“After all, it's like that, isn't it?” he told himself. “A lot of blood everywhere all round her.” He imagined the scene, from first to last, with its tragic end with which, by a mysterious link he found himself narrowly connected. And he had to make a great effort to realize that it was only imagination.
It was the thought of blood which fascinated Emile and he remembered it with a kind of pleasure. Moreover, he thought of Bebert. He scented his presence in all this complicated affair which only was real to him because of the hate he felt for the cruel and strong willed little man. He felt Bebert's influence surrounding him, and it frightened him and made him unable to escape.
PART FOUR.Portrait of the Love Merchant
XXI
At one o'clock in the morning Emile went home, and La Rouque, who was in bed, called him and asked if he knew where Bebert was. She said that she had been waiting at the Tango bar ever since midnight and he had not appeared.
“No,” answered Emile, “I don't know.”
“Usually,” said the girl, “he is punctual. At twelve o'clock, one o'clock, he always joins me. It's not natural. Something has happened.”
“What do you think can have happened?” replied Emile. “He must be with friends.”
“What friends?”
“Monsieur Bouboule perhaps.”
“Bouboule? No. He was at the Tango.”
“Then I don't know,” said Emile, “I can't think, but don't worry, he won't be much longer now.”
He said good night to Irma, went to his room and was immediately assailed by the thought of Bebert. He could not succeed in getting to sleep, however hard he tried. He kept his eyes closed for a long while but in vain, a hundred alarming ideas were struggling in his brain. “Oh, I have had enough of it,” he grumbled, “I've had enough.” He heard La Rouque moving in her bed and her unhappiness touched him. Gradually he began to pity her, and to tell himself that everything was Bebert's fault, that if he were to disappear, life would return to its natural course; become calm and balanced. He was certain of it. This idea slowly took possession of him and he felt less lonely, less depressed. Bebert must disappear or leave La Rouque, and this after all might easily happen, for the little man had found another woman and had not yet come in.. He certainly must have accompanied her home and stayed with her.
Emile could scarcely contain himself. He was hoping that Bebert would spend the night with the woman and afterwards not dare to show himself to Irma. It was not impossible; on the contrary, it was in this way that things would happen, connect themselves, settle themselves.
Everything would end, inevitably, without any drama, by the suppression—for Emile—of Bebert, and he felt such a great relief that he longed to go and tell La Rouque and explain matters to her. As a matter of fact, Bebert did not come home that night, or the days that followed. Irma ceased to exist. She searched for her lover in the bars, harassed Bouboule, wept for hours alone in her room and refused to be comforted. Her despair was terrible. Sometimes she wouldbe enraged and shouted out a thousand insults, sometimes she would rap at Emile's door, sit near his bedside, sob like a soul in pain, and wipe her eyes.
“Voyons, Irma,” said Emile, “be brave.”
“No... let me alone... let me alone,” she answered.
“But don't go on like that, he'll come back, he's not lost.”
“Ah, you say so.”
“Why shouldn't he come back?”
Irma blew her nose loudly, then shaking her head, she declared: “He's found somebody else... and you see... he doesn't care about me. He doesn't care a—He's a dirty beast, he's a mean swine.”
Emile certainly did not think the contrary, but he kept his opinion to himself, for fear that Irma would reproach him for not upholding Bebert, for taking advantage of his absence to join in her abuse. Her reasons were women's reasons, unlike those of Emile. Emile, then, in order to guard against fate, took care not to say what he knew, for if he spoke—he thought—it would be sufficient to bring Bebert back. He was too happy to risk spoiling everything. Ah! no, no follies!
But on certain evenings, he was astonished not to see Bebert in the kitchen, or in Irma's room, and he counted the days, with the idea that on the eighth or ninth he would at last be able to rejoice freely and perhaps to show it. Until then, he promised himself not to show his feelings, to say nothing that would compromise his own peace, though Irma often insisted and made him uneasy by asking questions which he hesitated to answer. He had wished for peace for too long a time to risk losing it. Not so stupid! He was not tempted to make the same mistake twice. After all, every man for himself, was sound sense.
Irma would console herself, she would forget Bebert and life would be sweet, even, and monotonous as in the past. Already, when he came home of an evening from his work, Emile was a different man. He had recovered his habits of punctuality, and by degrees made himself respected by the stupid prostitutes who had formerly attacked him. He was so distant, so cold, so impassive that they did not recognize him. And Belle-Amour, who was pining away, asked herself with stupor the reason of the change.
Emile thought about her no more than if she had never existed and the wretched creature in her drunkenness thought that she had been dreaming.
Alas! Emile was soon to come to the same conclusion. A dream! He had been dreaming!... for on the ninth night, precisely on the date he had fixed to himself, Bebert, who had been waiting in the street, accosted him.
“Come on,” said Bebert, “we'll go up together.”
Emile looked at him.
“Well, what?” said Bebert, in a hollow voice, “here I am... I haven't broken anything. Don't you recognize me?”
“Oh yes,” answered Emile sadly.
He climbed the stairs followed by his tormentor who whistled insolently, his hands in his pockets. However, on the landing, he stopped whistling and seizing Emile by an arm: “You haven't been blabbing at least?” he asked, “I've your word?”
“You have it,” said Emile.
He opened the door, drew aside, so that Bebert could enter, and waited: “Ah Bebert!” cried Irma, “it's you? You my darling... it's you... Bebert!”
“It looks like it,” responded Bebert with simplicity.
Irma burst into tears and, weeping, embraced the little man who held out his arms to her.
Then radiant: “Emile you see.... He's come back! Bebert! he's come back... he's here... with me.... No. It's not possible.... I'm too happy.... Emile, come, make haste... but come. Come quick!”
“Yes, it is too much happiness,” grunted Emile shutting the door.
That night they went out together and celebrated Bebert's return at great expense, in the different establishments of the Boulevard de Crenelle. One would have said that the place belonged to them; Irma paid royally. She asked for no explanations from Bebert. She kissed him every few moments, pressed herself against him, raved.
Emile accompanied them in silence. He had not the same reason for rejoicing as Irma. Far from it. But he put a good face on the matter and secretly in the depths of his heart made certain resolutions.
“What's the matter with you?” said Bebert to him with sudden roughness. “Don't look like that. Are you upset about something?”
“Don't think that,” he answered, “I am rather giddy.... All this row... this noise... it bewilders me.”
“There.... Hop la. The merry-go-round,” cried Irma.
It was the rabbit's merry-go-round, and immediately Emile was hoisted up by Bebert and found himself sitting astride on one of those animals. He was stupefied. However the merry-go-round began to turn to the shrill and old-fashioned music. Emile, who had Irma on his right, shut his eyes. An unutterable sadness seized him, contracted his throat. He held out his hand to Irma, and Irma took it, pressing it as she used to do when he had lifted her on this same merry-go-round, and stayed by her side so that she should not be frightened. “My God, was it possible?” Emile did not have to make any effort to remember that t
ime. The memories came in crowds, by the hundred, gay, sad, light, impalpable, as shadows and he felt himself carried away in their midst against his will. They rushed towards him from the distant past, with their pitiful smiles, their tears, their childish sorrows, vain and quickly forgotten. They fluttered round him, catching him up to join in a capricious dance, in which Emile sometimes thought that he recognized faces, and certain gestures. The faces of his father, of his mother, of his young sister, their familiar movements. He saw them through a mist, and they seemed to him to vanishas quickly as lightning, then to reappear. He was incapable of keeping them for a long time, they disappeared, mingled with other faces, other attitudes, which resembled them so strikingly, that he was astonished. Then it all disappeared in a cloud of golden dust.
Was Irma not having the same illusion? Emile did not dare ask her. But now it was he who held her hand, pressed it strongly, and did not wish to let it go.
He came down from his animal, feeling as if he were drunk and followed in the wake of Irma, who excited by the roar of the fair, talked of going in everywhere, laughed, shook him. He was very tired. He almost felt inclined to weep, and when Bebert drew La Rouque to him and gave her a kiss, he would have liked to bite, and hung on her arm as heavily as possible.
“Well,voyons— come along,” said Irma.
Bebert announced:
“If you hang on to her like that, we'll drop you, you are tiring her.”
“No,” answered La Rouque softly, “he isn't tiring me.”
“Ah, you see... you see...” said Emile in a sharp voice, “it's you... you can't stand me, you are starting all over again already.”
“What is it all about?”
Irma said gently: “That's enough, Emile. Be reasonable for to-night. Now then, aren't you enjoying yourself?”
“He is dribbling with it,” declared Bebert.“Tiens! Look at him. He can't stand me. It's worse than ever.”
“Bebert!”
“What have I done to you?” asked Emile.
“Oh! that's enough.”
“Well then good night!” cried Emile, beside himself. “I won't stand your criticizing me any longer. I'll do what I like, and you have nothing to say about it.”
“There, do you hear that,” said Bebert to Irma. “The pigheaded!—Oh, he hasn't changed.”
“So much the worse.”
Irma tried to stop him.
“No,” said Emile, “I'm going. It's better. I'm going. I leave you with him, Irma. Good night, good night.”
And he disappeared running.
XXII
Next day Emile bought a revolver. It was Tuesday. He had the mechanism explained to him, came home, hid the weapon under his bolster, and spoke neither to La Rouque nor to Bebert. He had made up his mind, and wished to choose the time that would be most convenient. It would not matter if he had to wait several days. Emile knew that Bebert would not escape him, and he felt a diabolical joy in dragging out the affair, and repeating to himself that he alone could decide the moment to act. Nothing had yet happened to indicate this moment, but Emile felt it approaching, and he prepared himself with method and reflexion.
Now, when he shut himself up in his room in the evening and considered his Browning, he congratulated himself that it was automatic. In this way he had more chance of being able to carry out his plan. However, he never manipulated the revolver except with a thousand precautions. It was the first he had ever had in his life, and was an object with which he must first become familiar. He would place it on his bed or on the mantelpiece, then come closer and observe it, surprised that it was so easy a matter to give death. His imagination was strained by daily meditation on the act he was to accomplish, and he saw himself pointing the barrel of the revolver at Bebert and pressing the trigger. He heard the shot. At the same time, he remembered the simplicity with which his neighbor of thebrasserie had declared that he would shoot Cecile and kill himself afterwards, and it comforted him. He would follow the example of this individual, and though he personally had no wish to imitate him in “doing justice to himself” as the newspapers say, he made up his mind to keep cool after he had done what had to be done.
He reached the end of the week in this way without betraying himself or his plan. Bebert, when they met in the kitchen or in the passage, never spoke to him. Irma, but only when she was sure that no one could surprise her, would wish Emile good night and advise him to look after his nerves.
“All right,” he grunted, “it's not my fault.”
“Of course,” said the girl, “but after all, we have to live together and we can't go on quarrelling.”
And, as Emile averted his eyes: “There,” she promised, “it'll all be settled one day. I'll speak to him, you'll see...”
“Yes, we'll see,” answered Emile. He went into his room and standing in front of the looking-glass, looked at himself attentively. “We'll see, I promise you, everybody will see.”
He sneered, passed his hand heavily over his face, yawned, nodded his head and occasionally, anxious to test his self-control, he obliged himself to forget the whole thing and put his various belongings in order.
This was now his chief occupation; he would carefully arrange on the dressing table one after the other, his soap, his tooth brush, his comb, his shaving brush, his razor, then he folded his old clothes and some linen in a cupboard, and spent a long time cleaning his shoes and making them shine. He brought a disconcerting zeal to bear on details which a man usually neglects, and in the end, the time passed surprisingly quickly without altering his resolution.
Thanks to this singular method, Emile was ready when he woke on Sunday a little after twelve. He got up at once, put on his socks and his trousers, then, his Browning in his hand, went towards the passage to go into Irma's room.
Irma's door was locked. Emile had to go slowly back into his room, for the wished to surprise Bebert, so as not to miss him. If he called, he risked making him suspicious. This irritated him. Why was the door shut? He searched for the reason, asked himself a hundred questions and could not answer any of them, walked sadly up and down his room.
“Patience!” he told himself.“Allans! It's not at the last moment...” He waited, standing with his revolver in his hand, for a part of the afternoon, walking, stopping, listening. Perhaps Bebert was asleep. It was cold. A damp cold. The daylight shone between the slats of the shutters—a daylight without gaiety. Emile strained his ears: he heard the rain fall outside with a confused, slithering noise and sometimes when the wind changed, it pattered against the shutters, now softly, now loudly. At last this noise of water acted strangely upon Emile, penetrated him, benumbed him. He had to make an effort to regain his clear-mindedness. Then he took out his watch, looked at the time, sat down, laid his Browning on the table ready to his hand counted up to two hundred... three hundred, five hundred.... he began to be weary....
By degrees the cold took possession of him, and he shivered all over. How was it that neither La Rouque nor Bebert was awake yet? He could not explain it to himself, and it provoked him, disarranged his plan.
“No, no,” he declared aloud, “I won't draw back now. I'll stick to it. It's today...”
“What are you saying,” said a voice then, Irma's voice. “Are you talking you yourself?”
He did not answer.
“Emile,” called the girl, “what is it, what is the matter?”
Bebert grunted.
“Nothing,” said Emile, hoisting himself up on his legs awkwardly. “I'm asleep.”
“Oh you're asleep!” said La Rouque, “you've been walking up and down for two hours. Aren't you finished? Go to bed,voyons... don't bother us all the time.”
But Emile heard Bebert getting up, and he felt as it were, a shock full in the breast. He was stifling. His hands trembled.
In order not to let fall the weapon which he had immediately seized, he was obliged to lay it back by his side in the same place. And it frightened him now, it terrified him. He dared not
take it up again for fear it should suddenly go off. He was conscious of nothing. He knew nothing. Nothing any more.
However, Bebert, who had put on his shoes, came and went, and the unavoidable moment was near. Emile shrank, took hold of the Browning, made an immense effort.
“Don't be long,” he heard Irma tell Bebert.
The door opened. Bebert went into the passage, stopped there to unhook his cap, took his time about it, turned the key in the keyhole of the entrance door, opened and shut it. Emile had not moved.
Then he understood that he was not able to do this deed, which for a week, he had sworn to himself to accomplish. The threw himself on the bed. It was beyond his strength. He could not. His courage failed him. He had then no courage?... Nothing... no energy... no strength?... He wept... He lamented... he called to Irma for help... He implored her to come... and suddenly when he saw her near him, upset, he pushed her roughly aside and began to insult her.
“It's you, yes,” he screamed with an insane fury, “you, it's your fault.... Go away... go away.... Oh! For pity's sake don't stay here.... Go! But go away.... Go to meet him...”
“But who? Meet who? Explain yourself!Voyons! Why did you call me?” she asked. “Are you mad?”
“Go to him! Go!”
“Who?”
“Bebert,” said Emile, “he has gone, hasn't he? He's gone off?”
“Bebert?”
“Yes, answer,... he... he...”
Irma grasped nothing of this scene. She tried to explain to Emile that Bebert had gone down to fetch some rum and cigarettes, he did not listen to her. He stuttered words without connection, moaned, insisted that she should go away. Standing in her chemise, she tried to reason with him. She argued, determined not to yield, then all at once cried out and rushed toward the revolver.
“Ah! but no,” said Emile seizing it, “that's mine.”
“Emile!”
“Mine,” he repeated...“Hein?”
Irma became livid, stretched out her hands, drew back towards the door but it was too late. The first bullet hit her in the stomach, then another, a third, and she collapsed heavily, whilst Emile emptied his revolver into her body, and suddenly, fell on his knees in tears and begged her pardon.
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