Death on the Installment Plan (34 page)

Our only trouble was lack of competition … Rival teams were rare, especially nearby. Actually the only ones that played us regularly, every Thursday, were the kids from Pitwitt Academy, on the other side of the bridge at Stroud, a gang of miserable pimplefaces, foundlings, a charitable institution … They were mighty skinny, even lighter than our gang … Actually they didn’t weigh anything. At the first violent charge downwind, they flew away just like the ball … The main thing was to hold them, to flatten then down … We used to beat them 12 to 4. Regularly. It was the custom … If there were any complaints, if we heard the slightest murmur, we didn’t hesitate a second, we beat the shit out of them, we massacred them … That was the custom too. If they kicked so much as a single goal more than usual, our boys got really vicious … They said they’d been double-crossed … they began looking for the guilty parties … murder was in the air … When we got home in the evening, they went over the whole business again … after prayers, when the old man had closed the door … Hell broke loose for five minutes … Jongkind was to blame … The fool things he did, he was always responsible for the penalties we got … He got his punishment … It was epic … They lifted up the grating and spilled him out of his crib … First they spread him out on the floor like a crab, ten of them all together gave him a mean whipping with belts … even with the buckles … When he yelled too loud, they’d pin him under a mattress and everybody stamped on him … Then they went after his pecker … to teach him how to behave … till there wasn’t any more … not a single drop.

Next day he couldn’t stand up … Mrs. Merrywin was puzzled, she couldn’t make the kid out … He didn’t say
“No trouble”
anymore … He crumpled up at the table and in class … for three days he was a wreck … But he was incorrigible, you’d have had to tie him to make him keep still … You had to keep him away from the goal … The minute he saw the ball go in, he went off his rocker, he dashed in like a madman, jumped on the ball, wrenched it away from the goalkeeper … Before we could stop him, he’d run away with it … At times like that he was really out of his mind … He ran faster than anybody else … “Hurray, hurray, hurray!” he’d keep shouting all the way down the hill. It wasn’t easy to catch him. He’d run all the way to town. Often we’d catch him in a shop … kicking the ball into shop windows, smashing signs … He was a demon athlete. He had funny ideas, you never knew what he was going to do next.

For three months I didn’t say boo; I didn’t say hip or hep or oof … I didn’t say yes … I didn’t say no … I didn’t say anything at all … it took some heroism … I didn’t speak to a living soul … That suited me fine …

In the dormitory everything went on as usual … the jerking and sucking … I wondered about Nora, but I didn’t really know a thing …

Around January and February it was terribly cold and the fog was so thick we could hardly find our way home from the playing field … We groped our way …

The old man let me alone in school and on the hill, he’d stopped trying to argue with me. He caught on to my character … He thought I was thinking things over … that I’d come around after a while, if handled gently … That’s not what interested me. What gave me the creeps was the thought of going back to the Passage. It gave me the shivers three months in advance. It drove me crazy just to think about it … Christ! Having to start talking again! …

On the physical side I had nothing to complain about, I was doing all right. I was feeling a good deal stronger … The rough climate, the glacial weather was just what I needed … It built me up more and more, if the eats had been better I’d have turned into a regular strong man … I’d have laid them all flat …

Another couple of weeks went by … That made four months of silence. Then all of a sudden Merrywin got kind of scared … One afternoon when we came in from sports, I saw him grabbing a sheet of paper. He begins to write my father, hysterically … a lot of bilge … It was a dumb thing to do …By return mail I got three big long letters that I can safely describe as vile … stupid, bristling with threats, bloodcurdling oaths, insults in Greek and Latin, warnings, prospective punishments, selected anathemas, infinite grief … My conduct was diabolical! Apocalyptic! … That got me down again … He writes me an ultimatum to plunge into the study of the English language, immediately, in the name of his terrible principles, of their extreme privations … of their twenty million sacrifices, of the horrible sufferings they had endured, all for my sake. Merrywin, the stupid bastard, stuttered and stammered … he was all upset, flummoxed at having brought on such a deluge … A lot of good it had done him! Now the dikes were broken … it was every man for himself … I can’t begin to say how rotten sick it made me to see all my old man’s damn foolishness right there on the table, spread out in black on white … It was even crummier in writing.

What an asshole he turned out to be … old Swallowtail Merrywin! Worse than all the brats lumped together … And ten times stupider and stubborner … I was sure he’d be my downfall with those glass eyes of his.

If he’d kept quiet and minded his business as agreed, I was good for another six months … Now that he’d put his foot in it, it was only a question of weeks … I locked myself up in my silence … I was very angry with him … If I picked up and left, he’d asked for it … It would be a disaster for the school. He’d brought it on himself. Meanwell College wasn’t doing very well to begin with … Without me on the football team, they were all washed up, the team would never get through the season.

After Christmas vacation four kids left—that is, they didn’t come back … The school would have one hell of a football team even if they let Jongkind play … It would be nonexistent … With only eight snotnoses left it was no use even lining up … They’d wipe the floor with us. Pitwitt would score whenever they felt like it … even if their kids had been lighter than feathers, even if they’d been twice as undernourished … Our boys would cut and run … They wouldn’t wait for the massacre … Meanwell was washed up … No more football meant bankruptcy … The old man was scared shitless … He made a last despairing try … He questioned me in French … Did I have any complaints, was anything wrong? … Did the kids bully me? … I’d have liked to see them try! Did my feet get too wet? … Was there something special I’d like to eat? There was no sense in talking. I was ashamed to sulk and act like an ass in front of Nora … but self-respect wasn’t the half of it … Once you’ve made up your mind, you got to go through with it … The more pupils they lost, the more indispensable I was getting … They were always making up to me … smiling … doing me favors … The kids knocked themselves out … Little Jack, the one that put on the puppy act at night, brought me candy … he even gave me some of his watercress … the little tiny leaves … stiff as whiskers … that taste like mustard … and grow in special moldy boxes on the windowsill …

The old man had told them all to be nice … and try and keep me until Easter … for the sake of our sports, the honor of the school depended on it … If I left any sooner, the team would be shot … they wouldn’t be able to play Pitwitt anymore …

To make things even nicer for me they let me off classes. In class I distracted everybody’s attention … I was always banging my desk … or I’d go and look out the window … at the fog and the movement in the port … I had projects of my own, I did things with chestnuts and walnuts, I set up naval battles … I made big sailboats with matches … I prevented the others from learning anything …

The idiot behaved pretty well, except he kept sticking his penholder up his nose … Sometimes he put two or even four of them in one nostril … He pushed them way up and yelled … He drank the ink out of the inkwells … It was better he should take walks … The more he grew the harder it got to handle him … They took us out together … I missed the classroom a little … I didn’t learn anything but I felt good, I didn’t mind the sound of English … It’s pleasant, elegant, supple … It’s a kind of music, it comes from another planet … I had no talent for learning … It wasn’t hard for me to resist … Papa always said I was stupid and opaque … There was nothing to be surprised about … My isolation suited me better and better … Obstinacy is my strong point … They had to give in, to stop bothering me … They flattered my instincts, my taste for bumming … They walked me all over the region, up hill and down village, with the idiot, his wheelbarrow, and all his toys …

As soon as school started, we lit out for the country, Jongkind, Mrs. Merrywin, and I … We often came back by way of Chatham, depending on the errands we had to do. We held the idiot by a rope fastened to his belt, so he wouldn’t make off through the streets … He was always up to something … We’d mosey down to town, we’d saunter along the shop fronts, we’d have to watch out for the carriages, he was scared of horses, he’d practically jump under the wheels …

While doing the shopping, Mrs. Merrywin tried to teach me the signs on the shops … That way I’d learn without even trying, without the slightest effort … I let her talk … I just looked at her face, at the particular spot that fascinated me, her smile … that saucy little jigger … I’d have liked to kiss her right there … It was itching me something terrible … I went around behind her … I hypnotized myself on her waist, her movements, her undulations … On market day we took the big basket … it was like a cradle … Jongkind and I each held a handle. We brought back all the food for the whole week … Our shopping took all morning.

I saw Gwendoline, my Greasy Joan, in the distance. She was still cooking her fritters, she was wearing a different hat, it was even bigger, with more flowers … I refused to go in that direction … I’d never have extricated myself from all the explanations and gush. When we stayed home because Jongkind had a cold, Nora lay on the couch in the drawing room and began to read, there were books all over the place … Our blessed angel was a sensitive soul, poetic, imaginative … She didn’t soil her hands, she never touched a finger to the food or the beds or the floors. There were two maids when I first came: Flossie and Gertrude. They seemed to be pretty hefty … How did they manage that? They must have kept all the grub for themselves, or maybe it was some disease … They were neither of them any spring chickens … You could hear them griping the whole time, they were always sniffing on the stairs. They’d shake their brooms at each other … But they didn’t knock themselves out … It was filthy in the corners …

Flossie smoked on the sly, I caught her one day in the garden … No washing was done in the house, we took it all to town to a special laundry, at the end of the world, way past the barracks. On those days Jongkind and I didn’t rest a minute, we went up and down the hill any number of times with enormous bundles … We’d have contests to see who could carry more and faster … That was a sport I understood … it reminded me of the days on the Boulevards … Our walks got to be wild adventures when the rain came down so heavy and wet … when the sky crashed against the roofs and burst into torrents and waterfalls. The three of us clung together to resist the tempest … The storm was so violent that Nora … her curves, her buttocks, her thighs … looked like solid water, everything was stuck together … We weren’t making any headway … We couldn’t take the stairs that went up our cliff … We had to go around by the park … to make a detour past the church. We stopped outside the chapel, under the portico … waiting for the storm to pass.

The rain drove the idiot crazy with excitement … He’d run out of his shelter … He tilted his head back and took the rain full in the face … With his mouth wide open … He gulped down the rivers, he was having a hell of a good time … He bobbed up and down, he flew into a frenzy … He danced a jig in the puddles, he jumped like a wood sprite … He wanted us to dance too … It was one of his fits … I was beginning to understand him, it was hard to calm him down … You had to pull his rope and hitch him to the foot of a bench.

I knew my parents. This business with the striped suit wasn’t going to suit them one bit, I knew it all in advance … They answered after some delay, they still hadn’t got over it, they yelled like stuck pigs, they thought I was trying to put one over on them, that the whole thing was a subterfuge to cover up my wild extravagance … They took advantage of the occasion to remark that if I wasted my time kicking a ball around, no wonder I wasn’t learning two cents’ worth of grammar … This was their final notice … my last chance … I needn’t worry too much about the accent … any old accent would do … as long as I could make myself understood … I read the letter over again with Nora and her old man … it lay open on the table … There were some passages they didn’t dig. The whole thing struck them as very strange and mysterious … I didn’t do any explaining … I’d been there for four months, I wasn’t going to let myself in for a lot of applesauce on account of a jacket … It upset them though. Even Nora seemed unhappy … that I didn’t want to wear a sport uniform with the monkey jacket and the rainbow cap … Probably for roaming around town, it would be good publicity for Meanwell, especially me, because I was the biggest and gawkiest … the way I looked on the football field was a disgrace to the school … Finally they carried on so much that I softened a little … I accepted a compromise … Nora pieced together a rig out of two of her old man’s castoffs … and I said I’d try it … Some combination … it made me look real cute … twice as grotesque … I had no shape or middle … But I didn’t have to listen to their lamentations anymore … At the same time I inherited a cap, two tones, with a crest, a tiny little thing the size of half an orange … It looked weird on my enormous bean … But they thought all that stuff helped the prestige of their establishment … the honor of the school was saved … Now they made a point of taking me out … they didn’t have to think of excuses anymore …