they had been given for errands. As soon as a lady were there receiving her change from the cashier, Antoine would take the notes out of her hands and, before she had time to protest, he would be back in Montmartre. Seizing other people’s belongings like that is rather troubling, even imagining doing so from one’s bed. But being hungry is troubling too. And when you’ve nothing left to pay the rent for your garret and you have to admit it to your concierge and make promises to the landlord, you feel as ashamed as if you had robbed someone.
Germaine Buge brought her son just as many oranges, as
many sweets and illustrated newspapers, as the other parents brought theirs. Yet Antoine had never felt their poverty so keenly as he did now, and it was because of these visits. To listen to the parents’ gossip at the other invalids’ bedsides, their lives must be a near-implausible wealth of luxuries. They were constantly referring to an elaborate existence, teeming with brothers, sisters, dogs, cats and canaries, further extended by visits to neighbours in the building, to all corners of the neighbourhood and of Paris, to the suburbs, to the countryside and even abroad. They talked about Uncle Émile, Aunt Valentine, cousins in Argenteuil, letters arrived from Clermont-Ferrand or from Belgium. Huchemin, for example, while at school seeming just like anyone else, turned out to be the cousin of an aviator and had an uncle who worked in the Toulon arsenal. Sometimes the arrival of a visitor from the Porte d’Italie neighbourhood or from Épinal in the north-east would be announced. Once a family of five from Clichy were seen gathered around Naudin’s bed, and apparently there were more of them still at home.
Germaine Buge, however, was always alone at Antoine’s bedside and brought news of nobody. There were no uncles, nor cousins, nor friends in their life. Dismayed by this exposure, by the presence and the loquacity of these neighbours, she and Antoine never recovered the ease and abandon of their first day. Germaine spoke about the houses she was cleaning, though briefly, fearing that her words might be overheard by Frioulat or his mother, for she worried it might be disagreeable for the son of tradespeople to find himself next to the son of a cleaning lady. Antoine worried about her meals, telling her not to spend too much on sweets and illustrated papers, he too fearing being overheard. They were virtually whispering and most of the time were now quiet, gazing at each other or distracted by the others’ loud conversations.
One afternoon, after visitors’ hour, the ordinarily talkative Frioulat remained silent for quite a while, staring fixedly, as if dazzled. To Antoine’s enquiries as to the meaning of his silence, he at first deigned only to respond:
“It’s amazing, old chap.”
He was visibly elated, yet his happiness seemed tempered by some regret that kept him silent while on the verge of confiding. In the end, he made up his mind:
“I told my mother all about it. She’s going to buy them for me. I’ll have them as soon as I get home.”
Antoine was chilled to the bone. Already the boots were no longer that shared treasure on which each boy could draw without denying his neighbour.
“I’ll lend them to you,” said Frioulat.
Antoine shook his head. He was furious with Frioulat for telling his mother what ought to have remained their secret.
On leaving the hospital, Madame Frioulat took a taxi to the Rue Élysée-des-Beaux-Arts, where she easily recognised the shop window her son had just described to her. The boots were still there, right in the middle. She took a few minutes to examine the bric-a-brac and the handwritten labels. Her knowledge of history was very cursory and the Campo Formio fountain pen did not in the least surprise her. She did not much care for this type of goods, but the display impressed her overall. She found one sign in particular reassuring—the one that read:
We only give credit to the wealthy.
She judged that the warning, though clumsy, showed the business was following sound principles. She pushed open the door and, in the light of the bulb that lit the whole shop, she saw a diminutive old man sitting before a large stuffed bird with whom he appeared to be playing chess. Paying no attention to Madame Frioulat, he continued to move the pieces about the board, playing now for himself, now for his companion. From time to time, he gave an aggressive, self-satisfied snigger, doubtless because he’d just made a smart move on his own account. At first nonplussed, Madame Frioulat wondered how she should attract his attention, but suddenly, half rising in his seat, eyes glittering and index finger waving menacingly at the bird’s head, the old man began to squeal:
“You’re cheating! Don’t lie! You’ve just cheated again. You have surreptitiously moved your knight to protect your queen whom I had under double attack and was about to be taken. Ah, you’ll have to admit it. My dear sir, I don’t mind in the least, but you know what we agreed a moment ago; I shall have to confiscate your knight.”
He did indeed remove one piece from the board and slip it into his pocket. After which, smirking at the bird, he gave a gay laugh that degenerated into a fit of giggles. He had dropped back into his chair and hunched over his game, arms folded across his chest, shoulders shaking, he was laughing almost inaudibly, only now and then letting out a high-pitched sound, like the squeak of a mouse. A little frightened, Madame Frioulat wondered if she ought not to make for the door. At last the old man regained his composure and, wiping his eyes, remarked to his strange companion:
“Forgive me, but you are too, too funny when you make that face. I beg you, don’t look at me, you’ll set me off again. You may not believe me, but truly, you’re quite priceless. Look, let’s forget what’s past. Here’s your knight.”
He pulled the knight back out of his pocket and, having replaced it, concentrated on his game once more.
Madame Frioulat was still unsure what to do. Considering that she had gone to the expense of taking a taxi to the shop, she decided to stay and coughed several times, increasingly loudly. At the third cough, the shopkeeper looked round and, staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval, demanded:
“You do of course play chess?”
“No,” replied Madame Frioulat, troubled by the question. “I don’t know. I used to play draughts. My grandfather was very good at that.”
Stunned and perplexed, he examined her for several seconds as if she were a mystery, perhaps wondering why she was there. The problem, he appeared to decide, was insoluble and probably devoid of interest, for he made a gesture of dismissal and, turning back to his chess game, said to the bird:
“Your turn, monsieur.”
Put out by such a reception and by the offhand manner of this peculiar shopkeeper, Madame Frioulat remained standing there, speechless.
“Aha!” exclaimed the old man, rubbing his hands. “The game is growing interesting. I’m curious to see how you will extricate yourself from this unpromising situation.”
“I beg your pardon,” Madame Frioulat dared to interject, “but I’m a customer.”
It was the shopkeeper’s turn to be shocked into stupefaction.
“A customer!”
He sat there, pensive, then turning again to the bird, said softly to it:
“A customer!”
He gazed at the chessboard dreamily. Suddenly he grew focused again.
“But I hadn’t seen that you just took your turn. More and more interesting. That’s a superb riposte and one I was far from expecting. My compliments.
The situation is completely turned around. Now it is I who am threatened.”
Seeing him once more absorbed in his game, Madame Frioulat considered herself offended and, raising her voice, she said:
“All the same, I don’t intend to waste my afternoon waiting until you see fit. I have better things to do.”
“But madame, what is it that you want?”
“I have come to find out the price of that pair of boots you have in the window.”
“Three thousand francs,” declared the old man, without looking up from the chessboard.
“Three thousand francs! But you’re mad!”
“Yes, madame.”
“Look, three thousand francs for a pair of boots, why it’s impossible! You’re not being serious.”
This time, the old man stood up, irritated, and planting himself before his customer said:
“Madame, yes or no, have you decided to spend three thousand francs on that pair of boots?”
“No!” exclaimed Madame Frioulat vehemently. “Of course not!”
“In that case, let’s not go on about them, and you can leave me to my game.”
On learning that he was to become owner of the seven-le
ague boots, Frioulat’s companions displayed such deep discontentment that he felt the need to reassure them.
Though he had told his mother about them, Frioulat said, it hadn’t been on purpose. Besides, she hadn’t promised anything. Only, she hadn’t said no. But remembering the unabashed joy that he had been rash enough not to hide, the others were hardly reassured. For a whole day, he was almost kept in isolation, and only spoken to with great reluctance. However their need for hope emerged the stronger. While remaining a little anxious, the boys were gradually persuaded that this threat of purchase was quite remote. Little by little, talk about the boots diminished and soon they were no longer mentioned, at least not openly.
Having thought so hard about Frioulat, each of the boys began to grow hopeful on his own account and to make his own plans accordingly. One afternoon, after his mother had left, Huchemin appeared to be glowing with happiness and for that whole evening retreated into a wonderstruck silence. The following day it was the turn of Rogier and Naudin to share that joy.
Frioulat was the first to be let out of hospital and, since the others made him promise to come and see them, he replied:
“Just think, how easy it will be for me to come all the way here!”
During the journey home from the hospital with his father, Frioulat took care to ask no questions, so as not to spoil his parents’ pleasure in surprising him. On arriving home, no one mentioned the boots, but he was not at all worried. In the mornings his parents were busy with the shop. Doubtless they were waiting to give him the boots over lunch. In the meantime, he went to play in a little courtyard that led out of the shop’s back room, where he built himself a fighter plane. He made use of a range of materials: crates, barrels, bottles, jam jars, all stacked up in the courtyard. He installed his navigation instruments—tins of salmon and peas—in an empty crate and made himself a machine gun out of a bottle of cognac. He was flying at one thousand, two hundred metres and the sky was looking quite clear when he saw an enemy plane emerging. Without losing his head for a second, he climbed vertically up to two-and-a-half thousand metres. The enemy didn’t suspect a thing and he got going with his machine gun, but as he was leaning on the edge of the crate, the cognac slipped out of his hands and smashed on the paving stones. Not in the least put out, Frioulat muttered between clenched teeth: