Death on the Installment Plan (41 page)

Well then? It was all a question of guts! The whole thing was perfectly simple, no use arguing … Stand up for your rights, don’t weaken … That was their point of view … It was the heat, the terrible atmosphere, the electricity in the air … That way at least they weren’t shouting at each other … They all got together on their “claims” … Everybody was in agreement … They were all hypnotized on the future … Everybody was hoping to be evicted.

All the neighbors in the Passage were flabbergasted at the dimensions I had assumed … I was getting to be a big bruiser. I’d almost doubled in bulk … That would cost even more when we went to the Deserving Classes for my outfit … I tried on my father’s clothes They burst at the shoulders, I couldn’t even get into his pants. I needed everything new. I’d just have to wait …

On her way home from her errands Madame Béruse, the glovemaker, dropped in just to see how [ looked: “His mother can be proud of him,” she finally concluded. “His stay abroad has done him good.” She repeated that wherever she went. The others came in too to form an opinion of their own. The old caretaker of the Passage, Gaston the hunchback, who picked up all the gossip, found me changed, but in his opinion I was thinner. They couldn’t really agree, everybody had his own idea. In addition, they wanted to know all about England. They asked me for details about how the Engleesh lived over there … I spent all my time in the shop, waiting for them to clothe me. Visios, the sailor, the one with the pipes, Charonne, the gilder, Madame Isard from the dry-cleaning shop, they all wanted to know what we ate at my school in Rochester. Especially about the vegetables. Was it really true they ate them raw, or hardly cooked? And the beer and the water? If I’d had whiskey? If the women had big teeth … kind of like horses? And what about their feet? A lot of applesauce. And their tits? Did they have any? All this with a lot of snide remarks and scandalized looks.

But what they really wanted was for me to say something in English. They were just dying to hear me, they didn’t care if they understood or not … the effect was what they wanted … to hear me talk a little … My mother didn’t make too much of a fuss, but all the same it would have made her mighty proud to have me display my talents … put all those busybodies in their place …

All I knew was:
“River … water … no trouble … no fear”
and maybe two or three more things … It really didn’t amount to much. Anyway I didn’t feel like it … I wasn’t in the mood … It made my mother miserable to see I was just as stubborn as ever. I wasn’t worthy of all their sacrifices. The neighbors were vexed too, they began to make long faces, they thought I was acting like a pigheaded mule … “He hasn’t changed a bit,” said Gaston, the hunchback. “He’ll never change … he’s still the same as when he used to piss on my gates … I could never make him stop.”

He’d never been able to stomach me … “It’s lucky his father isn’t here,” my mother consoled herself. “He’d feel so badly. He’d be beside himself, poor man … to see you so ungracious … so boorish … so antagonistic … so unfriendly … so horrid to everybody! … How do you expect to get ahead? Especially nowadays, the way things are in business … with all the competition? You think you’re the only one that’s looking for a job? Only yesterday he was saying: ‘Good Lord, if only he lands on his feet! We’re on the brink of disaster …’ “

Just then Uncle Édouard turned up … he saved my life … He was in high good humor … He gave everybody in general a good hearty greeting … He’d just put on his beautiful checked suit for the first time, the new summer style, from England as a matter of fact, with a mauve derby, the latest thing, fastened to his buttonhole with a thin ribbon. He seized both my hands, he shook them heartily, a real knockdown, drag-out
“shake-hands.”
He was wild about England … He’d always wanted to take a little trip over there … He kept putting it off because he wanted to learn the names for the things in his business first … pump, and so on. He was counting on me to teach him the language … My mother was still sniveling about my attitude, my repulsive, hostile ways … Far from siding with her he took my part right away … In two words he told all those insignificant cockroaches that they were dense, that they didn’t know a thing about foreign influences … especially England … When you come from over there, it changes you completely! It makes you more laconic, more reserved, it gives you a certain aloofness, in a word, distinction. And it’s a good thing … Why, of course! In high-class business nowadays … especially when you’re selling … the main thing is to hold your tongue … It’s a sign of breeding… that’s what counts in a salesman today … That’s right … The old style is dead, through, washed up … your slobbering … obsequious … voluble salesman …. People are sick of them … That’s all right for punks out in the sticks, for small-town jokers … In Paris you can’t get away with it … If you try that stuff in the Sender quarter, they’ll throw you out … It makes a crawling, servile impression … Got to keep up with the times … According to him I was dead right … That was the line he gave them …

His patter was a great comfort to my mother … it set her mind at rest … she heaved big sighs … she was really relieved … But the rest of them, the lousy stool pigeons, were still hostile … They had their ideas … and nobody could make them change their mind … They griped in accompaniment … I’d never get ahead with those kind of manners. It was out of the question.

Uncle Édouard did his best, he racked his brains and talked himself blue in the face … They stuck to their guns … They were stubborner than mules, they kept repeating that anywhere in the world … if you want to earn an honest living, you’ve got to be friendly and courteous … that’s the first requirement.

Days and days passed and we hardly saw any more customers. It was midsummer and they’d all gone to the country. My mother finally decided that in spite of her bad leg and the doctor’s orders, she’d go out to Chatou and try to sell a little something. I’d keep the shop while she was gone. We had no other alternative … we had to bring in some money. First to buy me a new suit and two pairs of shoes, and then to paint our whole shop front in attractive colors before the new season started.

Our windows looked heartbreaking beside the others … They were pearl-gray and greenish, while next door there was Vertune’s dry-cleaning shop, all brand-new, a fancy yellow and sky-blue, and on the other side the Gomeuse stationery store, an immaculate white, decorated with scrolls and jiggers and a sweet little pattern of little birds on branches … All that meant a big outlay … And we’d have to do it.

She didn’t say a word to my father, she just took the train with an enormous bundle weighing at least forty-five pounds.

Out in Chatou she got started right away … She scrounged a stand from behind the Town Hall and set herself up behind the station, a good location. She handed out all her cards to let people know about the shop. In the afternoon she began traipsing around again, loaded like a mule, all over town, looking for villas where some customers might be hiding … When she came home to the Passage in the evening, she was so done in she could hardly stand up, her leg was so tied up with cramps she could have screamed, her knee was swollen, and the worst of all was her dislocated ankle … She stretched out in my room while waiting for my father to come home … She put on soothing lotion … good cold compresses.

On her suburban tours she sold her stuff any old place dirt-cheap, so as to bring in a little cash … We needed it so bad … “So as not to haul it back home,” she explained … Only two or three people came to the shop all the time she was gone … So it made more sense to close up completely … that way I could go with her to the suburbs and tote her biggest bundles. We didn’t have Madame Divonne anymore to hold the shop down when we were absent. We hung out a sign saying: “Returning immediately.” We took the door handle with us.

Uncle Édouard really loved his sister, no fooling, it got him down to see her so miserable, wasting away, getting more and more run-down from all her work and troubles … He was worried about her health and her morale … He thought of her all the time. The day after a trip to Chatou she couldn’t stand up, her face was ravaged with the pain in her leg. She whined like a dog and lay all twisted on the linoleum … She’d flop on the floor as soon as my father went out. She said it was cooler than the bed. If he caught her like that when he came home from the office, wan and disheveled, massaging her leg in the dish-pan, her skirts hiked up to her chin, he beat it upstairs, he pretended he hadn’t seen her, he raced past, he was gone in a flash. He’d plunge into his typewriting or his water-colors … We always sold a few, especially his “Sailboats,” we had a whole collection of them, and the “Councils of Cardinals” … They had the liveliest colors … Really striking … Those things always look good in a room. And it was high time he got a wiggle on … It was coming on the end of the month … To make up for closing in the daytime during our wanderings through Chatou, we stayed open pretty late … People would go for a stroll after dinner … Especially if a storm came up … If a customer came in, my mother, quick as lightning, hid the basin and all her wads of cotton under the couch in the middle of the room … She’d pull herself up with a smile … She’d start her spiel … Around her neck, I remember well, she’d tie a big muslin cabbage-bow … They were all the rage at the time … It made her head look very big.

Uncle Édouard worked like a dog too, in his own way, but he had nothing to be sorry about, he got results … He was doing better and better in his line … bicycle accessories … That was getting to be a good business, very good in fact. Soon he was able to buy a share in a garage, on the edge of Levallois, with some reliable friends.

He was enterprising by nature and besides he was crazy about inventions … any kind of mechanical idea … Those things really sent him … Right away he’d invested the four thousand francs of his inheritance in a patent for a bicycle pump, the latest thing, it folded up so small you could keep it in your pocket … He always had two or three of them on him, ready to demonstrate. He’d blow them up people’s noses . . He pretty near lost his four thousand francs. The sellers were crooks … He managed to wriggle out of it thanks to his quick wits and a telephone call … a conversation he’d overheard at the last minute … An amazing stroke of luck! … In another minute he’d have been cooked …

My mother admired my uncle. She wanted me to be like him … After all I needed a model … For want of my father, my uncle was somebody to look up to … She didn’t say it straight out, but she dropped hints … In my father’s opinion Édouard was a hell of an example, he was idiotic, absolutely unbearable, grasping, vulgar, always getting a kick out of something nonsensical … He got on my father’s nerves … with his mechanical gadgets, his jalopies, his three-wheelers, his funny-looking pumps! Just hearing him talk irritated the hell out of him.

When my mother took it into her head to sing her brother’s praises, to tell everybody about his plans, his success, his bright ideas, he’d always interrupt her … He wouldn’t stand for it. Certainly not. He’d made up his mind once and for all … He put it all down to luck … “He’s disgustingly lucky and that’s all there is to it …” That was my father’s verdict. He never went any further. He couldn’t run him down anymore, we still owed him money and gratitude … But he had to hold himself in to keep from giving him a piece of his mind … Édouard must have known … It was perfectly obvious … He put up with my father’s dislike, he didn’t want to make trouble, he was always thinking of his sister.

He was very tactful, he just dropped in for a minute to see how we were getting along … wasn’t Mama feeling a little better? He was alarmed about the way she looked and the monumental loads she peddled around … Afterwards her joints were so stiff she’d moan for days on end … It worried him more and more … She was getting worse … He finally decided to speak to my father … The three of them talked it over, and finally they agreed it was high time she took a rest … that this couldn’t go on … But how could she rest? They hit on a plan … we’d take on a cleaning woman, maybe two three hours a day, even that would be a relief … She wouldn’t have to climb stairs nearly so much … She wouldn’t have to sweep under the furniture … she wouldn’t need to go shopping … But how in our present circumstances could we spend all that money? … The whole thing was a pipe dream, sheer lunacy … It would be feasible only if I found work … Then, with my earnings, which would go into the till after all, maybe, once we’d paid the rent, we could think about a maid … That would make it easier for Mama … She wouldn’t have to work so hard or run around so much … They’d thought this out all by themselves … They were delighted with their decision … They’d appeal to my better nature … they’d put me to the test. I wasn’t going to be a perverse, self-centered screwball anymore … Now I too would have my role, my aim in life! To make things easier for my mama! … On the double, boy … Get in there and fight … find yourself a job! That’s the ticket! As soon as they’d bought me my job-hunting suit … pronto, roll up your sleeves … do your stuff! No more mistakes! No more shilly-shallying! Down to business and no more questions! Show your mettle! Your perseverance! By God, I would! What a marvelous goal in life! It was already in the bag, I thought …

First I needed shoes. We went to the Prince Consort again … The Broomfields after all were a little too expensive … especially for two pairs with buttons … And yet, once you begin moving around, what you really need is three or four pairs.

For the suit and pants I had measurements taken at the Deserving Classes, near Les Halles, that was a gilt-edge firm, with a reputation going back a hundred years, especially for all sorts of cheviots and even for “dressy” goods, stuff that lasted practically forever … “Working-man’s outfits” they called them … Only the price was steep. A terrible sacrifice!