Journey to the End of the Night (60 page)

Robinson, I had the impression, was suffering much less from anxiety than when he got there. He was looking better and had gained three kilos. On the whole it seemed that as long as families had little lunatics in their midst, they would keep coming to us, conveniently situated as we were, at two steps from the capital. Our garden alone was worth the trip. On fine summer days people would come from Paris just to admire our flowerbeds and our clumps of roses.

It was on one of those Sundays in June that I thought I recognized Madelon for the first time, in the middle of a group of strollers. For a moment she stood there, just outside our gate.

At first I didn't want to mention this apparition to Robinson, for fear of frightening him, but then, thinking it over, I advised him, for a time at least, to give up the aimless strolls in the neighborhood that he'd got in the habit of taking. My advice had him worried. But he didn't ask to know more. Toward the end of July we received a few postcards from Baryton, this time from Finland. We were glad to hear from him, but he didn't say one word about coming back, he only wished us good luck and sent us friendly greetings, Two months passed and then more ... Again the roads were covered with summer dust. Around All Saints' Day one of our lunatics caused something of a stir outside our Institute. This patient had always been quiet and well behaved, but the mortuary excitement of All Saints was too much for him. We weren't quick enough to stop him from standing at the window and shouting that he didn't ever want to die ... The passers-by thought he was too funny for words ... In the midst of this ruckus I again had the unpleasant impression, but much more definitely than the first time, of having recognized Madelon in the front row of a group at the exact same place outside the gate.

In the night that followed I was awakened by a feeling of distress. I tried in vain to forget what I had seen. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep.

I hadn't been back to Rancy in a long time. As long as I was being pursued by a nightmare, I wondered if it mightn't be a good idea to take a look out there, where all misfortunes came from sooner or later ... I'd left plenty of nightmares behind me out there ... In a pinch you might think of going to meet them halfway as a kind of precaution ... Coming from Vigny, the shortest way to Rancy is along the Seine as far as the Gennevilliers Bridge, the low flat one. The slow river mists break up just over the water, rise, drift, race, stagger, and fall on the other side of the parapet, around the little dim lamps. The big tractor factory on the left is hiding in a great chunk of darkness. The windows have been opened by a dismal conflagration that is burning it away from inside and goes on and on. After the factory you're alone on the riverbank ... But you can't lose your way ... Your degree of fatigue gives you a pretty good idea that you've reached your destination.

At that point you just have to turn left into the Rue des Bournaires, and then it's not far. It's easy to get your bearings because of the green and red signal lights at the grade crossing, which are always lit.

Even in the middle of the night I could have found the Henrouilles' house with my eyes closed. I'd gone there often enough in the old days ...

But that night, just outside their door, I started to think instead of going ahead ... Madame Henrouille, it came to me, was living there alone now. They were all dead, all of them ... She must have known, or at least suspected, how the old woman had died in Toulouse ... I wondered how she had felt about it ...

The street lamp whitened the glass top of the little portico over the doorstep like a snowfall. I stood on the street corner for a long time, just looking. I could have gone and rung the bell. I'm sure she'd have let me in. We hadn't quarreled after all. It was freezing cold where I was standing ...

The street still ended in a bog, same as in my time. They'd promised to send workmen, but they never had. No one passed that way anymore.

It wasn't that I was afraid of Madame Henrouille. No. But all of a sudden I had lost all desire to see her. Wanting to see her had been a mistake. There, outside her house, I suddenly realized that there was nothing more she could tell me ... Listening to her would have bored me, it was as simple as that ... We were nothing to each other anymore. By then I'd gone further into the night than she had, further even than Grandma Henrouille, who was dead. We weren't all together anymore ... We had left each other for good ... Death had come between us and so had life ... Inevitably ... Each man for himself, I mumbled ... and started back to Vigny.

Madame Henrouille hadn't had enough education to follow me any further ... Character, yes, she had plenty of that ... But no education! That was the rub. No education!

Education is indispensable! That's why she couldn't understand me anymore, or understand what was going on around us, vicious and stubborn as she was ... That's not enough ... You need a heart and a certain amount of knowledge to go further than other people ... To get back to the Seine I took the Rue des Sanzillons and then the Impasse Vasson. My worry was all straightened out. I was pleased, almost happy, because now I knew that there was no point in batting my brains out over the Henrouille woman, I'd finally dropped her by the wayside, the bitch! ... What a number! We'd been pretty good friends in our own way ... We had understood each other for quite some time ... But now she wasn't low enough for me, and she couldn't go down any further ... To catch up with me ... She had neither the education nor the strength. You don't go up in life, you go down. And she couldn't get down to where I was ... There was too much night around me. Passing the house where Bébert's aunt had been the concierge, I'd have liked to go in and see who was living now in the lodge where I'd taken care of Bébert and where he had died. Maybe his schoolboy picture was still hanging over the bed ... But it was too late to be waking people up. I went on without showing myself ...

A little further on, on the Faubourg de la Liberte, I saw the light still burning in Bézin's junk shop ... I hadn't expected that ... But it was only a gas jet in the middle of the window. Bézin knew all the news and gossip of the neighborhood from hanging around the cafés ... He was known all the way from the Flea Market to the Porte Maillot. He could have told me some good ones if he'd been awake. I pushed his door. The bell rang, but no one answered. I knew that he slept in the back room, his dining room actually ... And there he was in the dark with his head between his arms on the table, sitting twisted beside his cold dinner that was still waiting, lentils. He had begun to eat. Sleep had grabbed hold of him the moment he started. He was snoring loudly. True, he'd been drinking. I well remember what day it was, a Thursday, the day of the market at Les Lilas ... He had a green cloth full of his acquisitions spread out at his feet. I had always liked Bézin, he was no crummier than most. Obliging, easygoing ... I wasn't going to wake him up just out of curiosity, just to get answers to my few little questions ... So I turned off the gas and left.

I'm sure he had a hard time making ends meet in that business of his. But at least he found no difficulty in falling asleep.

I can't deny that I felt sad as I started back to Vigny at the thought that all those people, those houses, those dirty, dingy, dismal things no longer spoke to me at all, no longer spoke straight to my heart as they had in the old days, and that, chipper as I might seem, I quite possibly didn't have the strength to go on much further like that alone. About meals at Vigny, we had stuck to the same arrangements as in Baryton's day, that is, we all got together at table, except that now we usually ate in the billiard room above the concierge's lodge. It was cosier than the regular dining room, where unpleasant memories of English conversations still hung in the air. And besides, the furniture in the dining room was too good for us? genuine "1900" pieces with opaline stained-glass windows. From the billiard room you could see everything that was going on in the street. That could come in handy. We'd spend whole Sundays in that room. Now and then we'd invite a doctor from the neighborhood to dinner, but our usual guest was Gustave, the traffic cop. He was regular. I can vouch for that. We'd got acquainted out of the window one Sunday, watching him on duty at the crossroads coming into town. The cars were giving him trouble. First we just exchanged a few words, and then from Sunday to Sunday we really got acquainted. It so happened that I'd cared for his two sons in Paris, one with measles, the other with mumps. Gustave Mandamour, that was his name, from Cantal, was our faithful friend. Conversation with him could be kind of trying, because he had trouble with his words. He could find them all right, but he couldn't get them out, they'd stay in his mouth making noises.

One evening Robinson invited him into the billiard room, as a joke I think. But it was Gustave's nature to keep on with anything he had started, so after that he came every evening at the same time, eight o'clock. He felt at ease with us, better than at the café, as he himself told us, because of the political discussions at the cafe that often got out of hand. We, on the other hand, never talked politics. In Gustave's case politics was a ticklish subject. It had got him into trouble at the cafe. The fact is, he should always have steered clear of politics, especially when he had a few drinks under his belt, which sometimes happened. In fact he had a reputation for drinking, that was his weakness. While with us he felt safe in every respect. He admitted it. We didn't drink. At our place he could let himself go and no harm would come of it. He knew he could trust us.

When Parapine and I thought of the situation we had escaped from and the one that had fallen into our laps at Baryton's, we didn't complain, there was no call to, because all things considered we'd had a miraculous stroke of luck, and we had all the social standing and material comfort we needed.

Still, for my part, I had never imagined that the miracle would last. I had a crummy past behind me, and already it was coming back at me like the belchings of fate. At the very start in Vigny I had received three anonymous letters that had seemed as suspicious and as menacing as could be. And then scads of other equally vicious letters. It's true that we often received anonymous letters at Vigny and didn't pay much attention to them as a rule. Usually they came from former patients, whose persecution mania had followed them home.

But these letters and their turns of phrase had me worried, they weren't like the others, their accusations were precise, and they were all about me and Robinson. To come right out with it, they accused us of shacking up together. A crummy insinuation. At first I was reluctant to mention them to Robinson, but I finally decided to when I kept receiving more and more letters of the same kind. So then the two of us tried to figure out who could have sent them. We drew up a list of all the possible people we both knew. That didn't get us anywhere. Anyway, this accusation didn't make sense. Homosexuality wasn't my line, and Robinson didn't give a damn about sex one way or the other. If anything was bugging him, it certainly wasn't sex. Only a jealous woman could have dreamed up such rotten calumnies. In short, of all the people we knew, only Madelon seemed capable of pursuing us all the way to Vigny with such foul fabrications. She could go on writing her poisoned letters for all I cared ... What I feared was that, exasperated at getting no answer, she'd come around in person one of these days and kick up a ruckus at the Institute. You had to expect the worst.

For several weeks we jumped every time the bell rang. I was expecting a visit from Madelon, or still worse, from the police.

Every time Gustave Mandamour came around for his game a little earlier than usual, I wondered if he didn't have a summons tucked in his belt, but in those days Mandamour was still as friendly and easygoing as could be. It wasn't until later that he too underwent a striking change. At that time he came almost every day and lost every game he played with perfect equanimity. If his disposition changed, it was definitely our fault. One evening, just out of curiosity, I asked Mandamour why he never won at cards. I had no serious reason for asking him, only my mania for knowing the why and the wherefore ... Especially seeing that we didn't play for money. While we were talking about his bad luck, I stepped up to him, studied him closely, and saw that he was extremely farsighted. The fact is that with the lighting we had there he could barely distinguish clubs from diamonds. Something was bound to happen.

I corrected his infirmity by giving him a nice pair of glasses. At first he was delighted with them, but not for long. Since he played better with his glasses, he didn't lose as often as before, and then he took it into his head to stop losing altogether. That was impossible, so he cheated. And when, as sometimes happened, he lost in spite of his cheating, he sulked for hours. In short, he became impossible.

I was aghast, he'd get sore for no reason at all, and to make matters worse he'd try to upset us, to give us things to worry about. When he lost, he'd get even, in his own way ... And yet, I repeat, we weren't playing for money, only for fun and glory ... But he was furious all the same.

One evening when his luck had been bad, he harangued us before leaving: "Gentlemen, I'm warning you to watch your step! ... Considering the people you associate with, if I were you, I'd be careful! ... Among others, there's a dark-haired woman who's been passing your house for days! ... A lot too often, if you ask me! ... She must have her reasons! ... I wouldn't be surprised if she had a bone to pick with one of you gentlemen! ..." That's the pernicious way Mandamour threw this thing in our faces before leaving the room. That got a rise out of us all right! ... Nevertheless, I pulled myself together in an instant. "Oh, thank you Gustave," I answered calmly. "I don't see who this dark-haired woman you refer to can be ... None of our former female patients, as far as I know, has had reason to complain of our care ... It must be some poor deranged creature ... We'll find out ... Anyway, you're right, it's always best to know ... Thanks again for telling us, Gustave ... And good evening."