Trio (21 page)

To which the other retorted, if you believe all the tittle-tattle you’ll never make sense of it, and anyway what do you make of the passing of time, he might have led a different sort of life in the old days but have settled down now, the old rumors could still be around and getting mixed up with the recent ones, no difference in their nature and that’s just as well, if we always had to be sorting out the old from the new in every domain nothing would ever take shape, nothing, d’you hear me, that’s what civilization is.

Settled down, settled down, with his mug, does a man who’s settled down have a face like that, look at Uncle Théo, at least he inspires confidence.

The horror of memory.

Or else a double life, why not, that would become interesting.

Cutting in from time immemorial.

The old rumors being mixed up with the new ones, poor Alexandre repeated, that’s why my head feels like a factory.

And he went back up to his room and made notes, voices from all around, from before, from last night, from afterwards, I am their spokesman here, traces of effacement.

Surging back, the old myths.

Blather, that’s all pure blather.

The time of larks and poppies.

In the mornings he used to go and pick bunches of flowers in the fields, do you call that normal at his age, preceded by the dog which used to disappear into the grass, sniffing out the traces of hares and sparrows, a charming rustic picture and a hymn to the far off times when nature, that old trap for halfwits, reigned over pure hearts.

Monsieur Théodore, even so, I used to say to him, couldn’t you do some useful work, I don’t know, well, gardening, planting trees, leeks, salsify, that would be cheaper for us, a packet of seeds in the spring, for the vegetables I mean, and there we are, safe for the season, instead of spending good money every day at the grocer’s, a sou is a sou.

You remind me of my mother, he used to answer, and anyway, salsify, that muck again, they say it causes cancer.

Because a single word was enough to set him raving again, he used to come out with puns like in his father’s day, his father despised all those larks and he called his boy a sissy.

Because personally, his illness
 
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Why his illness, why always harping on that, is it essential, we deplore his state, of course we do, but to have it shoved down our throats as our daily bread, what a bore, has he at least got a doctor, and anyway, let him get on with it, said Étiennette, ever since she’s been working in an office and has her own car she hasn’t been the same, you remember what a delightful girl she used to be, so discreet, so humble, so much the better for her in a way, but so much the worse for us, neither discretion nor modesty have ever been any use to anyone who wants to succeed but why bring up Étiennette again, I have a feeling that there was something about her on the tip of my tongue but it’s gone, unless it was the fact of classifying those damned papers, maybe I caught sight of her name casually, or else it could have been the horrible episode in the cemetery you were just talking about, Mortin’s body found dead on the grave, then we shall never get away from these retrospective visions, a fine method to make progress.

Because he was like that, Monsieur Théodore, enough good intentions to pave the whole of hell, unforeseeable reactions against his saturnine temperament which, in the eyes of a third party who wasn’t in the know, could make him pass for cheerful or dynamic, so that the rumors about him were nothing like him, and as they always reached his ears they disturbed him deeply, making him ask himself questions and answer them badly, he would have done much better to withdraw a long way away from the tittle-tattle and gossip and take no more notice of what people said, his deeper nature would have taken the upper hand, and if it was of an irremediable melancholy, well then, he could throw himself into the well and adieu, and anyway why should we at all costs want people we like to be artificially healthy, that must distress them far more than accepting their unhappy fate, destiny is destiny it’ll always have the last word, and it isn’t by relieving people with pills, or pellets, or persuasion, that you’ll make them any happier, personally, psychology
 
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and then really, happiness, has anyone ever known what it was, and love confused with pleasure does that make sense, come now, reread the great authors and don’t let’s descend to this sort of concierge’s talk anymore.

For indeed, the dead do answer.

Full of horrible photos of people who’d been strangled, or hanged, or had their throats cut.

Answer, but in a language of their own, something like that of the dream, that benediction, ah if only it would return.

Great ninny, not a word of truth in what he tells you, how do you think you can make a life between the fear of the cemetery and the horror of memory.

Or if that was what people call life.

Because you, then, you don’t believe in the progress of science.

Dear Mademoiselle, one does not believe in progress, that’s for idealists, one observes it, and furthermore it all depends on what we mean by progress, the sense it is given today is a shoddy derivative, its real meaning is of another order.

Oho, aren’t we uppity.

A missing link.

He saw his maid going upstairs surreptitiously, reaching his study, entering it, the room was filled with a pink light, she goes over to the writing desk, ferrets through its drawers and the dossiers, jots something down in a notebook, steals the drafts from the wastebasket and, leaving without a sound, goes and locks herself up in her bedroom and writes in her concierge’s language a journal consisting of a hodgepodge of reflections on existence, the fate of maids, religion, the condition of women and the cost of living, alternating with culinary recipes and accounts of dreams in which the poor creature’s unconscious had a whale of a time, she’s a
 
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The room was filled with a pink light, she goes over to the bed, puts the breakfast tray down on the bedside table and, before the sleeping man has had time to open his eyes, plunges the potato knife into his throat.

Why does she bring the breakfast tray, tell me, Uncle.

Because she’s used to it, and so as not to arouse any suspicion in her master’s mind, in case he was already awake.

What’s suspicion.

It’s the disease of the washouts, go on.

The room was filled with a pink light, she goes over to the bed, puts the tray of potatoes down on the chamber pot and, before the wide-awake man has time to say oof, strangles him with the
 
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Cut.

And to think that he had imagined that too, his maid murdering him, the old chucklehead, I knew him better than anyone and he gave me a pain in the neck with his suspicions about Marie, she changed as she got older, became shifty, went through his drawers, and was visited more and more frequently by a nephew who looked like a dubious character, he stayed in the kitchen with her for hours in the evenings, talking in a low voice, when her master asked her about him she said that the boy was in financial difficulties, he came to ask her advice and each time cadged ten francs off her, a sou is a sou, in short Alexandre had lost confidence in her, he was going to forbid her to have the fellow there, he’ll have had time to make a plan of the apartment, as for the safe in my room Marie must already have told him about it ages ago, what’s going to become of me it’s giving me nightmares, must I dismiss this maid and get a worse one, it’s frightful, I replied, you’re getting ideas into your head, what’s happening to you, Marie is the most dedicated of women, the most honest, but he didn’t listen to me.

Murdered by his maid or by one of her nephews, that’s a new one.

Repeat, I am dead, I shan’t keep silent anywhere.

Repeat, to emerge from less than nothing.

Repeat, take a hair of the night that bit you.

And if need be we shall sleep twenty hours, he added, Uncle’s stories will drive me bonkers, for he was still sorting out the papers and numbering them, I can still see him with his greasy little hat, his little pince-nez, coming back from the library, enough to break your heart, a drink here, a drink there, so charming with his story of the little elephant and the little soup tureen full of milk, rationing, he was completely pickled, we teased him, we stood him another round, his little moustache, his little ribbon running from one folder to the next, our youth in the café of illusions.

Cafe of illusions.

And how we used to dream of fame, and of the public weal, and of morality and poetry, what a thing that is, gentlemen, may it last beyond the twentieth year, well, in counting the people still cultivating it Monsieur Théo couldn’t even come up with three names, taking old leaflets out of his suitcase he started reciting odes by what’s his name, elegies by thingummy, and sonnets by a
 
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Betony, cow-wheat, cornflower, poppy.

Do-do, to bye-byes we go
 
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Old chimeras, everything is disintegrating.

The relative peace of the soul.

Oh, it’s not that old mother Marie was a saint, no, she had set tongues wagging on account of her gifts as a witch, according to some people who went to consult her in her kitchen of an evening, speaking in a low voice about their matrimonial troubles, it seems she had second sight and used some bizarre methods to break down the defenses of the agent of trouble, if not actually to eliminate it, but no one can furnish any proof, thank God.

Or tie the heretic to the stake.

Seeing her so-called nephew to the gate and whispering three words in his ear.

Used to walk around by the cemetery to observe her master surreptitiously.

But when you think back to the last days of the master one thing is striking, the serenity he had achieved, no more aggressivity in his behavior, no more sudden changes of mood, or was it senility, maybe he had lapsed into second childhood, pee-pee, pot-pot, but all that is such ancient history, at all events one impression remains with me, that of relaxation, isn’t that your feeling.

Oh, personally, you know, I barely knew him until he was in the hospital after the murder attempt, he was under sedation and everyone who has just had an operation reacts in the same fashion.

In short, it’s all as clear as mud.

And come what may.

As for confusing one funeral with another, alas, you know what memory is, we shall all be in the same boat, the procedures don’t differ much and the same goes for the deceased, not to speak of the survivors, no one could reproach the poor nephew for being a bit vague about the subject, and also
 
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for being a bit vague about the subject, and also about that of the facsimile notes, perhaps that was what he had meant to be but he’d forgotten it when it came to delivering the documents to the Toto or Zozo Foundation, some such name, we’d have to go and check on the spot, the ladies who had been classifying the notes may well have taken the originals for reproductions or vice-versa, why attach so much importance to details which don’t have any, and what’s more
 
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which don’t have any, and what’s more, do we even know whether the famous volume in this so-called library, probably no more than a shed tacked on to the church youth club, has as its author the old man in question, or whether it isn’t something quite different, the archives of the parish or commune or God knows what, always supposing that it exists, personally I consider that that story of the chain attaching it to the desk needs to be taken with more than a grain of salt, once again let’s not have preconceived ideas but let’s go and see for ourselves.

Like the questions of the codicil too, you know as well as I do the unimaginable imbroglios created by wills, which more often than not are rewritten, recast, lost, stolen, interpreted, et cetera, do you realize what a mess you’re getting yourself into, trying to get things straight, to me it all seems childish if not worse.

Monsieur Théo used to say, speaking of his uncle who used to drive him silly with his doubts about the value of his rough drafts, that, depending on the day, he used to pick out a random remark from the pages of his hodgepodge and then comment on it interminably, taking neither account of the domain it came from nor the time he had made it, so that the next day he might come across another remark that invalidated the previous one which he would then comment on again without comparing it with his previous day’s assertions, so that a third party who wasn’t in the know might have accused him of senility, but that for his part he didn’t see it that way because the common run of people don’t understand the first thing about the contradictions of a mind which, the more vigorous it is, the more enfeebled it appears, so that he clung to the table at which they had both been seated listening to Monsieur Alexandre monologuing, convinced that he was witnessing an unparalleled manifestation of lucidity, so that he had also convinced himself that it wasn’t chance that made his uncle put his finger on this or that thought when he opened his manuscript, but that a subtle and absolutely consummate mechanism, even though it wasn’t apparent, had been functioning both in the writing of the notes at a time X and in the revision of the same at a time Y, no material indication needing to be taken into consideration in order to authorize any kind of value judgment concerning the equilibrium of the forces present, so that when all was said and done he could only consider that anything whatsoever that came from the pen or the mouth of the old man deserved his closest attention.

Poor Monsieur Théodore, you can understand how he finished the way he did.

And it was also he, incidentally, who, thinking he was doing the right thing, probably imagined the existence of a second maid who succeeded Marie, so as to put people off the scent when they began to study the dead man’s memoirs, which second maid was supposed to have searched through the master’s papers to find inspiration for her own journal, and, knowing nothing of Alexandre’s past except by hearsay, may not merely have confused the facts and the names but may furthermore have surreptitiously interspersed her own writings in inverted commas with those of Mortin, whence a possible explanation for future exegetes of the mental troubles he allegedly suffered from and of the disorder that reigned in the dossiers, because it was impossible for him, for Monsieur Théo, to allow people to think Marie capable of such an action, the evidence of the survivors could only agree about her integrity.