Quiet Days in Clichy (8 page)

Eliane's husband and Carl were old friends. They had met in Budapest, where the former had rescued Carl from starvation and later had given him the money to go to Paris. The gratitude which Carl first entertained for the man soon changed to contempt and ridicule when he discovered how stupid and insensitive the fellow was. Ten years later they met by chance on the street in Paris. The invitation to dinner, which followed, Carl would never have accepted had the husband not flaunted a photograph of his young wife. Carl was immediately infatuated. She reminded him, he informed me, of a girl named Marcienne, about whom he was writing at the time.

I remember well how the story of Marcienne blossomed as his clandestine meeting with Eliane became more and more frequent. He had seen Marcienne only three or four times after their meeting in the forest of Marly where he had stumbled upon her in the company of a beautiful
greyhound. I mention the dog because, when he was first struggling with the story, the dog had more reality (for me) than the woman with whom he was supposed to be in love. With Eliane's entrance into his life the figure of Marcienne began to take on form and substance; he even endowed Marcienne with one of Eliane's superfluous moles, the one at the nape of her neck, which he said made him particularly passionate every time he kissed it.

For some months now he had the pleasure of kissing all Eliane's beautiful moles, including the one on the left leg, up near the crotch. They no longer made him inflammatory. He had finished the story of Marcienne and, in doing so, his passion for Eliane had evaporated.

The finishing stroke was the husband's arrest and conviction. While the husband was at large there had been at least the excitement of danger; now that he was safely behind the bars, Carl was faced with a mistress who had two children to support and who very naturally looked to him as a protector and provider. Carl was not ungenerous but he certainly was not a provider.
He was rather fond of children, too, I must say, but he didn't like to play the father to the children of a man whom he despised. Under the circumstances the best thing he could think of was to find Eliane a job, which he proceeded to do. When he was broke he ate with her. Now and then he complained that she worked too hard, that she was ruining her beauty; secretly, of course, he was pleased, because an Eliane worn with fatigue made less demands on his time.

The day he persuaded me to accompany him he was in a bad mood. He had received a telegram from her that morning, saying that she was free for the day and that he should come as early as possible. He decided to go about four in the afternoon and leave with me shortly after dinner. I was to think up some excuse which would enable him to withdraw without creating a scene.

When we arrived I found that there were three children instead of two—he had forgotten to tell me that there was a baby too. A pure oversight, he remarked. I must say the atmosphere wasn't precisely that
of a love nest. The baby carriage was standing at the foot of the steps in the dingy courtyard, and the brat was screaming at the top of its lungs. Inside, the children's clothes were hanging up to dry. The windows were wide open and there were flies everywhere. The oldest child was calling him daddy, which annoyed him beyond measure. In a surly voice he told Eliane to pack the kids off. This almost provoked a burst of tears. He threw me one of those helpless looks which said: “It's begun already . . . how am I ever going to survive the ordeal?” And then, in desperation, he began to pretend that he was quite merry, calling for drinks, bouncing the kids on his knee, reciting poetry to them, patting Eliane on the rump, briskly and disinterestedly, as though it were a private ham which he had ordered for the occasion. He even went a little further, in his simulated gayety; with glass in hand he beckoned Eliane to approach, first giving her a kiss on his favorite mole, and then, urging me to draw closer, he put his free hand in her blouse and fished up one of
her teats, which he coolly asked me to appraise.

I had witnessed these performances before—with other women whom he had been in love with. His emotions usually went through the same cycle: passion, coolness, indifference, boredom, mockery, contempt, disgust. I felt sorry for Eliane. The presence of the children, the poverty, the drudgery, the humiliation, rendered the situation far from funny. Seeing that the jest had missed fire, Carl suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He put his glass down and, with the look of a beaten dog, he put his arms around her and kissed her on the forehead. That was to indicate that she was still an angel, even if her rump were appetizing and the left breast exceedingly tempting. Then a silly grin spread over his face and he sat himself down on the divan, muttering Yah, Yah, as though to say—“That's how things are, it's sad, but what can you do?”

To relieve the tension, I volunteered to take the children out for a walk, the one in the carriage included. At once Carl
became alarmed. He didn't want me to go for a walk. From the gestures and grimaces he was making behind Eliane's back, I gathered that he didn't relish the idea of performing his amorous duties just yet. Aloud he was saying that
he
would take the kids for an airing; behind her back he was making me to understand, by deaf and dumb gestures, that he wanted
me
to take a crack at her, Eliane. Even had I wanted to, I couldn't. I didn't have the heart for it. Besides, I felt more inclined to torture him because of the callous way in which he was treating her. Meanwhile the children, having caught the drift of the conversation, and having witnessed the deaf and dumb show behind their mother's back, began to act as if the very devil had taken possession of them. They pleaded and begged, then bellowed and stamped their feet in uncontrollable rage. The infant in the carriage began to squawk again, the parrot set up a racket, the dog started yelping. Seeing that they couldn't have their way, the brats began to imitate Carl's antics, which they had studied with amusement and mystification. Their gestures
were thoroughly obscene, and poor Eliane was at a loss to know what had come over them.

By this time Carl had grown hysterical. To Eliane's amazement, he suddenly began to repeat his dumb antics openly, this time as though imitating the children. At this point I could no longer control myself. I began to howl with laughter, the children following suit. Then, to silence Eliane's remonstrances, Carl pushed her over on the divan, making the most god-awful grimaces at her while he chattered like a monkey in that Austrian dialect which she loathed. The children piled on top of her, screeching like guinea hens, and making obscene gestures which she was powerless to hinder because Carl had begun to tickle her and bite her neck, her legs, her rump, her breasts. There she was, her skirts up to her neck, wriggling, squealing, laughing as if she would burst, and at the same time furious, almost beside herself. When she at last managed to disengage herself she broke into violent sobs. Carl sat beside her, looking distraught, baffled, and muttering as before—Yah, Yah. I quietly took
the youngsters by the hand and led them out into the courtyard, where I amused them as best I could while the two lovers patched things up.

When I returned I found that they had moved into the adjoining room. They were so quiet I thought at first that they had fallen asleep. But suddenly the door opened and Carl stuck his head out, giving me his usual clownish grin, which meant—“All's clear, I gave her the works.” Eliane soon appeared, looking flushed and smolderingly content. I lay down on the divan and played with the kids while Carl and Eliane went out to buy food for the evening meal. When they returned they were in high spirits. I suspected that Carl, who beamed at the mere mention of food, must have been carried away by his enthusiasm and promised Eliane things which he had no intention of fulfilling. Eliane was strangely gullible; it was probably the fault of the moles, which were a constant reminder that her beauty was not untarnished. To pretend to love her because of her moles, which was undoubtedly Carl's line of approach, rendered her hopelessly defenseless.
Anyway she was becoming more and more radiant. We had another
Amer Picon
, one too many for her, and then, as the twilight slowly faded, we began to sing.

In such moods we always sang German songs. Eliane sang too, though she despised the German tongue. Carl was a different fellow now. No longer panicky. He had probably given her a successful lay, he had had three or four
apéritifs
, he was ravenously hungry. Besides night was coming on, and he would soon be free. In short, the day was progressing satisfactorily in every way.

When Carl became mellow and expansive, he was irresistible. He talked glowingly about the wine he had bought, a very expensive wine which, on such occasions, he always insisted he had bought expressly for me. While talking about the wine he began devouring the
hors d'œuvre
. That made him more thirsty. Eliane tried to restrain him, but there was no holding him back now. He fished out one of her teats again, this time without protest on her part, and, after pouring a little wine over it, he nibbled at it greedily—to the children's
huge enjoyment. Then, of course, he had to show me the mole on her left leg, up near the crotch. From the way things were going on, I thought they were going back to the bedroom again, but no, suddenly he put her teat back inside her blouse and sat down saying:
“J'ai faim, j'ai faim, chérie.”
In tone it was no different than his usual “Fuck me, dearie, I can't wait another second!”

During the course of the meal, which was excellent, we got on to some strange topics. When eating, especially if he enjoyed the food, Carl always kept up a rambling conversation which permitted him to concentrate on the food and wine. In order to avoid the dangers of a serious discussion, one which would interfere with his digestive processes, he would throw out random remarks of a nature he thought suitable and appropriate for the morsel of food, or the glass of wine, he was about to gulp down. In this off-hand way he blurted out that he had just recently met a girl—he wasn't sure if she were a whore or not, what matter?—whom he was thinking of
introducing me to. Before I could ask why, he added—“She's just your type.

“I know your type,” he rattled on, making a quick allusion to Mara of the Ile St. Louis. “This one is much better,” he added. “I'm going to fix it for you . . .”

Often, when he said a thing like this, he had nobody in mind. He would say it because the idea of presenting me to some mythical beauty had just popped into his head. There was this about it also, that he had never liked what he called “my type.” When he wanted to sting me he would insinuate that there were thousands of such types floating about in Central Europe, and that only an American would find such a woman attractive. If he wanted to be downright nasty he would inject a little sarcasm of this sort: “This one isn't under thirty-five, I can promise you that.” Sometimes, as on the present occasion, I would pretend to believe his story and ply him with questions, which he would answer flippantly and vaguely. Now and then, however, especially if I taunted him, he would embellish the story with such convincing details
that in the end he seemed to believe his own lie. At such moments he would assume a truly demonic expression, inventing with a rapidity that was like wild-fire the most extraordinary conversations and happenings. In order not to lose the reins he would make frequent attacks on the bottle, tossing a tall drink off as if it were so much froth, but with each toss of the head growing more and more purple, the veins standing out on his forehead in knots, his voice becoming more frantic, his gestures more uncontrolled, and his eyes piercing, as if he were hallucinated. Coming to an abrupt halt, he would look about with a wild eye, make a dramatic gesture of pulling out his watch, and then in a calm, matter of fact voice, say: “In ten minutes she'll be standing at the corner of such and such a street; she's wearing a dotted Swiss dress and has a porcupine handbag under her arm. If you want to meet her, go and see for yourself.” And with that he'd nonchalantly switch the conversation to a remote subject—
since he had offered us proof of the truth of his words
. Usually of course nobody budged to verify these astounding
statements. “You're afraid to,” he would say. “You know that she'll be standing there . . .” And with this he would add another striking detail, quite casually, always in a matter of fact voice, as though he were transmitting a message from the other world.

In predictions which were more immediately verifiable, which didn't involve breaking up a good meal, or an evening's entertainment, he was so often correct that, when these performances got under way, his auditors usually felt something like a cold chill running down their spines. What began as something clownish and flippant often turned into something horrible and uncanny. If the new moon were out, and these attacks of his often coincided with certain lunar phases, as I had occasions to observe, the evening would become shudderingly grotesque. To catch a glimpse of the moon unexpectedly would completely unnerve him. “There it is!” he would shriek—exactly as if he had seen a ghost. “It's bad, it's bad,” he would mumble over and over, rubbing his hands frantically, then pace up and down the room with
head lowered, his mouth half open, his tongue protruding like a piece of red flannel.

Fortunately, on this occasion there was no moon, or if there were, its maddening gleams had not yet penetrated the courtyard of Eliane's little home. His exaltation had no worse effect upon him than to launch him into a long story about Eliane's foolish husband. It was a ridiculous story, quite true, as I found out later. About a pair of dachshunds which the husband had looked upon with a covetous eye. He had seen them running about loose, the owner nowhere in sight, and, not content with palming off counterfeit bills successfully, he had decided to steal the dogs and demand a ransom for their recovery. When he answered the door bell one morning, and found a French detective waiting for him, he was dumfounded. He had just been feeding the dogs their breakfast. In fact he had become so attached to the dogs that he had forgotten all about the reward which he was hoping to capture. He thought it a cruel stroke of fate to be arrested for being kind to animals . . . The affair reminded
Carl of other incidents which he had witnessed when living with the man in Budapest. They were silly, ridiculous incidents which could occur only in the life of a half-wit, as Carl dubbed him.