"My operation, if you will, was simple: I rose late, well after the household had set about its business for the day. My father was out among his enterprises, small but profitable factories — paper mills and textiles, high-class progressive capitalism, if you allow me that distinction, for out of some loyalty to the memory of my dear father, I would give distinction to that which he himself prided in defining, the differences among the various forms of capitalist enterprise, the various goods and services which it produced. He would, it's fair to say, have considered it beneath him to manufacture arms and explosives, weapons of any kind or of any of those articles causing discomfort or misery or destruction to either its purchaser or those harmed by the said article. I'm growing thirsty. But to continue.
"Of habit I rose late, as I recall just mentioning, taking my petit déjeuner, as we termed it, having a penchant, as many northerners do, for phrases French and of Latin origin generally."
''I'll go mad with these digressions. Have you no discretion, no structure? These kind people will presently drop like gassed flies!"
"Correct, just, my dear Clavdia, you bring proportion to this discourse, and try I shall and will to bring the matter more to tow. Rising late, as I say, to the general discomfort of the household, I breakfasted, and usually in my robe de chambre, and perused the daily papers, for I had a great fondness for them then, the more vulgar the journal the better, the most vulgar the best. Topics of national and international concern were of no interest to me, but ah! the back pages, the lists of marriages and engagement announcements and obituaries, the employment advertisements, the inventories of apartments for rent, the reports of sordid crimes, these were matters to occupy my entire morning, the little that remained of it, that is, for when I left the table, it was usually the forward side of noon. Others, men and women in factories and in shops and offices, had been at their tasks several hours and were already consumed with fatigue and despair, their grim hearts, as a seaman friend once said, grimly set against the world."
"Just so," interjected the lieutenant, "the wretched and the alienated on whose shoulders you rose in the morning to sip your coffee."
"Would you have preferred that he had chained himself to a factory wheel or to the sour leg of an office desk?" Clavdia asked. "You men are so silly with all your pieties and theories. Why must you interfere with the world as it is, has been, will be? I'm sure your Indians, Lieutenant, are less concerned than you are with their own well-being."
"I doubt that's so, madame. But we of the revolution wish only to let them live as they did before others meddled with and uprooted their ways. Our ways, I should say, since I am of them and was raised among them by my grandfather, and I know very well what we wish. But I fear it may be too late.... How many TV antennas do you see rising from the shanties of the poor? They are the lightning rods for the bolts of new miseries sent us by outsiders."
"Never mind, my dear lieutenant," Naptha said reassuringly, "those electronic waves and images cannot injure your people's souls. The soul that is pure is inviolate and cannot be tampered with, as I'm certain you know."
"Pure souls, how few, yet we have one among us, an incorruptible, a natural spirit, a blond elf. Wouldn't you concur, Monsieur Tintin?"
"I suppose you mean me, Mademoiselle Clavdia. And I'm not sure in what spirit I'm to take your observation. For such terms as elf and elfin, elfish and elflike, while descriptive of size and perhaps personal bearing and manner, surely cannot be applied to me since possessed with a soul, I cannot be called a creature that has none, for technically speaking, elves do lack such ineffable components."
"Etymologically and mythically correct and well-phrased, my friend," said Settembrini, "but you must admit, granted you have a soul, that you have managed to maintain a certain youthfulness that I suspect Madame Clavdia associates with purity and innocence."
"Thank you, sir, but I find these attributions somewhat condescending and off the mark. In my line of work I have often succeeded by cultivating and exercising not innocence but guile and disguise, subterfuge and duplicity, for when dealing with malefactors and the criminal sensibility, one must, I'm sad to say, be something of a criminal oneself. I do hope, however, that my soul has remained uncorrupted and that I shall always strive for the good."
"Don't be cross, Monsieur Tintin, it's simply that you are so refreshing, so stimulating," said Peeperkorn.
"Perhaps I shall be less so as I mature — should that process ever apply itself to me."
"Naturally, and then," Peeperkorn added, "as you mature, you'll come to appreciate less brash pursuits, less stimulating escapades. You might acquire, for example, a taste for collecting what adults consider appreciable goods, Deuxieme Empire painting and furniture, as an instance."
"I detest Second Empire," said Tintin tartly. "No change of fashion wind shall ever reconcile me to the goods of that epoch, its ostentation fit only for the mentality of the bourgeois regime that spawned it, though I confess that unlike truth, taste is largely a matter of cultural moment, the blossoming of myriad factors not determined by any intrinsic or immutable aesthetic law."
Tintin's eyes gleamed for a moment, his cheeks flushing. He put his small hand to his forehead as if to feel his temperature.
"Excuse me, I really don't know what I was saying just then."
"You spoke with such authority! Such power! Wonderful words," Clavdia said.
"I wonder why, since I don't understand all that I propounded. Heavens! I feel another fit coming over me. Well, yes, in fact, Madame Clavdia, I know there is in all art regardless of the original motive of its creation — religious, political, or personal — a certain quality that distinguishes one work from the other as a work of art, and one may, though not all may, recognize this quality. A work of art emanates its aesthetic presence — "
"An ancient and conservative argument," chimed in Settembrini, "one with its roots in Plato, and revived most recently by British art circles of the early twentieth century."
"Sta'zitto!" commanded Tintin in a hiss. "Zitto. Non parlo con te. Non impicciarti degli affari degli altri."
"Ma io voglio parlare," began the Italian, amazed to hear Tintin speak in his own gentle tongue, yet offended by the youth's brusque, insulting tone and manner.
"Oh, do forgive me, Signor Settembrini," implored Tintin. "I really don't know what's come over me these last days. I'm in a whirl of changes."
"Then," thundered Peeperkorn, "how warm the world, how snug the nice fit of self, the carpeted parlors of winter nights, the lamps glowing, the red fire in the hearth, a small blaze of scented wood, a pot of tea by my side, an Algerian briar between my teeth, a book — bound in green vellum — of poems by Mallarme resting on the green robe covering my warm lap ... no need ever to stir myself into the cold night, into the world, where some, the ice forming about their heels, slept under bridges and on benches of tram shelters, where others, huddling in cafés, were soon to be evicted into the drunken streets. Not for me the poorhouse (lights out at nine) and the wickered iron cages of stone prisons, no illumination there after the natural death of the day, 'cept for the luminous sheen of despair from out one's eyes.
"I did not stir generally, but I must not forget those winter nights spent at the opera, my own box, the couchette for naps at intermission or for lovemaking behind the drawn curtain and locked door — those couchettes still exist in the Paris Opera House, if I'm not mistaken — my large basket of wines and meaty provisions for entertaining oneself (and a friend or two) during an especially fatiguing recitative.... It's of the insular charms of winter, I speak, but I must not neglect to mention the spring, la primavera, le printemps, for me the ripe melon of the seasons, the season of all my joys, the spring wines of Austria, the spring cherries of Tuscany, the yellow chanterelle mushrooms of Provence, the truffle omelets for breakfast downed with a Pouilly-Fumé while I sat on my petite terrace overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, all these joys were but the appetizers, the vorspeis, the antipasto of spri
ng. Bring back those years!
"Let's start at the Louvre, where I began my active day, a visit, say, to the Rubens salon after breakfast, among the satyrs and the nymphs — the little chubby folds of skin about the waist, tumescent plums amorously strewn on folded thighs. Then lunch with a friend, of whom I had tons those days; it's so simple to have friends when one always calls for l'addition and foots the bill. By afternoon I had covered the bookstalls and shops and some of the art galleries, where I was known and well treated as a collector of prints practically unmarketable to all save me, for I had in those days a special passion for Dutch prints, torture scenes of the Protestant martyrs, the market for which I understand has grown considerably since that time.
"The evenings I leave to your imagination. Sufficient to say that I have always had a need for the company of women, and fortunately, Venus, Eros, or whoever it is who looks after these matters, always seemed well disposed to me in that particular moist channel of affairs — love, I mean. I had a predilection then (which remains with me even now, though in an attenuated form, as I'm sure you will note) for women who do not speak much — the mutes, my friends would say — but who are, in short, beautiful or, at the minimum, radiantly attractive. What do you talk about with these women? my friends asked, assuming that I required in all human intercourse the mental, the intellectual, the prattle of art and books and theater so fashionable, especially today, between the sexes. By the heavens! A woman should be designed for beauty, not for function; a racing boat, not a hauling barge. Oh, how I was taken in those days by elegance and beauty, by the lustrous hair and the splendid coif, the pouty red mouth and the trim figure, yes, trim and, how else to say, the firm-breasted, the complete and self-devoted narcissist woman who spent her day between the coiffeur and the pedicurist, the leg waxer and the manicurist, the dressmaker and the shoemaker, the masseuse — "
Clavdia screamed. Little pots of jam and half-filled cups of coffee spun and careened to the floor.
"Talc, talc," cried Settembrini through the door leading to the kitchen.
"Oh, my dear, dear woman!" exclaimed Naptha, mindless of the coffee and milk dripping from the edges of the table to his lap. "What has brought you to this?"
"That he should go on, that you all sit here and let him go on like this, that you smile and nod your heads and butter his rolls and pour his coffee while he breaks reason with his aimless, pointless, insolent inventions! He's mocking us, can't you detect that, even you, there, great child sleuth, do you need more clues to uncover his plot? Can't you see that he would keep us here until evening, until the following dawn and even later with these tales, his giant fictions?"
"But, Madame Clavdia," Tintin protested, "he's so fascinating; I'm sure we all find him fascinating, do we not, gentlemen? Why, his mind is an enchantment, one learns so much."
"Indeed, to learn his calumnies and lies about women — how transcendental! You imbeciles. Stay, then, his table of dupes, and let him bugger you."
Embarrassment holds the table, holds it even as Clavdia, casting a last scornful look at the silent group, leaves, the metal taps of her high-heeled shoes clicking like furious castanets.
The table remains silent, fixed, except for Tintin, who half rises to avert Clavdia's flight. A voice finally breaks the silence.
"How strange of me not to have noticed that I've been a boring fool, tormenting you with my chatter," Peeperkorn said contritely. "Gentlemen, it needed only a word to stop me, I assure you. Let me apologize and beg your pardon. Yet all may be for the best, this departure of our beloved friend, I mean, her presence being a barrier to the natural flow of the little story I wished to recite, had wished, that is, for naturally, this story must wait its turn, should it ever come again, for a more receptive audience."
"But I'm certain I speak for the others in asking you to continue, implore you," Tintin said.
"How kind, how generous and courteous of you gentlemen. But indeed, I have been truant to the task, a good story needs pith and synthesis, crystallization and compression, the skills I patently lack, to produce the desired effect."
"Well," said Naptha, after a gloomy pause, "I suppose we've come to admire the narrator so much that we are indifferent to his mode of narration — wouldn't you agree, Settembrini?"
"Courtesy demands no less," Settembrini concurred. "But courtesy apart, I am interested in this historical capsule of decadence, having experienced it only through the literature of the period, the usual route beginning with Huysmans and Wilde and D'Annunzio and ending, in its virulent form, in the blood-soaked trenches of Verdun. All those green carnations, that dandified youth, hacked down in full effete flower by the scythe of the Great War."
"Well, then, since I'm pressed to continue," Peeperkorn said, "let me further describe the life I knew in my manhood. To ask whether I had ever a care for the means by which I was able to entertain myself so richly is not to know the disposition of the rich who come by their money through other's hands — my father's, in this case, as I have already outlined. Money there was, and money there seemed ever to be, not that I ever once touched actual currency, for my father's factotum took care of that. I merely had the statements, the bills — I could hardly bring myself to say the word in those days, it seemed truly vulgar — sent off to the one who arranged everything invisibly. Never once did I ask myself where my life course was leading me, for I thought, simply, that I would pursue the road ahead wherever it went. Profession I had none, nor skills nor trade. Naturally I was never one to twist a screw or steam a hat or shuffle a loaf into an oven. It was long before understood I would never enter the management of my father's various enterprises, my father wisely having decided I was unfit for business and would only bring the whole structure to ruin before his death. He was content to pension me off for a lifetime, content, that is, after the initial and unduly protracted period of dismay on realizing I was what I indeed seemed, a self-indulgent, indolent, ambitionless lad, amiable and perhaps intelligent, but a good-for-nothing nonetheless.
"You may imagine the shock when I received the news that my father, in his full strength and oaken maturity, had gone bankrupt. How, you ask, how did a man so conservative and sound, so renowned for his diligence and husbandry come to that? We search for causes, and well may we search, but I, who then knew less of economics than I do now, understood only one thing: that I was, at one stroke, shuttled into a world that, now that I was penniless, cared little for my polite manners and my splendidly tailored clothes, my fastidious tastes — cared little, in sum, for me."
"Good Señor," the lieutenant said, "it is not against you personally that I say this but for the lesson you provide us: that capitalism deserts its own children, is indifferent to all, and raises some with the same turn of the wheel that it casts down others. I'm sure you tasted a bit of want and hunger, for I'm certain that is how the tale usually goes."
"Well, Lieutenant, having read novels and seen films about these sorts of things, the rich profligate abandoned by his sycophants, tossed out by the landlord and reviled by the concierge, scorned by his tailor, a pariah at his club, having been thus forewarned of the practical consequences of failure,
I expected no less. And thus I immediately and silently gave all the slip, leaving behind, without a word, my furniture, clothes, leaving behind all who knew me rather than embarrass those who, seeing me in such neediness, would need to invent pretexts for quitting me.
"This, I thought, was wise. I stole out of Paris and went home, such as it was, for in the meanwhile, my father had sold our estate to pay his debtors, never enough to pay all, naturally, and I found my parents in a boardinghouse. It would have been hard, I thought, for a man even stronger than I to adjust to the sight of those two so effaced from their old lives and selves. Papa had grown portly, his cheeks puffy like little soft walnuts, and Mama, that once-robust, nay, stout matron, now had become a bone. Penury had quite reversed their physiognomies and their dispositions as well. Where Papa was formally austere and conse
rvative, he was now jolly, making light of his circumstances, of his fall, so to speak. 'The sun shines as brightly on the windows of the poorhouse as it does on the windows of the mansion!' he exclaimed, after greeting me. Yes, Papa, I remember thinking, but the rich have many more windows and beautiful vistas. Mama could not even bring herself to smile on seeing me. She hid her tears badly, and I went to kiss them from her gaunt cheeks.
Tintin in the New World: A Romance Page 12
