The little housemaids from Brittany are definitely coughing a lot more than they did last winter when they’d just arrived in Paris. Their green-and-blue mottled thighs do their best to decorate the flanks of the wooden horses. The boys from Auvergne, who treat them to their rides, are cautious post-office clerks and, as everyone knows, never lay them without a rubber. They have no desire to catch it a second time. In expectation of love, the housemaids squirm and wiggle in the disgustingly melodious din of the merry-go-round. They’re kind of sick to their stomachs, but that doesn’t stop them from posing in the freezing cold, because this is the great moment, the time to try their youthful charms on the definitive lover, who may be there, already smitten, tucked away among the yokels in this frozen crowd. Love is still hanging back … but it’ll come, same as it does in the movies, and happiness with it. If the rich man’s son loves you for just one evening, he’ll never leave you … It’s been known to happen, and it’s good enough. Naturally he’s sweet, and naturally he’s handsome, and naturally he’s rich.
The old woman who keeps the newsstand over by the Métro doesn’t give a damn about the future, she scratches her old conjunctivitis and slowly festers her eyes with her fingernails. An obscure pleasure that costs nothing. It’s been going on for six years now, and her itching gets worse and worse.
Strollers, driven into groups by the bitter cold, gather around the lottery booth. A brazier of rear ends. They can’t get in. So quickly, to warm themselves, they run, they bound into the knot of people across the way, waiting to get in to see the two-headed calf.
Under cover of the urinal, a young candidate for unemployment quotes his price to a provincial couple flushed with excitement. The morals cop knows what’s going on, but he doesn’t care, his assignment at the moment is the entrance to the Café; Miseux.* He’s been watching the Café Miseux for a week. The instigator must operate in the tobacco shop or in the backroom of the feelthy bookshop next door. Anyway it was reported long ago. Either one or the other of them, it seems, procures underage girls, who appear to be selling flowers. Anonymous letters again. The chestnut vendor on the corner does a bit of informing too. He has to. Everything that’s on the sidewalk belongs to the police.
That machine-gun kind of, that you hear over there, shooting in crazy short bursts, is only the guy who runs the “Wheel of Death” on his motorcycle. An escaped convict, so they say, but I’m not sure. Anyway, he has crashed through his tent twice in this same spot and once a couple of years ago in Toulouse. Why can’t he and his contraption smash up for good! Why can’t he break his neck and spinal column once and for all! That noise would put anybody in a temper! The same goes for the streetcar with its bell, in less than a month it’s killed two old folks in Bicêtre, hugging the walls of the shanties. The bus on the other hand is quiet, it pulls up slowly on the Place Pigalle, taking every possible precaution, staggering a little, blowing its horn, all out of breath, with its four passengers, who get off as slowly and carefully as choir boys.
Strolling from booth to booth, from clump to clump of humanity, from merry-go-rounds to lotteries, we’d come to the end of the carnival, to the big dark vacant lot where the families go to pee … Nothing to do but turn back. Retracing our steps, we ate chestnuts to work up a thirst. We got sore mouths but no thirst. There was a worm in the chestnuts, a cute little fellow. Naturally it was Madelon who got it. That was exactly when things started going really badly between us. Up until then we had kept ourselves more or less under control, but that worm really made her furious.
As she was going over to the gutter to spit out the worm, Léon said something to stop her, I don’t remember what he said or what had got into him, but all of a sudden her going over to spit went against Robinson’s grain. Like a damn fool he asked her if she’d found a seed in it … Honestly, that was no question to ask her … And then Sophie sees fit to join in their argument … She couldn’t see what they were fighting about … She wanted to know.
Being interrupted by Sophie, a foreigner, exasperated them even more, what would you expect? Just then a bunch of hoodlums come between us, and we’re separated. Actually they were young fellows trying to pick up customers, but with mimicry, kazoos, and assorted cries of terror. When we managed to get back together, she and Robinson were still fighting.
“It looks like time to go home,” I thought … “If we leave them here together for another few minutes, they’ll disgrace us right here in the middle of the carnival …” Better call it a day …” The whole thing had been a failure, you couldn’t deny it. “Let’s go home,” I suggested to Robinson. He gave me a look of surprise, but it still struck me as the wisest, most sensible course. “Haven’t you had enough?” I added. He made a sign meaning that I should ask Madelon how she felt about it. I had no objection to asking Madelon, but I didn’t think it was a very bright thing to do.
“We’ll take Madelon with us,” I finally said.
“Take her?” he asked. “Where do you want to take her?”
“To Vigny, of course,” I said.
That was a blunder. I’d done it again. But once I’d said it, I couldn’t take it back.
“We have an empty room for her in Vigny,” I went on. “There’s no shortage of rooms out there! … We could all have a bite to eat before going to bed … At least it’ll be more cheerful than freezing around here, like we’ve been doing for the last two hours … No trouble at all …” Madelon made no answer to my suggestions. She didn’t even look at me while I was speaking, but I know she hadn’t missed a word of what I’d said. Anyway, I’d said it and it couldn’t be helped.
Then when I’d wandered a few steps away from the group, she came over to me quietly and asked if I wasn’t trying to put something over on her, inviting her out to Vigny. I didn’t answer her. No sense trying to reason with a jealous woman. Anything I could say would only be a pretext for another endless scene. Besides I didn’t even know whom or what she was jealous of. It’s often hard to localize feelings of jealousy. Come to think of it, she was probably jealous of everything, same as everyone else.
By that time Sophie didn’t know where she was at, but she went on trying to be agreeable. She even took Madelon’s arm, but Madelon was much too furious and much too glad to be furious to let herself be diverted by friendly gestures. We fought our way through the crowd to the streetcar stop on the Place Clichy. Just as we were about to board a car, a cloud burst right over the square, and the rain came down in cascades. The heavens emptied.
In half a second every taxi in sight had been grabbed. I heard Madelon right near me asking Robinson in an undertone: “You’re not going to insult me in front of all these people? … Are you, Léon?” She was in bad shape. “You’re sick of me, aren’t you? Why don’t you say so?” she went on. “Say you’ve had enough of me … That you’d rather be alone with these, two … You all go to bed together, I bet, when I’m not there, don’t you? … Say you like it better with them than with me … Go on, say it so I can hear you …” After that she stood silent, her face contracted into a grimace around her nose, which pointed upward and tugged at her mouth. We were waiting on the sidewalk. “You see how your friends treat me?” she started in again. “You see, Léon?”
Léon, I have to give him credit, didn’t answer back, he didn’t do anything to provoke her, he could be very violent at times, but he just looked the other way at the house fronts and the boulevard and the cars.
And yet Léon had his violent moments. When she saw she wasn’t getting anywhere with threats, she came back at him in a different way, with love talk, while we were all waiting. “I love you, Léon, hear, I love you … Do you realize at least what I’ve done for you? … Maybe I shouldn’t have come today … but you do love me just a little, don’t you? You must love me just a little …You have a heart, haven’t you, tell me, Léon, tell me you have a heart … Then why do you despise my love? … We had a beautiful dream, the two of us together … And now you’re so cruel to
me! … You’ve trampled my dream, Léon! … You’ve soiled it! … You’ve destroyed my ideal, you can’t say different … I suppose you don’t want me to believe in love anymore … Is that it? And now you want me to go away for good … Is that what you want? …” All these questions while the rain was dripping through the awning of the café.
It was coming down on us all. He had warned me all right, she was exactly the way he had said. He hadn’t made anything up. I’d never have thought them capable of rising to such an emotional paroxysm in so little time.
Seeing the cars and all were making so much noise, I was able to whisper a few words in Robinson’s ear. I suggested that we try to run out on her and get this shindig over with as quickly as possible, because it was a flop and we’d better break up quietly before the situation soured in earnest and people got really angry as there was good reason to fear. “You want me to find you a pretext?” I whispered. “Then we’ll all beat it separately?”—“No!” he answered. “Don’t do that! Don’t! She’s capable of throwing a fit right here and we’d never be able to stop her!” I let it go at that.
Come to think of it, maybe Robinson enjoyed being yelled at in public, and besides he knew her better than I did. As the shower was letting up, we found a taxi. We jumped in, and there we were all squeezed together inside. First we didn’t say a word to each other. The air was too heavy between us and I felt I’d put my foot in it enough. I thought I’d better wait a while before doing it again.
Léon and I took the folding seats, the two women sat in back. On weekend nights the road to Argenteuil is badly congested, especially as far as the Porte. After that you have to count a good hour before you get to Vigny, on account of the traffic. It’s no fun sitting face to face and eye to eye without saying a word, especially when it’s dark and everyone’s kind of suspicious of everyone else.
Even so, if we had stayed like that, nettled, but keeping each to himself, nothing would have happened. That’s still my opinion when I think of it today.
It was my doing, I have to admit, that we started talking again and the quarrel resumed, worse than ever. We’re never suspicious enough of words, they look like nothing much, not at all dangerous, just little puffs of air, little sounds the mouth makes, neither hot nor cold and easily absorbed, once they reach the ear, by the vast gray boredom of the brain. We’re not suspicious enough of words, and calamity strikes.
Certain words are hidden in with the rest, like stones. They’re not very noticeable, but before long they make all the life that’s in us tremble, every bit of it in its weakness and its strength … The outcome is panic … An avalanche … You’re left dangling like a hanged man, over a sea of emotion … A tempest comes and goes, much too powerful for you, so violent you’d never have thought mere emotions could lead to anything like it … I therefore conclude that we’re never suspicious enough of words. But now let me tell you what happened: The taxi was slowly following a streetcar, because the road was being repaired … “Hum … hum” went the motor. A pothole every hundred yards … But the streetcar up ahead of us wasn’t enough for me. Always childish and talkative, I was impatient. The snail’s pace and the indecision all around me were more than I could bear … So, quick, I shattered the silence like a piggy bank to see what might be inside. I watched, or rather, since by then you could hardly see, I tried to watch Madelon in the left-hand corner of the cab. She kept her face turned toward the outside, toward the landscape, toward the darkness would be more like it. I noted with annoyance that she was as stubborn as ever. I, on the other hand, acted like a regular pest. Just to make her turn her head my way, I spoke to her.
“Look, Madelon. Maybe you’ve got some idea how we could amuse ourselves, but you’re afraid to tell us? Would you like us to stop somewhere before we go home? Come on, tell us! …”
“Amuse ourselves! Amuse ourselves!” she said, as if I’d insulted her. “All you people think of is amusing yourselves …” Then she let out a whole barrage of sighs, deep and so touching that I’ve seldom heard the like.
“I’m doing my best,” I said. “It’s Sunday.”
“How about you, Léon?” she asked him. “Are you doing your best too?” Straight from the shoulder.
“Are you kidding!” was his comeback.
I looked at them both when we passed a streetlamp. What I saw was anger. Madelon leaned foward as if to kiss him. It was written that no one would miss a chance to put his foot in it that night.
The taxi had slowed down again because of the trucks that were strung out all along the road. It exasperated him to be kissed, and he pushed her away, rather roughly, I must say. Of course that wasn’t a nice thing to do, especially in front of us.
When we came to the end of the Avenue Clichy, to the Porte, night had fallen, the lights were going on in the shops. Under the railroad bridge, in spite of the echo that’s always so loud, I could still hear her asking: “Don’t you want to kiss me, Léon?” She kept at him. He still didn’t answer. So then she turned to me and harangued me directly. The affront was too much for her.
“What have you done to Léon to make him so mean? Tell me this minute! … What kind of stories have you been telling him?” That’s the way she lit into me.
“Nothing at all,” I told her. “I haven’t told him anything! … Your quarrels are no concern of mine!”
The worst of it was that it was true, I hadn’t said anything to Léon about her. He was free, it was up to him whether he stayed with her or left her. It was none of my business, but it was no use trying to tell her that, she had stopped listening to reason. Again we fell silent, sitting face to face in the cab, but the air was so charged with fury that it couldn’t go on for long. She had spoken to me in a thin sort of voice I’d never heard her use before, the monotonous voice of a person whose mind is fully made up. Scrunched up as she was in the corner of the cab, I couldn’t see her movements anymore, and that troubled me.
All that time Sophie had been holding my hand. With these goings on the poor kid didn’t know what to do with herself.
Right after Saint-Ouen Madelon resumed her catalog of grievances against Léon. In long-winded frenzy she asked him questions and more questions, now at the top of her lungs: Did he love her, had he been faithful, and so on. For the two of us, Sophie and me, it was hopelessly embarrassing. But she was so excited she didn’t care at all whether we were listening or not. If anything she welcomed it. On the other hand, it hadn’t been very bright of me to shut her up with us in that box … every word resounded and, with her character, that made her want to put on a big act for our benefit. The taxi had been another of my brainstorms.
Léon had stopped reacting. He was tired after the evening we’d spent together, and he was always a little short of sleep, he’d always had that trouble.
“For God’s sake calm down,” I managed to shout at Madelon. “The two of you can have it out when we get there … You’ll have plenty of time!”
“Get there! Get there!” she said in a tone that would make your hair stand on end. “We’ll never get there, I tell you! … And anyway,” she went on, “I’m sick of your dirty nasty ways … I’m a decent girl … I’m better than the whole lot of you together! … Pigs! … You can’t make a fool out of me! … You can’t understand a girl like me, you’re not good enough … You’re too rotten the whole lot of you to understand someone like me! … You’ll never understand anything that’s clean and beautiful!”
In sum, she attacked us in our self-esteem. She went on and on. I kept strictly quiet on my folding seat, I didn’t so much as let out a murmur. But it did no good, every time the driver shifted gears she’d start yapping again. At times like that the least little thing can provoke disaster. Just making us miserable seemed to be giving her a big kick, she followed out her nature to the bitter end, she couldn’t help it.
“Don’t imagine you’re going to get off so easy!” she threatened us. “That you’re going to get rid of me on the quie
t! Oh no! I may as well tell you right away! No, you won’t get away with it! You no-good scum! … You’ve ruined my life! I’ll wake you up, you bastards!”
Suddenly she bent over toward Robinson, grabbed him by the lapels of his overcoat, and started shaking him. He made no attempt to break loose. You wouldn’t catch me interfering. It almost looked as if Robinson enoyed seeing her getting more and more excited on account of him. He was grinning, it wasn’t natural. She was yelling at him, and he was jerking back and forth on his seat like a marionette, nose down, all the starch gone out of his neck.
Just as I was going to attempt some little gesture of remonstrance to stop the rough stuff, she bristled and started giving me a piece of her mind … Unloading things she’d been storing up for a long time … I was in for it all right. And there in front of everybody. “You shut up, you lecher!” she screams at me. “This is between Léon and me, and it’s none of your business! I’m not having any more of your brutality! If you ever again lift a finger against me, Madelon will teach you how to behave! … First you cuckold your friends, then you beat their women! … Of all the blasted nerve! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Hearing these truths, Léon kind of woke up a bit. He wasn’t grinning any more. For a second I even wondered if he and I weren’t going to bash each other to kingdom come, but for one thing, with four of us packed into that cab, there wasn’t room enough for a fight. That reassured me. Too cramped.
Especially since we were making pretty good time over the cobblestones of the boulevards along the Seine. The taxi was jolting so bad you couldn’t even move.
“Come, Léon,” she commanded him. “I’m asking you for the last time, come! Drop these people! Do you hear what I’m saying?”—A riot!
“Make him stop, Léon! Stop the car, or I’ll stop it myself!”
Journey to the End of the Night Page 50
