Death on the Installment Plan (61 page)

” ‘See you tomorrow, des Pereires,’ he said. ‘It won’t help you any to put it off.’

“‘You think you’re eternal?’ No, really, I ask you, the crust of him! The unconscionable effrontery! … Those savages think they’re so clever just because brute force is on their side … with their two cents’ worth of whiskers and their big mouths. I’ve got to admit it, though, that was a pretty good crack … Absolutely novel and unprecedented! … Thundering asshole catacombs! A killer! But he’ll need more than that to get me down! A little something more than asinine traps … believe you me! … His infernal insolence only strengthens my position! That’s my impression! Come what may! Let them deprive me of food! drink! bed and board! Let them throw me in prison, torture me in every possible way! I snap my fingers at them! I have my conscience … and that’s enough for me! … Never will I make a move without it! Or in opposition to it! … There you have it, Ferdinand! It’s my lodestar!”

I knew the music … Papa had saturated me with it … You can’t imagine how overworked conscience was in those days! … But it was no solution … The prosecutor was seriously thinking of locking him up … The crack about eternity was pretty clever though … It could be interpreted in different ways … They gave us a few adjournments … That gave us a chance to sell some crap … Old junk out of the cellar … Even wreckage from the balloon … The old bag came in from Montretout for that very purpose … She’d decided to take control, to run things her way, especially selling the doodads … everything that was left of the balloon … We made one trip with the stuff on our backs and another with the pushcart … We unloaded most of it at the Temple … right in the middle of the floor … We had plenty of takers … People liked our little mechanical relics … And on Saturday we took whole job lots of books to the Flea Market … we sold it all wholesale, with little pieces of the
Enthusiast
thrown in … instruments … a barometer … and the ropes … In the end … after a good many trips … we got pretty near four hundred francs out of all that junk … It was pretty nice … It gave us a chance to soften up the printer some by giving him a decent slice on account … And they gave the Benoiton Loan Company enough for half an installment on the shack …

But after that there was nothing to justify the existence of our poor carrier pigeons … We hadn’t been feeding them much in the last two months … Sometimes only every other day … and even so it ran into money … Grain is always expensive, even when you buy it wholesale … If we’d sold them, they’d have certainly come right back as I knew them … They’d never have got used to other masters … They were good little creatures, loyal and faithful … like members of the family … They’d wait for me up in the attic … As soon as they heard me move the ladder, they’d coo double! Courtial was talking about throwing them in the pot … But I wasn’t willing to give them to just anybody … If they had to be bumped off, I preferred to do it myself … I tried to think of a way … Supposing like it was me, I said to myself … I wouldn’t like it with a knife … no! I wouldn’t want to be strangled … no! … I wouldn’t want to be opened up … and have my insides taken out … and be cut in quarters! … I have to admit it made me kind of sad! … I knew them awfully well! … But you couldn’t get around it … I had to do something … There hadn’t been any grain in four days … So I went up one afternoon about four o’clock. They thought I was coming to feed them … They didn’t suspect at all … They were gurgling like mad … “Come along, little glug-glugs,” I say. “We’re going to the fair. All aboard for the ride! …” They knew the routine … I open the pretty basket wide, the one we took them ballooning in … They all come running … I batten down the lid, I run a rope through the handles … I tie it in all directions … Finally it was ready … First I leave it in the hall. I pop downstairs a while … I don’t say a thing to Courtial … I wait until he shoves off for his train … Violette taps on the windowpane … “Come back later, beautiful …” I say, “I’ve got to run an errand …” She hangs around … she mutters something …

“Ferdinand,” she insists, “I got something to tell you …”

“Scram!”

So I go upstairs for my animals … I bring them down. I balance the basket on my head … I go out by the rue Montpensier … I cross the Carrousel … When I get to the Quai Voltaire, I look for a good place … I don’t see a soul … On the bank at the bottom of the stairs … I pick up a big cobblestone … I tie it on … I look around again … I pick it up in both hands and throw it in the drink … as far out as I can … It didn’t make any noise … I did it automatic …

Next morning I gave it to Courtial straight … I didn’t wait … I didn’t beat about the bush … He had no comment to make … Angelface, who was in the shop too, didn’t either … They could see by the way I looked that this was no time to fool with my ass.

If they’d left us alone, we’d probably have made out all right … We’d have saved our ante without any help from anybody … Our
Genitron
magazine, nobody could say any different, was getting along fine … It was read all over … Lots of people remember how interesting it was … Lively from cover to cover! From beginning to end! Always perfectly informed about everything connected with inventing and the interests of inventors.

On that end I’m not exaggerating … Nothing has ever taken its place … What knocked us for a loop was our joker with his racetrack fever … I knew he’d start playing again … even if he told me different. I saw the money orders coming in … fifteen francs for a new subscription … and whoopsy daisy! … if I wasn’t careful to hide them p.d.q., they’d melt into thin air! In a flash! He was a regular prestidigitator! … No business can stand up under that kind of drainage … not even the Bank of Peru! … He must have been spending our dough someplace … He wasn’t going to the Insurrection anymore … He must have got a new bookie … I’ll find out who it is, I says to myself … That’s when they started after us some more … More proceedings! … They call him back to the Préfecture … That little bastard on the rue des Bons-Enfants wouldn’t let go his bone … He started up again … He had us in his clutches … He was out to get us … He found more victims … of that damn competition… he’d even gone poking around in the furnished rooms on the Avenue des Gobelins … He was stirring them up against us … getting them sore again. He persuaded them to put in new complaints … Our life wasn’t worth living … It was time to shake the old gray matter and do something about it … We thought it over, and this is what we came up with: we’d have to divide and prosper … That was the only way … All those pests fell into two classes … On the one hand and mostly … the ones who were griping for the sake of form … the melancholies, the hard-luck boys … That was easy … we wouldn’t refund those stinkers anything … On the other hand, the characters that were really in a temper and never came out of it … That’s where the danger lay! … We’d have to get to those boys and smooth them down right away … talk things over with them … a little cash maybe … Naturally we weren’t going to reimburse them completely … It was impossible … out of the question … But slip them a little present … say, five ten francs … That way they wouldn’t be taking a total loss … They might be made to realize that this was an act of Fate … When it came to carrying out his lovely plan, Courtial went white as a sheet … The stuffing went out of him … Couldn’t he do it himself? … Inconceivable! … How would it look for him to go ringing bells? … What about his authority? He’d lose face with the inventors … Better I should go spreading the good word … I had no standing, no dignity to lose … But what a smelly prospect! I could see that in advance! I’d have chickened out too, but then we were sunk … If we let things drift, the rag was through … That would be ruin, we’d be out in the street! … Things really had to be bad for me to take on such a rotten job …

In the end I took a good deep breath, I steeled myself. I rehearsed the stuff I had to say … a whole collection of bedtime stories … Why things had gone wrong … beginning with the preliminary tests … because of a grave disagreement among scientists on a highly controversial technical point … We’d try again next year … Well anyway, a ton of baloney … So there I go … into the fray! … Good luck, kid … First of all I was to give them back all their plans, their models, their blueprints, their cock-eyed knickknacks … along with our apologies …

I used the indirect approach … I began by asking them if they’d received my letter … announcing my visit … No? … That got a rise out of them … They thought they’d won the jackpot … If it was dinner time, they’d invite me to join them. If the whole family was there, my little mission got kind of delicate with all those people around … I needed plenty of tact … They’d had visions of gold … It was an ugly moment … After all, I had to disabuse them … That’s what I’d come for … I tried to break it gently … They’d start gulping … they couldn’t eat anymore … They’d stand up hypnotized, their eyes fixed in stupor … It was time for me to keep an eye on the cutlery … Stormy weather in the dishes! … I braced my back against the wall … I’d pick up the soup tureen for a sling … ready to block any aggressor! … I’d go on with my spiel. At the first halfway suspicious move, I’d let go! Right in the guy’s face … But in most places my resolute attitude was protection enough … it made them think twice … It didn’t end so badly … with gushing congratulations … and then, after a little wine, a chorus of sighs and belches … especially if I coughed up the ten francs! … But one time, in spite of my caution and long practice, I got a bad shellacking … It was on the rue de Charonne, I remember, Number 72 to be exact, the Hôtel is still there … This guy was a locksmith, he did his inventing in his room … believe me, I know … not on the third floor, on the fourth … If you ask me, this character’s work was assembling kits of burglar’s tools … Well, anyway, his invention for the perpetual-motion contest was a mill, something like a dynamo, with a “variable faradic” intake … The idea was to store up the energy of storms … After that it kept going from one equinox to the next …

So I go in, I see his porter, I give him the name: “It’s on the fourth floor.” I go up, I knock … I was worn-out … fed up … I spill the beans all at once! The guy doesn’t even answer … I’d hardly looked at him … He was a heavyweight champ … I hadn’t even finished talking … Not a word! Boom! … He charges me … He rams me! … I take it in the breadbasket … I stagger … I topple backward … a wild bull! … I fall … I cascade down all three flights … They pick me up on the sidewalk … I was all over bumps … a bloody mess … They took me home in a cab … Seeing as I’d passed out, the boys had gone through my pockets … I didn’t even have my ten francs left …

After that little collision, I was even more careful … I didn’t go into the rooms right away … I’d parley from outside the door … With complaints from the provinces we had a different method … We told them their dough had been sent by mail … that they’d be sure to get it soon … that the address had been wrong … the department … the first name … any old thing … the contest had brought such a rush of mail … In the end they got sick of corresponding in all directions … They were ruining themselves on postage …

With the wild ones, you know where you’re at … it’s a bullfight … The only problem is jumping the fence before they gore your insides out … But with the timid, the sensitive souls that lose their grip and want to commit suicide right away … you’re in for trouble … The disappointment is too much for them … they can’t bear it … They hang their heads in their soup and start mumbling … They don’t understand … They break out in a sweat, their glasses fall off … Their faces go green, you can’t stand to look at them … Those are the sad sacks … Some of them want to end it all … They sit down, they get up again … They mop themselves off … They can’t believe their ears when you tell them their contraption didn’t work right … You’ve got to say it over again slowly, you’ve got to slip them their plans … They abandon themselves to their misery … They don’t want to live … they don’t want to breathe anymore … They collapse …

From laying on words like poultices, I was getting pretty good at it. I knew the phrases that console … the
De Profundis
of hope … Sometimes after my visits we parted buddies … I gained their sympathy … Out by the Plaine Saint-Maur, I had a whole group … really enthusiastic about our studies … they appreciated what I’d done for them … From the Porte Villemomble to Vincennes I knew rafts of them … fine hands at drawing magical plans and not at all vindictive … And in the west suburbs too … In a corrugated-iron shack right after the Porte de Clignancourt … there are Portuguese living there now … I met two junk dealers who with hair, matches, a spiral spring, three violin strings, and a sleeve-joint had worked up a little compensatory system that really seemed to work … Hygrométrie power! … The whole thing fitted inside a thimble! … It was the only perpetual-motion device I ever saw that worked a little.

It’s unusual for women to invent anything … But I met one … She was a bookkeeper for the railroad. In her leisure hours she decomposed water from the Seine with a diaper pin. She toted around a pile of equipment, a pneumatic pump, and a Ruhmkorff coil in a fish net. She had a flashlight too and a picrate battery … She recovered the essences right out of the water … and even the acids … She stationed herself for her experiments near the Pont-Marie, not far from the wash barge
^*
… She was nuts about hydrolysis … Her build wasn’t bad … Only she had a tic and she was cross-eyed … I came around one day, I said I was from the paper … First she thought like all the rest that she’d won the jackpot … She wouldn’t let me go away … she went and got me some roses! … I talked myself blue in the face … she didn’t understand … She wanted to take my picture … She had a camera that worked with infrared rays … She had to close the windows … I went back twice … She thought I was some good-looker … She wanted me to marry her right away. She kept on writing me … registered letters! … Mademoiselle Lambrisse her name was … Juliette.