The High-Life (3 page)

Around four, I went to vomit against the cemetery wall.

I spent the whole afternoon thinking over my horrible situation. My dull life, my poor life sleeping under a mossy stone, was now turned upside down, at one go, Madame C. wouldn't give up her prey now. The little blue cat would no longer have the right to go play anywhere else but her place. I shouldn't have let myself get cornered so easily, of course, but how could a little runt, a four-and-a-half-feet tall (in heels) runt barely weighing eighty-five pounds resist a mass of over two hundred pounds swooping down on him with the suddenness of a ground swell? It's like how a crab can sleep peacefully in a rock crevice, and then the fisherman drives it out and sentences it to mill about among its peers before being boiled alive. Leave rue Froidevaux? It was out of the question. I could never live anywhere else. Yet I hated that street; but I walked along it as if within myself. It was the joyless street. It was my prison, walled in on the right by the horrible place Denfert-Rochereau, the ugliest square in Paris, with its stupid greenish lion squatting for all eternity. Unless I was going to the movies, I never went beyond square Georges-Lamarque and the statue of Ludovic Trarieux (1840-1904). To the left, avenue du Maine, its racket, its flashy vulgarity, and, all the way at the end, that Tour Montparnasse, whose ugliness chilled my heart every morning, and which I often imagined in flames, at night, before falling asleep. Facing it, the cemetery, that cemetery Strindberg had so loved. I had my routines on that street. Every morning, around ten o'clock, I would pace up and down, in both directions, rue Emile-Richard, which divided the cemetery in two. I called it boulevard Ossements, in homage to Leo Malet. I tended my father's grave with the utmost care. The flowers were replaced regularly. I wouldn't tolerate any animal coming to walk within this sacred area. Especially cats. They should not allow cats in cemeteries. I had bought a marine telescope to watch the beloved grave from my place. My plan was to acquire a rifle with telescopic sight before long, the latest model, equipped with a silencer, to shoot down any animal that might come along and soil the grave of Rene Marlaud (1902-1953). To that end, I put aside a considerable portion of my salary every month. I wouldn't have any problem getting a gun license, thanks to a friend of my father who became my guardian after his death. Rene Marlaud (1902-1953) deserved nothing less. He'd been a model state servant. It was from him that I'd gotten this almost pathological taste for a job well done. He had taken part in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, in 1942. A police officer highly rated by his superiors, he had taught me what it was to be a man with a sense of duty. I was nine when he died, in 1953. Some years later, they gave me to understand that he'd killed himself, but it was never proven. I basically didn't know my mother. I don't even know what she looked like, because my father got rid of every photo of her. I've been led to believe that he gave her up to the Gestapo. At least that's what some people have long insinuated. I don't know what to think myself. What's certain is that he divorced her in 1942, in the middle of the Occupation, and that my mother had had to take back her maiden name, Jacob. "Just to teach her some manners," my father said, because she had had an affair and hadn't hid it from him. "Your mother was a whore," he'd simply say when I'd ask some overly insistent questions about she to whom I owed my life. He'd add nothing, and, throughout my childhood, the word "mother" was linked to the word "whore." Years later, I'd repeat this sentence to myself every now and then, in the office, and it filled me with shame. On the other hand, the vile act in which my father had taken part didn't really gall me. I condemned it, of course, but it didn't turn my stomach. My indifference struck me as a sign of an underlying moral defect. The Jewish blood that flowed through my veiu, and of which I should have been justifiably proud, was not something I accepted; but the ignominy of my father: that I took on completely, to the point of defending his memory every time someone attacked it in front of me, and of watching over his burial place for years like a loyal dog. On the other hand, when someone mentioned my mother's martyrdom in my presence, I only pretended to sympathize. But deep down, I felt nothing. And I thought to myself that what happened to her was normal for a whore.

At seven o'clock, seeing that I was not preparing to leave my office, and probably afraid of being obliged to pay me overtime, my boss grabbed me by the back of my jacket and unceremoniously threw me out. I came back to the shop to say goodbye to him, but he closed the metal shutter on me. I withdrew my hand just in time. I didn't hold it against him. He was a bit of a brute, but really very nice, deep down. There I was, exiled, once again. I was condemned to pass by number 47.1 crossed rue Froidevaux, I pressed up against the cemetery wall, I would have liked to have melted into it, the ivy lashed my face, my gray overcoat blended in with the saltpeter, I scraped my fingernails, but it wasn't night yet, alas, the dead were so peaceful on the other side, it wasn't night yet, August again, the music of time, hot and humid, on the other side lay my father, Rene Marlaud, 1902-1953, and no trace of my mother, gone up in smoke somewhere in Germany, August, again, but when would night fall, and Madame C., on the other side, watching me with her hippopotamus eye. I couldn't help looking away from the gray wall. The concierge's head emerged from the marsh. It must have been terribly hot, and yet I was cold. I lifted up the collar of my camelhair overcoat. I caught cold so easily. All my life I've been cold. Except when my father took me in his arms and let me stroke his prickly bearded face. August, all those leaves, the insects clinging to my hair, buzzing, and boulevard Ossements itself, in its greenish melancholy. There was a strange, miserable silence. You wanted to spin round, spin, spin, until you fall, an airplane in flames, like when you were small. And those grassy smells coming from who knows where, gardens, over there, probably, beyond the lime trees, in the splendor of the hollyhock. A young woman in a summer dress was weeping in the middle of the street, silently. She was pulling up, in vain, a dirty underskirt, which kept falling back down. The ivy, on the cemetery walls, had dark tints to it. The wire fencing that protected it from the living was painted purple. Yet if you wanted to, you could walk against the grayish stones, as I was, it was a question of habit. I was gazing at a chicken gizzard, from which some coarse-ground grains were spilling out, some tiny pebbles. Life had never seemed to me so slow and atrocious. Terrifying. The sky was taking on an ugly color of spoiled calf's liver. It would rain, that night. With a storm, perhaps, and a very strong wind.

Madame C. crossed the street and took me by the hand.

The strangeness of our sexual relations had put me off a bit in the beginning, of course, but then I ended up taking some pleasure in them. You get used to anything. I would wash myself for a long time after lovemaking. After all, it wasn't so unpleasant as all that to be a phallus-man, the w y there used to be cannon-men in the circuses. Madame C. was often very melancholic. She was only inexhaustible when it came to her childhood. Outside of that, and the question of the toilet, she was silent most of the time. She never spoke to me of her husband. I only knew that I looked like him. One evening, she confided to me that she was bored absolutely shitless on this earth, bored beyond all belief. Once she had extirpated me from her vagina, she knocked back about ten Calvados and fell asleep, curled up like a monstrous fetus. I quietly slipped out and returned to my little apartment. Sometimes, Madame C. made me think of an exiled queen, or an Oriental princess whom seclusion had made obese. She had perhaps been very beautiful in a former life. One evening, I brought her an old Frehel record. "You know, Madame, it's the song that she was listening to in
Pepe le Moko
." I never managed to call her anything other than "Madame," because she intimidated me. "It's beautiful, my little Adolphe, it's so beautiful!" She wept.

Madame C. was very fond of reading. She often opened up the mail of the building's residents ("all bastards," she confided to me, "you wouldn't believe the filth I read. If I don't like the letters, I don't let them have them. The others I seal up again, they don't notice a thing. Anyway, screw them. Humanity, Bastards Incorporated, my little blue cat"). She was sentimental: Max Du Veuzit, Guy des Cars, Gilbert Cesbron, Didier Decoin. For her birthday, I gave her
Pnin
. She asked me if this Nabokov was a Communist. I reassured her. "You'll see, it's very beautiful. It's the story of a bachelor. It's everyman's story. It's heartbreaking." She stopped at the tenth page. "Your thing's stupid," she told me simply. Same failure with Pierre- Jean Jouve and
The Desert World
. "What's with these fags? You going all village priest on me?" I had no luck with my books. I would have probably done better to let her read what she liked. But no. I was stubborn. I couldn't stand that she didn't like the same things I did. Svevo's
As a Man Grows Older
was the final straw. She thought I was making fun of her. "I'm forty-eight, my little Adolphe, I'm not an old woman yet, remember that!" She was an offended woman. She had probably suffered too much in the past, Madame C. had grown ill tempered. I was discouraged. I didn't have much to say to her. Our relations were beginning to disgust me. Moreover, I had been feeling a terrible sense of guilt since my romance began: my father's grave was a bit neglected. I didn't take the same care as before in hunting down its polluters.

It was toward the end of August that the drama broke out. I say drama, but that isn't the right word. There's no drama with us, messieurs, nor tragedy: there is only burlesque and obscenity. We may not be happy, but we get a good laugh. A hollow one, of course, but still. And then, let's admit it, sorrow is funny. It's hypocrites who claim the opposite (besides, those great humanists of ours secretly chuckle when they admire the disorder of the world). One evening Madame C. wanted us to go out together to the movies. I wasn't that keen on being seen with her, but as she insisted, I ended up giving in. It was a porno that someone had recommended to her,
Barbara Broadcast,
which they were playing at the "Maine," just behind the lodge. I personally don't have anything against pornos—quite the contrary—and I obediently followed Madame C. After all, a bad porno is better than a good film by Lelouche, or racking your brains over whether Romy Schneider is going to lave an abortion or not in Sautet's latest film. Pornography isn't always where you think it is. The film was far from crap. Two or three scenes were even beautiful, provocative. The main actress was rather moving. Madame C. held her breath. There weren't many audience members in the theater, luckily, her six and a half feet weren't in anyone's way. Poor audience, sparse, timid, touching. When the lights came up, Madame C. stood upwithout a word. She didn't seem her usual self. She didn't utter a peep the whole way to the lodge. She held me by the hand and squeezed me very tightly. I could tell she was aroused. Once we got to the lodge, she undressed feverishly. Then she sat down on a stool and looked at me solemnly: "You know what I found most moving in that film, my little blue cat, is when the cook fucked the baroness up the ass in the middle of all those simmering dishes ... What do you say we try it'? ..." Without waiting for me to answer, she grabbed me, tore off my clothes, and tried to insert me between her enormous buttocks. This time the idea of such a journey drove me crazy. I managed to slip away from her, the horror of the situation increased my strength, it was too much, the runt revolted, he yelled, he hopped from stool to stool, and finally, he knocked Madame C. out with an enormous pot. Then he ran back to his place, naked as a worm, and he locked himself in.

I didn't leave my apartment for two weeks. I phoned my boss to tell him that I was seriously ill. Terrible asthma attacks laid me up in bed. I was living in a state of perpetual terror. The slightest sound made me jump. At any moment, especially at night, I thought I heard the elephantine step of Madame C. in the stairwell. My door was securely bolted, but I knew very well that, with a simple flick of her wrist, she was capable of smashing it to bits. I had nightmares where King Kong was chasing me so he could sodomize me. Giant women disguised as little girls surrounded me, clapping their hands. I was sinking into quicksand, I was sinking straight to the bottom, unable even to cry out. Sometimes, Madame C.'s vagina was endowed with teeth, and she threatened to cut me in two if I wasn't nice to her. In the morning, I was so depressed, so agonized, that I didn't even have the courage to keep an eye on my father's grave. I spent the whole day flopped on my bed. I closed the shutters so as not to see the cemetery crushed by the heat. And, sometimes, I missed Madame C., and I wondered why she wasn't coming to see me and I burst into tears. I was terribly cold.

I began to recover, slowly. I was no longer afraid to leave my place. I was ready to apologize to Madame C. for having knocked her out. So I stopped by the lodge. She was no longer there. A little old woman, all shriveled, had taken her place. "What, you don't know what happened? Don't you read the paper? Madame C. tried to kill herself, she threw herself under the train, at Gaite station. Funny, isn't it? The poor woman must not have been in possession of all her faculties anymore. And then, hold on, monsieur, would you believe it, the old biddy didn't even manage to get squashed. It was the train that went off the rails. Six people had minor injuries, yes monsieur. I myself say that women like that are a public menace, that's all there is to it. First off, the woman was just too fat. It was abrr,rmal. Where is she? At Sainte-Anne, I think. Yes, with the crazies." The little old woman seemed beside herself with joy, telling me the misfortunes of the woman she had replaced. I left, shrugging. All that no longer concerned me.

Monsieur Rameau greeted me coolly at the shop. He didn't even ask me if I was feeling better. He himself wasn't in good health just then. He confided to me that he was afraid he had cancer. He sat in the shop, in front of his plastic flowers, hands on his knees, for hours at a time. He would just stare into space at who knows what. Good breeding no longer told. Good breeding wasn't good for anything anymore, not even for humiliating me.