The Bark Tree

by Raymond Queneau

  They all three went into the hut. The curé was sitting on a packing case, looking through a dilapidated issue of the Hachette Almanac. He was letting on he was extremely absorbed. Taupe hoped he would go. He didn’t. As for Pierre, he was somewhat stupefied by the appearance of this individual, and shocked by his foul smell. Catherine retreated before the fusion of filth and frock; the picturesque left her cold, and she went out and waited in the car.

  Pierre pretended to be looking around. With the tip of his gloves, he shifted various rusty screws and crusts of bread. There isn’t much, he said. Taupe showed him a teapot with a broken spout, which dated from President Fallières’s era (1906-13), and a feather duster from President Loubet’s (1899-1906). These didn’t interest the customer. Wasn’t much. But he had to bring this to an end somehow.

  “How much for that door?” asked Pierre.

  Panic-stricken, Taupe started stammering, and couldn’t manage to compose a rational sentence. The curé raised his head and, throwing the almanac onto a pile of my-movie-mags, opened his mouth and said:

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “I beg your pardon,” retorted Pierre. “I’m not addressing you, but Meussieu Taupe.”

  “Meussieu Taupe isn’t selling his door,” the priest declared.

  Taupe continued to look like a slug crossing a main road and terrified by the approach of a fast truck with wide wheels.

  “Well, Meussieu Taupe, how much will you sell me this door for?” Pierre again asked him, without deigning to answer God’s representative on earth.

  “Ah ba ba, ah ba ba,” came from Taupe.

  “I’ll give you two hundred francs for it.”

  “Meussieu Taupe isn’t selling his door,” roared the man in

  perpetual mourning, bespattering Pierre’s right sleeve with saliva.

  “I’ll tell you one thing very simply: you get on my nerves. I am not dealing with you, but Meussieu Taupe.”

  “You are dealing with me! You won’t have that door.”

  “You’re going to stop me, are you?”

  “Jesus Christ! I tell you, you won’t have it.”

  “Well, well, so you blaspheme.”

  “Ah ba ba, ha ba ba,” said Taupe, sweating profusely. Pierre was extremely embarrassed.

  The man in black looked resolute and violent. A curious person.

  “Two hundred francs in cash, and I’ll take it with me now,” he proposed to Taupe.

  “Don’t sell it to him,” yelled the man in skirts.

  “Hehe, hehe,” Taupe began, “hetried ...”

  “I beg your pardon?” asked Pierre, leaning over to try and understand what Taupe was stammering.

  “Hetried, hetried, hetriedakillme!”

  “He did?” and Pierre pointed to the sky pilot with his thumb.

  “He did! with the bar, hetriedakillme!” and the junk dealer collapsed onto his sleeping board.

  The curé hadn’t turned a hair. Pierre looked at him with interest.

  “Are you interested in this door?”

  “Zmuch as you are.”

  “But why?”

  “Same reasons as you.”

  “You have an odd voice.”

  “Mind your own ass.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Shit. Get lost.”

  “No.”

  There would be no point in concealing the fact that the situation was becoming devilish tense. Or divinely so, rather, since a representative of the cloth was present. The trouble was, the dark glasses. A curious person. Pierre turned to the junk dealer again:

  “Taupe, what is this door?”

  Sniveling, Taupe lay down on his bed. This was a subterfuge. Under his pillow was hidden an enormous 2nd Empire pistol; he got hold of it and, pointing it at the two visitors:

  “Get lost! get lost!” he screeched, keeping them covered.

  “Is it loaded, your pistol?” asked Pierre.

  “Take a look,” Taupe replied.

  Pierre took the fearsome weapon; it was, in fact, loaded. He gave it back to him.

  “Idiot, should’ve kept it,” grumbled the holy-water sprinkler.

  “I don’t stab people in the back,” replied Pierre, nobly.

  “Isn’t poisoning people stabbing them in the back?” Exploded the prayer-stool-pigeon.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  And Taupe was screeching:

  “Get lost! Get lost!”

  “All right, all right, we’re going.”

  The Abbe Rounère and Le Grand left, and behind them, Meussieu Taupe, so recently widowed, barricaded his gates, and, in a state of great emotion, went and sat down again outside his hovel, smoking his highly seasoned clay pipe, which gurgled merrily in the tranquil, but unhealthy, air.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  When dinner was over, Bébé Toutout carefully folded his napkin, and, belching freely, declared that he was highly satisfied with his meal. Then asked Etienne for a cigarette, and inquired whether the latter was not in the habit of indulging in some kind of liqueur; but Etienne was not, and this caused the dwarf to look a little glum. In the meantime, the Marcel family was silently watching him. Like a snail who happened to play the trumpet. Like a fly who might perform on the flying trapeze. Like a mustard pot that might be writing its memoirs. Like a policeman who happened to be plucking the petals of a rose. Like a lump of sugar that might have been going for a walk with a stick under its arm.

  Imperturbably, the dwarf let them look at him, and smoked in perfect peace.

  “What do we have for breakfast? coffee or chocolate?” he calmly asked.

  “Coffee,” Alberte answered, without thinking.

  “I prefer chocolate,” retorted the minimus.

  The Marcel family didn’t say a word; things were beginning to get tragic. There must be no delay in expelling this singular parasite who seemed determined to dig himself in here with them forever; and who wasn’t even trying to justify his behavior. Preceding his question with a little cough, Etienne asked him:

  “Are you going to stay the night in the hotel?”

  “Is there a hotel in Obonne?”

  “Yes, not far from here, at Hippolyte’s.”

  “Ah. I prefer to sleep here.”

  “But there isn’t a bed.”

  “Ah.”

  Etienne hasn’t got much further than he was before.

  “It’s probably time you left, if ...”

  “I’m perfectly all right here.”

  Then Théo exploded:

  “He’s making a fool out of us, this little thing is. So you think you’re going to sleep here, eh? My foot. I’m going to take you by the scruff of your neck and chuck you out like a cat that’s pissed in the corner.”

  “Oh, Théo,” says Alberte, “How can you be so vulgar!”

  “There now!” exclaimed the dwarf, triumphantly, “you see what your mother says!”

  Théo gets up, the dwarf is going to get it. But the generous Etienne stops his stepson midway, and advises him to keep calm. The dwarf is enjoying himself tremendously. Théo sits down again and mutters:

  “He won’t miss anything by waiting.”

  “We’ll see.” Then: “Believe it or not, I stayed for more than a year like this with a very respectable old lady, the Baroness du Poil. I had a marvelous life, champagne with every meal, the car whenever I wanted it, and all the rest of it. All I had to do was gnash my teeth like this” (he gnashes), “and she gave me everything I wanted.”

  “And why didn’t you stay any longer?” they ask him.

  “She died,” he sighs, pretending to wipe away a tear. “She died of purulent hemorrhoids. Poor dear old lady! Poor dear old thing! What a kind heart she had!”

  “And after she died, what happened?”

  “Her heirs asked me to leave. They were stronger than I was, weren’t they? I went. After that I lived with... But I’m not going to tell you my life history.”

  “I
t seems pretty strange, though,” says Etienne.

  “Pah,” says the dwarf. “Nothing so very extraordinary about it. You do the best you can.”

  “Then, if I understand you right, you’re intending to find the equivalent of the Baroness du Poil here?”

  Théo laughs. So does the dwarf.

  “Sright.”

  Alberte smiles. So does Etienne. The conversation is getting very friendly.

  “So you think you’re going to stay here, and eat and sleep here?”

  “Why not?”

  “But how are you reckoning on doing that?”

  This is becoming very amusing.

  “Through fear and cunning.”

  “Through fear?”

  “Well, yes. Meussieu Théo wasn’t very much at ease when he was alone with me. Were you, Meussieu Théo?”

  Meussieu Théo doesn’t answer. Etienne goes on:

  “But aren’t you afraid of being thrown out by force?”

  “That’s a risk to be run.”

  “Do you still hope to spend the night here?”

  “Of course.”

  “You know there isn’t a bed.”

  “You’re not going to tell me you sleep on the floor!”

  “I mean, we haven’t got a guest room.”

  “An armchair will do for me.”

  “A saucepan, even,” says Théo.

  Alberte and Etienne burst out laughing.

  “That’s right, make fun of me, now! Rude thing! Boor!”

  “He’s insulting us now.”

  “I,” says Etienne, “think the time has come for you to go.”

  “You’d even be wise to,” snarls Théo.

  “Now now, don’t get excited,” they tell him.

  The midget gets down from his chair and goes into Théo’s room, to fetch his cap and suitcase, no doubt. But he doesn’t come out again; and very calmly shuts the door behind him, and locks it.

  “Good night, all,” he calls to the Marcel family, who are crying, who are crying with laughter.

  “Oh, that’s too funny,” they say. “Well, what a nerve,” they add, in tears, in tears, in tears of laughter.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  It was decided that Alberte should go and spend the night with Mme. Pigeonnier, their neighbor. Théo insisted on taking his mother there, which meant that Etienne was left alone in the house.

  There was still a light on in the dwarf’s room. Etienne knocked.

  “Tizit?” came from the other side.

  “Are you sleepy?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Could you answer a question I’d like to ask you?”

  “If it isn’t nosy.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “I’d like to ask you what you think of Appearances.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wanted to ask you if you sometimes think about....”

  “Life?”

  “For instance.”

  The dwarf coughed, clearing his throat.

  “Wait a moment, will you,” Etienne called, “I’m going to get a chair.”

  Which he did. He sat down, and stuck his ear against the door.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “When I say life,” Bébé Toutout began, “I’m talking about the life lived by men, by myself; not about life in general, including the life of the fish, for instance.”

  “That’s interesting, too,” murmured Etienne.

  “Oh shit,” said the dwarf, “if you’re going to start criticizing, there’s no point in my going on with my lecture.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m listening carefully.”

  “I won’t talk about the lives of all men, either. Now, it’s like this. Some lives are full of possibilities, others are full of impossibilities. A man who sees the impossible closing all avenues to him, he’s described, so it seems, as despairing. But you also have to know why every road becomes impassable, and why the ship sinks, and why the days are dark. Because if the impossibilities spring from a deficiency in altitude, then it’s no longer a question of despair, but of ridicule. You tall people, you must think a despairing dwarf hideous; luckily you mostly only think of him in the category of the grotesque. I might tell you that, for my part, I see all these relationships the other way around. I scarcely care about the laughter of people between whose legs I am forced to pass, or about the giggles of people who at first take me for a child. It’s disappointing, of course, but I repeat, I scarcely care. Nor about all the possibilities that my height prevents me from envisaging. I can’t be an archbishop, or a general, or an undertaker, or a swimming instructor, or a professor. Among other things, I shall never become a great man. That would be terrible, if I were the right height, but as I midget my way around, it’s quite different. I find giraffes comic, and guinea pigs touching. There are only two roads open to me: the circus, or the one I took.”

  “Which is?”

  “Parasitism through terror. I live on old women’s cowardice, and I’d live on that of babes in arms if it could be of any use to me. What d’you think of my beard?”

  “Very beautiful, but white easily gets dirty, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not so bad as all that. It makes me look like a gnome; one more card up my sleeve.”

  “Do you ever think of anything other than your tricks?”

  “Of course I do. Didn’t you hear the result of my reflections on the mass perturbation my dwarfishness causes?”

  “Alas!”

  “What d’you mean, alas?”

  “I don’t want to offend you yet again, but I must tell you that I find your reflections on masturbation somewhat irrelevant.”

  “Oh¡¡” (¡¡—they’re indignation marks).

  “They don’t make sense, your thoughts about the possible, the impossible and the grotesque. Or rather, it’s not so much that they don’t make sense, as that they’re rather confused. They’re like trifle.”

  “You! you have a funny way of philosophizing!”

  “There! the dirty word is out! Philosophizing! But, my poor Bébé Toutout, you’re the one who philosophizes like a whistle in an old sock.”

  “I know what it’s all about better than you do, though. It’s actual experience what I’m telling you.”

  “No. It’s very abstract, on the contrary. I’ll tell you what I think. In the first place, when I see a dwarf, I’m suspicious.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m suspicious because he may well not be a dwarf. It would be too simple if a little fellow with a beard were just quite simply a dwarf. The world is much more complicated than that.”

  “There are dwarfs, though. Me, for example.”

  “No. All things considered, they don’t exist. They’re absurd and immoral. And furthermore. I’ve never seen one.”

  “Oh! !”

  Bébé Toutout jumps down from his bed; the key turns in the lock and the door opens; he appears, dressed in striped pajamas; he’s put on his cap with the earflaps to sleep in.

  “Well then, not a dwarf? Me?”

  At this moment, Etienne flings himself on him, grabs him by the seat of his pants, and carries him off, beard downward, intending to throw him out.

  This is a very bad action, and it greatly astonishes Bébé Toutout. He’d never have thought that this young man, who was so gentle, so timid, was so unpleasant. If it had been Théo, he wouldn’t have been surprised, but coming from this young metaphysician, it’s staggering.

  In the meantime, a sports car pulls up outside the halfhouse. Pierre and Catherine and a third individual in skirts get out of it. Amazed, Etienne lets go of Bebe Toutout, who goes rolling over on the gravel, but immediately picks himself up and runs back to bed, fuming like a thief.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  Alberte took the train at about 8 o’clock. Etienne had already left. She didn’t dare go back home. Théo kept Mme. Pigeonnier company until 10. Then, hav
ing had breakfast and suffered the necessary caresses, he decided to go and see what was happening in the house.

  He found Bébé Toutout in the kitchen, cleaning his shoes.

  “Good morning, Théo,” said the dwarf in friendly fashion, without looking up.

  To which the young man replied:

  “Huh, still there, eh, you!”

  Bébé Toutout seemed to be in an excellent mood; waves of gaiety were making his freshly brushed beard oscillate; he was zestfully polishing his miniature oxfords.

  “Sit down,” he ordered Théo, “I’m going to tell you a story.” He adds: “A story about your father.”

  His appetite whetted, Théo sat down.

  “Do you know a meussieu called Pierre?”

  “Shdthink so; he’s a pal of my stepfather’s.”

  “Is he your stepfather, that young man?”

  “Shdve thought it was obvious; I look as old as him.” (He sits up straight.)

  “Yes. And Mme. Cloche, you know her?”

  “No. Don’t know her.”

  “And Catherine?”

  “Oh, I know her. She’s Pierre’s girl. Wheredger meet them?”

  “They came here.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes. At the very moment when your father, your stepfather, was going to throw me out.”

  “Go on! How’d he manage?”

  “That’s another story. He stabbed me in the back.”

  Théo cackles.

  “Finished? Right. Well, at the very moment, a car stopped outside your house. Your stepfather let go of me and I rushed back and locked myself in your room again. Then I heard the people from the car coming in; there were three of them: Pierre, Catherine and Mme. Cloche. They went into the dining room and started a great discussion, it was terribly complicated, about a door.”

  “A door?”

  “Yes. The one called Pierre insisted that there mustn’t be any more misunderstanding about it: he didn’t know what was behind the door; and your stepfather said the same. Then that Mme. Cloche said that it was all Clovis’s fault—you know who Clovis is?”

  “No—no idea.”

  “In the end, she said she’d been mistaken about them; but that now one thing was sure, and that was that the door was hanging on the wall like a mirror or a picture. Which the others thought very strange. Then they started talking very softly, and I couldn’t hear anything, except that they were talking about someone called Pôte, and a woman called Ernestine—you know who they are?”