The Bark Tree

by Raymond Queneau

  The woods, naturally, are teeming. People have been picnicking, and there are bits of greasy paper all over the place. People are sleeping here and there, couples are tickling each other and women are laughing very loudly. Théo takes a sly look at a girl lying on the ground somewhat immodestly. This gets him into a terrible state; his day hasn’t been wasted. Etienne, on his arm, feels his wife hanging. He takes his family along their habitual route. They’ll go as far as the old castle, rest there, and then go down to the river again; a lemonade at the little café, and then back home.

  The walk takes three hours and is accomplished without a hitch. In any case, it’s a famous walk. The river is charming, at the bottom of the hill and the castle; people come all the way from Paris to see it. They drink the tepid lemonade under the cool arbor. Etienne tells them about the intrigues of the assistant manager in his office. At the next table, a man on his own is drinking the tepid lemonade and listening closely to their conversation; every so often, he casts an admiring eye at Etienne’s wife, but she doesn’t catch it, seeing that she’s got her back turned to him.

  Théo, whose father bores him, has spotted what’s going on, of course; suddenly, he begins to wonder whether that fellow isn’t by any chance? He immediately forgets the woman’s thigh he got a glimpse of just now and becomes passionately interested in this adventure. He’s jubilant, he’s got a secret; now he knows; no more doubt about it, it’s the fellow of the other evening, the day when the train was late. The fellow sees that the brat it watching him and is a bit embarrassed. His embarrassment increases. He blushes. He goes away. Théo is now very annoyed; he shouldn’t have stared at him so obviously. Maybe something would have happened.

  But it’s time to go home. The crowd is starting to make its way to the station. 6:30. They’ll wait half an hour for dinner, then a pipe, then a last walk around the garden, night, sleep. Tomorrow, work begins again.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  Here, the body is curled up like a fetus, turned in on itself, its fists clenched, it’s met a childhood friend. The friend is dressed as an ambassador. “What are you doing these days?” He doesn’t make excuses for himself. Here’s another childhood friend, a dentist; he tried to combine this position with that of inspector of weights and measures, so he went broke. They are all three naked, now. Etienne takes them to the art students’ ball. His right leg is relaxing a bit.

  Here, on his back, his mouth opens wide. He’s trying to buy an amusing children’s paper. He doesn’t dare, with any of the paper sellers he goes to, because there are customers. He goes to a lot of paper sellers like that. In the end, he finds himself at a butcher’s, he’s sharpening some long knives, he turns around, it’s his father. He starts. Agony. Théo gets a bit restless; sleep wins; he subsides.

  Here, a naked body is lying peacefully outstretched, windows wide open. He sees himself at his grandmother’s in the country; they’re going to kill an old cock; his mother, he can hardly make her out, is against this execution. The word execution somehow weaves the woof of a canvas on which before long an old cock is painted, a cock of the species that has a featherless red neck. He walks a bit crookedly, in a very particular way that Pierre recognizes. He’s the one who’s going to kill the cock, he’s aware of that. He wakes up very gradually, smiling. He feels marvelous; he looks at the time. Through the darkness, he makes out 4:20. He turns over and, on his other side, goes back to sleep.

  Here, a globulous, greasy mass is wrapped around dirty sheets; only a few grey hairs emerge from the conglomeration. The conglomeration is reviewing a regiment, a regiment of grenadiers. She’s their general. The grenadiers are singing as if they were in an operetta. Aren’t they handsome! Suddenly, she’s a little embarrassed; the trousers of one of them are open. She’ll have him shot. Her embarrassment increases and increases until an enormous white louse comes out of her mouth and flies away. The grenadiers cheer the unspeakable animal. Ma Cloche is dreaming.

  Here, a man is tossing and turning; he’s in a sweat; he’s stifling; what a hot night, what a warm night. He looks at the time, 4:20. He gets up, goes and drinks a glass of water. Walks around a bit, rubbing his forehead. He falls back onto the bed, which groans. He wrings his hands, in a way that he himself finds grotesque. Narcense isn’t going to get any more sleep tonight.

  The office is finished; she goes to the grocery store at the corner of La Fayette Street, to buy several things. Just as she’s crossing the street she realizes she’s forgotten the strawberries. She goes back to buy them. As she is coming out of the grocery store someone bumps into her and the bag of strawberries gets squashed against her white dress. That’s what she was dreaming.

  Meussieu and Mme. Belhôtel aren’t dreaming. They are carrying down to the river a little parcel that contains nothing other than the corpse of a dead child, that of the waitress and Meussieu Belhôtel. The waitress is called Ernestine; she has a snub nose and greasy hair. Whereas Meussieu Belhôtel, he, from time to time, makes himself useful to the local cop-shop.

  Second Chapter

  “HUH, here comes your sister,” says Mme. Belhôtel. “I’m off up to the fif floor.”

  “Or right, or right, you do that. If she annoys you, well, let her be.”

  “Sjust what I’m going to do, don’t you worry!”

  When Mme. Cloche arrives, she finds her brother Saturnin huddled up at the back of his lodge, like a spider; he’s examining the mail, which, today, is confined to one post card.

  “Your wife all right?”

  “Oh yes, she’s busy.”

  “Znever there when I arrive.”

  “Just the way it happens, you know. How’s our brother?”

  “Things aren’t too bad. Isn’t too much unemployment out that way. Sa good position, where he is. And then, with two bistros, he can get by.”

  “And the waitress?”

  “I fixed that.”

  She smiles.

  Saturnin gets up and puts the post card back in a pigeon hole. He spits skillfully into a receptacle for that purpose, and stretches his arms. He takes a few shambling steps.

  “Want summing to drink?”

  “If you ask me.”

  “Some marc.”

  Slowly, he gets the bottle, and brings it over. All his actions seem ponderous: all his looks, heavy with thought.

  “Still not ezactly overworked?”

  “Still no one. Just one tenant for an eight-floor apartment house with all mod. convs.; and what’s more, he doesn’t even pay, the one and only tenant. It’s an uncle who arranges for him to be here.”

  “You’ve already told me that. The one who was a musician.”

  “Mm; at the moment, hasn’t got any work. No idea what he does. He looks very weird, at the moment.”

  “Zthat a card for him?”

  “Mm; comes from the suburbs. Says: ‘Alberte doesn’t read your epistles; if you don’t mind too much, send them straight to me, then I won’t have to stick the bits together. Best wishes, Théo.’ It’s postmarked Obonne, 3:45 yesterday.”

  “Tsit mean?”

  “Way I work it out, Théo, he must be Alberte’s husband, and a friend of Narcense’s. He’s writing to tell him to stop importuning his wife with his assiduities. Tsas plain as the nose on your face.”

  “What’s he going to look like when he reads that, eh, your tenant?”

  She laughs.

  “Yaren’t half lucky to be able to take it easy all day.”

  “Oh, I don’t take it easy all the time. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Your thing you’re writing.”

  “Yes, my thing I’m writing. Makes a lot of work for me. But it’s getting on.”

  “You’re a bit nuts, you know. For a concierge, working as a penman, snot right.”

  “Tcha, can do what I like, can’t I? If you don’t understand, just too bad.”

  “What if I started to write?”

  “Write then, write then, my beauty. Well—seen anything nice rece
ntly?”

  “Oh yes! I saw a horrible accident outside the Gare du Nord. And another the next day.”

  “Nice—accidents?”

  “The first wasn’t bad. There was brains all over the shoes of the people standing round. A guy squashed by a B bus. The other—wasn’t anything to it; but the following Saturday, it was the Thursday it happened, the guy who nearly got run over, I saw him at Dominique’s. He came to have some French fries. Scalled Etienne Marcel.”

  “Like the street?”

  “Mm, Dominique even passed the same remark.”

  “And what sort of guy?”

  “Looks like a meussieu. Probably works in an office. But it was funny meeting him like that. And then, I just wonder what he was doing at 4 in the afternoon, at Dominique’s; and a Saturday, at that! Eh, what do you think?”

  “Maybe he lives thereabouts.”

  “Aren’t any houses for that sort of people round there. Zonly the factory, and a few huts for people who come and dig in their garden patches. After that it’s the railroad sidings, and then old Taupe’s shack. It certainly couldn’t have been old Taupe he wanted to see.”

  “Maybe’s a cop. On account of your whatsit.”

  “Oh, go on. Dominique’s not worried, he’s too useful to them. Me neither, I look after one of the local superintendent’s wives; I’m not worried.”

  “Never know.”

  “What I thought: maybe it’s on account of Ernestine. Za pretty girl, Ernestine. Maybe she’s scored.

  They laugh.

  “Your marc’s better than Dominique’s.”

  “So he’s doing all right, Dominique?”

  “Oh yes; course there’s the depression, but even so he reckons he’ll be able to buy a brothel soon. In which case his kid, he’ll be able to go to the lycée. Dominique’d like Clovis to be an engineer.”

  “I’sa good trade.”

  “And how.”

  “But if his father keeps a brothel, that’ll count against him later on.”

  Mme. Cloche considers that Saturnin is no fool; yes but it’s a pity he’s a little nuts; what an idea, taking it into his head to be a writer; it’s not for the likes of him. Ah, if he’d only wanted to, he could really have done something! But it’s time for her to go. Her work is calling her.

  Her brother says into her ear:

  “Tell Dominique to watch it, though; snitching on people, that can make trouble for you; you never know what you’re letting yourself in for; tell him that.”

  Just his imagination. Still, if it’ll please him, she’ll tell him. Right. So long.

  No sooner has Mme. Cloche disappeared around the corner than Mme. Belhôtel number two reappears.

  “The old bitch gone?”

  “Mm hm, she’s gone.”

  “What did she have to tell you this time?”

  Saturnin gives an accurate report, which is interrupted by the arrival of a telegraph messenger; it’s a telegram for Narcense. This is a rare and important occurrence. Will they have time to steam it open and discover some secret? ...

  Saturnin seals the telegram up again; nothing of any interest; “Grandmother dead.” That’s not a secret. They’d have known about it anyway.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  The night light revealed three to four shapes, deflated by slumber, trying in vain to find a comfortable position to sleep in. The head of one of them, who was merely sitting, was oscillating; the feet of another adjoined a cavernous face, its eyes bunged up with fatigue and embellished with an incipient rheumy discharge. Narcense, sitting motionless in a corner, with staring eyes, didn’t see the badly dressed bodies but, beyond the brown boards of the third-class coach, caught sight of a house that hadn’t had the strength to reach its second floor and remained acephalous. Now and then his grandmother went by with her retinue of foraging hens and her prehistoric old woman’s idiosyncrasies and her three aggressive teeth and her never-ending need to piss. She’d been a decent old woman. In the kitchen, getting the dinner, that very beautiful woman. One of the slumberers went out into the corridor, which made the man next to him move restlessly and automatically take up more room. The other came back a few minutes later and insinuated himself into the reduced space.

  A multiplicity of little lights announced the approach of a big town. A bridge was suspended over a suburban street. Narcense caught sight of a mangy dog zigzagging about in search of garbage. Then, in the station, the train, gradually, stopped. Some passengers got out, with swollen eyes and flabby hands. Narcense leaned out of the window, watching the people walking up and down and fussing, and the buffet on wheels, and the man hiring out pillows and blankets. Five minutes later, the train started off again, asthmatieizing. Narcense sat down again. A newcomer was occupying one of the corner seats left vacant by the departure of the first slumberers. This was a person of extremely singular aspect; not on account of the fact that he possessed two arms, two legs and a head, but because these arms, these legs and this head were of such exiguous dimensions that it would have been possible, without much fear of being mistaken, to call the man a dwarf. What was more, a pointed white beard adorned his face, in which scintillated two beady eyes; the beard reached as far as the penultimate button of his waistcoat, starting from the top.

  He asked if it was all right to leave the light on. It didn’t worry Narcense. Wasn’t sleepy. The dwarf began to read a number of Gay Paris with great attention. When he’d finished, he crumpled it up, threw it under the seat and started muttering into his beard: “What a life, what a life, what a life,” which made Narcense laugh; he had been scrutinizing this odd bird for the past forty-five minutes.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked him, nicely.

  “Shit,” replied the dwarf, and, taking a tiny comb out of the top right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, he started to comb out his tangled, whitish beard.

  Narcense didn’t insist. When he’d finished combing his beard the little creature picked his nose with an index finger, contemplated at length the product of his explorations, and then rolled it up into a ball.

  “It’s awful, it’s awful,” he started grumumbling again. “What a job!”

  “What job?”

  “That any of your business?”

  Narcense was really beginning to be amused by so much misery and bad temper reduced to such minute proportions. By this impotent, squashable ringworm.

  “I bet,” said Narcense, “I can guess what your profession is.”

  “Let’s bet! Ten francs you don’t guess!”

  “Ten francs I do guess!”

  “‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ as my very dear friend, the Countess of Rut’s farmer, used to say. What is my profession?”

  “Well, adventurer.”

  “Let’s say you’ve won five francs,” said the dwarf, and took them out of a greasy wallet.

  Narcense was enjoying himself.

  “I’m glad I met you,” he said, pocketing the five francs. “You’re taking my mind off things.”

  “Is that what you needed?”

  “That any of your business?”

  The cow-pat deigned to smile.

  “And to what do I owe these five francs?” Narcense went on.

  “Oh yes. Well,” (he lowered his voice) “I’m a parasite.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Parasite, just look at it, that mite, that micron, that molecule, that neutron—a parasite!

  “And I operate—through fear.”

  Fear, just look at it, that crumb, that shaving, that scraping, he operates through fear!

  “Yes, I frighten old women and children. Sometimes adults, even. I live on other people’s cowardice. Stupid, isn’t it, eh, to be afraid? Just imagine what sort of a shithouse the person’s soul must be. Don’t you think, Meussieu? Meussieu?”

  “Narcense.”

  “Nice name, and you’re ... ?”

  “A musician.”

  “Delighful.”

  “Jobless and penniless.”
<
br />   “Like me. Just think, I was on to a gold mine, and then ... But it’d take too long to tell you all that. Here’s the K. tunnel. I get out at the next station.”

  “I’m going as far as Torny,” said Narcense.

  “Tell me. You don’t happen to know of a house where they’d put me up, do you? It’s for in a few months.”

  “No.”

  “Never mind.”

  Suddenly, just like that, it occurs to Narcense:

  “Just a minute. I know a house. Rue Moche. In Obonne. Half built. There’s a child. A father. And a ... Yes, that’s it. A horrible brat.”

  The tiny tot wrote the address down in a notebook.

  “Do you always succeed in frightening people?”

  “Yes. When I want to. Even you, I can make you ...”

  “You don’t say?” laughed Narcense.

  The train braked. The dwarf was already in the corridor, suitcase in hand.

  “One day I’ll do the dirty on you, you’ll see, I’ll play such a dirty trick on you, it’ll knock the bottom out of your life.”

  He disappeared.

  Narcense smiled. Poor, miserable, blighted creature, unjustly reduced by nature to the proportions of a louse. And he’s going to knock the bottom out of your life. As if he had any need of that. Poor sap.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  Marcheville, some thirty miles from Torny, the industrial center, is more like a large village than a small town; a peasant population, a few bourgeois, among whom are the lawyer and his dog. The lawyer’s dog is a white poodle, answering to the name of Jupiter. Jupiter is highly intelligent; if his master had had the time, he would have taught him arithmetic, perhaps even the elements of formal logic, fallacies and all. But his various pursuits have obliged him to neglect Jupiter’s schooling, and he only knows how to say woof woof from time to time and sit on his behind to get a lump of sugar. However, though there may be some doubt as to the extent of his learning, there can be nothing but admiration for the care he takes of his person. Shorn like a lion, he swaggers about within a radius of fifteen yards of the notarial house. At any greater distance, enormous beasts, jealous of his elegance, menace him with their vulgar, ill-bred fangs.