The Bark Tree (32 page)

“It isn’t.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“I’d like to ask you what you think of Appearances.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wanted to ask you if you sometimes think about
...
.”

“Life?”

“For instance.”

The dwarf coughed, clearing his throat.

“Wait a moment, will you,” Etienne called, “I’m going to get a chair.”

Which he did. He sat down, and stuck his ear against the door.

“Well?” he asked.

“When I say life,” Bébé Toutout began, “I’m talking about the life lived by men, by myself; not about life in general, including the life of the fish, for instance.”

“That’s interesting, too,” murmured Etienne.

“Oh shit,” said the dwarf, “if you’re going to start criticizing, there’s no point in my going on with my lecture.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m listening carefully.”

“I won’t talk about the lives of all men, either. Now, it’s like this. Some lives are full of possibilities, others are full of impossibilities. A man who sees the impossible closing all avenues to him, he’s described, so it seems, as despairing. But you also have to know why every road becomes impassable, and why the ship sinks, and why the days are dark. Because if the impossibilities spring from a deficiency in altitude, then it’s no longer a question of despair, but of ridicule. You tall people, you must think a despairing dwarf hideous; luckily you mostly only think of him in the category of the grotesque. I might tell you that, for my part, I see all these relationships the other way around. I scarcely care about the laughter of people between whose legs I am forced to pass, or about the giggles of people who at first take me for a child. It’s disappointing, of course, but I repeat, I scarcely care. Nor about all the possibilities that my height prevents me from envisaging. I can’t be an archbishop, or a general, or an undertaker, or a swimming instructor, or a professor. Among other things, I shall never become a great man. That would be terrible, if I were the right height, but as I midget my way around, it’s quite different. I find giraffes comic, and guinea pigs touching. There are only two roads open to me: the circus, or the one I took.”

“Which is?”

“Parasitism through terror. I live on old women’s cowardice, and I’d live on that of babes in arms if it could be of any use to me. What d’you think of my beard?”

“Very beautiful, but white easily gets dirty, don’t you think?”

“It’s not so bad as all that. It makes me look like a gnome; one more card up my sleeve.”

“Do you ever think of anything other than your tricks?”

“Of course I do. Didn’t you hear the result of my reflections on the mass perturbation my dwarfishness causes?”

“Alas!”

“What d’you mean, alas?”

“I don’t want to offend you yet again, but I must tell you that I find your reflections on masturbation somewhat irrelevant.”

“Oh¡¡” (¡¡—they’re indignation marks).

“They don’t make sense, your thoughts about the possible, the impossible and the grotesque. Or rather, it’s not so much that they don’t make sense, as that they’re rather confused. They’re like trifle.”

“You! you have a funny way of philosophizing!”

“There! the dirty word is out! Philosophizing! But, my poor Bébé Toutout, you’re the one who philosophizes like a whistle in an old sock.”

“I know what it’s all about better than you do, though. It’s actual experience what I’m telling you.”

“No. It’s very abstract, on the contrary. I’ll tell you what
I
think. In the first place, when I see a dwarf, I’m suspicious.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m suspicious because he may well not be a dwarf. It would be too simple if a little fellow with a beard were just quite simply a dwarf. The world is much more complicated than that.”

“There
are
dwarfs, though. Me, for example.”

“No. All things considered, they don’t exist. They’re absurd and immoral. And furthermore. I’ve never seen one.”

“Oh! !”

Bébé Toutout jumps down from his bed; the key turns in the lock and the door opens; he appears, dressed in striped pajamas; he’s put on his cap with the earflaps to sleep in.

“Well then, not a dwarf? Me?”

At this moment, Etienne flings himself on him, grabs him by the seat of his pants, and carries him off, beard downward, intending to throw him out.

This is a very bad action, and it greatly astonishes Bébé Toutout. He’d never have thought that this young man, who was so gentle, so timid, was so unpleasant. If it had been Théo, he wouldn’t have been surprised, but coming from this young metaphysician, it’s staggering.

In the meantime, a sports car pulls up outside the halfhouse. Pierre and Catherine and a third individual in skirts get out of it. Amazed, Etienne lets go of Bebe Toutout, who goes rolling over on the gravel, but immediately picks himself up and runs back to bed, fuming like a thief.

—oooooo—oooooo—

Alberte took the train at about 8 o’clock. Etienne had already left. She didn’t dare go back home. Théo kept Mme. Pigeonnier company until 10. Then, having had breakfast and suffered the necessary caresses, he decided to go and see what was happening in the house.

He found Bébé Toutout in the kitchen, cleaning his shoes.

“Good morning, Théo,” said the dwarf in friendly fashion, without looking up.

To which the young man replied:

“Huh, still there, eh,
you!”

Bébé Toutout seemed to be in an excellent mood; waves of gaiety were making his freshly brushed beard oscillate; he was zestfully polishing his miniature oxfords.

“Sit down,” he ordered Théo, “I’m going to tell you a story.” He adds: “A story about your father.”

His appetite whetted, Théo sat down.

“Do you know a meussieu called Pierre?”

“Shdthink so; he’s a pal of my stepfather’s.”

“Is he your stepfather, that young man?”

“Shdve thought it was obvious; I look as old as him.” (He sits up straight.)

“Yes. And Mme. Cloche, you know her?”

“No. Don’t know her.”

“And Catherine?”

“Oh, I know
her.
She’s Pierre’s girl. Wheredger meet them?”

“They came here.”

“Last night?”

“Yes. At the very moment when your father, your stepfather, was going to throw me out.”

“Go on! How’d he manage?”

“That’s another story. He stabbed me in the back.”

Théo cackles.

“Finished? Right. Well, at the very moment, a car stopped outside your house. Your stepfather let go of me and I rushed back and locked myself in your room again. Then I heard the people from the car coming in; there were three of them: Pierre, Catherine and Mme. Cloche. They went into the dining room and started a great discussion, it was terribly complicated, about a door.”

“A door?”

“Yes. The one called Pierre insisted that there mustn’t be any more misunderstanding about it: he didn’t know what was behind the door; and your stepfather said the same. Then that Mme. Cloche said that it was all Clovis’s fault—you know who Clovis is?”

“No—no idea.”

“In the end, she said she’d been mistaken about them; but that now one thing was sure, and that was that the door was hanging on the wall like a mirror or a picture. Which the others thought very strange. Then they started talking very softly, and I couldn’t hear anything, except that they were talking about someone called Pôte, and a woman called Ernestine—you know who they are?”

“No—no idea.”

“You don’t know anything, then, my poor child.”

“Obviously, if I was as nosy as you are, I’d find things out too; but personally, you know, I don’t give a damn about other people’s business.”

“In any case, it seems to be a strange business, that door hanging on a wall. They sounded terribly excited when they were talking about it.

“Even Etienne?”

“That’s your stepfather?”

“Yes; Etienne.”

“Etienne as well. Ah! and they were talking about someone called Maxence, as well.”

“You don’t say.”

“Do you know him?”

“Do I know him! Shink so. He tried to hang me.”

“Well, well. So he tried to hang you, did he, my lad? He must have been a vicious one, to want to hang a little lad like you! And how come—why did he want to hang you?”

“I’d insulted him. Oh! that’s quite a story. That gigolo, all he did, he made advances to my mother: so I said to him, I said: Hands off my mother, Meussieu. So he said to me, he said: Unless you’re a coward, come and meet me tonight at midnight in the forest; we’ll have it out. I didn’t get cold feet. I went, all alone. He’d told me to meet him in a clearing. In the moonlight. I get there, he was waiting for me. The minute he sees me, he throws himself on me and ties me up. I’m going to hang you, he yells. He’d got a slipknot ready. Huh, what an adventure!”

“Go on, this is interesting.”

“Well then, just when he was starting to hoist me up in the air, what happens but a fisherman turns up, and so Narcense runs away.”

“He’s called Narcense?”

“Yes, Narcense, not Maxence.”

“A fisherman in the middle of the night?”

“Yes, he was looking for glowworms.”

“Ah.”

The dwarf is rubbing away at his shoes; Théo, wanting to look as if he’s doing something, absent-mindedly goes through his pockets. He finds the letter for Etienne. Bébé Toutout squints at it out of the corner of his eye.

“Huh, a letter.”

“Not for you.”

“Who
is
it for?”

“None of your business.”

“The letters other people get interest me more than the ones I get. All the more so as I never get any.”

“Nor do I.”

“Well then. When we’ve got a chance to read a letter for once. With a bit of steam, it’s very simple.”

“I know, I know,” says Theo, irritated, putting a sore span of water on the gas to heat.

—oooooo—oooooo—

If you think I didn’t understand all your schemes. And what a laugh they gave me. All your comings and goings and your tricks and your hopes and all. Old Taupe’s treasure, what a laugh, eh, oh what a laugh. And you believed in it! I’m talking to you, Ma’ame Cloche, especially to you. And I was always wondering how the idea could have taken root in your nut. How you could possibly have thought it up. I saw at once what it was all about; and I saw, too, that it was ever since those messieus came to see me that I’d begun to look like a miserly millionaire. I’d seen that much, but I couldn’t very well make out why. Maybe they were pulling your leg. Madame Cloche, those messieus. My goodness, I really couldn’t make it out. But one thing was absolutely certain, and that was that you took me for a millionaire, you and Ernestine. When she came to my place, the first time, I said to myself: Hm, that’s odd. What’s she want from me? Why should she agree to sleep with me? Then my brain got to work, and it went on working, and I thought, and I watched, and I listened, and in the end I understood: you, Ma Cloche, you’d persuaded her that I’d got a fortune hidden somewhere, and that if she married me she’d be rich. Rich! Rich! Poor Ernestine! Marrying me didn’t make her any less broke! She’d have been
...
Eh? Yes, you think it was a lousy thing to do, what I did. Lousy? Because I didn’t object. I let myself be married, an old boy like me. Sixty years old. A love match. They don’t dare say it’s my money they’re after. My nonexistent money! Poor Ernestine, she believed in it. She thought she was going to get out of the gutter by becoming my wife. How could you call that lousy? How could you? I loved the girl. And why not? Every time I went to Dominique’s, I saw her. What a lovely girl! Whenever she went by me, I could smell her sweat, I got drunk on it; it gave me the shivers, up and down my spine. And her buttocks; like marble, they were, like elastic marble. The bitch, she knew very well what a state she got me in. She never missed—every time I was there she’d hoist up her dress and fix her garter. When she saw I was looking, that’s what she’d do every time. And I’d go away, with my liter of white in my stomach, and my head haunted by the sight of her thighs. And then, she was so nice to all the others, to the young men. She’d laugh with them; they’d paw her, and she’d laugh. Not with me, though. Just an old beggar, that’s what she thought I was. And I wasn’t thinking about anything but her—the whole of her. I could feel her under my hand, when I was alone. What sort of hope did I have? And then, all of a sudden, she offers herself to me, to get her hands on my imaginary money. And you think it was lousy of me to say yes? Afterward, of course, I did ask myself, what’s she going to say when she finds out that it was all a lot of nonsense and that she’s just as broke as she ever was, and married to me, at that? What would she have done? She’d have gone mad. I was very worried. I’d have had her for a whole night, I said to myself, and then what? What a thing it would have been for her! The despair! To have thought you were going to get rich from one day to the next, and then find yourself in an even rottener position than before. How she’d have suffered. Poor Ernestine! But you know—she didn’t know—and I never had her. Never, never. And I can still see her, bringing me my liter of white and the glass she never wiped—I can still see her, with her green eyes and her messy hair and her pointed breasts, then she’d go away and peel the spuds. She wouldn’t look at me any more, and I’d just drink my liter of white. And now, nothing. She never got out of the gutter. And to think that I never had her. Never! Never!

And the door? that door, it’s always the same story. Yes, the same. The
same
thing always happens to you. Funny, isn’t it? When I was twenty, a woman. But I won’t bore you with a young man’s love affair, eh? Well, a woman who’s dead. The door’s a souvenir. That’s all. Forty years later, I found the door. It had got our names on it. I bought it. That’s all. No fortune, no treasure, no mystery. Nothing. And if you don’t like it, too bad. Or all the better. Yes, forty years later, I found the door we’d written our names on. And,
because of that door,
Ernestine, that I loved, is dead. That’s something out of the ordinary, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s even tragic?
Fatalitas! Fatalitas!
as they say. It’s given me a shock. And what about me? What becomes of me with all this? I’m left-with my head tormenting me and fermenting, with my head haunted by pictures that get more and more obscene. I’m left-slobbering in the sun, becoming more of an imbecile every day. Ernestine, the sweet cheat gone!