Death on the Installment Plan (6 page)

For twenty-two years she’s been trying to carry me off … at exactly midnight … But I can fight back … with twelve pure symphonies of cymbals, two cataracts of nightingales … a whole troupe of seals being roasted over a slow fire … It’s bachelor’s work … that’s for sure. It’s my second life. Anyway it’s
my
business.

If I mention it now, it’s to explain that I had a little attack in the Bois de Boulogne. I often make a lot of noise when I talk. I talk too loud. People make signs at me to lower my voice. I drool a little, I can’t help it … It’s very hard for me to take an interest in my friends. I tend to forget their existence. I’m preoccupied. Sometimes I puke in the street. Then it stops. It’s almost quiet. But the walls begin to shake and the cars go into reverse. The whole earth trembles and me with it. I don’t speak … Life begins again. When I get to see God in his place, I’ll blast his ear, the inner ear, I’ve studied those things. I wonder how he’ll like that. I’m the Devil’s Stationmaster. The day I go, wait and see how the train jumps the track. Monsieur Bizonde, the trussmaker, whom I do little jobs for, will find me paler than ever. He’ll get used to it.

I was thinking about all that in my room while my mother and Vitruve were padding about next door.

The gate of hell in your ear is a little atom of nothing. Move it a quarter of a hair’s breadth … a micron … and look through. You’re done for! That’s all. You’re damned forever. You ready? No? Do you think you can make it? Kicking in isn’t free of charge. A beautiful shroud embroidered with tales—that’s what the Pale Lady wants. The last gasp is very demanding. It’s the last movie and nothing more to come. A lot of people don’t know. You’ve got to knock yourself out. I’ll be up to it soon … I’ll hear my ticker give its last slobbery
pfutt
… and then plop! It’ll wobble in its aorta … like an old broom handle … It’ll be all over. They’ll open it up to check … on that sloping table … They won’t see my beautiful legend, nor my music either. The Pale Lady will have taken it all … Here I am, madame, I’ll say to her, you’re the greatest connoisseur of all …

I was dead to the world, but even so I couldn’t get Mireille off my mind.

I had no doubt about her spilling the dirt all over the place.

“My oh my!” they’d be saying at the clinic … “Ferdinand’s been overdoing it. He goes out to the Bois to get laid … (the way they always exaggerate). With Mireille of all people … debauching all our young women … They’re putting in a complaint … He’s a disgrace to his profession! A rapist and an anarchist …”

No less! It made my blood boil in my bed to think about those fairy tales, I was oozing all over like a toad … I was suffocating … I wriggled and thrashed … I threw off all the covers … Suddenly I felt strong as an ox. But it’s perfectly true that those devils were following us! That charred smell all over. An enormous shadow shuts off my view … It’s Léonce’s hat … An agitator’s hat … with a brim as wide as a race track … He must have put out the fire … It’s Léonce Poitrat! I’m positive. He’s always been shadowing me … He’s out to get me. He hangs around the Préfecture a damn sight more than legitimate business warrants … After six o’clock … He’s all over the place, always active, organizing the apprentices, doing abortions … He doesn’t like me … I give him the creeps. He’s out to get me. He admits it.

He’s the bookkeeper at the clinic. He wears a flowing bow tie. That hat blocks off part of my sleep … My temperature must be rising … I’m going to explode … At meetings he’s the life of the party, you should see him … He can shout for two hours on end at those trade-union blackmail sessions. No one can make Léonce shut up … if anybody tries to change a single word in one of his motions, he blows his top. He can shout louder than a colonel. He’s built like a brick shithouse. He can’t be beat for hot air and his cock has no equal either, comes up harder than thirty-six biceps. Cast iron. That’s him. He’s secretary of the Bricklayers and Roofers’ Union of Vanves La Révolte. Elected no less. His buddies are proud of Léonce, the lazy pugnacious bastard. For pimping on the labor movement he hasn’t his equal.

With all that he wasn’t satisfied, he was jealous of me, my ideas, my spiritual treasures, my looks, the way people call me “Doctor.” There he was with the ladies, waiting … for me to make up my mind, for me to kick in … Nothing doing. Just to burn him up … I’d stay right on the ground where I was … It would be a miracle … I’d even kiss him in the hope of killing him … by contagion!

What’s that noise upstairs … various noises … It’s the pianist giving lessons … No, practicing … He’s nervous. He must be alone … C … C … C! Not so hot. B … B … Come, come. Try again … E…E…D… It’ll come out all right in the end! an arpeggio with the left hand … and now the right hand’s perking up … B-sharp! Christ almighty!

Through my window I can see Paris … spread out below me … And then it begins to climb … toward us … toward Montmartre … One roof pushes the next, sharp, cutting, bleeding in the light, streets blue, red, and yellow … Lower down, the Seine, pale mists, a tugboat buffeting the current … with a tired wail. Still farther off, the hills … Everything looks alike … The night will take us in. Is that my concierge banging on the wall?

I must be in pretty bad shape for her to come up … Mother Bérenge is too old for all those stairs … Where can she be coming from? … She crosses my room ever so softly … She doesn’t touch the floor. She doesn’t even look to right or left … She leaves by the window, out into the void … There she is, off in the darkness above the houses … there she is, over there …

D … F … G-sharp … E … Shit! Isn’t he ever going to stop? That must be his pupil starting in … When fever spreads through you, life gets as flabby as a barkeeper’s belly … You sink into a muddle of entrails. I hear my mother rubbing it in … She’s telling Madame Vitruve the story of her life … Over and over again, to make it clear what a time she’s had with me. Extravagant … irresponsible … lazy … nothing like his father … he so conscientious … so hardworking … so deserving … so unlucky … who passed on last winter … Sure … she doesn’t tell her about the dishes he broke on her bean … Oh no! D … C … E … D-flat! That’s his pupil, in trouble again … skipping sixteenths … he’s tangled up in the teacher’s fingers … He’s skidding … he can’t straighten out … his nails are full of sharps … “Watch that beat!” I roar.

My mother doesn’t say a word about how he used to drag her through the back room by the hair. The place was really too small to argue in …

Not one word about all that … nothing but poetry … Yes, we lived in cramped quarters, but we loved each other so. That’s what she was saying. Papa was fond of me, he was so sensitive about every little thing that my behavior … so much to worry about … my alarming propensities, the terrible trouble I gave him … hastened his death … all that grief and anguish affected his heart. Plop! The fairy tales people tell each other … they make a certain amount of sense, but they’re a pack of filthy stinking lies … The stinking bitches get so het up filling each other full of bullshit that they drown out the piano … I can puke in peace.

Vitruve is no slouch at telling whoppers either … she lists her sacrifices … Mireille is her whole life … I can’t catch it all … I’d better go to the can to vomit … probably a touch of malaria too … brought it back from the Congo … I’m pretty far gone in all directions …

By the time I get back to bed, my mother is in the middle of her courtship … the days when Auguste rode a bike … not to be outdone, the other one goes on shamelessly … about her desperate efforts to save my reputation … at Linuty’s … Oh no! I can’t stand it! I sit up … I’m at the end of my rope … I can’t move … I just lean over and vomit on the other side of the doss. If I’ve got to be delirious, I’d rather wallow in stories of my own … I see Thibaud the Troubadour … He’s always in need of money … He’s going to kill Joad’s father … Well, at least that will be one father less in the world … I see splendid tournaments on the ceiling … I see lancers impaling each other … I see King Krogold himself … He has come from the north … He had been invited to Bredonnes with his whole court … I see his daughter Wanda, the Blonde, the Radiant … I wouldn’t mind jerking off, but I’m too sticky … Joad is horny in love … Oh well, why not … I’ve got to get back … A sudden surge of bile … The effort makes me bellow … This time my old bitches can’t help hearing … They come in and patch me up. I throw them out … in the hallway they start shooting the shit again. After the way they’d been running me down, the tide changes … they discover my good points … they’re dependent on me for a good many things … Better be realistic … they’d been overdoing it … After all, who brings home the bacon? … My mother wasn’t making much, working for Monsieur Bizonde, the famous trussmaker … Not enough to get by on … It’s hard at her age to make ends meet on a commission basis. And who keeps Madame Vitruve and her niece going with his clever ideas? … Suddenly a new wave of suspicion. They begin to hedge …

“He’s a scatterbrained brute … but good-hearted …” You’ve got to admit that. Yes, of course. There’s the rent and groceries to think about … Mustn’t exaggerate. They hasten to put each other’s minds at rest. My mother is no workingwoman … She says that over and over again, it’s her litany … She’s a small businesswoman … Our family ran itself ragged for the glory of small business … We’re no drunken workers, up to our ears in debt … Oh no! Certainly not … There’s a big difference and don’t forget it … Three lives, mine, hers, and most of all my father’s were ground down by sacrifice … Nobody even knows what became of them … they paid our debts …

And now my mother knocks herself out trying to recapture those lives of ours … she’s reduced to her imagination … they’ve disappeared … our pasts as well. Whenever she has a free moment, she tries to put things back on their feet … but inevitably they collapse again …

She flies into terrible rages if I even begin to cough, because my father had a chest like a bull, good strong lungs … I can’t stand the sight of her anymore, she gives me the creeps. She wants me to share in her fantasies … I’m not in the mood. One of these days I’m going to do something bad! I want to have my own fantasies … C! E! A! the pupil is gone. The pianist is relaxing … Doing a
berceuse
… I wish Emilie would come up … She comes every evening to straighten out … She hardly says anything … I forget she’s there … Ah, here she is! She wants me to take some rum … The drunks next door are bawling again …

“He has a high fever … I’m terribly worried,” my mother repeats for the hundredth time.

“He’s so kind to his patients,” yacks Vitruve.

At that point I was so hot I dragged myself to the window.

On a long tack across the Étoile my gallant ship glides through the dusk … under full sail … she is heading straight for the Hôtel-Dieu … The whole town is on deck, still and calm. All those dead—I know them all … I even know the helmsman … He’s my buddy … The pianist has caught on … He’s playing the tune we need: “Black Joe” … for a cruise … to catch the wind and weather … and the lies … If I open the window, it will be cold … Tomorrow I’m going to kill Monsieur Bizonde, who keeps us going … the trussmaker, in his shop … I want him to travel … he never goes out … My vessel groans and pitches over the Parc Monceau … She’s slower than last night … She’s going to hit the statues … Two ghosts go ashore at the Comédie Française … Three enormous waves carry off the arcades of the rue de Rivoli. The siren screams against my windowpanes … I close my door … A roar of wind … My mother appears with her eyes popping out … She scolds me. Misbehaving as usual. Vitruve comes running … More good advice. I rebel … I give them hell … My fair ship is limping. Those females can wreck the infinite … She’s off course, it’s shameful … Nevertheless she heels over to port … there’s no more graceful craft afloat … My heart follows her … Those bitches would do better to run after the rats that are fouling the rigging … She’ll never make that tack with her ropes so taut … got to slacken them … let out three turns before the Samaritaine! I shout all that out over the rooftops … My room is going to sink. I’ve paid for it, haven’t I? Every last cent. With my lousy rotten existence … I shit in my pajamas … What a mess! Things are bad. I’m going to founder at the Bastille. “Ah, if only your father were here” … I hear those words. I explode. It’s her again. I turn around. My father, I say, was a skunk! I yell my lungs out … “There was no lousier bastard in the whole universe! from the Galeries-Lafayette to Capricorne …” At first she was stupefied. Transfixed … Then she gets hold of herself. She calls me the lowest of the low. I don’t know which way to look. She bursts into tears. She rolls on the carpet in anguish. She rises to her knees. She stands up. She comes at me with the umbrella.

She hauls off and gives me a couple of cracks full in the face. The handle breaks in her hands. She bursts into tears. Vitruve throws herself between us. She never wants to see me again. That’s what she thinks of me. She sobs so hard the whole place shakes … All my father left behind him was his memory and carloads of trouble. Memory is an obsession with her. The deader he is the more she loves him. Like a she-dog that can’t get enough … But I won’t put up with it … I’ll protest if it kills me. I repeat that he was a sneak, brute, hypocrite, and yellow in every way. She starts up again. She’s ready to die for her Auguste. I’ll smash her face. Hell! I haven’t got malaria for nothing. She upbraids me, she lets herself go, she has no consideration for the state I’m in. I’m in a blind rage. I bend over and lift up her skirt. I see her calf as skinny as a poker, without any flesh on it. her stocking all sagging, it’s foul … I’ve seen it all my life … I puke on it, the works …