Death on the Installment Plan (70 page)

Naturally, it’s not hard to see, my mother was more awfully worn-out than ever from having to keep holding my father up all the time day and night … She was always at her post … bolstering his morale … warding off his obsessions … Well, actually she didn’t feel too sorry for herself … If I hadn’t been cussed … if I’d shown some sign of repentance … of acknowledging all my vices … my stinking ingratitude … it would have been balm for her … That was plain … She’d have been comforted … She’d have said to herself: “Ah, my boy, you’ve still a chance or two left … All hope isn’t lost … His heart isn’t all stone! He’s not so debased, so absolutely incurable … Maybe he’ll snap out of it …” It would have been a light in her distress … a delicious consolation … But I wasn’t in the mood … Even if I’d done my damnedest, I’d never have gotten it out … I couldn’t have made it … Of course I felt sorry … Of course I saw how unhappy she was! That was God’s truth. If I felt bad, it wasn’t to go blabbing it out! And especially not to her … And besides … after all … when I was a kid in their house and didn’t know from nothing … who always got it in the neck? … It wasn’t just her … It was me too … Me the whole time … I got the lickings … Childhood! Shit! … Yes, sure, she was always devoted, she sacrificed herself … OK, OK … it made me sick to be thinking of all that so hard … But hell! It was her fault too … I never thought about it all by myself … That was the worst part of it, worse than all the rest of the crummy business … It was no use my trying to say something … She turned on me with a look of distress, as though I’d beaten her … It was best I clear out … We’d start fighting again … But I let her pour her heart out … I didn’t open my mouth … Sure, help yourself … it’s free of charge … She took a good slice … She gave me plenty of advice … All those excellent precepts, I heard them again … Everything that was indispensable to uplift my morality … To make me stop giving in to my low instincts … to make me learn from good examples and imitate them … She saw I was holding myself in, that I didn’t want to answer … So she changed her tune … She was afraid of making me mad, she tried cajolery … She went to the sideboard and brought out a bottle of syrup … It was for me, to take to the country … as long as I was going … And then a bottle of tonic to build me up … She couldn’t help harping on my terrible habit of eating too fast … I’d ruin my stomach … And finally she asked me if I didn’t need money … for the trip or something else … “No, no,” I said … “We’ve got all we need …” I even showed her the capital … I had it all in hundred-franc bills … See? … In conclusion I promised to write, to let them know … how our farming panned out … She didn’t understand about such things … That was an unknown world … She put her trust in my boss … I was right next to the stairs, I got up, I tied up my bundle …

“Maybe after all it’s better not to wake your father up now … What do you think? … Maybe he’s asleep … Don’t you think so? You saw how the slightest excitement upsets him … I’m afraid it’ll throw him off again to see you leave … Doesn’t it seem wiser … Suppose he had another attack like three weeks ago … I’d never get him to sleep again … I’d do anything to prevent that from happening …”I was of the same opinion … It struck me as perfectly reasonable … to clear out quietly … while the wind was right … We whispered good-bye … She gave me a little advice about my underwear … I didn’t listen to the end … I slipped into the Passage and then galloped out to the street.

I hightailed it … I was late, very late in fact! … It was exactly midnight by the gilded dial of the Crédit Lyonnais … Courtial and his old cutie had been waiting for me for two solid hours outside the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul … with their pushcart … I climbed the whole length of the rue d’Hauteville in high … I could see them in the distance under a gas lamp … It was an honest-to-God moving … He’d brought the whole works. He’d really sweated for once in his life … He must have cleaned out the homestead regardless and notwithstanding … He’d had to murder the old punk (not for real!) … The cart was so loaded full of junk it was sagging … The dynamo and the motor were under the mattresses and the clothes … The double curtains, the whole kitchen … He’d saved as much as possible … You had to hand it to him … He was wearing a new frock coat I’d never seen … I wondered where he’d found it … It was pearl-gray … I remarked on it … it was from his younger days … He’d pinned up the tails. The old lady wasn’t wearing her hydrangea-and-cherry hat … It was perched on top of the cart … for safekeeping … Instead she’d put on a real pretty Andalusian shawl, all embroidered in bright colors … It looked good under the street lamp … She told me it was really the best thing for long trips … it protected the hair.

Well, there we were finally … After some discussion about an obsolete timetable we started off very slowly … Frankly, I was happy! … The rue Lafayette is steep … especially between the church and the corner drugstore … We couldn’t lay down on the job … Des Pereires had harnessed himself to the cart … The old bag and I pushed from behind … And “Come on, kid!” and “I know you got it in you! …” And “keep her rolling …” And “Never say die!” The only trouble was that we’d lost too much time … We missed our train … It was my fault … We could forget about the twelve-forty … now it was the two-twelve … the first of the day … So now we were ahead of time, pretty near fifty minutes … We had plenty of time to take our dolly apart … it was the folding reversible type … and load all our stuff … again! … into the freight car at the tail of the train. After that we still had time enough to blow ourselves to some mud, two cups with milk, a
mazagran
, and a “breakfast coffee,” all in a row! At the spiffy Terminus … We were nuts about coffee all three of us … really gone … And I had the treasury.

We got out in Persant-la-Rivière … It was a sweet little village between two hills and some woods … A chateau with turrets provided the finishing touch … The dam below the houses made a majestic roar … All in all, it was very pretty … We could have picked worse, even for a vacation … I said as much to the old battle-ax… But she was out of sorts … We had a hell of a time with our stuff, getting our motor out of the freight car … We had to ask for help …

The Stationmaster looked our paraphernalia over … He thought we were itinerants … come for the fair … to put on movie shows … He judged by our rig … For the fair we’d have to come back another time … It was over two weeks ago … Des Pereires didn’t like leaving him with the wrong idea … He put the little jerk straight right away … told him all about our projects … He wanted to speak to the notary! Immediately! … This was no laughing matter, it was an agricultural revolution … A crowd of yokels started poking into our stuff … They clustered around the tarp … They made a lot of remarks about our apparatus. On the road the three of us by ourselves couldn’t make it … The cart was too damn heavy … We’d noticed that on the rue Lafayette … And our agricultural hole was too far away … We needed a horse at least … Right away those hicks put up a remarkable show of inertia … Finally we were able to start out …

Once settled on the seat, our cutie lit up a good pipe … Our hangers-on laid bets that she was a man dressed like a woman …

To reach our property at Blême-le-Petit it was still seven miles … with plenty of hills … They warned us at Persant … Des Pereires had already collected piles of dope, going around from one group to another … It hadn’t taken him long to sign all the papers … he’d hurried the notary … Now he was prospecting the green hills from the top of the cart … We’d given one of the peasants a lift … With the map spread out on his knees, Courtial never stopped talking once the whole time … He commented on every rise, every roll in the ground … He searched for every last brook … in the distance with his hand over his eyes … He didn’t always find them … He gave us a regular lecture that went on at least two solid hours, bumpity-bump, on the potentialities, the lag in development, the agricultural splendors and weaknesses of a region whose “metallo-geodisic infrastructure” didn’t entirely suit him … Oh no! … He told us right off and several times over … He’d have to make his analyses before throwing himself into this thing … It was a beautiful day.

At Blême-le-Petit things weren’t exactly the way the notary had said. It took us two whole days to find out …

The farm was plenty run-down … That much had been stated in the papers … The old man who’d had it last had died only two months before and nobody in the whole family had wanted to take over … It seemed that nobody wanted the land, or the shanty, or even the village … We looked over some of the other shacks a little farther on … We knocked at all the doors … We went into the barns … There was no sign of life … Finally near the watering trough, in some kind of a shed, we found two old customers so old they couldn’t leave the place … They were almost blind … and completely deaf … They kept pissing on each other … That seemed to be their only amusement … We tried to talk to them … They couldn’t think of anything to say … They made signs that we should go away and leave them alone … They’d lost the habit of anybody coming to see them … We frightened them.

It didn’t look very promising to me … That deserted village … All those half-open doors … Those two old folks who didn’t like us … And the owls all over the place …

Des Pereires, on the contrary, thought it was perfectly splendid … He felt invigorated by the country air … First thing he wanted to dress the part … He’d lost his panama, so he had to borrow a hat from our old sweetie … An enormous soft-straw number with a chin strap … He kept on his frock coat, the beautiful gray one … plus a soft shirt and a pair of wooden shoes (that he never really got used to) … When he took a long walk through the fields, he always came home barefoot … and so’s to look really like a tiller of the soil, he never forgot his spade … He carried it jauntily over his right shoulder … Spade at the ready, we went out every afternoon to inspect the fallow fields, looking for a suitable place to plant radishes.

Madame des Pereires kept busy on her own hook … She did the errands and kept house … and most of all she went to the market in Persant twice a week … She did the cooking … She repaired things and made the place halfway livable … Cooking in the hearth was an awful business, we wouldn’t have eaten if not for her … just to make an omelet you had to light the fire so many times … the logs, the embers … you lost your appetite …

The two of us, Pereires and me, didn’t get up very early, I’ve got to admit … Even that made her gripe … She always wanted us to be getting a move on … to be doing something really useful … But once we’d gone out, we didn’t feel like coming back … Then she got mad again, poor old thing, wondering what we were doing so long outside … Des Pereires enjoyed our big excursions … Every day he discovered new aspects of the countryside … and in the afternoon again, thanks to his map, he could be as instructive as hell … Now and then, at the edge of the woods … or on some slope … we’d make ourselves comfortable … as soon as a little heat came on … We always had a few bottles of beer … Pereires was free to meditate … I didn’t bother him much … He talked to himself … with his spade in the ground, dug in right beside us … The time passed pleasantly … It was a real change … the peace … the quiet of the woods … But the dough was going out fast … She was getting worried … She went over the accounts every night …

In the matter of dress I wasn’t long in adapting myself … Little by little the soil gets you … You forget about the nonessentials … In the end I worked out a rugged little outfit consisting of bicycle pants and a spring overcoat with the tails cut to half length that I tucked into my baggy pants … kind of warm but comfortable … I could be recognized a mile away … The whole thing decorated with lengths of string … with ingenious props. The old cutie came around to our way of thinking, she wore pants too like a man … She didn’t have a skirt to her name anyway. She thought it was handier … She went to market that way too. The school kids waited for her on the way into town. They hooted at her, they bombarded her with cowflop and broken bottles and big stones … It ended in a fight … She didn’t take it lying down … The cops stepped in … They asked for her papers … She was very high and mighty: “I’m an honest woman, messieurs … You can follow me home! …” They weren’t in the mood.

It was a beautiful summer … You really couldn’t imagine it would ever end … The heat makes for idleness … Des Pereires and I, after his pousse-café, we’d head for the fields … and all afternoon we’d wander aimlessly over hill and furrow. If we ran into a yokel, we’d give him a polite “good-day” … Our life was mighty pleasant … It reminded us of the happy days with the balloon … But we had to be careful not to talk about our stratospheric setbacks in front of Madame des Pereires … or about the
Enthusiast
or the
Archimedes!
… Or she’d burst into tears … She couldn’t contain her grief … She treated us like dirt … We mostly talked about one thing and another … We couldn’t stir up the past … And we had to watch our step with the future … We could only mention it with kid gloves … The future was ticklish too … Ours was vague … it didn’t stand out very clearly … Courtial was still hesitating … He preferred to wait a little longer, he didn’t want to dive in until he felt perfectly sure … Between meditations, in the course of our afternoon wanderings, he’d prospect around with his spade … He’d bend down to examine, weigh, scrutinize the fresh earth he’d stirred up … He’d crush it into a powder … He’d filter it between his fingers as if looking for gold … Finally he’d clap his hands and blow on them hard … It would all fly away … He’d frown … “Tt, tt … This soil isn’t so hot, Ferdinand. It’s not rich. Hm! hm! I’m mighty scared about radishes . ‘. . Hm! Maybe artichokes … And even then I wouldn’t be too sure … My oh my! There’s an awful lot of magnesium in it …” We’d start off again, undecided.