DAY BY DAY
We rearranged the house. We did not alter the general arrangement, nor
the places of the heavy furniture--that would have been too great a
change. But we cast out all the dusty old stuff, the fossilized and
worthless knick-knacks that Mame had accumulated. The photographs on
the walls, which were dying of jaundice and debility, and which no
longer stood for anybody, because of the greatness of time, we cleared
out of their imitation tortoiseshell and buried in the depths of
drawers.
I bought some furniture, and as we sniffed the odor of varnish which
hung about for a long time in the lower room, we said, "This is the
real thing." And, indeed, our home was pretty much like the
middle-class establishments of our quarter and everywhere. Is it not
the only really proud moment here on earth, when we can say, "I, too!"
Years went by. There was nothing remarkable in our life. When I came
home in the evening, Marie, who often had not been out and had kept on
her dressing-gown and plaits, used to say, "There's been nothing to
speak of to-day."
The aeroplanes were appearing at that time. We talked about them, and
saw photographs of them in the papers. One Sunday we saw one from our
window. We had heard the chopped-up noise of its engine expanding over
the sky; and down below, the townsfolk on their doorsteps, raised their
heads towards the ceiling of their streets. Rattling space was marked
with a dot. We kept our eyes on it and saw the great flat and noisy
insect grow bigger and bigger, silhouetting the black of its angles and
partitioned lines against the airy wadding of the clouds. When its
headlong flight had passed, when it had dwindled in our eyes and ears
amid the new world of sounds, which it drew in its train, Marie sighed
dreamily.
"I would like," she said, "to go up in an aeroplane, into the
wind--into the sky!"
One spring we talked a lot about a trip we would take some day. Some
railway posters had been stuck on the walls of the old tin works, that
the Pocard scheme was going to transfigure. We looked at them the day
they were freshly brilliant in their wet varnish and their smell of
paste. We preferred the bill about Corsica, which showed seaside
landscapes, harbors with picturesque people in the foreground and a
purple mountain behind, all among garlands. And later, even when
stiffened and torn and cracking in the wind, that poster attracted us.
One evening, in the kitchen, when we had just come in--there are
memories which mysteriously outlive the rest--and Marie was lighting
the fire, with her hat on and her hands wiped out in the twilight by
the grime of the coal, she said, "We'll make that trip later!"
Sometimes it happened that we went out, she and I, during the week. I
looked about me and shared my thoughts with her. Never very talkative,
she would listen to me. Coming out of the Place de l'Eglise, which
used to affect us so much not long ago, we often used to meet Jean and
Genevieve Trompson, near the sunken post where an old jam pot lies on
the ground. Everybody used to say of these two, "They'll separate,
you'll see; that's what comes of loving each other too much; it was
madness, I always said so." And hearing these things, unfortunately
true, Marie would murmur, with a sort of obstinate gentleness, "Love is
sacred."
Returning, not far from the anachronistic and clandestine Eudo's lair,
we used to hear the coughing parrot. That old bird, worn threadbare,
and of a faded green hue, never ceased to imitate the fits of coughing
which two years before had torn Adolphe Piot's lungs, who died in the
midst of his family under such sad circumstances. Those days we would
return with our ears full of the obstinate clamor of that recording
bird, which had set itself fiercely to immortalize the noise that
passed for a moment through the world, and toss the echoes of an
ancient calamity, of which everybody had ceased to think.
Almost the only people about us are Marthe, my little sister-in-law,
who is six years old, and resembles her sister like a surprising
miniature; my father-in-law, who is gradually annihilating himself; and
Crillon. This last lives always contented in the same shop while time
goes by, like his father and his grandfather, and the cobbler of the
fable, his eternal ancestor. Under his square cap, on the edge of his
glazed niche, he soliloquizes, while he smokes the short and juicy pipe
which joins him in talking and spitting--indeed, he seems to be
answering it. A lonely toiler, his lot is increasingly hard, and
almost worthless. He often comes in to us to do little jobs--mend a
table leg, re-seat a chair, replace a tile. Then he says, "There's
summat I must tell you----"
So he retails the gossip of the district, for it is against his
conscience, as he frankly avows, to conceal what he knows. And Heaven
knows, there is gossip enough in our quarter!--a complete network,
above and below, of quarrels, intrigues and deceptions, woven around
man, woman and the public in general. One says, "It _can't_ be true!"
and then thinks about something else.
And Crillon, in face of all this perversity, all this wrong-doing,
smiles! I like to see that happy smile of innocence on the lowly
worker's face. He is better than I, and he even understands life
better, with his unfailing good sense.
I say to him, "But are there not any bad customs and vices?
Alcoholism, for instance?"
"Yes," says Crillon, "as long as you don't exarrergate it. I don't
like exarrergations, and I find as much of it among the pestimists as
among the opticions. Drink, you say! It's chiefly that folks haven't
enough charitableness, mind you. They blame all these poor devils that
drink and they think themselves clever! And they're envious, too; if
they wasn't that, tell me, would they stand there in stony peterified
silence before the underhand goings-on of bigger folks? That's what it
is, at bottom of us. Let me tell you now. I'll say nothing against
Termite, though he's a poacher, and for the castle folks that's worse
than all, but if yon bandit of a Brisbille weren't the anarchist he is
and frightening everybody, I'd excuse him his dirty nose and even not
taking it out of a pint pot all the week through. It isn't a crime,
isn't only being a good boozer. We've got to look ahead and have a
broad spirit, as Monsieur Joseph says. Tolerantness! We all want it,
eh?"
"You're a good sort," I say.
"I'm a man, like everybody," proudly replies Crillon. "It's not that I
hold by accustomary ideas; I'm not an antiquitary, but I don't like to
single-arise myself. If I'm a botcher in life, it's cos I'm the same
as others--no less," he says, straightening up. And standing still
more erect, he adds, "_Nor_ no more, neither!"
When we are not chatting we read aloud. There is a very fine library
at the factory, selected by Madame Valentine Gozlan from works of an
educational or moral kind, for the use of the staff. Marie, whose
imagination goes further afield than mine, and who has not my
anxieties, directs the reading. She opens a book and reads aloud while
I take my ease, looking at the pastel portrait which hangs just
opposite the window. On the glass which entombs the picture I see the
gently moving and puffing reflection of the fidgety window curtains,
and the face of that glazed portrait becomes blurred with broken
streaks and all kinds of wave marks.
"Ah, these adventures!" Marie sometimes sighs, at the end of a chapter;
"these things that never happen!"
"Thank Heaven," I cry.
"Alas," she replies.
Even when people live together they differ more than they think!
At other times Marie reads to herself, quite silently. I surprise her
absorbed in this occupation. It even happens that she applies herself
thus to poetry. In her set and stooping face her eyes come and go over
the abbreviated lines of the verses. From time to time she raises them
and looks up at the sky, and--vastly further than the visible sky--at
all that escapes from the little cage of words.
And sometimes we are lightly touched with boredom.
* * * * * *
One evening Marie informed me that the canary was dead, and she began
to cry, as she showed me the open cage and the bird which lay at the
bottom, with its feet curled up, as rumpled and stark as the little
yellow plaything of a doll. I sympathized with her sorrow; but her
tears were endless, and I found her emotion disproportionate.
"Come now," I said, "after all, a bird's only a bird, a mere point that
moved a little in a corner of the room. What then? What about the
thousands of birds that die, and the people that die, and the poor?"
But she shook her head, insisted on grieving, tried to prove to me that
it was momentous and that she was right.
For a moment I stood bewildered by this want of understanding; this
difference between her way of feeling and mine. It was a disagreeable
revelation of the unknown. One might often, in regard to small
matters, make a multitude of reflections if one wished; but one does
not wish.
* * * * * *
My position at the factory and in our quarter is becoming gradually
stronger. By reason of a regular gratuity which I received, we are at
last able to put money aside each month, like everybody.
"I say!" cried Crillon, pulling me outside with him, as I was coming in
one evening; "I must let you know that you've been spoken of
spontanially for the Town Council at the next renewment. They're
making a big effort, you know. Monsieur the Marquis is going to stand
for the legislative elections--but we've walked into the other
quarter," said Crillon, stopping dead. "Come back, come back."
We turned right-about-face.
"This patriotic society of Monsieur Joseph," Crillon went on, "has done
a lot of harm to the anarchists. We've all got to let 'em feel our
elbows, that's necessential. You've got a foot in the factory, eh?
You see the workmen; have a crack of talk with 'em. You ingreasiate
yourself with 'em, so's some of 'em'll vote for you. For _them's_ the
danger."
"It's true that I am very sympathetic to them," I murmured, impressed
by this prospect.
Crillon came to a stand in front of the Public Baths. "It's the
seventeenth to-day," he explained; "the day of the month when I takes a
bath. Oh, yes! I know that _you_ go every Thursday; but I'm not of
that mind. You're young, of course, and p'raps you have good reason!
But you take my tip, and hobnob with the working man. We must bestir
ourselves and impell ourselves, what the devil! As for me, I've
finished my political efforts for peace and order. It's _your_ turn!"
He is right. Looking at the ageing man, I note that his framework is
slightly bowed; that his ill-shaven cheeks are humpbacked with little
ends of hair turning into white crystals. In his lowly sphere he has
done his duty. I reflect upon the mite-like efforts of the unimportant
people; of the mountains of tasks performed by anonymity. They are
necessary, these hosts of people so closely resembling each other; for
cities are built upon the poor brotherhood of paving-stones.
He is right, as always. I, who am still young; I, who am on a higher
level than his; I must play a part, and subdue the desire one has to
let things go on as they may.
A sudden movement of will appears in my life, which otherwise proceeds
as usual.