Death on the Installment Plan (7 page)

“Ferdinand, you’re out of your mind!” She backs away, gives a start and runs for it. “You’re out of your mind!” she cries again from the stairs.

I stagger and fall flat. I hear her limp all the way down. The window is still wide open … I think of Auguste, he liked boats too … He was an artist at heart … He had no luck … he drew storms now and then on my blackboard …

The maid is still there beside my bed. “Lie down here in your clothes,” I say. “We’re cruising … My ship has lost all her lights over the Gare de Lyon … I’ll give the captain a receipt, so he’ll come to the Quai d’Arago when they set up the guillotines … the quay of morning …”

Emilie laughs … she doesn’t get it … “Tomorrow,” she says. “Tomorrow …” And she goes back to her kid.

Then I was really alone!

Then I saw the thousands and thousands of little skiffs returning high above the Left Bank … Each one had a shriveled little corpse under its sail … and his story … his little lies to catch the wind with.

The last century—I can talk about it, I saw it end … It pulled out by the road past Orly … Choisy-le-Roy … Rungis, where my aunt Armide lived, the eldest of the family …

She talked about all sorts of things that nobody remembered. The day we picked for our visit was a Sunday in the fall, before the hardest months. We wouldn’t be back until spring for the surprise of finding her still alive …

Old memories stay with you … but they’re delicate, fragile … I’m sure we took the horsecar in front of the Châtelet … We and our cousins would climb up to the top deck. My father stayed home. My cousins would joke; we’d never find Aunt Armide in Rungis, they said. All alone in the house without a maid, she was sure to have been murdered, and what with the floods we probably wouldn’t be notified until it was too late.

So we’d jog along to Choisy along the river. It took hours. That gave me a little fresh air. We’d be taking the train back.

When we got to the end of the line, we’d have to hurry. Over the big cobblestones … my mother would tug at my arm to make me keep up … We’d meet other relatives, also on their way to visit the old lady. My mother would have trouble with her bun, her veil, her straw hat, and her hairpins and hatpins … When her veil was wet, she’d chew at it in irritation. The avenues on the way to my aunt’s were full of chestnuts. ] couldn’t pick any up, we hadn’t a moment to lose … Beyond the road there were trees, fields, an embankment, clods of earth, and then the country … farther still, countries unknown … China … and after that nothing at all.

We were in such a hurry to get there that I made in my pants … To tell the truth I was in such a hurry all through my childhood that I had shit on my ass until I was drafted … We were all wringing wet by the time we got to the first houses. It was a sweet little village, I realize that now; with quiet little nooks, winding lanes, moss, all picturesque as hell. The fun was over when we reached her gate. It squeaked. My aunt had sold “ready to wear” at the Carreau du Temple for close on fifty years … All her savings had gone into her cottage in Rungis.

She lived at the back of one room, beside the fireplace, always in her armchair, waiting for people to come to see her. She kept the blinds drawn on account of her eyes.

Her cottage was in the Swiss style; that was all the rage in those days. Out in front there were some fish pickling in a smelly pool. A little more walking and you’d be at the door. Then darkness swallowed you up. You touched something soft. “Come closer. Don’t be afraid, little Ferdinand …” That meant smooching. I couldn’t get out of it. It was cold and prickly and then kind of warm at the corner of her mouth; the taste was awful. Somebody lighted a candle. The relations huddled together and began to gossip. It gave them a kick to see the relic kiss me … I was sick to my stomach from just that one kiss … and from walking too fast. But when she began to talk, they all had to shut up. They didn’t know how to answer her. My aunt conversed only in the imperfect subjunctive. Old-fashioned. It cramped everybody’s style. It was time for her to be moving along.

There had never been a fire in that fireplace behind her. “The draft was never quite sufficient …” The real reason was economy.

Before we left, Armide offered little cakes. Dry-as-dust cookies taken from a tightly covered receptacle that was opened twice a year. Everyone declined of course … they weren’t children anymore … The cookies were for me, Ferdinand! … To show my pleasure and appreciation I had to jump up and down for joy … My mother pinched me, that was my signal to perform … I ran out into the garden, always the little imp, and spat it all out to the fish.

Everything that’s washed up was there in the darkness, behind my aunt, behind her armchair. There was my grandfather Leopold, who never came back from India, there was the Virgin Mary, Cyrano de Bergerac, Félix Faure, Lustucru,
^*
and the imperfect subjunctive. That’s how it was.

I let the relic kiss me once again before leaving … And then hurried departure; out through the garden at breakneck speed. In front of the church we ditched some cousins, the ones who were going to Juvisy. In kissing me they gave off every known smell, rancid breath between beard and shirt front. My mother’s limp was worse from sitting still a whole hour, her leg had gone to sleep.

When we came to the cemetery at Thiais, we’d dash in for a minute. There were two more of our dead at the end of one of the lanes. We scarcely looked at their tombs and lit out like thieves. We’d catch up with Clotilde, Gustave, and Gaston after the crossroads at Belle-Épine. My mother was dragging her bad leg and bumping into things. She even sprained her ankle once trying to carry me just before the grade crossing.

In the darkness our only thought was to reach the big apothecary jar at the pharmacy. That was on the main street, it meant we were saved … Against a background of raw gaslight gusts of music flew from the clattering doors of the wineshops. We felt threatened and quickly crossed the street. My mother was afraid of drunks.

The inside of the station was like a box, the waiting room was full of smoke, with a rickety oil lamp dangling from the ceiling. Huddled together around the little stove, the travelers hawked and coughed and sizzled in their heat. There’s the humming of the train, it crashes in like thunder, you’d think it was tearing the whole place apart. The travelers shake themselves, break into a run, and storm the carriages like a hurricane. We’re the last two. I get a good clout to teach me not to play with the door handle.

At Ivry we have to get out; we take advantage of our day out to drop in on Madame Héronde, the seamstress. She mends all our lace, especially the old things that are so fragile and hard to dye.

She lived in a shack at the far end of Ivry, on the rue des Palisses, in the middle of the fields. This was a good chance to stir her up a little. Her work was never ready on time. The customers were ferocious; nowadays nobody would dare to gripe the way they did then. I used to see my mother in tears almost every night over the seamstress and the lace that never came back. If our customer got peeved about her torn Valenciennes, she wouldn’t be back for a whole year.

The plain beyond Ivry was even more dangerous than the way to Aunt Armide’s. No comparison. Sometimes there were toughs. They’d insult my mother. If I turned around, I’d get a smack. When the mud got so soft and mushy that your shoes came off in it, it meant we hadn’t far to go. Madame Héronde’s shack was in the middle of an empty lot. Her mutt heard us and began to bark like mad. We caught sight of the window.

Our visit always came as a great surprise to Madame Héronde; she couldn’t get over it. My mother upbraided her, unloaded her grievances. Finally both of them burst into tears. There was nothing for me to do but wait and look out … as far as possible … across the plain, heavy with darkness, that stretched out as far as the banks of the Seine and ended in a long cluttered line of housing lots.

Our seamstress did her mending by the light of an oil lamp. The smoke choked her and the light was ruining her eyes. My mother kept after her to have gas put in. “It’s really indispensable,” she said again as we were leaving.

Mending tiny little insets, pieces as delicate as spider webs, she was certainly ruining her eyes. It wasn’t only self-interest that made my mother say these things, but friendship as well. I never visited Madame Héronde’s shack when it wasn’t dark.

“They’re installing it in September,” she said every time. It was a lie to make my mother leave her alone … my mother thought well of her for all her faults.

My mother was in mortal terror of thieving seamstresses. Madame Héronde had no equal for honesty. She never did us out of a single penny. And yet she was poor as a church-mouse and we entrusted her with treasures! Whole chasubles of Venetian lace, such as you wouldn’t even see in a museum nowadays. When my mother spoke of her later on in the family circle, it was with enthusiasm. It brought tears to her eyes. “She was a real fairy, I’ve got to admit. It’s too bad she couldn’t keep her word. She never delivered anything on time, never once …” The fairy died before the gas was installed, of fatigue, carried off by the flu, and also no doubt by the sorrow of having a skirt chaser for a husband … She died in childbirth … I remember her funeral well. It was at Le Petit Ivry. There were only the three of us, me and my parents, her husband hadn’t bothered! He was a handsome man, he drank up every cent he ever owned. He spent whole years at the bar on the corner of the rue Gaillon. We saw him there for at least another ten years every time we passed. And then he disappeared.

When we left Madame Héronde’s, it wasn’t the end of our visits. At Austerlitz we had another gallop and then a bus ride to the Bastille. The Wurzems had their workshop near the Cirque d’Hiver. They were Alsatians, cabinetmakers, a whole family of them. It was Wurzem who antiqued all our small pieces of furniture, the kidney-shaped tables, consoles, and so on. For the last twenty years he’d done nothing else, first for Grandma, then for other people. Marquetry doesn’t last, it’s a perpetual headache. Wurzem was an artist, an excellent craftsman. They all of them lived in the shavings, his wife, his aunt, a brother-in-law, two female cousins, and four children. He was never on time either. His vice was fishing. He’d often spend a whole week by the Canal Saint-Martin instead of filling his orders. My mother would shout herself blue in the face. He always had some insolent comeback. Then he’d apologize. The whole family would burst into tears; there’d be nine of them crying and we were only two. They were a shiftless lot. They never paid their rent. In the end they were thrown out and had to take refuge in the “jungle” off the rue Caulaincourt.

Their shack was down at the bottom of a pit, you had to walk over planks to get to it. We’d start shouting from far off and head for their lantern. What tempted me at their place was to upset the glue pot that was always teetering on top of the stove. One day I made up my mind. When my father heard about it, he told my mother that I’d strangle her one day, it was my nature. He could see it all.

The nice thing about the Wurzems was that they never bore a grudge. After the worst bawlings out, as soon as you’d give them a little money, they’d be singing again. Nothing ever got them down. Shiftless, never a look ahead. That’s the working class for you. No sense of responsibility like us. My mother always seized on these incidents as object lessons to show me how not to live. I thought they were very nice. I went to sleep in their shavings. My mother had to shake me when it was time to race down to the boulevard and jump into the Halle-aux-Vins bus. I loved the inside of it, because of the big crystal eye that lit up the faces all along the benches. Pure magic.

The horses gallop down the rue des Martyrs, the people move aside to let us pass. Even so we’re very late in getting back to the shop.

Grandma is griping in her corner, Auguste, my father, pulls his cap way down over his eyes. He’s pacing about like a lion on the bridge of a ship. My mother collapses on the stool. She’s in the wrong, there’s no use explaining. Nothing we had done that day appeals to them. Finally we close the shop … We say good-bye politely. The three of us set out for home and bed. It’s still an awful hike. We lived on the other side of the Bon Marché.

My father wasn’t an easy man to get along with. When he wasn’t in his office he always wore a cap, the nautical kind. It had always been his dream to be the captain of an ocean liner. That dream made him mighty bitter.

Our apartment on the rue de Babylone looked out on the Mission. The priests sang a good deal, even at night they’d get up to sing a few more hymns. We couldn’t see them on account of the wall that was right against our window. That made it kind of dark.

My father didn’t make much at the Coccinelle Fire Insurance Company.

When we got to the Tuileries, he often had to carry me. The cops all had big bellies in those days. They hung around under the lamps.

The Seine is surprising to a kid, the way the wind ruffles the reflections, and the black emptiness below, shifting and grumbling. We turned down the rue Vaneau, and then we were home. There was always a to-do about lighting the hanging lamp. My mother didn’t know how. My father Auguste fumbled, cursed, swore, and kept upsetting the holder and the mantle.

My father was a stout, blond man who’d fly into a rage over nothing, with a chubby round nose like a baby’s over an enormous moustache. He rolled his eyes ferociously when he was angry. He never remembered anything but troubles. He’d had plenty. He made a hundred and ten francs a month at the insurance company.