Death on the Installment Plan (51 page)

It wasn’t very far from her shop to our place … No more than a fifteen minutes’ walk … Even so, she was groaning with fatigue when she got there … She was completely bushed … I saw her in the distance … from the end of the Galerie. I was talking with a subscriber. She was leaning on the shopwindows, resting without letting on, every fifty feet she’d stop … She looked awfully thin, and besides she’d gone sallow, her eyelids and cheeks had shriveled, she was all wrinkled around the eyes. She really looked sick … She gave me my socks, my underdrawers, and my big handkerchiefs, and then right away she started talking about Papa, though I hadn’t asked … He’d feel the effects of my assault to his dying day, she sobbed. Twice already they’d brought him home from the office in a cab … He could hardly stand up … He had fainting spells all the time … He sent word that he gladly forgave me, but that he didn’t want to see me again … not for a long time … not before my military service … until my looks and mentality had changed completely … when I got back from the army …

Courtial was just coming back from a stroll, probably to the Insurrection. Maybe he hadn’t dropped as much as usual … in any case he was extremely polite all of a sudden, as charming and friendly as he could be … delighted to meet her … And about me? Reassuring. Right away he set out to charm my mother, he asked her upstairs for a chat … in his private office … on the “Tunisian” mezzanine … She had difficulty in following him … It was a horrible corkscrew staircase and to make matters worse it was littered with piles of garbage and papers that made you skid. He was mighty proud of his “Tunisian office.” He wanted to show it to everybody. It was a devastating layout in the hyperpoky style, with “Alcazar” cabinets … You couldn’t conceive of anything crummier … And then the Moorish coffeepot, the Moroccan ottomans, the fringed shaggy carpet that stored up a whole ton of dust all by itself … Nothing had ever been done about it … not even the slightest attempt at cleaning … Anyway the heaps of printed matter, the mountains, the cataracts of proof, of type, of newsprint lying around would have mocked any effort … Actually, there’s no denying it, it would have been dangerous … To come around troubling the equilibrium would be taking a big risk … The only way was to leave it perfectly intact, to move things as little as possible … Better still, I soon found out, was to toss on new layers of litter as you went along. That gave the surface a certain freshness … a kind of gloss.

I heard them talking … Courtial told her frankly that he had discerned in me a real aptitude for the kind of journalism that was just what the
Genitron
needed … reporting … technical investigation … scientific research … objective criticism … that I was sure to get ahead … that she could go home with an easy mind and sleep soundly … that the future was already smiling on me … it would be all mine as soon as I’d acquired all the essential knowledge. It was a matter of simple routine and patience … He’d gradually teach me all I needed … But all that took time … Ah yes, he had no use for haste! Thoughtless precipitation! … No use trying to force matters … to go too fast … That would be idiotic waste! Anyway, according to his song and dance, I displayed a keen desire for education! … Moreover, I was learning to be clever with my hands. I did the little jobs that came my way to perfection … I was managing very nicely … I was getting to be as nimble as a monkey! Eager! Intelligent! Hardworking! Discreet! In short, a dream! He went on and on … It was the first time in her life that my poor mama had heard anybody speak of me in such glowing colors … She couldn’t get over it … At the end of the interview, as she was leaving, he insisted on her taking a whole book of subscription blanks to distribute at random among her connections and acquaintances … She promised to do anything he pleased. She gaped at him in bewilderment … Courtial had no shirt on, only his varnished shirt front over his flannel vest, but the vest always went way up over his collar … he took an extra large size, it formed a kind of ruff, and of course it was completely filthy … In winter he wore two of them, one on top of the other … In the summer, even during hot spells, he wore his long frock coat, his lacquered collar down a little lower, no socks, and he brought out his boater. He took meticulous care of it … It was a unique item, a real masterpiece of the sombrero type, a gift from South America, a rare weave! Impossible to match … In short, it was priceless! … From the first of June to the fifteenth of September he kept it on his head. He hardly ever took it off … except for some extra-special reason … He was sure somebody’d steal it … That was his biggest worry on Sundays, before going up in his balloon … But there was no help for it, he had to exchange it for his cap, the tall one with the braid … That was part of his uniform … He entrusted his treasure to me … But the moment he’d touched the ground, the moment he’d rolled like a rabbit into the muck and come bouncing over the furrows, that was his first cry: “Hey, my panama! Ferdinand! My panama, dammit …”

My mother noticed the thickness of the flannel vest right off and the fine quality of the prize hat … He let her feel the weave, to give her an idea … For quite some time she was lost in admiration, exclaiming: “Oh! Ttt! Oh! Ttt! … Ah, monsieur, I can see that. It’s the kind of straw they don’t make anymore!” She was in ecstasy.

All this restored my mother’s confidence … a good omen … She was particularly fond of flannel vests … they indicated solidity of character, she’d never gone wrong. After fond farewells, she gradually started on her way … For the first time in her life and mine I think she was a little less worried about my future and my fate.

It was perfectly true that I threw myself into my work. From morning to night I had no chance to loaf … In addition to my cargoes of printed matter, I had the
Enthusiast
in the cellar, the endless mending, and our pigeons that I had to look after two or three times a day … Those critters lived all week in the maid’s room on the seventh floor, under the eaves … They cooed like, mad … They never felt gloomy. Their working day was Sunday, they’d be taken out in a basket for a ride in the balloon … At six or eight hundred feet Courtial would raise the lid … They’d be released … with messages … They’d all fly straight home … to the Palais-Royal! … The window’d be left open for them … They never dawdled on the way, they didn’t care for the country, they didn’t like to bum around … They flew back automatically … They loved their attic and their roo-coo-crooing. That’s all they wanted. It never stopped … They were always home before us. I’ve never known pigeons less enthusiastic about traveling, so enamored of peace and quiet … And I left their windows wide open … It never occcurred to them to take a turn around the garden … to go calling on the sparrows … or the fat gray cooers gallivanting on the lawns … around the fountains … and once in a while on the statues … on Desmoulins
^*
… or old Vick
^*
… dropping their beauty marks … Not at all … they kept to themselves … they were perfectly happy in their attic, they left it only under duress, when they were tossed into their basket … They were pretty expensive though, on account of the grain … It takes quantities, pigeons eat a lot … They’re pigs … you wouldn’t expect them to eat so much … it’s on account of their high body temperature, normally 107 and a few tenths … I swept up their droppings carefully … I made several little piles along the wall and I let them dry … That made up some for their food … It was excellent fertilizer … When I had a whole sack full, about twice a month, Courtial took it away, he used it in his garden … in Montretout on the hill … where he had his tony villa and his experimental garden … there’s no better manure …

I got along fine with the pigeons, they reminded me a little of Jongkind … I taught them tricks … Naturally after they got to know me, they ate out of my hand … But I did a lot better than that, I got them to perch on a broomstick, all twelve of them at once … I even managed to carry them down to the shop … and back up again without their moving, without a single one of them deciding to fly away … They were really sedentary. When it came time to throw them in the basket and push off, they got terribly sad. They didn’t coo at all. They hid their heads in their feathers. They hated it.

Two more months passed … Little by little Courtial gained confidence in me. He was convinced that we were made to get along … I had a lot of advantages, I wasn’t very particular about food or pay or working hours … I never complained … As long as I was free in the evening, as long as nobody bothered me after seven o’clock, I felt I was well off …

From the moment he lit out for his train, I was the one and only boss of the shop and paper … I got rid of the inventors … I soft-soaped them … then I started out on a cruise, often heading for the shipping office on the rue Rambuteau, pulling the cart loaded with copies of the rag. At the beginning of the week I had to bring back proofs, the typos and plates and engravings. What with the pigeons, the
Enthusiast
, and a million other odds and ends, there was never a letup … He dropped everything and pushed off for the sticks … He had urgent work out there, so he said. Hm! Neo-agriculture … he said it with a straight face … but I was convinced it was hokum … Sometimes he forgot to come back, he’d stay out for two or three days … that didn’t worry me … I’d take a little rest, I needed it … I’d feed the pigeons up in the attic, then I’d paste up a sign in the middle of the shopwindow: “Closed for the day” … I’d go take it easy on a bench, under the trees nearby … From there I watched the joint, the people coming and going … I saw them in the distance, always the same gang of dopes, the same lunatics, the same haggard faces, the old crowd of bellyachers, the disgruntled subscribers … They bunked into the sign, they massacred the door handle, they beat it … That was fine with me.

When his nibs came back from his spree, he had a screwy look … He eyed me curiously to see if I suspected anything …

“I was detained,” he said. “The experiment wasn’t quite perfected … I thought I’d never be through.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I hope you made out all right in the end …”

Little by little he filled me in, he told me a little more each day, he gave me all the details about the beginnings of his racket … There were some pretty wild stories, gimmicks that could end you in the cemetery. How it had started, the ups and downs, the risky dodges, the shady little deals … He told me the whole story, which was pretty strange when you think of his rotten character, his innumerable suspicions, and all his calamities and hard luck … He wasn’t the complaining kind … But the troubles and messes he’d been through were unbelievable … It was no rest cure monkeying around with inventors … Don’t get the wrong slant … Oh no. Some of those boys were real savages, absolutely diabolical … they’d go off like dynamite if they felt they’d been taken … And naturally you can’t hope to please everybody … the devil and his brother-in-law! That would be too sweet. I knew something about that myself … In that connection he gave me an example of malice that was really hair-raising … The lengths people will go to … In 1884 he’d got an order from Beaupoil and Brandon on the Quai des Ursulines, the publishers of
Epoch
, for a textbook intended for the second program of the Preliminary Schools … A concise work, of course, but carefully executed, elementary but compact. Specially condensed …
The Home Astronomer
, the little book was entitled, with the subtitle:
Gravitation, explained to the whole family
. So he goes to work … He dives right in … he might have contented himself with delivering a brief work on the specified date, a hurry-up job full of inept borrowings from foreign periodicals … slapdash, corrupt, garbled quotations, and in three shakes of a lamb’s tail constructed a new cosmogony a thousand times lousier than all the other miniature handbooks, full of mistakes and absolutely senseless! … Utterly useless! … As everyone knew, that wasn’t Courtial’s way of doing things. He was conscientious. His chief concern when he sat down to a piece of work was to get tangible results … He wanted his reader to form his own ideas in person, by his own observations … about the most essential aspects of the work … the stars and gravitation … to discover the laws for himself … He wanted to force the always indolent reader to do real laboratory work and not just cajole him with flattering flimflam … He’d appended a little set of instructions: how to build a “family telescope” … A few squares of cardboard provided the darkroom … a few cheap mirrors … an ordinary lens … a few lengths of pliable wire … a cardboard packing tube … By strictly following the instructions you could do it for seventeen francs, seventy-two (reckoned to the centime) … for that price (in addition to the exciting and instructive work) you could obtain in your own home, not only a direct view of the principal constellations, but also photographs of most of the large stars of our zenith … “All sidereal observations made available to the family” … that was his formula … As soon as the booklet came out, more than twenty-five thousand readers started without a moment’s delay to build the thing, the marvelous miniature photosidercal device…

I can still hear des Pereires telling me about all the trouble that ensued … The incomprehension of the competent authorities … their abject partiality … How painful, rotten, sickening it all was … All the libels he had received. Threats … Challenges … A thousand threatening letters … Summonses … How he’d been obliged to lock himself in, barricade himself in his apartment! … He’d been living on the rue Monge at the time … Then, more and more harassed, he’d fled to Montretout from the rage of all those insatiable, vicious peeping toms, disappointed by telescopy … The mess had gone on for six months … and it still wasn’t over! Some of those angry stargazers, even pestier than the rest, would take advantage of their Sunday off … They’d come out to Montretout, they’d bring the whole family, to kick the boss in the ass … He hadn’t been able to receive any visitors in almost a year … This “photo-sidereal” business was only a small example among many others of how the masses were capable of reacting the minute you tried to educate them, to uplift them, to wise them up …