Death on the Installment Plan (47 page)

I never really found out how Uncle Édouard managed to make my father lay off … to make him leave me strictly alone … I think he must have given him to understand that his disciplinary routine, his idea of sending me to La Roquette, wasn’t so very bright … That I wouldn’t stay there forever … that maybe I’d escape right away … just to come and rub him out … and that this time I’d really finish the job … Anyway, he managed … He didn’t confide in me … I didn’t ask him to.

My uncle’s place was nicely situated, it was cheerful, pleasant … It looked out over the gardens of the rue de Vaugirard and the rue Maublanc … There were rows of little copses and kitchen gardens in front and in back … The honeysuckle climbed all around the front windows … Everybody had his little plot between the houses, radishes, lettuces, even tomatoes … and grapevines! All that reminded me of my head of lettuce … It hadn’t brought me much luck. I was terribly weak, like after an illness. But in a way I felt better. I didn’t feel hunted at Uncle Édouard’s place.

I began to breathe again …

The decoration in his room consisted of whole series of picture postcards, pinned up fanwise, in frescoes, in garlands … The “Kings of the Steering Wheel,” the “Kings of the Handlebars,” and the “Heroes of Aviation” … He bought them all, a few at a time … His ultimate plan was to have them form a tapestry that would cover the walls completely … It wouldn’t be long now … Paulhan and his little fur cap … Rougier of the lopsided schnozzle … Petit-Breton with the legs of steel and the zebra-stripe jersey … Farman, the bearded … Santos-Dumont, the fearless fetus … Vicomte Lambert, the Eiffel Tower specialist … Latham, the disillusioned … MacNamara, the “black panther” … Sam Langford, all thighs … And a hundred other celebrities … Boxing too of course …
^*

It wasn’t a bad life … We managed pretty well … When my uncle came home from his business and all the chasing around connected with his pump, he talked to me about sporting events … He figured all the chances … He knew all the weaknesses, the idiosyncrasies, the tricks of the champions … We ate our meals on the oilcloth, we did the cooking together … We talked things over in every detail, the chances of all the favorites …

On Sunday we were full of beans … By ten o’clock in the morning we were in the big Gallery of Machines … it was a fantastic sight … We’d get there good and early … We’d take our places way up top, on the turn … We were never bored for a second … Uncle Édouard was always on the run, from one end of the week to the other … He never stopped going … His pump still wasn’t exactly the way he wanted it … He was having a lot of trouble with patents … He didn’t quite see what the difficulty was … It mostly had something to do with America … But whether he was in a good or a bad humor he never made speeches … He never moralized … That’s what I liked best about him … Meanwhile he put me up. I lived in his second room. My fate was in suspense. My father never wanted to see me again … He was still gassing as usual … He’d have liked me to start my military service … But I wasn’t old enough … I only heard about all this bit by bit … My uncle didn’t like to talk about it … He preferred to talk about sports, his pump, boxing, gadgets … anything … Touchy subjects gave him a pain … me too …

Even so, he was a little more talkative on the subject of my mother … He brought me news … She couldn’t move around at all anymore … I wasn’t very eager to see her … What was the use? … She always said the same thing … Anyway, the time passed … A week, two weeks, three … This couldn’t go on forever … I couldn’t dig in here for good … My uncle was OK but that was just the trouble … And how was I going to live? … At his expense? … That was no good … I dropped a little suggestion … “We’ll see about it later on.” he said … there was no hurry … he was attending to it …

He taught me how to shave … He had a special contraption, tricky and modern … you could put it together in all directions and even backwards … Except it was so complicated it took an engineer to change the blade … This delicate little razor was another nest of patents, he explained to me, about twenty in all.

It was I who set the table and did the shopping … I kept on like that, waiting and doing nothing, for almost a month and a half … lounging around like a woman … That had never happened to me before … I did the dishes too. We didn’t bother with too much cleaning … Then I went roaming around wherever I pleased … No kidding! … That was something … I had no fixed destination … I just wandered … Every day Uncle Édouard said the same thing before I went out: “Go take a walk. Go ahead, Ferdinand! Just follow your nose … Don’t worry about a thing … Go wherever you like … If you’ve got some special place, that’s the place to go. Sure. As far as the Luxembourg if you feel like it … Ah! If I only weren’t so busy … I’d go and watch them playing tennis … I’m crazy about tennis … Get a little sunshine … You never look at anything, you’re like your father …” He’d stop for a minute, he’d stand still, thinking. Finally he’d add: “And then you’ll come home, but don’t hurry … I’ll be a little later than usual tonight …” And he’d give me a little extra dough, a franc and a half, two francs … “Take in a movie … if you’re up on the Boulevards … You seem to like stories …”

Seeing him so generous … with me on his hands, I began to feel crummy … But I didn’t dare to argue. I was afraid he’d take offense … After the latest ruckus I was always on the lookout for consequences … So I thought I’d wait a while for things to straighten themselves out … To spare expense I washed my own socks while he was out … The rooms in his place weren’t strung in a row, but pretty far apart. The third, next to the stairs, was weird, it was like a small drawing room … But with hardly anything in it … a table in the middle, two chairs, and a single picture on the wall … an enormous reproduction of Millet’s
Angelus
… I never saw such a wide picture … it took up the whole panel … ‘“Isn’t it beautiful? What do you say, Ferdinand?” Uncle Édouard asked every time we passed in front of it on our way to the kitchen. Sometimes we stopped a moment to contemplate it in silence … We didn’t talk in front of the Angelus … This wasn’t any “Kings of the Handlebars” … It wasn’t made to be gassed about!

I think my uncle had an idea it would do me a lot of good to look at a fine picture like that … that it was a kind of treatment for a rotten character like mine … that maybe it would soften me up … But he never made an issue of it … He understood these sensitive things perfectly … He didn’t talk about them, that’s all … Uncle Édouard wasn’t only good at machinery … That would be the wrong idea … He was very sensitive, there’s no denying it … Actually that was what made me feel so uncomfortable … It made me feel lousy to be sitting there like a sap, piling his groceries into my belly … I was a skunk and I had my nerve with me … Hell! … Enough was enough …

I asked him again … risked it … if there was any objection to my starting out again… having a look at the want ads … “You stay right here,” he says to me. “Aren’t you happy? Is anything eating you, kid? Go out for a walk. It’ll be better for you. Don’t worry about a thing … You’ll only get mixed up with the same dopes … I’ll find you a job … I’m working on it. Just leave me alone. Don’t stick your nose in. You’re still too jittery … You’ll only bollix everything up … You’re too nervous right now. Anyway I’ve arranged everything with your parents … Go roaming around some more … You won’t always have the chance. Go out to Suresnes along the river. Or take the boat, come to think of it. Give yourself a change of air. There’s nothing like those boats. Get off at Meudon if you feel like it. That’ll clear your mind … I’ll tell you in a few days … I’ll have something very good for you … I can feel it … I’m sure of it … But we mustn’t try to force things … And I hope you’ll be a credit to me …” “Yes, Uncle.”

You don’t meet many men like Roger-Martin Courtial des Pereires … I was a good deal too young at the time, I’ve got to admit, to appreciate him properly. My uncle had the good fortune to meet him one day at the office of the
Genitron
, the favorite magazine (twenty-five pages) of the small artisan-inventors of the Paris district … in connection with his scheme for obtaining a patent, the best, the most airtight, for all kinds of bicycle pumps … folding, collapsible, flexible, or reversible.

Courtial des Pereires, let’s get this straight right away, was absolutely different from the mob of petty inventors … He was miles above all the bungling subscribers to his magazine … that crawling mass of failures … Oh no! Roger-Martin Courtial wasn’t in that class … He was a real master! … It wasn’t just neighbors that came to consult him … but people from all over, from the departments of the Seine, the Seine-et-Oise, subscribers from the provinces, the colonies … even from foreign countries …

But the remarkable thing about it was that in private Courtial expressed nothing but contempt and ill-concealed disgust for all those small-fry, those weights around the neck of Science, those misled shopkeepers, those delirious tailors, those gadget peddlers … all those harebrained delivery boys, always being fired, hunted, cachectic, driving themselves nuts about perpetual motion or the squaring of the world … or the magnetic faucet … The whole miserable swarm of obsessed screwballs … of inventors of the moon! …

He had his bellyful of them right away, just from looking at them and especially when he had to listen to them … He had to put a good face on it in the interests of the paper … That was his routine, his bread and butter … But it was disgusting and embarrassing … It wouldn’t have been so bad if he could have kept quiet … But he had to comfort them! flatter them! get rid of them gently … according to the case and the mania … and above all collect his fee … It was a race between all those maniacs, those dreary slobs, to see who could get away a little quicker … only five minutes more! … from his furnished room … his workshop, his bus or shed … just time to take a leak … and then dash to the Genhron … and collapse in front of des Pereires’ desk, like a lot of escaped convicts … panting … haggard … tense with fright … to shake their dunce caps some more … to fire thousands of puzzlers at Courtial … about “solar mills,” the junction of the “lesser radiations” … ways of moving the Cordilleras … of deflecting the course of comets … as long as they had a gasp of breath left in their dottering bagpipes … to the last twitch of their stinking carcasses … Courtial des Pereires, secretary, precursor, owner, founder of the
Genitron
, always had an answer to everything, he was never embarrassed or disconcerted, never maneuvered to gain time … His aplomb, his perfect competence, his irresistible optimism made him invulnerable to the worst assaults of the worst nitwits … Besides, he never put up with long conversations … Instantly he parried, he himself took over … Whatever was said, decided, settled … was settled once and for all … no use starting up again or he’d go purple with rage … He’d tug at his collar … He’d spray spit in all directions … Incidentally he had some teeth missing, three on one side … In every case his verdicts, the most tenuous, the most dubious, the most open to argument, became massive, galvanized, irrefutable, instantaneous truths … He had only to open his mouth … He triumphed instantly … There was no room for a comeback.

At the slightest sign of disagreement he gave free rein to his temper and the martyred consultant didn’t have a chance … Instantly turned inside out, crushed, routed, massacred, volatilized forever … It was a regular fantasia, a trapeze act over a volcano … The poor insolent bastard saw stars … Courtial was so imperious when he got mad he would have made the most insatiable nut drop through the floor, he’d have made him crawl into a mousehole.

Courtial wasn’t a big man, he was short and wiry, the small powerful type. He himself told you his age several times a day … He was past fifty … He kept in good shape thanks to physical culture, dumbbells, Indian clubs, horizontal bars, springboards … he did his exercises regularly, especially before lunch, in the back room of the newspaper office. He’d fixed up a regular gymnasium between two partitions. Naturally it was kind of cramped … But all the same he swung himself around on his apparatus … on the bars … with remarkable ease … That was the advantage of being little … he could pivot like a charm … Even so he collided now and then … good and hard … when he was swinging on the rings … He’d shake the walls of his cubbyhole like a bell clapper! Boom! Boom! You could hear him exercising. Never in the worst heat did I ever see him take off his pants or his frock coat or his collar … Only his cuffs and his ready-made tie.

Courtial des Pereires had a good reason to keep in perfect form. He had to watch out for his physique and keep limber … It was indispensable … In addition to being an inventor, an author, and a journalist, he often went up in a balloon … He gave exhibitions … Especially on Sundays and holidays … It usually went off all right, but occasionally there was trouble and plenty of excitement … And that wasn’t all … He led a perilous life, full of unforeseen dangers and a hundred different kinds of surprises … That’s how he’d always lived … It was his nature … He told me what he was aiming at …

“Muscles without mind, Ferdinand,” he’d say, “aren’t even horse meat. And intelligence without muscles is electricity without a battery! You don’t know where to put it … It leaks out all over the place … It’s a waste … It’s a mess …” That was his opinion. He’d written several conclusive works on the subject: “The Human Battery and its Upkeep.” He was gone on physical culture even before the word existed. He wanted a varied life … “I don’t want to be a pen-pusher.” That was the way he talked.

He was crazy about balloons, he’d been an aeronaut almost from birth, ever since his earliest youth … with Surcouf and Barbizet … highly instructive ascents … No records, no long-distance flights, no breathtaking performances. No, nothing showy, colossal, unusual … He had no use for the clowns of the atmosphere … Nothing but demonstration flights, educational ascents … Always scientific … That was his motto and he stuck to it. The balloon was good for his magazine, it rounded out his activities … Every time he went up it brought in subscribers. He had a uniform for climbing into the basket, he had an uncontested right to it, like a captain with three stripes, he was an “associated, registered, graduate” aeronaut. He couldn’t even count his medals. They looked like a breastplate on his Sunday rig … He didn’t give a damn about them, he wasn’t a show-off, but it meant a lot to his audience, you had to keep up appearances.