The Bark Tree (37 page)

“…”

“What a life, Théo, you can’t imagine it. You don’t know anything. You don’t understand this war. You don’t understand your father. Stay here, Théo, in this house. And go to school every day. Work hard. Learn Greek, Latin, maths, history, physics, gym and chemistry. Learn everything properly, Théo. But I—I must go.”

“…”

“Now. Now. Now.”

For the last time, the gate squeaked. Théo, at the gate, kissed his mother with all due respect and affection. They felt the very cold, very icy rain falling on their heads. Alberte disappeared, on her way to the station. And Bébé was snoring on his bed, overcome by alcohol. Then Théo was alone, really alone, and there was an imaginary woman in front of him, who was wearing nothing but black stockings (they’re terrific, black stockings). Alone, what did he do? He was tired of being alone. Alcohol and masturbation reigned in the half-house, whose inferior plaster was turning to mud.

And as she went down the steps at the Gare du Nord, the steps down to the metro, she met a man who was conspicuous for a scar on his forehead.

—oooooo—oooooo—

Saturnin, who had been in the other war, was raised (raise the flag) to the rank of captain; this was the occasion of a glorious orgy. Around 2 in the morning, Saturnin went back to his room; as he didn’t have the slightest desire to go to bed, he started to write a few pages which he intended to add to the work he had been preparing for nearly a year:

Could be that some readers, ordinary privates or corporals, have read as far as this, being desirous of educating themselves and eager to understand. Let them tremble, then! For I am t-a-l-k-i-n-g to them: Let them be burned, and then reborn from their ashes! Let them be torn to pieces, and then reborn from their remains! Let them rot, and then be reborn from their putrefaction! Let them be hammered, laminated, stunned, morselated, calcined, fulminated, and then be reborn from their bites! Let them be desperate, and then be reborn from their despair. Let them be shit on, and then reborn from their scatological state! Let them be pissed on, and then reborn from their humiliation! Let them be convulsed, soaked, breeched, plucked, embossed, booted, clogged up, cut up, smashed up, and then let them be reborn from their discomfiture!

But who? How the hell should I know and how the hell should they know themselves!

Gentle, gentle reader, whether you are a private or a corporal, pock-marked or floury-bottomed, I won’t pretend any longer—I’m boozed, boozed as a coot, disgustingly boozed. But there’s no denying that I preserve my dignity. Yes, I preserve my dignity.

There’s sure to be some people who’ll tell me: you can’t be a real man, because you’re not puking. To anybody that says that, I’ll say: Who d’you think you are, you scum of the earth? —just take a look at yourself. Looks to me as if you’re taking me for someone else. Thanks to these striking, convincing, ineluctable arguments, I shall go on looking like a dignified, powerful, Saturnin sort of guy. Not to mention that, joking apart, it helps my great work on its way. Doesn’t it? Look at the number at the bottom of the page in the middle and compare it with the number on the last page, well, there’s not much left to read, is there? Some people will be as pleased as anything. I can just imagine them, the idle, lazy wretches, the ones that are rubbing their hands because it’ll soon be finished. You needn’t be so pleased, my little men. You’ll regret it! You can take it from me. But there’s other people who’re saying: Already! Already finished! no, really, when I think about them I asperge my gullet with the peppermint tea of pride, I massage my skull with the lotion of vanity, I rub my ribs with the Eau de Cologne of self-respect and I polish my toes with the brush of nitwittedness. When I imagine that there’s some people who’ll go on reading it, who are going on reading it. No, really. Come, my children, let me press you to my heart. You want to go on? Do, then! Go on! Forward! Forward! Forward! Courage!

I certainly am drunk. I might even say that alcohol has made me more obfuscated than the darkest night. But don’t think you’ve got me cornered. Anyone who got that into his head would be orbipercussing his ass with the middle finger of mediocrity. Which would be a great lack of elegance on his part. Tch, tch! However that may be, dear Meussieu corporal or private, kindly accept my heartfelt sympathy and believe me, I remain, yours very truly: Signed: Saturnin on active service, Captain Belhôtel.

—oooooo—oooooo—

Over toward Modane, it was snowing so hard and so fast, shells were falling so abundantly, there were so many enemies all around and all about, that the people who were really seriously disguised, I mean the ones with stars on their sleeves and grand crosses on their pectoral muscles, decided to get out of it with their arms and luggage. It was a magnificent retreat. No really, ever since the one from Russia and the one from Charleroi, there had never been a more magnificent one. It was ghastly. The winter was especially terrible, because winter is always decent in periods of gunfire, it does its job well. So some soldiers died because it was cold. There were illnesses, infections, epidemics. Some soldiers died because they were ill. There were also the guns, the machine guns, the shells, the gases. Some soldiers died because they were killed. Ah! it was a magnificent retreat. One of those magnificent retreats that the papers, they say they’re strategic, practicly a victry. And every day the guys that had stars on their chests and grand crosses
sulle maniche,
they esspected an unesspected victry on account of the prayers they were sending up to the good Lord and the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc. But the victry never came, on account of all those myths, they aren’t worth two cents. And the Etruscans were occupying towns and villages all over the place. Etienne dragged his kit bag and his miserable boots over roads white with snow, roads ploughed up by shells, roads where the gases that kill people lingered as if they were coming out of fumaroles, you even always had to sleep more than six-foot
-
three above the ground.

Narcense was a deserter. Bébé Toutout didn’t leave it at that. But we won’t dwell on this too much. Every day some airplanes made a little trip around the town and sowed a few bombs. Things were collapsing among the civilians, but it must be admitted that they were also enjoying themselves no end. They didn’t live in the cellars, because of the gases, because the Etruscans only had heavy gases. So there were great goings-on on the roofs. The night clubs had established themselves up there, under the stars. People danced on the snow. It was so lovely to dance in the cold. And it was dangerous, what was more, as you risked getting pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis and influenza. But what wouldn’t people have risked? It was a glorious winter, a glorious winter that killed people off at every turn. And Chrissmas, what a glorious Chrissmas it was. So many couples made love that night that the whole town seemed to be caterwauling. And the snow fell, impassive and cold (even so, we wouldn’t want it to be hot), white (even so, we wouldn’t want it to be black), impeccable and terrible on the despairing towns where the women eagerly got their bellies filled by the last men still there.

Etienne hadn’t got a kit bag any more, nor a rifle, what was the use of it? He hadn’t got any boots any more, that was the most annoying thing. He hadn’t got a scarf any more. Ah, shit, he’ll catch a cold! His regiment (odd sort of possessive pronoun) finally got to Epinal, in little pieces. It wasn’t snowing there, but it was freezing. And this war that was supposed to have lasted two or three months. And those idiots of Etruscans who couldn’t get around to winning. It was lamentable, it was enough to make you put your eyes out with your thumbs.

At about the same period, that’s to say, when it was still snowing, the G.M.P. heard there was a deserter in town. An anonymous denunciation. Bébé Toutout hadn’t wanted to leave it at that. A deserter? That was interesting. They sent some gendarmes to investigate the matter from a little closer. It was true. The man lodging with the Pigeonnier woman was an absentee. They went and picked him up one day when the women were out shopping. They brought him before the officers who’d baptized themselves judges: So you’re a deserter? they ask him, and he answered: Yes. And then the brass hats frowned. Seeing that he doesn’t want the enemy to kill him, right! we’ll be the ones to kill him. In short, they condemned the fellow to death and they stuck him against a wall and they inserted twelve bullets in his skin, in the name of patriotism. That’s how Narcense died.

Alberte never knew what had happened to him; the post office is so badly run in wartime.

—oooooo—oooooo—

They presented Etienne with a pretty little gold stripe, and stuck him in another regiment; it so happened that his immediate superior was not unknown to him; in fact, his name was Saturnin Belhôtel. They shook each other’s mitt in friendly fashion, and Saturnin said to Etienne:

“I’ll take you to my brother’s place.”

My brother’s place was 47 rue Thiers, the most expensive, most famous, best-frequented brothel in Epinal. Thirty of the most docile and conscientious girls imaginable worked there. The spondulics were accumulating in Dominique’s piggy bank, and when they were visited by generals, Camélia herself, in person, was prepared to do some of the work.

There was quite a bit of pushing and shoving at the door. The two men made their way through the crowd of rutting N.C.O.’s and managed to reach the café. A suffocating smell of tobacco, wine, leather and armpits swamped their nostrils; but, triumphing over this initial revulsion, they crossed the dance floor in the midst of a colossal uproar, and reached the table the boss kept for his brother. The girls swooped down on them. There were cross-eyed ones, skeletal ones, ulcerated ones, slobbering ones, dilapidated ones, bald ones, snotty
-
nosed ones, elephantiae ones, bandy-legged ones; they were all smiling and wiggling their asses.

“Lay off, lay off!” Saturnin yelled at them crudely, and then he shouted:

“Camélia! Where are Tata and Rara?”

Seeing that Saturnin was the boss’s brother, they were sent to him; two rather pretty girls, tuberculous to the seventh degree, came and sat down beside him, squealing a little, as they were anxious to seem gay. This tore their chests out of them, and when they’d finished scraping out their lungs, they laughed like anything. By some astonishing mystery, their eyes still seemed to expect something out of this immense fuckery. They were given some glasses and the wherewithal to fill them, after which no one took any more notice of them. The player piano gave painful birth to a waltz, and stripes and naked breasts revolved to its rhythm.

Then Saturnin said:

“Well?”

Etienne replied:

“Well?”

These were serious questions. How could they answer them? Where could they start? With the door? When he thought about the door, Etienne couldn’t get over it. Could they talk about that now? What a bad joke. What the hell could they have done with it? But who on earth cared about it now?

“Do you remember Les Mygales? That’s where we met. In an odd sort of way, I must say. I haven’t often had the opportunity of meeting you since. What about the guy who was strung up in the tree, do you know what happened to him?”

“He deserted.”

Etienne swallowed the potion that had been placed in front of him, a potion very probably made from bidet water, the nectar of brothels and the hydromel of whorehouses. To desert. He leaned over to Saturnin:

“Braver that I am,” he murmured.

“Don’t talk like that in front of the girls,” muttered Saturnin. “They repeat everything you say.”

And he moved his gold braid up and down over Tata’s stomach.

“Shall we go up?” she suggested, but the ex-concierge didn’t condescend to answer.

“Your door, that was all hokum,” he said to Etienne.

“I knew it was.”

“We really went to some trouble, Narcense and I did, to find a worthy place to put it. We carted it from apartment to apartment, from castle to manor house, from hotel to barracks, always hoping to discover the lost room that corresponded to it.”

“And you didn’t find it?”

“No. Naturally we didn’t. And yet we were operating methodically, we were following a genuine clue. Nothing to be done, though, it was all imagination. In the end, we burned it. As we were breaking it up, I noticed the name Taupe carved on one of the bits, next to the name of a woman.”

“Yes, his name, Gérard Taupe. I knew that, too. A souvenir of a love affair, that door “

“Then you must also know?”

“That he’s dead. Yes. Prewar stuff, all that. Don’t you think? Tell me, what’s happened to your sister, Mme. Cloche?”

“Already decorated three times for heroism.”

“It’s not true!”

“It is. Blood excites her. And what about your pal, Pierre Le Grand?

“Well now, I haven’t the slightest idea what’s become of him. He’s another strange one.”

“And your missus?”

“All right. Thanks.”

“And your big son?”

“He’s at the lycée, working for his exams.”

The women were getting impatient.

“Shall we go up?” they kept asking every five minutes.

But the two men went on talking without a break, and were swapping reminiscences of their childhood. Finally, Camélia came to call them to order; the girls were wanted elsewhere. So they went up, fucked, and came down again and went on drinking.

The heavy atmosphere muffled the shouts and songs; the player piano barely scratched them and words were dissipated in slow and ineffective oscillations. Idle words. Outside there was a foot of snow and minus fifteen times as many degrees centigrade.

Etienne and Saturnin couldn’t make up their minds to leave.

“Don’t you find that nothingness absorbs being,” said the latter to the former, who retorted:

“Wouldn’t you rather say that being conjugates nothingness?”

When they’d reached their seventeenth glass of liquor, they fell asleep.

A colleague, Lieutenant Themistocles Troc, recognized them dozing on their table and went up and shook them, bellowing in their ears: