Death on the Installment Plan (19 page)

My mother was so fagged out she could hardly drag her leg. She was panting like an old hound.

The road wound along the cliffs. We pushed along in the downpour. Down below the ocean roared at the bottom of the chasm … full of clouds and landslides.

My father’s yachting cap was oozing into his mouth. His dust coat clung so tight his ass looked like an onion.

Mama hobbles along … she abandons her hat, the one trimmed with swallows and little cherries. We gave it to a bush … The gulls running away from the storm are screeching all around us. They must have been surprised to see us in the clouds too … Under the gusts of rain we kept our foothold as best we could … On the side of the cliff, on hills like waves, another and still another … endless … The clouds had spirited my father away … He seemed to melt away in the downpour … Every time we saw him he was farther away, pressing on doggedly, always smaller, heading down the far slope.

“We’ll just climb to the top of this one, Ferdinand … And then I’ve got to rest … Do you think he can see Brichetonne? Do you think it’s still far? …” She was at the end of her rope. It was impossible to sit down. The embankments were pure mud … Her clothes had shrunk so that her arms stuck way out … Her shoes were swollen up like saddlebags … At that point my mother’s leg buckled … It caved in under her weight … She toppled over into the ditch … her head was wedged in, stuck fast … She couldn’t move … All she could do was make bubbles like a toad … The rain in England is like an ocean suspended in midair … little by little you drown …

I shouted: “Papa! … help! …” at the top of my lungs … Mama had fallen head down. I pulled with all my might … it was like a tug-of-war. It was no good … But finally our explorer turns up after all. He’s all dizzy with the clouds. We go at it together … we heave and we hoist. She moves. We extract her from the muck … She comes up smiling. My, was she happy to see her Auguste again! Was he all right? He hadn’t had too bad a time? What had he seen from the end of the cliff? He didn’t answer … He only said we’d better make it snappy … Get back to the port quick … Up and down, another hundred hills … breathless and panting. The storm had made such a mess of the road we couldn’t recognize it on the way back … We caught a glimpse of lights … the port, the lighthouses … It was pitch dark … Crawling, staggering, we passed the same Hôtel … We hadn’t spent a nickel … We hadn’t met anybody … We hadn’t a stitch of clothing to our name … we were all strips and tatters … We looked so worn out they were good to us on the boat … they let us move from third to second class … they told us to lie down … At the station in Dieppe we stretched out on the benches … We were going right back … In the train there was another big scene on account of Mama’s constipation …

“You haven’t gone in a week! … You’ll never go again.”

“I’ll go when we get home …”

The irregularity of her bowels was an obsession with him … it haunted him. Sea voyages are constipating. From then on he couldn’t think of anything but her bowels. In the Passage we were finally able to dry ourselves. All three of us had colds. We got off easy. My father had a beautiful shiner. We said it was a horse, he just happened to be behind it when something exploded …

Madame Divonne was bubbling with curiosity, she wanted to hear all about it … every detail of our adventure … She’d been to England too, on her honeymoon. She was so eager to hear about it she stopped playing the piano … Right in the middle of the Moonlight Aria …

Monsieur Visios was also crazy about stories and discoveries … Édouard came by with Tom to hear the news … Mama and I had our little impressions too … But Papa wouldn’t let us open our mouths … He hogged the floor … He had certainly seen some amazing, fantastic, stupendous, absolutely unexpected things … at the end of the road … way out beyond the cliffs … When he was in the clouds … between Brigetonne and the hurricane … Papa all alone, cut off from the world! … lost in the tempest … between heaven and earth …

Now it was over he stopped at nothing, he gave them all the wonders they could ask for … He shot off his mouth like a machine gun … Mama didn’t contradict him … She was always happy to see him triumph … “Isn’t that right, Clémence?” he’d ask her when his story was getting a bit too tall … She nodded, she backed up everything he said … Of course she knew he was overdoing it, but if it gave him pleasure …

“But what about London? You didn’t get there?” asked Monsieur Lérosite, the optician from 37, who was completely senile and imported his lenses from over there …

“Oh, yes, but only the outskirts … We saw the best part! … The harbor! … When you come right down to it, that’s the only thing that’s really worth seeing! And the suburbs … We only had a few hours.” Mama didn’t bat an eyelash … Soon word got around that we’d been in a big shipwreck … that the women had been landed on the cliffs with a cable … He made it up as he went along … And the way we’d gone roaming around London with the other survivors … mostly foreigners … He stopped at nothing … He even imitated their accents.

There was a session every night after dinner … fantasies, new ones every time … Madame Méhon was beginning to boil and bubble again … in her den, she didn’t come over … we were too mortally on the outs for that … She made her phonograph sing so as to interrupt my father … so as to make him stop … Mama closed the shop to give us a little peace and pulled the shutters all the way down … Then Madame Méhon came over and banged on the windows to needle Papa, to make him come out and start a riot … My mother wouldn’t let him … The neighbors were all furious. They were all on our side … They were developing a taste for explorations … One night when we came home from our errands, we didn’t hear Madame Méhon and her phonograph … Our usual visitors came in one by one … We settled ourselves in the back room … Papa started in on his story … it was something brand-new … Suddenly from the old battle-ax’s place … boom! … a tremendous blast! And a whole string of firecrackers! … The flash is blinding. It explodes against the shop! The door crashes in! We see the old bag waving her arms … she’s holding a torch and some rockets … She lights the fuses! … The rockets whistle and whirl! She’d dreamed up the whole act just to cramp my father’s style! She flails around like a demon. She sets fire to her skirts. She’s going up in flames. The people rush out. They smother her in curtains. They put out the blaze! But her shop’s on fire, corsets and all. The firemen come running. We never saw the old witch again. They took her away to the bughouse in Charenton. She stayed there for good. Nobody wanted her back. They signed a petition from one end of the Passage to the other, saying she was insane and impossible.

Hard times were back again. No more talk of vacation or markets or England … The rains pounded down on our glass roof, the Passage was closed up tight with the sour smell of people and little stray dogs.

It was fall …

The thrashings were coming thick and fast again because I wanted to play instead of doing my homework. I didn’t catch on very well in school. Once again my father made the discovery that I was really feeble-minded. The sea air had made me grow but had made me more listless than ever. I was always daydreaming. He flew into terrible tempers. He accused me of hopeless laziness. Mama was beginning to moan and groan again.

Her business was going from bad to worse. The styles never stopped changing. Batiste came in again. We dragged out our old bonnet tops. The ladies rolled them up like napkins and put them on their tits and in their hair. In the crisis Madame Héronde was always busy making things over. She invented boleros of Irish linen, made to last twenty years. Alas, it was only a passing fancy. After the Grand Prix we mounted them on wire, now they were lampshades . ‘. . Sometimes Madame Héronde was so worn-out she got her orders balled up, she gave us little embroidered bibs when we were expecting comforters … The scenes were something … The customer would split a gut and threaten to haul us into court. We were in despair, we paid for all the damage, which accounted for two months’ worth of noodles … The day before my examination a volcano erupted in the shop, Madame Héronde had dyed a ”négligé” cuckoo-yellow, when it was actually meant to be a bridal dress. People have been killed for less! A criminal blunder! The customer would skin us alive! … And it was all written plain as day in the order book! … Madame Héronde collapsed sobbing in my mother’s arms. My father was upstairs bellowing.

“Ah, you’ll always be the same! You’ll always be soft. Haven’t I warned you forty-six times? Didn’t I tell you they’d ruin us … those seamstresses of yours … Ah! Suppose I made even half a mistake at La Coccinelle! … I can just imagine what they’d say in the front office!” The mere idea was so terrifying that he thought he was dead and buried … He blanched … We sat him down … The crisis passed … I went back to my arithmetic … He reviewed my lessons with me … And I couldn’t think of anything to say, he got so balled up in his explanations that I couldn’t see straight … I attacked the problem ass-backwards … I didn’t know very much to begin with … I gave up … He started in on my failings … In his opinion I was incorrigible … For my money he was as nutty as a fruitcake … He started up again about my division … He tangled himself up to the square roots … He slapped my face … he pulled my ears … He accused me of grinning … of taking him for a fool …

My mother came in for a minute … That redoubled his fury … He bellowed that he wanted to die!

On the morning of my exam my mother closed the shop. She thought it would encourage me if she came along. The exam was held at the grade school next to Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, right in the entrance hall. On the way she tried to bolster up my self-confidence. It was a solemn occasion, she thought of Caroline. That made her whimper some more …

All the way around the Palais-Royal she made me recite my Fables and the list of departments … At eight o’clock sharp we were all outside the gate, waiting to have our names taken. The kids were all cleaned up and neatly dressed, but terribly nervous, the mothers too.

First there was dictation, then problems. It wasn’t very hard, I remember, all you had to do was copy. This was a bunch that had flunked the previous fall. For almost all of us it was a matter of life and death … if you wanted to be taken on as an apprentice … When it came to the oral, I was lucky, I pulled a big fat little guy with warts all over his nose. He had a flowing bow tie, sort of like Uncle Arthur … he wasn’t an artist, though … He’d been a pharmacist on the rue Gomboust. Some of the people there knew him. He asked me two questions about plants … I hadn’t the faintest idea … He answered them himself. I was in a complete muddle … Then he asked me the distance between the sun and the moon and then between the earth and the other side … I was afraid to stick my neck out too far. He had to come to the rescue. When he asked me about the seasons, I knew a little more. I mumbled something kind of vague … He really wasn’t hard to please … He finished all the answers for me.

Then he asked me what I was planning for the future if I got my diploma.

“I’m going into business,” I said without enthusiasm.

“It’s a hard life, my boy,” he said. “Couldn’t you wait a while? Another year perhaps?”

I guess he didn’t think I was very strong … Right away I thought I’d flunked … I thought of the return home, of the tempest I was going to unleash … I began to feel dizzy … I thought I was going to faint … I could feel the blows in advance … I clutched the desk … The old guy saw me turn pale …

“Come, come, boy,” he said. “Don’t worry. All that doesn’t mean a thing. I’ll pass you. You’ll get your start in life. If you want it as badly as all that.”

I went back and sat down on a bench, some distance away, by the wall … I was still mighty upset. I wondered if he hadn’t been soft-soaping me, just to get rid of me. My mother was outside the church, on the little square. She was waiting for the results …

Everybody hadn’t finished yet … there were still some kids waiting … I saw the others now … stammering their confessions across the table cover … the map of France, the continents …

Since hearing those words about starting out in life, I looked at my little friends as if I’d never seen them … Their dread of failing made them strain against the desk, wriggling as if they were caught in a trap.

Was that what it meant to start out in life? … They were trying to stop being kids that very moment … struggling to arrange their faces, to look like men …

We all looked pretty much alike, all dressed the same way, in our school smocks. They were all like me, small shopkeepers’ kids … or their parents did tailoring at home or sold stationery or something … They were all pretty puny … They opened their eyes big and round, they panted like puppies in their effort to answer the old guy …

Lined up along the wall, the parents watched the proceedings … The looks they shot at their offspring were fierce, electric, enough to cramp anybody’s style.

The kids were wrong every time … They shrank up even smaller … The old man was untiring … he answered for everybody … The kids were all dunces … The mothers’ faces were getting redder and redder … Thousands of thrashings threatened … There was a smell of impending massacre … Finally all the kids were through … It was all over, except for the list of successful candidates … And then miracle of miracles … everybody had passed! The government inspector made the announcement from the platform … He had a paunch with a chain on it, a great big watch charm that jiggled between sentences. He sort of bumbled and got all the names screwed up … It didn’t matter …