Journey to the End of the Night (62 page)

At first, I could see, he hesitated, then he replied, but without enthusiasm, that he saw no objection ... I suspect Madelon had told him that I'd try to see her soon on one pretext or another. About the slap in the face I'd given her the day she came to Vigny, I didn't breathe a word.

I couldn't run the risk of his yelling at me there and calling me a brute in public, because after all, though we'd been friends a long time, there in the institution he was under my orders. Authority first.

January was a funny time for that sort of operation. Because it was most convenient, we decided to meet in Paris one Sunday and go to the movies together. We thought maybe we'd drop in at the Batignolles carnival for a while first if it wasn't too cold out. Robinson had promised to take her to the Batignolles carnival. Madelon, he told me, was wild about carnivals. That was a lucky thing. Meeting again for the first time, a carnival was the best possible place.

We sure got an eyeful of that carnival! And a headful too! Bim bam! And bam again! We whirl around! And we're carried away! And we scream and we yell! There we were, in the crowd with lights and noise and all the rest of it! Step up, step up! Show your skill, show your daring, and laugh laugh laugh! Wheel Everyone tried in his overcoat to appear to his best advantage, sharp and just a little aloof, to show that he usually went elsewhere for his entertainment, to more "expensif" places, as they say in English. You tried to make the impression of knowing, lighthearted young blades in spite of the icy wind, just one more humiliation, and the depressing fear that you were spending too much money on these amusements and might have occasion to regret it for a whole week. The merry-go-round sends up a big belch of music. It can't quite deliver itself of the waltz from Faust, but it tries hard. The waltz plumps down and shoots up again and swirls around the circular ceiling, which spins with its thousands of pastry light bulbs. The steam calliope's having a bad time. The music is giving it a pain in its pipe, its stomach. Would you care for a piece of nougat? Or would you rather try another target? Take your choice. In our group at the shooting gallery it was Madelon, with the brim of her hat turned up over her forehead, who showed the most skill. "Look," she says to Robinson. "My hand isn't shaking. And we had plenty to drink, didn't we?" ... Just to show you the kind of things we were saying. We'd just come out of a restaurant. "One more try!" And Madelon won the bottle of champagne. Bing bang! Bull's-eye! Then I bet her she can't catch me on the Dodge'em cars. "I'll take you up on that," she says as chipper as you please. "We'll take separate cars!" And there we go! I was glad she'd accepted. It was a way of making up to her. Sophie wasn't jealous. She had her reasons.

So Robinson climbs into the back car with Madelon and I get into another up front with Sophie. Man, do we collide! And it's crash! And hold tight! But I see right away that Madelon doesn't enjoy being shaken up. Neither does Léon for that matter, he used to like it, but no more. It's plain that he doesn't feel comfortable with us. While we're clutching at the rail, some sailorboys come along and start feeling us up, men and women alike, and making propositions. We're freezing. We shake them off. We laugh. More and more feeleruppers come from all directions with music and rhythm and excitement. You get such jolts on these barrels on wheels that your eyes pop out of your head every time you clash. Great fun! Violence and joy! The whole accordion of pleasures! I want to make up with Madelon before we leave the carnival. I want to very much, but she doesn't respond to my overtures anymore. It's no soap. She's snubbing me. Keeping me at a distance. I can't make her out. These moods that come over her. I'd had hopes of something better. Physically, come to think of it, she has changed completely.

She can't bear comparison with Sophie, no sparkle, no luster. Good humor was more becoming to her, but now she has an air of possessing superior knowledge. That irritates me. I'd gladly give her another slap in the face, maybe that would bring her around or maybe then she'd tell me what she knows that's so superior. Come on, smile! This is a place of merriment, we haven't come here to weep! Let's whoop it up!

She's found work with an aunt of hers, so she tells Sophie while we're strolling later on. On the Rue du Rocher. Her aunt is a corset maker. May as well believe her. It wasn't hard to see that if reconciliation was the idea, this meeting was a failure. My little scheme was a washout too. In fact, a gigantic flop.

Seeing each other again had been a mistake. Sophie hadn't really grasped the situation. She hadn't realized that this get-together would just make everything more complicated ... Robinson should have warned me, told me how stubborn she was ... Too bad! Oh well!

Barn! Bam! The carnival goes on! Let's try the "Caterpillar," as they call it. My idea and my treat! One more attempt to make up with Madelon. But she keeps slipping away from me, avoiding me. Taking advantage of the crush, she climbs into another seat up front with Robinson, I'm flummoxed again. We're dazed by waves and whirls of darkness. I mutter under my breath that it's hopeless. Sophie finally agrees with me. She realizes that in this whole affair I had been led away by my lecherous fantasies. "You see how it is? She's sore. I think we'd better leave them alone now ... You and I could drop in at the Chabanais before we go home ..." That suggestion appealed to Sophie, because while still in Prague she had often heard people talking about the Chabanais, and she was delighted at the thought of trying the Chabanais and judging for herself. But then we figured that considering the amount of money we had brought with us, the Chabanais would be too expensive. We'd just have to try and revive our interest in the carnival. While we were in the Caterpillar, Robinson must have had a scene with Madelon. They were both in a foul humor when they got out. You really couldn't have touched her with a ten-foot pole that evening. To smooth things over I suggested an absorbing amusement?

fishing for bottlenecks. Madelon accepted sulkily. Even so she beat us all hollow. She got her ring just over the cork and slipped it on just before the bell rang. Click! And that was that. The stand owner couldn't get over it. He gave her a half bottle of Grand-Due de Malvoison.[93] Just to give you an idea of how skillful she was. But it didn't make her happy. Right away she announced that she wouldn't drink it. "It's no good," she said. So Robinson uncorked the bottle and drank it. Down the hatch! At one gulp. A funny thing for him to do, because he practically never drank.

Then we came to the tin wedding. Biff! Bang! We all had a try with hard balls. It's depressing how clumsy I am at these things ... I congratulate Robinson. He beats me at any game. But not even his skill could make him smile. They both looked as if we were leading them off to slaughter. We tried hard, but nothing could put any life into them. "This is a carnival!" I yelled at them. For once I was completely out of ideas. My shouting things in their ears and trying to cheer them up didn't mean a thing to them. They didn't even hear me. "What about youth?" I asked them. "What are we going to do about it? ... Has youth stopped making merry? Look at me, ten years older than the rest of you! All right, sweetheart, what do you say?" He and Madelon looked at me as if I were drunk, gassed, nuts, and there was no point in even answering me ... no point in trying to speak to me, because I'd certainly be incapable of understanding anything they could say ... I wouldn't understand a thing ... maybe they're right, I said to myself, looking anxiously at the people around us.

But all those people were doing the things you do to have fun, they weren't nursing their little troubles like us. Far from it. They were getting something out of the carnival. A franc's worth here! ... Fifty centimes' worth there! ... Lights! Music, spiel, and candy ... They were buzzing around like flies, scads of them, with their little grubs in their arms, livid, pasty-faced babies, so pale in the glaring light that you could hardly see them. Just around their noses those babies had a bit of pink, in the area for colds and getting kissed. Among all the stands I immediately recognized the Gallery of the Nations ... A memory, I didn't mention it to the others.?That makes fifteen years that have gone by ... A long time ... And what a lot of friends I've lost along the way! I'd never have thought the Gallery of the Nations could drag itself out of the mud it was sunk in out there in SaintCloud ... But now it was all refurbished, as good as new, with music and everything. You gotta hand it to them. And all these people shooting. A shooting gallery always does business. And the egg was back again like me, there in the middle, supported by practically nothing, bobbing up and down. It cost two francs. We passed it by, we were too cold to try, it was best to keep moving. But not because we were short of change, our pockets were still full of change, our little pocket music.

I'd have tried anything just then to put some life into us, but no one was doing a thing to help. If Parapine had been with us, it would probably have been worse, seeing how gloomy he was with people. Luckily he'd stayed home to look after the loonies. I was sorry I'd come. Then Madelon started laughing after all, but there was nothing funny about her laugh. Robinson, who was beside her, snickered so as not to be different. Then Sophie started making jokes. That was all we needed.

As we were passing the photographer's booth, he noticed our hesitation. We had no great desire to go in, except Sophie maybe. But a moment later, thanks to our hesitation, we were at the mercy of his camera. He drawled out his commands, and we submitted on the cardboard bridge?he must have built it himself?of a purported ship,
La Belle France
. The name was written on imitation life belts. We stood there for quite some time, staring straight ahead, challenging the future. Other customers were waiting impatiently for us to come down off the bridge, and already they were avenging themselves for having to wait by not only finding us too ugly for words, but telling us so out loud.

They thought they could take advantage of our not being able to move. But they couldn't faze Madelon, she slanged them back with the full force of her Southern accent. She could be heard for miles around. She told them where to get off!

A magnesium flash. We all flinch. We each get a picture. We're even uglier than before. The rain comes through the canvas roof. Our feet are footsore and frozen stiff. The wind had found holes all over us while we were posing, so much so that there's hardly anything left of my overcoat.

All we can do is keep walking among the booths. I didn't dare suggest going back to Vigny. It was too early. Our teeth were already chattering with the cold and the heart-throb organ of the merry-go-round jangled our nerves till we were shivering even more. The end of the whole world?that's what the damned organ is laughing about. It bellows its message of disaster through its silver-plated kazoos, and the tune goes out to die in the environing darkness, along the pissy streets that come down from Montmartre.

The little housemaids from Brittany are definitely coughing a lot more than they did last winter when they'd just arrived in Paris. Their green-and-blue mottled thighs do their best to decorate the flanks of the wooden horses. The boys from Auvergne, who treat them to their rides, are cautious post-office clerks and, as everyone knows, never lay them without a rubber. They have no desire to catch it a second time. In expectation of love, the housemaids squirm and wiggle in the disgustingly melodious din of the merry-go-round. They're kind of sick to their stomachs, but that doesn't stop them from posing in the freezing cold, because this is the great moment, the time to try their youthful charms on the definitive lover, who may be there, already smitten, tucked away among the yokels in this frozen crowd. Love is still hanging back ... but it'll come, same as it does in the movies, and happiness with it. If the rich man's son loves you for just one evening, he'll never leave you ... It's been known to happen, and it's good enough. Naturally he's sweet, and naturally he's handsome, and naturally he's rich.

The old woman who keeps the newsstand over by the Métro doesn't give a damn about the future, she scratches her old conjunctivitis and slowly festers her eyes with her fingernails. An obscure pleasure that costs nothing. It's been going on for six years now, and her itching gets worse and worse.

Strollers, driven into groups by the bitter cold, gather around the lottery booth. A brazier of rear ends. They can't get in. So quickly, to warm themselves, they run, they bound into the knot of people across the way, waiting to get in to see the two-headed calf. Under cover of the urinal, a young candidate for unemployment quotes his price to a provincial couple flushed with excitement. The morals cop knows what's going on, but he doesn't care, his assignment at the moment is the entrance to the Café Miseux.[94] He's been watching the Café Miseux for a week. The instigator must operate in the tobacco shop or in the backroom of the feelthy bookshop next door. Anyway it was reported long ago. Either one or the other of them, it seems, procures underage girls, who appear to be selling flowers. Anonymous letters again. The chestnut vendor on the corner does a bit of informing too. He has to. Everything that's on the sidewalk belongs to the police. That machine-gun kind of, that you hear over there, shooting in crazy short bursts, is only the guy who runs the "Wheel of Death" on his motorcycle. An escaped convict, so they say, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he has crashed through his tent twice in this same spot and once a couple of years ago in Toulouse. Why can't he and his contraption smash up for good! Why can't he break his neck and spinal column once and for all! That noise would put anybody in a temper! The same goes for the streetcar with its bell, in less than a month it's killed two old folks in Bicętre, hugging the walls of the shanties. The bus on the other hand is quiet, it pulls up slowly on the Place Pigalle, taking every possible precaution, staggering a little, blowing its horn, all out of breath, with its four passengers, who get off as slowly and carefully as choir boys.

Strolling from booth to booth, from clump to clump of humanity, from merry-go-rounds to lotteries, we'd come to the end of the carnival, to the big dark vacant lot where the families go to pee ... Nothing to do but turn back. Retracing our steps, we ate chestnuts to work up a thirst. We got sore mouths but no thirst. There was a worm in the chestnuts, a cute little fellow. Naturally it was Madelon who got it. That was exactly when things started going really badly between us. Up until then we had kept ourselves more or less under control, but that worm really made her furious.