The Bark Tree (35 page)

How he occupied his days—that was something of which the hard-working family was totally ignorant, and which they could not even manage to conjecture, in spite of the prodigious efforts of imagination. Sometimes they described his sloth as prodigious, at other times as disgusting, but behind his back, because in front of it they were rather friendly. If he’d been less broke, Etienne would have bought a great big dog who’d have eaten the parasite. He
had
tried to evict him in various ways, but the dwarf always came back again, fortified by his inferiority, adept at every sort of low trick, and endowed with menacing malice. What was more, he was now Théo’s friend—his intimate friend and tyrant. He knew everything he did and thought, because he created and controlled these processes. Théo became at will top or bottom of his class (there’s a slight exaggeration there—le’s say the second or the bottom but one), a chaste adolescent or a little monster of vice; a young man of tolerable inlligence or an incredible cretin. Love your stepfather, Bébé Toutout suggested to him; then Théo thought Etienne was really very nice. Detest him, and Théo felt like breaking rotten eggs over the step-paternal skull.

As for Bébé Toutout, his own tyranny left him entirely cold. It was even completely involuntary. There was only one thing he asked: a nice warm house, where you’re fed and where you can sleep; and, whatever happened, not to work. An inexorable marmot, he had found, in the metaphysical bank clerk’s half-house, a nest. His dirtiness was on a par with his laziness and his voracity. And that, in any case, had become the great Sunday pastime. They bathed the dwarf. They heated a basinful of water, and threw him into it. He raged, spat like a cat, and clawed like a cat, too. As good an amusement as any other, and hygienic into the bargain. Sometimes Etienne considered heating the water
a bit too much,
and Bébé Toutout would be boiled. But these frightful thoughts did no more than pass through his heart. He didn’t dwell on them. It was when he heard a train whistle that he thought of this expedient for the first time. And yet the whistle was very little concerned with the peculiar association of ideas of which its sound had given rise; and the train even less, and the engine driver even less, and they all three went by every day, with the regularity implied by a reasonably worked-out timetable; went by every day, I say, and passed the
CHIPS
hut which had been boarded
-
up ever since the departure of the Belhôtels for their boardy
-
house. Etienne had heard this one Saturday afternoon when he had ventured, alone, onto the territory of this commune that had seen the growth of his being. An individual as amorphous as the reflection of a streetlamp in a patch of mud informed him likewise of the death of the old junk
-
dealer. He hadn’t been to town for two weeks; they discovered him rotting on his mattress; and since various rumors were making the rounds, men of good will searched his miserable abode from top to bottom. The Pics, in particular, dedicated themselves to this end with great zeal. But there was strictly nothing to be found. By order of the mayor, and in the interests of hygiene, this debris was burned.

Etienne never went back to Blagny. He never saw Pierre Le Grand, who had completely disappeared. When he came out of the Audit Bank, he was always hoping to see him; but Pierre was never there. Slowly, gently, Etienne felt himself diminishing. One day, he found in the back of a drawer a funny sort of gadget that he recognized as the cutter-of
-
hard-boiled-eggs-in-thin-slices. He took it into the kitchen, so that it could be used. As he turned his head, he thought he caught sight of something like happiness behind him. The sequence of incidents that had led him from a waterproof hat to a fake door seemed to him to be a marvelous adventure, and the time it had taken, a time of bliss. But, as he still doubted appearances, he doubted, and then realized that never, never had he been so unhappy. Then he counted on his fingers the number of days which, with their low-lying brows, separated him from All Saints’ Day, holiday and feast day of all corpses.

—oooooo—oooooo—

On the beach at R
...
, two bodies were tanning in the sun; one was Pierre and the other was Catherine. She said to him:

“What a marvelous climate! November, already, and the sun’s as fierce as it is in August.”

“It’ll be like this all winter.”

“And shall we stay here all winter?”

“We shall stay here all winter?”

“And will you love me all this winter?”

“Yes. This whole winter.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Tell me some memories. When you were a child.”

“My mother was a lion-tamer and my father an acrobat.”

“The other day, you said he was a banker.”

“That’s not the same one. I was saying, then, that my father was an acrobat. In the evenings, after dinner, he used to help my mother clear the table; he’d walk on his hands, and balance the plates on his feet.”

“What an idea!”

“When he was in a good mood, he used to hang by his legs from the chandelier and, thus poised above the table, he would eat his dinner. On other occasions, he would hang by his teeth and mix the salad with his toes.”

“Disgusting fellow!”

“But he wasn’t always so cheerful; when things weren’t going very well he took it out on Mother, and he used to stick forks in her behind. But Mother’s behind was pretty tough, which meant that all our forks had bent prongs.”

“And then what?”

“My father could catch a bus by running backward, and every time he got off he’d do splits.”

“And then what?”

“We lived on the second floor for six months. Well, my father neved used the stairs, he always threw himself out of the window and fell on his feet without hurting himself. There was occasional mishaps; one day, he landed on the butcher’s dog, a fox terrier that was very highly thought of in the neighborhood. And, as a consequence, we had to move, because people used to shout insults at my father, and some tried to lynch him. After that, we lived on the fifth floor; my father couldn’t jump from that height; he used the stairs, but he used to make himself into a ball and roll down to the bottom. There too he had trouble; the concierge didn’t care for this way of going downstairs. We moved again. We went to live in a little suburban house, in Noircy-sur-Marne; that was when I started learning white magic, I was thirteen years old.

“How long did you study magic?”

“Seven years.”

“You must know a lot of tricks!”

“One or two.”

“Why don’t you ever display your talents?”

“I think it’s vulgar.”

They turned over, and exposed their backs to the sun.

“Catherine, you do believe everything I tell you, don’t you?”

“Of course, Pierre.”

Silently, they absorbed the light. Then they swam over to the hollowed-out rock that the natives called Bunte Bi.

When they got back to the hotel, the proprietor made great gestures at them and spoke to them at length, and with animation; but they didn’t understand. So then he showed them a newspaper and Pierre, who could to some extent decipher the language it was written in, was able to read:

THE FRENCH AND THE ETRUSCANS

WILL DECLARE WAR ON EACH OTHER

ON WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 11TH

And these miscellaneous details :

“Agreement between the two tribes, which had almost been despaired of, has at last been reached; in order to preclude all future discussions relative to the responsibility for the war, they have agreed on common action; the date for the commencement of hostilities has, by common consent, been fixed for November 11th. This day would seem to be especially well chosen, since people will thus be able to celebrate simultaneously an armistice and a declaration of war. On either side, therefore, people are expressing their delight, and both French and Etruscan diplomats may congratulate themselves on having thus achieved a magnificent result.”

“
Paris.
The papers today are emphasizing the dangers civilization would incur if the Etruscan barbarians were to be victorious. Among other things, they point out that they do not speak an Indo-European language, that they play the mandolin and that they eat macaroni.”

“
Paris.
The King of France, Anatole, and the Queen of the Etruscans, Miss Olini, have decided to break off the game of bezique they were playing by correspondence. ‘The interests of the nation,’ they have stated, each in his own language, ‘take precedence over individual pleasures, even royal ones.’ Many Frenchwomen have voluntarily offered their services to replace Miss Olini as Anatole the First’s partner.”

“
Capua.
The mobilization of the Etruscans is taking place amid the greatest enthusiasm.”

“
Paris.
The same thing.”

“
New York.
The clash between Gaul and Etruria will probably develop into a world conflagration. The Ligurians and the Iberians will probably join the Gauls; the Umbrians, the Oscans and the Veneti will probably join the Etruscans. The Polish people have declared they will support their permanent ally and put the Vistula at the disposal of the fringe govermint.”

“How awful!” said Catherine. “What a good thing we’re a long way, a very long way, anyway from all that.”

“Yes,” said Pierre, “all that leaves me cold.”

—oooooo—oooooo—

“Are you sure you’ve got everything you want?” asked Alberte.

Etienne felt his pockets, his haversack with two days’ rations and some thick woolen socks for the future winter trenches; he’d got his tin hat all right, he hadn’t forgotten his gas mask. He could go now. He hesitated, turned his head, to see what was on that side, behind him, just once more. They went out. The gate squeaked, Etienne gave Alberte the key. Then they all four, for Bébé Toutout was one of the party, caught the train to town, where Etienne had to change stations in order to get to his mobilization center. The train to town was full. And of all sorts of people. Soldiers joining their regiments, for the most part. Someone had written up on the carriages:
To Capua, To Capua.
Capua was the capital of the Etruscans; they’d just been informed of that by the newspapers, which also explained that these people loaded their guns with macaroni, and that that didn’t hurt, and that their mandolins weren’t any match for French bombers. In short, the war wouldn’t last long and they weren’t to worry. Not to mention that it was going to be good for industry. In the train, it was chaos. Women and children were crying. The soldiers joining their regiments were of all sorts and conditions. Some were looking pretty glum, but a lot were boozed. There was a whole contingent of peasants who came from out the Guermantes way and who were as merry as anything. Among them were some who’d been through t’other war. They were singing some of the old songs that dated from those days like
La Madelon, Rosalie,
and it’s a long way to Tipperary. There were also, among these joiners
-
up, some who were strenuously discussing what it was all about. It’s like this, one was explaining, the Etruscans, it was all their fault, this war, and we French would never have any peace so long as they were around. And it’s like this, another one was explaining, it was to defend their bits of land and stop their wives getting violated that they were going to fight the enemy. Now and then someone would yell: Long live France, and others would yell back: Death to the Coches. The Coches, that was what they were beginning to call the Etruscans, and in the paper they’d explained that it was an abbreviation for Etruscoche, which was slang for Etruscan.

And then there were some who weren’t saying a word, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t thinking. They weren’t saying a word, on account of there’d been one of them who’d thought out loud, and the peasants from the Guermantes way had slung him out, out of the window, onto the rails.

Bébé Toutout, so as not to be crushed underfoot, had taken refuge in the luggage rack. And from there was going at a rapid pace. “You’re joining the Cuirassiers, eh?” someone had started by saying. “Go on, are they going to have
you
in the army?” But the white-bearded dwarf wasn’t letting them get away with
that
sort of thing. “Some people may not be big,” he told them, “some people may even be small” (you can say that again, interrupted a listener) “but that doesn’t stop them having a Frenchman’s heart beating in their breasts, does it, comrades?”

“Bravo, bravo,” they yelled. “Ah! if only I had the great good fortune to be able to be a soldier,” sighed Bébé Toutout, folding his hands and looking up at the ceiling where some clever joker had managed to make a cigarette butt stick. “Alas, though! Mother Nature made me too small to go to the front. But I shall serve my country all the same! I shall make bandages, I shall knit mittens for our heroes, and I shall raise the morale of the populace. To Capua! To Capua!”

This homily was greeted by enthusiastic hurrahs. They were passing Blagny. Some hundreds of militiamen surrounded the chemicals factory. That’s where they make the gas. We’re going to smoke ’em out, the swine. We’re going to smoke ’em out of their burrows, the Coches!

And what about Théo? Poor boy. He was still too young to go to war. Like Bébé Toutout, he was out of luck. One on account of his size, the other on account of his age, neither could be a soldier; and the war wasn’t going to last long enough for him
even
to be able to join up; twasn’t going to be like the last war. Indeed it wasn’t. This one was going to be polished off in no time. Three months at the outside. What a thumping they were going to get, the Etruscans. All this was in the papers.

Then they became aware, through a cloud of black dust, of a pall of cops, gendarmes, militiamen, republican guards and curées; it was Paris.

From the Gare du Nord to the Gare de l’Est it was triumphal. Tricolor flags were hanging from every window. Old-gents-with-medals were weeping from the emotion caused by watching the men go by on their way
there.
Lucky guys, who’re going to go boom-boom, thought the old-gents-with
-
medals, and: Long live France, they added, letting a surreptitious tear drop onto their shoulders. And once again French culture was going to be saved, French culture was even going to be nicely fertilized, with something very special—blood and corpses.