IV

 

 

The general feeling was that Milliquet had made a good deal. If his hope of inheriting a nice sum of dollars had definitively evaporated, he was at least compensated by a substantial influx of francs which was not only imagined, nor imaginary, but already making a weight in his pocket, making a lovely light noise in the dip of his hand. In less than a week, his clientele had doubled—this was clear to him. And this was clear to everyone because we were all coming, and we kept coming, and those who could come in came in; but there were those that, because of their gender or their age, or a lack of money, were forced to stay outside; and these people watched through the bubble-filled windows, between the fake lace curtains, trying to see if she was there.

All they could see was that the café was full of smoke so thick you could cut it with a knife, as we say, because of course everyone was smoking cigars, cigarettes, clay pipes or wooden pipes, smoking beneath the low ceiling, in the little space there was between the ceiling and the floor, where it was all dark;—but maybe it was also because she was no longer shining.

This was happening at that time when the trees were all working together above the paths, working to hide the sky with their leaves; we could see the sparrows resting on the shutters, a long strip of straw in their beaks.

This was happening at that time when in just a few days the grass grows all the way up to your knees, as high as it will grow; the automobiles began to pass again in great numbers along the road, several coming from abroad (where she came from herself), with license plates written in black capital letters on white backgrounds, A., or GB. or Z. Up behind the village, there was the international road which was no longer a white road like the valiant car roads of yesterday, but all black with tar over the fine-grained sand which the tires smash to bits. Pieces of the world came to us up there at high speed, going with their white lights to rustle the trees in the orchard over the top of the hedge like taking a stick to knock down the fruits. And it shined there now with reflections on the hoods, on the windshield, on the nickel, the steel, the glass; the girl, the girl had nothing but a little black dress, with a black lace handkerchief tied around her hair (which we thought must have been the fashion in the country where she came from).

It didn’t matter, people continued to come. The first words which had flown through the air had painted her in another way and with beautiful colors; that description still served. They continued to have an effect far away and to call people, so much so that all that time, when Milliquet did his accounting (and, quite simply, after closing his restaurant he went to the cash drawer to establish how many bills and coins had entered it throughout the day), he had cause to celebrate, or he would have had cause to celebrate, without his bad moods and his worries. Only now his wife had refused to be nice to Juliette, she had said to the serving girl, “It’s worse than I thought.” And Juliette was eating in the kitchen now, but Mrs. Milliquet wasn’t giving the impression that she noticed she was there, which was the attitude she had adopted; pretending not to see Juliette come in, pretending not to hear when Juliette wished her good day, and sometimes raising her voice to complain or make an insulting comment, but she addressed herself only to her husband, who said nothing because this is easier.

The girl was not speaking anymore either. She lowered her head beneath her lace handkerchief. To see her face we had to lean down to the table; we tried to see her from beneath by stretching our necks out, which made everyone laugh (above the brown painted tables, because they were old furnishings), but sometimes we didn’t laugh; above the filled or half-filled glasses in the smoke. We were laughing. All of a sudden we stopped laughing. We grew timid. This was when she raised her head. If we had started to say something, we grew quiet.

And now they no longer dared look her in the face, because it felt then like a long knitting needle entering your heart.

She served in the café, the serving girl on the terrace; Milliquet probably preferred keeping her near him, under his immediate supervision. When someone called from outside, he sent the serving girl.

One evening, a whole group of young people came. The days were beginning to get long, and after supper they still had time to go play a game of ninepins, or at least this was the pretext they gave themselves that evening. At first they came onto the terrace, then, having looked around them, and not having seen what they were looking for, they continued their way up to where the balls seemed to be waiting for them in the planks where they rolled back down and where they sat, the big one and the little one, with a round hole for your thumb, and a larger opening for your fingers.

Big Alexis looks over the wall on the terrace side. “What should we order?” He hits the table with his fist.

Amidst the ninepins game, that night, big Alexis, the dragon, a handsome boy of more than six feet tall, with a little blond mustache, a low forehead, and curly hair;—he hits the table then with all his strength.

The serving girl arrives.

No one had started to play yet; we heard the serving girl saying, “What would you like?”

Alexis answered, “Nothing.”

He picks up the biggest of the balls and says to Gavillet, “It’s your throw.”

Gavillet plays his turn.

And the serving girl who’s been waiting finally leaves, without understanding what was happening, or not yet understanding; so Alexis grabbed a stick which was lying about and hit the table again to make sure he was heard.

He watched who was going to come; the fat serving girl is the one who comes back.

He stayed facing her until she came up, then said, “What are you doing here, you?”

“Rude boy!”

She left; we heard her voice on the terrace, and then Milliquet himself came out.

“Oh, it’s you!” said Alexis. “It’s just you…  well, that isn’t what we want.” And to the others he said, “Let’s get out of here…we’ll come another time.”

They passed across the terrace again; with them was little Maurice Busset, our mayor’s son, who was not yet 18 years old, and had a soft and reserved character; we all pretty much understood that he was already engaged.

Rouge was now coming twice a day. That day he had come for the first time around 2:00; he came back later in the evening, when the first quarter of the moon had begun to show itself above the peaks of the Oche or the peak of the Oche (because really, for us, there is only one).

The clouds had been hanging a long time in the sky like a layer of dirty ice; suddenly they broke up in all directions. Seen through the holes, the sky looked like little rivers up there, like an irrigated field. Rouge, pushing through the door to the café, was surprised to see that it was empty. He waits a moment: no one comes. He waits, then he hears the noise of a discussion coming from the kitchen, and, through the walls, he recognizes Milliquet’s voice, then he recognizes the voice of the serving girl. Still no one was coming; he had to call. He had to open the door which led to the corridor, and he had to yell out, “Hey, is anybody here?” Then the sound of the voices stopped suddenly, and Milliquet appeared; but, seeing Rouge, he dropped his head into his two hands.

“What’s happened?”

Milliquet came beneath the lamp, his face much grayer and more wrinkled than usual, his head sideways, his mouth half open. “What’s happened?” Then, he said, “You know, this is all your fault... as if there weren’t already enough women here, but no, you had to go and bring me a third one… just look.” He gestured at the empty café. “No one could stand it…”

“My dear Milliquet, you never change. You don’t see your own luck.”

“My luck? Look...” He took a piece of paper out of the pocket of his hunting vest.

“Look,” said Milliquet, holding out to Rouge a piece of notebook paper with a column for adding numbers.

Help Wanted

This was the title; beneath it were several lines written in thick letters filled with scratch-outs.

In a small respectable lakeside establishment, young girl with good references to work in the café. Apply to the following number...

“Exactly,” said Milliquet, “you see what it’s come to. I didn’t even dare put my name.”

He was standing beside the table, (tall, heavy, his trousers sagging, his sparse beard, and a yellowing mustache);—then suddenly, behind the ninepins game, beneath the sky which was getting clearer and clearer, although here we are beneath the lamps, suddenly the accordion began to play.

This was while Rouge, having finished reading, handed the paper back to Milliquet, and said, “What does that bother you? Look...you’re used to women.” This was beneath the electric lights, and Rouge kept talking, “You’ll never change your wife, what do you want? Let her yell...”

Beneath the stained light bulbs, the three or four light bulbs stained with fly droppings and the cloth lampshade, which was also covered in the same little black dots.

“Sit down,” said Rouge, “I’ll explain it to you… but the girl, where is she?”

Milliquet shrugged his shoulders, “By Jove, she’s in her room. She’s locked herself in her room again. My wife has locked herself in hers… and the serving girl gave me her eight days notice.”

He sat down, he put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “If this continues, I’ll go crazy.”

“No,” said Rouge, “You’ve got something better to do. You’re lucky, I told you, and don’t make me take it back. You just need to know how to manage it…”

Up above, she had raised her head. She was only just half undressed. She was sitting on her bed. The moon was invisible. In front of her were two windows, so close together they touched; but the moon stayed hidden. On the other side of the windows, against the breaking up of the clouds, the moon was making a kind of very soft dusty light, like a light shining through a thin cloth. And the little notes of the accordion were coming. They passed through the window panes, shaking them just a little, like a bird on the wing. The girl had put her bare feet in her hands, stretched her neck out and was leaning forward. The notes kept coming, kept coming and coming; she jumps up onto the floor.

“You don’t know how to make the best of it. Just let your wife keep yelling…”

She made it all the way to the door. She listens, her ear stuck against the thin panel of pine. No other sound could be heard in the house but a dull murmuring coming from the entryway, like a fly stuck behind a window…

“It isn’t your wife who counts; look Milliquet, you know…”

She goes to her heavy leather suitcase; she pulls out a pair of espadrilles, a floral shawl which she wraps about herself; she slides out onto the landing. No one on the landing, and no one on the stairs. No one had yet lit the electric lamps or maybe Mrs. Milliquet had turned them off when she went to bed. The girl could easily get to the door which leads out to the little street, where the little notes were coming from. And, in fact, here they are again, stronger now, louder now in the fresh night, and more numerous: a dance tune which moves around her, and even enters into the corridor at the moment that she opens the door to the house…

“Leave her free,” Rouge was saying in the cafe. “What do you want to make her work for? She isn’t made for that. Leave her free, and then there’s no risk of extinguishing her…”

The accordion came and played a moment around the two men, and it turned a moment beneath the cloth lampshade.

“It’s like butterfly wings: if you touch them, they turn gray… let her run about… when you don’t know what to do anymore, just send her to me.”

But the door to the house had closed again. The girl was now on the other side of the door, in other words, on the good side. She had all the music for herself. All she needed to do was swim up it, like she would have swum up a stream. Just past the ninepins game was a kind of passage which opened up between two walls behind some sheds. She entered into the passage. She raises her head, turning it right and left. It was on the right. The wall was taller than her, but now we begin to see who she is. A wagon with a ladder had been pushed against the wall; she grabbed ahold of it with two hands, having wrapped her shawl around her belt, and then began to climb up the ladder, in the moonlight, because the moon had just come out from behind the clouds, and so the moon was on her hair, on her shoulders, then on her skirt and around her legs. We saw how flexible she was. She held herself crouched for an instant at the top of the wall, leaning forward on her hands which she held flat before her; she was on the edge of a paved terrace used for hanging out the washing, which we could see by the iron lines fixed between two supports. We saw that she knew what she was doing. We saw that she knew how to take care of herself. She did not stand up, did not straighten herself; that would have made it too easy to see her. That first quarter of the moon shone like a well-washed ice cube over the Café Milliquet, shining even farther out on the water like a kind of long road casting back its reflection; she crawled like a cat. She was so quiet that she seemed to add to the silence with her crawling. She made it to the other side of the terrace. All she had to do was stretch along it with her body, with only her eyes peeking out.

And so it was on the other side of a courtyard, in a long low house whose first floor only was made of stone. Something like a barn with a stable below and next to this stable were two rooms, one with the window lit up and no curtains. We could see him very well. Pushed back against the whitewashed walls, the room had a little iron bed with a brown blanket with a striped border; the boy was seated between the window and the bed, on a chair without a back, because he could not have been seated on a chair with a back. The hump on his back pushed his head down toward his knees; it was very difficult for him to raise it. Oh, he’s so small! Oh, he’s so pale! He’s so small and he has this enormous instrument, an instrument which becomes even bigger than him when he pulls the red leather of the bellows completely open, then he bends it down into a half-circle, pushing on the pressed air from both sides; this is why he leans over with his entire body, and pulls his shoulders inward pressing on his open arms; how his fingers run quickly over the beautiful shiny keys! She moves her head forward a little. And then without seeing her, he turns toward her. With his foot he shifts the stool beneath him and begins a new song now that the other has finished: this time, it’s the right song, this time, it’s the most beautiful song;—it begins with a long call, a long cry held by the bass notes, then, there is a short silence; and then a thousand little notes tumble and crash against each other.

She had knocked at the window, he hadn’t stopped. She knocks three times on the window, he simply raises his head, he doesn’t seem surprised.

Nothing stops, nothing even changes, not the smallest instant, or slowing of the lovely movement of the bellows, his fingers which fly from top to bottom and from bottom to top, climbing and ascending the scale;—she knocks, he makes a sign that she can come in, then he leans again as hard as he can on the pressed air for a great chord; while the girl enters into a first room, where she is taken at the throat by the bitter odor of leather, making her cough, but she could see a small thread of light flickering below the second door.

At first she stood with both shoulders against the wall. She seemed very big compared to him.

She seemed to be trying to hold herself back, having thrown herself backward so far, her two shoulders against the wall, one hand on top of the other hand; then, suddenly, in the shadow, beneath her brown face, the great flash of her teeth appeared.

He must have understood; he made her a sign.

And the girl unwrapped her shawl from over her beautiful arms; she unwrapped it from around her curved neck.