by Guy Endore
Thereupon Aymar had Bertrand appear in the study again, as formerly, two hours every day.
But Bertrand was dull. He learnt slowly. He had used to be so quick to grasp. “He’s been away from his studies too long,” Aymar decided. “Or else he’s reached the end. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” it occurred to him.
Months passed and still all was quiet. One day Françoise knocked at his study.
“What’s the trouble, Françoise, you look worried?”
“Yes, monsieur.” She paused. “I think, monsieur,” she said suddenly and rapidly, “you ought to lock Bertrand’s door again.”
Aymar gaped. What did Françoise know?
“Has he had bad dreams again?”
“You and I, monsieur, needn’t speak of bad dreams. I’m not Josephine, whose mother-love blinds her. I can put two and two together as well as you.” She brushed the gray hair from her forehead.
“What do you know?” he demanded.
“I’ve heard that people can keep tiger cubs and make pets of them. But when they reach a certain age you have to put them in a cage.”
“What do you know?” he repeated wearily.
“I know,” she insisted. “Haven’t I watched him grow since childhood? He was cute and playful. So are puppies. So, perhaps, are tiger cubs.”
“But why have you come to me with this now?”
“Because Guillemin says to me this morning, ‘That fox is back again.’ Guillemin’s son found a duck’s head, chewed off.”
Aymar wiped his forehead wearily: “Where will this end?”
At lunch he had an idea. He went into the kitchen where Bertrand was eating. He went up to the boy and pulled down the lower lid of the eye. “Anæmic,” he diagnosed.
“He has no appetite again,” Josephine complained.
“We’ll give him a little raw meat, every day,” Aymar prescribed. “That makes blood.”
Afterwards he laughed. A good trick. We’ll feed the wolf in him and keep him quiet. And he actually succeeded. Bertrand ate the raw flesh avidly. He improved in appearance. His hair grew glossy. His skin sleek. His eyes bright. He grew in weight and stature. And Josephine, noting the excellent results, tempted her darling boy with larger, bloodier portions of meat, with bigger chunks of suet clinging to it.
In his lessons, too, he grew better, and it was delightful to see how he played in the courtyard. He would tire out the dog with running. When he played hares and hounds with the village boys he was always the last to be caught, if caught at all. And when he was It in I-spy, no one could remain hidden from him.
As a whole, the village suspected nothing of Bertrand’s peculiar condition. Bramond’s wife did indeed smell something a little mysterious in that house, but she ascribed it to an affair between Josephine and Aymar. She allowed her tongue to play with the notion that Bertrand was secretly Aymar’s child, but much of her maliciousness in this was due to the fact, as her husband now and then took occasion to point out, that she was jealous of Josephine’s son, who was destined to study medicine, a career she wished to provide for her own son Jacques, but which seemed an unlikely possibility in view of the number of the children in the Bramond family—five—and the narrow resources of the family income, limited to Bramond’s salary as garde champêtre.
But she came back to it so insistently that she got what she wanted. Not, it is true, all at once, but step by step. First she was allowed to send Jacques to the local school. That was as much as Bramond would give in to. Then she was allowed to let him try to enter a lycée. And when he passed the entrance examination, well, he might have a year of it, but no more. And so on, until years had passed and Jacques was ready to take his baccalaureat, and after the summer he would be off to Paris to study medicine.
Bertrand was to take the examination for the baccalaureat at the same time. He had studied at home with Aymar, whom he called his uncle, and he did not expect to do as well as his friend, for though he was bright, he was frequently ill. Especially in winter, in February. Then he would get dull at his lessons and be troubled at night with horrible dreams. He was ashamed of this, his only weakness, and to his curious friends he would say no more than that he suffered of migraines.
He, himself, was curious about those strange dreams in which he would yearn to race on all fours through a forest, up hill and down dale. His uncle quieted him: “It’s nothing. Occasionally boys will have that. You’ll get over it.”
Then he asked Bertrand: “What do your boy friends say?”
“They don’t say anything. I don’t tell them much.”
“Hm. I see. Well, perhaps it’s best you said nothing.”
The spring baccalaureat examinations were held at Auxerre. Jacques and Bertrand went off together to take them. It was a matter of three days.
Aymar had at first proposed to go along with Bertrand, whom, despite all these years of comparative quiet, he hated to trust out of his sight. But Françoise had said: “If he’s to go to Paris alone later, let him go alone now. It will be a test.” That seemed wise, and was so arranged. After all, he had been pretty good these last six years, thanks no doubt to Aymar’s trick of feeding him copious amounts of raw meat.
Arrived at Auxerre, Jacques and Bertrand put up at a little inn which was crowded with boys all there for the same purpose. The first two days there was quiet in the inn. Nothing could be heard but the turning of pages and the drone of many boys reciting to themselves, preparing for the daily hours of severe examinations. But on the third day, with only one more easy test in the offing, the tension relaxed. Voices rose to shrieks, there were shouts of laughter, two boys started to pummel each other in the courtyard.
And when the third test was happily in the limbo of the past, pandemonium broke loose. The boys raged through the town where the citizens, wise from long experience, had closed their shops. The cafés handed out only their worst china and were prepared to charge for broken ware as if it came from Sèvres.
In the evening, slightly drunk, one young man with whom Jacques and Bertrand had become friendly proposed that they go to a house he knew of.
Jacques was willing, for in the freer life of the poorer section of his village he had not remained totally pure. But Bertrand was shocked. No, he couldn’t go.
Jacques taunted him: “Afraid?”
The other fellow said: “Garçon, a glass of warm milk for my baby.”
Bertrand said seriously: “No, it isn’t that. I’m not feeling well. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Who did? None of us could sleep.”
“And then I think my migraine is coming on again.” As a matter of fact he did feel that strange congestion and tension that he associated with a delirious night.
Jacques slapped him on the back. “Here’s your cure! This is what you’ve been needing all along. Une petite femme…”
The other chap began to recite some naughty verses, which being obscure in meaning were all the more piquant:
Marc une béquille avait
Faite en fourche, et de manière
Qu’ à la fois elle trouvait
L’oeillet et la boutonnière.
D’une indulgence plénière
Il crut devoir se munir,
Et courut, pour l ’obtenir,
Conter le cas au Saint-Père.
Qui s’écria: Vierge Mère,
Que ne suis-je ainsi bâti!
Va, mon fils, baise, prospère,
Gaudeant bene nati.
“Well, good-bye, Bertrand,” said Jacques, “don’t forget your muffler or you’ll catch cold—Gaudeant bene nati!”
The taunt was a little too much. He rose and said stiffly: “I’m coming with you.” Thereupon the two caught hold of him by either arm and went walking down the street singing together. Bertrand allowed himself to be infected by their reckless gaiety. He lifted up his voice and sang louder than his friends.
The house to which they proceeded was on a quiet by-street. A small but portly w
oman opened the door and greeting the boys rather coolly, showed them the way into a tiny parlor. Small gilt chairs were arranged around the wall. A diminutive gilt piano occupied a corner. A few pictures decorated the wall and in the flickering gas-jets revealed fat, naked women, lolling on divans or near fountains and attended by black slaves. A single picture in a corner showed Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet. An eternal light burnt before this picture in a deep ruby glass.
Three girls came into the room. They were neither pretty nor joyous. They were dressed simply, in dark severe materials. One girl, by far the ugliest, wore heavy spectacles. Since Jacques and his friend Raoul had at once approached the other two, Bertrand greeted the myopic girl, and began to dance a polka, along with the others, for Madame had sat down at the gilt piano and was playing.
When the dance was over, the mood was a little merrier. The girls were fanning their perspired faces with their handkerchiefs. Madame had left to fetch some champagne. Raoul had just finished one uproariously funny song and was beginning another.
The champagne added to his previous drinks, the dancing and singing had inflamed Bertrand a little.
Now Madame suggested delicately that it was getting late. She opened the door and showed the way upstairs.
Bertrand was alone with his girl. He was all at once prey to a terrible feeling of fatigue. He could scarcely stand up. His nerves could not bear the excitement. He wished the embarrassing preliminaries were over; in fact, he wished the whole business were over.
The girl laughed across to him. She was accustomed to shy young men. Her method of attack was to tease them. Now she said: “Monsieur must be very modest, if he intends to make love with his clothes on.”
Thereupon he began to unbutton his jacket.
“Look,” she said suddenly, “you must first write something nice in my book of autographs.” She brought over a heavy volume.
He opened the book and was surprised to see the name of Victor Hugo, signed with an immense flourish beneath a dirty verse.
On another page was Horace Vernet beneath a miserable, filthy picture.
The next page showed a sonnet signed “Tout à vous, Adolphe Thiers.”
There were Dumas, Garibaldi, and even a large crown and seal hastily sketched, beneath which was the name: Napoleon III.
Bertrand was at first taken in, in fact he was overwhelmed, and before he realized his mistake he had signed his name, Bertrand Caillet, Mont d’Arcy.
Then he understood. All this was mere fantasy. A cruel trick imagined by the first person to enter his name and perpetuated by those who followed.
“Can you read?” he asked.
She blushed, and shook her head.
He understood vaguely. She wore glasses for the same reason she kept a book of autographs: to conceal her misfortune, her lowly station.
“Aren’t you going to write something more?”
He pleased her and added above his name the lines:
O mon amante!
O mon desir!
Sachons cueillir
L’heure charmante!
As Bertrand was still shy, the girl, Thérèse, suggested a little game. She would take off two pieces of her clothing to every one of his. There was a little argument as to whether he should count his cap. No, she said, for if he counted his outdoor clothes, so could she. They must start from scratch, as it were. Bertrand soon fell in with her mood and took off the jacket which he had already unbuttoned. She took off a jabot and a lace bolero. Apparently her costume, unadorned as it seemed, consisted of innumerable parts, several petticoats, corset-cover and corset, garters and whatnot else, to all of which she gave a name as she took it off with a giggle of triumph. But in the end she had only a stocking and a shift, and when Bertrand took off his last undergarment, he exclaimed: “It’s a tie!”
“No, it isn’t,” she retorted, and took off one stocking and her eyeglasses and remained in her slip. “I won,” Thérèse said, pointing to her last garment.
“But your spectacles—that isn’t fair,” he objected.
“Yes, it is,” she asserted, “I’ve won, and for punishment you must take off this last piece yourself, only you are not allowed to use your hands.”
She joined Bertrand, who, still a little modest, had, in his nudity, retreated to the protection of the bed.
“What shall I do?” he said, laughing nervously. “How can I take it off without using my hands?”
“You have teeth and toes left, haven’t you?”
He began a little timidly to seize the thin material in his teeth.
“It’ll rip,” he said.
“Then you’ll buy me another,” she warned. “But it’s very cheap,” she encouraged with a laugh.
He set to work again.
“Aïe! Oh, you’re biting me! Jésu-Marie…”
He had caught a piece of her skin between his teeth, along with the material. He heard her scream, he felt a drop of blood oozing through the linen. He had his arms laced about her body. He wanted to release her, but a strange rage had overcome him. Holding her down with one arm, he stopped her screams with the heel of his other hand. She, feeling his hand there strangling her cries, bit down for her part too, and fought out wildly with her fists.
Early the following morning Jacques and Raoul came to an agreement: “Let’s leave Bertrand here, and run offtogether. It will give him a good scare.”
When Madame presented her bill they paid only what they had to. Champagne, use of ballroom (!), all the other items with which the bill was decorated, they left for Bertrand.
“He’ll pay,” they reassured the procuress. “He’s rich.”
“Really?” she asked. She had herself noticed that he was much better dressed than the other two.
“Very rich,” they answered.
She thought to herself: “In that case, I’ll see if there isn’t something else I can add to the bill.” And filled with her plan, she bade her customers good-bye and retired to write out a new and fancier bill. Local business wasn’t any too good; the visiting traffic must therefore be made to bear all it could stand.
Jacques and Raoul returned to their inn, packed their books and waited for Bertrand. But Bertrand did not show himself.
“Let’s go back and see what happened to him,” Jacques suggested. But their return to normal life had brought on a feeling of shame for their escapade. Neither of them cared to return to that house in broad daylight.
Meanwhile the landlord wanted his inn cleared. “I’ll have to charge for another day if the gentlemen are going to stay any longer.”
Raoul, whistling a merry tune, decided to wash his hands of the whole matter and departed for his home, feeling that something was amiss and he’d better be out of it as soon as possible, for if it came to the ears of his parents he was done for.
As for Jacques, he too had become uneasy. To the bravado of the previous night had succeeded qualms of conscience.
“Well,” the landlord interrupted Jacques’s thoughts, “you’d better take out your friend’s belongings too, unless he’s holding the room.”
“No, I’ll take them,” Jacques decided, “and I’ll leave a note for my friend if he should come.” Thinking thus to have solved the matter, Jacques made a bundle of his roommate’s books, wrote out a brief note telling Bertrand that he had all the books and had gone on home, and thereupon set out.
Back in the village, he waited nervously for news of Bertrand. When he heard that Bertrand was sick at home, his trepidation increased. “Now the whole thing is bound to come out,” he thought. But nothing happened. He ventured to ask his mother:
“What’s the matter with Bertrand?”
“Oh, she said harshly, “who can ever say what’s going on in that house! I hear that old Galliez beat the poor lad to within an inch of his life. Shame on the old roué! For that’s all he is!”
He made no answer: he knew his mother’s attitude to the Galliez establishment, and content to know his own skin still
safe, he impatiently awaited his approaching departure to a distant farm where he was to work during the summer. He would be back about the middle of August and leave again at once for Paris, to attend the medical school there. Though the war started that summer, that did not alter his mother’s plans. She could not imagine anything sufficiently important to delay her sole ambition.
* “Where fools are ordinarily housed.”
Chapter Eight
On that morning when Jacques and Raoul had gone off leaving Bertrand saddled with the major part of the bill, the landlady had retired to evolve a new bill which was to be a masterpiece. This accomplished, she waited for her guest to arise. It was already late, but since a girl with a guest frequently slept late, she thought nothing further of the matter and went about her duties.
But at ten o’clock she became impatient and went to knock at Thérèse’s door. There was no answer.
“Those rich people…” she thought to herself in disgust, her sense of propriety outraged. She went downstairs again to add on another day’s lodging to her bill. That brought the figure to over a hundred francs. Would he have that much? Well, she would show herself amenable to bargaining for the limit in his pockets. “Including that fine watch he has,” she determined.
At eleven she went to knock again. There was no answer. She put her ear to the door. A faint groan was audible. She turned the knob and entered.
Thérèse, but what a Thérèse, lay alone in bed and was moaning softly. Great brown bloodstains covered the sheets. Of her customer there was not a sign.
Madame’s screams brought the other girls to Thérèse’s room.
“Run for a doctor,” Madame commanded.
“Get the police, too,” said one of the girls.
“No!” cried the mistress. “Don’t anyone dare.” She did not stand in any too well with the authorities, and the last thing she wanted was to be further implicated. If the police were necessary that could wait until the last moment.
When Thérèse had had her wounds washed and bound and could talk, her mistress asked:
“And how could you let him do such things to you?”
