I was going on seven, I’d soon be going to school, I shouldn’t be given any wrong ideas … the other shopkeepers’ children would also be going to school soon. The time for tomfoolery was past. On our way home from deliveries he’d make me little sermons about the seriousness of existence.
Whacks alone won’t do it.
Foreseeing that I’d be a thief, my father blared like a trombone. One afternoon Tom and I had emptied the sugar bowl. It was never forgotten. But that wasn’t my only fault. In addition my behind was always dirty, I didn’t wipe myself, I didn’t have time, that was my justification, we were always in too much of a hurry … I never wiped myself properly, I always had a sock coming to me … and hurried to avoid it … I left the can door open so as to hear them coming … I shat like a bird between two storms …
I bounded upstairs and they couldn’t find me … I’d go around for weeks with shit on my ass. I was conscious of the smell, I’d be careful not to get too close to people.
“He’s as filthy as thirty-six pigs! He has no self-respect! He’ll never make a living. Every boss in the world will fire him! …” He saw a shitty future in store for me.
“He stinks! … We’ll always have him on our hands …”
My father looked far ahead and all he saw was gloom. He put it in Latin for emphasis: ”Sana … corpore sano.” My mother didn’t know what to say.
A little further down the Passage there was a family of bookbinders. Their children never went out.
The mother was a baroness. De Caravals was her name. She didn’t want her children to learn bad language at any cost.
They played together all year long behind the windowpanes, putting their noses in each other’s mouths and both hands at the same time. Their complexions were like celery.
Once a year Madame de Caravals took a vacation all by herself. She’d go visiting her cousins in Périgord. She told everybody how her cousins came to meet her at the station in their “break” drawn by four prize-winning horses. They would drive together through endless estates … The peasants would troop out to kneel on the castle drive as they passed … that was the kind of stuff she dished out.
One year she took the two kids with her. She came back alone in the wintertime, much later than usual. She had on deep mourning. You couldn’t see her face behind all the veils. She offered no explanation. She went straight up to bed. She never spoke to anybody after that.
The change had been too much for those children who never went out. The fresh air had killed them … That disaster gave everyone pause. From the rue Thérèse to the Place Gaillon all you heard about was oxygen … for more than a month.
As for us, we often had the chance to go to the country. Uncle Édouard, my mother’s brother, was only too delighted when he could do something for us. He’d suggest excursions. My father never accepted. He always found some pretext for getting out of them. He didn’t want to be beholden to anybody, that was his motto.
Uncle Édouard was up-to-date, he had a way with machinery. He was mighty clever with his hands. He wasn’t extravagant, he wasn’t the kind to involve us in a spending spree, but even so the slightest outing is bound to be rather costly … “A hundred francs,” my mother would say, “don’t last long when you go out.”
Nevertheless the sad story of the Caravals had got the whole Passage so upset that something had to be done. It was suddenly discovered that everybody looked “peaked.” Advice was passed from shop to shop. No one could think of anything but microbes and the perils of infection. The kids came in for a wave of parental solicitude. They were made to take whole jugfuls, whole barrelfuls of cod-liver oil, reinforced, in double doses. Frankly, it didn’t do much good … it made them belch. It made them greener than ever; they could hardly stand up to begin with, now the oil killed their appetite.
I have to admit that the Passage was an unbelievable pesthole. It was made to kill you off, slowly but surely, what with the little mongrels’ urine, the shit, the sputum, the leaky gas pipes. The stink was worse than the inside of a prison. Down under the glass roof the sun is so dim you can eclipse it with a candle. Everybody began to gasp for breath. The Passage took cognizance of its asphyxiating stench … We talked of nothing but the country, hills and valleys, the wonders of nature …
Édouard offered once more to take us out one Sunday, all the way to Fontainebleau. Papa finally gave in. He got our clothes ready and the provisions.
Édouard’s first three-wheeler was a one-cylinder job, as massive as a field howitzer, with half a coachman’s seat in front.
We got up that Sunday much earlier than usual. My ass was given a thorough wiping. We waited a whole hour at the meeting place on the rue Gaillon before the contraption got there. Our departure was something. It had taken at least six men to push the thing from the Pont Bineau. The tanks were filled. The carburetor spewed in all directions, the steering wheel quaked … There was a series of terrible explosions. They tried it with the crank, they tried it with a strap … They harnessed themselves to it by three and sixes … Finally a tremendous explosion … the engine began to turn. Twice fire broke out … and was quickly extinguished. My uncle said: “Pile in, ladies and gentlemen, I think she’s warm now. Now we can get started …” It took nerve to stay put. The crowd pressed in on us. Caroline, my mother, and I wedged ourselves in. We were tied so tightly to the seat, so squeezed in among the clothes and gear that only my tongue protruded. But I came in for a good little whack before we moved off, just to keep me from getting any ideas.
The three-wheeler bucked and settled back … It gave two, three big jolts … A terrible crashing and belching were heard … The crowd shrank back in terror … They thought we were goners … But the monster was climbing the rue Reaumur in frantic fits and starts … My father had rented a bike … Since he couldn’t pedal up the hill, he pushed us from behind … The slightest stop would have been the end … he had to push with all his might … At the Square du Temple we stopped a while. We started off again with a crash. In full flight my uncle poured grease, straight out of the bottle, into the connecting rods, the chain, and the whole works. It always had to be swimming in grease, like the engine of an ocean liner. There’s trouble in the front seat. My mother has a bellyache. Jf she takes time out, if we stop, the engine is perfectly capable of conking out … if it stalls, our goose is cooked … My mother bears up heroically. My uncle, perched on his infernal machine, looking like a shaggy deep-sea diver surrounded by a thousand tongues of flame, adjures us over the handlebars to hold tight … My father is tagging after us. He pedals to the rescue. He picks up the parts as they fall off, pieces of levers and pedals, nuts, cotter pins—and some bigger things. We hear him cursing and swearing louder than the clatter of the machine.
The cobblestones were the cause of our disaster … At Clignancourt they snapped all three chains … At the Vanves tollgate they demolished the front springs … We lost all our lamps and the big horn shaped like a dragon’s maw in the rills where the road was being repaired at La Villette … Near Picpus and on the highway we lost so much stuff that my father missed some of it …
I could hear him cursing behind us: that it was the end of the world and night would catch us on the road.
Tom ambled along ahead of our expedition, we took our bearings by his asshole. He had time to piss wherever he pleased. Uncle Édouard was more than clever, he had real genius for repairs of all sorts. Toward the end of our outings he had everything in his hands, his fingers were doing all the work, between jolts he juggled with splinters and wrist pins, he played the leaks and pistons like a trumpet. His acrobatics were marvelous to watch. But at a certain moment everything came tumbling out on the road all the same … We’d go into a drift, the steering gear would founder, we’d run plunk into the ditch. Crashing, gushing, snorting, the thing would run us all into the mud.
My father came up bellowing … The tin can let out one last BWAAH … And that was all. The bastard passed out on us.
W
e stank up the countryside with crankcase oil. We disentangled ourselves from the catafalque … and then we pushed the whole thing back to Asnières. That’s where the garage was. My father was magnificent in action, his calves bulged in his ribbed woolen stockings … The ladies along the road couldn’t take their eyes off him. My mama was proud of him … The engine had to be cooled off, we had a small collapsible canvas bucket for the purpose. We’d take water from fountains. Our three-wheeler looked like a factory mounted on a pushcart. There were so many hooks and pointed gadgets sticking out on all sides that we ripped our clothes to tatters pushing …
At the tollgate my uncle and Papa went into a bar for a beer. The ladies and myself collapsed wheezing and panting on a bench outside and waited for our pop. Everybody was in a foul temper. In the end I was the victim. Storm-clouds hung over the family. Auguste was aching for a tantrum. He was just looking for a pretext. He was pooped, he was sniffing like a bulldog. No one but me would do. the others would have told him where to get off … He took a stiff drink of pernod. He wasn’t used to it, it was a dumb thing to do … On the grounds that I’d torn my pants he gave me a royal thrashing. My uncle stuck up for me, kind of. That only added to his fury.
It was on the way back from the country that I got my worst lickings. There are always crowds of people at the city gates. I screeched as loud as I could just to get his goat. I stirred up mob sentiment, I rolled under the café tables. I heaped mountains of shame on him. He blushed from head to foot. He hated attracting attention. I hoped it would make him bust. We started off again with our tails between our legs, our backs bent over the infernal machine.
There were always such scenes on the way back from our trips that my uncle gave up the whole idea.
“Of course the air is good for the little fellow,” they said, “but the automobile gets him upset …”
Mademoiselle Méhon had the shop straight across from us. You can’t imagine what a dog she was. She was always trying to pick a fight with us, she never stopped plotting, she was jealous. And yet she was doing all right with her corsets. She was an old woman and she still had her faithful clientele, handed down from mother to daughter for the last forty years. Women that wouldn’t have let just anybody see their bosoms.
Things came to a head over Tom, who’d got into the habit of pissing against the shopwindows. Still, he wasn’t the only one. Every mutt in the neighborhood did worse. The Passage was their promenade.
The Méhon woman crossed the street for no other purpose than to provoke my mother, to make a scene. It was scandalous, she bellowed, the way our mangy cur befouled her window … Her words resounded on both sides of the shop and up to the glass roof. The passersby took sides. It was a bitter brawl. Grandma, ordinarily so careful about her language, gave her a good tongue-lashing.
When Papa came home from the office and heard about it, he flew into such a temper you couldn’t bear to look at him. He rolled his eyes so wildly in the direction of the old bag’s shop window we were afraid he was going to strangle her. We did our best to stop him, we clung to his overcoat … He had developed the strength of a legionnaire. He dragged us into the shop … He bellowed loud enough to be heard on the fourth floor that he was going to make hash out of that damn corsetmaker … “I shouldn’t have told you about it,” my mother wailed. The harm was done.
In the weeks that followed my life was a little more peaceful. My father was absorbed. Whenever he had a moment’s free time, he’d glare at the corset shop. She did the same. They’d spy on each other from behind the curtains, floor by floor. The moment he got home from the office, he’d begin to wonder what she might be up to. It was directly across the street … When she was in her kitchen on the second floor, he’d be standing in the corner of ours, muttering ferocious threats …
“Will you look at the rotten old bag! Isn’t she ever going to poison herself? … Couldn’t she take some mushrooms? Couldn’t she swallow her false teeth? Hell! She even examines her food for ground glass …” He couldn’t stop staring at her. He had no time for my propensities … It was better in a way.
The neighbors were afraid to commit themselves. Dogs urinated all over the place, on their windows too, not just on hers. It was no use sprinkling sulphur, the fact is that the Passage des Bérésinas was a kind of sewer. Piss brings company. Anybody who felt like it pissed on us, even grown-ups, especially if it was raining out in the street. They came in just for that. People even crapped in the little side alley, the Allée Primorgueil. What call had we to complain? Often a pisser, with or without a dog. gets to be a customer.
After a while my father wasn’t satisfied with bristling at the corsetmaker, he’d work himself up against Grandma. “The dirty old bag—huh!—with her stinking mutt, you want me to tell you what she’s been doing? … You don’t know? … She’s sly … she’s underhanded! She’s an accomplice. Well, there you have it. They’re in it together, cooking up some lousy trick … and it’s nothing new! Ah, those two bitches! … What for? You really want to know? To drive me raving mad. That’s all. That’s the long and the short of it.”
“Come, come, Auguste. I assure you … You’re imagining things. You make a mountain out of the least word …”
“I’m imagining things? Why don’t you come right out and say I’m nuts! Go ahead! Imagining things! Ah, Clémence, you’re incorrigible. Life goes on and you don’t learn a thing … We’re being persecuted, that’s what! Stepped on! Ridiculed! They’re dishonoring me. And what have you to say? That I’m imagining things! No! Oh, it’s too much!”
And damned if he didn’t burst into tears. It was his turn.
We weren’t the only ones in the Passage with stands, kidney-shaped tables, little chairs, and fluted Louis XVI pieces. Our competitors, the junk dealers, sided with Méhon. That was to be expected. My father couldn’t sleep anymore. His nightmare was cleaning the sidewalk outside our shop. He’d wash down the flags every morning before going to work.
He’d come out with his pail, his broom, his rag, and the little trowel he’d slip under the turds, to pick them up and throw them in the sawdust. What a humiliation for a man with his education! The turds increased in number and there were many more in front of our shop, lengthwise and crosswise, than anywhere else. Obviously a plot.
Mademoiselle Méhon was at her second-floor window grinning from ear to car as she watched my father battling the shit. It gave her a kick that lasted all day. The neighbors collected to count the turds.
Bets were laid that he wouldn’t be able to clean it all up.
He’d make it fast, then he’d rush in to put on his collar and tie. He had to be at La Coccinelle before anyone else to open the mail.
Baron Méfaise, the director, counted on him implicitly.
This was when tragedy hit the Cortilènes. A drama of passion at Number 147 in the Passage. It was in the papers; for a whole week there was a dense crowd parading, grunting, pondering, and spitting outside their shop.
I’d seen Madame Cortilène lots of times, my mother made her blouses of fine Irish linen with lace insets. I remember well her long eyelashes, her eyes full of gentleness, and the looks she gave even a kid like me. I’d often jerk off thinking of her.
During fittings you get to see shoulders, skin … The moment she left, it never failed, I’d run up to the can on the fourth floor and masturbate strenuously. I’d come down with big rings under my eyes.
Those people had scenes too, but they were over jealousy. Her husband didn’t want her to go out. He did the going out. He was a former officer, small and dark-haired, with a terrible temper. They sold rubber goods at 147, drainage tubes, instruments, and “articles” …
Everyone in the Passage said she was too pretty to keep that kind of shop …
One day her jealous husband came home unexpectedly. He found her upstairs starting up with two men; it gave him such a shock that he pulled out his revolver and shot her first and then himself, straight in the mouth. They died in each other’s
arms.
He hadn’t been out more than fifteen minutes.
My father’s revolver was a military model, he hid it in the bedside table. The caliber was something enormous. He had brought it home from the army.
The Cortilène tragedy might have given my father grounds for the worst tantrums, something to yell about. Actually it made him clam up. He hardly spoke at all.
There was no lack of turds on the sidewalk outside our door. With all the people who passed, there was so much spit it made the pavement sticky. He cleaned it all up. And not a peep out of him. That was such a revolution in his habits that my mother began to watch him when he locked himself up in his room. He’d stay there for hours. He neglected his deliveries, he gave up drawing. She’d look in through the keyhole. He’d pick up his gat, he’d turn the cylinder. You’d hear “click, click” … He seemed to be practicing up.
One day he went out alone and came back with cartridges, a whole box of them. He opened them up in front of us, to make sure we’d got a good look. He didn’t say a word, he just put the box down on the table beside the noodles. My mother was scared stiff; she flung herself on the floor, she clasped his knees and implored him to throw it all in the garbage. It was no use. He was as stubborn as a mule. He didn’t even answer. He shook her off roughly and swilled a quart of the red stuff all by himself. He refused to eat. When my mother kept after him, he pushed her against the cupboard. Then he beat it down to the cellar and closed the trap over his head.
We heard him shooting: Ping! Ping! Ping! … He took his time, the shot rang out, followed by a tremendous echo. He must have been shooting at the empty barrels. My mother called down to him, screaming through the cracks …
“Auguste! Auguste! I implore you! Think of the child! Think of me! Call your father, Ferdinand!”
Death on the Installment Plan Page 8
