Death on the Installment Plan (72 page)

“Yes, my love.”

“Good! … Well, I want to see it, understand? I want to see it … I want to see every bit of it … I’ve sacrificed everything! My whole life! … My health … My future! … Everything! … I haven’t anything left! … I want to see them grow! … Understand? … Grow!”

She planted herself there defiantly, she handed it to him full in the face … Her hard labor had given her biceps that were no joke … they looked like hams … She chewed tobacco in the fields … She only smoked her pipe in the evening and when she went to market … Eusèbe, the postman, who hadn’t delivered in our neck of the woods for years, had to start in again … He came around two or three times a day … The news had spread around the country like wildfire that certain agriculturists were doing wonders, performing real miracles raising potatoes with magnetic waves …

Our old crowd of inventors had picked up our track … They all seemed mighty happy to hear that the three of us were safe and sound … They besieged us with new projects … They bore us no grudge at all … The postman was good and sick of it … Three times a week he had to tote whole sacks of manuscripts … His pouch was so heavy his frame had caved in … He’d been using a double chain … his bike had folded up … He’d put in to the department for a new one …

From the very start des Pereires had taken to meditating again … He really took advantage of his solitude and leisure … He finally felt equal to the hazards of fate … all of them … He was deep in his meditations! Absolutely determined! The great Decision! … He’d face up to his Destiny … Not overconfident … not overcautious … just forewarned! …

“Ferdinand! See here and take note! … Events are shaping up pretty much as I predicted … But they’ve got a little ahead of themselves … The rhythm has been a little hasty … which wasn’t what I wanted … Nevertheless, you’ll see … Observe … Don’t lose a scrap! Not one luminous atom! … Behold, my child, how Courtial is going to crush, to tame, to chain, to subjugate rebellious Fortune! … Behold with wonderment! Open your ears! Try to be fearless, ready at a moment’s notice! The second I catch her, I’ll pass her on to you! And go to it! Clutch her! Strangle her! It will be your turn! Kiss her! Mangle the bitch! My strictly private needs are those of an ascetic! I shall soon be replete! Stuffed! Submerged in abundance! Yours to bleed her. Drain her to the gills! … You’re at an age for follies! Take advantage! Overdo it! Gods above! Shine! Do what you please with her! For me there’ll always be too much and to spare … Embrace me … Lord, how lucky we are!”

It wasn’t easy to do any embracing on account of my overcoat that was solidly moored with strings inside my pants … It curtailed my movements but kept me good and warm … It was necessary … The winter was on us … In spite of the fireplace and the caulking the main building was lousy with drafts … it kept in all the winds and very little heat … It was a strainer for the cold … It was really a very old house.

This inspiration that des Pereires had after all his meditations at the Big Ball and in the woods was really terrific … His ideas were even bolder and more farsighted than usual … He fathomed the needs of the world …

“The individual is washed up! … You won’t get anything out of individuals … It’s to the family, Ferdinand, that we’ll have to turn! Once and for all, to the family! Everything for and by the family!”

His grand appeal was addressed to the “Anguished Fathers of France.” To those whose sovereign preoccupation was the future of their dear little ones … To those who were slowly being crucified by daily life in corrupt, putrid, unhealthy cities! … To those who were ready to attempt the impossible to save their poor little cherubs from the atrocious fate of slavery in a shop … from bookkeeper’s tuberculosis … To the mothers who dreamed of a wholesome spacious existence for their little darlings, absolutely in the open air … far from the city’s putrefaction … of a future fully secured by the fruits of wholesome labor … in the country … of great sunlit joys, peaceful and complete! … Des Pereires solemnly guaranteed all that and a good deal more … He and his wife would take complete care of those lucky little tikes, their primary education, their secondary “rationalistic” education too … and finally of their higher learning, “positivistic, zootechnie, and horticultural …”

In two shakes of a lamb’s tail our “radio-telluric” farm was transformed, with the help of our subscribers, into the “Renovated Familistery for the Creation of a New Race” … That’s what we called our farm in our prospectus … In a few days our appeals (all sent out by Taponier) had covered several Paris neighborhoods … the most populous, the most congested … and for the hell of it a few of the slum districts out by Achères, where it stinks … We had only one worry … that the invasion would start too soon! We dreaded overenthusiasm like the plague … We knew all about it!

With our radiotellurism plentiful fare would be no problem … All in all, there was only one thing to worry about … The market would be glutted with our “undige-nous” potatoes … We’d think about that in due time … We’d raise pigs … millions of them … We’d have plenty of poultry too … The pioneers would eat chicken … Courtial was all in favor of a mixed diet … Meat is good for growth … Obviously we’d have no trouble clothing our little charges in the linen we raised on our farm … woven in choral cadence on long winter evenings … Sounds pretty good … All very promising! A beehive of agricultural industry! But under the aegis of Intelligence! not of mere instinct! Ah yes! That distinction meant a good deal to Courtial! He wanted his hive to be rhythmical! … flowing! … intuitive! That was how he summed up the situation. Playing all the while, learning on every hand, building their lungs, the children of the “New Race” would at the same time joyfully provide a spontaneous labor force … quickly trained and stable, absolutely free of charge … Without constraint they would harness their youthful vigor to the needs of “neo-pluri-radiant” agriculture … This great reform was rooted in the depths, in the very sap of the countryside! It would flourish in the heart of nature! We’d all bask in its perfume! Courtial sniffed in advance … We were especially counting on our charges, on their zeal and enthusiasm, to pull out weeds! to uproot them! to clear more ground! … A perfect pastime for kids … The worst torture for adults … Relieved of the petty tasks of common farming by this industrious afflux, des Pereires would be free to devote himself entirely to the delicate regulation, the endless adjustments of his “polarizer complex” . . He’d rule the waves … He wouldn’t do anything else … He’d flood our subsoil, he’d overwhelm it with telluric torrents! …

Our pamphlet looked good … We had ten thousand of them sent to various neighborhoods … It must have responded to a good many secret desires, unspoken longings … Anyway, we almost immediately received a deluge of answers … with truculent comments … almost all of them extremely flattering … What seems to have struck most of our subscribers in particular was the extreme modesty of our terms … It’s true that we’d cut our prices to rock bottom … We could hardly have done better … To carry a pupil from early childhood (minimum age, seven) to the draft board, to provide him with board and lodging for thirteen consecutive years, to develop his character, his lungs, his mind, and his arms, to inculcate the love of nature, to teach him a magnificent trade, and last but not least to give him, when he left the phalanstery, the magnificent and valid diploma of a “Radio-geometric Engineer,” all we asked of the parents, everything included, was the lump, global, and definitive sum of four hundred francs … This sum, these immediate receipts were to enable us to buy our wire and set up our circuits … our underground currents. We weren’t expecting the impossible … Four carloads of potatoes a month would do for a starter.

The moment an undertaking begins to shape up, it becomes
ipso facto
the butt of a thousand hostile, treacherous, subtle, and untiring intrigues … Nobody can say different … A tragic fatality penetrates its very fibers … slowly lacerates its warp, so profoundly that, when you come right down to it, the shrewdest captains, the snootiest conquerors can only hope to escape disaster, to keep from cracking up, by some cock-eyed miracle … Such is the nature and the burden, the true upshot of the most admirable ventures … It’s in the cards … Human genius is out of luck … The Panama disaster … it’s the same old lesson … ought to bring the most outrageous blowhards to their senses … make them do some tall thinking about the perfidy of fate … the murky harbingers of Hard Luck! Foo! The slings and arrows! … Destiny eats prayers like a toad eats flies … It jumps on them! crushes them! mangles them! swallows them! It feasts on them and shoots them out in tiny little turds, ex-votive spitballs for the bride to be.

Making due allowances, we in Blême-le-Petit got it liberally in the neck from the very beginning of our operation … First the notary in Persant … He descended on us pretty near every afternoon … in the most menacing terms … to make us pay his balance … He’d read a sensational story in the paper about our magnificent experiments … He thought we had secret funds … He thought we were loaded … He demanded immediate payment for his beat-up farm and his swampy acreage … And our creditors from the Palais-Royal were all bursting with impatience … Taponier too … He’d been so nice at first, now he was getting to be the crummiest of the lot … He read the papers too … The jerk thought we were getting subsidized … drawing gravy from the Ministry of Education …

In addition to quantities of manuscripts relating to the “research” that would surely be required, we were riddled with court orders … of all kinds … we were practically attached before we’d even seen the color of our first potato! The constabulary jumped on the pretext for a little jaunt out our way, to get an eyeful of our astonishing mugs, to give us the once-over … Our clever prospectus in behalf of the “Race” had kind of upset the legal authorities … The Inspector of Schools, another envious character, naturally, had expressed certain doubts about our right to open an educational institution … Doubting was his business … In the end they were only average mean. They merely took the opportunity, which was to be expected, to give us a not unfriendly warning that all things considered we’d better content ourselves with something of the nursery, summer camp … or sanatorium type … that if we carried the educational aspect too far we’d inevitably fall foul of the authorities … the whole lot of them …

A delicate dilemma if ever there was one! … To perish or to teach? … We thought it over … We hadn’t really made up our minds … when a bunch of snoopy parents came hiking out one Sunday afternoon around four o’clock to see for themselves … They carefully examined the farm, all the outbuildings, the general look of the place … We never saw them again …

Nuts! We were beginning to lose hope … So many adverse winds … Such rotten incomprehension! … Such deep-seated malevolence! … It was really too much … And then one fine day, the sky finally cleared … Almost all at once we received eighteen enthusiastic registrations! … Ah, these were really conscientious parents, who frankly cursed the city and its pestilential air! They frankly agreed with us … They subscribed immediately to our “New Race” reform … They sent us their kids with an advance on the fee, to be incorporated immediately in the agricultural phalanx … A hundred francs here, two hundred there … the rest to follow … All we got was advances, never the full sum … They promised to send the rest later on … Plenty of goodwill in any case … their enthusiasm was genuine … but kind of obscure … Economy, foresight … and a big helping of suspicion …

Anyway the kids came … fifteen in all … nine boys and six girls … Three didn’t show up. It seemed best to pay a little attention to the judge’s advice … a word to the wise … We’d play it cagey for a starter … A little caution wouldn’t hurt us … Later on, when the experiment had proved a success, things would take care of themselves … They’d come begging … We’d unfurl our banner: “The New Race, Flower of the Furrows.”

With the dough that first batch of kids brought us, we couldn’t buy much … not even all the beds we needed! not even mattresses! … We all slept in straw … in perfect equality! … The girls on one side, the boys on the other … After all we couldn’t send them back to their parents … that chickenfeed didn’t last a week … It was already speculated in all directions … It was gone in no time … The notary alone claimed three-quarters of it … The rest went for wire … Maybe about five spools … but the large size … mounted on a trestle, ready to unroll.

Right at the beginning our old cutie, foreseeing trouble, had planted some kind of super-potato that grew even in the wintertime … There’s no hardier spud in existence … If the worst came to the worst and Courtial’s waves didn’t yield all we expected … we’d still have a crop … He couldn’t very well prevent them from growing … that would be mighty weird, in fact unheard-of. We all got down to work … We strung wire wherever he told us … With a little extra encouragement, to be on the safe side, we’d have wound three or four copper garlands around the roots of every plant … It was a memorable job! … Especially the way we were situated on the hillside … full in the north wind … Even in the most biting gale our kids were happy. All they cared about was being out-of-doors the whole time … never a minute in the house. Most all of them came from the suburbs … They weren’t obedient. Especially a skinny little character, Dudule, who wanted to feel up all the girls … We had to sleep him between us … They began to cough … Luckily our old honeybun knew a little something about medicine, she covered them with poultices from head to toe … They didn’t even mind having their skin ripped off … as long as they weren’t shut in … They wanted to be outside come hell and high water … We ate out of the big kettle … enormous quantities of soup …