Death on the Installment Plan (58 page)

The autumn came, it was getting windy. She staggered in the gale, the poor thing would crumple up right at the start instead of rising into the air … She ruined us in hydrogen and methane … But we kept on pumping and she’d take a little start after all … in two or three jumps she’d clear the first bushes well enough … if she snagged a fence, she’d plummet in the orchard … she’d start again with a jerk … she’d ricochet into the church … she’d carry away the weather vane … she’d head for the country … The squalls would bring her back … straight into the poplars … That was enough for des Pereires … He’d release the pigeons … He’d blow a big blast on his bugle … The whole gasbag was ripping … What little gas he had was evaporating … I had to pick him up in mortal peril all over Seine-et-Oise, in Champagne, and even in the Yonne department! He scraped all the beets in northeastern France with his ass. The lovely wicker basket had lost its shape … On the Orgemont plateau he spent two good hours completely submerged, stuck in the middle of the pond, a sea of liquid manure … frothing and bubbling, fantastic! … The farm boys laughed to split a gut … When we folded the
Enthusiast
, she stank so bad of hard and liquid substances, and Courtial too for that matter … he was completely caked, welded, upholstered with shit … that they wouldn’t let us into the compartment … We had to travel in the freight car with the contraption, the rigging, and all the junk.

When we got back to the Palais-Royal, it wasn’t over … Our lovely aerostat still stank so bad, even in the depths of the cellar, that all that summer we had to burn at least ten pots full of benzoin, sandalwood, and eucalyptus… and reams of Armenian paper … we’d have been evicted … Petitions were already circulating …

All that we could still manage … It was part of the risks and hazards of the trade … The worst thing, the death blow, was certainly the competition of the airplane … That’s for sure … They took away all our customers … Even our most faithful committees … the ones that were almost sure to hire us … Péronne, Brives-la-Vilaine, for instance … Carentan-sur-Loing … Mézeaux … Reliable committees, absolutely devoted to Courtial … who’d known him for thirty-five years … Places where they’d always sworn by him … All those people suddenly found weird pretexts for putting us off till later … subterfuges! … cock-and-bull stories! Our business was melting away! Ruin was staring us in the face! … It was especially beginning in May and June-July, 1911, that things really went to pot … Candemare Julien, to mention only one, did us out of more than twenty customers with his
Dragonfly
.

And yet we’d made almost unbelievable reductions … We went further and further … We supplied our own hydrogen … the pump … the condensimeter … We went to Nuits-sur-Somme for a hundred and twenty-five francs! gas included! And we paid the shipping costs! … It was getting to be too much. The stinkingest holes … the most rancid county seats … all they cared about was cellules and biplanes … flying meets and Wilbur Wright …

Courtial knew it was a death struggle … He was determined to fight back … He attempted the impossible. Within two months he published twelve articles in his rag and four handbooks in quick succession, proving to the hilt that airplanes would never fly … that they were a perversion of progress! … an unnatural fad! … a technological monstrosity! … that all this would end in an atrocious shambles! … that he, Courtial des Pereires, with his thirty-two years of experience, washed his hands of the whole business! He ran his picture with the article … But his readers were way ahead of him … He was obsolete … submerged by the rising wave. The only answer he got to his diatribes, his virulent philippics, was insults, blistering broadsides, menacing threats … The inventor audience wasn’t going along with des Pereires anymore … That’s the plain truth … Still he persisted … he stuck to his guns … He even took the offensive … That was when he founded the “Feather-in-the-Wind Society” … at the most critical moment … “For the Defense of the Spherical, Much Lighter-than-Air Balloon.” Exhibitions! Demonstrations! Lectures! Parties! Socials! Headquarters at the
Genitron
office. We never enrolled ten members. There was hunger in the air … I went back to my mending … I’d taken so much out of the Archimedes, our old captive, that there wasn’t a decent piece left … All moldy rags … And the
Enthusiast
wasn’t much better … There was nothing left but the ropes … You could see the warp all over … And I’m in a position to know …

Our last flight was one Sunday in Pontoise. We’d decided to risk it … They hadn’t said yes and they hadn’t said no … we’d drastically overhauled the old carcass, tucked in the frayed edges, turned her inside out … We’d reinforced her a little with patches of cellophane … rubber, fuse wire, and oakum! But in spite of all our efforts she was condemned, she had her last spasm in front of the Town Hall! We pumped a whole gasometer into her … but she was losing more than went in … It was a case of endosmosis, as Pereires immediately explained … And when we kept trying, the thing split … with a terrible farting noise … The foul smell spread … The people fled from the gas … It was a panic, a nightmare! … To make matters worse, the whole enormous cover flops down on the cops … it smothers them, they’re stuck in the flounces … wriggling under the folds … They damn near suffocated … They were caught like rats … After struggling for three hours we got the youngest out … the rest had fainted … we weren’t popular anymore … They cussed us out something terrible … The kids spat at us.

Even so, we folded up the wreck … we found some charitable souls … luckily the fairground wasn’t far from the big lock … We hailed a barge … They let us come on board … They were going down to Paris … We threw all our crap down in the hold …

The trip was fine … It took about three days … One night we reached the Port à l’Anglais … That was the end of our balloon flights … We hadn’t had a bad time on the barge … They were nice friendly people … Flemings from the North … we drank coffee the whole time, so much we couldn’t sleep. They played the accordion fine … I can still see the laundry drying all along the deck … The liveliest colors … raspberry, saffron, green, and orange. You could take your pick … I taught their kids to make paper boats … They’d never seen them.

As soon as our old lady, Madame des Pereires, heard the fatal news, she descended on the office … she didn’t let the grass grow under her feet … I’d never seen her in all the eleven months I’d been there … It took a real disaster to move her … She was happy in Montretout.

At first glance she looked so weird I thought she must be an “inventress” … that she’d come to talk about some contraption … She was in a terrible state … As she opened the door, she was so upset … that was plain … and in such a lather she could hardly get the words out. Her hat was all crooked, shimmying in all directions. She wore a thick veil … I couldn’t see her face. What I remember mostly is her black velvet skirt with the big flares, the big embroidered pattern on her mauve, bolero-style waist sprinkled with beads of the same color … and a changeable-silk umbrella … The picture is still with me.

After a certain amount of palavering, I finally got her to sit down in the big visitor’s armchair … I ask her to be patient … the master won’t be long … But right away she sails into me …

“Ah! Why, you must be Ferdinand? Am I right? You are, aren’t you? Then you know all about the tragedy? … Isn’t it a disaster? … That zebra of mine! … He got what he was after! … He doesn’t feel like working anymore, is that it? …” She kept her fists clenched on her hips. She sat there anchored in the chair. She started up again. She was brutal.

“So he wants to sit on his ass all day? … So he’s sick of working? … He thinks there’s no need of it? What does he expect us to live on? Our investments? Ah, the bum! the scoundrel! the stinker! … the slimy toad! Where’s he keeping himself at this time of day?”

She looked in the back room …

“He’s not there, madame! He’s gone to see the minister …”

“Ha, the minister! What’s that again? The minister!” That hands her a laugh. “Oh no, sonny, that won’t go down with me. Not with me! … I know him better than you, the swine! Minister! Oh no. A whorehouse, maybe! In the clink, you mean … in jail, yes. That I’m willing to believe. Anywhere! In Vincennes! In Saint-Cloud! Maybe … but that minister gambit? Oh no!”

She shakes her umbrella in my nose …

“You’re an accomplice, Ferdinand! That’s right, an accomplice! Do you hear? You’ll end up in jail, the whole lot of you … That’s where your schemes will land you … your slimy tricks … your dirty work … your rotten swindles! …”

She fell back in the chair, her elbows on her knees, she made no attempt to control herself … her ferocious harangues gave way to prostration … she mumbled and sobbed … She filled up her veil … She told me the whole story.

“Never mind, I know what’s what … I never wanted to come … I knew how it would hurt me … I know he’s incorrigible … I’ve been putting up with him for thirty years …”

Out there in Montretout she had peace and quiet … she could take care of herself. Her health was frail … She didn’t like to go out, to leave her house … Long ago … Long ago … she’d knocked around a lot with des Pereires … in the early days of their marriage … Now she didn’t care for change … She preferred to stay home … Especially on account of her shoulders and her back, they were so sensitive … If she was caught in the rain or took a chill, she’d suffer for months on end … excruciating rheumatism and everlasting bronchitis, a kind of catarrh … That’s how it had been all last winter and the year before … On the business end, she told me, they hadn’t finished paying for their house … Fourteen years of scrimping and saving … She spoke gently … She appealed to my reason …

“Dear little Ferdinand! Dear boy! Have pity on an old woman … Why, I could be your grandmother, and don’t forget it. Please tell me … tell me, I beg of you … if the
Enthusiast
is really lost. With Courtial I never know, I can’t trust him … I can’t believe a thing he tells me … How could you expect me to? … He’s such a liar! … He’s gotten to be so lazy … But you, Ferdinand! You can see what a state I’m in! … You can understand how I feel! … You won’t try to pull the wool over my eyes! … I’m an old woman … I’ve plenty of experience of life … I’m capable of understanding anything … I only want someone to explain

I had to tell her again … I had to swear by my immortal soul that the
Enthusiast
was completely cracked up, rotten, finished … inside and out … That there wasn’t one sound stitch in the whole cover … in the carcass or the basket … that nothing was left but stinking rubbish … loathsome junk … absolutely impossible to repair …

The more I talked, the more miserable it made her. But now she trusted me, she saw I wasn’t lying … She started confiding in me some more … She told me all the details … about her life since the early days of her marriage … when she’d still been a certified first-class midwife … How she’d helped Courtial get ready for his balloon flights … how she’d given up her own career for him and his balloon … and never left him for a second … They’d spent their honeymoon in a balloon … from one fair to the next … In those days she’d gone up with her husband … They’d gone as far as Bergamo in Italy … even to Ferrara … to Trentino near Vesuvius … As she unloaded, I realized that that woman, in her heart and conviction, expected the
Enthusiast
to last forever! … And the fairs too! She expected them to go on and on! … She had a good reason, an absolutely imperative reason … Namely, the balance due on their dump! La Gavotte, at Montretout … They still owed six monthly payments plus arrears … Courtial had stopped bringing money home … They were actually two and a half months overdue and had been given notice five times … Just telling me about the disgrace of it tied her voice into knots … Which reminded me that our own rent on the shop was long overdue … And what about the gas? … And the telephone bill? … There wasn’t a chance we’d ever pay it … Maybe the printer would deliver again, just this once … That son of a bitch Taponier knew what he was doing. He’d put a lien on the joint … He’d snap it up for a song … That was a sure thing … He was the crummiest of the lot … A fine pickle we were in! … I could feel a whole mountain of headaches … an avalanche of troubles coming down on me … The future and our lovely dreams were all screwed up … I couldn’t kid myself … The old doll was moaning into her veil … She’d sighed so much that she thought she’d make herself a little more comfortable … She took off her hat … I could recognize her by the portrait and des Pereires’ description of her … Even so I was taken aback … He’d told me about the moustache that she refused to have removed … And it wasn’t any faint shadow … It had started growing after her operation … They’d taken everything out in one throw … both ovaries and the womb … At first they’d thought it was her appendix, but when they opened up the peritoneum, they’d found an enormous fibroma … She’d been operated on by Péan
^*
himself …

Before being mutilated that way, Irène des Pereires had been a very pretty woman, attractive, affable, charming, and what have you … But since the operation and especially in the last four or five years, the male characteristics had got the upper hand … Regular moustaches had come out and even a sort of beard … They were bathed in tears, which flew copiously as she talked to me … Colored streams ran down from her makeup. She had powdered … plastered … and painted like mad! She’d made odalisque’s eyelashes, she’d given herself a complete overhauling before coming to town … She put her enormous lid back on. with its bed of hydrangeas … it started wobbling again in the storm … there was nothing to hold it … It slid back … She banged it straight … She put in long hatpins … and tied her veil again. For a minute I see her rummaging around in her petticoats … She takes out a big briar pipe … He’d told me about that too …