Death on the Installment Plan (56 page)

“Don’t bother me, Ferdinand. Don’t bother me … You’re driving me crazy. You depress me with your sordid gossip … I can feel it! I can feel it in my bones! Tomorrow we’ll be out of the woods. This is no time to be quibbling. Go back and tell Taponier … Tell him from me … from me, do you understand! That bastard, when I think of it … He’s grown fat at my expense … For twenty years I’ve been feeding him … he’s piled up a fortune … several fortunes … on my paper. I’ve decided to do the stinker one last favor. Tell him! Tell him, do you hear me, to put his whole plant! his machines! his equipment! his apartment! his daughter’s dowry! his new car! everything! his insurance policy! tell him not to forget anything! his son’s bicycle! Everything! Remember! Everything! on Bragamance to win! To win, I say! … not to place! not to come in third! At Maisons, on Thursday! … That’s it! That’s the long and the short of it, son! I can see the finish! And 1,800 francs for five! Do you hear me, 1,887 to be exact … In your pocket … Remember that! With what’s left of my winnings … that will be 53,498 francs for the two of us! Net! … Bragamance! … Maisons! … Bragamance! … Maisons! …”

He went on jabbering … He didn’t hear my answers … He went out through the corridor … He was like a sleepwalker.

The next day I waited for him all afternoon … to show with the fifty-three grand … It was after five o’clock … Finally he turns up … I can see him across the garden … He doesn’t look at anybody in the shop … He comes straight up to me … he grabs me by the shoulders … The hot air has all gone out of him … He’s sobbing … “Ferdinand! Ferdinand! I’m a viper! A despicable scoundrel! … Talk of depravity! … I’ve lost everything, Ferdinand! Our month’s earnings. Mine! Yours! My debts! Your debts! The gas bill! Everything! I still owe Formerly what I put on that horse! … I owe the binder eighteen hundred francs … I borrowed thirty francs more from the scrubwoman in the theater … I owe another hundred francs to the gatekeeper in Montretout! … I’ll be running into him this evening! … You see the morass I’m stuck in … Ah, Ferdinand, you were right! I’m sinking into my own muck! …” 

He disintegrated completely … He flayed himself … He added up the sum … He added it up again … How much did he actually owe? … It came to more each time … He unearthed so many debts I think he made some of them up … He went for a pencil … He was going to start in all over again. I stopped him. I was firm.

“See here, Monsieur Courtial,” I said. “Calm down. You’re making a spectacle of yourself. Suppose some customers came in! What would they think? Better take a rest …”

“Oh, Ferdinand! How right you are! You’re wiser than your master, Ferdinand! The stinking old fool! A wave of madness, Ferdinand! A wave of madness! …”

“It’s unbelievable! Unbelievable! …” After a moment’s prostration he opened the trapdoor … He vanished all alone … I knew his act! … It was always the same routine … When he’d made an ass of himself … first he’d lay on the applesauce, then came meditation … But what about eating, friend? I’d have to lay hands on some dough somehow! … Nobody gave me any credit … neither the butcher … nor the grocer … The bastard was counting on my having a little nest egg put by … He’d suspected that I’d take my little precautions … that I had some sense … I was the guy with foresight … I was the shrewd accountant … With the scrapings from the drawers I held out a whole month … No air bubbles with salt … And we didn’t eat so badly … We had real meat! … plenty of French fries … and jam made out of pure sugar … That was my way of doing things.

He didn’t want to put the bite on his wife … She didn’t know a thing out there in Montretout.

Uncle Édouard came by one Saturday night … He’d been out of town, we hadn’t seen him in a long time … He brought news from home, from my parents … Their luck was still running bad … In spite of all his efforts, my father hadn’t been able to leave La Coccinelle … And that was his only hope … Even after he knew how to type, they hadn’t wanted him at Connivance Fire Insurance … They thought he was too old for an underling’s job … and that he seemed too bashful to deal with the public … So he’d had to give it up … and stick to the old grind … and butter up Lempreinte … It was a terrible blow … he wasn’t sleeping at all anymore.

Baron Méfaize, the head of “Litigious Life,” had got wind of my father’s moves … he’d detested him from way back, he was always torturing him … He’d make him climb five flights of stairs on the other side of the yard to tell him what an ass he was … that he got all the addresses wrong … which was absolutely untrue …

While talking with me Uncle Édouard began wondering … he thought maybe it would give my folks pleasure to see me again for a minute … I could make up with my father … He’d had trouble enough, he’d suffered enough … It came from a good heart … But just thinking about it, the gall started coming up … I had vomit in my throat … I wasn’t going to try again …

“OK, OK, I’m sorry for them and all that … But if I went back to the Passage, I can tell you right now, I wouldn’t last ten minutes … I’d set the whole place on fire.” There was no use trying …

“All right, all right,” he said. “I can see how you feel.”

He dropped the subject … He probably told them what I’d said … Anyway, his happy-homecoming gambit never came up again …

With Courtial, I’ve got to admit … I can’t deny it … it was one holy mess from morning to night … a perpetual rat race … He played some rotten tricks on me … he was as sneaky as thirty-six bedbugs. It was only at night that I had any peace … Once he was gone I did what I felt like … I made my own plans … Until ten in the morning when he came back from Montre-tout I was the boss … And that’s a good deal. Once I’d fed my pigeons, I was absolutely free … I always took a little rake-off on the sales of the
Genitron
… We had a racket with the returns … some of it was for yours truly … I put it aside … and I got something out of the balloon flights too … It was never more than twenty, twenty-five francs … but to me, for pocket money, it was a fortune!

The old crocodile would have been glad to know where I stashed my dough away … my cute little nest egg … He could look till doomsday … I was very careful … I’d learned a thing or two … My little treasure never left my pocket, actually it was a special pocket, carefully pinned, inside my shirt front … You couldn’t say we trusted each other very much … I knew all his hiding places … he had three … One was under the floor … another behind the gas meter (a loose brick) … and a third right there in Hippocrates’ head! … I dipped into them all … He never counted … In the end he began to have his suspicions … But he had no call to complain … He never gave me a penny in wages … And what’s more, I fed him … Supposedly out of “general’” funds … The stuff wasn’t too bad … and plenty of it … He realized that he couldn’t say anything …

In the evening I didn’t cook, I went all by myself to the Automatic on the corner of the rue de Rivoli … I took a bite standing up … I’ve always liked that best … it only took a minute … Then I went roaming around … I had my little circuit … rue Montmartre … the post office … rue Etienne-Marcel … I’d stop by the statue on the Place des Victoires and smoke a cigarette … It was a majestic square … I liked it fine … A quiet place to think things over … I’ve never been so happy as in those days on the
Genitron
… I made no plans for the future … But the present didn’t seem too rotten … I’d be back by nine o’clock …

I still had plenty of work … There was always patching on the
Enthusiast
… bundles that were late in getting off … and letters for the provinces … So then about eleven o’clock I’d go out under the arcades again … That was the interesting time … Our neighborhood was full of whores … They did it for five francs … or even less … Every three or four columns there was one with one or two customers … They knew me well from seeing me all the time … Sometimes they were good company … I took them up in our office when there was a raid … They hid in between the files, eating up the dust … waiting for the cops to go away … We had some hot brawls in the investor’s corner. I was entitled to all the ass I wanted … thanks to my eagle eye, because I watched all the approaches from my mezzanine … at the critical hour … When I saw the cops coming … they all piled in through the little side door … I was the gang’s lookout … What people don’t know won’t hurt them … We expected the bulls a little before midnight … Sometimes I had ten or twelve of these tomatoes in the shambles on the second floor … We doused the candle … You couldn’t make a sound … We heard their size tens passing on the flags and doubling back … The girls were scared stiff … They were like rats skulking in the corner … Later on we relaxed … The best part of it was the stories … They knew all about the Galerie … everything that went on … under the arches … in the attics … in the back rooms … I found out all about the business people in the neighborhood … all the ones who had themselves buggered … all the miscarriages … all the cuckolds … between eleven o’clock and midnight … I heard all about des Pereires, how the low-down swine would get flagellated at the Etruscan Urns at Number 216 in the alley across the way … near the exit of the Comédie Française … he liked a good shellacking… you could hear him bellowing behind the velvet curtains … and it cost him twenty-five francs a throw … cash on the line, naturally … and he seldom went a week without getting himself whipped three times in a row!

It made me good and sore too to hear such stories … I was beginning to see why we never had a penny in the till … what with the knout and the ponies, no wonder we couldn’t make ends meet …

The one who told the best stories was Violette. She wasn’t young anymore, she came from the North, she never wore a hat, she had a triple bun like a flight of stairs, and long “butterfly” pins. She was a redhead, she must have been forty … Always in a tight-fitting black skirt, a tiny pink apron, and high-laced white shoes with “spool” heels … She had a weakness for me … We all died laughing listening to her … she was a wonderful mimic. She had new ones every time … She wanted me to bugger her … She called me her “ferryboat” because of the way I bucked her … She was always talking about “her” Rouen … she’d been there for twelve years in the same house, hardly ever going out … When we went down in the cellar, I lit the candle for her … She sewed on my buttons … that was a job I hated … I tore off a good many … because of my struggles pushing that handcart around … I could sew anything at all … but not a button … never! … I couldn’t stand them … She wanted to buy me socks … she wanted me to look nice … I hadn’t worn any in a long time … Pereires didn’t either, to tell the truth … When she left the Palais-Royal, she hiked up to La Villette … the whole way on foot … for the five-o’clock trade … She’d do pretty well up there too … She didn’t want to be shut up in a house anymore … From time to time, though, she’d spend a month in the hospital … She’d send me a postcard … She’d hurry back. I knew her way of tapping on the windowpanes … We were good friends for almost two years … until we left the Galerie … Toward the end she was jealous, she had hot flashes … she was hard to get along with.

When vegetables were in season, we piled them in … I did them up in mixtures with chopped bacon … He brought in salads … beans by the basket … from Montretout. Bunches of carrots and turnips, and even peas …

Courtial went in for sauces. I’d learned all that from his cookbook … I could make any kind of stew, I knew all about browning and simmering … It’s a very convenient method … You can dish it out all week. We had a powerful Sulfridor gas heater … slightly explosive … in the backroom-gymnasium … In the winter I made
pot-au-feu
… It was me that bought the meat, the margarine, and the cheese … We took turns bringing home the liquid refreshments …

Violette liked to take a snack around midnight … She liked cold veal on bread … But all that ran into money … On top of our wild expenses.

I argued against it … I predicted the most dire disaster … it was no use. We had to have a try at his perpetual-motion contest. It was a hurry-up scheme … We expected quick results. The situation was desperate! … The admission fee was twenty-five francs … The first prize was twelve thousand smackers, the winner to be selected by a “grand jury of the world’s foremost authorities” and in addition there was a second, consolation prize … four thousand three hundred and fifty francs … We were no pikers!

We had customers right away … a flood … a tidal wave … an invasion! … Blueprints! … dissertations! … enormous monographs! … illustrated theses! … We ate better and better! But we weren’t easy in our minds … Far from it! I was dead sure we’d be sorry … that we were in for every kind of headache and no kidding … that we’d pay through the nose for every cent we took in … for our beautiful dreams of two … three … maybe five thousand francs … that we were cooking up a mess of indignation that would come down on our noodles … and pretty damn quick.

Models of every description were entered in the contest … every taste, trend, craze was represented … There were pumps, dynamic flywheels, cosmo-terrestrial tubes, pendulums for dynamos … calorimetric clocks … sliding refrigerators, reflectors of Hertzian waves … You only had to reach into the pile, you were sure to get your money’s worth … After two weeks the screwball contestants began to come around … in person … They wanted news … Ever since the contest started, they’d been on tenterhooks. They besieged the joint … They hammered on our door … Courtial appeared in the doorway … he made them a long speech … He put them off for a month … He told them one of our financiers had broken his arm while taking a walk on the Riviera … but he’d be better soon and would hurry back … he wanted to bring his mezuma in person … Everything was all right … just this little hitch … It wasn’t a bad line … They left … but they were disgruntled … They moved away from the window … spitting their bile in all directions … some of them in solid lumps … something like tadpoles … Courtial had certainly stirred up a mean gang of maniacs … they were really dangerous … He himself began to have misgivings, but he wouldn’t admit it … instead of admitting his mistake, he took it out on me …