Journey to the End of the Night (51 page)

"I've been took!" he concluded. "Took for a sucker! ... Again! ... I never have any luck! ... The old bag's cellar, you know ... it brings in a fortune! ... Believe you me, she's raking it in!"

"But you didn't put any money into the business," I argued to calm him down and put some sense into him ... "And you're well fed! Well taken care of!" But Robinson was as stubborn as a mule, he felt persecuted and that was that. He refused to understand, to resign himself.

"All in all," I said, "you've come out of a nasty business pretty well! So don't complain!

You'd have gone straight to Cayenne[88] if they'd nabbed you ... Here nobody's bothering you! ... And you've found little Madelon who's a sweet kid and willing to put up with you ... despite the state of your health ... So what have you got to complain about? ... Especially now that your eyes are getting better ..."

"You seem to be saying I don't know what I'm complaining about," he said then. "But I feel I've got to complain ... that's the way it is ... it's all I've got left ... that's right ... It's the only thing they let me do ... Nobody's forced to listen."

True enough, he did nothing but complain whenever we were alone. I had come to dread those confidential moments. I looked at him with his blinking eyes which still oozed a little in the sunlight, and I said to myself that all things considered Robinson was not endearing. There are animals like that, they can be innocent, unhappy, anything you please, you know it, and still you don't like them. There's something wrong with them.

"You could have died in jail ..." I tried again, determined to make him think.

"I've been in jail ... It's no worse than where I am now! ... You're out of date ..." He hadn't told me he'd been in jail. That must have been before we met, before the war. He pressed his point and concluded: "Take it from me. There's only one kind of freedom, only one, to see properly and have your pockets full of money. The rest is bullshit! ..."

"So what, exactly, do you want?" I asked him. When he was challenged like that to make up his mind, to speak up, he deflated. And that's just when it might have been interesting ...

During the day, while Madelon was working for the dressmaker and Grandma Henrouille was exhibiting her mummies, we went to a cafe under the trees. Robinson was crazy about that cafe under the trees, probably because of the noise the birds made up above us. Millions of them! Especially about five o'clock when they came home to their nests, all keyed up by the summer. They swooped down on the square like a storm. There was a story about a barber who had his shop across from the park and had gone crazy just from hearing them cheep for years and years. It's true we couldn't hear each other talk. Robinson thought it was cheerful.

"If only she'd give me twenty centimes per visitor and be regular about it, I'd be satisfied." About every fifteen minutes he'd get back to his preoccupation. In between, the colors of times past seemed to come back to him, incidents too, stories, among others, about the Compagnie Pordurière in Africa, which both of us had known well after all, and some hairy tales that he'd never told me before. Maybe he hadn't dared. He was kind of reticent in a way, I'd even say secretive.

Speaking of the past, what I remembered best when I was in good spirits was Molly, like the echo of a clock striking in the distance. When something pleasant popped into my mind, I always thought of her.

After all, when our egoism lets us go for a while, when it comes time to throw it off, the only women whose memory you cherish in your hearts are the ones who really loved men a little, not just one man, even if it was you, but the whole lot.

When we left the cafe that evening, we hadn't done a thing, we could have been retired noncoms.

During the season, there was a steady flow of tourists. They hung around the crypt and Grandma Henrouille always got them to laugh. Her jokes weren't exactly to the priest's taste, but, since he was collecting more than his share, he didn't say boo, and besides smutty jokes were over his head. Be that as it may, Grandma Henrouille was worth seeing and hearing in the midst of her corpses. She looked you straight in the eye, she wasn't in the least afraid of death; wrinkled and shriveled as she was, you'd have thought she was one of them, coming along with her lantern to shoot the shit right in what passed for their faces.

When we got back to the house and foregathered for dinner, we discussed the day's take, and Grandma Henrouille called me her "little old Dr. Jackal" because of the dealings we'd had in Rancy. All in a bantering tone, of course. Madelon bustled about in the kitchen. That joint where we were staying got only the measliest light, it was an annex of the sacristy, very cramped, all cluttered with joists and struts and dusty crannies. "Yes," said the old woman, "it's practically always night in here, so to speak, but you can still find your bed, your pockets, and your mouth. That's good enough for me."

She hadn't grieved for long after her son's death. "He was always very delicate," she said to me one evening. "Look, I'm seventy-six and I've never complained! ... He complained all the time, it was his way, exactly like your Robinson ... just to give you an example. Take the stairs to the crypt, for instance ... They're tough, you'll agree ... You've been down there ... They knock me out, of course they do, but some days they're worth as much as two francs a step to me ... I've figured it out ... Well, for that price I'd climb up to heaven if anyone asked me to!"

Madelon put lots of spices in our food, and tomatoes as well. It was great. And we drank rosé. Even Robinson had taken to wine now that he was living in the South. He had already told me everything that had happened since his arrival in Toulouse, so I had stopped listening. To tell the truth, I was kind of disappointed in him, and disgusted. "You're a bourgeois!" I told him finally (at that time I could think of no worse insult). "All you ever think of is money ... Once you recover your eyesight, you'll be the worst of the whole bunch."

Hard words couldn't get him down. They seemed on the contrary to give him a lift. Besides, he knew it was true. The man's all set, I said to myself, no need to trouble my head about him ... You can't get around it, a little woman like that, slightly on the violent, depraved side, will change a man beyond recognition ... For a long time, I said to myself, I thought this Robinson was made for adventures, but cuckold or not, blind or not, he's only a cheap punk ... Neither more nor less.

In addition, Grandma Henrouille had contaminated him with her mania for saving, and so had Madelon with her desire to be married. That settled it. He was washed up. Especially as he'd got to like the girl more and more. I knew something about that. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous, it wouldn't be true. Madelon and I got together for short moments now and then, before dinner in her room. But those interviews were hard to arrange. We never spoke of them. We were as discreet as could be.

Don't go thinking on that account that she didn't love her Robinson. There's no connection. It was just that he was playing at being engaged, so naturally she played at being faithful. That's how it was between them. As long as they saw eye to eye, that was the main thing. As he told me, he wasn't going to touch her until they were married. It was his idea. So he'd have eternity, and I'd have the here and now. He was also planning, so he told me, to set himself up in a small restaurant with Madelon, and run out on Grandma Henrouille. He really meant business. "She's nice, the customers will like her," he foresaw in his more cheerful moments. "And say, you've tasted her cooking ... When it comes to the eats, she hasn't her equal."

He even thought he could touch Grandma Henrouille for a bit of capital to start with. All right with me, but I suspected that he'd have a hard time persuading her. "You see everything through rose-colored glasses," I said, just to calm him down and make him think a little. At that he began to cry and call me a heartless bastard. To tell the truth, you should never discourage anybody. I admitted that I was wrong, that my trouble was my black thoughts, and that all things considered, they were what had wrecked my life. Robinson's gimmick before the war had been copperplate engraving, but he wouldn't have anything more to do with it, not at any price. That was his business. "With my lungs I need fresh air, and anyway my eyes will never be the same." In a way he was right. What could I say? When we walked through busy streets together, people turned around to pity the blind man. People have plenty of pity in them for the infirm and the blind, they really have love in reserve. I'd often sensed that love they have in reserve. There's an enormous lot of it, and no one can say different. But it's a shame that people should go on being so crummy with so much love in reserve. It just doesn't come out, that's all. It's caught inside and there it stays, it doesn't do them a bit of good. They die of love?inside.

After dinner Madelon would devote herself to her "little Léon," as she called him. She read the newspaper out loud. He was wild about politics at the time, and the papers in the South pustulated with politics, of the juciest kind.

Around us in the evening the house would sink into the dilapitude of the centuries. That's the time, after dinner, when the bedbugs come out for the corrida and also the time to test the corrosive formula which I hoped to sell to some pharmacist at a small profit later on. A modest racket. My invention amused Grandma Henrouille, and she helped me with my experiments. Together we went from nest to nest, from crack to cranny, and sprayed their swarms with my vitriol. They scurried and vanished in the light of the candle that Grandma Henrouille conscientiously held for me.

While at our work, we talked about Rancy. Just thinking about the place gave me the collywobbles, I'd have stayed in Toulouse for the rest of my life. What more did I want, after all, than my daily bread and some time to myself? Happiness in short. Still, I had to think about going back to work. Time was passing, and so were the Abbé Protiste's bonus and my savings.

Before leaving, I thought I'd teach Madelon a thing or two, and give her a bit of advice. Of course it's better to give money when you can afford it and you want to help. But you can also do good by warning a person, telling them exactly what's what and especially about the risks of fucking right and left. That's what I said to myself, because I was really worried about Madelon catching something. She was a smart little number, but no one could have been more ignorant about microbes. So I started explaining in great detail that she should take a close look before responding to advances. If it was red ... if there was a drop at the end ... In short, the classical and exceedingly useful things that everyone should know. After listening attentively and hearing me out, she protested for the sake of form. She even made something of a scene, assuring me ... that she was a "respectable" girl ... that I should be ashamed of myself ... that I had a foul opinion of her ... because she'd done it with me ... that

I despised her ... that all men were beastly ...

Anyway, the kind of thing they say in a case like that ... I might have expected it ... Window dressing. What mattered to me was that she had listened carefully to my advice and grasped the essential. The rest didn't mean a thing. After hearing what I had to say, what really saddened her was that you could catch all those things I'd been telling her about just from affection and pleasure. Even if nature was to blame, she thought I was fully as disgusting as nature, and that offended her. I carried the matter no further, except for a few words about condoms, which are so convenient. After that we played psychologist and tried to analyze Robinson's character just a little. "He's not exactly jealous," she said to me.

"But he has his difficult moments."

"That's neither here nor there," I said, and launched into a description of Robinson's character, as if I knew his character, but I noticed right away that I didn't know Robinson at all, except for a few obvious and glaring features. Nothing more.

It's amazing how hard it is to imagine what can make one person pleasing to another ... You want to do someone a favor, to be helpful, and all you do is make a fool of yourself ... It's pitiful, the moment you open your mouth ... you flounder. Nowadays it's not easy to be La Bruyère.[89] The whole unconscious skedaddles the moment you go near it.

Just as I was about to buy my ticket, they got me to stay ... for another week, we agreed. The idea was to show me the country around Toulouse, the cool banks of the river I'd heard so much about, and especially they wanted me to see the beautiful vineyards on the outskirts, that everyone in town seemed to take pleasure and pride in, as if they were all part owners. They wouldn't think of letting me leave like that, when I hadn't seen anything but Grandma Henrouille's corpses. It was unthinkable! Well anyway, soft soap ... I was paralyzed by so much kindness. I didn't dare seem too eager to stay, because of my intimacy with Madelon, which was getting kind of dangerous. The old woman was beginning to suspect something between us. A strain in the air.

But the old woman wasn't coming with us on this excursion. In the first place she didn't want to close her crypt, not for a single day. So I agreed to stay on, and one Sunday morning we set out for the country. Robinson walked between us, we held him by the arms. At the station we took second-class tickets. Even so, the compartment smelled strongly of sausage, just the same as third class. We got off at a place called Saint-Jean. Madelon seemed familiar with the region, and right away she began meeting acquaintances from this village and that village. It looked like a fine day coming on. As we walked along, we had to tell Robinson everything we saw. "Here there's a garden ... That's a bridge over there, and on top of it there's a man fishing ... He's not catching anything ... Watch out for the bicycle ..." But the smell of French fries gave him his direction all right. In fact it was he who dragged us to a bar where they served French fries for fifty centimes a portion. I'd always known that Robinson was fond of French fries. So am I. It's a Parisian taste. Madelon preferred vermouth, dry and straight.