Death on the Installment Plan (8 page)

With his yen to serve in the navy, he had pulled seven years in the artillery. He would have liked to be imposing, well-off, and respected. At the Coccinelle office they treated him like dirt. His pride tormented him and he couldn’t stand the monotony. He had nothing in his favor but his school diploma, his moustache, and his lofty principles. To make things worse I got born. We were on the downgrade.

We still hadn’t eaten. My mother was pottering about with pots and pans. She had stripped to her petticoat for fear of grease spots. She kept muttering that her Auguste didn’t appreciate her good intentions and the difficulties of the business … He sat with his elbows on one corner of the oilcloth table cover, mulling over his troubles … From time to time he put on a scowl to show that he couldn’t hold himself in much longer … Still she kept trying to mollify him. But when she tried to pull down the beautiful yellow globe of the hanging lamp, he really flew off the handle. “Clémence! Stop that! Christ almighty! You’re going to start a fire. Haven’t I told you to use both hands?” He began to bellow something awful, he was so mad I thought he was going to bite his tongue off. In his bad spells he used to turn purple and swell up all over, he rolled his eyes like a dragon. It was horrible to look at. My mother and I were scared stiff. Then he broke a dish and went to bed.

“Turn toward the wall, you little pig! Don’t turn around.” I had no desire to … I knew … I was ashamed … it was my mother’s legs, the skinny one and the fat one … She continued to limp about from one room to the next … He was trying to pick a fight … she insisted on finishing the dishes … She tried to clear the air with a little tune …

              And through the holes in the roof

              The sun shone down upon us …

Auguste, my father, read
La Patrie
. He sat down beside my crib. She came over and kissed him. His storm was subsiding … He stood up and went to the window. He pretended to be looking for something down in the court. He let a resounding fart. The tension was down.

She let a little fart in sympathy and fled kittenishly into the kitchen.

Later they closed their door … the door to their bedroom … I slept in the dining room. The missionaries’ hymn came in over the walls … And in the whole rue Babylone there was only a walking horse … clop clop … that late cab …

To raise me my father was always taking on extra jobs. Lempreinte, his boss, humiliated him in every possible way. I knew Lempreinte, he was a redhead who had gone pale, with long golden hairs, just a few of them, instead of a beard. My father had style, elegance came natural to him. That vexed Lempreinte.- He avenged himself for thirty years. He made him do nearly all his letters over again.

When I was still smaller, at Puteaux where they’d put me out to nurse, my parents used to come and see me on Sunday. There was plenty of fresh air. They always paid in advance. Never a cent owing. Not even when things were at their worst. But in Courbevoie, what with worrying and doing without all sorts of things, my mother began to cough. After that she never stopped. It was slug syrup and later on the Raspail method
^*
that saved her.

On account of my father’s style Monsieur Lempreinte suspected him of fancy ambitions.

From the garden of the nurse’s place in Puteaux you could look down over the whole of Paris. When Papa came to see me, the wind ruffled his moustache. That’s my earliest memory.

After the fashion shop in Courbevoie went bankrupt, my parents had to work twice as hard, they really ran themselves ragged, she as my grandmother’s saleswoman, he doing all the overtime he could at La Coccinelle. But the more he exhibited his high-class style, the more Lempreinte detested him. To keep from getting bitter, he took up watercolors. He used to paint at night after supper. They brought me back to Paris. I’d see him in the evening drawing, mostly boats, ships at sea, three-masters in a heavy breeze, black and white or in color. He had it in his blood … later on, memories of his days in the artillery, batteries galloping into position … or he’d do bishops … at the request of his customers … because of the bright robes … And dancing girls with hefty legs … My mother would offer a selection of his watercolors to the peddlers at lunch hour … She did all she could to keep me alive, I just shouldn’t have been born.

At Grandma’s on the rue Montorgueil she sometimes spat blood in the morning while arranging the sidewalk display. She’d hide her handkerchiefs. Grandma came out … “Wipe your eyes, Clémence. Crying won’t help matters …”To get there early enough, we’d get up at daybreak and cross the Tuileries as soon as the housework was done; Papa would turn the mattresses.

The days were no joke. It was exceptional if I didn’t cry a good part of the afternoon. In that shop I came in for more slaps than smiles. I apologized for everything I did, I was always apologizing.

We had to be on the lookout for theft and breakage. Junk is fragile. I ruined tons of the stuff, never on purpose. The thought of antiques still makes me sick, but that was our bread and butter. The scrapings of time are sad … lousy, sickening. We sold the stuff over the customer’s dead body. We’d wear him down. We’d drown his wits in floods of hokum … incredible bargains … we were merciless … He couldn’t win … If he had any wits to begin with, we demolished them … He’d walk out stunned with the Louis XIII cup in his pocket, the openwork fan with cat and shepherdess wrapped in tissue paper. You can’t imagine how they revolted me, grown-ups taking such crap home with them.

During working hours Grandma Caroline ensconced herself behind the Prodigal Son, an enormous tapestried screen. Caroline had an eye for light fingers. Customers are low characters, especially the women. The fancier they dress, the worse crooks they are. A little piece of Chantilly slips like a breeze into a practiced muff.

The shop was hardly a blaze of light … And in the winter it’s especially treacherous on account of the ruffles … velvet, furs, canopies big enough to enfold three bosoms … not to mention the long-range boas of all kinds starting from the shoulders, the waves of diaphanous chiffon … Birds of overwhelming sorrow … The lady struts, plowing through piles of bric-a-brac, clucks, retraces her steps … scatters things all over the place … pecking, cackling … finding fault for the hell of it. We were goggle-eyed trying to find something that would appeal to her, there was plenty to choose from … Grandma was always out rustling … looking for white elephants at the auction rooms … she brought back everything, oil paintings, amethysts, whole forests of candelabras, cascades of embroidered tulle, cabochons, pyxes, stuffed animals, armor, parasols, gilded monstrosities from Japan, alabaster bowls and worse, gimcracks without a name, and objects nobody ever heard of.

The lady gushes and burbles in this treasure-house of shards. The heap settles back into place behind her. She overturns, she jingles, she twists and turns. She’s just come in to look. It’s raining, she’s come in out of the rain. When she’s had enough, she leaves, promising to come again. Then we have to gather up the rubbish in a hurry. We crawl around on our knees, scraping under the furniture. If nothing’s missing, if every handkerchief, knick-knack, piece of cut glass, every gewgaw is accounted for, we heave a great sigh of relief.

Mother slumps down, massaging her leg cramped from standing, speechless with exhaustion. And then just before closing time, the furtive customer steps in out of the darkness. He slips in softly, explains his business in a whisper, he has a small object to sell, a family keepsake, he undoes the newspaper wrapping. We don’t think much of it. We’ll wash his treasure in the kitchen sink, we’ll pay him in the morning. He leaves with a mumbled good-bye … The Panthéon-Courcelles bus races past, almost grazing the shop.

My father comes in from his office. He keeps looking at his watch. He’s on edge. We’ve got to make it fast.

He puts down his hat. He takes his cap from the nail.

We still have to eat our noodles and make our deliveries.

We’d put the light out in the shop. My mother was no cook, but she managed to work up some sort of mess. When it wasn’t egg soup it was sure to be macaroni. No mercy. After the noodles we sat still for a moment, a little meditation is good for the stomach. My mother tried to entertain us, to dilute our embarrassment. If I didn’t answer her questions, she’d keep on trying. “There’s butter in them, you know,” she would say gently. The light came from a naked gas jet behind the screen. The plates were in darkness. Stoically my mother helped herself to some more noodles to encourage us … It took a good swig of red wine to keep them down.

The alcove where we ate was also used for the washing and for storing the junk … There were heaps of it, mounds … The stuff that couldn’t be patched up, that couldn’t be sold, that wasn’t fit to be shown, the worst monstrosities. From the transom draperies hung down into the soup. There was also, for some reason or other, a big coal range with an enormous hood that took up half the room. In the end we’d turn over our plates for a smidgin of jam.

It was like living in a filthy museum.

After we moved away from Courbevoie, Grandma and my father stopped talking to each other. Mama kept talking the whole time to keep them from throwing things at each other. Once we had downed our noodles and enjoyed our sampling of jam, we hit the road. The sold article would be wrapped in a big canvas. Usually it was some piece of drawing-room furniture, a “kidney,” or occasionally a
poudreuse
. Papa hoisted it up on his shoulders and we’d start for the Place de la Concorde. After the Splashing Fountains I’d be kind of scared. As we headed up the Champs-Élysées, the darkness was immense. He sped along like a thief. I had trouble keeping up. It seemed like he was trying to ditch me.

I’d have liked him to talk to me, all he did was grunt insults at strangers. By the time we reached the Étoile, he was in a sweat. We took a little rest. When we got to the customer’s house, we had to look for the service entrance.

When we delivered in Auteuil, my father was in a better humor. He didn’t take out his watch so often. I’d climb up on the parapet and he’d tell me all about tugboats … the green lights, the whistle signals between the strings of barges. “She’ll be down at the Point-du-Jour in no time.” We’d admire the wheezing old tub and wish her a happy journey …

It was when we were going to the Ternes section that he really got into a foul mood, especially if it was a dame … He couldn’t stand them. He’d be in a temper before we even got started. I remember one time we were going to the rue Demours. Outside the church he gives me a clout and a vicious kick to make me shake a leg crossing the street. When we got to the customer’s house, I couldn’t keep from crying. “You little bastard,” he shouts at me, “I’ll give you something to cry about! …” He climbed up the stairs behind me with his little tea table on his neck. We rang at the wrong door. All the maids looked out. I was squealing like a stuck pig … On purpose … to get his goat! What a ruckus! At last we find the right bell. The maid lets us in. She sympathizes with me. The lady of the house swishes in. “My, what a naughty little boy! He’s made his papa angry.” He didn’t know which way to look. He would have liked to crawl into a drawer. The lady tries to comfort me. She pours my father a glass of cognac. Then she says: “Polish it up, my good man. I fear the rain will leave spots… .” The maid gives him a rag. He gets to work. The lady gives me a piece of candy. I follow her into the bedroom. The maid comes in too. The lady lies down in a mess of lace. All of a sudden she hikes up her dressing gown and shows me her fat legs, her behind, and her clump of hair. Whew! She goes poking around inside with her fingers …

“Come, little darling! … Come, little love! … Come, suck me in there! …” Her voice was ever so soft and tender, no one had ever spoken to me like that before. She opens it out. Oozing.

The maid was doubled up with laughter. That’s what held me back. I ran off to the kitchen. I wasn’t crying anymore. They gave my father a tip. He didn’t dare to put it in his pocket, he just looked at it. The maid was laughing again. ” I guess you don’t want it,” she asked him. He ran out to the stairs. He forgot all about me, I had to race after him in the street. I called him all the way down the avenue. “Papa! Papa!” I caught up with him on the Place des Ternes. We sat down. It wasn’t very often that he kissed me. He squeezed my hand.

“Yes, my boy! … Yes, my boy!” he kept repeating as if to himself, looking off into space … He had feelings deep down. I had feelings too. Life has nothing to do with feelings. We went straight back to the rue de Babylone.

My father distrusted his imagination. He talked to himself in corners. He was afraid of being carried away … He must have been steaming inside …

He was born in Le Havre. He knew all about boats. A name that kept coming back to him was that of Captain Dirouane, who had been in command of the
City of Troy
. He’d seen his boat putting out to sea, moving out of the basin. She never came back. She had been lost with all on board off the coast of Florida. “A fine three-mast bark!”

Another, the
Gondriolan
, a Norwegian, overloaded, had crashed into the locks … Bad handling. He told me all about it. Twenty years later the incident still filled him with horror and indignation … And then he’d go back into his corner. And mull things over some more.

His brother Antoine was something else again. With real heroism he had crushed every impulse to wander. He too had been born right near the Great Semaphore … When their father died … he taught French at the lycée … he’d gone straight into the Bureau of Weights and Measures, a steady job. To play it absolutely safe he’d married a young lady in the Statistics Division. But a yearning for far-off places kept plaguing him … He still had adventure in his bones, he never felt buried enough, he kept digging in deeper and deeper.