Journey to the End of the Night (61 page)

Robinson's consternation was such that he couldn't get up from his chair. When the policeman had gone, we examined the information he'd given us from every angle. After all, it could be another woman, it didn't have to be Madelon ... There were others who used to hang around under the windows of our nuthouse ... Still, there was good reason to believe it was she, and the mere possibility scared us out of our wits. If it was Madelon, what was she up to now? And what could she have been living on all these months in Paris? And supposing she was going to turn up in person, we'd better talk it over right away and decide what to do.

"Look here, Robinson," I said. "Make up your mind, it's high time, and don't change it ... What do you want to do? Do you want to go back to Toulouse with her?"

"No, I tell you. No no no!" That was his answer. Plain enough.

"Okay," I said. "But in that case, if you really don't want to go back with her, the best thing, in my opinion, would be for you to leave the country for a while and try and make a living somewhere else. That's the surest way to get rid of her ... She wouldn't follow you out of the country, would she? ... You're still young ... You've recovered your health ... You're rested ... We'll give you a little money, take it and shove off ... That's my advice ... Besides, you must be aware that this is no job for you ... You can't go on like this forever ..."

If he had listened to me, if he had cleared out then and there, it would have suited me, I'd have been really glad. But he wouldn't buy it.

"Why are you so mean to me, Ferdinand?" he said. "It's not nice of you at my age ... Just look at me! ..." He didn't want to shove off. He was sick of moving around.

"This is as far as I'll go," he said. "Say what you please ... do what you please ... I won't go ..."

That was how he requited my friendship. Still, I kept trying.

"But what if Madelon were to turn you in, just supposing, in connection with old Madame Henrouille? ... You told me yourself that you wouldn't put it past her."

"That would be just too bad," he said. "She can do as she pleases ..." That kind of talk was something new, coming from Robinson. Up until then he had never been a fatalist ...

"At least go find yourself some little job nearby, in a factory, then you won't have to be here with us all the time ... If somebody comes looking for you, we'll have time to warn you."

Parapine was in complete agreement with me. The matter must have struck him as really grave and urgent because he even went so far as to say a few words to us. We'd have to figure out some place to put Robinson, where he wouldn't be noticed ... One of our business connections was a carriage maker not far away who owed us a small debt of gratitude for certain little favors we'd done him in awkward situations. He agreed to give Robinson a trial at hand painting. It was delicate work, not hard and nicely paid.

"Léon," we told him the morning he started in. "Don't make a fool of yourself in your new job, don't attract attention with your screwed-up ideas ... Arrive on time ... Don't leave before the others ... Say good morning to everybody ... In other words, behave. It's a decent shop, and you've been well recommended ..."

But right away he got himself spotted, though you can't say it was his fault. A stool pigeon, who worked in one of the other workshops, saw him going into the boss's private office. That did it. Reported. Undesirable element. Fired.

So a few days later Robinson came back to us, jobless. It was bound to happen. Then, just about the same day, he started coughing again. We auscultated him and found a whole collection of rales all up and down his right lung. Calling for bed rest. One Saturday evening just before dinner someone asked for me personally in the reception room.

A woman, they tell me.

It was her all right, wearing a little three-cornered hat and gloves. I remember well. No need of preliminaries. She couldn't have picked a worse moment. I give it to her straight before she can say a word.

"Madelon," I said, "if you've come to see Léon, I can tell you right away to forget it ... Just turn around and go home ... His lungs are affected and so is his head ... Quite seriously, I might add ... You can't see him ... Anyway, he has nothing to say to you ..."

"Not even to me?"

"No, not even to you ... Especially not to you," I added. I expected her to flare up. No, she only stood there in front of me, shaking her head from side to side and compressing her lips. With her eyes she tried to find me where she had left me in her memory. I wasn't there anymore. I, too, had moved in her memory. In that situation I'd have been afraid of a husky man, but from her I had nothing to fear. She was only a weak woman, so to speak. I had always wanted to slap a face consumed with anger, to see what a face consumed with anger would do under the circumstances. A slap or a fat check is what it takes if you want to see all the passions that go beating about behind a face take a sudden tack. It's as beautiful as watching a sailing ship maneuvering in a stormy sea. The whole person keels over in the changed wind. That's what I wanted to see. For at least twenty years that desire had been goading me. On the street, in cafés, wherever aggressive, touchy, boastful people quarrel. I'd never have dared for fear of getting hit back and even more of the shame that comes of getting hit. But here for once I had a golden opportunity.

"Get out!" I said, just to raise her fury to white heat.

She couldn't get over my talking to her like that. She started to smile, hideously, repulsively, as if she thought me ridiculous and really contemptible ... "Smack! Smack!" I slapped her face twice, hard enough to stun a mule.

She slumped down on the big divan on the other side of the room, against the wall, with her head between her hands. Her breath came in short gasps and she moaned like a puppy that's been beaten too much. Then, as if she'd thought it over, she jumped up, light and bouncy, and went out the door without even turning her head. I hadn't seen a thing. I'd have to try again.

But regardless of what we did, she was smarter than all of us together. She saw her Robinson again, she saw him as often as she pleased ... It was Parapine who first spotted them together. They were on the terrace of a cafe across from the Gare de 1'Est. I'd suspected they were seeing each other, but I didn't want to seem to be taking the slightest interest in their relations. After all, it was none of my business. He was doing his work at the rest home, and not at all badly, taking care of the paralytics, a nasty job if ever there was one, wiping them, sponging them, changing their underwear, helping them slobber. We couldn't expect any more of him.

If he chose to see his Madelon on the afternoons when I sent him to Paris on errands, that was his business. We definitely hadn't seen her at Vigny-sur-Seine since those slaps in the face. But I was pretty sure that since then she must have told him some rotten things about me.

I stopped talking to Robinson about Toulouse, as if none of all that had ever happened. Six months passed for better or worse, and then there was a vacancy on our staff, and we suddenly needed a nurse, skilled in massage. The old one had gone off to get married without giving notice.

Quite a few fine-looking girls applied for the job. In fact, so many strapping young women of all nationalities flocked to Vigny as soon as our ad appeared that we were hard put to it to choose among them. In the end we picked a Slovak by the name of Sophie, whose complexion, energetic yet gentle bearing, and divine good health struck us, I have to admit, as irresistible.

This Sophie knew only a few words of French, but I undertook without delay, the least I could do, to give her lessons. And lo and behold, in contact with her youth and freshness I felt my interest in teaching revive, though Baryton had done everything in his power to disgust me with it. Impenitent! But what youth! What vigor! What muscles! What an excuse! Supple! Springy! Amazing! Her beauty was diminished by none of that false or true reticence that impedes ail-too occidental converse. Frankly, I couldn't admire her enough. From muscle to muscle, I proceeded by anatomical groups ... By muscular slopes, by regions ... I never wearied of pursuing that concentrated yet relaxed vigor, distributed in bundles which by turns evaded and consented to the touch ... Beneath her satin, taut or relaxed, miraculous skin! ...

The era of these living joys, of great undeniable physiological and comparative harmonies is yet to come ... The body, a godhead mauled by my shameful hands ... The hands of an honest man, that unknown priest ... Death and Words must give their permission first ... What foul affectations! A cultivated man needs to be rolled in a dense layer of symbols, caked to the asshole with artistic excrement, before he can tear off a piece ... Then anything can happen! A bargain! Think of the saving, getting all your thrills from reminiscences ... Reminiscences are something we've got plenty of, one can buy beauties, enough to last us a lifetime ... Life is more complicated, especially the life of human forms ... A hard adventure. None more desperate. Compared with the addiction to perfect forms, cocaine is a pastime for stationmasters.

But let's get back to our Sophie! Her mere presence seemed a feat of daring in our sulking, fearful, unsavory household.

After she had been with us for some time, we were still glad to number her among our nurses, yet we could not help fearing that she might one day disturb the fabric of our infinite precautions or suddenly, one fine morning, wake up to our sleazy reality. Sophie still failed to suspect the depth of our fetid resignation! A gang of failures! We admired her, so alive in our midst ... just her way of getting up from a chair, coming to our table, leaving it again ... She charmed us ...

And every time she performed those simple gestures, we experienced surprise and joy. We made strides in poetry, so to speak, just marveling at her being so beautiful and so much more obviously free than we were. The rhythm of her life sprang from other wellsprings than ours ... Our wellsprings were forever slow and slimy.

The joyful strength, precise yet gentle, which animated her from her hair to her ankles troubled us, alarmed us in a charming sort of way, but definitely alarmed us, yes, that's the word.

Though our instinct reveled in her innate joy, our peevish knowledge of the things of this world rather frowned on it, that essentially frightened, ever-present knowledge which cowers in the cellars of existence, accustomed to the worst by habit, by experience. Sophie had the winged, elastic, precise gait that is so frequent, almost habitual, among the women of America, the gait of heroic creatures of the future, whom life and ambition carry lightly toward new kinds of adventure ... Three-masters of joyful warmth, bound for the Infinite ...

Parapine, who was hardly given to lyricism on the subject of attractive women, would smile to himself when she left the room. Just to look at her did your soul good. Especially mine, I must say, which had lost none of its aptitude for desire.

Wishing to take her by surprise, to ravish a little of her pride, of the prestige and power she had acquired over me, to diminish her, in short to humanize her a little and reduce her to our paltry proportions, I would go into her room when she was sleeping.

At such times, Sophie offered a very different sight?more commonplace, yet surprising and reassuring as well. Without ostentation, almost uncovered, lying crosswise on the bed, legs every which way, skin moist and relaxed, she was battling with fatigue. In the depths of her body she dug into sleep, so hard that it made her snore. That was the only time when I found her within my reach. No more enchantment. No joking. This was serious. She toiled as though to pump more life out of existence ... At such times she was greedy, drunk with wanting more and more. You should have seen her after those sleeping bouts, still swollen, her organs exultant, ecstatic under her rosy skin. At such times she was funny, as laughable as other people. For some minutes she'd reel with happiness, then the full light of day would come to her and delivered, as if too heavy a cloud had just passed, she'd resume her glorious flight ...

All that can be fucked. It's extremely pleasant to grasp this moment when matter becomes life. You rise up to the endless plateau that spreads out before men. "Whew!" you go. And again "Whew!" You come the limit up there, and then it's like an enormous desert ... Among us, her friends rather than employers, I, I believe, was the most intimate. True, she was regularly unfaithful to me with the orderly in charge of the violent ward, an ex-fireman. For my own good, she told me, so as not to put too great a strain on me, considering all the brain work I had under way, which wasn't exactly compatible with the demands of her fiery temperament. Entirely for my own good. She cuckolded me in the interest of hygiene. What could I say?

All this, when I think of it, could have given me nothing but pleasure if the Madelon business hadn't been weighing on my mind. One fine day I told Sophie the whole story to see what she'd say. Telling her my troubles made me feel a little better. I was sick of the endless quarrels and resentments growing out of that wretched passion, and Sophie thought I was perfectly right.

Seeing that Robinson and I had been such good friends, she thought we should all have one big reconciliation, just patch the whole thing up as quickly as possible. Her advice came from a good heart. Central Europe is full of good hearts. The only trouble was that she didn't know much about the characters and reactions of the people around here. With the best intentions in the world she gave me the worst possible advice. I came to realize that she'd been wrong, but too late.

"You should see Madelon," she advised me. "From what you've told me, I'm sure she's a good girl deep down ... It's just that you provoked her, and you were really brutal and mean to her ... You owe her an apology and a nice present too, to make her forget ..." That's the way things were done in her country. Everything she advised me to do was exquisitely polite but not at all practical.

I took her advice, mostly because behind all the frills and foolishness, behind the diplomatic maneuvers, I envisaged the possibility of a little foursome that would have been most entertaining, in fact it would have made a new man of me. Under the pressure of age and circumstances, I note to my sorrow, my friendly feelings were taking an insidiously erotic turn. Betrayal. And Sophie, without meaning to, was abetting me in this betrayal. There was so much curiosity in Sophie she couldn't help being attracted by danger. An excellent nature, nothing Protestant about her, she never tried to belittle the opportunities life offered and was never suspicious of them. Just my type. She went further. She understood the need for variety in the distractions of the rear end. An adventurous disposition of that sort, you'll have to agree, is most unusual in women. We had definitely picked the right one. She wanted me, and I thought it perfectly natural, to give her some idea of Madelon's physique. She was afraid of seeming awkward in an intimate situation with a Frenchwoman, in view of the stupendous reputation in this line that has been pinned on Frenchwomen in foreign parts. As for enduring Robinson's attentions at the same time, it was only to give me pleasure that she consented. Robinson didn't send her at all, so she said, but on the whole we were in agreement. That was the main thing. Okay. I waited a while for a good opportunity to approach Robinson with my plan for a general reconciliation. One morning when he was in the office copying medical reports into the big book, the moment struck me as propitious, and I interrupted him to ask him very simply whether he thought it would be a good idea for me to see Madelon and suggest that we let our violent bygones be bygones ... Whether on the same occasion I might introduce her to Sophie, my new friend? And lastly, if he didn't think it was time we all got together and patched up our quarrels.