“Once again, if you care to advance me...”
“I never make advances,” Monsieur Béguinard interrupted, brusquely. “That’s a principle.”
That alarm bell warned the unfortunate junior master that he ought to expect dismissal, or the entrepreneur of cut-price education would not have would not have refused such a minimal advance. In any other circumstances, he would have hastened to take the initiative, but those two weeks of assured life had been so useful to him that he felt that in a few days more he would have got a grip on himself again, become once again the man of sure judgment, prompt determination and resourceful intelligence that he would not have ceased to be without the sledgehammer blow that destiny had brought down on his head. He had observed with so much joy the symptoms of the imminent awakening that he kept quiet, energetically determined to bury his pride, submit to all caprices, endure all villainies, support all shames and swallow all insults, provided that he was not thrown brutally on to the sidewalk, with his pockets a empty as the day of his arrival.
The next day, a Sunday, he was taking his children for a walk when an individual of Mephistophelean appearance, bony, toothless and grimacing, decked in a long threadbare frock-coat, accosted him on the main road.
“Are you the study-master at the Béguinard school?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“Food and lodging for the first month—and what nourishment! Fifty francs salary the second, if the victim has the gift of pleasing?”
“I can see that you’re well-informed.”
“I should say so. I’m one of your predecessors. Well, Monsieur, I’ll make it a duty to warn you that the second month never arrives; the unfortunate dupe always displeases at the end of the first. That’s the crapulous hypocrite’s game.”
“I suspected as much.”
“There’s never any lack of excuses. Monsieur Béguinard is always delighted with your services, he’s in despair at losing you, he’ll regret it as long as he lives, but one displeases the ladies—two dirty sluts, in parentheses—a ridiculous feminine caprice to which one is obliged to submit for the sake of domestic harmony, etc. Conclusion: pack your bags and make way for the poor devil who’ll be exploited in the same fashion. With that system, the wretch has solved the difficult problem of having study-masters—what am I saying…galley-slaves, pariahs, negroes—without taking a sou out of his pockets. If he weren’t a former wrestler, things wouldn’t have passed that way with me! Have you been with him for long?”
“About a fortnight.”
“Well, in a week, he’ll commence his confidences; he’ll tell you about his debuts in the team of the illustrious Marseille; then he’ll pass on to a little demonstration, lifting enormous weights, carrying heaving chairs at arm’s length and challenging you to do the same.”
“He really was a wrestler, then?”
“Big Béguinard, the rampart of St-Quentin! That’s common knowledge. He became the director of the school by marrying the founder’s daughter; the establishment is still in the father-in-law’s name. He’ll soon give you all the details himself. At first, one’s astonished by the cynical display of a past so little commendable for a headmaster; it’s only when the coarse reproaches replace his honeyed words and wheedling monkish smiles, and he throws you out brutally, that you understand the meaning and value of the whole comedy.”
“What you’re telling me is abominable!”
“It’s the pure truth, Monsieur, I swear, and if, after that confidence, you persist in remaining in the house until the end of the month, you’ll play the sad role of simpleton and métier-spoiler.”
“Have you another situation, however precarious, to offer me?” asked Charles Balin.
The other junior master remained mute.
“Well then,” his interlocutor continued, “while thanking you for your advice, permit me to handle the matter as I please.”
The unknown man was continuing on his way when one of his pupils took it into his head to throw a stone at him. To turn round and administer one of those beatings that provide relief was the affair of an instant. The master of studies tried to extract his pupil from the angry avenger, but could not prevent him from receiving a magisterial correction.
On returning from the walk, Monsieur Béguinard, immediately informed and convinced that his altered dupe was about to leave him in the lurch, hastened to take the initiative. He could make light of all that a thief, an ignoramus defrocked for inadmissible reasons, had been able to tell him, but he could not tolerate that anyone would allow the dear children confided to his care to be assaulted!
“That’s all right, Monsieur; I’ll leave tomorrow,” replied the sacked master, coldly.
“This very instant!” howled the rampart of St-Quentin, his fists on his hips.
“No, Monsieur,” replied the victim, calmly. “I’ll leave tomorrow, after you’ve given me a certificate of good conduct. If you refuse, I’ll make a complaint to the Academic Council and take an article to the Moniteur des Maîtres d’étude. Know that it’s not stupidity, but dire necessity, that caused me to tolerate the ridiculous role that I’m playing. Don’t push me to extremes; your quality as a former wrestler doesn’t impress me, and you might learn at your expense what an intelligent man is worth in such circumstances.”
Suddenly softened, the headmaster judged it prudent not to demand an instant departure.
Chapter IX
“Not even an unemployed junior master,” murmured the unfortunate Charles Balin, as he headed for Paris the following morning. “It’s very difficult to eat bred by the sweat of one’s brow, to the detriment of one’s intelligence!”
He searched his pockets; he had had sixteen sous on entering the Béguinard school; he had spent four having his shirt laundered, so he still had twelve, enough not to die of hunger for two days.
However, that brief sojourn at the suburban pseudo-school had had several important advantages for him. He had rested from his physical fatigues and mental anguish; he had eaten regularly for a fortnight; and he possessed three documents of identity: a letter recommending a pupil to him, the certificate extracted by threat from Monsieur Béguinard, and a legalization of signature that he had procured under a pretext from the local Mairie. He had, therefore, the commencement of a legal existence. He was emerging from place that he could indicate, and he possessed papers—insignificant, to be sure, but papers nevertheless.
It was about one o’clock in the afternoon when he arrived at the Porte de X***. His stomach, lacking the dried peas and haricot beans of the institution, was gurgling consistently. He started nibbling pieces of bread thrown at him by the pupils and picked up covertly the day before. Then, embarrassed by the passers-by who were watching him eat with a scornful curiosity, he climbed the bank of the fortifications.
The July sun cast a little gaiety over the meager landscape of the suburb. The formless huts of the military zone, made of planks or plasterboard covered with bituminous paper, were hung with clothes in the process of drying. The ground, blackened by the dust and mud of Paris, constellated by the scintillations of shards of glass or porcelain, concealed its pestilence beneath vegetables and green bushes. Innumerable factory chimneys blurred by thick mist emerged therefrom, vague and somber, in the distance, vomiting floods of black smoke plumed with grey in vertical jets. On the horizon, the indecisive lines of hills melted into the sadness and uncertainty of the azure, soiled by so much impure breath.
Moving aside the greasy paper, the repugnant debris of improvised snacks, he sat down on the short, thick grass, which idleness, somnolence or the enlacement of wretched couples sprawling thereon for long hours seemed to have prevented from growing. Here and there, shady individuals lying on their backs, legs bent, hands behind their heads by way of a pillow, were sunbathing. A girl in a red smock was picking daisies and singing a sentimental sing; another kneeling next to a side-whiskered lout adjusted the locks of her hair and then, a female in heat beside a somnolent male, tickled h
im with blades of grass, laughing in bursts. An old groundsel-merchant, basket overflowing, drew away, curbed beneath the burden, while a dog-clipper armed with his scissors, and surrounded by brats, sheared a mongrel extended at full length.
The man with the check jacket, the dirty hat, the wan face and the forehead creased with anxiety for the morrow; the downfallen man whose hard crust cracked between his teeth, felt that he was in his element there, that he did not spoil the view, that he was, in fact, the individual characteristic of it and indispensable to it, the poor shameful fellow who did not yet dare to sate his hunger before the eyes of passers-by. Thus Dr. Albin, under the bushy shade of his luxurious villa, parading his meditation in a solitary park, listening to the distant rumbling of the sea, had once completed by his presence the décor made for a life of prosperity.
This, he sniggered, is what one might call a nice day in the country: a green carpet, choice neighbors, a rural, and above all frugal, feast. But why was it necessary for him to hide in order to eat? It was necessary for him to get used to wearing his poverty brazenly; there was nothing infamous about it!
A man had stopped in front of him, with a ferrety face almost entirely covered with unkempt hair, within which the anxious eyes of a jackal gleamed. He contemplated him with an open, drooling mouth, like a fog that can hear bones breaking.
“You wouldn’t have, by any chance, an extra piece?” he implored, wiping the corner of his mouth.
He dipped into his pocket and brought out one last crust, which he threw to the vagabond. “That’s all I have left, my poor fellow. It’s a little stale—don’t break your teeth.”
The stranger had caught the piece of bread in mid-air, and devoured it with a kind of frenzy. “I’d like to have one like that every day,” he mumbled, with his mouth full.
A frisson caused him to shudder. There were, therefore, creatures even more wretched than himself!
“It’s a pity,” groaned the starveling, “when one has arms, and can’t make use of them to eat. In the provinces, there are rubbish-heaps, one can still unearth something by digging, but in this damnable Paris, one’s worse off than the dogs. And to think that I’ve come so far to die of hunger! By dint of hearing it said that it was a land of Cockayne! In God’s name, what a Cockayne! I’m no good-for-nothing, though; must be unlucky, can’t find a blow to strike!” He paused, his interrogative and malevolent eyes igniting with sinister hatred. “You wouldn’t be in need of a mate?” he went on, lowering his voice. “I’m a man who’d let himself be shortened rather than spill the beans—one can count on me.”
He takes me for a gang-leader, thought the master of studies, invaded by disgust and sorrow. He stood up abruptly and drew away, to avoid the temptation to give him a sou.
He went back into Paris. The drinking-dens of the Barrière were full of workers celebrating holy Monday. The reek of soup and the scent of stew were already escaping from kitchens. Two coachmen with shiny faces were eating large steaks in the open air. A fat peasant-woman with a Norman bonnet, in front of an oven surmounted by a cast iron pipe, on which melted butter was sizzling with an appetizing odor, was turning over a large thin pancake, round and gilded, like a nimbus. A sudden greed, mingled with childhood memories, overwhelmed him. He bought the pancake and ate it hot, seasoned with regret for his prodigality, which made it seem even more delicious.
He walked on a short distance; a young woman whose face was shaded by the eccentric headgear of the Salvation Army approached him with the smile made of pity and scorn that believers accord to sinners, and offered him a pamphlet, which he took, and read the epigraph mechanically:
I have seen the doors of the tomb open and searched in vain for the remainder of my days. Ezekiel.
Seized by a sudden superstitious terror, he threw it away urgently. The citation launched by some clergyman at the moment when he was leaving the cemetery returned to his mind.
A child ran after him. “Monsieur, Monsieur, you dropped something.” The child brought back the disdained pamphlet.
“Keep it. my lad.” He replied. “I’ll make you a gift of it.”
A little further on, an older salvationist, whose ugliness was aggravated by colored spectacles, handed him another copy of the haunting pamphlet. He felt a surge of wrath that it was impossible for him to repress.
“Devil take these fanatics,” he growled. “They always have some discouraging verse from a psalm to offer you; they’d do better the replace the celestial nourishment they dole out to passers-by with something more substantial.”
“If you’re deprived of resources and work,” replied the propagandist, “go to...”
He drew away, grumbling, and did not hear the address she indicated. A brief moment of reflection sufficed to make him regret his outburst. He tried to retrace his steps to obtain the information that had been offered to him, but the Salvationists had disappeared.
He found himself outside a fashionable restaurant, where wedding vehicles were arriving in procession. Louts and ragged individuals hastened toward the landaus, opened the doors and received tips. He was watching them, almost envying their lot, when he saw the hairy man who had asked him for bread again.
The starveling tried to slip into the midst of the door-openers and share their windfalls, but the improvised lackeys would not stand for it; they would not allow an unknown prowler to benefit from a profit impatiently awaited for several hours. Surrounded in the blink of an eye, jostled and belabored with punches, and the luckless individual was forced to quit the place, piteously.
The spectacle revolted him. Was the struggle for existence so pitiless in its ferocity, then? But in that case, that pariah, chased away everywhere, was logically driven to theft, to crime. He went to him.
“Go to the night-shelter in the Rue St-Jacques, my poor fellow; you’ll sleep in a bed and have some good soup.”
By the inflexions of his head, the man let him know that the resource was not unknown to him.
“You’re only let in there three nights in succession,” he murmured. “Necessary to find myself something to eat, though, or I get myself put in prison; they’ll be obliged to feed me there.”
He quickly resumed his course, escaping the temptation to give him a sou for the second time.
Had the practice of poverty hardened his heart to that extent? Poor as he was, ought he not to aid someone poorer than him? Would he not have a small share of responsibility for the evil deed that the desperate man was bound to commit? But what sentimental folly it was to occupy himself with another when tomorrow, or the day after, he might perhaps find himself in the same situation, or one even worse? For after all, what was going to become of him? To what sad necessity would he be reduced?
Yesterday, he had been able to affirm that he had been, and would always be, an honest man; was he sure now of not committing a theft, if he were placed in that alternative and that of dying of hunger? Had his poverty not just been exploited unworthily? An idea of revenge might have germinated in his brain, weakened by suffering, revolted by bad faith! He had been born with good instincts, but not all the actions severely punished by law arise uniquely from our evil inclinations! Who knows whether our perverse instincts themselves might not be atavistically born of a long series of injustices and tortures?
He had believed once that he had torn away all the veils, explored all the charnel-houses; he had made great speeches, pronounced sonorous words; but, in reality, he had not had an accurate conception of matters that he had imagined he knew thoroughly. If all legislators had the rude apprenticeship that he was in the process of undergoing, their laws would be more indulgent to the weaknesses and impulses of the starving. He had never understood more fully Renan’s remark that “No one has a right to anything but what is necessary; the excess belongs to those who have not.”
He found himself in the Place de la République and wandered, mechanically around the flower-market. Women in bright summer dresses, nurses whose long ribbons hung down to the groun
d and who were proudly carrying heaps of linen and lace in which the white faces of babies were glimpsed through veils of tulle, idlers, soldiers and amorous couples cluttered the edges of the covered market.
Rows of flowers in pots were aligned on the asphalt. Climbing roses, honeysuckle and clematis clung to iron uprights, coiling their flexible stems around the slender supports. Gladioli with bright corollas, petunias as velvety as lovers’ gazes, heraldic lilies and swooning or smiling roses promises perfumes and colors to the windows of mansards as well as the balconies of rich town houses. Ferns, fleshy plants, dwarf palms, dracaeanas, elegant umbels, disorderly tresses and bizarre nodulated stems declared their affinity with the Japanese bronzes of drawing-rooms. Gardeners in haste to sell their last merchandise were making seductive offers, commenting on the language of flowers, complimenting the ladies with banal circumstantial comparisons. And all those odorous effluvia, all those sparkling hues, emitted a kind of dizzying sadness that went to his head, as if the flowers had become animated in order to sympathize with him, seemingly astonished to see him so unhappy, and vague amorous memories emerged dully from the past.
The voice of a peasant woman attracted him from his reverie.
“Is there a ticket-porter here?” asked the flower-seller.
He turned round, a stout gentleman with a jovial and self-satisfied expression wanted to buy an orchid.
“No ticket-porter,” repeated the florist.
Charles Balin presented himself. The purchaser looked him up and down. “Don’t you have a plaque?” he asked.
“No, Monsieur, but you can trust me.”
The bourgeois looked in all directions. A ticket-porter with a copper medallion in his buttonhole finally responded to the appeal.
“Here, my good man,” the buyer instructed. “Take this plant to the address and the person indicated on this card, and then come back.” He turned toward the solicitor he had dismissed; as if to compensate him for the refusal, he slipped two sous into his hand and said: “And you, my friend, have a drink.”
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 9
