CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
On the Stairs, 12
Draft inventory of some of the things found on the stairs over the years (second and final instalment)
A SET OF “Fact Sheets” on dairy farming in the Poitou-Charentes region,
a macintosh bearing the brand name “Caliban” made in London by Hemmings & Condell,
six varnished cork glass-mats portraying the sights of Paris: the Elysée palace, Parliament House, the Senate Building, Notre-Dame, the Law Courts, and the Invalides,
a necklace made from the spine of an alosa,
a photograph taken by a second-rate professional of a naked baby lying prone on a sky-blue tasselled nylon cushion,
a rectangular piece of card, about the size of a visiting card, printed on one side: Have you ever seen the Devil with a nightcap on? and on the other side: No! I’ve never seen the Devil with a nightcap on!
a programme for the Caméra cinema, 70 Rue de l’Assomption, Paris 16, for the month of February 1960:
3–9: |
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, |
10–16: |
JACQUES DEMY FESTIVAL: |
17–23: |
Don’t Give Up the Ship, |
24–March 1: |
CONTEMPORARY HUNGARIAN CINEMA A FILM A DAY; on 26 February, |
a packet of nappy pins,
a well-worn copy of If You’re So Funny Why Don’t You Laugh?, a collection of three thousand puns by Jean-Paul Grousset, opened at the chapter entitled “At the Printer’s”;
See Naples and Didot.
There’s nothing a printer can’t justify.
Inset information is worth its weight in bold.
a goldfish in a plastic bag half-full of water, hung on Madame de Beaumont’s doorhandle,
a weekly season ticket for the inner circle (PC) rail line,
a small, square, black Bakelite powder box with white dots, with an undamaged mirror but missing powder and puff,
an educational postcard in the Great American Writers series, No 57: Mark Twain
MARK TWAIN, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in 1835 at Florida, Missouri. He lost his father at the age of twelve. He was apprenticed to a printer and became a pilot on the Mississippi where he gained the nickname Mark Twain (an expression meaning literally “mark twice”, calling on the sailor to measure the draught of water with a plumbline). He was subsequently a soldier, a miner in Nevada, a gold digger, and a journalist. He travelled to Polynesia, Europe, and the Mediterranean, visited the Holy Land, and, disguised as an Afghani, went on pilgrimage to the holy cities of Arabia. He died at Redding (Connecticut) in 1910, and his death coincided with the reappearance of Halley’s comet, which had also marked his birth. A few years before, he read in a newspaper that he had died and cabled the editor straightaway with the message: NEWS OF MY DEATH HIGHLY EXAGGERATED! Nonetheless, money worries, the death of his wife and of one of his daughters, and the mental illness of his other daughter, darkened the last years of this humorist and gave his later works an unaccustomed gravity. Principal works: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867), The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), The Gilded Age (1873), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1875), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Life on the Mississippi (1883), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), What Is Man? (1906), The Mysterious Stranger (1916).
seven marble lozenges, four black and three white, laid out on the third-floor landing so as to make the position called Kō or Eternity in the game of gō:
a cylindrical box, wrapped in paper from The Gay Musketeers toy and games shop, 95a Avenue de Friedland, Paris; the packaging depicted, as was only right and proper, Aramis, d’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos crossing their brandished swords (“All for one and one for all!”). The packet carried no indication of an addressee when Madame Nochère found it on the doormat of the then empty flat occupied later by Geneviève Foulerot. After checking that the anonymous packet did not make any suspicious ticking noises, Madame Nochère opened it and found it contained several hundred little bits of gilded wood and imitation tortoiseshell plastic which, when appropriately assembled, were supposed to constitute a faithful reproduction at one-third life-size of the water clock presented to Charlemagne by Haroun al-Rashid. None of the inhabitants of the building claimed the object. Madame Nochère took it back to the shop. The sales ladies recalled that they had sold this rare and expensive scale model to a ten-year-old child; they had been very surprised to see him pay for it with one-hundred franc notes. The enquiry was carried no further, and the puzzle was never solved.