“Who are you looking for?” said Emile.
His lamp raised, he looked at Bebert and repeated: “Who? Well, speak!”
Bebert burst out laughing.
“Eh! Idiot!” he demanded, “don't you recognize me?”
“Ah, indeed,” said Emile, “Monsieur Bebert.”
“It looks like it.”
Irma interrupted: “It's idiotic to disturb people like that,” she declared. “Are you any further?”
“You too?” said Emile recognizing her. “Why, what's the matter?”
“But nothing at all,” replied La Rouque. “Bebert thought it would be funny to tap on the shutter just now. It wasn't very intelligent.”
“And the police?” questioned Emile mysteriously. “Are they outside?”
“The police?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you're going strong!” said Bebert who after the first moment thought the misunderstanding very funny.... “There are no police here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh don't worry!” replied Bebert. “Is it Belle-Amour makes you so funny?”
Emile was silent.
“And tell me,” proceeded Bebert, “are you married to her? You don't say so! Without telling us, you living with the kid!”
He shook Emile gently by the shoulder.
“My compliments,” he said in a sarcastic voice, “you know how to do things.... A blooming young thing,hein? Just someone to suit you....”
“Yes,” said Emile.
Bebert stopped abashed.
“Yes? Ah!” he said not knowing whether to take Emile seriously....
“It's true, yes, yes, certainly....”
But he recovered his self possession, and blowing out the lamp:“Tiens” he declared, “perhaps you haven't had a good look at your girl yet, well you won't risk being disappointed to-night at any rate.”
XVIII
Irma kept her impressions to herself, but the thought of Emile was now odious to her. She imagined him in bed with Belle-Amour and was disgusted.
However, for a whole week she said nothing about the matter, and when Bebert reminded her, sneering, of the details they had suppressed, she felt a physical embarrassment which made her brother's presence unbearable to her.
In fact, La Rouque's feelings for Emile were such a mixture of blame, pity and disgust that on some evenings she was obliged to try and forget his existence, or she could not have borne him near her. She never spoke to him first, she answered him reluctantly, and as shortly as possible, and sometimes she avoided looking at him. Emile did not notice it. He lived, apart from realities, in a strange world peopled by his fears, and his modest pleasures. What did Irma's attitude matter? He had something else to think about. At nightfall he became another man, at the mercy of the strange phenomenon of duplicating himself. And he welcomed it with delight. He gave way to it. The habit was formed, he submitted passively and it brought him in his torpor such strong and disconnected sensations that they governed him entirely. Irma was worried by the change she saw in Emile. He behaved as usual, but his gestures were becoming more and more jerkily mechanical, and La Rouque was alarmed. She would wait for him in the evening and try to stop him going out, to make him talk, to keep him company. It did not change matters. After two or three phrases, sometimes quite incoherent, he would get up and go downstairs to Belle-Amour.
“Listen,” said Irma to him at last, “if you're in love, I don't discuss it, but Belle-Amour! To be mixed up with her! Have you thought about it?”
Emile seemed absent-minded, distant, sly.
La Rouque went on: “How did it happen? Did you begin it?”
She shook him.
“Pardon,” said Emile. “It wasn't me.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed La Rouque, “she had the cheek! Well, leave it to me. I'll talk to her when I see her. I'll make a row about it, you can be sure.”
“You. .?”
“I promise you that I will.”
“Oh no,” answered Emile with fear... “I don't want... don't speak to her... you mustn't speak to her.”
“Why?”
“Things,” he stuttered, “gossip.... All sorts of things.”
“Ah?”
“Yes,” said Emile.
La Rouque looked into his eyes fixedly, and for the first time for days he did not turn his head away, but met her eyes and muttered very quickly: “If I were sure that you wouldn't say anything, I would explain.”
“Say anything, to who? To that woman?”
“No, to Bebert.”
It was Irma's turn to feel disturbed, but she hid her uneasiness, and asked: “Bebert? I don't understand. What has he got to do with it? Is he mixed up with it?”
Emile tried to free himself.
“You've said too much,” declared Irma holding him by the lapel of his jacket. “Go on now, tell me.”
“Oh,” he begged, “leave me alone.”
“No.”
“Irma!”
Irma took his hand and pressed it, then said in a persuasive voice: “If you know,” she confessed, “the way Bebert behaves to me now, you'd trust me, you'd believe that I won't repeat anything.”
“What?”
“He doesn't care for me any more,” said Irma sadly. “He runs after all the women he meets and I am only good enough to give him my sous .... Otherwise he would let me drop, I can tell you.... I see clearly what he's after. And I can't be angry with him, he's got hold of me.”
Emile opened his eyes widely: “He has got hold of me,” sighed La Rouque. “He does whatever he likes with me, good or bad, anything. It's not pleasant to have to say so, but as soon as he orders me, I obey. He only has to order. Do I know how it happened? It happened like that, gradually, without my noticing it, do you understand?”
“I too,” replied Emile.
He pulled his moustache mechanically, crumpled it in his hand, kneaded it.
“Without my noticing it,” he repeated wearily, “the same thing.”
“It's like that, isn't it?”
“Against my will,” said Emile.
Irma said in her turn: “There is nothing to be done, it's impossible.”
They looked silently at each other, embarrassed because they had confessed their secret thoughts, and astonished, almost overwhelmed, because they were so much alike. Irma could hardly believe it. She drew Emile to her, and suddenly pressed him in her arms. “It's taken me a long time,” she confided, “to guess that you as well...”
“That we weren't happy?”
“Oh no, far from it,” said the Red One with effort. “You see, sometimes I almost guessed... and other times I asked myself where I'd got the idea from. It worried me more than anything.”
“I didn't dare.”
Emile reproached her.
“But if you had dared...”
“Of course,” moaned Irma, “if only we had once talked as we are talking now.”
“I would have told you everything,” said Emile. He pushed his sister aside feebly, and as she clung to him and tried to detain him:
“No,” he groaned, “I can't explain now, that's enough. What more can we say? It won't change us.”
“Why?”
“On account of Bebert,” answered Emile in a hollow voice. “As long as you can't live without him, you'll tell him everything.”
“It depends,” said Irma. “If I promise never to tell him...”
“You wouldn't keep your promise.”
“I?”
Emile declared: “I tell you it's better to leave things as they are. There would be trouble with him again, and he wouldn't forgive me. Yes.... Yes....”
Irma held him back.
“There,” he begged, “don't begin to worry me like the others do... I don't want to say anything....”
“You must,” said La Rouque... “absolutely. You began just now, you must go on.”
“We'll see.”
“Oh but you must,” she affirmed... “Come, Emile, tell m
e, trust me.”
He struggled, loosened the Red One's clasp, escaped from her, then coming back: “Don't insist,” he said in an irritated tone of voice. “I've told you that I don't want to say anything.”
“But why, Emile, why?”
He murmured: “Nothing.”
Suddenly he added as if to himself: “From the others I have borne it, up to now... but from you... no... but no... don't imagine that I'll accept it... do you know... never.”
He began to stamp, seized by an inexplicable wrath that now exalted and now dejected him. He shouted, he swore, he reproached Irma with wishing to torment him, and tear him to pieces like the others did.
“What others?” asked Irma.
Emile became uneasy.
“You're there,” said the girl, “putting yourself in a state and talking a lot of nonsense, it is not common sense, keep quiet—I haven't any idea of harming you. What harm? What has hurt you?”
“Downstairs,” answered Emile in a low voice.
Irma looked at him with an expression of disgust and triumph.
“Really,” she said, “that woman?”
“Which woman?” .
“The Belle-Amour, of course.”
“No,” groaned Emile, “not Belle-Amour. The women who wait for me every evening in the street, those...”
“He? interrupted La Rouque, “have they been troubling you?”
Emile started. He stood motionless, and silent, darting suspicious looks about the room. He was trembling and observed Irma fearfully.
She shook her head.
“There,” she told him gently. “Don't think about it? Don't think about it any more. It's not worth while putting yourself in such a state. It doesn't help matters.”
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “of course. Only if you saw how they are all after me, you'd understand. They'll send me mad, d'you hear? I don't know what will happen.”
He began to scream: “I don't know, something will happen. That's sure and certain. They'll drive me to it. They'll force me to it.” Irma took him by the shoulders.
“There, Emile.”
He sighed deeply.
“You're not yourself any longer. Why do you scream like that? It's ridiculous.”
“What?” he replied. “What is the matter?”
“The matter is that I won't see you in such a state,” said Irma. Pull yourself together. You frighten me screaming in that way. Nobody's doing anything to you now. Look, it's me, Irma.”
“Yes,” said Emile.
He looked at La Rouque for a long time open mouthed, then, hiding his face in his hands, uttered an indistinct moan.
“There, you are beginning all over again,” said Irma discouraged.
“But stop it. What's the matter, Emile? Try to have some self-respect.”
“They.... They...” he stuttered... “Those... all those women...” And suddenly, seized by an immense longing to confide in her, to unburden himself, he told Irma everything. He related his troubles and what had happened on the evening when Nenette and Trou-de-Vrille had threatened to tell the “coppers” what they knew. He spoke with volubility, interrupting his story with long complaints, accompanying it with gestures, repeating himself.
La Rouque stupefied, let him tell his incoherent tale, sometimes only half understanding it, for he repeated himself so often, magnified certain facts, went back to them, was unable to talk connectedly. Sometimes she guessed beforehand what he was going to say. She listened till the end, without interruption, but when he had finished, she said in a quiet voice, which contrasted strangely with her brother's: “Well, we'll go downstairs together presently, and you see I'll talk to them.”
“They'll go to the police!” said Emile alarmed.
“The police? Don't be afraid of that,” she answered quietly. “Not at all, not one of them would risk it. Only,” she exacted, “not a word to anybody,hein? Or Bebert will take it in hand.”
XIX
Emile did not go to see Belle-Amour that evening, for Irma took him into the street and explained matters in such a way that the women at once changed their tone, and even made excuses.
“We didn't know,” declared the Nenette. “We thought you didn't care for your brother. We thought he had told you everything.”
“Emile said nothing.” Trou-de-Vrille tried to explain: “If he hadn't begun to quarrel with us...”
Irma cut her short.
“That's enough,” she declared... “begun or not begun, you'll leave him alone now. Is that understood?”
“Yes, it's understood,” they answered.
“Well, don't start again,” said La Rouque, “or else, I warn you, you'll have my man to deal with.”
La Nenette said, vexed: “There is no need for a man to settle this affair. We girls can talk to you, and when we have said something”...She spat in front of her: “We don't go back on it, there!”
Emile was abashed. He walked away, passed the closed shop windows, taking small steps, and arrived at the Rue du Commerce. Ten o'clock. It was raining. On either side of the street, low one-storied buildings succeeded each other with their old tile roofs surmounted by advertisement placards.
Dark colored shutters contrasted crudely with the whitewash of the house fronts; some were green, others yellow or chestnut, and here and there high chimneys of sheet iron were silhouetted against the reddening sky. The further Emile advanced in the direction of the boulevard, the lighter it became. To the right was a gleam of livid pink which shone through the leafless trees whose boughs stood out sharply against the brick walls of the Metro. Emile saw reddish vapors which seemed to cross the street very low down, and soon he heard the nasal music of barrel organs, the sound of bells, cymbals, of big drums, of sudden detonations, the persistent panting of motors, and all at once the piercing shriek of a hooter. It was the fair of Vaugirard, spreading with its booths and merry-go-rounds from the Boulevard Pasteur to the Avenue de La Motte Picquet.
“But, of course, it's true,” said Emile... “what was I thinking about?”
He turned round the corner of the Rue du Commerce, where, inside a bar, which was brilliantly lit up, and ornamented with mirrors, humble people, soldiers with servant girls, Japanese and Moroccan workmen, dressed in the European fashion, were listening to a phonograph. Emile noticed that postcards were sold in this bar as in the cafes adjoining suburban railway stations. The cafe Pierrot opposite, with its long terraces where stoves were burning, was also packed with clients. There were people everywhere, and when the tramways which grazed the pavements passed with a precipitate rolling of wheels and tinkling of bells, all sorts of men and women, some carrying children in their arms, stepped back quickly.
A patient crowd was penned under the Metro gallery between two rows of shops. Emile joined it mechanically crushing the dusty gravel with his feet, and was carried up the boulevard, stopping from time to time. He thought about nothing, he was lost in the crowd, which dragged him with it, and at certain moments obliged him to stand still and mark time.
Most of his neighbors promenaded hatless young girls, and under their caps their faces were ravaged. There were many foreigners amongst them; swarthy Arabs, Chinese, Italians with short black moustaches, filthy Spaniards, Russians with reddened eyelids lacking eyelashes, Germans, fat Belgians. All were looking at the women and the lights, with rapture, smiling. They were dirty, in their working clothes, and satisfied to walk like that, glued one to the other, pressed together, elbowing each other. They surrounded Emile on all sides. He looked also at the booths made of painted canvas, the pearls, the glass decorations of the merry-go-rounds, their gilded organ pipes, and their animated crowds; the interiors of the shooting galleries, where the targets, the stone pipes, the egg dancing on a jet of water, the landscapes painted in faded colors made up a fairyland of banal and incoherent luxury.... Nothing interested him. The menageries with their pungent smell of animals and acetylene, the sweet shops with their pale serpents of marshmallow coiled up and
stuck upon metallic hooks, the lotteries with their odd display of champagne bottles, soup tureens, dolls, kitchen utensils, lamps, toys, ornamented lampshades, napkin rings, all laid upon the steps decorated with turkey-red cloth; the games of massacre, theMusee Dupuytren (the show of anatomical curiosities), the palace of dancing, the wrestlers' boards, he threw an indifferent glance at them as he passed, then went on his way without looking round....
What did these people matter to him, the shops, the lights, the incoherent and blaring noises? Nothing was able to touch him or divert him from himself and the odd sensation, which had possessed him ever since he had decided to tell Irma about his troubles. It was strange. Emile amidst the crowd, felt as though he were deprived of strength and life.
He was not conscious of living, or so dimly, that he had the impression of not realizing what his existence meant. He really could not imagine, for he was emptied so to speak of everything that made him think, act, connect his thoughts and his deeds. He did not explain the state he was in to himself, or know the reason of it, he did not even manage to grasp it, and strangely enough with such a simple being, he minded not at all. He arrived, still buffeted by the crowd at the place Cambronne, and suddenly he perceived that it was raining: Emile felt his coat and his hat, was astonished to find them wet, and coughed a little. The rain in the light of the electric globes fell obliquely, silently, and very far off in the night it made the road and pavement glisten. “There,” thought Emile, “it's pouring! Where shall I go now?” He retraced his steps, walking along the bars and hotels.
He forgot that it was raining, took no notice of it, and strolled along, without haste. On the left was the Tango bar and just before it No. 162. Emile recognized the house-front with its colored window-panes and heard the automatic piano, but he did not stop. He soon reached, and passed the Tango bar, and went slowly on his way. He had no plan in his mind, and he cared very little if he followed that boulevard or another. Then at the corner of the Rue de 1'Avre, Irma whom he had not seen hailed him.
“Are you going home?” she asked.
“I? No.”
“Ah! All right...” She nodded and smiled at a passer-by and as he did not answer, said in a low voice to Emile: “You had much better go home.”
Perversity Page 10