The Bark Tree (3 page)

The flat entity can’t accept the idea of anyone killing his cat; he starts getting inflated, like the meussieus in the train. Then he gets deflated. He goes to bed. He feels odd. He’ll make love to his wife tonight. As for the child, he will abstain from any sort of pollution, because he’s got a mathematics test tomorrow, and whenever he does it the night before, it always brings him bad luck.

—oooooo—oooooo—

The observer is hatching something; what it is even he doesn’t know yet. But he is preparing himself; either he will continue to study his quarry, as he calls him, or he’ll look for some other random event, just as pointless, just as useless. After wavering between various possible occupations, he settles for Pernod and the silhouette. And with his eyes open, seeing the beings he encounters with perfect lucidity, he decides to play a waiting game. On his way, he meets his brother, whom he hasn’t seen for a very long time; he makes out he’s in a great hurry, and also very busy, and arranges to meet him at midnight. Finally, he attains one of his goals: his place is free; the man with emphysema is sitting next to him. Further to the south, the young man with the passport is brooding, all by himself. At the nadir, a cigarette butt, at the zenith, a striped awning, for the vigilant proprietor is preparing for his customers to get the perfidious drops secreted by the alleged protector down the back of their necks.

The storm is taking its time; so is the flat entity, because just precisely today he’s doing an hour’s overtime. Finally one, two, three drops of water fall on to the asphalt. The observer, who has been disappointed by the 6 o’clock exodus, remains at his post. Four, five, six drops of water. Some people, anxious about their straw hats, raise their noses. Description of a storm in Paris. In summer. The timid take to their heels; others raise the collars of their jackets, which gives them an air of bravado. It begins to smell of mud. Many people prudently look for shelter, and when the rain is at its height, all that can be seen are blackish groups clustered around doorways, like mussels around the pile of a pier. The cafés are doing a brisk trade. 7 o’clock. Streetcars, buses and trains will be missed, dinners burned and appointments unkept. A few ostentatious thunder claps try to make people believe this is a real storm. Certain learned people declare that it had been working up to a storm and that it will cool the air, and that it’s a good thing, a little rain like that from time to time, and that it won’t last long.

The observer allows these vain words which tell nothing but the truth to reach him; he notes with some bitterness that these banalities correspond perfectly to reality. The present reality couldn’t ask any more. And the silhouette has still not appeared. Yes it has, though; he sees it on the steps of the Audit Bank, patiently waiting for the rain to stop; in any case, it isn’t a silhouette any longer, but a flat entity. The other man catches his breath; the rain stops; the flat entity runs for the metro.

The observer gets up, leaves without paying (he’ll be back) and starts to pursue his quarry. Now he’s going down into the metro. He’s right at the bottom of the steps, he’s about to go through the iron gate. Luckily, the other man has some tickets. A train arrives. What an incredible crowd! The flat entity is there in the second second-class coach; so is the observer; the first in front of the right-hand door, the second in front of the door he went in by.

What a remarkable change, thinks the second, but it’s pointless to study him like this. I wonder what station he’ll get off at. Much shoving; Saint-Denis; he’s going to change.

Rearrangements as far as the Gare du Nord. Which train will he catch, the local or the one that is an express more or less? The 7:31 or the 7:40? Come on, dig your elbow into that obstructionist’s stomach; step on that charming girl’s toes—otherwise you’ll miss your more or less express train, and if you look at that woman you’ll miss the slow one. The flat entity only misses the faster one; the slow train is still waiting. He’s made it. No more habits here, the faces aren’t the same, the 7 o’clock commuters are an unknown world to the 6 o’clock commuters, and he is one of the latter. He knows neither the little man with a moustache whose jagged-edged straw hat is threatening to bite a tall man next to him who is dozing with his mouth open, nor those two girls absorbed in a book-based-on-the-movie, nor that mother and brat, the latter watching two flies coupling on his grazed knee, because he took a hell of a spill down the escalator at the Pigalle metro station, what a business that was, nor that blond young man staring fixedly at the landscape as it goes by. He has a feeling he saw the young man in the metro earlier, but he isn’t sure. Now he’s thinking about his cat, about whose assassination he is in despair. He counts up the proofs of affection the animal used to give him. For instance, it used to wait for him every evening on the little wall, by the gate. A dirty beast has killed it. He thinks of its corpse, its hide, its skin that Ma Tyrant is busy tanning. The flat entity becomes indignant, he rebels. And he tells himself so.

Instead of being cut out like a tin soldier, his contours are starting to soften. He is gently expanding. He is maturing. The observer can clearly perceive this, but can see no outward reason for it. He now has in front of him a being who is endowed with a certain consistency. He notes with interest that the features of this being endowed with a certain reality are slightly convulsed. What can be happening? This silhouette is a prize specimen.

The kid murmurs something to his mother; everyone guesses what it is. The little man with the moustache has gotten into a conversation with his neighbor; he informs him in pensive tones that the weather was oppressive and stormy, but that the storm just now cooled the air. The listener agrees. Then, by association of contiguous ideas, he talks to him about journeys into the stratosphere.

Between two stations, without any explanation, the train slows down, and then stops. Heads abruptly appear at the windows; the ones on the right-hand side have to retire into their shells immediately, under penalty of decapitation, because a train is going by in the other direction, but it’s going pretty slowly at that. There must have been an accident. Indefinite delay. This news provokes something of a stir in the compartment. The brat takes advantage of it to get out and piss. The man with a mustache loses his listener, who’s gone to sleep for good.

—oooooo—oooooo—

Narcense and Potice are following a woman. That, actually, is Potice’s main activity; his conquests are multiple. A benevolent conformist, he doesn’t despise his fellow men, and thinks about them as little as possible. He detests it when some great event occurs and interferes with his ploys. This particular day seems to him to be just as good, if not better; than yesterday; he doesn’t really know, though, he doesn’t give it much thought. But he doesn’t worry about tomorrow. He collects women.

Whereas Narcense, he’s an artist; neither a painter, nor a poet, nor an architect, nor an actor, nor a sculptor, he plays music, to be more precise, the saxophone; and he does this in night clubs. At the moment, he’s out of work anyway, and is looking for a means of earning his daily bread by the exercise of his abilities, but he can’t manage it. He’s beginning to get worried. Today, at about 4 o’clock, he met his old friend Potice, who persuaded him to join him in pursuit of a woman he had chosen out of all the thousands of others; he’d only seen her from behind; her face was doubtful. Risky. 5 o’clock.

Narcense and Potice are very Parisian. They follow women at 5 o’clock.

The lady in question is walking with resolute, hurried steps. Right, now she’s in the streetcar. A number 8. Going to the Gare de l’Est. Narcense and Potice run after the streetcar. Some cars run after Narcense and Potice. In the streetcar, the lady sits down, looking lost. Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t look at anything or anyone, isn’t interested in anything, or anyone. She just sits there, with some packages on her knees. Not pretty, but beautiful: Narcense and Potice admire her.

At the terminus, still resolutely, she goes toward the Gare du Nord. Does a little shopping on her way. Potice tries to get into conversation with her, but fails.

At the Gare du Nord, they’re lagging behind, somewhat. A volley of automobiles has come between them. The lady is going to disappear. They swear. Is this the right moment? They press on, they leap between the delivery wagons and the buses, they avoid the one, and the other. Narcense has time to see the lady on platform 31. He runs and finds out where the train is going, and takes an appropriate ticket (Potice isn’t following him); all down the platform he looks into the compartments. This one’s full, this one, this one. She’s in there. There’s still a bit of room in the corner. He climbs in, slightly out of breath. The lady is staring straight ahead, and doesn’t seem to see anything. She looks exhausted. Narcense wonders what has happened to Potice. He looks out of the window, but doesn’t see anyone. The train starts. At Obonne, the lady gets out. So does Narcense. Lots of people in the street. Narcense doesn’t dare to risk it. He nearly does, but then he chickens. So that he finally finds himself all by himself at the gate of a little house. He hangs around a bit, and looks at the house, which is either half built or being demolished. He thinks it’s magnificent. He understands that such a woman, such a beautiful woman, should live in such a strange place. Meanwhile, the beautiful woman is peeling onions, quite exhausted.

Narcense is still prowling around, extremely perplexed. Doesn’t know what to do. Very fortunately, a definite external event makes up his mind for him. It starts raining hard. And he rushes off to the nearest shelter. A bistro.

I look like a rabbit, today, he thinks. Running all day long. A rabbit playing a little drum. What a beautiful woman! What a presence! He undresses her as he absentmindedly orders a mandarin-curaçao, and he’s biting her breast, not the one on the left, the one on the right, when at a nearby table he hears a voice reminiscing.

“Shanghai, that’s where the biggest bar in the world is
...
I know all the brothels in Valparaiso
...
I once sailed on a steamer that was transporting Chinese corpses
...
On my first trip, I was sixteen, I went to Australia. In Sydney, I nearly got myself killed by a great big Swede, who
...
I got three years’ hard labor. I got over it
...
I’m off to the Pacific in a month. I got a nice little chick in Valparaiso
...
”

Narcense comes out of his dream and looks; a very nondescript individual, but with a seaman’s jersey and a leather
-
peaked cap. Three local youths surround him, listening. It’s still raining outside. The proprietor blows his nose loudly, wipes the counter and would like to say something. The other tables are empty, except the one at the far end which is occupied by a truculent mongrel. The sailor goes on jabbering. Then he decides to start up the player piano.

Narcense absently leaves some money on the table and goes out.

—oooooo—oooooo—

The child was hypocritical and solitary. Sometimes at the top of his class, he didn’t hesitate to win his way to the bottom, if his inner anguish pushed him that way. He had never had a daddy; killed in the war, they told him; but he knew perfectly well that he was illegitimate. His mother, who had some idea of sin, went out to work to bring him up. Then she married a very young man and went on working. The child knew all this; no one had told him, but slowly, skillfully, he had pieced the whole story together. And in any case, this story didn’t interest him.

Apart from the solitary pleasures, which took up a considerable portion of his leisure hours, he didn’t like anything very much, didn’t collect anything and read little.

This evening, he was sitting studying as usual, waiting for his stepfather to come home, but just this evening the stepfather was keeping them waiting. Extraordinary. The mother kept coming and going, from the dining room to the kitchen, and elsewhere. “What could’ve happened?—your father’s not back yet. Something must have gone wrong. I haven’t heard a train for the last hour.” The question didn’t worry him hardly at all. He was trying to remember whether the abscissa was the vertical, and the ordinate the horizontal. He couldn’t manage to keep it in his head. Constant is annoyed with him because he hasn’t given him back the photo of Marlene Dietrich. To go and see
The Blue Angel
all by himself. This idea excites him considerably. He knows that it starts in a school and that the pupils are showing each other this photo; and this woman sings and she’s always undressed, he’s been told, and the way she’s undressed, you just can’t imagine how.

“Definitely, something must have happened. Why don’t you go to the station and see? Maybe there’s been an accident.”

He doesn’t wait to be asked twice. In a little garden, he takes one single deep breath. It’s warm, it’s moist. The ground’s wet. It’s shining a bit. The moon is three-quarters full. He looks at it and remembers the severed giant’s head he used to think he saw when he was younger. This memory embarrasses him a little. He takes a couple of steps in the darkness. It’s silly, but he’s a bit scared. Suddenly he catches sight of a man standing in front of the iron gate. In the darkness, he stands still; gradually, he begins to make things out. Yes, a man; his head, it looks as if it’s trapped between the bars of the gate; it can’t be, he’s going to wrench them apart with his forehead; his eyes are shining terribly, his mouth is half open. Something seems to be shaking him, though he doesn’t move from the spot. The hidden child can see him very well, and with what interest! Pushed by the weight of this desperately isolated body, the little gate squeaks and squeaks. The man lets out a deep sigh, then, in a low voice, moans frantically: “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” indefinitely, like a litany. The child suddenly feels like counting how many times he repeats the sound: Ah, but this idea comes to him too late, like at night when you’re trying to count the number of times a clock is striking and you don't know if you started soon enough. “Ah, ah, ah.” He’s almost talking out loud now, he seems delirious, he’s shaking the bars of the gate with one hand, he’s banging his body against it rhythmically. All of a sudden, very quietly, but with his mouth wide open, he intones “Aaaaaaaah” and his head drops. He stays there for a few moments without moving, with his head against the bars of the gate, and his forehead dislodges a bit of the paint, which peels off. Then, abruptly, he goes away.