Death on the Installment Plan (42 page)

It was still August, I was being outfitted for the winter … The warm weather doesn’t last long … But at that particular moment the heat was stifling … Oh well, it wouldn’t be long, I’d live through it … The cold, the bad weather, goes on and on … In the meantime, while I was looking around, suppose I suffocated to death … hell, I’d simply carry my coat over my arm. I’d put it on as I was ringing the bell … it was simple …

My mother hadn’t said how much it would take out of our household funds to outfit me … from top to toe … Considering our resources, it was a staggering sum … We scraped the bottom of the drawers … She ran herself ragged, she racked her brains, she’d dash out to Le Vésinet and come back by the next train, hightail it to Neuilly, to Chatou on market days, hauling her whole stock, everything that wasn’t too repulsive … that was more or less negotiable … She couldn’t sell it … She couldn’t make up the amount … It was a real headache … we were always twenty or twenty-five or thirty-five francs short … On top of the taxes that kept raining down on us and the seamstress’s wages and the rent that was two months overdue … An avalanche, it was sickening … She didn’t say a word to Papa … She kept looking for some new dodge … She took five of his best water-colors to the rue d’Aboukir, to old Madame Heurgon Gustave (a real filthy junk shop), for less than a quarter of the usual price. On consignment, so to speak … In short, she tried dozens of crummy expedients to scrape up the full amount … She wouldn’t buy anything on credit … After desperate weeks and all sorts of plots and stratagems I was finally dressed, absolutely resplendent, good strong material, but very hot … When I saw myself dolled up brand-new, I lost some of my confidence! Hell! It made me feel funny. I still had the will, but nasty doubts began to crop up … Maybe I’d perspire too much in my winter suit? I was like a walking oven …

It was God’s truth that I didn’t feel the least bit pleased with myself anymore, or optimistic about the future … The immediate prospect of facing bosses … of reeling off my cock-and-bull stories, of shutting myself up in their rotten morgues, gave me a pain in the gizzard. Over in lousy England I’d got out of the habit of being shut in … I’d have to get used to it again. It was no joke … It knocked me for a loop just to look at a possible boss! It made me gag … Just figuring out how to get to places gave me the creeps … It was so hot the nameplates on the doors were melting … It was 102 in the shade.

Of course what my folks were saying was perfectly reasonable … that I was at the critical age, the turning point … this was the time to make a supreme effort … to force the gates of destiny … to start a career … it was now or never … All that was fine and dandy … But even if I took off my suit, my collar, my shoes, I couldn’t stop sweating … The sweat ran down in streams … I took the itineraries I knew. I passed outside the Gorloge’s place … It gave me the shivers to see their house and the big carriage door … Just thinking about that incident gave me a twinge in the asshole … Holy shit! Some sweet memory!

Faced with the enormity of my task … thinking it over, I lost heart, I just wanted to sit down … I hadn’t much money to spend on bocks … even little glasses for ten centimes … I hung around in doorways … There was always plenty of shade and treacherous drafts … I sneezed something terrible … It got to be a habit while I was thinking … I kept thinking … I thought so much that in the end I almost agreed with my father … I realized … experience proved it … that I was worthless … I had disastrous impulses … I was completely thickheaded and lazy … I didn’t deserve their great kindness … their terrible sacrifices … I felt absolutely unworthy, infectious, loathsome … I knew what I had to do and I struggled desperately, but I wasn’t up to it … less than ever … I wasn’t improving with age … And I was getting thirstier and thirstier … The heat in itself is a calamity … Looking for a job in August is the most thirsty-making thing in the world, on account of the stairs and the terror that parches your throat every time … while you’re cooling your heels … I thought of my mother … of her leg and the cleaning woman we might be able to take on if I could get somebody to hire me … It didn’t revive my enthusiasm … I lashed myself, I screwed up all my strength to rise to the ideal, I couldn’t feel sublime anymore. Since Gorloge I had lost all my enthusiasm about work. It was pitiful! And in spite of all the sermons I’d had, I felt that I was more miserable than all the other bastards, more woebegone than the whole lot of them together … What disgusting egotism! All I cared about was my own troubles, and there they were, all of them horrible, they made me stink worse than a senile camembert … I was rotting in the heat, collapsing with sweat and shame, climbing stairs, oozing over the bells, I was falling apart, I’d lost all dignity, all character.

With nothing on my mind but a slight bellyache, I drifted through the old streets, rue du Paradis, rue d’Hautcville, rue des Jeûneurs, the Sentier quarter … in the end I took off not only my heavy jacket but also my extra-solid celluloid collar, it would have killed a dog, and besides it gave me pimples. I got dressed again on the landing. I looked up more addresses, I found them in the directory. At the post office I drew up lists. I hadn’t any money left for a drink. My mother left her purse, the little silver one, knocking around on the furniture … I eyed it avidly … Such heat is demoralizing … Frankly, I came damn near swiping it … At a certain point … two steps from the fountain … I’d get mighty thirsty … I think my mother noticed, she gave me two francs more …

When I came back from my long wanderings, always futile and useless, up and down stairs and neighborhoods, I had to fix myself up before going back into the Passage, so I wouldn’t look too miserable, too crestfallen at meals. That wouldn’t have gone down at all. That was one thing my folks couldn’t have taken, that they’d never been able to stomach, that they’d never understand, that I, their son, should be without hope and heroic fortitude … They wouldn’t have stood for it … I had no right to my share of lamentations, certainly not … Tragedies and condolences were their private preserve … All that was for my parents … Children were thugs, hoodlums, ungrateful, thoughtless scum … The minute I dropped the slightest complaint, even the wee little beginning of a complaint, they both saw red … That was anathema! Sacrilege! Abomination!

“What’s that, you little shitheel? What colossal nerve!” How, with youth on my side, could I put on such airs? What a beastly imposture! What diabolical impertinence! Ah! The effrontery of it! Heavens above! Didn’t I have my best years ahead of me! All the treasures of existence! And I thought I was entitled to gripe … About my piddling little setbacks? Ah! Jumping Jehoshaphat! What monstrous insolence! What absolute degeneracy! What inconceivable rottenness! They’d have beaten me to a pulp to make me eat my blasphemies. Her bad leg, her abscesses, her horrible sufferings were forgotten … My mother leapt to her feet! “You little wretch! Right this minute! You heartless little reprobate! Take back those insults …”

I did as I was told. I couldn’t exactly make out what the joys of youth were, but they seemed to know … They would have massacred me without hesitation if I hadn’t recanted … If I expressed the slightest doubt or seemed to be running things down, they went right off the handle … They’d rather have seen me dead than hear me profane the gifts of heaven. My mother’s eyes went white with fury when I let myself be carried away! She’d have bashed me in the nose with anything that was handy just to make me stop … My only right was to rejoice! to sing hymns of praise! I was born under a lucky star! Imagine a miserable worm like me having parents who dedicated themselves exclusively … wasn’t that enough? … to the worries, the troubles, the tragic fatalities of existence … I was just a brute and nothing else! Silence! An unconscionable family burden! … My business was to do as I was told … to fix everything up sweet and nice again! To make amends for my faults and nauseating propensities! … The misery was all for them! if there was any complaining to do, that was their department! They were the ones who understood life! They were the ones with sensitive souls! Who was it that suffered atrociously? Under the most excruciating circumstances? From outrageous fortune? … It was they. They alone, always and forever. They didn’t want me meddling, even going through the motions of helping them … taking my small share … It was their absolute monopoly! That struck me as very unjust. We just couldn’t see eye to eye.

They could talk and curse till they were blue in the face, I stuck to my convictions. I too felt myself to be a victim in every way. On the steps of the Ambigu, right near the Wallace fountain,
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all these thoughts came back at me … It was all as plain as day! …

If I’d finished pounding the sidewalks, another day wasted, I frankly aired my dogs … I smoked skinny little butts … I’d question the boys a little, the bums that hung around there, they always had plenty of dope and phony tips … They were big talkers … They’d seen all the ads, they knew about all the odd jobs … One of them was a tattooer, he clipped dogs on the side … They knew all the crummy rackets … the food market, the slaughterhouse, the wine market … They were as grimy as a railroad station, down at heel, crawling with dirt, they passed their crabs back and forth … That didn’t cramp their cock-and-bull stories … their bragging and bluffing … they’d split a gut telling about their connections … their triumphs, their fancy deals … One big delirious fantasy! … There was no limit to the dog they put on … and they were perfectly capable of pulling a knife … if anybody doubted they had a cousin in the Cabinet … or of chucking him in the Canal Saint-Martin … No claim was too wild … Even the cock-eyedest sandwichmen … had certain pet episodes in their lives that it wasn’t healthy to laugh at … Fairy tales drive people to crime even worse than liquor … they were so moth-eaten they had no teeth left to chew with, they’d sold their glasses … That didn’t prevent them from dishing out a line … You can’t imagine such hokum … I could gradually see myself getting to be exactly like them …

It was about five in the afternoon when I suspended my efforts … called it a day … It was a good place to convalesce in, a regular resort … We’d give our feet a good rest … Ambigu Beach, catering to bums and down-and-outers. Some of them weren’t so lazy, but they figured it was better to drink up their luck than drag around in the heat. Which is easy enough to understand … All along the theater front, under the chestnut trees, there was a fence … handy to hang your stuff on … we took it nice and easy … we exchanged mugs of beer … There was white sausage “à la mode” and garlic and red wine and Camembert … on the ramp and the stairs it was like an academy … All kinds … They hadn’t changed much … since the days when I went out peddling for Gorloge … There were lots of little pimps, and dicks with plenty of time on their hands … stool pigeons of all ages … who made good money tipping off the cops … There’d always be a card game going on … And two or three bookies, trying to drum up trade … There were overage salesmen who’d turned in their sample cases … nobody was willing to hire them anymore … There were little fairies still too green for the Bois … One of them came around every day, his specialty was the urinals and especially the crusts of bread soaking in the drains … He told us his adventures … He knew an old Jew who was nuts about those babas … They’d go and eat the stuff together … One day they got caught … We didn’t see him for a couple of months … He was changed beyond recognition when he got back … The cops had given him such a going-over he was fresh out of the hospital … That shellacking had turned him inside out … He’d moulted in the meanwhile … He had a big bass voice … He’d let his beard grow … He’d given up eating shit.

Another of the charms of the place was the procuress. She had a kid in long red stockings … she’d walk her up and down outside the Folies Dramatiques … They said she cost twenty francs … She’d have suited me fine … That was a fortune at the time … They didn’t even look in our direction … we were too crummy … We whooped at them, but it didn’t get us anywhere …

We exchanged newspapers and the jokes we’d picked up on our rounds … The bad part of it was the crabs … Naturally I caught them too … Those cooties out in front of the Ambigu were a pestilence … The worst of all were the butt pickers that hung around the terraces of the cafés … A whole bunch of them would drop over to the Saint-Louis hospital for ointment … Then they’d go off together and rub it in …

I can still see my straw hat, the reinforced boater, I always had it in my hand, it must have weighed a good two pounds … It was supposed to last me two years, if possible three … I wore it till I was drafted, which was in 1912. I took my collar off one more time, it had left a terrible mark, completely scarlet … All men had that red furrow around their necks in those days, they kept it until their dying day. It was like a magic sign.

When we’d finished commenting on the ads, all those crazy come-ons, we’d start on the sports column, the try-outs at the Buffalo Stadium and the forthcoming six-day bicycle race, with Morin and pretty-boy Faber, who was the favorite … Those who preferred the horse races set up on the opposite corner … The little streetwalkers moseyed back and forth … They weren’t interested in us, they went on walking … We weren’t good for anything but talk, a bunch of no-soap artists …

The very first motor buses, the marvelous Madeleine-Bastille with the high top-deck, gave it the works at that point … set off all their explosives to make it up the hill … It was some show, an uproar! They dashed boiling water against the Porte Saint-Martin. The passengers on the balcony took part in the performance … They were nuts. They could have capsized the whole thing the way they all leaned over on the same side at once in their ecstatic excitement … They clutched the tassels, the bars and knobs that ran around the railing … They shouted and cheered … Horses were a thing of the past, it was plain as day … It was only on bad roads that they still had a chance … Uncle Édouard had always said so … well, in front of the Ambigu, between five and seven, I witnessed the coming of Progress … but I still didn’t find a job … Every night I came home empty-handed … I couldn’t seem to find the boss who’d give me a new start in life … They wouldn’t take me as an apprentice, I was too old … And to be a- regular employee I was apparently much too young … I’d never get past the ungrateful age … And even if I talked English beautifully, it made no difference … They had no use for it… Foreign languages were only for the big shops … And there they didn’t take beginners … I was out of luck all along the line … any way I went about it … it was always the same old shit …