Death on the Installment Plan (73 page)

After three weeks of toil the immense potato field was one network of wire, strung just below the surface with a thousand joints in dotted lines … It was real needle-prick work … Turn her on! … Des Pereires had only to shoot the juice through the fibers … He started his contraption … Right away he gave those spuds a series of terrible shocks … of powerful, intensely telluric discharges … with a few little bursts of “alternating” in between … He even got up in the middle of the night to give them a little extra, to stimulate them more completely, to stir them up to the maximum. It worried the old sugarbun to have him going out in the cold like that … She woke with a start … She yelled at him to put something on.

We’d been worrying along for about a month when all of a sudden our Courtial began casting about for excuses … That was a very bad sign …

“I’d have preferred,” he said “to try leeks …” He kept saying that more and more often in front of the old lady … He wanted to see her reaction … “What would you say to radishes? …” His wife gave him a cross-eyed look, she pushed up her dip in front … she didn’t care for his insinuations … Hell, he’d made his bed, he shouldn’t try to wriggle out of it …

Our pioneers were thriving, they made the most of their freedom … We didn’t hem them in, they did what they pleased … they even attended to their own discipline … Terrible thrashings they gave each other … The littlest was the worst, the same old Dudule, he was seven and a half … The oldest of the flock was practically a young lady: Mésange Rimbot, the blonde with the green eyes, she had a nice billowy ass and her tits stuck out sharp … Madame des Pereires wasn’t exactly a simple soul, she didn’t trust our little wench around the corner, especially when she had her period … She’d fixed her up a special bunk in a corner of the barn, so she could sleep all by herself when she fell off the roof … That didn’t keep her from monkeying around with the brats … nature, nature. That ornery postman caught her one night behind the chapel at the end of the village, doing it with Tatave, Jules, and Julien … All four of them were together …

This Eusèbe, the postman, had it in for us on account of the distances we made him travel … The department hadn’t given him his bike … It would take two years … He wasn’t entitled to it … He couldn’t stand our guts … He wanted us to supply him with shoes, we didn’t have any for ourselves … Naturally, moseying along on foot, he saw everything that went on. The day he caught the kids having fun, he doubled back extra, just to tell us what he thought of us … after he’d seen it all … as if it was our fault. Peeping toms are always like that … first they get a good eyeful … they don’t miss an atom … And then when the party’s over, they’re all indignation … We told him off … We had more serious things to worry about.

In our beat-up hamlet there hadn’t been any traffic for going on twenty years … Once this potato jazz got around, it was an invasion … a parade of sightseers from morning to night. The whole department was full of false rumors … The people from Persant and Saligons took the front row, they wanted all kinds of specimens and explanations. You couldn’t put them off … They wanted to know if it was dangerous … if our system mightn’t blow up and “start the earth vibrating” … As the expériment went ahead, as time passed, des Pereires was getting more and more cautious … He dropped “ifs” and “maybes” that sounded really ominous … lots of them … more and more … It was worrisome … He’d hardly ever said “if” and “maybe” at the Palais-Royal … About a week later he had to stop the dynamo and the motor … It was getting a little risky, he told us at that point, to pour on more waves and current … we’d better stop a while … we could start up again later … after a breathing spell. Waves of the telluric variety were perfectly capable of engendering certain individual disorders … you never could tell … absolutely unforeseeable repercussions detrimental to the physiology … Personally des Pereires was feeling the effects of saturation … He was having dizzy spells … 

Hearing these remarks, the farmers and sightseers began to get suspicious. They shoved off, plenty worried. New complaints came in … The cops dropped in again … but there wasn’t much they could say about our phalanstery … The kids had nothing wrong with them … none of them had taken sick … We’d only lost our seven rabbits … A rough case of epizootic! Maybe it was the climate … or the food … Finally the cops went away … Not long after that our cunning little pioneers got fed up on our Spartan fare … They griped something awful … They were insubordinate … They had to build up their strength, didn’t they? … They’d have eaten the whole county … They found a way … It was their idea … One day they came home with three bunches of carrots … and the next day a crate of turnips. A ton of beans! All for the soup. The chow was looking up … Then came a dozen eggs and three pounds of butter and some bacon … It’s perfectly true, we were out of all those things … This looting wasn’t for the hell for it, it wasn’t from wickedness … Madame des Pereires couldn’t hardly go out anymore since we’d started our intensive farming, she was busy all the time with the “circuits,” patching them up so the juice would go through … She only got to Persant once a week. At table nobody batted an eyelash … We dove right in … It was a case of “compelling circumstances” … The next day they brought home an old hen … all plucked … It turned into soup fast … As banquets go, we could have used a little wine … We didn’t exactly suggest it … nevertheless and regardless we had wine on the table the following days … several different vintages … Where the kids found all that we didn’t ask … We let well enough alone … A wood fire is mighty pretty but not very convenient. It’s a nuisance to keep up, it burns too fast, you’ve got to keep stirring it up … They found some briquettes … They hauled them through the fields in a wheelbarrow … We had a beautiful fire … But it was getting risky … We counted on our potatoes to straighten everything out … our honor and all that … To dodge the worst reprisals …

We went out to look at the spuds, we watched them like gems, we dug one up every hour … to see what was going on … We started the wave machine up again … It was purring almost day and night … It used up a lot of gas, we didn’t see much results … The spuds the kids brought home, their hot vegetables, were always a good deal better looking …

Des Pereires had noticed that. He was more puzzled than ever … In his opinion our wire wasn’t right … The conductivity wasn’t as good as we’d originally thought … or needed … That was perfectly possible.

We went back to the Big Ball … Only once, just to look in … We’d better hadn’t … Some reception we got! Agathe, the maid, wasn’t there anymore, she’d gone off with the town drummer, a married man with children … They’d shacked up for the sheer ass of it … Moral turpitude, they put the blame on me … Everybody was down on me in the village and environs … when the whole lot of them had screwed her! … So help me! They said I’d debauched her. They wouldn’t have anything to do with either of us … They refused to gamble with us … They wouldn’t listen to our Chantilly “starters” … They were laying their bets with the barber across from the post office … He’d taken over our whole system, envelopes, stamps, and all …

Those people at the Big Ball knew plenty more about our smelly ways … They knew, in particular, that we were living off the land … All those chickens that had disappeared for fifteen miles around … Same with the butter and carrots … We were the gypsies … They didn’t say it in so many words, because they were hypocrites … But they made some mighty pointed remarks about buckshots in the ass that certain people had coming to them … about a bunch of no-goods that would certainly end up in the pen, amen and so be it! … Well anyway, disagreeable remarks … We left without saying good-bye … It was a good two-hour hike back to Blême … Time enough to meditate on our cool welcome …

Things weren’t doing so hot … Our affairs weren’t cooking with gas … Des Pereires knew it … I thought he was going to talk about it … but he talked about entirely different things on the road … About the stars again and the heavenly bodies … about their distances and satellites … about the magical dances they spin while we’re mostly asleep … About constellations so dense you’d take them for clouds of stars.

We’d been walking quite a while … he was getting winded … He always got too excited when he got talking about the sky and the cosmogonie trajectories … It went to his head … We had to slow down … We climbed up on a bank … He was panting … We sat down.

“You see, Ferdinand, I can’t manage it anymore … I can’t do two things at once … when I used to be always doing three or four … Ah, it’s no joke, Ferdinand … it’s no joke … I don’t mean life, Ferdinand, it’s Time I mean … Life is ourselves, it’s nothing … Time is everything … Look at the little stars of Orion … You see Sirius? right next to the Snake? … They pass … they pass … They’re heading over yonder to join the great galaxies of Antiope …” He was done in … his arms fell back on his knees … “You see, Ferdinand, on a night like this I could have located Betelgeuse again … a night for vision, a really crystalline night … Maybe with the telescope we still could … It’s the telescope I’m not likely to find so soon … Ah, Christ, what a stinking muddle when I think of it … Can you imagine, Ferdinand! Can you imagine! Say, you really went for it, didn’t you?”

It made him laugh to think of it … I didn’t answer … I didn’t feel like gilding his pill anymore … When he got his optimism back, he always did something idiotic … He went on talking about one thing and another …

“Ferdinand, you see, my boy … I wish I were some place else … some place completely different … Somewhere … I don’t know …” He made some more gestures, he described parabolas … He moved his hands through the milky ways … high, high up in the atmosphere … He discovered another twinkler … a little thing to explain … He wanted to talk some more … but he couldn’t … His words scraped too hard … His chest was bothering him … “The fall gives me asthma,” he said … So then he was quiet … He dozed off for a while … huddled up in the grass … I woke him on account of the cold … maybe half an hour later … we started off again very slowly.

Nobody has ever seen kids thrive like ours … growing so fast, getting so strong and muscular … since we’d been eating with no holds barred … We had enormous stews, we really put it away … and all the brats were on wine … They wouldn’t take any reprimands or advice … They said we shouldn’t worry about them, they were doing all right …

Our headache was Mésange … supposing one of the little thugs knocked her up … Sometimes she’d get a dreamy look that boded no good … Madame des Pereires had it on her mind … She marked crosses on the calendar to show when she was due.

All day long our pioneers sniped and snaffled around in the barns and farmyards … They got up again at night when they felt like it … It depended on the moon … They told us a certain amount … Our agricultural labors were mostly in the morning … When it came to bringing home the bacon, our little angels had gotten remarkably enterprising and ingenious … They were everywhere at once, in everybody’s fields … But nobody ever saw them … They played Indians for real … They were crafty … After six months of scouting and fancy trailing in every kind of terrain, they’d learned to get their bearings by dead reckoning, they could do it in their sleep … they knew the most labyrinthine pathways, the most secret hideouts … the position of every clod of earth … better than the native hares … They’d catch them by surprise … That’ll give you an idea.

Without them, I don’t mind telling you, we’d have starved … We were stone-broke … they stoked us to the gills, it gave them a kick to see us get fat. All they ever heard from us was compliments …

Our old cutie was champing at the bit … She’d have liked to say something … It was too late … The food problem comes first … With the kids gone we’d have croaked … The country is merciless … We never issued a word of command … The initiative was all theirs … Raymond’s father, a lampman on the railroad in the Levallois sector, was the only one who came to see us the first winter … It was easier for him because he had a railroad pass … He hardly knew his Raymond … he’d got so big and strong … the kid had always been frail, now he was a champ … We didn’t tell him the whole story … Raymond was a wonder, for swiping eggs he was in a class by himself … He’d snitch them out from under the hen … without making her squawk … the velvet touch … The father was the honest kind, he wanted to settle his debt … Now that his kid was so husky, so perfectly built, he talked of taking him back to Levallois. He thought he looked well enough … We wouldn’t hear of it … We put up stiff resistance … We made him a present of his dough, he still owed us three hundred smackers … on the sole condition that he’d leave the kid with us until he’d learned all there was to know about agriculture … That kid was worth his weight in gold … We sure didn’t want to lose him … And he was glad to stay with us … He wasn’t looking for a change … So our life was getting organized … We were detested for fifteen miles around, they hated us tooth and nail, but tucked away all by ourselves in Bléme-le-Petit it was hard for them to catch us red-handed …

The old cutie got fatter than anybody else on the fruits of the kids’ larceny. So she couldn’t say a thing … Her field didn’t feed her! or her hat! or her pants! She heaved some comical sighs after sipping her brandy … She couldn’t get over it the way little by little she’d got used to this unspeakable piracy … She’d taken to drink … maybe from repressed sorrow … A nip … another … and pretty soon she couldn’t do without her pousse-café … “Let fate take its course,” she sighed … “seeing as you’re no good for anything.” She was talking to Courtial.

We stored our victuals in our attic, in our basement, and in a corner of the barn … The kids had contests to see who could bring back the most in a day … We could have held out six months … gone through several honest-to-God sieges … We were fixed … Groceries, beer, margarine! Absolutely everything! … But we were eighteen at table, sixteen of whom were growing! A crowd like that can put it away, especially when “stationed” in the country …