Death on the Installment Plan (53 page)

“The ‘All-Purpose Cottage,’ on the other hand, is flexible, it adapts itself, it expands, it contracts according to necessity, according to the laws, the living forces of nature!”

“It bends enormously, but it never breaks …” The day his stand was inaugurated, after President Félix Faure had come through, after all the powwow and congratulations, the crowd broke through the barriers! the guards were swept away! The populace burst in so frantically between the walls of the cottage that the little marvel was instantly torn apart, washed away, swallowed up! The mob was so feverish, so avid, that it combusted all the materials … You couldn’t say this one and only model was destroyed … it was sucked up, absorbed, digested on the spot … The evening the exhibition closed there wasn’t a trace left of it, not a crumb, not a nail, not a shred of muslin … The amazing edifice had been absorbed like a pimple … As Courtial told me about all this fifteen years later, he was still in a daze …

“Of course I could have started in again … In that field, I can say without flattering myself, my ability was remarkable … When it came to drawing up a precise, a meticulous estimate for on-the-spot assembly, I had no rival … But other, more grandiose projects carried me away, kept me absorbed … I’ve never found the time to resume my calculations of the ‘indices of resistance’ … And after all, in spite of the final disaster, I had proved what I set out to … By my boldness I had enabled certain schools, certain young enthusiasts, to step forward … to shout their opinions from the rooftops … to find their way … That and nothing else was my mission! I desired nothing more! My honor was intact! I asked for nothing, Ferdinand! Coveted nothing! Demanded nothing of the authorities! I went back to my studies … I didn’t scheme or intrigue! … And now listen … Guess what I get … Practically one right after the other? The Nicham, and a week later the Academic Palms! … I was really offended! Whom did they take me for all of a sudden? Why not a tobacco counter? I wanted to send all that flimflam back to the minister! I told Flammarion about it: ‘Don’t do it,’ he said, ‘don’t do anything of the kind. I’ve got them too!’ Well, in that case I was in the clear. But even so they’d swindled me outrageously! … Oh, the skunks! My plans had been plagiarized, pirated, copied, do you hear, in a thousand revolting ways … and incompetently what’s more … by so many swelled-headed, unprincipled, shameless official architects that I wrote to Flammarion … If they wanted to make amends, they owed me at least the Legion of Honor … if they’d wanted to butter me up with honors, I mean … He thought I was perfectly right, but he advised me to keep quiet and not make any more of a stink … it would even get him in trouble … to be patient … that the time wasn’t quite ripe … that after all I was his disciple and I shouldn’t forget it … Oh, I don’t feel any bitterness, get me straight! Yes, those little things still make me feel sad … But nothing more! Absolutely not! … A melancholy lesson … That’s all … I think of it now and then …”

I could tell when the architectural blues came over him … It usually happened in the country … and when he was getting ready to go up in his balloon … when he was climbing into the basket … His memories came back to him … Maybe he was a little scared and that was what made him talk … He looked at the country in the distance … Out there in the suburbs, especially at the housing lots, the shacks and shanties … He was overcome with emotion … it brought the tears to his eyes … Those shacks, all lopsided and cross-eyed, all cracked and rickety, rotting away in the muck, sinking into the slush, at the edge of the fields … beyond the highway … “You see all that,” he’d say to me, “you see that stinking mess?” He’d make a sweeping gesture, embracing the horizon … The whole crawling swarm of shanties, the church and the chicken coops, the wash-house and the schools … The ramshackle tumbledown huts, gray, mauve, and mignonette … all the plaster thingamajigs …

“It’s bad, eh? It’s pretty crummy? … Well, it’s a good deal my fault … I’m responsible! You can put the blame on me … All that is mine, do you hear me? … Mine! …”

“Ah?” I said as though flabbergasted. I knew he was going into his routine … He threw his leg over the edge … He jumped into the wicker basket … If the wind wasn’t too strong, he kept his panama on … he was much happier that way … but he tied it under his chin with a broad ribbon … I’d wear his cap … “Let her go!” She’d rise inch by inch, very slowly at first … and then a little faster … He’d have to get a move on to clear the roofs … He couldn’t make up his mind to throw off ballast … But he had to rise somehow … We never inflated her completely … The stuff cost thirteen francs a bottle …

Some time after the adventure with the “Homemade Cottage” that the insane crowd had torn to pieces, Courtial des Pereires suddenly decided to change his whole tactics … “Capital first!” That’s what he said … That was his new motto. “No more risks. Cold cash! …” He had mapped out a program based entirely on these principles … And fundamental reforms … all absolutely judicious and pertinent …

First of all he decided that come hell or high water the conditions of inventors had to be improved … He started from the premise that in this racket there’d never be any shortage of ideas … that they were actually too plentiful! But that capital, on the other hand, is disgustingly evasive! pusillanimous! retiring! … That all the misfortunes of the human race and his own in particular came from lack of funds … the distrustfulness of money … the hideous rarity of credit … But all that could be straightened out … All it would take to remedy this state of affairs was action … an ingenious idea … So one two three, right there on the Galerie Montpensier, behind the “Tunisian office,” between the kitchen and the corridor, he founded an “Investors’ Corner” … a very special little nook, furnished very simply: a table, a cupboard, a filing cabinet, two chairs, and to preside over deliberations, a fine bust of de Lesseps on the top shelf, between folders and more folders …

On the strength of the new statutes, any inventor willing to invest fifty-two francs (total payable in advance) could run an ad in our paper for three successive issues … saying anything he pleased about all his projects, even the wildest nonsense, the dizziest phantasmagorias, the most shameless impostures … Not bad! It filled up two full columns in the
Genitron
and we’d throw in a ten minutes’ private consultation with Courtial, the director … And finally, to make the deal even more attractive, an oleo-graphed diploma, certifying him as a “member in good standing of the Eureka Research Center for the financing, study, equilibration, and immediate exploitation of discoveries conducive to the advancement of all the sciences and of industry …”

It wasn’t so easy to get them to cough up the fifty smackers … That was always slow going … Even giving them the song and dance … talking himself blue in the face … when it came to paying up, they nearly always balked … even the screwiest of them got to feeling worried … even in their delirium, they smelled a rat … they realized that this was dough they’d never be seeing again … “Registration fees” was the name we dreamed up for our gimmick …

The understanding was that from that moment on Courtial would take all the necessary steps, put out feelers, attend to all the calling and contacting, the interviews … the documentation … the meetings … the premonitory discussions, the arguments, in short everything that was needed to attract, propitiate, arouse, and reassure a consortium … All this, it went without saying, at the opportune moment … On that point we were adamant … Haste makes waste … easy does it … that was our way … Impatience can only mess everything up! Precipitation wrecks the best-laid plans! The most fruitful undertakings are those that ripen slowly! … We were radically opposed, implacably hostile, to all premature bungling … to all hysteria … “Your investor escapes on the wings of the swallow, he’s a tortoise when it comes to forking up.”

To interfere as little as possible with the negotiations, always so delicate, the inventor was advised to leave the field perfectly clear … to go straight home … to smoke his pipe and wait … and not worry about a thing. He’d be duly notified, summoned, acquainted with every detail as soon as things began to shape up … But it wasn’t often that he’d stay home and mind his business … Hardly a week would pass before he came running … asking for news … bringing us new models … complementary projects … more blueprints … spare parts … we could yell ourselves blue in the face, he’d keep coming, he’d come more and more often … like shooting pains, worried, dispirited … As soon as he began to see the light, he’d start bellowing … kicking up a ruckus of varying proportions … And after that you’d never see him again. There were some … but not very many … who weren’t so dumb, who threatened to raise hell, legal proceedings, to register a complaint with the police if we didn’t return their dough … Courtial knew them all. He cleared out when he saw them coming. He recognized them a mile away … It’s incredible what a piercing eye he had for spotting a rabid customer … They seldom caught him … He’d disappear into the back room and do a little turn with the dumbbells, but mostly he went down in the cellar … There it was even safer … He wasn’t in … The old-timer who wanted his money back could split a gut, it didn’t get him anywhere …

“Hold him, Ferdinand. Just hold him,”’ the stinker would say. “Hold him while I think things over … I know that gasbag only too well! That drooling ape! Every time he comes here for an interview he stays two hours at least … He’s made me lose the thread of my deductions a dozen times. It’s shameful! It’s scandalous! He’s a plague! Kill him, I beseech you, Ferdinand! Don’t let him contaminate the world anymore! Burn him! … Slaughter him! Scatter his ashes! I don’t care what you do! But for God’s sake, at any price, do you hear me, don’t bring him to me. Tell him I’m in Singapore! in Colombo! in the Hesperides! Tell him I’m making elastic banks for the Isthmus of Suez and Panama. That’s an idea! … Tell him anything! Anything will do, so long as I don’t have to see him! … I beg you, Ferdinand, I beg you!”

So it was I that had to bear the brunt of the whole tempest sure as shit … I had my system, I admit … I was like the “Do-it-yourself Cottage,” my approach was flexible … I put up no resistance … I bent in the direction of his fury … I went even further … I amazed the lunatic by the virulence of my hatred for the loathsome Pereires … I took him every time in nothing flat … with my hair-raising insults … In that province I was supreme … I flayed him! I stigmatized him!

I covered him with garbage, with pus! That abject villain! That mountain of shit! twenty times worse! a hundred times! a thousand times worse than the customer had ever thought on his own! …

For his private delectation I turned Courtial … shouting at the top of my lungs … into a heap of soft, slimy, inconceivably sickening turds … How unbelievably loathsome he was! … He was in a class by himself! I went at it hammer and tongs! … I stamped on the trapdoor right over the cellar, in chorus with the nut … I outdid them all in violence … thanks to the intensity of my revolt! my sincerity! my destructive enthusiasm! my implacable tetanism! … my frenzy! … my anathematic writhing! … It was unbelievable what a paroxysm I could work myself up into in my total fury … I got all that from my dad … and the performances I’d been through … For temper tantrums I had no equal … The worst lunatics, the most delirious interpretive screwballs didn’t stand a chance if I decided to take a fling, if I really wanted to bestir myself … Young as I was … they all left with their asses dragging … absolutely bewildered by the intensity of my hatred … my indomitable fury, the eternal thirst for vengeance that I harbored in my flanks … With tears in their eyes they entrusted me with the task of crushing that turd … that execrable Courtial … that sink of iniquity … of covering him with new and unpredictable kinds of excrement, slimier than the bottom of the shithouse! … a mass of unconscionable purulence! … of making a cake out of him, the most fetid that could ever be imagined … of cutting him up into balls … flattening him out into sheets, plastering the whole bottom of the crapper with him, all the way from the bowl to the sump … and wedging him in there once and for all … to be shat on for all eternity …

As soon as our friend was gone … as soon as he was far enough away … Courtial would come back to the trapdoor … He’d lift it up a little … He’d take a gander … Then he’d surface …

“Ferdinand! You’ve just saved my life … Ah, yes! My life! It’s the truth. I heard it all. Ah! It’s just as I feared! That ape would have torn me apart. Right then and there! Did you realize that?” Then he’d stop and think. He began to feel worried about what I’d been shouting … my little session with the visitor …

“But I do hope, Ferdinand, tell me now, that I haven’t fallen as low as all that in your esteem? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t hide it from me, would you? I’ll explain my position if you want me to. Go ahead … I do hope these little acts you put on have no effect on your feeling for me! That would be too dreadful. Your affection for me is unchanged? You can count on me to the hilt, you know that. I’m a man of my word. You do understand me? You’re beginning to understand me, aren’t you? Tell me you understand me.”

‘Yes, yes. Of course … I think … I think I’m beginning …”

“Then listen to me, my dear Ferdinand! … While that lunatic was raving, I was thinking .of thousands of things … while he was turning our stomachs … mouthing his delirium … I was saying to myself: My poor Courtial! All these scenes, this ranting, this infamous uproar is lacerating your existence abominably … without furthering your cause any! When I say cause, you understand, I don’t mean money. I’m speaking of the great intangible treasure! Immaterial wealth! The great Decision! The eternal theme, the infinite acquisition! The idea that is worthy of our enthusiasm … You’ve got to understand me, Ferdinand … Quicker! Quicker! Time is passing! A minute! An hour! At my age, Ferdinand, that’s eternity. You’ll see … It’s all one, Ferdinand, all one!” His eyes moistened … “Listen to me, Ferdinand. I hope you’ll understand me fully one day … yes! … that you’ll really appreciate me … When I’m not here to defend myself … Then it’s you, Ferdinand, who will possess the truth! … You who will refute the calumnies … It’s you, I’m counting on you, Ferdinand. I’m counting on you! If people come to you … from all four quarters of the world … and say : ‘Courtial was nothing but a skunk, the crummiest bastard of them all! A swindler! There was never another like him …’ What will you say, Ferdinand? … Just this … You hear me? ‘Courtial made only one mistake. But that mistake was fundamental! He thought the world was waiting for the spirit … to help it change … The world has changed … That’s a fact … But the spirit hasn’t come to it! …’ That’s all you’ll say … Absolutely … Not another word! You will add nothing! … The order of magnitudes, Ferdinand! The order of magnitudes! Maybe the infinitestimal can be inserted in the immense … But how are we to reduce the immense to the infinitesimal? Ah? Our misfortunes have no other source, Ferdinand! No other source! All our misfortunes! …”