Life

by Perec, Georges

  Coach horses that go on order, without a driver

  Copper change given wrapped in paper

  Open rooms at the inn

  Do you want … me?

  It’s calf’s-foot jelly

  Way of carrying children

  Dinner at Mr Macklin’s

  Smautf no longer knows what he meant to remember by this. All he can recall – and he did not make a note of it – is that Mr Macklin was a botanist, aged over sixty, who had spent twenty years cataloguing butterflies and heathers in the basement of the British Museum before setting off into the field to make a systematic inventory of Kenyan flora. When Smautf arrived for dinner at the botanist’s – Bartlebooth was at a reception that evening at the provincial governor’s at Mombasa – he found the man kneeling in his drawing room sorting, into little rectangular tins, basil plants (Ocumum basilicum) and several samples of epiphyllum, one of which, with ivory-coloured flowers, was manifestly not an Epiphyllum truncatum but, he told him with trembling voice, might one day be named Epiphyllum paucifolium Macklin (he would rather have had Epiphyllum macklineum, but even then that was not done any more). Indeed, for more than twenty years, this old man had cherished a dream of leaving his name to one of these cacti or, failing that, to a local variety of squirrel, sending ever more detailed descriptions of it to his superiors, who persisted in replying that this variety was not sufficiently different from other African sciuridae (Xerus getelus, Xerus capensis, etc.) to merit a species name.

  The most extraordinary part of this tale is that Smautf met another Mr Macklin twelve and a half years later, in the Solomon Islands, scarcely younger than the first, who was his uncle; his forename was Corbett: he was a narrow-faced missionary of ashen complexion who fed himself exclusively on milk and cream cheese; his wife was a bright, neat little woman, answering to the name of Bunny, who looked after the village girls; she made them do gym practice on the beach, and every Saturday morning they could be seen dressed in pleated slips, embroidered hairbands, and coral bracelets, swaying in time to the tinny sound of a Handel oratorio played on a clockwork phonograph, to the greater glee of some idle Tommies whom the good lady never let out of her lethal glare.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Marcia, 5

  THE FIRST ROOM in Madame Marcia’s store, the room her son David is in charge of, is full of small items of furniture: marble-topped coffee-tables, nesting tables, puffy poufs, trestle chairs, Early American stools from the old staging post at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, prayer stools, X-shaped canvas folding chairs with whorled feet, etc. Against the walls, hung with plain brown hessian, stand several bookcases of different depths and heights with shelves covered in green baize with red leather trim studded with large-headed brass nails, and on them a whole assortment of objects stands in meticulous order: a candy box with a crystal base and delicately chased gold feet and lid, antique rings displayed on narrow tubes of white card, a money-changer’s weighing scales, some headless coins found by Engineer Andrussov whilst clearing the line of the Trans-Caspian railway, an illuminated book open at a miniature depicting a Virgin and Child, a print portraying the suicide at Bourg-Baudoin of Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière (the revolutionary politician, in mauve breeches and striped jacket, is kneeling to scrawl the brief note in which he explains his gesture. Through a half-open door can be seen a man in a Marseillaise waistcoat and a Phrygian bonnet, armed with a long pike, looking at him full of hatred); two of Bembo’s tarot cards, one showing the devil, the other the House of God; a miniature fortress with four aluminium towers and seven spring-loaded drawbridges, equipped with little toy soldiers; other, bigger model soldiers, representing Poilus from the Great War: one officer looking through binoculars, another sitting on a powder keg and studying a map on his lap; a runner saluting as he hands a sealed dispatch to a general in a cape; a soldier fitting his bayonet; another, in fatigues, leading a horse by the reins; a third soldier unrolling a coil-dispenser supposedly containing Bickford fuse tape; an octagonal mirror in a tortoiseshell frame; several lamps, including two lamp brackets held out by human arms, similar to those which come alive, on some nights, in the film Beauty and the Beast; scale models of shoes, carved in wood, concealing pill boxes or snuff boxes; a young woman’s head in painted wax, with red hairs stuck onto her head, one by one, for use by hairdressers in advertising displays; Junior Gutenberg, a child’s printing set dating from the nineteen twenties, including not only a full case of rubber characters, a composing line, tweezers, and inking rollers, but also images in relief on lino blocks, allowing texts to be decorated with various colophons: flower garlands, bunches of grapes and vine leaves, a gondola, a large pyramid, a small Christmas tree, shrimps, a unicorn, a gaucho, etc.

  On the little desk David Marcia sits at in the daytime can be found a numismatic book-collector’s classic, the Collection of the Coins of China, Japan, etc. by Baron de Chaudoir, and an invitation card to the world premiere of Suite sérielle 94 by Octave Coppel.

  The Tale of the Saddler, his Sister and her Mate

  The shop’s original occupant was a glass-engraver who worked mostly for store outfitters and whose delicate flourishes could still be admired in the early nineteen fifties on the frosted-glass mirrors of Riri’s Café, until Monsieur Riri, yielding to fashion, had them replaced with Formica and glued hessian panels. His successors who came and went were a seedsman, an old watchmaker found dead one day on the premises amongst his clocks which had all stopped, a locksmith, a lithographer, a deckchair maker, a fishing-tackle shop, and finally, around the end of the 1930s, a saddler by the name of Albert Massy.

  The son of a Saint-Quentin fish farmer, Massy hadn’t always been a saddler. At sixteen, whilst doing his apprenticeship at Levallois, he joined a racing club and immediately proved to be an exceptionally good cyclist: a good climber, a strong sprinter, a fantastic pacemaker, quick to pick up, instinctively knowing when and whom to attack, Massy had the makings of one of those giants of road-racing whose exploits spangle the golden age of cycling: at the age of twenty, scarcely having turned professional, he displayed his mettle to spectacular effect: in the penultimate stage (Ancona–Bologna) of the Giro d’Italia 1924, his first major trial, between Forli and Faenza, he broke away at such a rate of acceleration that only Alfredo Binda and Enrici could tuck in to his slipstream: this ensured Enrici his overall victory and got Massy a very honourable fifth place.

  One month later, in his first and last Tour de France, Massy almost repeated his performance to even better effect, and in the very tough Alpine stage from Grenoble to Briançon he only just missed taking the yellow jersey from Bottecchia, who had worn it from day one. With Leduc and Magne, also doing their first Tour de France, he made a breakaway at the Aveynat bridge and had distanced the bunch by the time they reached the exit from Rochetaillé. Their lead grew progressively over the next fifty kilometres: thirty seconds at Bourg d’Oisans, one minute at Dauphin, two at Villar-d’Arène, before the long climb to the summit of the Col du Lautaret. Electrified by the crowds, who were delighted to see Frenchmen at last threatening the unbeatable Bottecchia, the three young racers breasted the Col with a lead of three minutes: all they now had to do was to let themselves go in a triumphant descent down to Briançon; in whatever order the others crossed the line, Massy, as long as he kept his three-minute lead over Bottecchia, would obligatorily become race leader: but twenty kilometres before the finishing post, just before Monêtier-les-Bains, he skidded on a turn and fell, doing no serious damage to himself but with a disastrous effect on his machine: the front forks snapped clean off. In those days the regulations forbade riders to change bicycles within stages, and the young roadster had to quit the race.

  The end of his season was dismal. His team manager, who had almost unbounded faith in his star youngster’s promise, managed to persuade him, as he went on saying he would give up racing for ever, that his bad luck in the Tour had left him with a real road-phobia, and succeeded in making him take up track-racing in
stead.

  Massy thought first of all of doing Six-Day events and to this end got in touch with the veteran Austrian pursuit rider Peter Mond, whose usual team-mate, Hans Gottlieb, had just retired. But Mond had already signed with Arnold Augenlicht, so Massy decided – on the advice of Toto Grassin – to go in for motor-paced racing: of all the forms of cycle sport, it was at that time the most popular, and champions like Brunier, Georges Wambst, Sérès, Paillard, and the American Walthour were literally worshipped by the Sunday crowds which filled the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the Buffalo bowl, the covered track at Berny, and the stadium at Parc des Princes.

  Massy’s youth and enthusiasm worked miracles, and on the fifteenth of October 1925, less than a year after his debut in the event, the novice stayer beat the world one-hour record at Montlhéry by pedalling 118.75 kilometres behind his pacer Barrère’s big motorcycle, fitted for the occasion with a primitive windshield. The Belgian Léon Vanderstuyft, motor-paced on the same circuit a fortnight earlier, using a rather bigger cowl, had only reached 115.098 kilometres.

  In other circumstances this record might have been the start of a prodigious career in motor-paced championship riding; but it turned out to be no more than a sad apotheosis without a morrow. Massy was in fact at that time, and had so been for only six weeks, a private in the First Transport Regiment at Vincennes, and though he had obtained special leave for his championship challenge, he had not managed to get the leave postponed when one of the three judges required by International Cycling Federation rules cancelled two days before the date fixed.

  His performance was thus not made official. Massy fought the decision as hard as he could, which wasn’t easy from the back of his barracks despite the spontaneous support given not just by his hut comrades, for whom he was obviously an idol, but also by his superiors up to and including the colonel commanding the garrison, who even got a speech made in parliament by the War Minister, who was none other than Paul Painlevé.

  The International Homologation Committee remained unmovable; all Massy could get was authorisation to make a second attempt in regulation conditions. He went back into training with determination and confidence, and in December, at his next attempt, impeccably motor-paced by Barrère, he beat his own record by covering 119.851 kilometres in the hour. But that didn’t prevent him shaking his head in sadness as he dismounted: some two weeks previously, Jean Brunier, pedalling behind Lautier’s motorcycle, had done 120.958 kilometres, and Massy knew he hadn’t beaten him.

  This injustice of fate which robbed him of ever seeing his name in the lists of champions, despite his having been, in actual fact, world champion in the professional one-hour motor-paced event from 15 October to 14 November 1925, so demoralised Massy that he resolved to give up cycling completely. But then he made a bad mistake: barely discharged from military service, instead of looking for a job far from the roaring crowds of the velodromes, he became a pacemaker, that is to say a motorcyclist, pacing a very young stayer, Lino Margay, a stubborn and inexhaustible chap from Picardy who had chosen motor-pacing out of admiration for Massy’s exploits and had come at his own initiative to ride under his auspices.

  The pacemaker’s lot is not a happy one. He stands arched over his big motorbike with legs straight and elbows tucked in to the body to make the best windshield possible, he pulls along his stayer and directs him as he races in such a way that he minimises his energy output and at the same time puts himself in a favourable position for attacking one opponent or another. It is a terribly tiring posture; almost all the body’s weight is carried on the tip of the left foot; the pose has to be held for an hour or ninety minutes without moving an arm or a leg, the pacemaker can barely see his stayer and is practically unable, given the noise of his machine, to hear any message from him: all he can do, at the most, is to communicate with him by brief nods of the head, with meanings agreed in advance, that he’s about to accelerate, slow down, go up to the banked edge, dive off the banking, or overtake some opponent. All the rest, the rider’s physical form, his aggressivity, his morale, has to be guessed. The racer and his pacer must thus be as one man, think and act as one man, make the same analysis of the progress of the race at the same time and draw the same consequences at the same instant: any delay, and the rider is lost: a pacer who allows an enemy motorcycle to get into a position that cuts his slipstream cannot then help losing his stayer; the stayer who fails to follow his pacer when the latter accelerates into a bend so as to attack a rival will burst his lungs when he tries to close up on the rollers again; in either case, in a few seconds, the rider loses any chance he might have had of winning.

  From the start of their association, it was obvious to all that Massy and Margay would make a model tandem, one of those teams people still cite as examples of a perfect match, in the mould of those other celebrated two-man teams of the twenties and thirties, the great age of motor-paced racing, such as Lénart and Pasquier senior, De Wied and Bisserot, or the Swiss Stampfli and D’Entrebois.

  For several years Massy led Margay to victory in all the great velodromes of Europe. And for many years, when he heard the audience in the stalls or on the stands cheer Lino on with a deafening roar and rise to their feet to chant his name as soon as he appeared on the track in his mauve-striped white jersey, when he saw him, the winner, step up to the podium to receive his medals and his bouquets of flowers, he felt only joy and pride.

  But, as time passed, these acclamations that were not for him, these honours he should have known and which only an iniquitous fatality had deprived him of, aroused in him a resentment that grew ever sharper. He began to hate those howling crowds which ignored him and stupidly adored the hero of the day who owed his victories only to him, to his experience, to his willpower, to his technique, to his abnegation. And, as though he needed, in order to confirm him in his hatred and his contempt, to see his youngster heap up trophies, he came to demand greater and greater efforts of him, taking greater and greater risks, attacking from the start of the race, and leading from start to finish at an infernal average. Margay followed, doped by the inflexible energy of Massy, for whom no victory, no exploit, no record ever seemed enough. Until the day when, having incited the young champion to take his turn at challenging the one-hour event, at which he had once been the unacknowledged world champion, Massy forced him, on the wicked Vigorelli track at Milan, up to such a powerful pace and into such tight cornering that the inevitable finally happened: sucked along at over one hundred kilometres an hour, Margay missed a corner, got caught in a crosswind, lost his balance, and fell, coming to a halt more than fifty yards on.

  He didn’t die, but when he left hospital six months later he was horribly disfigured. The hardwood track had ripped off the whole right side of his face: he had but one eye, but one ear, no nose, no teeth, and no bottom jaw. All the lower part of his face was a horrible pinkish magma which quivered uncontrollably or alternatively froze into an unspeakable rictus.

  After the accident. Massy finally gave up cycle sport for good and went back to the trade of saddler, which he had learnt and practised when he had still been only an amateur. He bought the premises in Rue Simon-Crubellier – his predecessor, the fishing-rod merchant, whose fortune had been made by the Popular Front government, was moving into a shop four times bigger in Rue Jouffroy – and shared the ground-floor flat with his young sister Josette. Every day at six he would go to see Lino Margay at Lariboisière Hospital, and when Margay was discharged he took him in. His feelings of guilt were inextinguishable, and when the former champion asked him a few months later for the hand of Josette in marriage, he worked at it so hard that he managed to persuade his sister to wed this larval monster.

  The young couple moved to a little house by the lake at Enghien. Margay rented out deckchairs, rowing boats, and pedalos to holiday-makers and to people taking the waters. With his lower face permanently swaddled in a big white wool scarf, he more or less managed to hide his intolerable ugliness. Josette kept house, did the shopping and
the cleaning, or did sewing for a lingerie shop which she had asked Margay never to set foot in.

  This state of affairs lasted eighteen months. One evening in April nineteen thirty-one, Josette came home to her brother and begged him to free her of this slug-faced man who had become for her a nightmare of every minute.

  Margay did not try to find Josette, to see her or to get her back. Some days later, a letter reached the saddler: Margay understood only too well what Josette had endured ever since she had sacrificed herself to him, and he implored her forgiveness; unable to ask her to return, but just as unable to get used to living without her, he preferred to go away, to leave the country, in the hope of finding the deliverance of death upon some foreign shore.

  War came. Massy was conscripted into the Compulsory Labour Service and left for Germany to work in a shoe factory; Josette set up a tailoring business in the saddler’s shop. In that time of penury, when almanacs recommended strengthening shoes with soles cut out of thicknesses of newsprint or old discarded felt and unpicking old pullovers so as to knit new ones, it was obligatory to have old clothes remade, so Josette was not short of work. She could be seen sitting by the window rescuing shoulderpads and linings, reversing an overcoat, cutting a loose jacket out of an old brocade offcut, or, kneeling at Madame de Beaumont’s feet, chalking the hemline of her culotte-skirt contrived from a pair of tweed trousers that had belonged to her late husband.

  Marguerite and Mademoiselle Crespi sometimes came to keep her company. The three women sat in silence around a little wood stove for which the only fuel was sawdust-and-paper pellets, drawing their needled threads for hours on end under the dim light of their blackout lamp.