VI

 

 

It was several days later…

The first to come to the café were some cattle merchants, two or three of these merchants with their long purple shirts, who had ordered some bottles of wine†; after which, the biggest of the three, the one with a black mustache, having pushed back his flat-brimmed felt hat, said, “I like that!”

He crosses his arms on the table: this was out on the terrace, it was one of those green-painted tables; the man, he goes completely over it with his two arms in their wide sleeves with the tight-fitted wrist, embroidered in white.

“I like that who brings the drink is the same quality as the drink, and the serving girl the same as who is served.”

Three o’clock in the afternoon. It had rained that morning. A light dampness was still rising with a slight mist between the legs of the tables which were splattered with a light film of dirt that was drying and becoming white as it dried.

“I like that, because it’s rare.”

A little man with a yellow face who was sitting across from the one speaking nodded his head in approval, holding his hands on the top of his cane; the third of these three men was looking over the wall on the lake side of the terrace.

“And it’s rare, it’s extremely rare…how did he do it, this Milliquet, how did he get his hands on her? We’d never have thought him clever enough…”

Three merchants who were crossing the countryside in a light pitch pine wagon which was attached to a small slender-legged horse that they had hitched in front of the café; the big one said again, “Where is this Milliquet?”

He hit the table with the handle of his whip which he had taken with some difficulty from between his legs.

It wasn’t the one they wanted who came, it wasn’t Milliquet either; it was the newest serving girl who came, and she does her job which is to come when called for.

The tall man said, “You’re too little…”

Truly, she didn’t seem to be more than 15 or 16 years old. She caught her feet in her too-long apron.

“What are you doing here, you? You didn’t go to school today? Listen,” said the man, “If you bring us the boss, you’ll get fifty cents.”

Milliquet was in the kitchen; he was just saying to Juliette, “You shouldn’t discourage the customers…you know well enough I’m not at liberty here…”, when the little serving girl came back.

“Sir, they’re asking for you.”

Milliquet came to the men.

“Congratulations,” said the tall man with the black mustache, “Congratulations, Milliquet. That’s what I call dedicated service.”

There was a bottle in front of him, it was a Bordeaux with a cork and a lovely label with colors drawing a castle with round towers, with a green and white shield, the name of the wine, the date and the year.

“Oh, yes,” said Milliquet, “This wine is particularly suited to its bottle…” He was standing at the head of the table, arms hanging, head sideways, but we could see he was pleased. “It’s unfortunate I don’t have much of it left.”

“You’ve certainly got one more.”

Milliquet began to smile, his pained smile that showed his ruined teeth.

“Well,” he said, “for you…”

“Only,” said the tall one, “a good wine deserves a pretty girl. Where’ve you got her, tell us, you old fox. And we’re your serious customers, and you send us this child, or is it that you want to keep the other one for yourself? Who is she? And where did you get her? Are you going to tell us, or what?”

Because Milliquet suddenly looked severe, and he didn’t answer right away and even seemed like he didn’t want to answer (a person has his dignity):—then, because these were, as a matter of fact, good customers, and he couldn’t make them too unhappy, he said, “It’s my niece…”

“Your niece?”

“Yes, my brother’s daughter.”

He had spoken coldly, with a kind of superiority; then he told the whole story, from Juliette’s arrival (even now flattered by the idea that he still had this whole story to tell and that he would have the other benefit of having conducted himself as a good brother).

“Oh,” said the tall dark one, “and then maybe she’s rich; lucky devil! She comes from America, the country of dollars!”

But Milliquet shook his head; that was entirely another question.

It was a Saturday afternoon around three o’clock, out on the terrace, before it got busy, because usually everyone comes later; and above Milliquet’s head, on a branch thicker than a thigh, one of the first leaves was hanging, all wrinkled up, and it looked like a duck’s foot.

At that moment, the man with the black mustache raised his fist, “And why not? Why not, after all? Another bottle and your niece…otherwise, we go…how much do we owe you?”

He moved like he was going to take his wallet out of his pocket.

She was forced to come out. So she came out (or came back). And now on the terrace (Milliquet was no longer there):

“Miss, we still have one seat in the wagon; it’s all yours…”

The Savoyard was just passing by the terrace, he was passing there for the second time; he stopped, he looked over the wall, he listened, he went away.

“There are four seats in the wagon, there are three of us, we’ll take you with us.”

It was the tall one speaking.

“We’d have a lovely room for you, a south-facing room with two windows…two windows and a dresser with a mirror…waiting for your answer, here’s to your health.”

He drank glass after glass.

“You’re not drinking with us, Miss?”

So then he began having trouble finding his words, like when a person’s embarrassed; the others were no longer speaking; we hear them all get up.

The tall man follows, then we hear, “Too bad, another time then.”

And while the little hooves of the horse were hurrying away, grinding on the paving stones, she runs to Milliquet, she hands him the money and a receipt. “Are you happy now?”

Then she said, “That’s the right amount?”

Then, still running, she went up into her room;—and just a moment later, the Savoyard came.

What happened next is that the cattle merchants had hardly disappeared around the bend in the road when the Savoyard had appeared, or reappeared;—and it’s because we are drawn into beauty’s orbit. Down here on the earth we don’t see enough of it. We are greedy about it, we hunger for it; we want to possess it. The Savoyard came back; he went and sat down on the terrace and he ordered a half liter. He drinks his half liter; then he went to buy some cigarettes at the shop, he comes back with his packet and places it on the table in front of him, and then all he had to do was fish them out, lighting each new cigarette with the one he had in his mouth.

This time he wasn’t drinking, and Milliquet, worried about his interests, had started hovering about him without making it too obvious.

Then the Savoyard calls, saying, “I’m thirsty. Where is your niece? Yes, your niece. Miss Juliette. Send her to me to take my order.”

Milliquet turned his back.

Where could beauty find its place among men, how could she find her place among us?—he had put on his Sunday clothes, he was wearing a checked cap, he had a collar, a tie, a jacket, a vest, a red belt (the same red as his tie); he sees the little serving girl pass by, he calls her.

He took some money out of his vest pocket, and, showing her his hand filled with coins, he says, “Go get her for me; this is for you if she comes…”

“If you think she’s going to come like that…” She was laughing at him. “Put your money away, because I don’t think she’s coming back down…Anyway, if she wanted, there wouldn’t be any need for money to bring her down; and if she doesn’t…”

The Savoyard left, then he came back around seven or eight o’clock.

Electric lamps were fixed onto planks between the branches of the plane trees. On fine summer evenings, when the air was soft, customers stayed out happily on the terrace; and all Milliquet had to do was turn on the switch (with the sole inconvenience of gnats, moths, and bugs, not to mention the mosquitoes, but it isn’t until much later in the season that they become a problem). That night there were a lot of people on the terrace: Alexis the dragon among others and some of his friends; being out there was like being in a box with glass walls, walls of a dark blue, being out there was like being behind panels of glass through which the lake and the sky were shining softly.

Suddenly, it seemed like the walls exploded away. Instead of panels of blue glass, it was opaque walls of night that fell all around you, hiding the lake, the sky and the mountain, like being on the inside of a house. The electric lamps had just been lit. It was like being in a room beneath the lights, not knowing what was happening outside the room, except when a little wave came with a kind of a sigh; hunh! Like the sound of splitting a log or a baker making his bread; the sound of hitting the ax against the edge of the iron, or raising both hands above the head with the ball of dough.

This little square world with its tables, three walls of night; and, because of the change of scale, it seems to have grown enormously: three walls and five or six tables, and those who were sitting around the tables, Milliquet was coming and going, Marguerite the little serving girl was coming and going, then we see Milliquet speaking to her.

We could see the colors; we could really see people’s hands, their shoulders, the tops of heads with their felt hats, a few straw hats, a few caps; there were about twelve or fifteen people; we could see that the Savoyard hadn’t yet come back, because he came back later.

It was a little later that the boss had spoken to Marguerite, and now she was no longer there, this meant that Milliquet had a lot to do, passing continually from the café to the terrace. Marguerite had climbed up those two floors (while we heard Mrs. Milliquet’s door open)…

She had knocked. “The boss tells you to come down.”

“No.”

“And there was also the Savoyard who asked about you. I told him that you didn’t want to come…”

Little Marguerite had knocked, she had said quietly, “Miss, it’s me.” She had gone inside. We could see that the large leather suitcase had been opened and then beyond that, behind the blinds, the wooden shutters were closed. At first little Marguerite stayed standing at the threshold of the door in her black dress with its white spots; suddenly, she said, “Oh, Miss…” She paused, started again, “It’s just that there’s a whole group downstairs waiting for you…”

She gestured toward the shutters, behind which they could, in fact, hear a sound like two stones hitting together. They heard a great laugh, they heard people calling Milliquet, they heard someone hit their fist against the table.

“I’m scared,” she continued, “that the boss will come up, because he said if you don’t go down, then he would come up…”

Then she forgot what she was saying. “Oh, that’s so beautiful! What is it?”

Pointing to the things that had been taken from the suitcase, and spread around the suitcase on the bed, “Those are things from your country?”

But someone was calling up the stairway. And she said quickly, “I’ll come up again, Miss…I will tell you what’s happening…”

She went back down taking the stairs two at a time and Mrs. Milliquet’s door closed again.

While down on the terrace they are all looking up at the second floor, they were looking up from the terrace through the spaces left between the branches of the plane trees, looking at those two windows that touched just beneath the ridge of the roof. We were looking up there, because we knew she was up there (some of us at least knew this), but we saw that the shutters had been closed. Marguerite had just come back down. And Milliquet was going to talk to her when he was called by his wife, a call which Marguerite hears and then Marguerite hears a discussion on the stairs; but still nothing moves up there, while Marguerite had come back to the terrace where she sees the Savoyard in his corner turn his shiny eyes toward her beneath the brim of his cap. The Savoyard signals to her that he has nothing to drink, then he leans on his elbows without a word and puts his hands beneath his chin. It must have been about 10 o’clock.

She asked him, “What would you like?” He hadn’t answered her.

She chooses at random, bringing him three deciliters of petit vieux; and she was running back into the café when someone grabbed her arm; it was Milliquet, his face haggard (at the same time on the first floor a door slammed).

“Hurry and go serve, and then listen up: this time, if she doesn’t come down, tell her that I’m coming up…If she isn’t down in five minutes. And that this time it won’t be like the others.”

He had pulled her into a corner and was speaking close to her face with a finger in the air, “Doesn’t matter if she locks the door; I’ll break down the door. I’ll shame her in front of everyone.”

Marguerite had raced back upstairs.

Again, she’d made a little mouse scratching sound against the door panel with her nails; she said, “Miss, can I come in?” The key turns in the lock. “Miss! Miss! He’s going to come up! He told me he’s giving you five minutes.”

She was quiet.

“Miss, Miss,” she starts again, “Believe me, it would be best if you would lie down, I’ll tell him that you’re sick; maybe he wouldn’t dare…”

She was quiet again.

And then, “Oh, that’s so beautiful! Is it yours? And it comes from your country? What is it? A comb? And these little red balls, they’re coral? What is this comb made out of? Oh! It’s gilded copper…”

She stuck her hand forward, then brought it back each time against her body; then we see her with her hands crossed over her too-long apron, her eyes shining, looking like a little girl and an old woman at the same time, in the midst of this great silence that has grown;—Juliette stayed with her back toward her, Juliette stood all this time in front of her mirror:

“Oh, those are strange earrings, are you going to put them on? Oh, yes, put them on!”

The room had only a poor little mirror with a metal frame painted in fake wood; there was no other light but the one from the ceiling; the mirror was between the two windows; she had to lean over her dressing table and had to put her face up against the glass; no matter, she leaned anyway, she leaned over with her fingers to her lips, she leaned over with the powder puff to her cheeks.

“Where I come from, a woman makes herself beautiful in the evening. Tonight you will see how the women in my country are dressed. In just a moment…”

But at the same instant the accordion music could be heard.

It was hard for all the noise on the terrace to sustain itself, the high little notes pierced through it everywhere. We had heard them begin in the distance, they came quickly closer.

“It’s him! It’s him! Oh, I was sure he would come. I don’t know what made me believe it, but I was sure…”

She takes the powder puff, she passes it over her face; she says to Marguerite, “Now, give me the comb,” while she raised her arms. Oh, it’s that she’s completely transformed and we can’t even recognize her;—tying her long hair up against her neck, she says, “Can you give me the shawl, the long one with the flowers…”

“Oh, Miss, are you going down?”

“Of course, since there’s music.”

“And your uncle?”

Juliette bursts out laughing.

The accordion was just beneath the windows.

“Because I just knew,” Juliette was saying, “that he would come, so I’ve got to hurry; quick, Marguerite, please, the comb…And then the shawl, just like in my country…”

And then on the terrace, all the voices quieted one by one; everything became quiet, the wind quieted, even the waves quieted; there was nothing but this lovely dance tune which started to turn on itself all alone. It stopped as well, just a moment, and none of us breathed; then, again, those great chords burst forth one after another…

But at that instant, a table fell; and then a voice: “Stop him! Stop him! He’s getting crazy…”

And suddenly the accordion was also silenced.

The Savoyard had told the other workers, “I’m not working today…Tell the boss he shouldn’t count on me.”

The other workers had left as they did every morning for the gravel quarry; the man, having gone to wash himself at the fountain, had shaved; then he’d taken his Sunday clothes from his closet, a clean shirt, a collar, a tie. This was in a house near the station where he and the other workers were lodgers; there, he got dressed slowly. He had a brand new suit, a jacket that fitted at the waist; he had also tried to part his hair, but his hair was much too curly and tangled, so he shoved his cap upon his head, and turning the bill to the front, he brought the hair forward onto his forehead where it stuck out from the bill.

He was smoking cigarettes. He opened the window. Through the window, he asked the woman who owned the house if he could eat his soup a little earlier than usual. He had eaten his soup, he went out shortly after.

He had crossed the big road. He had gone to lie down beneath a tree not far from the highway where automobiles were always passing by, rolling along with flashes of light glancing off their bonnets and with reflections off their windshields like a flame exiting the barrel of a carbine. The cars barked, they coughed, they gave out long howls like a bored watchdog. They rolled over the tarred highway without kicking up any dust—coughing, whistling, barking, crossing paths or passing one another, disappearing behind a hedge, reappearing: ten, fifteen, twenty,—because he’d taken his watch out and amused himself by counting them. He spit between his knees. Then he gets up and, having followed the road, he reached the Bourdonnette not far from the great stone viaduct on which the trains passed and he started to walk down along it, which brought him to the quarry where his colleagues were just getting to work. He watched them working from below, waving to them, wearing his good Sunday clothes, while up there, on their stair steps, behind the sieves, they were naked to the belt or wearing sleeveless shirts: how different he is today. Hello up there! We could see him. Where’s he going like that, this Ravinet?

“Oh,” we said, “he’s a bit crazy. And there are days when it’s best not to pay him any mind, otherwise things can go badly.” So they raised their arms, or started again to push the blade of the shovel along the top of the soil beneath the heaps of little stones and sand, while Ravinet went away and he was going down along the Bourdonnette, where, beneath the alders, he sees Bolomey the fisherman with his plastic boots. Bolomey was going up along the Bourdonnette. The two men passed not far from one another without saying a word. Here we arrive at the place where the banks are close together, and there, the volume of the water is restricted, it grows deeper, making stairstep waterfalls that the trout go up with a flick of their tail; which is why Bolomey preferred to fish upstream, with his high plastic boots and his flat basket hanging down his back on a strap;—well, now, I couldn’t care less about fishing; these fishermen annoy me. He was smoking cigarettes, his hands in his pockets. The water made a drumming noise as it gave way to its forward movement. And then, a little further on, the water becomes all quiet and smooth as it widens: that’s where the reeds start, and there are little islands of gravel invading into the middle of the reed bed. Here, Ravinet turned right.

Just then Perrin the carpenter arrived in front of Rouge’s house with a load of beams. Ravinet walked up, gradually slowing his steps as if he were wary. He sees this new construction, this new addition that Rouge has done to his building: “Ah, he’s building,” he says to himself; why is this man building?” And “this man” was Rouge, whom we could see was busy measuring the already unloaded wood with a pocket ruler, all the while looking at his notebook; he didn’t see the Savoyard; it was only the sound of feet on the stones that made him raise his head.

The Savoyard had stopped, his cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

He said, “You’re building, are you?”

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” said Rouge.

“It’s for you?” The Savoyard began to chuckle strangely and Rouge, who was surprised, couldn’t find anything to say at first.

Then, “Hey now! Is it any of your business? Why don’t you bother with your own affairs?”

Only Ravinet, having spit once again, had already walked away and showed only his back to Rouge;—and so he kept walking along the shoreline and arrived in front of Milliquet’s pretending it was by chance, then he looked to go in, but he saw the three cattle merchants over the wall.

He went and walked around the village, and then came back a moment later.

Again, he didn’t go in. And where can beauty find a place among us when it is so doggedly pursued? Because he went in finally, remember, he sat himself down on the terrace and he ordered a half-carafe which Milliquet brought out to him.

He drank his half-carafe.

He went and bought cigarettes at the store, he came back with his packet and placed it on the table in front of him, and then he said to Milliquet, “Where’s your niece?”

Milliquet turned his back.

“So it’s like that, is it?”

And he said to the little serving girl, “Go get her for me!” But the little serving girl only laughed at him. “So it’s like that, is it?” And he left to go drinking in the café next to the train station.

 

***

 

Voices could be heard beneath the window:

“I saw that he’d opened his knife. I’d been watching him for awhile…but what was anyone to do? No one could know, a person can always have something to cut, a long nail maybe, a wart, a shoelace…”

“Of course.”

“Remember though that it wasn’t really the man he was after, but the instrument. The Savoyard didn’t touch the man…”

“Oh, well…”

“No, I’m telling you, he didn’t touch him.”

“Because we didn’t let him. Luckily, Alexis was there…”

She is listening, up there in her room. There was nothing but these voices out on the terrace.

She listens again; there was also a voice inside the house, this other voice, always the same, monotonous, without inflection, continual, unquietable, like when a faucet is left to drip:

“And aren’t you happy now? Ah! You’ve certainly done well, haven’t you? Why don’t you congratulate yourself? Idiot! You’ve got what you were looking for! Now they are killing each other in your restaurant, that’ll give you a great reputation…Weren’t you proud and telling me, ‘A hundred francs today,’ and then, ‘A hundred and twenty francs!’ You idiot, because tomorrow it will be zero francs and, if this continues, zero francs again the day after tomorrow… That wanderer, that street girl, that I-don’t-know-what, that I-don’t-dare-say-what-she-is…”

And a person had to run away from this voice, out onto the stairs, but the voice followed all the same.

Behind the window, she is still listening.

“Oh, there’s nothing to be worried about,” they were saying on the veranda. “Big Alexis is watching him. There are three or four guys with an eye on things. He won’t make another move.”

Just then a door closed, Mrs. Milliquet’s voice quieted; Juliette sees that no one is bothering about her anymore. Little Marguerite had gone downstairs when the fight started, leaving her alone; no one will see her leave. And too bad if someone stops her, she will fight, she will go out anyway.

No one saw her.

She slides along the little street, like the time before; she climbed onto the wall of the terrace. And when he saw her come in, he only raised his head in greeting as he was seated before the workbench, his accordion on his knees.

We saw that the knife slash had cut across the bellows, in such a way that the rip went from fold to fold; delicately, like a surgeon feeling along the edge of a wound, he brought the two edges together.

He shook his head. Had he really seen her come in?

Then it seems that he did, because he said, “There is no place for me here.”

Then he said quickly, “Nor for you.”

She wanted to say something. She stepped toward him, but he signaled for her to keep quiet, as you do when there is someone terribly ill in a room.

 

“So,” Rouge was saying, “that night (he should have said tonight because it was only just after midnight), I had been in bed for awhile when I hear the sound of footsteps outside. At first I thought it might be some lovers out, because they don’t usually bother about me when they’re a little late getting back from a couple’s walk in the forest. I hadn’t been to Milliquet’s because Perrin had brought the wood over and, since it was June, Décosterd and I were able to work at the carpentry until nearly 10 o’clock; we had to use some boards to close up the hole we’d made in the wall of the kitchen…where was I? Oh, yes, I’d fallen asleep. And then I heard a footstep and then a second one, one kind of a step and then another kind of a step, which is why I thought there were two people, when suddenly someone knocked on the door. I said, “Who is it?” and no one answered right away. I had time to get up, put on my trousers and go into the kitchen, because you can’t get into the house except through the kitchen and when I got into the kitchen I heard behind the door:

“Is that you, Mr. Rouge?”

“Of course it’s me.”

“Mr. Rouge, can you open up?”

I was pretty sure I recognized the voice. There was a bright moon and I saw that it was who I thought—Maurice Busset, young Maurice Busset, you know, the mayor’s son, and I see that he’s holding a big leather suitcase in his hand, while behind him was standing someone who looked like she was trying to hide herself. But really, that girl, can she hide herself? And her shawl was shiny, her silk shawl, you understand, shining on her shoulder.

I say, “What are you all doing here?”

“Oh, Mr. Rouge,” says Maurice. “Can’t we come in? I’ll explain everything…”

I say, “Wait, I’ll turn on the light.”

I say, “Wait, I’ll lock the door.”

And then little Maurice told me all that had happened. He asked me if she couldn’t spend the night and then stay with me for a few days. What was I supposed to do? I said, “Of course, only look…it’s too bad, Miss, you’re just a few days early…” There was a pile of plaster debris in the corner of the kitchen and the hole we’d made in the wall was badly boarded up. “It’s too bad!”

She still hadn’t said a word. It was only a few days later that I learned the whole story, the story of the Savoyard, the story of the accordion, and all that happened to her…And you know, she was afraid for the hunchback…and it happened while she was at the hunchback’s place. And it was Milliquet’s wife. The girl, she told me that she’d heard eleven o’clock ring out (and she knew it was the curfew), but when she arrived back at the café there was only her suitcase. Mrs. Milliquet had put it before the door, with all of her things inside. She went all around the house but all the lights were off. And of course she didn’t call out…She told me that she thought immediately of me; the only problem was the suitcase, because it was so heavy. This is when Maurice Busset showed up. How he was there, that’s another question, but okay, he was there…I said to Juliette, “You’ll just stay here. Don’t worry about a thing, make yourself at home. Since they’ve kicked you out…” Oh, I forgot to tell you that luckily I had two mattresses. I only had to lie down on the older one in the kitchen…”