He’d never been able to stomach me … “It’s lucky his father isn’t here,” my mother consoled herself. “He’d feel so badly. He’d be beside himself, poor man … to see you so ungracious … so boorish … so antagonistic … so unfriendly … so horrid to everybody! … How do you expect to get ahead? Especially nowadays, the way things are in business … with all the competition? You think you’re the only one that’s looking for a job? Only yesterday he was saying: ‘Good Lord, if only he lands on his feet! We’re on the brink of disaster …’ “
Just then Uncle Édouard turned up … he saved my life … He was in high good humor … He gave everybody in general a good hearty greeting … He’d just put on his beautiful checked suit for the first time, the new summer style, from England as a matter of fact, with a mauve derby, the latest thing, fastened to his buttonhole with a thin ribbon. He seized both my hands, he shook them heartily, a real knockdown, drag-out “shake-hands.” He was wild about England … He’d always wanted to take a little trip over there … He kept putting it off because he wanted to learn the names for the things in his business first … pump, and so on. He was counting on me to teach him the language … My mother was still sniveling about my attitude, my repulsive, hostile ways … Far from siding with her he took my part right away … In two words he told all those insignificant cockroaches that they were dense, that they didn’t know a thing about foreign influences … especially England … When you come from over there, it changes you completely! It makes you more laconic, more reserved, it gives you a certain aloofness, in a word, distinction. And it’s a good thing … Why, of course! In high-class business nowadays … especially when you’re selling … the main thing is to hold your tongue … It’s a sign of breeding… that’s what counts in a salesman today … That’s right … The old style is dead, through, washed up … your slobbering … obsequious … voluble salesman …. People are sick of them … That’s all right for punks out in the sticks, for small-town jokers … In Paris you can’t get away with it … If you try that stuff in the Sender quarter, they’ll throw you out … It makes a crawling, servile impression … Got to keep up with the times … According to him I was dead right … That was the line he gave them …
His patter was a great comfort to my mother … it set her mind at rest … she heaved big sighs … she was really relieved … But the rest of them, the lousy stool pigeons, were still hostile … They had their ideas … and nobody could make them change their mind … They griped in accompaniment … I’d never get ahead with those kind of manners. It was out of the question.
Uncle Édouard did his best, he racked his brains and talked himself blue in the face … They stuck to their guns … They were stubborner than mules, they kept repeating that anywhere in the world … if you want to earn an honest living, you’ve got to be friendly and courteous … that’s the first requirement.
Days and days passed and we hardly saw any more customers. It was midsummer and they’d all gone to the country. My mother finally decided that in spite of her bad leg and the doctor’s orders, she’d go out to Chatou and try to sell a little something. I’d keep the shop while she was gone. We had no other alternative … we had to bring in some money. First to buy me a new suit and two pairs of shoes, and then to paint our whole shop front in attractive colors before the new season started.
Our windows looked heartbreaking beside the others … They were pearl-gray and greenish, while next door there was Vertune’s dry-cleaning shop, all brand-new, a fancy yellow and sky-blue, and on the other side the Gomeuse stationery store, an immaculate white, decorated with scrolls and jiggers and a sweet little pattern of little birds on branches … All that meant a big outlay … And we’d have to do it.
She didn’t say a word to my father, she just took the train with an enormous bundle weighing at least forty-five pounds.
Out in Chatou she got started right away … She scrounged a stand from behind the Town Hall and set herself up behind the station, a good location. She handed out all her cards to let people know about the shop. In the afternoon she began traipsing around again, loaded like a mule, all over town, looking for villas where some customers might be hiding … When she came home to the Passage in the evening, she was so done in she could hardly stand up, her leg was so tied up with cramps she could have screamed, her knee was swollen, and the worst of all was her dislocated ankle … She stretched out in my room while waiting for my father to come home … She put on soothing lotion … good cold compresses.
On her suburban tours she sold her stuff any old place dirt-cheap, so as to bring in a little cash … We needed it so bad … “So as not to haul it back home,” she explained … Only two or three people came to the shop all the time she was gone … So it made more sense to close up completely … that way I could go with her to the suburbs and tote her biggest bundles. We didn’t have Madame Divonne anymore to hold the shop down when we were absent. We hung out a sign saying: “Returning immediately.” We took the door handle with us.
Uncle Édouard really loved his sister, no fooling, it got him down to see her so miserable, wasting away, getting more and more run-down from all her work and troubles … He was worried about her health and her morale … He thought of her all the time. The day after a trip to Chatou she couldn’t stand up, her face was ravaged with the pain in her leg. She whined like a dog and lay all twisted on the linoleum … She’d flop on the floor as soon as my father went out. She said it was cooler than the bed. If he caught her like that when he came home from the office, wan and disheveled, massaging her leg in the dish-pan, her skirts hiked up to her chin, he beat it upstairs, he pretended he hadn’t seen her, he raced past, he was gone in a flash. He’d plunge into his typewriting or his watercolors … We always sold a few, especially his “Sailboats,” we had a whole collection of them, and the “Councils of Cardinals” … They had the liveliest colors … Really striking … Those things always look good in a room. And it was high time he got a wiggle on … It was coming on the end of the month … To make up for closing in the daytime during our wanderings through Chatou, we stayed open pretty late … People would go for a stroll after dinner … Especially if a storm came up … If a customer came in, my mother, quick as lightning, hid the basin and all her wads of cotton under the couch in the middle of the room … She’d pull herself up with a smile … She’d start her spiel … Around her neck, I remember well, she’d tie a big muslin cabbage-bow … They were all the rage at the time … It made her head look very big.
Uncle Édouard worked like a dog too, in his own way, but he had nothing to be sorry about, he got results … He was doing better and better in his line … bicycle accessories … That was getting to be a good business, very good in fact. Soon he was able to buy a share in a garage, on the edge of Levallois, with some reliable friends.
He was enterprising by nature and besides he was crazy about inventions … any kind of mechanical idea … Those things really sent him … Right away he’d invested the four thousand francs of his inheritance in a patent for a bicycle pump, the latest thing, it folded up so small you could keep it in your pocket … He always had two or three of them on him, ready to demonstrate. He’d blow them up people’s noses . . He pretty near lost his four thousand francs. The sellers were crooks … He managed to wriggle out of it thanks to his quick wits and a telephone call … a conversation he’d overheard at the last minute … An amazing stroke of luck! … In another minute he’d have been cooked …
My mother admired my uncle. She wanted me to be like him … After all I needed a model … For want of my father, my uncle was somebody to look up to … She didn’t say it straight out, but she dropped hints … In my father’s opinion Édouard was a hell of an example, he was idiotic, absolutely unbearable, grasping, vulgar, always getting a kick out of something nonsensical … He got on my father’s nerves … with his mechanical gadgets, his jalopies, his three-wheelers, his funny-looking pumps! Just hearing him talk irritated the hell ou
t of him.
When my mother took it into her head to sing her brother’s praises, to tell everybody about his plans, his success, his bright ideas, he’d always interrupt her … He wouldn’t stand for it. Certainly not. He’d made up his mind once and for all … He put it all down to luck … “He’s disgustingly lucky and that’s all there is to it …” That was my father’s verdict. He never went any further. He couldn’t run him down anymore, we still owed him money and gratitude … But he had to hold himself in to keep from giving him a piece of his mind … Édouard must have known … It was perfectly obvious … He put up with my father’s dislike, he didn’t want to make trouble, he was always thinking of his sister.
He was very tactful, he just dropped in for a minute to see how we were getting along … wasn’t Mama feeling a little better? He was alarmed about the way she looked and the monumental loads she peddled around … Afterwards her joints were so stiff she’d moan for days on end … It worried him more and more … She was getting worse … He finally decided to speak to my father … The three of them talked it over, and finally they agreed it was high time she took a rest … that this couldn’t go on … But how could she rest? They hit on a plan … we’d take on a cleaning woman, maybe two three hours a day, even that would be a relief … She wouldn’t have to climb stairs nearly so much … She wouldn’t have to sweep under the furniture … she wouldn’t need to go shopping … But how in our present circumstances could we spend all that money? … The whole thing was a pipe dream, sheer lunacy … It would be feasible only if I found work … Then, with my earnings, which would go into the till after all, maybe, once we’d paid the rent, we could think about a maid … That would make it easier for Mama … She wouldn’t have to work so hard or run around so much … They’d thought this out all by themselves … They were delighted with their decision … They’d appeal to my better nature … they’d put me to the test. I wasn’t going to be a perverse, self-centered screwball anymore … Now I too would have my role, my aim in life! To make things easier for my mama! … On the double, boy … Get in there and fight … find yourself a job! That’s the ticket! As soon as they’d bought me my job-hunting suit … pronto, roll up your sleeves … do your stuff! No more mistakes! No more shilly-shallying! Down to business and no more questions! Show your mettle! Your perseverance! By God, I would! What a marvelous goal in life! It was already in the bag, I thought …
First I needed shoes. We went to the Prince Consort again … The Broomfields after all were a little too expensive … especially for two pairs with buttons … And yet, once you begin moving around, what you really need is three or four pairs.
For the suit and pants I had measurements taken at the Deserving Classes, near Les Halles, that was a gilt-edge firm, with a reputation going back a hundred years, especially for all sorts of cheviots and even for “dressy” goods, stuff that lasted practically forever … “Working-man’s outfits” they called them … Only the price was steep. A terrible sacrifice!
It was still August, I was being outfitted for the winter … The warm weather doesn’t last long … But at that particular moment the heat was stifling … Oh well, it wouldn’t be long, I’d live through it … The cold, the bad weather, goes on and on … In the meantime, while I was looking around, suppose I suffocated to death … hell, I’d simply carry my coat over my arm. I’d put it on as I was ringing the bell … it was simple …
My mother hadn’t said how much it would take out of our household funds to outfit me … from top to toe … Considering our resources, it was a staggering sum … We scraped the bottom of the drawers … She ran herself ragged, she racked her brains, she’d dash out to Le Vésinet and come back by the next train, hightail it to Neuilly, to Chatou on market days, hauling her whole stock, everything that wasn’t too repulsive … that was more or less negotiable … She couldn’t sell it … She couldn’t make up the amount … It was a real headache … we were always twenty or twenty-five or thirty-five francs short … On top of the taxes that kept raining down on us and the seamstress’s wages and the rent that was two months overdue … An avalanche, it was sickening … She didn’t say a word to Papa … She kept looking for some new dodge … She took five of his best watercolors to the rue d’Aboukir, to old Madame Heurgon Gustave (a real filthy junk shop), for less than a quarter of the usual price. On consignment, so to speak … In short, she tried dozens of crummy expedients to scrape up the full amount … She wouldn’t buy anything on credit … After desperate weeks and all sorts of plots and stratagems I was finally dressed, absolutely resplendent, good strong material, but very hot … When I saw myself dolled up brand-new, I lost some of my confidence! Hell! It made me feel funny. I still had the will, but nasty doubts began to crop up … Maybe I’d perspire too much in my winter suit? I was like a walking oven …
It was God’s truth that I didn’t feel the least bit pleased with myself anymore, or optimistic about the future … The immediate prospect of facing bosses … of reeling off my cock-and-bull stories, of shutting myself up in their rotten morgues, gave me a pain in the gizzard. Over in lousy England I’d got out of the habit of being shut in … I’d have to get used to it again. It was no joke … It knocked me for a loop just to look at a possible boss! It made me gag … Just figuring out how to get to places gave me the creeps … It was so hot the nameplates on the doors were melting … It was 102 in the shade.
Of course what my folks were saying was perfectly reasonable … that I was at the critical age, the turning point … this was the time to make a supreme effort … to force the gates of destiny … to start a career … it was now or never … All that was fine and dandy … But even if I took off my suit, my collar, my shoes, I couldn’t stop sweating … The sweat ran down in streams … I took the itineraries I knew. I passed outside the Gorloge’s place … It gave me the shivers to see their house and the big carriage door … Just thinking about that incident gave me a twinge in the asshole … Holy shit! Some sweet memory!
Faced with the enormity of my task … thinking it over, I lost heart, I just wanted to sit down … I hadn’t much money to spend on bocks … even little glasses for ten centimes … I hung around in doorways … There was always plenty of shade and treacherous drafts … I sneezed something terrible … It got to be a habit while I was thinking … I kept thinking … I thought so much that in the end I almost agreed with my father … I realized … experience proved it … that I was worthless … I had disastrous impulses … I was completely thickheaded and lazy … I didn’t deserve their great kindness … their terrible sacrifices … I felt absolutely unworthy, infectious, loathsome … I knew what I had to do and I struggled desperately, but I wasn’t up to it … less than ever … I wasn’t improving with age … And I was getting thirstier and thirstier … The heat in itself is a calamity … Looking for a job in August is the most thirsty-making thing in the world, on account of the stairs and the terror that parches your throat every time … while you’re cooling your heels … I thought of my mother … of her leg and the cleaning woman we might be able to take on if I could get somebody to hire me … It didn’t revive my enthusiasm … I lashed myself, I screwed up all my strength to rise to the ideal, I couldn’t feel sublime anymore. Since Gorloge I had lost all my enthusiasm about work. It was pitiful! And in spite of all the sermons I’d had, I felt that I was more miserable than all the other bastards, more woebegone than the whole lot of them together … What disgusting egotism! All I cared about was my own troubles, and there they were, all of them horrible, they made me stink worse than a senile camembert … I was rotting in the heat, collapsing with sweat and shame, climbing stairs, oozing over the bells, I was falling apart, I’d lost all dignity, all character.
With nothing on my mind but a slight bellyache, I drifted through the old streets, rue du Paradis, rue d’Hautcville, rue des Jeûneurs, the Sentier quarter … in the end I took off not only my heavy jacket but also my extra-solid celluloid collar, it would have killed a dog, and
besides it gave me pimples. I got dressed again on the landing. I looked up more addresses, I found them in the directory. At the post office I drew up lists. I hadn’t any money left for a drink. My mother left her purse, the little silver one, knocking around on the furniture … I eyed it avidly … Such heat is demoralizing … Frankly, I came damn near swiping it … At a certain point … two steps from the fountain … I’d get mighty thirsty … I think my mother noticed, she gave me two francs more …
When I came back from my long wanderings, always futile and useless, up and down stairs and neighborhoods, I had to fix myself up before going back into the Passage, so I wouldn’t look too miserable, too crestfallen at meals. That wouldn’t have gone down at all. That was one thing my folks couldn’t have taken, that they’d never been able to stomach, that they’d never understand, that I, their son, should be without hope and heroic fortitude … They wouldn’t have stood for it … I had no right to my share of lamentations, certainly not … Tragedies and condolences were their private preserve … All that was for my parents … Children were thugs, hoodlums, ungrateful, thoughtless scum … The minute I dropped the slightest complaint, even the wee little beginning of a complaint, they both saw red … That was anathema! Sacrilege! Abomination!
“What’s that, you little shitheel? What colossal nerve!” How, with youth on my side, could I put on such airs? What a beastly imposture! What diabolical impertinence! Ah! The effrontery of it! Heavens above! Didn’t I have my best years ahead of me! All the treasures of existence! And I thought I was entitled to gripe … About my piddling little setbacks? Ah! Jumping Jehoshaphat! What monstrous insolence! What absolute degeneracy! What inconceivable rottenness! They’d have beaten me to a pulp to make me eat my blasphemies. Her bad leg, her abscesses, her horrible sufferings were forgotten … My mother leapt to her feet! “You little wretch! Right this minute! You heartless little reprobate! Take back those insults …”
Death on the Installment Plan Page 32
