Death on the Installment Plan (12 page)

He was all shriveled, shaken with spasms. He was like the villain in the movies, only worse because he swore out loud …

“Oh! By all the whorehouses in hell! Freedom! Bah! Self-abnegation? Yes. Sacrifice? Yes. Privation? Yes. The whole shooting match and then some. And all for this perverted little shitass! Oh! Oh! Freedom! Freedom! …” He disappeared into the wings. On his way upstairs he belabored his chest with great dull blows.

The mere mention of “divorce” threw my mother into convulsions …

“Why, Auguste, I do everything I can! You know that! I work my fingers to the bone. I do the work of ten, you can see that for yourself. Things will get better! I promise you! I implore you! One day we’ll be happy, all three of us!

“What about me?” he shouted down from upstairs, “I suppose I don’t do my best. And a lot of good it does …”

She surrendered to her sorrows. The floodgates burst.

“We’ll bring him up properly, you’ll see, I swear it, Auguste! Don’t work yourself up! … He’ll do his best too … He’ll be like us! He’ll be like you! You’ll see! He’ll be like us. Won’t you, child?”

We started delivering again. We saw the big monumental gate going up at the corner of the Place de la Concorde. It was so delicate, so fancy, so full of frills and gingerbread from top to bottom, it made you think of a mountain in bridal dress. Every time we passed by, we saw something new being done to it.

Finally they took the scaffolding away. Everything was in readiness for the public … At first my father pooh-poohed the whole thing, and then he went after all, all alone one Saturday afternoon. To everybody’s surprise he was delighted … Pleased, happy, like a kid who’s been to fairyland …

All our neighbors, except Madame Méhon of course, came running over to hear him tell about it. At ten that night he still had them spellbound. In less than an hour on the grounds, he had seen everything, been everywhere, understood it all and a lot more, from the Pavilion of Black Snakes to the Gallery of Machines, and from the North Pole to the Cannibals …

Visios, the sailor who had been all over the world, said the whole thing was marvelous. He’d never have believed it … and he knew a thing or two. My uncle Rodolphe, who had been working in the sideshow done up as a troubadour ever since the Exposition opened, was nonexistent as a storyteller. He was there in the shop with the rest of them. Draped in his finery, he’d grin for no reason, he’d make paper birds and wait for supper to be served.

Madame Méhon was at her window, worried sick to see all the neighbors coming over our way. For her money, it was sure to end in some plot. Grandma stayed away a whole week. Papa’s bumptiousness gave her a pain. And every night he started his lecture all over again, adding new touches. Rodolphe got hold of some free tickets. So one Sunday the three of us dove into the crowd.

At the Place de la Concorde the mob got hold of us and really pumped us in. We came to, breathless and half unconscious, in the Gallery of Machines. It was terrifying! Hanging in midair in a transparent cathedral with little panes of glass that went way up to the sky. The racket was so awful we couldn’t hear my father, and he was shouting his lungs out. Steam gushed and spurted on all sides. There were giant kettles as big as three houses, gleaming pistons that came charging at us out of the bottom of hell … In the end we couldn’t stand it, we were scared, we beat it … We passed the Ferris wheel … but what we liked best was the bank of the Seine.

It was weird the way they had rigged up the Esplanade … terrific … Two rows of enormous cakes, fantastic cream puffs, full of balconies crammed with gypsies swathed in flags, music, and millions of little light bulbs that were lit in broad daylight. That was wasteful. Grandma was right. We moved on, crushed worse and worse. I was right near all the feet, the dust was so thick I couldn’t see where I was going. I swallowed whole mouthfuls and spat cement … Finally we got to the North Pole … An explorer, real friendly, was explaining the show, but so confidentially, so softly, all wrapped up in his furs, you could hardly hear a thing. My father told us what was what. Then the seals came out for their dinner. They bellowed so loud there was nothing else in the world. So we beat it.

In the big Refreshment Palace lovely orangeade was being dished out in a long line at a little moving counter absolutely free of charge … Between us and it a riot was going on … A seething mob struggling to get at the glasses. Thirst has no mercy. If we’d attempted it, there wouldn’t have been anything left of us. We fled through another door … We went to see the natives …

We only saw one, behind a fence, he was boiling himself an egg. He wasn’t looking at us. he had his back turned. It was quiet there, so my father started gabbing again with lots of animation, trying to enlighten us about the curious customs of tropical countries. He wasn’t able to finish, the nigger was fed up too. He spat in our direction and disappeared into his cabin … I couldn’t see straight or open my mouth. I had breathed in so much dust all my passages were blocked. From one eddy to the next we made it to the exit. Even after we’d passed the Invalides I was still being jostled and trampled. We were so shaken, so shattered by fatigue and excitement we hardly recognized each other. We took the shortest way home … by way of the Marché Saint-Honoré. Then we went straight upstairs and drank all the water in the kitchen.

Our neighbors, with Visios, our sailor, in the lead, the perfume dealer from Number 27, Madame Gratat from the glove shop, Dorival the pastrycook, and Monsieur Pérouquière, popped right over to hear about it. They wanted us to tell them all about it and then some … Had we been to see all the exhibits? … Hadn’t they lost me? … How much had we spent? … What! At every turnstile? …

Papa told them the whole story with thousands of details … some of them true and others not so accurate … My mother was happy, it had been worth it … for once Auguste was being really appreciated … She was mighty proud for his sake … He puffed himself up … he laid it on thick … She knew he was telling fairy tales … but that’s what it is to be an educated man … she hadn’t suffered for nothing … the man she had given herself to was somebody … a thinker … there was no denying it. All those poor bastards sat there with their tongues hanging out … Pure admiration!

Papa made it all up as he went along, without the slightest effort … There was magic in our shop … with the gas turned off. All by himself he put on a show a hundred times more amazing than four dozen Expositions … But he didn’t want the gas … Just candles. Our shopkeeper friends brought their own glims, dug out of their storerooms. They came back night after night to listen to Papa and kept asking for more …

His prestige was enormous … They could think of nothing better. In the end, I guess, Madame Méhon must have taken sick over there in her hovel, haunted by bitter thoughts … They’d told her everything, down to the last syllable …

About two weeks later she couldn’t stand it anymore … One night she came down all alone and crossed the Passage … She looked like a ghost … She was in her nightgown. She banged on our window. We all turned around. She didn’t breathe a word. She stuck a piece of paper on the glass. The inscription was brief, in big capital letters: LIAR …

Everybody burst out laughing. The charm was broken. They all went home … Papa had nothing more to say …

The pride of our shop was the coffee table in the middle, Louis XV, the only piece we were really sure about. People were always making us offers. We didn’t try very hard to sell it. We couldn’t have replaced it.

The Brétontés, our fancy customers from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, had noticed it a long time ago … They asked us to lend it to them for a play they were putting on, a comedy, with some other society people in their private house. The Pinaises were in it, and the Courmanches, the Doranges whose daughters were so crosseyed, and a lot of others who were customers more or less. The Girondets, the Camadours, the De Lambistes, who were related to the ambassadors … The cream of the cream! … It was going to be put on one Sunday afternoon. Madame Brétonté was sure their play would be a howling success.

She came back more than ten times, always to pester us about that table. We couldn’t refuse, it was for charity.

To make sure nothing would happen to it, we took a cab and delivered it ourselves in the morning, wrapped in three blankets. Then in the afternoon we came back just in time to take our seats, three stools near the door.

The curtain hadn’t gone up yet, but already it was marvelous. The ladies, dressed fit to kill, all burbling and sashaying. They smelled so good you almost fainted … Looking around, my mother recognized all the best pieces from her shop. Her boleros, her neckbands, her Chantilly lace. She even remembered the prices. And hadn’t they had them made up nicely! Lace could be so lovely … And wasn’t it becoming to them! … She was in seventh heaven.

Before we left the shop, I had been warned that if I gave off any smells, I’d be thrown out one-two-three. I had given myself such a wiping the toilet was all stuffed up. Even my feet were clean in my dress shoes …

Finally the people took their seats. Somebody called for silence. The curtain rolled up … Our coffee table appeared … plunk in the middle of the stage … same as in our shop … That set our minds at rest … A few bars on the piano and the actors were saying their lines … Oh, how beautifully they spoke … all the characters coming and going and posturing in the bright light … They were marvelous … They started bickering and arguing … they were getting madder and madder … but it made them more charming than ever … I was carried away … I wanted them to start all over again. I didn’t quite get it all … But I was captivated, body and soul … Everything they touched … their slightest gestures … the most commonplace words were enchanted … The people around us applauded, my parents and I didn’t dare… .

On the stage I recognize Madame Pinaise, she’s absolutely divine … There were her legs again and those throbbing tits … She’s lying on a deep silk divan … sheathed in an airy négligé … She’s desperate, she’s sobbing … All on account of Dorange, another of our customers … He’s bawling the hell out of her, she has no one to turn to … The heartless blackguard slips around behind her and takes advantage … she’s bent over our coffee table, bawling … he steals a kiss … and starts to bill and coo … It was nothing like home … Finally her resistance breaks down … She sinks back gracefully on the couch … He gives her another buss, square on the lips … She swoons, she passes out … Whew! … and him waggling his ass …

I really caught on … the polite passion … the deep luscious melody … All those visions to jerk off on …

Our coffee table, I’ve got to admit, looked mighty good there. The hands, the elbows, the bellies of the plot all rubbed against it … La Pinaise clutched it so hard you could hear it crack all the way across the room, but the worst was when handsome young Dorange, in a very tragic moment, made as if to sit down on it … Mama’s heart jumped in her throat … Luckily he bounced up again … almost instantly … During the intermission she kept worrying … what if he did it again? … My father understood the whole play … But he was too far gone to talk about it just then.

It did something to me too. I didn’t touch the soft drinks or even the cookies that the society people passed around … Those socialites are used to mixing grub with magical emotions … They’re pigs. It’s all one to them as long as they’re chewing. They gulp it all down at one sitting, the rose and the crap it grows in …

We went back to our seats … The second act passed like a dream … Then the miracle was over … We were back again among plain ordinary things and people.

We waited, all three of us on our stools, we didn’t dare let out a peep … We waited patiently for the crowd to drift out, so we could take our table … Then a lady came in and asked us to wait just a little while … We agreed … The curtain went up again. We saw all the actors, all the people in the play. They were all sitting around our table … all playing cards together. The Pinaises, the Coulomanches, the Brétontés, the Doranges, and Kroing, the old banker … They all sat there facing each other …

Kroing was a funny little old man, he often came to my grandmother’s shop on the rue Montorgueil, always very friendly and polite and completely shriveled up. He used violet perfume, it stank up the whole shop. He collected only one thing, it was his only interest in life: Empire bell-pulls.

The game on our table started quite amicably. They gave each other cards as politely as can be. Then things went kind of sour, they began to speak sharply, not at all like in the play … They weren’t talking for the fun of it anymore. They shouted numbers at each other. The trumps resounded like somebody getting a licking. Behind their father the Dorange girls were squinting something awful. The mothers and wives were left strictly to themselves, sitting with their chairs against the wall, all tensed up and scared to breathe. A command rang out. The players exchanged places. On the table the dough was piling up … Heaps and mounds of it … Old man Kroing was pounding the tabletop with both hands … In front of the Pinaises the pile kept growing and swelling … like an animal … They were red in the face with excitement … With the Brétontés it was the exact opposite … They were losing their pazazz … They were as pale as ghosts … They didn’t have a cent left in front of them … My father went pale too. I wondered what he was going to do. We’d been waiting at least two hours for the game to end … They’d forgotten us …