The Bark Tree (31 page)

“So you’re saying that you’re not a miyonnaire?”

“Me, a millionaire.”

“Yes you, a miyonnaire.”

“You’re loony, with all respect.”

The curé had become purple in the face and was walking up and down the room, raising the dust with his steaming clodhoppers. He bellowed:

“It’s hell! it’s hell that’s lying in wait for misers. I’m telling you, that’s the way it is, and I know a thing or two about hell. It’s hell, for money-grubbers! It’s hell, for muckworms! It’s hell, for niggards!”

“I don’t have a bean, I tell you,” yelped Taupe, who was getting desperate.

“It’s hell, for tightwads; it’s hell, for skinflints!”

“Boohoo, don’t have a bean! don’t have a bean!”

“You want to go the way your wife did, eh? that went straight to the devil. You want to go and meet her down below, eh? Come on, old Taupe, out with your stuff so’s we can make a splendid cathedral with it.”

“Boohoohoo.” The old man was crying now. “Don’t have a bean, not a bean, notabeen, notabene.”

Then the Abbé Rounère pointed to the door—not the door that led outside, but the one opposite it, the one that was painted blue.

“And that door—where’s it go?”

Old Taupe started, looked at the blackish gentleman in utter amazement, and didn’t answer.

“What’s behind that door, I asked you,” yelled the abbé, banging on it with his fist.

This question seemed to soothe the old man. He almost smiled.

“You’re going to break it,” he said, in a gentle voice.

The Abbé Rounère stopped banging.

“Well, what’s behind it?”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” replied Taupe “it’s none of your business.”

The curé’s cheeks turned vermilion. His anger was terrible to see. He was drooling with rage, he was incohering.

“I gotta know everything, I do, what’s behind the door and even what isn’t behind it. It’s hell, for pinchfists! You’ll go and roast with Ernestine, Taupe. You can take it from me. Out with your cash, you old heathen! Come on, out with it! Or do you want to make it into jam? Behind the door, thass where I want to look! Woss behind the door? Produce your cash, you sordid old hoarder! Ah, aha, aha!”

Old Taupe finally got the jitters, and how! He thought the best thing to do was to get away from this maniac. This decision even seemed extremely prudent, and necessary for the protection of his old bones, when he saw the curé grab hold of the iron bar he used to barricade his door at night. He saw at once the news item it would make, and his photo on the front page with his skull stove in and minus his brains. Terribly afraid for himself. The curé was standing threateningly against the door. Taupe turned green. Oh! What a pain in his stomach he’d got. To die in bed, all right, but to get your skull bashed in by a nut, that’s too silly.

At that moment, a car hooted, and someone knocked at the gate. The curé dropped the iron bar and Taupe trotted out to see who it was.

—oooooo—oooooo—

With the junk dealer out of the way, the Abbé Rounère rushed over to the mysterious door and tried to open it. But shake it as he would, it was in vain. He looked through the keyhole, and naturally saw nothing. His visit wasn’t to have been in vain, though; after careful examination, he was able to make this important observation: there was absolutely no doubt about it—the enigmatic door was hung on the wall like a picture. This made him profoundly uneasy. He didn’t understand anything any more. An excruciating doubt pierced his soul. And yet—didn’t that make it even more suspicious? At this moment he turned around and saw—and that was really the end—that the visitor to whom Taupe indirectly owed the fact that he was still vegetating, was none other than Pierre Le Grand, who was accompanied by a rather remarkably beautiful young woman. They had come, so they claimed, to see the curios. There wasn’t very much there, volubilized Taupe, who was smiling, happy to be alive. The first time he hadn’t found anything, but the second time, you never know, Le Grand was saying, something no one would think of any value might perhaps interest him. He, Taupe, hoped so.

They all three went into the hut. The curé was sitting on a packing case, looking through a dilapidated issue of the Hachette Almanac. He was letting on he was extremely absorbed. Taupe hoped he would go. He didn’t. As for Pierre, he was somewhat stupefied by the appearance of this individual, and shocked by his foul smell. Catherine retreated before the fusion of filth and frock; the picturesque left her cold, and she went out and waited in the car.

Pierre pretended to be looking around. With the tip of his gloves, he shifted various rusty screws and crusts of bread. There isn’t much, he said. Taupe showed him a teapot with a broken spout, which dated from President Fallières’s era (1906-13), and a feather duster from President Loubet’s (1899-1906). These didn’t interest the customer. Wasn’t much. But he had to bring this to an end somehow.

“How much for that door?” asked Pierre.

Panic-stricken, Taupe started stammering, and couldn’t manage to compose a rational sentence. The curé raised his head and, throwing the almanac onto a pile of my-movie
-
mags, opened his mouth and said:

“It’s not for sale.”

“I beg your pardon,” retorted Pierre. “I’m not addressing you, but Meussieu Taupe.”

“Meussieu Taupe isn’t selling his door,” the priest declared.

Taupe continued to look like a slug crossing a main road and terrified by the approach of a fast truck with wide wheels.

“Well, Meussieu Taupe, how much will you sell me this door for?” Pierre again asked him, without deigning to answer God’s representative on earth.

“Ah ba ba, ah ba ba,” came from Taupe.

“I’ll give you two hundred francs for it.”

“Meussieu Taupe isn’t selling his door,” roared the man in

perpetual mourning, bespattering Pierre’s right sleeve with saliva.

“I’ll tell you one thing very simply: you get on my nerves. I am not dealing with you, but Meussieu Taupe.”

“You
are
dealing with me! You won’t have that door.”

“You’re going to stop me, are you?”

“Jesus Christ! I tell you, you won’t have it.”

“Well, well, so you blaspheme.”

“Ah ba ba, ha ba ba,” said Taupe, sweating profusely. Pierre was extremely embarrassed.

The man in black looked resolute and violent. A curious person.

“Two hundred francs in cash, and I’ll take it with me now,” he proposed to Taupe.

“Don’t sell it to him,” yelled the man in skirts.

“Hehe, hehe,” Taupe began, “hetried
...
”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Pierre, leaning over to try and understand what Taupe was stammering.

“Hetried, hetried, hetriedakillme!”

“
He
did?” and Pierre pointed to the sky pilot with his thumb.

“
He
did! with the bar, hetriedakillme!” and the junk dealer collapsed onto his sleeping board.

The curé hadn’t turned a hair. Pierre looked at him with interest.

“Are you interested in this door?”

“Zmuch as you are.”

“But why?”

“Same reasons as you.”

“You have an odd voice.”

“Mind your own ass.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Shit. Get lost.”

“No.”

There would be no point in concealing the fact that the situation was becoming devilish tense. Or divinely so, rather, since a representative of the cloth was present. The trouble was, the dark glasses. A curious person. Pierre turned to the junk dealer again:

“Taupe, what
is
this door?”

Sniveling, Taupe lay down on his bed. This was a subterfuge. Under his pillow was hidden an enormous 2nd Empire pistol; he got hold of it and, pointing it at the two visitors:

“Get lost! get lost!” he screeched, keeping them covered.

“Is it loaded, your pistol?” asked Pierre.

“Take a look,” Taupe replied.

Pierre took the fearsome weapon; it was, in fact, loaded. He gave it back to him.

“Idiot, should’ve kept it,” grumbled the holy-water sprinkler.

“I don’t stab people in the back,” replied Pierre, nobly.

“Isn’t poisoning people stabbing them in the back?” Exploded the prayer-stool-pigeon.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And Taupe was screeching:

“Get lost! Get lost!”

“All right, all right, we’re going.”

The Abbe Rounère and Le Grand left, and behind them, Meussieu Taupe, so recently widowed, barricaded his gates, and, in a state of great emotion, went and sat down again outside his hovel, smoking his highly seasoned clay pipe, which gurgled merrily in the tranquil, but unhealthy, air.

—oooooo—oooooo—

When dinner was over, Bébé Toutout carefully folded his napkin, and, belching freely, declared that he was highly satisfied with his meal. Then asked Etienne for a cigarette, and inquired whether the latter was not in the habit of indulging in some kind of liqueur; but Etienne was not, and this caused the dwarf to look a little glum. In the meantime, the Marcel family was silently watching him. Like a snail who happened to play the trumpet. Like a fly who might perform on the flying trapeze. Like a mustard pot that might be writing its memoirs. Like a policeman who happened to be plucking the petals of a rose. Like a lump of sugar that might have been going for a walk with a stick under its arm.

Imperturbably, the dwarf let them look at him, and smoked in perfect peace.

“What do we have for breakfast? coffee or chocolate?” he calmly asked.

“Coffee,” Alberte answered, without thinking.

“I prefer chocolate,” retorted the minimus.

The Marcel family didn’t say a word; things were beginning to get tragic. There must be no delay in expelling this singular parasite who seemed determined to dig himself in here with them forever; and who wasn’t even trying to justify his behavior. Preceding his question with a little cough, Etienne asked him:

“Are you going to stay the night in the hotel?”

“Is there a hotel in Obonne?”

“Yes, not far from here, at Hippolyte’s.”

“Ah. I prefer to sleep here.”

“But there isn’t a bed.”

“Ah.”

Etienne hasn’t got much further than he was before.

“It’s probably time you left, if
...
”

“I’m perfectly all right here.”

Then Théo exploded:

“He’s making a fool out of us, this little thing is. So you think you’re going to sleep here, eh? My foot. I’m going to take you by the scruff of your neck and chuck you out like a cat that’s pissed in the corner.”

“Oh, Théo,” says Alberte, “How can you be so vulgar!”

“There now!” exclaimed the dwarf, triumphantly, “you see what your mother says!”

Théo gets up, the dwarf is going to get it. But the generous Etienne stops his stepson midway, and advises him to keep calm. The dwarf is enjoying himself tremendously. Théo sits down again and mutters:

“He won’t miss anything by waiting.”

“We’ll see.” Then: “Believe it or not, I stayed for more than a year like this with a very respectable old lady, the Baroness du Poil. I had a marvelous life, champagne with every meal, the car whenever I wanted it, and all the rest of it. All I had to do was gnash my teeth like this” (he gnashes), “and she gave me everything I wanted.”

“And why didn’t you stay any longer?” they ask him.

“She died,” he sighs, pretending to wipe away a tear. “She died of purulent hemorrhoids. Poor dear old lady! Poor dear old thing! What a kind heart she had!”

“And after she died, what happened?”

“Her heirs asked me to leave. They were stronger than I was, weren’t they? I went. After that I lived with
...
But I’m not going to tell you my life history.”

“It seems pretty strange, though,” says Etienne.

“Pah,” says the dwarf. “Nothing so very extraordinary about it. You do the best you can.”

“Then, if I understand you right, you’re intending to find the equivalent of the Baroness du Poil here?”

Théo laughs. So does the dwarf.

“Sright.”

Alberte smiles. So does Etienne. The conversation is getting very friendly.

“So you think you’re going to stay here, and eat and sleep here?”

“Why not?”

“But how are you reckoning on doing that?”

This is becoming very amusing.

“Through fear and cunning.”

“Through fear?”

“Well, yes. Meussieu Théo wasn’t very much at ease when he was alone with me. Were you, Meussieu Théo?”

Meussieu Théo doesn’t answer. Etienne goes on:

“But aren’t you afraid of being thrown out by force?”

“That’s a risk to be run.”

“Do you still hope to spend the night here?”

“Of course.”

“You know there isn’t a bed.”

“You’re not going to tell me you sleep on the floor!”

“I mean, we haven’t got a guest room.”

“An armchair will do for me.”

“A saucepan, even,” says Théo.

Alberte and Etienne burst out laughing.

“That’s right, make fun of me, now! Rude thing! Boor!”

“He’s insulting us now.”

“I,” says Etienne, “think the time has come for you to go.”

“You’d even be wise to,” snarls Théo.

“Now now, don’t get excited,” they tell him.

The midget gets down from his chair and goes into Théo’s room, to fetch his cap and suitcase, no doubt. But he doesn’t come out again; and very calmly shuts the door behind him, and locks it.

“Good night, all,” he calls to the Marcel family, who are crying, who are crying with laughter.

“Oh, that’s too funny,” they say. “Well, what a nerve,” they add, in tears, in tears, in tears of laughter.

—oooooo—oooooo—

It was decided that Alberte should go and spend the night with Mme. Pigeonnier, their neighbor. Théo insisted on taking his mother there, which meant that Etienne was left alone in the house.

There was still a light on in the dwarf’s room. Etienne knocked.

“Tizit?” came from the other side.

“Are you sleepy?”

“Not yet.”

“Could you answer a question I’d like to ask you?”

“If it isn’t nosy.”