Nausea (10 page)

The little old man next to me is surely Coffier; one of the women of the group, the brunette, is devouring him with her eyes, all the while smiling at the Doctor. She seems to be thinking, "There's Monsieur Comer, president of the Chamber of Commerce; how intimidating he looks, they say he's so frigid." But M. Coffier deigns to see nothing: these people are from the Boulevard Maritime, they do not belong to his world. Since I have been coming to this street to see the Sunday hat-raising, I have learned to distinguish people from the Boulevard and people from the Coteau. When a man wears a new overcoat, a soft felt hat, a dazzling shirt, when he creates a vacuum in passing, there's no mistaking it: he is someone from the Boulevard Maritime. You know people from the Coteau Vert by some kind of shabby, sunken look. They have narrow shoulders and an air of insolence on their worn faces. This fat gentleman holding a child by the handùI'd swear he comes from the Coteau: his face is all grey and his tie knotted like a string.

The fat man comes near us: he stares at M. Comer. But, just before he crosses his path, he turns his head away and begins joking in a fatherly way with his little boy. He takes a few more steps, bent over his son, his eyes gazing in the child's eyes, nothing but a father; then suddenly he turns quickly towards us, throws a quick glance at the little old man and makes an ample, quick salute with a sweep of his arm. Disconcerted, the little boy has not taken off his hat: this is an affair between grown-ups.

At the corner of the Rue Basse-de-Vieille our column abuts into a column of the faithful coming out of Mass: a dozen persons rush forward, shaking each other's hand and whirling

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round, but the hat-raising is over too quickly for me to catch the details; the Eglise Sainte-Cecile stands a monstrous mass above the fat, pale crowd: chalk white against a sombre sky; its sides hold a little of the night's darkness behind these shining walls. We are off again in a slightly modified order. M. Corner has been pushed behind me. A lady dressed in navy blue is glued to my left side. She has come from Mass. She blinks her eyes, a little dazzled at coming into the light of morning. The gentleman walking in front of her, who has such a thin neck, is her husband.

On the other side of the street a gentleman, holding his wife by the arm, has just whispered a few words in her ear and has started to smile. She immediately wipes all expression from her chalky, cream coloured face and blindly takes a few steps. There is no mistaking these signs: they are going to greet somebody. Indeed, after a moment, the gentleman throws his hands up. When his fingers reach his felt hat, they hesitate a second before coming down delicately on the crown. While he slowly raises his hat, bowing his head a little to help its removal, his wife gives a little start and forces a young smile on her face. A bowing shadow passes them: but their twin smiles do not disappear immediately: they stay on their lips a few instants by a sort of magnetism. The lady and gentleman have regained their impassibility by the time they pass me, but a certain air of gaiety still lingers around their mouths.

It's finished: the crowd is less congested, the hat-raisings less frequent, the shop windows have something less exquisite about them: I am at the end of the Rue Tournebride. Shall I cross and go up the street on the other side? I think I have had enough: I have seen enough pink skulls, thin, distinguished and faded countenances. I am going to cross the Place Marignan. As I cautiously extricate myself from the column, the face of a real gentleman in a black hat springs up near me. The husband of the lady in navy blue. Ah, the fine, long dolichocephalic skull planted with short, wiry hair, the handsome American moustache sown with silver threads. And the smile, above all, the admirable, cultivated smile. There is also an eyeglass, somewhere on a nose. Turning to his wife he says:

"He's a new factory designer. I wonder what he can be doing here. He's a good boy, he's timid and he amuses me."

Standing against the window of Julien, the pork butcher's shop, the young designer who has just done his hair, still pink,

45his eyes lowered, an obstinate look on his face, has all the appearance of a voluptuary. This is undoubtedly the first Sunday he has dared cross the Rue Tournebride. He looks like a lad who has been to his First Communion. He has crossed his hands behind his back and turned his face towards the window with an air of exciting modesty; without appearing to see, he looks at four small sausages shining in gelatine, spread out on a bed of parsley.

A woman comes out of the shop and takes his arm. His wife. She is quite young, despite her pocked skin. She can stroll along the Rue Tournebride as much as she likes, no one will mistake her for a lady; she is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers.

I reach the Brasserie Vezelise on the stroke of one. The old men are there as usual. Two of them have already started to eat. Four are playing cards and drinking aperitifs. The others are standing, watching them play while their table is being laid. The biggest, the one with a flowing beard, is a stockbroker. Another is a retired commissioner from the Inscription Maritime. They eat and drink like men of twenty. They eat sauerkraut on Sunday. The late arrivals question the others who are already eating:

"The usual Sunday sauerkraut?"

They sit down and breathe sighs of relaxation:

"Mariette, dear, a beer without a head and a sauerkraut."

This Mariette is a buxom wench. As I sit down at a table in the back a red-faced old man begins coughing furiously while being served with a vermouth.

"Come on, pour me out a little more," he says, coughing.

But she grows angry herself: she hadn't finished pouring:

"Well, let me pour, will you? Who said anything to you? You holler before you're hurt."

The others begin to laugh.

"Touche!"

The stockbroker, going to his seat, takes Mariette by the shoulders:

"It's Sunday, Mariette. I guess we have our boyfriend to take us to the movies?"

"Oh sure! This is Antoinette's day off. I've got a date in here all day."

The stockbroker has taken a chair opposite the clean-shaven, lugubrious-looking old man. The clean-shaven old man immedi-

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ately begins an animated story. The stockbroker does not listen to him: he makes faces and pulls at his beard. They never listen to each other.

I recognize my neighbours: small businessmen in the neighbourhood. Sunday is their maids' day off. So they come here, always sitting at the same table. The husband eats a fine rib of underdone beef. He looks at it closely and smells it from time to time. The wife picks at her plate. A heavy blonde woman of forty with red, downy cheeks. She has fine, hard breasts under her satin blouse. Like a man, she polishes off a bottle of Bordeaux at every meal.

I am going to read Eugenie Grandet. It isn't that I get any great pleasure out of it: but I have to do something. I open the book at random: the mother and daughter are speaking of Eugenie's growing love:

Eugenie kissed her hand saying:

"How good you are, dear Mama!"

At these words, the maternal old face, worn with long suffering, lights u-p.

"Don't you think he's nice?" Eugenie asked.

Mme Grandet answered only by a smile; then, after a moment of silence, she lowered her voice and said;

"Could you love him already? It would be wrong."

'Wrong?" Eugenie repeated. "Why? You like him, Nanon likes him, why shouldn't I like him? Now, Mama, let's set the table for his luncheon."

She dropped her work, her mother did likewise, saying:

"You are mad."

But she wanted to justify her daughter's madness by sharing it.

Eugenie called Nanon:

"What do you want, Mam'selle?"

"You'll have cream for noon, Nanon?"

"Ah, for noonùyes," the old servant answered.

"Well, give him his coffee very strong. 1 heard M. des Gras-sins say that they make coffee very strong in Paris. Put in a lot."

"Where do you want me to get it?"

"Buy some."

"And if Monsieur sees me?"

"He's out in the fields."

My neighbours had been silent ever since I had come, but, suddenly, the husband's voice distracted me from my reading.

47The husband, amused and mysterious:

"Say, did you see that?"

The woman gives a start and looks, coming out of a dream. He eats and drinks, then starts again, with the same malicious air:

"Ha ha!"

A moment of silence, the woman has fallen back into her dream.

Suddenly she shudders and asks:

"What did you say?"

"Suzanne, yesterday."

"Ah, yes," the woman says, "she went to see Victor."

"What did I tell you?"

The woman pushes her plate aside impatiently.

"It's no good."

The side of her plate is adorned with lumps of gristle she spits out. The husband follows his idea.

"That little woman there . . ."

He stops and smiles vaguely. Across from us, the old stockbroker is stroking Mariette's arm and breathing heavily. After a moment:

"I told you so, the other day."

"What did you tell me?"

"Victorùthat she'd go and see him. What's the matter?" he asks brusquely with a frightened look, "don't you like that?"

"It's no good."

"It isn't the same any more," he says with importance, "it isn't the way it was in Hecart's time. Do you know where he is, Hecart?"

"Domremy, isn't he?"

"Yes, who told you?"

"You did. You told me Sunday."

She eats a morsel of crumb which is scattered on the paper tablecloth. Then, her hand smoothing the paper on the edge of the table, with hesitation:

"You know, you're mistaken, Suzanne is more . . ."

"That may well be, my dear, that may well be," he answers, distractedly. He tries to catch Mariette's eyes, makes a sign to her.

"It's hot."