Death on the Installment Plan (14 page)

It was time to get going … But we couldn’t run right … A lot of feet were missing … Small as I was, I ran Madame Méhon over …

My mother lifted her skirts … But she ran more and more slowly … on account of her calves … suddenly they were as thin as wire … and so hairy they got tangled up in each other like spiders … The people up ahead wound her into a ball … and let her roll … But the buses were coming … at fiendish speed … They thundered down the rue Royale … blue ones, green ones, lemon-colored ones … The shafts broke, the harnesses gushed out across the Esplanade and fell against the trees in the Tuileries. I sized the situation up at a glance … I harangued … I exhorted … I rallied my troops … I laid down my plan of attack … We try to back up on the sidewalk outside the Orangerie … But it’s hopeless. Almost instantly poor Uncle Édouard and his motorcar are run over at the foot of the statue of Bordeaux
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… A few minutes later he comes out of the Solférino métro station with his three-wheeled tub welded on to his rear end like a snail … We lead him away … He has to hurry, to crawl faster and faster on account of the hundreds of motorcars … Reine-Serpollets from the automobile show. They bombard the Arc de Triomphe. Hell-bent for the cemetery, they descend on our routed army… .

For a split second I caught sight of Rodolphe, leaning against the pedestal of the statue of Joan of Arc, smiling happily … He’s auctioning off his troubadour costume … He wants to be a general … This is no time to disturb him … The asphalt is all ripped up … A chasm opens … Everything falls in … I skirt the precipice … I catch Armide’s pocketbook just as it’s about to disappear … There’s an inscription on it in beads: “In fond remembrance” … Her glass eye is inside … We’re so surprised we all laugh like hell … But the avalanche of punks is coming on from all sides … This time there are so many of them the rue Thérèse is full up to the fourth floor … a hill of packed meat … we start climbing … It buzzes like a manure pile all the way up to the stars …

But to get back home we have to bend back four thoroughly padlocked iron gates … We push by the hundreds and thousands … We try to get in through the transom … Nothing doing … the bars bend but jump right back into place, they snap in our faces like rubber bands … A ghost has hidden our key … He wants a prick and won’t settle for anything else … We tell him to go to hell. “Fuck you,” he says. We call him back. There are ten thousand of us trying to argue with him.

Echoing down the rue Gomboust, a hundred thousand cries of disaster come to us in bursts … That’s the crowds that are being massacred off the Place Gaillon … the buses are still raging … the apocalypse goes on … the Clichy-Odéon plows through the desperate mob … the Panthéon-Courcelles storms in from the rear, sending the pieces sky-high … they rain down on our shopwindow. My father beside me moans: “If only I had a trumpet!” … In despair he sheds his clothes, in a second he’s mother-naked, climbing up the Bank of France … he’s perched on top of the clock … He rips off the minute hand and brings it down with him … he dandles it on his knees … It fascinates him … it gives him a kick … we’re all feeling pretty gay … But a detachment of Guards bursts in through the rue Méhul … the Madeleine-Bastille goes into a spin, tips, and crashes into our gate … Luckily the whole thing collapses. The axle catches fire, the van bursts into crackling flames … The conductor is whipping the driver … They’re coming faster and faster … They take the rue des Moulins, they climb the grade, they take the fire with them … a hurricane … The cyclone strikes, weakens, rises up again, and breaks against the Comédie Française … The whole building bursts into flame … the roof comes loose, rises, flies away in flames … In her dressing room La Screwball, the beautiful actress, is frantically poring over her lines … Her soul has to be saturated with poetry before she can appear on the stage. She gargles her crack so hard that she stumbles … she falls plunk into the fire … She lets out a terrible scream … The volcano has swallowed up everything …

Nothing is left in the world but our fire … we’re all cooking in it … A ghastly redness rumbles through my brain with a crowbar that dislodges everything … blinding me with terror … It gobbles up the inside of my bean like fiery soup … using the bar for a spoon … It will never go away …

It took me a long time to recover. My convalescence dragged on for another two months. I had been very sick … it ended with a rash … The doctor came often. In the end he insisted they send me to the country … That was easy to say, but we hadn’t the cash … They took me out in the fresh air whenever possible.

When the January quarter came due, Grandma Caroline went out to Asnières to collect the rent. She took me with her. She owned two brick and stucco houses out there on the rue de Plaisance, a little one and a medium-size one, she rented them out to working-class people. They were her property, her income, her savings.

We started off. We had to go slow on my account. I was weak for a long time, I’d get nosebleeds for no reason at all, and I peeled all over. After the station it’s straight ahead … Avenue Faidherbe … Place Car-not … At the Town Hall you turn left and then you cross the park.

At the bowling alley between the fence and the waterfall, there’s always a crowd of funny old codgers … lively old grampas full of spunk, always good for a joke, and some that grouse the whole time, retired shopkeepers … Every time they knocked the ninepins over, the jokes flew thick and fast … I understood all their gags … better and better as time went on … The funniest thing was when they had to pee … they’d trot behind a tree, one at a time … They had an awful hard time of it … “Hey, Toto, watch out you don’t lose it …” That’s the kind of thing they said. The others took up the refrain. To me they were irresistible. I laughed so loud my grandmother was embarrassed … Standing around in that wintry blast listening to their cracks … it was a good way to catch your death …

Grandma didn’t laugh much but she wanted me to enjoy myself … It was no joke at home … she realized that … and this was cheap entertainment … We stayed a little while longer … When the game was over and we finally left the little old-timers, it was almost dark …

Caroline’s houses were beyond Les Bourguignons … after the Market Gardens, which in those days extended all the way to the dikes at Achères.

So as not to sink into the muck and manure, we had to walk single file on a line of planks … You had to be careful not to bump into the frames … whole rows of them full of seedlings … I went behind her, still laughing but careful to keep my balance, remembering all those cracks … “Did you enjoy it all that much?” she asked. “Tell me, Ferdinand. Did you really?”

I didn’t care for questions. I shut up like a clam … To own up brings bad luck.

We got to the rue de la Plaisance. That’s where the work began. Collecting the rent was a headache … the tenants were in full revolt. They fought every inch of the way and they never paid in full … never … they tried every slimy trick … The pump was always out of order. The discussions were interminable … They started griping about everything under the sun before Grandma even opened her mouth … The shithouse was stuffed up … They were very dissatisfied … they shouted their complaints from every window in the place … they wanted it fixed … and right away! … They were afraid we’d put one over on them … They hollered to prevent us from mentioning the rent … They wouldn’t even look at the bills … Their shithouse was really stopped up, it was overflowing into the street … In winter it froze and the bowl cracked under the slightest pressure … Every time it cost eighty francs … The bastards wrecked everything in sight … That was the tenants’ way of getting even … And making children … Every time we came back there were new ones … with less and less clothes on … Some of them were stark-naked … Lying in the bottom of a cupboard …

The worst drunks and slovens treated us like dirt … They watched every move we made as we unplugged the drain. They followed us to the cellar when we went down for the bamboo pole to clean out the siphon … Grandma pinned up her skirts with safety pins and stripped to her shift on top. Then we went to work … We needed lots of hot water. We had to get it from the shoemaker across the street and bring it over in a pitcher. The tenants wouldn’t give us a drop. Then Caroline started poking down into the drain. She worked her pole back and forth and dislodged the muck. The pole alone wouldn’t do it. She plunged in with both arms, the tenants all came out with their brats to watch us cleaning out their shit … and the papers … and the rags … They’d wad them up on purpose … Caroline was undaunted … what a woman! Nothing could get her down …

She fought her way through. The tenants saw the drain was working again. They couldn’t help admiring her energy … not to be outdone, they began to help us … They brought out wine … Grandma clinked glasses with them … she wasn’t one to bear grudges … We wished each other Happy New Year … it was all very cordial and friendly … That didn’t bring in any money … They were unscrupulous … If she’d given them notice, they’d have had time for vengeance before moving out … They’d have wrecked the whole joint … Both houses were full of holes … Every time we went out there we tried to fill them in … it was a waste of time … they kept making more … We took putty with us … Pipes, attics, walls, and floors were all shreds and patches … But what they attacked most viciously was the toilet bowl … The whole thing was full of cracks … It made Grandma cry to look at it … Same with the garden gate … They’d bent it double … it looked like licorice … For a while we’d given them a concierge, a friendly, obliging old woman … she hadn’t lasted a week … She was so horrified she cleared out. In less than a week two of the tenants had gone up to strangle her … in her bed … some nonsense about doormats.

Those houses are still there. Only the name of the street has changed … from “Plaisance” to “Marne” … That was the fashion for a while …

Lots of tenants have come and gone, bachelors and spinsters, whole families, generations … They’ve gone on making holes, and so have the rats, the little mice, the crickets and woodlice … No one has plugged them in ages … Uncle Édouard inherited the houses. They’ve taken so much punishment they’ve got to be regular sieves … no one paid his rent anymore … the tenants had grown old, they were tired of arguing … so was my uncle … they were even sick of fighting about the shit-house … there was nothing more to wreck, there was nothing left. They turned them into storerooms. They put in their wheelbarrows, their watering cans and coal … At the moment we don’t even know exactly who’s living there … they’ve been condemned to widen the street … they’re going to be torn down … As far as we know, there are four families … Portuguese, so they say.

Nobody’s bothered to try to keep them up … Grandma knocked herself out, it didn’t do her any good … when you come right down to it, that’s what killed her … messing around that day in January even later than usual, first in cold water, then in boiling water … always in the draft, putting oakum in the pump and thawing out the faucets.

The tenants came out with their candles to needle us and see if the work was getting ahead. The rent? Well, they wanted a little more time. We should come around next week … We started back to the station.

At the ticket window Grandma Caroline had a dizzy spell. She clutched the railing … it wasn’t like her … She had chills all over … We went back across the square to a café … While we were waiting for the train, the two of us shared a grog … When we got to Gare Saint-Lazare, she went straight home to bed … she was all in … she came down with a high fever, same as I’d had in the Passage, but hers was grippe and it turned to pneumonia … The doctor came morning and evening … She was so sick that we in the Passage didn’t know what to tell the neighbors when they asked.

Uncle Édouard shuttled back and forth between her place and the shop … She was worse than ever … She was sick of having her temperature taken, she didn’t even want us to know what it was … She still had all her wits about her. Tom hid under the furniture. He didn’t budge, he hardly ate … My uncle came to the shop. He had a great big balloon full of oxygen.

One night my mother didn’t even come home for supper … Next morning it was still dark when Uncle Édouard shook me in my bed and told me to get dressed quick. To go and kiss Grandma, he explained … I didn’t know exactly what he meant … I was still half asleep … We walked fast … It was on the rue du Rocher … second floor … The concierge hadn’t been to bed … She came out with a lamp to light the hallway … We went upstairs. Mama was in the first room crying… . down on her knees, slumped against a chair. She was moaning softly, mumbling in her grief … Papa was standing … he didn’t say a word … He went out to the landing … then he came back again … He looked at his watch … He tugged at his moustache … Then I caught a glimpse of Grandma in her bed in the next room … She was breathing hard, gasping, suffocating, making a disgusting racket … The doctor was just leaving … He shook hands with everybody … Then they led me in. I could see she was fighting for breath. She was all yellow and red, her face was covered with sweat, like a wax mask beginning to melt … Grandma stared at me, but her look was still friendly … They had told me to kiss her … I was already leaning against the bed. She motioned me not to … She smiled a little … She wanted to tell me something … There was a rasping sound in her throat … it wouldn’t come out … in the end she made it … she spoke as softly as she could … “Work hard, my dear little Ferdinand,” she whispered … I wasn’t afraid of her. We understood each other deep down … The fact is that I have worked hard, all in all … That’s nobody’s business …

She wanted to say something to my mother too. “Clémence, my little girl … take care … don’t let yourself go … please, for my sake …” That was all she could manage. She couldn’t breathe at all … She motioned us to leave … to go into the other room … We obeyed … We could hear her … The whole apartment was full of it … We stayed there at least an hour, stunned and silent. My uncle went to the door. He wanted to see her, but he didn’t dare disobey. He only pushed open one of the double doors, that way we could hear her more distinctly … There was a kind of hiccup … My mother jumped up … She went
eek
, as if her throat were being cut. She crumpled up in a heap on the carpet between her chair and my uncle … Her hand was clenched so tight over her mouth that we couldn’t take it away …