Death on the Installment Plan (13 page)

Suddenly the Brétontés stood up … They offered to stake … their castle in Normandy! They announced it solemnly … on three cards! … And little Kroing won … He didn’t seem happy about it … Brétonté stood up again … “I’m staking the house,” he muttered. “The house we live in!”

My mother was thunderstruck … She jumped up like a spring. My father couldn’t hold her back …

She climbed up on the stage with her limp … in a voice still shaken with emotion she addressed those big gamblers: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to take our little boy home … he ought to have been in bed long ago … We’re going to take our table …” Nobody raised any objection. They all acted as if they’d been hit on the head … They were staring into the void … We picked up our table and whisked it out fast … We were afraid they’d call us back …

When we got to the Pont Solférino, we stopped a moment for breath …

Years later my father was still telling that story … with priceless gestures … My mother didn’t care for it … It stirred up too much emotion in her … He always pointed out the exact place in the middle of the table where we plain people had seen millions and millions vanish in a few minutes, and all a family’s honor and all its castles go up in smoke.

I didn’t learn very quickly with Grandma Caroline. Even so, the day came when I could count up to a hundred and read better than she could. I was ready to take up addition. It was time for me to go to school.

They chose the grade school on the rue des Jeûneurs, right near the shop, the dark door on the other side of the Carrefour des Francs-Bourgeois.

You went down a long corridor and there was the classroom. It looked out on a little court, and on the other side there was a wall so high that the blue sky was blotted out. To keep us from looking up, there was also the big tin shed that covered part of the yard. We were expected to concentrate on our lessons and not to bother the teacher. I hardly got to know him, all I remember is his spectacles, his big stick, and his cuffs on the desk.

It was Grandma who took me to school for eight days, on the ninth I fell sick. In the middle of the afternoon the matron brought me home …

Once I got to the shop, I couldn’t stop puking. Waves of fever ran through me … a heat so dense that I thought I had turned into somebody else. It was kind of fun if I only hadn’t had to throw up so much. My mother was suspicious at first, she thought I had eaten too much nougat … It wasn’t my way … She begged me to control myself, to make an effort not to vomit so much. The shop was full of people. When she took me to the can, she was afraid somebody’d swipe her lace. I was feeling worse than ever. I threw up a whole basinful. My head began to boil. I couldn’t hide my joy … All sorts of funny things were going on in my head.

I’d always had a big head, a good deal bigger than other children. I could never wear their berets. Suddenly, as I was puking, my mother remembered this monstrous deformity of mine … She was worried sick.

“Auguste, do you suppose he’s coming down with meningitis on us? That would be just our luck … it’s all we needed … That would really be the end! …” I finally stopped vomiting … I was baked in heat … I was terribly interested … I’d never suspected so much stuff could fit inside my noodle … fantasies … weird sensations. At first everything looked red … Like a cloud all swollen with blood … right in the middle of the sky … Then it disintegrated … and took the form of a Lady Customer … enormous … gigantic … She began to order us about … up there in the sky … She was waiting for us … hanging in midair … She commanded us to get busy … she made signs … to get a move on, the whole lot of us! … to clear out of the Passage p.d.q… . Every last one of us … There wasn’t a moment to lose!

And then she came down, she came toward us under the glass roof … She filled the whole Passage … an enormous strutting figure … She didn’t want a single shopkeeper left in his shop … not one of our neighbors was allowed to stay put … Even Madame Méhon came along. She had grown three hands and four gloves … I could see we were going out for a good time. Words danced around us like around actors … Impassioned cadences, surprise effects … magnificent, irresistible inflections

The gigantic Lady Customer had stuffed her sleeves full of our lace … She cleared out the showease … right out in the open … She wrapped herself in point lace, whole mantillas, enough chasubles to cover twenty priests … And amid the frills and finery she grew and grew …

All the little good-for-nothings in the Passage … the umbrella vendors … Visios of the tobacco pouches … the girls from the pastry shop … they were waiting … The tragic and glamorous Madame Cortilène was there beside us … her revolver slung on a strap … It was full of perfume and she was spraying the whole place … Madame Gounouyou with the veils, the one who’d been shut up indoors for years on account of her runny eyes, and the caretaker in his cocked hat … they were all in a huddle as though getting ready for some shindig, all in their Sunday best, and even little Gaston, one of the bookbinder’s kids that had died, he had come back for the occasion … his mother was just nursing him. He was sitting on her lap good as gold, waiting to be taken for a walk. She was holding his hoop for him.

Old Aunt Armide drove in from the cemetery in Thiais; she drew up in a brougham at the end of the Passage. She had just come for the drive … She had grown so old since the previous winter that she had no face at all, only a lump of soft dough in its place … I recognized her anyway by the smel! … She gave my mama her arm. My father Auguste was all ready, slightly ahead of time as usual. His watch hung from his neck, as big as an alarm clock. His rig was something very special, morning coat, straw hat, hard rubber bicycle, cock in evidence, stockings molded by his calves. All spiffed up like that, with a flower in his buttonhole, he got on my nerves worse than ever. My poor mother, overcome with embarrassment, returned his compliments … Madame Méhon, the old battle-ax, was carrying Tom balanced on her hat in among the feathers… She made him bite everybody who came by.

As we trooped along behind the enormous Customer, there got to be more and more of us. We pushed and jostled in her wake … And the Lady kept growing … If she hadn’t bent down, she’d have gone through the glass roof … As we were passing by, the printer … death notices and visiting cards … popped out of his cellar, pushing a baby carriage with his two brats in it … there wasn’t much life in them either … All bundled up in paper money … Nothing but hundred-franc notes … all counterfeit … so that was his racket … The music dealer from 34, who owned a phonograph, six mandolins, three sets of bagpipes, and a piano, refused to leave anything behind … He wanted us to take the whole lot with us … We harnessed ourselves to his showease, and the whole thing collapsed under the strain. There was a terrible crash.

An orchestra of brilliant soloists pours from the stage door of the Plush Barn, the café-concert across from 96 … They get together a long way from the giantess … they blare out three terrific chords … violins, bagpipes, and harps … the trombones and double basses blow and scrape so loud and lovely that we all howl with delight …

Slender, trim usherettes with fragile little caps are bouncing all around us … They fly through the air and land in the tangerines … At 48 the three elderly sisters, who hadn’t set foot outside their shop in fifty-two years, who are always so courteous, so patient with their customers, suddenly start driving out the clientele with big sticks … Two old bags conk out on their sidewalk, disembowelled … The three old ladies tie footwarmers on their asses to make them run faster … Objects rain in all directions from the gigantic Customer … stolen knickknacks. They drip from every fold in her clothing … Her accessories keep falling off and she keeps picking them up … Outside Cesar’s jewelry shop she repairs her dress and wraps herself in chains and pearls, all phony … Everybody laughs … She takes a whole salad bowl full of amethysts and throws them by the fistful through the skylight … We all turn violet. She bombards the glass roof with topazes from the next tray … We all turn yellow … We were almost at the end of the Passage. There’s an enormous crowd ahead of our procession and a howling mob behind us … The woman from the stationery store at 86—I had swiped some pencils from her—fastened on to my pants … And the widow with the antique cupboards went for my dick … It was no fun … It was the umbrella man that saved me, he hid me under his parasol.

If Aunt Armide had found me again, I’d have had to kiss her right in the headcheese …

This time Uncle Édouard and his three-wheeler were chasing my father … he had his nose so close to the road that it almost bent his bicycle. A big pebble lodged in one of his nostrils. The engine cooed as softly as a lovesick pigeon, but Uncle Édouard had his eyes attached to two strings and was dragging them smack over the road for fear of missing something … On the front seat Aunt Armide, wedged in among the cushions, was passing the time of day with a gentleman all in black. He was hugging a thermometer three times as big as me … That was the doctor from the Hespérides, who had come for a consultation … He was filled with consternation … Thousands of luminous particles darted from his face … At the sight the neighbors took off their hats and bowed down to the ground. And then they showed their backsides … He spat on them. He didn’t have time to stop. We stormed the entrance all together … We invaded the Boulevards …

As we were crossing the Place Vendôme, a fierce gust of wind inflated the Customer. At the Opéra she swelled up twice as big … a hundred times! … All the neighbors scurried under her skirts like mice … No sooner were they settled than they dashed out again in a panic … then they rushed back again to hide in the caverns … The confusion was awful.

The little dogs from the Passage ran squirting in all directions, doing their business, going for people’s asses, nipping ferociously. Madame Juvienne, Number 72, toiletries, expired before our eyes, under a mountain of mauve flowers, jasmine … from suffocation … Three passing elephants trampled her slowly to death, a thousand little rivulets of perfume came pouring out …

Four little baker’s apprentices who worked for Largen-teuil, the pastrycook, came running up … carrying the enormous pipe from the Mohammed Tobacco advertisement that lit up at six o’clock … They smashed the bowl against the Marché Saint-Honoré, trying to move the buildings out of the way … First they bashed in the one on the right—POULTRY—and then the one on the left—FISH.

But we had to keep going—especially the giantess. Our giantess … with two planets for tits … I was being knocked around pretty bad … my father tried to hold me up but it was no use … He got caught in the spokes of his bike … He bit Tom’s tail. He trotted along ahead of us barking, but no sound came out …

The caretaker put me back on my feet, all he had on was the top of his uniform … The lower end of him was thin air … We got a good laugh out of him with his long pole for lighting the gas with … He stuck it up his nose, every inch of it.

As we were crossing the rue de Rivoli, the Customer missed her step, she tripped over a bus stop shelter and smashed a building … the elevator squirted out and gored her eye … We passed over the ruins. On the rue des Jeûneurs, my little friend Émile Sarsaparilla, popped out of my school … a hunchback … that’s how I’d always known him … and green around the gills, with a big wine-colored smudge running out of his ears … Now he didn’t look bad at all. He was handsome, pink, and natty … I was glad for his sake.

Now all those people we had known were running in the caverns underneath the Lady, in her drawers, through whole streets and neighborhoods, compressed inside her petticoats … They went where she chose. We were squeezed tighter than ever. My mother held me by the hand … Faster and faster … At the Place de la Concorde I realized she was taking us to the Exposition … It was mighty kind of her … She wanted us to have fun …

The Lady, our Customer, had all the money, all the shopkeepers’ cash, stashed away on her … She was going to treat us … It was getting hotter and hotter, and we were still wedged against the Lady … In among the drapery, next to the lining, I saw thousands of things hanging. All the stolen goods in the world … As we galloped, the little “Byzantine” looking-glass, the one we’d been looking for for months on the rue de Montorgueil, fell on my head … it left a bump … If I’d been able to, I’d have sung out that it was found, but we were already so penned in I’d never have been able to pick it up …

The time had come, we all realized, to squeeze a little tighter. We were shoved into the gate, the monumental gate, the arrogant gate, that rose into the sky like the bun on a lady’s hair … Going in like that without paying, we were all scared shitless … Luckily we were swept in by the swish of petticoats … We were crushed, suffocating, crawling on our bellies … Up above, our Customer bent down when it came time to go through. Was it all over? Were we under the Seine? Would the sharks be coming to ask us for a penny? What do you think? When do you ever get admitted to anything for free? … it just doesn’t happen … I let out a yell so sharp, so piercing that the giantess lost her head. All of a sudden she picked up her skirts, every single frill and ruffle … and her drawers … and lifted them sky-high, way over her head … A tempest rushed in, a wind so glacial we screamed for pain … There we were on the quai, frozen stiff, abandoned, shivering, helpless. Down below, between the embankment and the three barges, the Customer had flown away! … Our neighbors from the Passage turned so white I couldn’t recognize a single one of them … The giantess had fooled us all with her magnificent thefts … There wasn’t any more Exposition … it had been over long ago … Already we could hear the howling of the wolves on the Cours de la Reine …