Death on the Installment Plan (18 page)

The harbor master’s clerk in a frock coat is the first to go aboard … The pulley swings a plank overhead … More insults fly … The rumpus goes on … the longshoremen swarm over the rigging … The hatch covers are taken off … Now we see the iceberg in sections … After the forest … Faster, coachman! … Here come the wagons … There’s nothing more to see, the excitement is elsewhere.

We go back to the semaphore, they’re expecting a collier. She comes in past Guignol Rock with her flag at half-mast.

The pilot in his boat dances and splashes from one wave to the next. He’s fighting every inch of the way … he’s thrown back … finally he grabs the ladder and climbs up the side. The old tub has been hammering into the storm all the way from Cardiff … She’s rolling from rail to rail in a mountain of foam and spray … She’s caught in the current, carried toward the breakwater … Finally the tide shifts a bit, sets her right, and drives her into the harbor mouth … Her whole hull is trembling as she pulls in, the waves are still chasing her. She grunts and rumbles and blows out steam. Her rigging screeches in the gale. Her smoke falls back on the crests of the waves, the ebb tide beats against the jetties.

Now you can make out the “helmets” in the Emblemeuse narrows … the little rocks come up at low tide …

Two cutters in trouble are trying to feel their way through … There’s going to be a tragedy; we mustn’t miss a mouthful … The fans collect at the end of the breakwater by the bell … They study the situation through binoculars … A man beside me lends me his … The squalls are getting so thick they gag you. You can’t breathe … The wind blows up the water rougher than ever … it splashes in streams high up against the lighthouse … way up to the sky.

My father pulls his cap down … We wouldn’t be going home before nightfall … Three dismasted fishing boats come in … You can hear the voices from the channel … They’re calling each other … They get tangled up in each other’s oars …

Mama was beginning to worry, she’s waiting for us at the Little Mouse, the fishmongers’ hangout … She hasn’t sold much … But the two of us aren’t interested in anything but ocean voyages.

Papa was a good swimmer, he was crazy about bathing. It didn’t appeal to me. The beach at Dieppe is no good. But after all, this was vacation. And besides I was even filthier than in the Passage.

At the Tomtit we only had one little basin for the three of us. I got out of washing my feet. I was beginning to smell very bad, almost as bad as the sink.

Sea bathing takes a lot of courage. The crest of the wave seethes and foams, rises high in the air, roars, descends reinforced with thousands of pebbles. It catches me.

Chilled to the bone, bruised, the child totters and falls … A universe of pebbles beats my bones amid the flaking foam. First your head wobbles, sways, staggers, and pounds into the gravel … Every second is your last … My father in a striped bathing suit, between two roaring mountains, is shouting like mad. He bobs up in front of me … he belches, thrashes about, makes wisecracks. A roller knocks him over too, turns him upside down, there he is with his feet in the air … He’s wriggling like a frog … He can’t straighten himself out, he’s done for … At this point a terrible volley of pebbles hits me in the chest … I’m riddled … drowned … It’s awful … I’m crushed under the deluge … Then the wave carries me back and lays me down at my mother’s feet … She tries to grab me, to rescue me … The undertow catches me, carries me out … She lets out a terrible scream … The whole beach comes running … But it!s no use … The bathers crowd around, all hysterical … The raging sea pounds me down to the bottom, then lifts me gasping to the surface … In a flashing moment I see that they’re discussing my agony … There they are, every imaginable color: green … blue, parasols, lavender ones, lemon-yellow ones … I whirl about in pieces … And then I don’t see a thing … A life preserver is strangling me … They haul me up on the rocks … like a whale … Brandy scorches my throat, they cover me all over with arnica … and those terrible rubdowns … I’m burning under the bandages … I’m strangled in three bathrobes …

All around me people are saying the sea is too rough for me! OK! That suits me fine. I hadn’t expected as much … It was a sacrifice … on the altar of energetic cleanliness …

Already ten days had passed. Next week it would all be over. My father would have to go back to the office. It made us sick to think about it. There wasn’t a single minute to waste.

We weren’t selling much. All of a sudden business had got so slow that only a real moment of panic could have made us decide to go on that excursion … to take the boat to England, all three of us … It was the idea of going back so soon that sent us off our rockers, that drove us to extremes …

We started off at daybreak, hardly time for a cup of coffee … Grandma’s nest egg … well … we’d already gone through half of it …

We went on board ahead of time … We had the cheapest seats, in the bow … they were fine … We had a wonderful view of the whole horizon … It was agreed that I’d be first to point out the foreign shores … The weather wasn’t bad, but even so, as soon as we were a little way out and had lost sight of the lighthouses, it began to be kind of wet … The ship started to seesaw; this was real seafaring … My mother took refuge in the shelter where the life jackets were kept … She was the first to vomit across the deck and down into third class … For a moment she had the whole area to herself …

“Watch out for the child, Auguste,” she had barely time to yelp … That was the surest way to infuriate him …

Some of the others began straining their guts over the side … In the rolling and pitching, people were throwing up any old place, without formality … There was only one toilet … in one corner of the deck … It was already occupied by four vomiters in a state of collapse, wedged in tight … The sea was getting steadily rougher … At every rising wave, oops … In the trough a dozen oopses, more copious, more compact … The gale blew my mother’s veil away … it landed wringing wet on the mouth of a lady at the other end … who was retching desperately … All resistance had been abandoned. The horizon was littered with jam … salad … chicken … coffee … the whole slobgullion … it all came up …

My mother was down on her knees on the deck … she smiled with a sublime effort, she was drooling at the mouth …

“You see,” she says to me in the middle of the terrible plummeting … “You see, Ferdinand, you still have some of that tuna fish on your stomach too …” We try again in unison. Bouah! and another bouah! … She was mistaken, it was the pancakes … With a little more effort I think I could bring up French fries … if I emptied all my guts out on deck … I try … I struggle … I push like mad … A fierce wave beats down on the rail, smacks against the deck, rises, gushes, rolls back, sweeps the steerage … The foam stirs up the garbage and spins it around between us … We swallow some of it … We spit it up again … At every plunge the soul flies away … at every rise you recapture it in a wave of mucus and stink … It comes dripping from your nose, all salty. This is too much! … One passenger begs for mercy … He cries out to high heaven that he’s empty … He strains his guts … And a raspberry comes up after all! … He examines it, goggle-eyed with horror … Now he really has nothing left! … He wishes he could vomit out his two eyes … He tries, he tries hard … He braces himself against the mast … he’s trying to drive them out of their sockets … Mama collapses against the rail … She vomits herself up again, all she’s got … A carrot comes up … a piece of fat … and the whole tail of a mullet …

Up top by the captain, the first and second class passengers were leaning over the side to puke, and it came tumbling down on us … At every wave we caught a shower with whole meals in it … We were lashed with garbage, with meat fibers … The gale blows the stuff upward … it clings in the shrouds … Around us the sea is roaring … the foam of battle … Papa in a cap with a chin strap … supervises our misery … He’s in the pink, lucky man, he’s a born sailor … he gives us good advice, he wants us to lie even flatter … to crawl on the floor … A woman comes staggering … she wedges herself in beside Mama so as to throw up better … There’s a sick mutt, too, so sick he shits on the ladies’ skirts … He rolls over and shows us his belly … piercing screams are heard from the shithouse … Those four are still jammed in, they can’t puke anymore, they can’t pec, they can’t shit … They’re leaning over the toilet, pushing … They bellow, begging someone to shoot them … And the tub pitches still higher … steeper than ever … and plunges into the depths … into the dark green … And she rises again, the stinker, she picks you up again, you and the hole in your stomach …

A stocky little character, a wise guy, is helping his wife to throw up in a little bucket … he’s trying to encourage her.

“Go on, Léonie … Don’t hold back … I’m right here … I’m holding you.” All of a sudden she turns her head back into the wind … The whole stew that’s been gurgling in her mouth catches me full in the face … My teeth are full of it, beans, tomatoes … I’d thought I had nothing left to vomit … well, it looks like I have … I can taste it … it’s coming up again … Hey, down there, get moving! … It’s coming! … A whole carload is pushing against my tongue … I’ll pay her back, I’ll spill my guts in her mouth … I grope my way over to her … The two of us are crawling … We clutch each other … We embrace … we vomit on each other … My smart father and her husband try to separate us … They tug at us in opposite directions … They’ll never understand …

Why bear grudges? It’s nasty. Bouah! … That husband is a stupid brute! … Come on, sweetie, we’ll vomit him up together! … I give his fair lady a complete hank of noodles … with tomato juice … a drink of cider three days old … She returns the compliment with Swiss cheese … I suck at the strings … My mother’s snarled up in the ropes … she comes crawling after her vomit … The little dog is caught in her skirts. We’re all tangled up with this brute’s wife … They tug at me ferociously … He starts peppering my ass with his boot to get me away from her … He was a regular bruiser … My father tried to mollify him … he hadn’t said two words when the other guy rams him in the breadbasket with his head and sends him sprawling against the winch … And that wasn’t the end of it! The strong man jumps on him and starts hammering at his face … He bends down to finish him off … Papa was bleeding all over … The blood poured down into the vomit … He was slipping down the mast … In the end he collapsed … But the husband still wasn’t satisfied … Taking advantage of a moment when the roll has sent me spinning he charges me … I skid … He flings me at the shithouse … like a battering ram … I smash into it … I bash the door in … I fall on the poor sagging bastards … I turn around … I’m wedged in the middle of them … They’ve all lost their pants … I pull the chain. We’re half drowned in the flood. We’re squashed into the bowl … But they never stop snoring … I don’t even know if I’m dead or alive.

The siren woke everybody up. We climbed up and stuck our heads out the portholes. The jetties at the entrance to the harbor were like a lacework of wooden piles … We looked out on England as though disembarking in the other world …

Here too there were cliffs and then green … But much darker and rougher than on the other side … The sea was perfectly flat now … It was easy to vomit … but you didn’t need to so much anymore.

Talk about shivering … it’s a wonder our teeth didn’t crack … My mother was weeping spasmodically from having vomited so much … I had bumps all over … A big silence fell in our ranks … everyone felt bashful, worried about going ashore. Corpses couldn’t have been any more bashful.

The steamer tugged at the anchor, gave two, three jerks, and then we really stopped. We fished around for our tickets … Once we were through customs we tried to clean ourselves up. My mother had to wring her skirt, rivers of water ran out. My father”d taken such a beating a chunk of his moustache was missing. I pretended not to notice but he had some shiner. He dabbed at it with his handerkerchief … Little by little we pulled ourselves together. The streets were still heaving pretty bad. We walked past the shops, little tiny ones the way they are over there, with striped shutters and little whitewashed stoops.

My mother did her best, she didn’t want to hold us back, but she was limping way behind … We thought of going to a Hôtel, of taking a room right away so she could rest … just a little while … we’d never get to London, we were already too wet … We were sure to get sick if we tried to go any farther … And besides, our shoes wouldn’t hold out. They were drinking up the mud, making a noise like a flock of sheep …

We identified a hôtel … The word was written on the front in gold letters … At the door we got scared and went past … The rain kept coming down harder and harder … We tried to figure out how much things would cost, the least little things … We were afraid of the currency … We went into a tearoom … they understood us all right … Once seated, we looked at our suitcase … It wasn’t ours! In the confusion at the customs we’d taken the wrong one … We ran back p.d.q… . ours was gone … we gave the one that didn’t belong to us to the Stationmaster … So then we didn’t have anything … We were really out of luck … Such things only happened to us … That was perfectly true in a way … My father didn’t pass up the opportunity to point it out … We had no fresh clothes to put on … not even a shirt! Still, we had to see the sights … People began to notice us in the village, the three of us shivering in the rain. We definitely looked like gypsies. We thought we’d better take a road out of town … We took the first one we saw … after the last house …

“Brighton” said a signpost. Fourteen miles ahead … We were good walkers, that didn’t scare us. But we couldn’t keep together. My father was always way ahead … He wasn’t very proud of us … Even there, soaked, muddy, half crippled, he kept as far away from us as possible … He couldn’t stand us clinging to him … He kept his distance.