Journey to the End of the Night (41 page)

We go in and drink the beer with no head on it. But under the cardboard trees the stink of the waiter's breath is real. And the change he gives you has several peculiar coins in it, so peculiar that you go on examining them for weeks and weeks and finally, with considerable difficulty, palm them off on some beggar. What do you expect at a carnival? Gotta have what fun you can between hunger and jail, and take things as they come. No sense complaining, we're sitting down, aren't we? Which ain't to be sneezed at. I saw the same old Gallery of the Nations, the one Lola caught sight of years and years ago on that avenue in the park of Saint-Cloud. You always see things again at carnivals, they revive the joys of past carnivals. Over the years the crowds must have come back time and again to stroll on the main avenue of the park of Saint-Cloud ... taking it easy. The war had been over long ago. And say, I wonder if that shooting gallery still belonged to the same owner? Had he come back alive from the war? I take an interest in everything. Those are the same targets, but in addition, they're shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion. The wedding was still there, the soldiers too, and the town hall with its flag. Everything. Plus a few more things to shoot at than before.

But the people were getting a lot more fun out of the Dodge'em cars, a recent invention, because of the collisions you kept having and the terrible shaking they gave your head and innards. More howling lunatics kept pouring in for the pleasure of smashing ferociously into one another and getting scattered in all directions and fracturing their spleens at the bottom of their tubs. Nothing would make them stop. They never begged for mercy, it looked as if they'd never been so happy. Some were delirious. They had to be dragged away from their smash-ups. If they'd been offered Death as an extra attraction for their franc, they'd have gone right in. At about four o'clock the town band was supposed to play in the middle of the carnival ground. It took some doing to collect the musicians, because of the neighborhood bars, all of which wanted a turn at them. A last one was always missing. The rest waited. Some went looking for him. While waiting for them to come back, the others would be stricken with thirst and two more would disappear. They had to start all over again.

Incrusted with dust, the gingerbread pigs turned into relics and gave the prize-winners a devastating thirst.

Family groups are waiting for the fireworks before going home to bed. Waiting is part of the carnival too. Thousands of empty bottles jiggle and clink in the shadow under the tables. Restless feet consent or say no. The tunes are so familiar you hardly hear the music or the wheezing motor-driven cylinders behind the booths, which put life into things it costs two francs to see. When you're tipsy with fatigue your heart pounds in your temples. Bim! Bim! It beats against the velvet around your head and inside your ears. One of these days you'll burst. So be it! One of these days, when the movement inside catches up with the movement outside, when your thoughts scatter far and wide and rise up at last to play with the stars.

A lot of crying went on all over the carnival, children getting accidentally squeezed between chairs and others being taught to resist their longings, to forego the enormous little pleasure of another ride on the merry-go-round. For character building the carnival hasn't its equal. It's never too soon to start. The little darlings don't know yet that everything costs money. They think it's pure generosity that makes the grownups behind the brightly lit counters incite the public to treat themselves to the marvels which they have amassed and which they guard with their raucous smiles. Children don't know the law. Their parents slap them to teach them the law and protect them from pleasure.

There's never a real carnival except for the shopkeepers, and then it's deep down and secret. The shopkeeper rejoices at night when all the unsuspecting yokels, the public, the profit fodder, have gone home, when silence returns to the avenue and the last dog has squirted his last drop of urine at the Japanese billiard table. That's when the accounts are totted up, when the shopkeepers register their receipts and take stock of their powers and their victims.

On the last Sunday evening of the carnival, Martrodin's barmaid cut her hand pretty badly cutting sausage.

Late that night, the things around us suddenly became quite distinct, as if they were sick of wobbling from one side of fate to the other and had all come out of the shadow at once and started talking to me. But you'd better not trust things and people at such times. You think objects are going to talk but they don't say a thing, and often enough the night swallows them up before you can understand what they were trying to tell you. Anyway that's been my experience.

Be that as it may, I ran into Robinson that same night at Martrodin's café just as I was getting ready to dress the barmaid's wound. I remember the circumstances exactly. There were some Arab customers nearby, a whole raft of them were dozing on the benches. They didn't seem interested in anything that was going on around them. Speaking to Robinson, I was careful not to bring up our conversation of the other night, when I'd caught him carrying boards. I had trouble sewing up the barmaid's cut, because I couldn't see very well at the back of the bar. I had to pay close attention and that kept me from talking. As soon as I'd finished, Robinson drew me into a corner and informed me without my asking that everything was all set for his scheme, it would be coming off soon. His telling me that didn't suit me at all, I could have easily done without it.

"Soon? What?"

"You know as well as I do."

"What? The same old business?"

"Guess how much they're giving me?"

I had no desire to guess.

"Ten thousand! ... Just to hold my tongue!"

"That's a lot of money!"

"It'll save my life, that's all," he said. "Those are the ten thousand francs I've needed all along! ... The first ten thousand! ... See? ... I've never really had a trade, but now with ten thousand francs! ..."

He must have started blackmailing them already ...

He listed his projects, all the things he'd be able to do with ten thousand francs ... Leaning against the wall, in the shadow ... He gave me time to think about them. A new world. Ten thousand francs!

Yes, but thinking it over, I wondered if I wasn't running some risk myself, if I wasn't slipping into some sort of complicity by not trying to talk him out of his scheme. Actually I should have reported him. Not that I gave a damn about morality, any more than anyone else. What business was it of mine? But all the nasty stories, all the complications the law stirs up when a crime has been committed, just to entertain the taxpayer, the prurient bastard! ... When that happens, it's hard to clear yourself ... I'd seen it happen ... Trouble for trouble, I preferred the quiet kind that's not splashed all over the newspapers. To make a long story short, I was fascinated and horrified at the same time. I'd gone this far, and once again I hadn't the courage to get really to the bottom of things. Now that the time had come to open my eyes in the darkness, I almost preferred to keep them shut. But Robinson seemed to want me to open them, to know all about it.

To change the subject a bit, as we roamed around the room, I started talking about women. He didn't think much of women.

"You know," he said, "I can get along fine without women, their big asses, their fat thighs, their rosebud lips, their bellies that always have something growing in them, if it's not a brat it's a disease ... Their smiles won't pay your rent for you! Take me in my pad; if I had a woman, it wouldn't do me a bit of good to show the landlord her ass on the fifteenth of the month, he wouldn't reduce the rent! ..."

Robinson had a thing about independence. He said so himself. But Martrodin was getting sick of our private conversation, our little plots in the corner.

"Robinson, dammit, the glasses!" he sings out. "Do you expect me to wash them for you?" Robinson starts up.

"You see," he informs me, "I'm filling in here." It was carnival time all right. Martrodin was having a hard time counting up the take, it was getting on his nerves. The Arabs left except for the two who were still dozing by the door.

"What are they waiting for?"

"The barmaid," says Martrodin.

"How's business?" I asked to be saying something,

"Pretty fair ... But it's not easy! See, doctor, I bought this place for sixty thousand before the crash. I'd need to get at least two hundred out of it ... See what I mean? ... It's true, the place is full, but it's mostly Arabs ... And those people don't drink ... They haven't caught the habit yet ... Poles is what I need ... Take it from me, doctor, the Poles are drinkers ... In the Ardennes where T was before, I had Poles, they worked in the enameling ovens, get the idea? ... Those ovens really heated them up! ... That's what we need here! ... Thirst! ... On Saturdays they spent everything they had! ... Christ! That was something! Their whole pay! Bing! ... These greasers here aren't interested in drinking, they're more interested in buggering each other ... It seems drinking's prohibited by their religion and buggery isn't ..."

Martrodin had it in for the Arabs. "A bunch of perverts! It seems they even do it to my barmaid! ... They're fanatics! ... Crazy way to behave! Doctor, I ask you ..." With his stubby fingers Martrodin squeezed the little serous pouches he had under his eyes.

"How are your kidneys doing?" I asked him when I saw him doing that. I was treating him for his kidneys. "I hope you've cut out the salt at least."

"There's still some albumen, doctor. I had the pharmacist analyze it only the other day ... Oh, I don't care if I conk out, from albumen or something else, what bugs me is working the way I do ... for practically nothing ..."

The barmaid had finished washing her dishes, but her bandage had got so greasy I had to change it ... She held out a five-franc note. I didn't want to accept her five francs, but she insisted. Her name was Severine.

"Why, Séverine," I observed. "You've had your hair cut."

"Had to," she says. "It's the style. And besides, with the cooking in this place, long hair picks up all the smells ..."

"Your ass smells a damn sight worse!" Martrodin breaks in. Our chatter was interfering with his accounts. "And it doesn't keep your customers away ..."

"Yes, but it's not the same thing," says Séverine, who was good and mad. "Every part has its own smell ... And look here, boss, you want me to tell you what you smell like ... Not just one part, all over?"

Séverine was really worked up. Matrodin didn't want to hear the rest. He just grumbled and went back to his wretched accounts.

Séverine's feet were so swollen from the day's work that she couldn't manage to get out of her felt slippers and into her shoes. She prepared to leave in her slippers.

"I'll sleep all right with them on," she finally said aloud.

"Go put the light out in back!" Martrodin ordered her. "Anybody could guess that you don't pay the light bills,"

"I'll sleep all right," Séverine repeated with a sigh, as she was getting up. Martrodin was still at his accounts. To reckon better he'd taken off his apron, then his vest. He was sweating blood. From the invisible depths of the bar we could hear a clatter of saucers, that was Robinson and the other dishwasher at work. Martrodin was tracing his big childish numbers with a blue pencil squeezed between his thick murderer's fingers. In front of us the barmaid was dozing, sprawled all over her chair. Now and then she'd regain a spark of consciousness in her sleep.

"Oh, my feet! Oh, my feet!" she'd say and fall back into her dose. But then Martrodin woke her with a yell.

"Hey, Séverine! Get your greasers out of here! I'm sick of them! ... Clear out, the whole lot of you, Christ almighty! It's time!"

The Arabs didn't seem to be in any hurry at all in spite of the hour. Séverine finally woke up. "It's true I gotta go," she finally agreed. "Thanks, boss." She took both greasers along with her. They had joined forces to pay her.

"I'll do them both tonight," she told me as she was leaving. " 'Cause next Sunday I won't be able to on account of I'm going to Acheres to see my kid. 'Cause next Saturday is visiting day."

The Arabs got up and followed her. They didn't seem the least bit insolent. Still, Séverine looked at them kind of dubiously because she was so tired. "I don't agree with the boss," she says. "I like greasers better. Arabs aren't brutal like Poles, but they're perverts ... Boy, are they perverts! ... Well, let 'em do what they please, I don't think that'll keep me from sleeping!" - "All right, boys!" she called them. "Let's go!" Off they go, all three, she a step or two ahead of them. We saw them cross the square, littered with the wreckage of the carnival, the last gas lamp at the end whitened their group for an instant, and then the night took them in. We heard their voices for a while and then nothing at all. There was nothing left.

I left the bistrot without talking to Robinson again. Martrodin bade me a polite good night. A policeman was pacing the boulevard. In passing each other we stirred up the silence. Here and there the sound startled a shopkeeper bogmired in his aggressive figuring, like a dog gnawing a bone. A family on a bender filled the whole street, yelling on the corner of the Place Jean-Jaurès. They weren't getting ahead at all, they stood at the end of an alley, hesitating to go in, like a fishing fleet in a gale. The father went stumbling from one side of the street to the other and couldn't seem to stop urinating.

The night had come home.

I remember another night about that time because of what happened. First, shortly after dinnertime, I heard an enormous sound of garbage cans being moved. People often made a racket with the garbage cans in my stairway. Then a woman moaning, sighing. I opened my door a crack, but I didn't move.

If I came out after an accident without being called, they'd probably think of me as a helpful neighbor, and my medical assistance wouldn't have to be paid for. If they wanted me, they'd just have to send for me officially, and then it would cost them twenty francs. Poor people persecute altruism implacably, meticulously, and the kindest impulses are punished without mercy. So I waited for someone to ring my bell, but no one came. For reasons of economy no doubt.