Midnight Confession: A Novel Read online

  Midnight

  Confession

  (Translated from French)

  By

  GEORGES DUHAMEL

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER-I

  CHAPTER-II

  CHAPTER-III

  CHAPTER-IV

  CHAPTER-V

  CHAPTER-VI

  CHAPTER-VII

  CHAPTER-VIII

  CHAPTER-IX

  CHAPTER-X

  CHAPTER-XI

  CHAPTER-XII

  CHAPTER-XIII

  CHAPTER-XIV

  CHAPTER-XV

  CHAPTER-XVI

  CHAPTER-XVII

  CHAPTER-XVIII

  CHAPTER-XIX

  CHAPTER-XX

  CHAPTER-XXI

  CHAPTER-XXII

  CHAPTER-I

  I don't hold it against Mr. Sureau; I am completely unhappy to have lost my situation. A sweet situation, you see? But I don't hold it against Mr. Sureau. He was within his rights and I don't really know what I would have done in his place; although, unfortunately, I understand a lot of things.

  It must be said that Mr. Sureau did not want to understand. I would have had to explain it to him and, on balance, I had better not explain anything. And then, Mr. Sureau did not give me time to pull myself together, to justify myself. He was lively. Let's cut the word: he was brutal and even fierce. It doesn't matter: I don't think to blame him.

  For Mr. Jacob, it's different: he could have done something in my favor. For five years he watched me every day, evening and morning, working. He knows that I am not an extraordinary man. He knows me. That is to say, on judging well, he hardly knows me. Finally! He could have said a word, just one. He didn't say that word, I don't hold it against him. He has a wife, children, and a reputation that he cannot play with.

  Certainly, if I said what I know about Mr. Jacob ... But, let him sleep peacefully: I won't say anything. He didn't defend me, he didn't draft me; after all, I don't hold it against him either. These people do not have to have views on certain things. There were a number of very distressing circumstances there. Let's say, for the moment, that the fault is mine alone. Since the world is made as you know, I am willing to admit that I was wrong. We'll see later!

  Besides, this adventure was long ago. I wouldn't be talking about it if you hadn't awakened bad memories. Besides, so many things have happened to me since then that I may have forgotten a few details. I must point out to you that I had only seen Mr. Sureau three times. In the space of five years, it is little. This is because the Socque and Sureau house is too important: these gentlemen cannot maintain relations with their two thousand employees. As for my service, it had nothing to do with management.

  So one morning the phone starts ringing. I do not know if you are sensitive to ringtones, bells, stamps and other devices of this infernal species. For me, I hate it. The existence of an electric bell in the place where I am standing is enough to disturb my life! For that reason alone, there are times when I congratulate myself for leaving the office. A ringtone is not a noise like the others; it is a spin that suddenly pierces your body, that spits on your thoughts and that stops everything, even to the movements of the heart. You don't get used to that.

  So this is the phone that starts ringing. The whole office is listening, without seeming to. The bell stops, and we wait. I am not more nervous than another, but this wait is still a torture, because we are waiting to know if there will not be several blows.

  One blow is for Mr. Jacob. Two shots is for Pflug, the Swiss. I walked three times. Since I left, the three shots must be for Oudin, who in my time was four shots. Oudin! He is not nervous either, that one! At the first stroke, he began to eat a nail, without seeming to, of course. And he ended up having a panaris turning on that finger.

  On the day in question, one hit, no more. A long, straight, irritating blow with insurance.

  Mr. Jacob comes out from behind his half-wall; he leaves this closet where he stands like a racehorse in his box. He comes to take down the device and, according to his custom, He sits down, his head pressed against the wall, where his hair has, in the long run, left a greasy stain.

  The conversation begins. I listen half-way: it's always amazing a guy who talks with nothingness, and who smiles at him, who gives him graces, a guy who, suddenly, stares at the chocolate paint, on the wall, like s 'he saw something amazing.

  On that day, however, Mr. Jacob did not smile; he did not give thanks. From the first words, he had looked embarrassed, then he had turned all red, then he had lowered his eyes and he began to contemplate the radiator bristling in his corner, like a pug that is not happy.

  I was sharpening a pencil. Needless to say, I was breaking mine every second. I heard Mr. Jacob stammering: "But sir, but sir ..." and I thought inside of me: "If he repeats his But again ... I get up and go to him administer a slap! Pan! Head against the wall! ”

  I always tell myself things like that. In reality, I am a very calm man and I hardly ever do anything of these things that I say to myself. You can imagine that I wouldn't have slapped her. I still continued to break my face and dirty my fingertips. Mr. Jacob reminded me of these spiritualists who pretend to converse with shadows and who end up communicating to them a kind of existence. During the silences he spared, we heard a thin rumor which seemed to come from the end of the world and in which, little by little, I could see the shards in an irritated voice.

  Suddenly, Mr. Jacob takes off from the device and he deposits the groped receiver, missing the hook more than ten times before meeting it. I was at the height of fury; but it certainly couldn't be seen. I had just made a good point with my pencil and I wiped my fingers on the bottom of my pants, where the graphite does not mark.

  Mr. Jacob goes into his box, opens boxes, crumples up papers and suddenly exclaims:

  --Salavin! Come see a little here!

  I was sure of it. I get up and obey. I find Mr. Jacob pulling the hairs from his nose, which in his case is a great sign of concern. He tells me:

  "Take this notebook and take it yourself to M. Sureau." You will find him in his office, at the management. You will say that I have just been taken from indisposition.

  Thereupon he stops; he looks, winking at the window, at a large coat he had just pulled out of his nostril; he puts the hair on his blotter and he adds, holding back a big urge to sneeze which brought tears to his eyes:

  --Go to Salavin, and hurry up!

  To reach Mr. Sureau's office, you have to cross several buildings. In summer, when the windows are open and the doors yawn in the cool, you can see all kinds of overlapping compartments, where men work.

  There are some of these men who are plunged to the chest in complicated American offices like machines. Others stand shriveled at the top of tall slender stools like perches. We see huge walls, covered with cardboard boxes, which look a bit like the Père-Lachaise columbarium. There, there are two or three boys walking over aerial galleries, who seem to be busy with honey flies. Sometimes you hear a sizzling sound, the sound of frying, and you enter a large room where the typists strum like madmen: storm music, punctuated by small strokes of the timbre. Elsewhere, there are species of air vents that smell of wet cats and strong glue; in the background, we see people crushing the registers to copy, in the press, clenching their hands and clenching their jaws.

  In the antechamber of M. Sureau, there is a servant in livery and white stockings. He asks me for the number of my service and pushes me into a large room, murmuring: "We are waiting for you".

  I immediately recognize the office of Mr. Sureau, where I only came once, having seen the other two times Mr. Sureau in our section. I see big blue hangings, grape-colored paintings, and, in a corner, a cross-se
ction of the "Socque and Sureau thresher-sorter", with the medals of the exhibitions.

  He is there! You may know him and you know that he is a rather strong man, tall, with short hair, a mustache in brush and a rough goatee; all fairly gray hair. An eyeglass that always shakes because it only squeezes a brimborion of skin under the forehead.

  Mr. Sureau looks at me askance and only says:

  --You come from the editorial office? What is Mr. Jacob doing?

  --He is ill.

  --Ah? Give!

  And I remain standing, facing the large Empire desk, not knowing if it is better to keep the heels together, the body straight, or to haunt myself in the position of the soldier at rest.

  I must admit that I lived very withdrawn, at the Socque and Sureau house. I hated the circumstances that took me out of my duties and my habits. My job was to correct texts and not to stand in front of a prince of industry. I cursed M. Jacob and prepared for him some of these well-simmered sentences, which in the end I never say. I was also worried about my body which I did not know what to do. I felt all of my muscles lean, each in a posture to do harm to others, and I had the curious impression of composing a huge grimace, not only with my face, but with my chest, my belly, my limbs, finally with all the beast.

  Fortunately, Mr. Sureau was not looking at me. He was fiddling with the notebook I had given him. He felt heavy rage, fairly well contained.

  Suddenly, without looking up, he crushes an index finger on the page and says:

  - Wrong written .... Unreadable .... What is that word?

  I take four steps of automaton. I lean over and read, without hesitation, aloud: "supererogatory". This maneuver had placed me very close to M. Sureau, within reach of the left arm of his chair.

  It was then that I noticed his left ear. I remember it very exactly and still judge that it was nothing extraordinary. It was the ear of a somewhat bloody man; a broad ear, with hairs and wine-colored spots. I do not know why I began to look at this patch of skin with extreme attention, which soon became almost painful. It was very close to me, but nothing had ever seemed more distant and foreign to me. I thought, "It's human flesh. There are people for whom touching this flesh is quite natural; there are people for whom it is familiar ”.

  I suddenly saw, as in a dream, a little boy, - M. Sureau is the father of a family - a little boy who put an arm around Mr. Sureau's neck. Then I saw Mademoiselle Dupère. She was a former typist with whom Mr. Sureau had had a rather rowdy affair. I saw him leaning behind Mr. Sureau and kissing him there, precisely, behind the ear. I always thought, "Well! it is human flesh; there are people who embrace it. It's natural". This idea seemed to me, I don't know why, implausible and, at times, odious. Different images were succeeding in my mind, when, suddenly, I realized that I had moved my right arm a little, the index finger in front and, immediately, I understood that I wanted to put my finger there , on the ear of Mr. Sureau.

  At that moment, the fat man groaned in the notebook and his head changed places. I was both furious and relieved. But he started to read again and I felt my arm start to move again slowly.

  At first, I was scandalized by the need for my hand to touch Mr. Sureau's ear. Gradually I felt that my mind was nodding. For a thousand reasons I confusedly saw, it became necessary for me to touch Mr. Sureau's ear, to prove to myself that this ear was not something forbidden, nonexistent, imaginary, that it was not only human flesh, like my own ear. And suddenly I deliberately extended my arm and carefully placed the index finger where I wanted, a little above the lobule, on a corner of brick skin.

  Sir, we tortured Damiens because he had stabbed King Louis XV. To torture a man is a great infamy that nothing can excuse; nevertheless, Damiens did a little harm to the king. For my part, I assure you that I did no harm to Mr. Sureau and that I did not intend to harm him in the least. You will tell me that I was not tortured, and to some extent that is correct.

  No sooner had I delicately touched the tip of my index finger with Mr. Sureau's ear when they and he and his chair jumped back. I must have been a little pale; as for him, he became bluish, like the apoplectics when they turn pale. Then he rushed to a drawer, opened it and took out a revolver.

  I did not move. I said nothing. I felt like I had done something monstrous. I was exhausted, drained, vague.

  M. Sureau placed the revolver on the table, with a hand that trembled so much that the revolver made the sound of chattering teeth when he touched the furniture. And Mr. Sureau screamed, screamed.

  I no longer know exactly what happened. I was seized by ten office boys, dragged into a neighboring room, stripped naked, searched.

  I took my clothes back; someone came to bring me my hat and tell me that we wanted to cover up the matter, but that I had to leave the house immediately. I was led to the door. The next day, Oudin brought me my scribe equipment and my personal belongings.

  This is this miserable story. I don't like to tell it, because I can't do it without feeling an inexpressible annoyance.

  CHAPTER-II

  Note also that the Sureau affair marks the beginning of my misfortunes.

  When I say "misfortunes", I do not mean above all the great unpleasantness which resulted, for me, from the loss of my place. I am thinking rather of the moral distress in which I have waded since that time and from where I may never get out again.

  I, that day, measured, visited depths from which my mind can no longer escape. There was a tear in the clouds and for a minute I looked very clearly at the bottom of the background.

  No need to reason about unreasonable things. I would prefer to tell you about the events that happened later. Note in passing that to call events unimportant brimborions, like everything that is mine, is pitiful when you think about it.

  My conversation with Mr. Sureau's people had taken place around ten in the morning. It was not half past ten when I was on the street. I only had one thing left to do: go home.

  I live with my mother. I realize that you know nothing. I need to explain everything to you, to tell you everything. It's unbearable, when we talk about ourselves, we never finish.

  My mother is a widow, my father died while I was still in infancy, so that I know almost nothing about him. Hear that I have very few Absolutely personal memories. Besides that, my mother told me four or five hundred times certain stories of my father, so that these stories are an integral part of my memory and that I have to make a real effort to distinguish these memories from my memories. me. But we will talk about my father another time.

  We have always lived in our accommodation on rue du Pot-de-Fer. Three rooms and a kitchen, on the fourth floor. I hate this place, and yet I am only there.

  The house, the place where we usually live ends up becoming like an image of being: we know only that, and we see all the sadness, all the intolerable sadness.

  My mother has a very small income. With this income and the little that I earn it makes the house work very well. My mother is an admirable woman, the only person in the world who sometimes makes me want to throw myself on my knees.

  I tell you this in passing, but it must be very good to throw yourself on your knees before someone, to venerate them, to open their hearts to them, to rely on them for all things. When I think of humanity, when I think of all these bastards of men, what I blame them the most is not the harm they do; it is not to arrange so that once in a while there is an urgent need to bow down to one of them, to kiss his feet, to swear loyalty to him, to serve him as he would a slave, or a dog. Ah well, yes! There is nothing to be gained from these brutes! We would offer them his burning soul, snatched alive, they would take the suspicious air of a tripe looking at a demonetized room.

  I repeat, my mother is an admirable woman. So good, so courageous, so unlike me! For I am doubtless despicable, but for reasons which I remain the only one to know, I beg you to believe it; for reasons that neither Oudin, Mr. Jacob, nor even Lanoue could imagine. Those, rather than despising me, they better look at themselves in cold blood
. Besides, they may not despise me, basically.

  Other than that, my mom has a little flaw. She always treats me as if I had remained the toddler she pampered and greedily once. It's annoying for a man approaching his thirties. To be fair, my mother is a bit grumpy in character. A very small defect, I know, and which, however, is extremely painful to me, especially on certain occasions.

  It was through my mother that I thought when I left Socque and Sureau.

  The great outdoors had done me good. I began to pull myself together, to gather my ideas which were pulling in all directions, like a team discouraged by a long hill.

  I followed the quay of Austerlitz. I was trying to understand what had just happened to me and I kept saying: "They flanked me at the door .... They flanked me at the door ... at the office door". It is difficult for me to withdraw my thoughts from the rhythm of the walk, and, as my pace was fairly regular, I chanted these wicked sentences with an air of polka.

  Suddenly I stopped. I had just glimpsed that it was necessary for me to announce this news to my mother and that this news was very unfortunate, that it had many frightening consequences.