Journey to the End of the Night (50 page)

The other young lady in the shop was of the same opinion. The consequence was an impassioned controversy involving all three. Not wanting to disturb them, I sat quietly in my corner, stuffing myself uninterruptedly with tarts and cream puffs, which were excellent by the way, hoping that my discretion would help them solve their delicate problem of family priorities more quickly, but they made no progress. Nothing came of their discussion. Their speculative incompetence restricted them to an imprecise sort of hatred. Those shopgirls were bursting with illogicality, vanity, and ignorance. Drooling with rage, they whispered insults by the dozen.

I couldn't help it, I was fascinated by their nasty passion. I attacked the rum babas. I stopped counting the babas. So did they. I was hoping they'd come to some conclusion before I had to leave ... But passion made them deaf and soon dumb. Tense, their venon spent, they rested in the shelter of the pastry counter, each one invincible, shut up in her shell, pinched, ruminating plans for a still more embittered comeback. At the first opportunity, she would?promptly this time-spew out all the angry, cutting absurdities she happened to know about her little friend. And the occasion wouldn't be long in coming, she'd see to that ... Scrapings of arguments aimed at nothing at all. In the end I sat down, the better for them to befuddle me with the unceasing sound of their words, intentions, thoughts, as on a shore where the ripples of unceasing passions never manage to get organized ...

You listen, you wait, you hope, here, there, in the train, at the cafe, in the street, in drawing rooms, at the coincierge's, you listen and wait for evil to get organized as in wartime, but there's only waste motion, nothing is ever done, either by those unfortunate young ladies or by anyone else. No one comes to help us. An enormous babble, gray and monotonous, spread over life like an enormously discouraging mirage. Two ladies came in, and the muddle-headed charm of the ineffectual conversation spread out between the counter girls and myself was broken. The girls gave the new arrivals their eager and undivided attention, anticipating their requests and their least desires. They chose here and there and nibbled at the tarts and
petits fours
. When it came time to pay, they gushed polite phrases, and each insisted on offering the others little pastries to nibble that very minute. One declined most graciously, explaining at length and in confidence to the other ladies present, who took a keen interest, that her doctor had forbidden her all sweets, that her doctor was a genius, that he had done wonders in combating constipation in Toulouse and elsewhere, that he was well on his way to curing her of a retention of "number two," from which she had been suffering for more than ten years, thanks to a very special diet and a miraculous medicine known to him alone. The other ladies were not going to let themselves be outdone so easily in matters of constipation. Their own constipation defied comparison. They were up in arms. They demanded proofs. In response to their doubts, the lady observed simply that when moving her bowels she now broke wind, that it sounded like fireworks ... that because of her new-style bowel movements, all well molded, solid, and substantial, she was obliged to take extra precautions ... Sometimes these marvelous new feces of hers were so hard they gave her excruciating pain in the rectum ... a tearing sensation! ... So now she had to use vaseline before moving her bowels. Irrefutable. Thus convinced, the voluble ladies left the Petits Oiseaux pastry shop, accompanied to the threshold by the smiles of the entire staff.

The park across the way was a good place in which to rest, meditate briefly, and put my thoughts in order before going to look for my friend Robinson.

In provincial parks the benches, offering a view of flowerbeds overstuffed with cannas and daisies, are almost always empty on weekday mornings. Near the rock garden, on strictly captive waters, a small tin boat, encircled by floating ashes, was moored to the shore by a moldy rope. A sign announced that the skiff operated on Sunday and that a tour of the lake cost two francs.

How many years? ... students? ... phantoms?

In the corners of all parks there lie forgotten any number of little coffins engarlanded with dreams, thickets charged with promises, handkerchiefs full of everything. All a big joke. But that's enough daydreaming. Let's go looking for Robinson and his church of SainteEponime, and that crypt where he and the old woman are taking care of mummies. That's what I'd come for, so I'd better get going.

I took a carriage, and we meandered this way and that at a leisurely sort of trot, through the dark sunken streets of the old town, where the light catches between the roofs. Over cobbles and bridges we drove with a great clatter of wheels, behind a horse that was all shoes. They haven't burned any cities in the South for a long time. They've never been so old. Wars don't pass that way anymore.

We pulled up in front of Sainte-Eponime[86] on the stroke of noon. The crypt was a little further on, under a calvary. It was pointed out to me, in the middle of a small, parched garden. You entered the crypt through a sort of barricaded hole. From a distance I saw the caretaker, a young girl, and asked for news of my friend Robinson. She was just closing the door. She answered with a friendly smile, and the news she gave me was good. From where we were standing in that noonday light everything around us turned pink, and the worm-eaten stones of the church rose skyward, as though ready to melt into the air. Robinson's little friend must have been about twenty, with firm, wiry legs, a small, perfectly charming bust, and surmounting it a delicate, precisely etched face. Just the eyes may have been a little too black and attentive for my taste. Not at all the dreamy type. It was she who wrote Robinson's letters, the ones I had received. She went ahead of me to the vault with her precise gait, her shapely feet and ankles. She had the build of a good lay, and must have spread her legs very nicely when circumstances demanded. Short, hard hands with a strong grip, the hands of an ambitious working girl. A brisk little movement to turn the key. Shimmering heat all around us. Once she had the door open, she decided, in spite of the lunch hour, to show me through the vault. I was beginning to feel a little more relaxed. Behind her lantern we descended into increasing coolness. It was real nice. I pretended to stumble between two steps as an excuse for grabbing her by the arm. That made us laugh, and when we reached the clay floor at the bottom I kissed her a little on the neck. She protested at first, but not very much.

After a brief moment of affection, I wriggled round her belly like a love worm. Lecherously we moistened and remoistened our lips for our soul conversation. With one hand I crept slowly up her tensed thighs, it's fun with the lantern on the floor, because at the same time you can watch the muscles rippling over her legs. It's a position I can recommend. Ah!

Such moments are not to be missed. They put your eyes out of joint, but it's worth it. What gusto! What sudden good humor! The conversation resumed in a new tone of confidence and simplicity. Now we were friends. Asses first. We had just saved ten years.

"Do you often show people around?" I asked, puffing and putting my foot in it. But I quickly covered up: "Doesn't your mother sell candles at the church next door? ... Father Protiste has told me about her."

"I only take Madame Henrouille's place during lunch hour," she answered. "In the afternoon I work for a dressmaker ... On the Rue du Theatre ... Did you pass the theater on your way here?"

Again she reassured me about Robinson. He was much better, in fact the specialist thought he'd soon see well enough to go out by himself. All that was most encouraging. As for Grandma Henrouille, she seemed delighted with the vault. She was doing good business and saving money. Only one difficulty, in the house where they were living, the bedbugs kept everybody awake, especially on stormy nights. So they burned sulfur. It seemed that Robinson often spoke of me, pleasantly what's more. One thing leading to another, we came around to the projected marriage, the circumstances and all.

I have to admit that with all that talk I still hadn't asked her name. Her name was Madelon.

[87] She'd been born during the war. Their marriage plans, after all, suited me fine. Madelon was an easy name to remember. I figured she must know what she was doing in marrying Robinson ... Even if he was getting better, he'd always be an invalid ... And besides, she thought only his eyes were affected ... But his nerves were shot, and so was his morale and everything else! I was almost going to tell her so, to warn her ... I've never known how to steer conversations about marriage, or extricate myself from them. To change the subject, I expressed a keen and sudden interest in the cellar and its occupants. People came a long way to see it, so as long as I was there why not take a look?

With her little lantern Madelon and I made the shadows of the corpses emerge from the wall one by one. They must have given the tourists food for thought! Those ancient stiffs were lined up against the wall as if a firing squad had worked them over ... They weren't exactly skin and bone anymore, or clothing either ... Just a little of all that ... In a very grimy state, and full of holes. Time had been gnawing at their skin for centuries and was still at it ... Here and there it was still tearing away bits of their faces ... enlarging all the holes and even finding long strips of epidermis that death had left clinging to their cartilage. Their bellies had emptied of everything, and now there were little cradles of shadow where their navels had been.

Madelon explained that to get into this condition the bodies had had to spend more than five hundred years in a quicklime cemetery. You wouldn't have taken them for corpses. Their corpse days were far behind them. By easy stages they had come closer and closer to dust. In that cellar there were big ones and little ones, six and twenty in all, who asked for nothing better than to enter into Eternity. They weren't being admitted yet. Two women with bonnets perched on top of their skeletons, a hunchback, a giant, and even a complete baby, with a kind of bib, lace if you please, around his tiny dried-out neck, and some bits and pieces of swaddling clothes.

Grandma Henrouille was making a lot of money out of these scrapings of the centuries. To think that when I last saw her she herself had looked very much like these spooks ... So then Madelon and I went slowly back, passing them by again. One by one their so-called heads stood silent in the harsh circle of lamp light. It's not exactly night they have in their eye sockets, it's almost a gaze, but gentler, like the gaze of those who know. More disturbing is their smell of dust, it catches in your nose.

Whenever a party of tourists showed up, Grandma Henrouille was on the spot. She made those stiffs work like circus performers. At the height of the summer season, they brought her in a hundred francs a day.

"Don't they look sad?" Madelon asked me. A ritual question. Death didn't mean a thing to that cutie. She had been born during the war, when death came easy. But I knew well how people die. Something I had learned. It's very painful. It's all right to tell the tourists that these dead are happy. They can't speak for themselves. Grandma Henrouille even clouted them on the belly when there was enough parchment left on it, and it went "boom boom." But even that's no proof of good cheer. Finally Madelon and I got back to our own affairs. So it was true that Robinson was better. That was good enough for me. Our little friend seemed bent on this marriage. She must have been bored to death in Toulouse. You didn't often meet a man who had traveled as much as Robinson. What stories he had to tell! True ones and not so true. He'd already spoken to them at length of America and the Tropics. Lovely!

I'd been in America and the Tropics too. I knew stories about them too and proposed to tell her some. Come to think of it, I had traveled with Robinson, and that's how we'd got to be friends. The lantern went out. We lit it ten times while arranging the past and the future. She wouldn't let me touch her breasts, said they were much too sensitive. But seeing that Grandma Henrouille would be coming back from her lunch any minute, we had to climb back to the daylight over the steep, rickety staircase, which was as difficult to negotiate as a ladder. I made a note of those stairs.

Because of the treacherous narrow stairs Robinson didn't often go down to the mummy cellar. Most of the time he stood at the door, giving the tourists a bit of sales talk and getting used to taking in a few specks of light here and there.

Meanwhile in the depths, Grandma Henrouille managed very well. She knocked herself out with the mummies., enlivening the tourists' visit with a little speech about her parchment stiffs. "They're not at all repulsive, ladies and gentlemen, because, as you see, they were preserved in quicklime ... for more than five centuries ... Our collection is the only one of its kind in the whole world ... The flesh is gone, of course ... Only the skin is left, but it's tanned ... They're naked, but not indecent ... You will observe that a baby was buried at the same time as its mother ... The baby is also extremely well preserved ... And that tall man with the lace shirt that he still has on ... He's got every one of his teeth ... You will observe ..." At the end of the tour she clouted them all on the chest?it sounded like a drum.

"Observe, ladies and gentlemen, that this one has only one eye left ... all dried out ... and the tongue too ... it's like leather!" She gave it a pull. "He's sticking his tongue out, but he's not nasty ... You can give what you like as you leave, ladies and gentlemen, but the usual is two francs each and half price for children ... You can touch them before you go ... convince yourself ... but please, ladies and gentlemen, don't pull too hard ... they're extremely fragile ..."

Grandma Henrouille had wanted to raise the prices as soon as she got there, she applied to the Diocese. But it wasn't so simple, because of the priest at Sainte-Eponime, who demanded a third of the take all for himself, and also because of Robinson, who kept griping, because in his opinion she wasn't giving him a big enough rake-off.