by Marcel Ayme
“Oh, don’t bother with his good deeds. There’s only one to his credit.”
At this, Saint Peter looked down at Malicorne with a kind smile. The bailiff attempted to protest and enumerate all the good deeds written in his exercise books, but the saint would not let him speak.
“Yes, one good deed, but a weighty one. He, a bailiff, shouted out: ‘Down with landlords!’”
“Oh, that’s beautiful,” murmured God. “That is beautiful.”
“He shouted it twice, and he died in the act of protecting a poor woman from her landlord’s fury.”
Delighted, God commanded the angels to play their lutes, viols, oboes and flageolets in Malicorne’s honour. Then he had the great double doors of heaven open wide, as is done for the destitute, the homeless, whores and those who are condemned to die. And, born up by a heavenly song, the bailiff entered Paradise with a halo of light around his head.
WHILE WAITING
DURING THE 1939–1972 WAR, in Montmartre, at the door of the grocer on Rue Caulaincourt, there was a queue of fourteen people who, having become friendly, decided never to part again.
“I,” an old man said, “I’ve no wish to go home. What I’ve got waiting for me at home is no fire and no one to eat my bread with, two hundred grams a day and not much to put with it. My wife died a month ago. It’s not so much the hardships but—if I tell you you’ll never believe me—she died because of a fox-fur coat. Without the war she would still be with us and, as she used to say, we didn’t deserve that. I don’t mean to complain, of course, but I’ve worked hard in life and what have I got left now? Just the weariness of my labour. For forty years I was an upholstery-cloth salesman. It’s a hard profession; it doesn’t seem so, but all day on your feet and looking to the client’s needs, always smiling, always an answer and that impression of being right there. The head of department always on your back, watching you, and when he hauls you over the coals, all you can do is nod and obey. It’s that or make your own way to the door. And we barely earned enough to live on. The basic just about paid the rent and the commissions never amounted to much either. To give you an idea, in 1913, counting both together, it came to a hundred and eighty a month. Add in three daughters needing bringing up, and my wife as it turned out unable to earn. It wasn’t all roses for her either—two of her daughters not strong, always one or the other poorly, and the worry of making do with so little. On which point, come 1914 and me a simple soldier, on the home front of course, but five years or thereabouts of earning almost nothing. I come back to work in 1919 and I’d been replaced. In the end, I manage to find myself a steady job at Bourakim and Balandra. In those years, sales were going strong. I made big commissions, the girls began to earn as well. My wife used to tell me—this time, finally, we’re on the up. But I was forty-eight, I could see the time coming when we’d have to play it a bit safer. When she was pushing to spend a bit more, my line was to tighten our belts. My wife was still pretty, not young any longer, of course, but pretty all the same, but she always lacked the time and the means to be stylish. To say she was dwelling on it now, well that’s not quite how it was. The truth is that she had some regrets or, if you prefer, some fancy ideas, to the point that she got it into her head she should buy herself a silver fox-fur coat. She would tell me this as if it were nothing to her. You know, how you sometimes say, if I were rich, I’d buy a … In her heart she knew it was madness. What proves it is one day I said to her: “After all, you know, we could buy your fox fur …”, and then it was her who didn’t want to. But the idea stayed with her all the same. Eight or ten years go by, not the best of times, my youngest in a sanatorium, a son-in-law who took to drink. My wife used to laugh about her fox coat, but a sad little laugh, you know, it made me sorry.
“One evening, heading out of Bourakim, I come across my old boss who asks me if I’d like to join him as head of the department. Me, head of department, just think of it, a dream come true! From another point of view, this had me worried. It was 1934, I was almost sixty-three. At that age, you don’t hold on to old thoughts of revenge, you’ve lost all the spite you need to drive it home. But I wasn’t going to drop a chance like that. From my point of view, it was a plum position, besides which I could enjoy the thought that I had made it in the end. My wife was happy too. You know how women are. They’re in a shop, gossiping, they say to a neighbour: ‘I can get you good prices, my husband is head of upholstery at Nadar.’ In fact, we got rather carried away, I did as well as her. One fine evening, I come home with a parcel in my hand, and it’s the silver fox fur. A magnificent beast it was, I hadn’t got her some pig in a poke. As a salesman, one has contacts. I used to know a furrier’s second cousin on the Boulevard de Strasbourg. That fox cost me two thousand, but it was worth every penny. When I unwrapped it, my wife, she started weeping. I never saw anyone so happy. She hardly dared believe it. Still, that fox, she can’t have worn it much, four or five times, maybe six: an occasion, a baptism, a dinner in town with disagreeable people. Sometimes when we’d go out of a Sunday, I would tell her: ‘Marie, why don’t you put it on, your fox.’ But no, she was too afraid of it getting worn out. She had put it in a pretty box with mothballs, well wrapped up in tissue paper. Once a week, on Thursdays, she would air it out of the window, and that was also a little to show it off to the neighbours, to let them know that she had a silver fox-fur coat. And you see what it meant to her—from that alone she had more joy than if she had worn it every day. She was happy, so was I. And then in 1937, there was I, usually tough as nails, suddenly not doing so good; my old age catches up with me all at once. My head a dead weight, always sleepy, swollen legs; my working days were over. I had to lay down the yoke and think about living on the income from our savings. Sixty-five thousand francs, we had, which all went towards our annuity plan. And even that annuity, it didn’t bring in much, you won’t be surprised to know. Yet we managed to live decently, we were careful, that’s all. After that there was the war, the Germans, everyone left. We thought about it. I imagined five years of war over the Loire, my daughters and sons-in-law on the other side, us dying without seeing them. So off we went, me with a few bits of underwear in a suitcase, my wife with her fox fur in its box and, a month later, we were on our way back. As long as the weather held it was all right, but after that. It came down to food and the expense; the future was looking bleak. On top of that, with two sons-in-law taken prisoner and one of the girls turning out to be expecting, they really needed our help. We couldn’t manage any more. The prices were going up and up but the income from the annuity, that didn’t change. And then me, after last winter, I had to go and get sick. The doctor said: ‘You should be eating better.’ ‘Of course, but the cost!’ ‘It’s all right,’ said my wife, ‘don’t trouble yourself, we’ll find a way this time, just like before.’ It was true, by the spring I found myself sprightlier, but she, I saw her starting to go down. Black moods, she had, weak legs, her heart, her stomach, in the end, who knows, things went against her. Obliged to take to her bed. One Thursday morning, before going out for the shopping, the last days of summer it was, beautiful sunshine, I said to her: ‘Marie, would you like me to air your fox out of the window?’ Her poor head on the pillow, now she turned to look at me, her eyes shining like never before, her chin started to wobble. ‘My fox,’ she said to me, ‘I sold it.’ She had sold it for eight hundred francs. A month ago, when she died, I thought about buying her a new one so that she wouldn’t miss it on the other side. ‘If it’s not too dear,’ I said to myself, ‘I might be able to get one on loan.’ I made some enquiries. A silver fox fur these days, second-hand, goes for around ten thou.”
“I’m hungry, said a child. I’m always hungry.”
“As for me,” said a young woman, “I’d do better to stay away from home. My husband is in Silesia, in a German kommando. He’s twenty-eight, I’m twenty-five; we feel this war will never end. The days go by, the months, the years; my life is taking shape without him, and even taking quite a good,
solid shape. What good is it having his picture in my handbag, in my bedroom and on every piece of furniture, I’m by myself now, doing the thinking and deciding. On Sundays I used to go with him to the rugby, to the football or the velodrome. I used to clap and shout: ‘Come on you slackers!’ Or: ‘Look sharp, ref!’ I used to read Auto magazine every day and I’d say to him: ‘I say, looks like Magne is on top form.’ Now on Sundays I go to the cinema or I stay home. When he comes back, I shan’t be able to make myself believe I’m interested in sport any more. I don’t think I’ll even try. The people he used to like, I hardly see them any more. Before the war, we used to visit the Bourillots all the time, and they would visit us. Bourillot was an old school-friend of my husband. He had slept with an actress, knew a senator, spent a fortnight in New York. He treated my husband like a nobody, called him du Clott and Ledunce, pinched my thigh in front of him, his wife used to laugh. When we came home, my husband used to say: ‘What lovely friends those Bourillots are!’ I used to answer yes, not only to please him—it was a yes that came from the heart. Now that Bourillot, even the sound of his voice has become unbearable. The same for my parents-in-law, I don’t visit too often. They’re such cardboard cut-outs. And the little pleasures of life. Reading in bed, going out without a hat, getting up late, leaving my hair down, going to the theatre, being late for appointments, and so many other things that were forbidden but can’t be any longer. What journeys I can make, almost without leaving the apartment. The pleasure I take—indeed that’s certainly the worst of it—listening only to myself, making my own decisions. At first, I would consult him, I would tell myself: ‘Let’s see, if he were here …’ Now, less and less, and more often I think: ‘Yes, of course, but so what, that’s how it is.’ What’s terrible, too, is that I’m never bored for a minute. I hate to think of him over there, I would give anything in the world to see him come back, but still, I’m never bored. I have my own life, a life moulded according to my wishes, and which can no longer be confused with someone else’s. As soon as he returns, of course, I’ll act as if nothing has changed. I’ll go with him to the rugby, I’ll see the Bourillots again and the in-laws, I’ll try to stop reading in bed. But I’m bound to hold it against him and, in spite of myself, at any moment I might recall this other way of life that I find more sincere. I am no longer the wife he left behind, it’s as if I regained my old self. What am I meant to do? A couple is not a chemical compound. When the elements come apart, it isn’t enough to put them in the same room for them to be reunited. People who declare wars should think about that. The most dangerous thing is that I’m in earnest and I’ll stay that way, touch wood. I shan’t have to be excused anything, my mind will be mine to make my own decisions. I know a POW’s wife who took a lover straight away. But when her husband comes home, she won’t have lost her taste for shaping herself to a man’s will. Their life will start up again quite easily. I know there are women who marry late, at thirty and more, their lives already formed. But they have only to adapt, well or badly. They have no need to hide the fact that rugby bores them to tears. Their candour will not seem like a betrayal. No one will ask them to say or do things they don’t believe in. They say that love works miracles. That’s what frightens me too. Because in the end, if I have to go back to liking the velodrome and the Bourillots, then I don’t know what’s left for me to hope for. I’m so happy as I am now. What I’m telling you now, perhaps I ought to write it to Maurice—his name is Maurice. I don’t dare. I know he’s waiting for the day when life starts up again the same as ever. In his last letter, he said: ‘Do you remember our last Sunday at the Vel’d’Hiv?’ Think what a blow it would be if I were honest with him. Still, in my life as a woman alone, I have learnt not to hide things from myself. The first scene he makes or indeed the first fuss I make, I’ll have plenty to say! I’m afraid to think of it. While there’s time, I shall need to learn how to lie once again. In short, I shall need some friends.”
“I don’t believe in God any more, said a very old woman. Yesterday evening, I managed to get two eggs, real eggs. Coming back home, my foot missed the edge of the pavement and I broke them both. I don’t believe in God any more.”
“I am always a little afraid of going home, said a housewife. There are four little ones waiting for me back there. The eldest is twelve. The fifth one died in 1941, after the Turnip Winter. It was tuberculosis took him. He ought to have had meat every day and nourishing food. Where was I to find it? My husband on the railways, me doing domestic work when I have the time, you can be sure that’s not enough to go shopping on the black market. He as good as died of hunger. And the others, they’re in a bad way too. Thin, their poor faces so pale, and always a cold or their throats, and tired, eyes all hollow, hardly wanting to play. When I come back from shopping, they all four run to me, to see what I have in my bag. I scold them: ‘Go on, get out of my skirts!’ Off they go, always without a word. Sometimes I can’t, I haven’t the strength. Yesterday my shopping bag stayed empty, now that’s what empty really means—no food in sight. To see them run up, all four of them, my heart almost broke, I was in tears. Besides all that, leaving the heating off, in this cold, and this last week with the gas cut off for a week already, nothing hot to put in their stomachs. They’ve gone grey from the cold, their eyes are dull and they seem to be saying: ‘But what have we done?’ And the chaps and the chilblains; you should see their feet. Even with a coupon it’s hard to find galoshes at a price we can manage. Look, at the moment I’ve only got three pairs for the four of them. What helps is that there’s always at least one who’s ill and staying in bed. I’ve sometimes gone to the town hall to ask for another coupon, a coupon for this, a coupon for that. I shouldn’t, I know what will happen, but when I see my little ones coughing away, just skin and bone and nothing in their bellies, it’s too much for me, I have to go and ask. What do you expect, they send me packing, sneering down their noses and such filthy language. I don’t dress good enough. And wherever I turn, it’s always the same story. Officials behind their counters, they’re nothing but lapdogs to the big shots and the moneybags. When they see a bit of poverty, they bare their teeth. What was I after, in any case, bringing children into the world? Whatever’s happening to me, I brought it on myself. If all four of them are to perish, who will be troubled by that? Not the government, never them, nor the city council. And the nobs even less. While my children are dying of hunger, those pigs are dining on eggs at twenty francs apiece, meat with every meal, butter at four hundred francs, chickens, hams, enough to bust your weskit. And clothes, and shoes, and hats, they don’t lack for anything, don’t trouble yourself about them! The rich are eating more than before the war, they even force themselves to eat, for fear of leaving anything to the needy. I’m not making it up. Yesterday, at the grocer’s I heard two ladies dressed to the nines, my word, up to their ears in furs, jewels and Pekinese, they were saying that for fear of running short, people these days are eating double what they used to. They were saying, ‘That’s how it is in our house.’ Don’t talk to me about the rich. They’re all murderers, child-killers, that’s what they are. March on, I say, this war can’t last for ever. When the Germans go, there will be accounts to settle. All those looking fresh as daisies and with their bulges hanging over their belts, we’ll be having a few words with them. For each of my lambs that they’ve murdered, I’ll ask for ten in return—ten great kicks in the kisser for each one, enough to kill ’em, and I’ll take my time, I want them to suffer. The pigs, they’re full to the gills and they come lecture us about honour, loyalty and all the rest of it. I know about honour, we’ll speak again when my children aren’t hungry any more. Sometimes, I tell my husband: ‘Victor, I say, be a bit canny at that Gare du Nord of yours; there are staff there who are pinching the POWs’ parcels, why don’t you do like them?’ When everyone only has just enough for his own stomach, when the rich make a mockery of their own laws, this is no time for finicketing—it’s everyone for himself, never mind how. But my husban
d, see, he’s the most honourable family man. He’s got honour stuck in his teeth like caramel. Too bad for the rest of us.”
“If you only knew what happened to me,” said a girl of twelve. “In the evenings as I was walking home, down the steps on Rue Patureau, I used to see a man, tall, unshaven, with a shifty look to him, he would look at me like, I can’t describe how he would look at me. My mother used to tell me all the time that all men are pigs. But that one, he really frightened me. Yesterday evening he hid in a dark corner. When I went by, he jumped on me. He laid me right out on the pavement. And he stole my shoelaces.”
“As for me,” said an older lady, “I’m quite exhausted. Life, the things that are happening these days, there’s not much for me in it any longer, less and less. I am a dressmaker on Rue Hermel, but I hardly need to tell you I don’t sew much any more. It was already hard before the war. I used to do dresses, coats, trouser suits, bodices too. I had as many as five working for me. I used to have a bourgeois clientele—I’m talking about long ago now. Then there was new competition. There were the new department stores, and the trouser-suit specialists, the dress specialists, the blouse specialists. And the readymades, mass production. Except that it was less hard-wearing, they almost did better than me and cheaper too, I must admit. In the end, all I had were repairs and alterations, I had only one assistant left, badly paid at that, but what else could I do? And now I’ve no fabric left. You’ll tell me: ‘There is the black market,’ but I don’t know the right people. And I haven’t the capital. When one is old, to play the black market one has to be rich or else well informed about business or a civil servant. Before the war I still had bespoke work. That’s over now, or as good as. The women who buy fabric at fifteen francs a metre, they want fancy tailoring too. Anything less than two or three thousand francs and they don’t trust it, but if I ask for more than three hundred people laugh in my face. Now I’m the old dressmaker. That’s what they say when they talk about me, that old dressmaker on Rue Hermel, who does small jobs for almost nothing. Yes, the old dressmaker. And only ten years ago, I was dressing shopkeepers and even the wives of police superintendents and solicitors. But if I were to tell you that Madame Bourquenoir, the councillor’s wife, used to have all her dresses made by me. When I think what I have come to—taking things in for the poor people in the neighbourhood, making boys’ underwear out of old coats, sewing on patches, making things last. Come, when one has been a truly skilled worker, this is very hard. And work like that, if I only had sufficient, but no, far from it. My one piece of luck is that, with these coupons, no one can eat as they would, without that I’d have no work at all. I’m sixty-five, I’ve never been pretty and if I amounted to something it was because I had a profession, a real one: ‘Mademoiselle Duchat: dresses, coats, trouser suits’. Just before the war it was still the same, the wholesalers knew me. However little I was buying, still, there were always smiles and polite greetings, always ‘Bonjour Mademoiselle Duchat’. But the wholesalers these days have no time for anything that isn’t money. They don’t see poor people at all any more. The war might come to an end one day, but I’ll stay on the sidelines. Wives will have their husbands again, men their professions, but no one will come and tell me about it. I don’t expect anything now.”