Death on the Installment Plan (24 page)

I ended up believing in the renaissance of the jewel engraver’s art. I had the faith of a crusader. I didn’t even see my competitors. They went into gales of laughter whenever they heard my name called. When it came my turn at the window, I’d put on my most winning smile, all sweetness and light. Quietly, from behind my back, I’d produce my little jewel case containing the least loathsome items … and put it on the counter … The beast didn’t even bother to say anything … He just made a gesture meaning to clear out … that I was a dirty-minded brat …

I hurried on … farther and farther. A fanatic doesn’t calculate. Dripping wet in my shell or consumed with thirst, according to the season, I tried the most insignificant little shops, the grimiest little watchmakers, cowering in their suburbs between lamp and globe …

From La Chapelle to Les Moulineaux, I did them all. I found a gleam of interest in a junk dealer in Pierrefitte and a ragpicker in Saint-Maur. I tried the shopkeepers who’ve been dozing all around the Palais-Royal ever since the days of Camille Desmoulins, under the Arcades Montpensier … the stalls in the Galeries des Pas-Perdus … shopkeepers who’ve lost all hope … grown stiff and sallow behind the counter … They don’t want to live and they don’t want to die. I galloped over to the Odéon … to the last of the Parnassian jewelers in the arcades around the theater. They weren’t even starving anymore, they digested diist. They had their models too, all of lead, almost identical with mine, enough for a thousand coffins … and a whole raft of mythological necklaces … And mounds of amulets, a mass so dense that the counters were sinking into the ground … They were shoulder-deep in the rubbish … they were disappearing, turning into Egyptians … They didn’t even answer when I spoke. Those guys really gave me a scare …

I went back to the suburbs … When I had ventured too far in my hunt for enthusiasm, when I was caught by nightfall and felt kind of lost, I’d hurry up and take a bus so as not to get home too late. My parents left me fifteen francs out of my monthly thirty-five … It melted away in fares. Without meaning to, by the sheer force of circumstances, I was getting pretty extravagant … Of course I should have walked … but then it goes out in shoe-leather.

Monsieur Gorloge even got around to the rue de la Paix looking for repair work. The ladies who ran the fashionable shops might have taken a shine to him, the only thing that prevented him from really making a hit was that he wasn’t very clean. On account of his beard. It was always full of scabs … his “sycosis,” as he called it …

I’d often catch sight of him in a doorway, scratching furiously. Then he’d walk away happy as a lark … He always had a few rings in his pocket to alter, to change the size. A brooch to weld … the one that never stays closed. A watch chain to shorten … some trinket or other … enough to keep his business running … He wasn’t very demanding.

It was Antoine, his one assistant, who did all these little jobs. Gorloge never touched them. As I was going down the Boulevards, I’d run into him, I’d recognize him in the distance … He didn’t walk like other people … He took an interest in the crowd … He looked in all directions … I could see his hat turning on its hinges. He also attracted attention by the polka dots on his vest … and his hearty manner … he made you think of a musketeer… .

“Well, Ferdinand, how you doing? Still going strong? Still in there fighting? Everything all right? Everything OK? …”

“I’m fine, Monsieur Gorloge. Really fine.”

I’d stand up straight to answer him despite the crushing weight of my saddlebags … My enthusiasm was undiminished. Except that what with making nothing, selling nothing, and hiking all day with that heavy collection, I was getting thinner and thinner … Except for my biceps of course. My feet were still growing. My soul was growing … and everything else … I was getting to be sublime …

When I got back from my selling tour, I’d run a few more errands for the shop. To some artisan’s. To the wholesaler’s for jewel cases. All that was in the same street.

Little Robert, the apprentice, was better off tinkering with little settings, filing openwork, or even sweeping out the joint. There was never much harmony in the Gorloge household. They yelled at each other at the top of their lungs, even louder than in our house. Especially between Antoine and the boss, there were terrible brawls. No more respect, especially on Saturday evening when they settled accounts. Antoine was never satisfied … Whether they figured by the piece, by the hour, by the week, regardless of the system, he always complained. And yet he was his own boss, there were no other helpers … “Your lousy joint … you can stick it up your ass! How many times do I have to tell you? …”

That was the tone they took with each other. You should have seen Gorloge’s face … He scratched his beard … he was so upset he’d nibble at the scales.

Some days Antoine got so mad about money that he threatened to smash the glass globe on his head … Every time I expected him to leave … But not at all! … It was getting to be a regular habit, like with us at home …

But Madame Gorloge didn’t get upset like Mama … The roaring and bellowing didn’t interfere with her knitting. Whenever things began to look desperate, little Robert would crawl under the workbench … There he was safe … but he wouldn’t miss a second of the corrida. He’d eat a slice of bread and butter …

When there wasn’t a sou in the place to pay Antoine on Saturday, we’d always, at the last minute, find a few coins in the bottom of a drawer to round out the sum … There was always something … We even had our emergency fund in the big kitchen closet … our cargo of cameos … our stock of delirium … our mythological treasure … that was our last resort … It was no time for hesitation …

In the leanest weeks I’d unload them by weight, some place … any place … at the Village Suisse, across the street at the Temple … on the sidewalk at the Porte Kremlin … They’d always bring in five francs or so… .

Never since engraving had gone out had a single gram of gold spent more than three days at Gorloge’s. What repair work we picked up we’d deliver in hurry, the same week. Nobody was very trusting … Three or four times, on Saturdays, I took care of the deliveries, to the Place des Vosges, the rue Royale, as usual on the run. In those days nobody talked about hardship. It wasn’t until much later that people began to realize how lousy rotten it was to be a worker. The suspicion was just dawning. About seven in the evening, in the middle of the summer, it wasn’t cool on the Boulevard Poissonnière on my way back from my cross-country efforts. I remember that we’d stop at the fountain, under the trees by the Théâtre de l’Ambigu … and toss off two or three cups of water, we even had to wait in line … We’d sit down on the steps of the theater and rest a minute. There were stragglers from all over, still trying to get their breath … It was a perfect place for collectors of cigarette butts, sandwich men, pickpockets, bookmakers on the prowl, small-time pimps, and bums of every description, by the tens and dozens … You’d hear talk about hard times, about little bets you could make … horses that were sure to place … and news of the velodrome … We’d pass
La Patrie
from hand to hand for the races and the want ads …

The song hit at the time was “Matchiche” … Every-body’d whistle it while sauntering around the kiosk … waiting to take a leak … And then we’d cross the street and start off again … The dust was thickest on the rue du Temple, where the street was being ripped up … They were digging for the métro … Then came the square with the trees on it, a lot of alleys, the rue Greneta, the rue Beaubourg … The rue Elzévir is a long way … around seven in the evening. It’s way at the other end of the district.

Little Robert the apprentice … his mother lived in Épernon, he sent her all his pay, twelve francs a week, plus his board … he slept under the workbench on a mattress that he rolled up himself in the morning. I watched my step with the kid. I was very careful, I didn’t tell any stories, I’d decided to keep my nose clean …

Antoine, our skilled assistant, was awfully strict, he’d smack him for nothing at all. But he liked the job all the same, because after seven nobody bothered him. He could have fun on the stairs. The court was full of cats, he’d bring them scraps. On his way back upstairs he’d look through all the keyholes … That was his main amusement.

When we got to know each other better, he told me all about it. He showed me his system of looking into the can to see the women pissing, right on our landing, two holes in the door. He’d put little plugs in them when he was through. He’d seen them all, Madame Gorloge too, she was the biggest slob of the lot, he could tell by the way she picked up her skirts …

He was a peeping torn by instinct. It seemed she had thighs like monuments, enormous pillars, and so much hair on her pussy, the fur went up so high it covered her belly button … Robert had seen her right in the middle of her monthlies … It splattered up the whole shithouse … She had the most amazing ass … you can’t imagine… He promised to show me. And something even worse, another hole he had bored … something really terrific … in the bedroom wall, right next to the bed. And there was still another way … If you climbed up on the stove … in the corner of the kitchen, you could look down through the transom … and see the whole bed.

Little Robert would get up at night just for that. Lots of times he’d watched the Gorloges fucking. The next day he told me all about it, except he could hardly stand up from jerking off so much …

Little Robert worked mostly with filigree … the rough polishing … He had a file no thicker than a hair that he stuck into the tiniest openings … He’d also put patina on the finished pieces … It was close work, those things were as fine as cobwebs … He’d squint at them until his eyes hurt … Then he’d stop and sprinkle the floor.

Antoine never let him get away with anything, he always had it in for him … He couldn’t stand my guts either. We wanted to catch him laying Madame Gorloge. Apparently he did … Robert said so, but he wasn’t really sure … Maybe it was a red herring. At the table during meals Antoine was insufferable, you had to watch your step. At the slightest word he’d fly off the handle and start packing up his tools. They’d promise him a raise … ten frances … maybe only five … “Go shit in your hat!” he’d say. Right to Gorlogc’s face. “You give me a good pain in the ass … How can you make promises when you haven’t got a pair of shoes to your name! … Bullshit!” 

“Don’t get excited, Antoine! I assure you that things are going to pick up … One of these days … I’m positive … Soon … Sooner than you think …” 

“Balls! They’ll pick up when I’m an archbishop …” 

That was the way they spoke to each other. The sky was the limit … The boss would stand for anything … he was so scared Antoine would pick up and leave. He didn’t want to do anything by himself … he didn’t want to ruin his hands. While waiting for the renaissance … his main pleasure in life was his cup of coffee and looking out the window smoking his pipe … The neighborhood panorama … He didn’t like anybody to talk to him … You could do anything you pleased as long as you didn’t bother him. He told us so perfectly frankly: “Just pretend I’m not here.”

I still wasn’t finding any takers, neither wholesale nor retail. I still had every one of my bats and chimeras on my hands … And yet I hadn’t left a stone unturned … From the Madeleine to Belleville … I’d been everywhere, I’d tried everything … From the Bastille to Saint-Cloud there wasn’t a single door that I didn’t open sooner or later … Every junk dealer, every watchmaker from the rue de Rivoli to the cemetery of Bagneux … Every little Yid knew me … every punk … every goldsmith … All I got was the brush-off … They didn’t want anything … This couldn’t go on forever … Even bad luck gets tired …

Finally one day it happened. A miracle … on the corner of the rue Saint-Lazare … I’d been passing the place every day … And I’d never stopped … They sold Chinese bric-a-brac … Not a hundred yards from La Trinité. Funny I hadn’t noticed before that they went in for grimaces too, and not little ones, great big ones! Whole windows full of them. And they weren’t just kidding, they were real horrors. Pretty much like mine … Every bit as ugly … But they went in more for salamanders, flying dragons … Buddhas with enormous bellies … all gilded … furiously rolling their eyes … Smoke was coming up from behind the pedestal … like an opium dream … And rows of arquebuses and halberds all the way up the ceiling … with fringes and sparkling glass-beads. Real fun. Lots of snakes too, spitting fire … twined around columns … wriggling down toward the floor … And along the walls a hundred flaming parasols and next to the door a devil, life-size, surrounded by toads with wide-open eyes lit by thousands of lanterns …

Since they sold that kind of truck, the idea came to me —a real inspiration … that they might like my little things.

I screw up my courage. I push through the door . . , with my saddlebags … I unpack … of course I stammer a little at first … then finally the patter begins to flow.

The guy was a little character with slanting eyes and a voice like an old woman, as sly as they come … he was wearing a silk dress with a flower design, and clogs … in short he looked like a Chinese goblin except for his soft hat … At first he didn’t say much … But I could see I was making an impression with my large selection of charms … my mandrakes … my knots of Medusas … my Samothrace brooches … For a Chink it was hot stuff! … You had to have come a long way to appreciate my collection …

Finally he thawed … In fact he was frankly excited … enthusiastic … exultant … He even stuttered with impatience … He came right out with it: “I believe, my dear little young man, that I shall be able to do something for you …” And he went on in his singsong …