Journey to the End of the Night (48 page)

There were old patients of mine here and there, male and female, that I'd long stopped thinking about, and still others, the black man in a white cloud, all alone, the one they had given one lash too many down there in Topo, and old man Grappa, the lieutenant of the virgin forest! I'd thought of them all from time to time, of the lieutenant, the tortured black, and also of my Spaniard, the priest, he had come down from heaven that night with the dead to say prayers, and his golden crucifix was getting in his way, making it hard for him to fly from sky to sky. It got tangled up in the clouds, the dirtiest and yellowest of them, and as time went on I recognized more dead people, more and more ... So many you can't help feeling ashamed of not having had time to look at them while they were living here beside you, all those years ...

There's never enough time, it's true, not even for thinking of yourself. Well, anyway, all those sons of bitches had turned into angels without my noticing! Whole clouds full of angels, including some very far-out and disreputable ones, all over the place. Roaming around, high over the city! I looked for Molly among them, a golden opportunity, my sweet, my only friend, but she hadn't come with them ... She'd always been so nice that she probably had a little heaven all to herself, right next to God ... I was glad not to find her with all those thugs, oh yes, the ghosts assembled over the city that night were really just the dregs of the dead, just scoundrels, scum and riffraff. Especially from the cemetery nearby they came, more and more of them, though it's not a big cemetery, not at all high class. There were even Communards, all drenched with blood, with their mouths wide open as if they wanted to yell some more and couldn't ... The Communards were waiting with the others, waiting for La Pérouse, La Pérouse of the Islands, who was in command of the whole rally that night ... La Pérouse[83] was taking a hell of a long time to get ready, because of his wooden leg, which he'd put on backward ... he'd always had trouble with that wooden leg, and besides he couldn't find his big spyglass.

He refused to come out of the clouds without his spyglass around his neck, crazy idea, the famous spyglass of his adventures, a laugh, it made you see people and things far away, further and further away through the small end, and naturally becoming more and more desirable because and in spite of your getting closer to them. Some Cossacks, who were tucked away not far from the Moulin,[84] couldn't manage to get clear of their graves. They were trying so hard it was terrifying, but they had tried many times before ... They kept toppling back into their graves, they'd been drunk since 1820.

Nevertheless, a shower made them shoot up, and there they were over the city, refreshed. Then they scattered far and wide and painted the night with their turbulence, from cloud to cloud ... The Opera in particular seemed to attract them, with its enormous brazier of electric signs in the middle. Spurting from it, the ghosts bounded to the other end of the sky, so numerous and so active they made your head spin. Ready at last, La Pérouse wanted them to hoist him up at the last stroke of four. They held him in place and strapped him to the saddle. Finally astride and settled, he went right on waving his arms and gesticulating. The clock striking four almost made La Pérouse lose his balance as he was buttoning his coat. But then he led the mad rush across the sky. A hideous rout. Twisting and turning, the phantoms pour from all directions, the ghosts of a thousand heroic battles ... They pursue, they challenge, they charge one another, centuries against centuries. For a long while, the north is cluttered with their abominable męlée. The bluish horizon detaches itself, at last the day rises through the big rent they've made in the night while escaping.

After that it becomes very hard to find them. You have to get outside of Time. If you do manage to find them, it will be over toward England, but on that side the fog is always so dense, so compact that it's like sails rising one after another from the earth to the highest heaven and for all time. With practice and close attention you can find them even so, but never for very long, because of the wind that keeps blowing rain squalls and mists from the open sea.

The tall woman who is there, guarding the island, is the last of all. Her head is even higher than the uppermost mists. By now she is the only halfway living thing on the island. Her red hair, high over everything else, still puts a little gold into the clouds; that's all there is left of the sun.

They say she's trying to make herself a cup of tea.

She may as well try, because she'll be there for all eternity. She'll never bring her tea to a boil because of the fog, which has become too dense and penetrating. For a teapot she uses the hull of a ship, the most beautiful, the largest of ships, the last she could find in Southampton, and she heats up her tea in it, waves and waves of it ... She stirs ... She stirs it about with an enormous oar ... That keeps her busy.

Serious for all time, bent over her tea, she doesn't look at anything else. The whole dance has passed over her, but she hasn't even moved, she's used to having these ghosts from the Continent losing themselves over there ... That's the end of it. With her fingers she stirs, that's good enough for her, the coals under the ashes between two dead forests.

She tries to revive the fire, it's all hers now, but her tea will never boil again. There's no life left for the flames.

No more life in the world for anyone, only a wee bit for her ... everything is almost over ...

Tania woke me up in the room where we had finally gone to bed. It was ten in the morning. To get rid of her I told her I wasn't feeling very well and wanted to stay in bed a while. Life was starting in again. She pretended to believe me. So soon as she'd gone, I went out myself. There really was something I wanted to do. The saraband of the night before had left me with a strong taste of remorse. The memory of Robinson came back to plague me. It was true that I'd abandoned the man to his fate and worse, to the mercies of Abbé Protiste. No need to say more. True, I'd heard that everything was just fine down there in Toulouse and that Grandma Henrouille was being good and kind to him now. In certain situations, however, you only hear what you want to hear and what seems most convenient ... Come right down to it, those vague rumors didn't prove a thing.

Anxious and curious, I headed for Rancy in quest of news, something definite, the real thing. To get there I had to take the Rue des Batignolles, where Pomone lived. It was on my way. As I approached his house, I was surprised to see Pomone in person on the corner, apparently shadowing a little man at some distance. Since Pomone never went out, I figured something big must be going on. I recognized the character he was following, a client, in his correspondence he referred to himself as "the Cid." But we had been tipped oft", "the Cid"[85] worked in the post office.

For years he'd been pestering Pomone to find him a well-bred chick, that was his dream. But the young ladies that were introduced to him were never well bred enough to suit him. They committed gaffes, so he claimed. On close consideration, there are two main classes of chick, the "broad-minded" ones and the ones who've had "a good Catholic upbringing." Two equally crummy ways of feeling superior, two ways of titillating anxious, frustrated men, the "shrinking violet" type and the girl about town.

This search had gone on month after month and engulfed all "the Cid's" savings. His transactions with Pomone had brought him to the end of his resources and the end of his hopes. Later on I heard that "the Cid" had committed suicide in a vacant lot that same afternoon. Actually, I knew something cockeyed was afoot the moment I saw Pomone leave his house. So I followed them quite a way through that neighborhood, which loses its shops as it goes along, and even its colors one after another, till there's nothing left but ramshackle bistrots as you approach the toll gate. When you're not in a hurry, it's easy to get lost in those streets, befogged by the sadness and utter indifference of the place. So great is your ennui that if you had a little money you'd jump into a cab and escape. The people you pass are burdened with a fate so heavy that you feel embarrassed on their account. It's practically certain that behind their curtained windows some of those small pensioners have left their gas on. Nothing you can do about it. "Christ!" you say. Which isn't much.

There's not even a bench to sit down on. Everywhere you look it's brown and green. When it rains, it rains from all directions, from the front and sides, and the street is as slippery as the back of a big fish with a parting of rain in the middle. You can't even speak of disorder in that neighborhood, it's more like an almost well-kept prison, a prison that has no need of doors.

Roaming around like that, I finally lost Pomone and his suicide, right after the Rue des Vinaigriers. That put me so near La Garenne-Rancy I couldn't resist the temptation to cast a glance across the fortifications.

From a distance, La Garenne-Rancy doesn't look bad, you can't deny it, because of the trees in the big cemetery. You could swear you were in the Bois de Boulogne. When you really want information about someone, you have to go to the people who know. After all, I said to myself, what have I got to lose by paying the Henrouilles a little visit?

They must know what's going on in Toulouse. So then I made a mistake. You can never be careful enough. Before you know it, you're deep in the noisome regions of the night. It doesn't take long for disaster to strike. The merest trifle can bring it on, and besides, in the first place, there are certain people you shouldn't dream of going back to see. Especially those people! Once it's done, you're sunk.

Roaming at random, I was finally drawn by habit to the vicinity of the Henrouilles' house. Still in the same place, I couldn't get over it. Suddenly the rain was coming down. There was no one in the street but me. I didn't dare go any closer. I was about to turn back when the door of the house opened just enough for the daughter-in-law to motion me to come in. That woman saw everything. She'd seen me on the opposite sidewalk, looking fuddled. I had lost all desire to go closer, but she insisted. She even called me by my name.

"Doctor! ... Oh, hurry!"

That's how she called me, not a moment's hesitation ... I was afraid of attracting attention, so I hurried up her front steps. Again I saw the little corridor with the stove in it, the whole layout. I have to admit, it gave me the same old uneasy feeling. Then she started telling me that her husband had been very sick for two months and was getting steadily worse. Naturally I had my suspicions.

"What about Robinson?" I hastened to ask her.

At first she eluded my question. Then finally she decided to answer. "They're both fine ... Their business in Toulouse is doing well," she finally said, but talking very fast. That was all, then she shifted back to her sick husband. She wanted me to see him that minute, there was no time to lose ... seeing that I was so devoted ... that I knew her husband well ... that he had confidence in no one but me ... that he'd refused to see any other doctor ... that they didn't have my address ... Bullshit, in short.

I had good reason to suspect that there was more to her husband's illness than met the eye. I knew the lady well and the ways of the household. Nevertheless, my idiotic curiosity made me climb the stairs to the bedroom.

He was lying in the same bed where I'd treated Robinson after his accident some months before.

A room changes in a few months, even if you don't move anything. Old and rundown as things may be, they still find the strength, the Lord knows where, to get older. Everything had changed around us. Not that anything had moved, no, of course not, the things themselves had actually changed, in depth. Things are different when you go back to them, they seem to have more power to enter into us more sadly, more deeply, more gently than before, to merge with the death which is slowly, pleasantly, sneakily growing inside us, and which we train ourselves to resist a little less each day. From moment to moment, we see life languishing, shriveling inside us, and with it the things and people who may have been commonplace or precious or imposing when we last left them. Fear of the end has marked all that with its wrinkles, while we were chasing around town in search of pleasure or bread.

Soon our past will be attended only by inoffensive, pathetic, disarmed things and people, mistakes with nothing to say for themselves.

The wife left me alone with her husband. He was in bad shape. Not much circulation left. The trouble was in his heart.

"I'm going to die," he said simply.

Cases like this were my special form of luck. I listened to his heartbeat just to be doing something, the few gestures people expect under those circumstances. His heart was racing, no doubt about it; shut up behind his ribs, it ran after life in fits and starts, but run or not, it would never catch up with life. His goose was cooked. Soon, the way it was stumbling, his heart would fall in the muck, all juicy and red, gushing like a crushed pomegranate. That's how his flabby old heart would look on the marble, cut open with a knife at the autopsy that would take place in a few days. All this would end in a lovely court-ordered autopsy. That's what I foresaw, considering that everyone in the neighborhood would be relaying some highly seasoned rumors after his death, which would look very fishy after the other business.

The neighbors were laying for his wife with all the accumulated and still undigested suspicions aroused by the previous affair. This would come up a little later. At the moment the husband didn't know how to live or die. He was already part way out of life, but he couldn't quite get rid of his lungs. He expelled air, and air came back. He'd have been glad to let himself die, but he had to live to the end. It was rough work, and it was driving him up the wall.

"I can't feel my feet anymore!" he groaned ... "I'm cold up to my knees ..." He tried to touch his feet, but he couldn't.

He couldn't drink either. It was almost over. Handing him the tisane his wife had made him, I wondered what she could have put in it. That tisane didn't smell very good, but smell proves nothing. Valerian smells vile all by itself. And the way he was suffocating, it didn't make much difference whether the tisane was spiked or not. Still, he was going to a lot of trouble, working like mad with all the muscles he had left under his skin to keep suffering and breathing. He was struggling as much against life as against death. In a case like that the right thing would be to burst. When nature stops giving a damn, there wouldn't seem to be any limits. Behind the door his wife was listening to our consultation, but I knew his wife like a book. I tiptoed over and caught her. "Caughtcha!" I said. She wasn't the least bit put out, she even whispered something in my ear.