Death on the Installment Plan (9 page)

He and his wife would come to see us on New Year’s Day. They were so thrifty, they ate so miserably and never spoke to a soul, that the day they conked out nobody in the neighborhood remembered them. Everybody was surprised. They died in secret, he of cancer, she of abstinence. They found Blanche, his wife, on the Buttes-Chaumont.

That was where they used to spend their vacations. Just the same, it took them forty years, always together, to commit suicide.

My father’s sister, Hélène, was a different story. She had wind in her sails. She ended up in Russia. She got to be a whore in St. Petersburg. For a while she had everything, a carriage, three sleighs, a village all her own, with her name on them. She came to see us at the Passage twice in a row, done up like a princess, stunning and happy and all. She came to a tragic end, shot by an officer. She had no willpower. She was all flesh, desire, music. It made my father puke just to think of her. When she heard of her death, my mother said: “What a terrible end! But it’s a fit end for an egotist.”

Then there was Uncle Arthur. He was no model either. The flesh was too much for him too. My father had a certain liking for him, a kind of weakness. He lived like a regular bohemian, on the fringe of society, in a shanty, shacked up with a housemaid. She worked at the restaurant outside the École Militaire. Thanks to her, there’s no denying it, he managed to eat very well. He was a dandy, with a goatee, corduroy pants, pointed shoes, and a long slender pipe. Nothing ever got him down. Making women was his main occupation. He was sick a good deal, seriously so when the rent came due. He’d stay in bed for a week or more at some girl friend’s house. When we went to see him on Sundays, he didn’t behave very well, especially with my mother. He’d take little liberties with her. That made my old man see red. When we left, he’d swear by eighty thousand devils that we’d never go back.

“Really, that brother of mine! His manners are disgusting! …” But we’d go back all the same.

He would draw boats on his big drawing board, under the skylight; yachts cutting through the foam, that was his style, with gulls all around … Now and then he’d do some work for a catalog, but he had so many debts he always felt discouraged. He was cheerful when doing nothing.

From the cavalry barracks next door you could hear all the bugle calls. Arthur knew all the words that went with them by heart. He’d start in again at every refrain. He made up some smutty ones. My mother and the housemaid went: “Oh! Oh!” Papa was furious because of my tender years.

But the screwiest member of the family was certainly Uncle Rodolphe, he was really off his rocker. He would titter quietly when you spoke to him. He only answered his own questions. That could go on for hours. He insisted on living in the open air. He never consented to have anything to do with a store or an office, not even as a watchman, not even at night. He preferred to take his meals out-of-doors, on a bench. He distrusted the insides of houses. When he was really too hungry, he’d come to see us. He’d turn up in the evening. That meant things were pretty rough.

He made his living carrying baggage in the railroad stations. It was a job that took stamina and he kept at it for more than twenty years. He had an in with the “Urban Express.” He ran like a rabbit after cabs and baggage as long as he was able to. His high season was when people were coming back from vacation. His job made him hungry, and always thirsty. The coachmen liked him. He was screwy at the table. He’d stand up with glass in hand, clink it all around, and strike up a song … He’d stop in the middle and burst out laughing without rhyme or reason … and drool all over his napkin.

We’d take him home. He’d still be laughing. He lived on the rue Lepic at the Rendez-vous du Puy de Dôme, a shack on the court. He kept his belongings on the floor, there wasn’t a single chair or a table. At the time of the Exposition he became a “troubadour.” He’d stand outside the papier-mâché grottoes along the Seine, drumming up trade for “Old Paris.” His coat was a patchwork of rags of every color. He’d keep warm by bellowing and stamping his feet. In the evening, when he came to dinner in his carnival rig, my mother made him a hot-water bottle. His feet were always cold. To make matters worse, he took up with the “wench.” She was a spieler too. She stood in a painted cardboard grotto at the other entrance. Poor thing, she’d already begun to cough her lungs out. She didn’t last three months. She died right there in his room at the Rendez-vous. He didn’t want them to take her away. He bolted his door. He came home every night and lay down beside her. It was the smell that put them wise. Then he went raving mad. He didn’t understand that things die. They buried her by force. He wanted to carry her all the way to Pantin himself, on a hod.

Finally he went back to work by the Esplanade. My mother was horrified. “Dressed like a scarecrow, in this cold. It’s a crime.” What upset her most was that he wouldn’t wear his overcoat. He had one of Papa’s. They sent me to have a look. I was underage, so I could get through the gate without paying.

He was there behind the fence, dressed like a troubadour. All smiles again. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, son … D’you see her? D’you see my Rosine? …” He pointed a finger across the Seine … the plain, a point in the mist … “You see her?” I said yes. I never crossed him. I told my parents he was all right. Pure spirit, that was Rodolphe!

Late in 1913 he went away with a circus. We could never find out what had become of him. We never saw him again.

We left the rue de Babylone to open another shop, to try our luck again. This time it was in the Passage des Bérésinas, between the Stock Exchange and the Boulevards. Our living quarters were over the shop, three rooms connected by a spiral staircase. My mother was always limping up and down those stairs. Tip-tap-plunk, tip-tap-plunk. She’d hold on to the banister. The sound gave my father the creeps. He was always in a temper anyway, because the time wouldn’t pass. He kept looking at his watch. With Mama and her leg in addition, it didn’t take much to start him off.

Our top room was above the glass roof of the Passage; the windows looked out on an open space, so they had bars to keep out burglars and cats. That was my room, and it was also the place where my father could draw and paint when he came home after his deliveries. He’d fuss over his watercolors, and when he was finished, he’d often make as if to come down and catch me playing with myself. He’d lurk in wait on the stairs. I was quicker than he was. He only caught me once. But he’d always find some excuse for giving me a licking. It was a battle between us. In the end I’d always apologize for my insolence … It was an act, I hadn’t done anything.

He’d ask me questions and answer them for mc. When he was through licking me, he’d stay there behind the bars, looking out at the stars, the atmosphere, the moon, the night high above us. That was his quarterdeck. I knew that. He’d be commanding the Atlantic.

If my mother interrupted him, if she called him to come down, he’d start griping again. They’d collide in the darkness, in the narrow cage between the second and third floors. She’d be in for a good smack and a volley of insults. Tip … tap … plunk! Tip … tap … plunk! Whimpering under the onslaught, she’d run down to the basement and count her wares. “Why can’t you leave me alone! Godammit to hell! What have I done to deserve this? …” His bellowing shook the whole house. In the narrow kitchen he’d pour himself a glass of red wine. Nobody let out a peep. That was how he wanted it.

In the daytime I had Grandma, she taught me to read a little. She herself wasn’t very good at it, she had learned late, after her children were born. I can’t say she was tender or affectionate, but she didn’t talk much, which is a good deal, and she never hit me … She hated my father’s guts. She couldn’t abide him with his education, his high principles, his idiotic rages, and his catalog of complaints. For her money her daughter was an ass to have married such a prick … making seventy francs a month in an insurance company. As for me, the kid, she hadn’t quite made up her mind what to think of me, she was keeping me under observation. She was a woman of character.

At the Passage she helped us as long as she could with what junk she still had left from her stock. We only lighted one window, that was as much as we could fill … It was a discouraging lot of bric-a-brac, decrepit with age, gray elephants, crap; if that was all we had to sell, we were sunk. We only kept going by scrimping … always noodles and pawning Mama’s earrings at the end of every month … It was a wonder we had anything to eat at all.

We took in a little money doing repair jobs. We did them a lot cheaper than anybody else, we’d take them at any price. And we delivered day and night. For a profit of two francs we’d hike out to the Pare Saint-Maur and back.

“It’s never too late for the brave,” said my mother cheerfully. Her specialty was optimism. But Madame Héronde was always holding things up, she went too far. Every time she kept us waiting there was a crisis, the whole lot of us damn near starved. By five in the afternoon my father would be back from the office, trembling with anxiety, looking at his watch the whole time.

“Clémence, I repeat for the hundredth time, if that woman gets robbed, what’s going to become of us? … Her husband will sell it all! … He spends all his time in the whorehouse, I know it for a fact! … Everybody knows …”

He dashed up to the top floor, bellowing the whole time. Then back down to the shop. Our house was like an accordion. The amplification was terrific.

I’d go scouting for Madame Héronde as far as the rue des Pyramides. If I didn’t see her coming with her bundle bigger than she was, I’d run back empty-handed. Then I’d go look again. Finally, when all hope was gone, when it was plain that she had been lost with all on board, I’d sight her off the rue Thérèse, gasping in an eddy of the crowd, listing under her bundle. I’d tow her to the Passage. In the shop she’d collapse. My mother gave thanks to heaven. My father couldn’t bear to witness these scenes. He’d climb up to his attic, looking at his watch at every step, refurbishing his obsession. He was building up to the next outburst, the Deluge that wouldn’t be long in coming … Getting into trim …

The Pinaises screwed us. My mother and I go traipsing over to show them our selection of lace. For a wedding present.

They lived in a palace across from the Pont Solférino. I remember what struck me first … the vases, some were so big and fat you could have hidden inside. They’d stuck them all over the place. Those people were very rich. We were shown into the salon. The beautiful Madame Pinaise and her husband were there … they were expecting us. They give us a friendly reception. My mother spreads her stuff out in front of them … on the carpet. She gets down on her knees, it’s handier. She talks herself blue in the face, she really knocks herself out. They stall, they can’t make up their minds, they simper, they put on the dog.

Madame Pinaise reclines on the sofa in a dressing gown with a lot of ribbons. He takes me around in back, gives me a few friendly little pats, cuddles me a little … My mother on the floor is doing her damnedest, plowing through the pile, brandishing the merchandise … Her bun comes undone, her face is dripping wet. She’s awful to look at. She gasps for breath, she loses her head, she clutches at her stockings, her bun topples, falls in her eyes.

Madame Pinaise comes over to me. They both start tickling me. My mother is still at it. Her spiel isn’t getting her anywhere. I’m about to come in my pants … A flash! I see her … Madame Pinaise … She’s swiped a handkerchief. It’s disappeared between her tits. “My compliments, madame. You have such a nice little boy! …” That was to throw the dust in her eyes. They’d seen all they wanted. We quickly did up our bundles. My mother was sweating big drops but smiling just the same. She didn’t wish to offend anyone … “Another time perhaps,” she excused herself ever so politely. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t tempt you …”

In the street, outside the doorway, she asked me in a whisper if I hadn’t seen her slip the handkerchief into her corset. I said no.

“Your father will be sick. We had that handkerchief on consignment. Valenciennes openwork. It belonged to the Gréguès. It wasn’t ours. But imagine! If I had taken it away from her, we’d have lost her as a customer … and all her friends too … there would have been a scandal!”

“Clémence, look at your hair. It’s undone. It’s all over your eyes. You’re green around the gills, poor thing. You’re falling apart. You’re running yourself ragged …” Those were his first words when we came home.

So as not to lose sight of his watch, he hung it up in the kitchen above the noodles. He gave my mother another look. “You’re positively green, Clémence.” The watch was so’s we’d get through with the eggs, the stew, the noodles … with our tiredness and the future. He was fed up.

“I’ll go get dinner,” she suggested. He didn’t want her to touch anything … He couldn’t stand the thought of her handling the food … “Your hands are dirty! Hell, you’re played out!” She went to set the table. She dropped a plate. Infuriated, he rushed to help her. The place was so small we were always bumping into things. There was never room enough for a wild man like him. The table rocked, the chairs began to waltz. It was a terrible mess. They collided. They got up full of black-and-blue marks. We went back to our leek salad. It was confession time …

“So you didn’t sell anything? … All your trouble was for beans? … You poor dear …”

He began to sigh something awful. He was feeling sorry for her. He envisaged a future full of shit, we’d never get out of it.