The Bark Tree

by Raymond Queneau

  Théo was walking up and down in the room, trying to look important, furious and fuming. Secretly, he was pleased that his escape had finished so well. The journey with Mme. Pigeonnier and Catherine had scared him stiff; his flight had filled him with anxieties and fears. Now that everything had turned out for the best, he was sorting out his feelings and keeping only the most high-flown—the taste for risk and adventure, the awareness of responsibility, the virile decision and the scorn for the common opinion. He had thus attained ethical heights of which, up to now, he had not even had the slightest suspicion. He was walking in the clouds, and breathing the pure air of heroism.

  Mme. Pigeonnier, on the other hand, had flown from Obonne in a spirit of absolute unconcern; she considered this adventure the best she’d ever had. She was still radiant with joy, she was beginning to get worried now. She multiplied her anxieties. Wouldn’t the Marcels discover all, simply by using their reasoning powers? For how could they not see some connection between her presence here and Théo’s flight. And should she not also fear that some mischief-maker would reveal all to his parents? Or that Théo would give himself away in the course of conversation? or that she would? Didn’t the law punish her act as a crime? She could already imagine herself up before the judges, or even with a public hue and cry after her. And so, lying on her bed, she was tormenting herself in multifarious ways, while Théo, standing at the window, was lighting a cigarette and looking Life in the face.

  There’s a knock at the door; it was Catherine. She came in apologizing for disturbing them and, sitting down on Mme. Pigeonnier’s bed, at her feet, started telling them the various things that had been happening among them that, early that afternoon, a young man had accosted her, and that the said young man was Meussieu Marcel’s friend. He had tried, so she said, to “worm” various things out of her, but she’d “played the innocent,” and he hadn’t found anything out. But he certainly suspects something: he looks very bright, that young man.

  “And he’s such a gentleman, Madame.”

  Catherine went into ecstasies over various sartorial details that had struck her and described the elegance of his speech and the distinction of his gestures, then she went on to say that he had paid her a lot of compliments, that he’d told her that he had something to do with the movies, that he’d find her a part in a film, and that she would certainly become a star.

  “Must be crazy to believe such whoppers,” opined Théo.

  The two women didn’t answer him.

  “He’s gone off to visit some property he’s got at Z ... today,” Catherine went on. “He made a date with me for when he comes back.”

  Théo shrugged his shoulders and began turning over the pages of The Three Musketeers, Mme. Pigeonniers favorite reading. While Catherine was starting to tell them about her flirtation with Alexis Considérable, the son of the Mayor of X ... , Théo was pondering the subject of a poem; a man loves a woman in silence; she either loves someone else or despises him; he doesn’t dare declare his love; he writes a sonnet to describe all this; the woman who has inspired it reads it, but she doesn’t understand that it’s about her. There. He’d just found the first line: Mon âme a son mystère, ma vie a son secret, but, counting on his fingers, he discovered that his alexandrine was walking on thirteen feet; he tried to think of a synonym for mystère, Enigme, no, Cacher, all right; but the corresponding noun? Se taire, not bad. Mon âme se tait, no. It didn’t work. Once again, he counted on his fingers the number of feet in: Mon âme a son mystère, ma vie a son secret. There really were thirteen.{11} Mme. Pigeonnier asked him:

  “What are you counting like that?”

  “How many days we’ve got left in this moldy hole,” he growled.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  Then Etienne experienced the power of boredom.

  After two days. Pierre had gone; he had to go, he said, and see his brother, not far from there; some friends were expecting him in Y ... , too; in short, mundane and family obligations caused him to disappear. So they gave themselves up, without reserve, to the pleasures of X....

  Going for a dip, walking on the cliffs, meals, fishing(?) made up the daily routine. They got to know the lady from Obonne better; she taught them to play (here the name of a game in fashion three years previously). They renewed their other acquaintanceships; Théo was allowed to go out with Sensitif junior and young Nécessaire, but not with that girl Catherine, who lost no time in getting herself talked about in the neighborhood because she was carrying on a flirtation, so they said, with Alexis Considérable. In the evenings, there was an open-air jazz band, and they danced by lantern light. Sensitif junior asked Alberte to dance; but he didn’t dare show her the poems he’d written for her. Young Nécessaire was absorbed in the contemplation of Mlle. Considerable, the mayor’s daughter, and a distant star. Théo didn’t have any success with the first line of his sonnet, worked wonders of imagination and diplomacy to meet Mme. Pigeonnier, and read The Three Musketeers in secret. All this totally escaped Etienne, who only seemed interested in ridiculous details, and went down more and more in the estimation of his son by marriage.

  Alberte took the pleasure in this vacation which there was to be taken by a person who throughout the year worked, either bureaucratically or domestically, ten to fifteen hours a day. She was touched by Sensitif junior’s homage, and charmed by Mme. Pigeonniers friendship. The fine weather continued uninterrupted.

  After a week, Etienne suddenly realized that he was terribly, totally and irremediably bored. He discovered this while he was lacing up his shoelaces. These shoes were white and beige, and most impressive. He was putting them on to go and meet the ladies and the young things down at the harbor. He had just been shrimping with two young employees of the C.N.A. who were highly skilled at it, and he was now changing. For when he went shrimping, he obviously didn’t wear his beautiful white-and-beige shoes any more than he wore his trousers with the vertical crease. He was dressing for dinner, then (even though he wasn’t wearing a dinner jacket), and lacing his shoelaces.

  The sea was beautiful, the sun was lovely, the earth was beautiful, the sky was lovely, the beach was beautiful, the harbor was lovely, the town was beautiful, the country was lovely, the atmosphere was beautiful and the air was lovely.

  The room was on the second floor; the window of this room opened onto the roofs; if you leaned out to the right, you could see the vasty deep (the briny element, you might call it).

  In the dining room, they were starting to set the tables. The doctor had not notified them of any contagious diseases in the area belonging to the commune; the hens wouldn’t have to fear the staggers, the pigs swine fever, the turkeys the pip, the cows mammitis, the dogs rabies or the horses glanders.

  The barber’s wife had just auspiciously given birth to a viable teratological phenomenon capable of being shown in public and bringing in some cash.

  Youths and girls, adults and old people, children and the maids of the same, fishermen and lighthouse keepers, swimming instructors and waiters, big and little short and long, aphonic and stentorian, Catholic and Orthodox, trepanned and legless, country people and peasants, vacationers and summer visitors, they all, all, breathed in the perfume of quietude with the lungs of happiness.

  The hour—sweet.

  While lacing his shoelaces, he realized this; not that the hour—sweet; not that the ones and the others were breathing in the perfume of happiness with the lungs of quietude; not that the mewing monster represented a fortune for the poor barber; not that animals and men had nothing to fear from the microbial tribe (!); not that the forks and knives were being artistically arranged on quasi-clean tablecloths, not that if he leaned out of the window he could see, over on the right, a fragment of green enamel which he would know was the sea. No, no and no again.

  He realized that he was bored; terribly, totally and irremediably. He had finished lacing his right shoe; he sat there, shoehorn in hand, dreary-eyed, and the laces of his left shoe lay on the floor lik
e snakes run over by a truck. He had said nothing, against the world, for the world existed only in so diminished a form that it could scarcely be said to exist. A grey mist lay over everything. Who could want anything, then? Who could love, then? Who could suffer, then? Shoehorn in hand, Etienne contemplated, with a dreary eye, the laces lying on the ground like bits of macaroni under the table of a transalpine glutton.

  Existence was losing all its value; things, all their meaning—and it wasn’t only this existence that was present here and now that was losing all its value; it wasn’t only these things here and now that were shedding all their meaning, but also the existence that was behind and above and over there, and everything that was elsewhere and beyond and everywhere. The universe was squeezed like a lemon, and no longer seemed to him to be anything other than a despicable, unattractive piece of peel, like an infinitely thin skin to which he couldn’t (didn’t want to, or didn’t know how to) adhere.

  At the same time as the world, he himself lost all value and meaning. He was dissolving, becoming obliterated, being annulled. He could no longer distinguish himself from the uniform fog that was absorbing everything. He threw the shoehorn on the bed and finished lacing up his shoes. Then, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, he yawned. Perhaps he was hungry.

  He got up slowly and, when he was on his feet, stood still. His arms reached a jacket; before he put it on, he took a few steps up and down. He noticed some dust on the mantlepiece; with his finger, he traced a few ornamental patterns in it. In the distance, he could hear the phonographs and radios in the harbor. He looked at what he had just drawn, but he felt no interest in it; the tip of his finger was now black with filth, he ran some water on it and wiped it. He put on his jacket. Then he yawned at the copper balls on the bed. He made as if to hold his hand out toward one of these balls, but immediately checked the movement. He had very vaguely felt like unscrewing it. He sat down again, without good reason, and counted how much money he had to last out the vacation. He looked at the time, and immediately forgot it.

  He formulated his state in vulgar terms: “I’m so goddamn bored today,” he murmured. Then he made up his mind, and cast a last glance at the designs traced in the dust. As he shut the door behind him, he yawned. Perhaps he was hungry.

  In the hall, he passed various faces he more or less knew. He admitted their existence, but not their interest; they appeared to him as abstraction of no value, and not as living people near him. At the door, the proprietress greeted him, using his name; he replied in symmetrical fashion. In the street, people were nonchalantly walking up and down; the shopkeepers were emerging from their obscure lairs; a newsman was hawking the Paris papers. Everyone was agreed in acknowledging that the weather was superb.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Six revolver shots.

  Who has fired these revolver shots? We don’t know yet. What’s going on, then? Quick! Let’s go and see. We run. We’re going to see.

  Horrors! There lies on the ground the corpse of a young man, almost a child.

  Isn’t he hideous, though. But that doesn’t matter much, for he is dead. Hats off! The corpse is weltering in blood, in a lot of blood, in barrels of blood.

  Could it be suicide? Some despairing young man? A disappointed love? A question of honor? Ah, but no! It is not suicide, it is murder!

  Terror! Atrocity! Who, then, with cruel and bloody hand, could have ... et cetera, this young man? almost a child?

  Who then? There he is! there she is, rather. For it is a female felon.

  People are throwing themselves on her, they are disarming her, they are shouting and yelling! Oh! Oh! that such a quiet little seaside town for Paris tourists should be agitated, upset, congested by such a petrifactive crime. The customers will fly away and flee this apprehensive place, like little birdies abandoning our so-called temperate regions at the approach of the rigors of the cold winter. But tell me, if you please, who are the two protagonists of this seaside drama? This young man is named and is called Théo Marcel! That woman sells toys—and in particular that toy which is named the cup-and-ball!

  Oho! here’s something out of the ordinary. But how could this honorable tradeswoman commit such a heinous crime?

  Well! lend me your ears, and I will pour into them the bitter essence of this long and distressing story.

  Not long after the death of Julius Caesar, the Gallic chieftain Péponas emigrated with his whole family to a more hospitable land, for in Arvernia, that year, the chestnut harvest was extremely poor.

  While telling himself the tale of this comforting murder, Narcense is slowly absorbing the ham sandwich which will comprise his one and only meal of the day. His situation is daily becoming more critical; he has nothing left to pawn; he neither dares, nor wishes to touch Saturnin for any more; he despairs of hearing from Pierre and Shibboleth. He has thought of subletting the apartment his uncle gives him, but he can’t find any takers; and his uncle, whose stupidity and ferocity increase with age, has merely offered him a ten-franc note which he has preferred to refuse with a disdainful air. And here he is, this August Sunday, sitting in front of a small glass of beer and a ham sandwich. After which, he will still have two francs left. And what of tomorrow? So he goes on telling himself stories.

  Well then, the Gallic chieftain Péponas, deeply grieved by the poor harvest, emigrated with his family to a more hospitable region; after having wandered aimlessly for some time, he came to the shores of Lake Aral and settled there. He dealt in pawns, a trade that was not at all tiring and fairly lucrative. Unfortunately, an invasion of lancinating spinning-tops obliged him to move on, and he, and all his family, fled by bicycle to a more hospitable region. N.B.: He had just invented the bicycle when the invasion occurred, and this invention had been forced on him by the necessity of cutting four-wheeled carts longitudinally in two when he wanted to go down certain narrow paths. In any case, the chieftain Péponas was a highly educated young man; he spoke the Gallic tongue to perfection and could count up to two thirds; when they got to Trebizond, he and his family had a breathing spell; it was then that the cup-and-ball was invented. The cup-and-ball immediately enjoyed an unparalleled vogue both in the Mediterranean world and in the Extreme Orient, an incomprehensible vogue, at that, for Péponas had omitted to give directions for the use of this singular object. In general, it was recognized as a weapon of economic cast, since it returned its projectile to its sender; in short, a perfected version of the boomerang; it was through replacing this archaic weapon by the new invention that Alexander the Great made the Macedonian phalanx the invincible instrument of his great and well-known ambition. Péponas junior—for the father, full of years and honors, had departed this life—was decorated, pensioned, beatified, statufied and embalmed.

  From generation to generation, the Péponases continued the manufacture of the cup-and-ball, to such effect that, throughout the Middle Ages, there was a proverbial saying (Ah! the good old days): there are no cups-and-balls like those from Trebizond.

  In 1453, the genius of Christopher Columbus discovered a way of considerably improving the cup-and-ball; abandoning the projectile to its flight, he abolished the string; the weapons became more costly (since its entailed a new projectile each time), but certainly more efficient. Then, taking his inspiration from the ordinary hen’s egg, he replaced the wooden ball by a very fragile sphere filled with an evil-smelling liquid; this modification necessitated another: removing the hole from the ball and putting it in the stick, thus turning the latter into a tube; the whole was mounted on two wheels and equipped with a spring with a knob to pull to provoke the expulsion. So Péponas’s son, who had acquired the patent, started manufacturing cannons, and prodigiously multiplied their fortune. They were ruined and suppressed at the time of the Armenian massacres in 1912, and the sole survivor of this illustrious industrial family established herself at X ... , a little port on the Atlantic coast; but she only made the old-fashioned type of cup-an
d-ball, having lost the secret of the type called “Columbus’s egg.” Twenty years later, a young man comes into her shop and says: “Madame, the obscene trade in which you are engaged is an insult to Christian youth.”

  “Oh, Meussieu,” says she, blushing. The young man goes away. He is Théo Marcel, a little cretin who goes bathing in the sea and indulges in practical jokes in bad taste. The next day, he comes back and says to the lady: “Madame, the obscene trade in which you are engaged is an insult to Christian youth.”

  “Oh Meussieu,” says she. The young man goes out.

  Narcense, who has decided not to finish his story until he gets home, and who is still only halfway there, makes the adventure last for twenty-seven days.

  On the twenty-seventh day, a young man comes in and says to the lady: “Madame, the obscene trade in which you are engaged is an insult to Christian youth.” Mme. Péponas doesn’t answer, but the moment she sees Théo going out of the door, she pulls out a revolver which she had hidden in her blouse and mercilessly slaughters the insolent clown. Justice is done, she cries, ha, ha, ha, ha! no longer will little humorists insult the senile industiy created on the shores of the Black Sea by the Arvenian chieftain, Péponas, whose geneaology was even then lost in the night of time; so just imagine what it must be now. As for Théo, he is voiding his blood on the pavement.

  “Hallo, Saturnin. Haven’t you gone to the country this beautiful Sunday?”

  “Oh, Meussieu Narcense, I muss tell you the latest about my sister. She’s still got the idea that that young man from Obonne and his friend are gangsters she’s got to be leery of; she found out, no idea how” (here Saturnin is just slightly embarrassed; very slightly) “that they’ve gone to X ... for their holidays. And do you know what she’s done? She’s persuaded my brother to send his son there, to stay with a lady she knows, a midwife, to spy on em.”