Midnight Confession: A Novel Page 2

  So I stopped completely to lean on the parapet which overlooks the Seine.

  In the shade of the trees, the stone was almost cold. It needed this freshness and this stillness to make me feel better my fever and my agitation. A minute break is enough to show me that I was not at all in my normal state, this famous state in which I never am.

  This little stop was still beneficial to me. It takes so little to make me happy. The bad news is that it takes even less to break me down. Ah! Poor mechanics!

  There was a team of longshoremen loading a barge. They took their burden at the edge of the quay and reached the boat on long elastic planks whose image waved in the water. Watching them, I first took real pleasure. And then I saw myself advancing on the narrow board, like a balancing act. I felt a kind of vertigo and it was quickly so unpleasant that I detached myself from the stone and resumed my journey.

  Immediately, the thought of announcing the disastrous news to my mother returned and overwhelmed me with boredom.

  To say: "I lost my place", it still seemed quite easy to me. The sentence is short, simple, decisive, it did not seem impossible to pronounce. I even see Several ways to deliver myself from this first admission. I could, for example, sit down looking sorry - an air I wouldn't have needed to pretend, I assure you - and say, in a low voice: "Mom, I lost my situation " He was perhaps more dexterous, more skilful, so as not to discourage the poor woman, from coming and going in the accommodation, as usual, and suddenly throwing these words, in a tone full of carefree: "About! You know I lost my situation. " I was also considering the possibility of a tumultuous entry; I would violently drop a remark like this: "It's ignoble! It is abominable! They made me lose my situation. ” I saw the painful repercussions that such an explosion, even if simulated, would have on mom's health and I decided in favor of a simpler operation: I would enter my room and take off my shoes with noise; my mother would say to me: "Why are you taking your shoes off? So the office is closed this afternoon ”? And I would answer: "No, but I'm not going back, I had words with the bosses and I lost my place". this afternoon"? And I would answer: "No, but I'm not going back, I had words with the bosses and I lost my place". this afternoon"? And I would answer: "No, but I'm not going back, I had words with the bosses and I lost my place".

  I repeat, this first part of the interview did not seem to me to have any difficulty; however, I was prodigiously irritated at the idea that I would then have to give explanations, explain the reasons for this leave, finally tell the story, the famous story you know now.

  No! that, under no pretext! My mother is an admirable woman, I told you; but she is in a simple mood, she is a soul without detour. I couldn't tell her this ridiculous adventure, that finger on the big guy's ear, that nonsense.

  Is it really nonsense, by the way? Is it ridiculous, actually? No! A thousand times no! You will not make me admit that I am a criminal, or that I am an idiot. So, is that your humanity? There is a man, a man like you and me; there is such a barrier between the two of us that I can't even apply the tip of my finger to his skin without looking like a criminal. So, am I not free? So the individual is surrounded, like maritime countries, by an inviolable space where foreigners cannot navigate without formalities?

  I do not pose to the original; I am not made other than the others. Something tells me: an idea like the one that had moved me, in this circumstance, it is one of those ideas that all men know, an absurd and natural idea anyway. Whether or not to give in to such impulses is another matter, alas!

  I hate lies. It is hard enough to get out of the truth; should we mix other miseries with it? Telling my mother that I was laid off by a general staff reduction measure, or that the jealous intrigues of my comrades had determined my dismissal, was an idea that did not even touch me. Or rather, it touched me a little, since I'm talking about it; but I thought of it only to repel it easily.

  You see, my thoughts were far from soothing. When I arrived at the Pont d'Austerlitz, I was determined to give notice of my dismissal without any comment.

  The Pont d'Austerlitz is a beautiful bridge. He rushes into the middle of a large white space. As soon as there is a bit of clarity in Paris, it is for the Pont d'Austerlitz. There, there is always wind, smells of travel, laborious boats, merchants of nothing, outdoor photographers who charge their cameras under the coats of their wife as a dark room, finally all kinds of distractions for the eyes. The bridge is a little heavy back, as if it was pleasantly tickled by the trams and dunnies running over his spine. In general, I like the surroundings of the Pont d'Austerlitz well. It is a place that is not too compromised with my bad memories. I don't remember ever having crossed the Austerlitz bridge in a state of shame or anger. It counts,

  Unfortunately, that day, the Austerlitz bridge did me no good. My worries were too bitter: the Pont d'Austerlitz was not strong.

  I went to the Jardin des Plantes and thought: "Surely it will be better in the avenue of plane trees"; because, this large alley which goes up towards the Museum, it is a place where I am almost always happy.

  The avenue of plane trees was a complete failure. When I reached the level of the greenhouses, I was a little more dissatisfied, a little more troubled than by passing through the garden gate. The aisle had let me slip away with obvious indifference, taking no more care of me than a stranger, without making me the slightest sign of friendship, to me who, for five years, had caressed it in its full length four times a day in summer and three times a day in winter.

  I felt a painful impression of abandonment and hostility in things. Bad sign, sir, when things betray us in serious circumstances.

  Too bad! the sight of the botanical garden gave me an unexpected disturbance: the botanical garden was closed. I therefore understood that I was early and that, if I continued on my way, my arrival at home in the middle of the morning would have something unusual that would precipitate the catastrophe, that is to say the explanation.

  I returned to the bear pit. I did not do this without a dull anger: all my habits turned upside down! No wonder the familiar world was not helpful to me, since I turned everything upside down, since I denounced the pact, since I arrived when someone was not expecting me, like a suspicious husband who returns from a trip to France. improvisational.

  I had more than an hour to waste before I could return to the rue du Pot-de-Fer. I spent this time weaving around the botanical garden, like a ship with a view to the port and waiting for the waves to enter.

  I was determined not to breathe a word of my story; but the certainty that my mother was going to ask me for clarification did not stop exasperating me.

  I thought, "If she blames me, I won't answer her. I will remain frozen, worthy, like a man who has suffered great injustice. Because, after all, I am the victim in this case. I have just suffered a great injustice, I owe me apologies and consolation.

  "Surely she will scold me, she always treats me like a child. Surely, she will complain, question me, talk to me about money. Oh! that, no! This is a material that has the gift of exasperating me. I don't want to hear about money.

  "If, as the thing is probable, it greedily consumes me, I am resolved not to hide anything from it of what I think. I will tell him my opinion on this dirty situation that I have just lost. Was it my fault that I entered the offices? I wanted to do chemistry. I have no aptitude for this hideous profession of leather. Why did mom push me to take a place with Moûtier, first, with Socque and Sureau then? I was made for chemistry. Everything that happened was bound to happen. Why didn't she let me go my way? We are poor, it is understood; but it is not a reason to have distorted my career, lost my life, compromised, spoiled my happiness. No! No! I accept no complaints about this situation which I have just lost. If I am not

  As I walked the winding paths of the Labyrinth, I felt swollen, swollen by a world of poisonous thoughts. My steps always returned in the same stupid circle and my feelings whirled on the spot, like a flight of sansonnets who do not know where to land. I gradually came to the conclusion that my mother was the only person responsible for my misfortune. It was she who had let me pass the age of scholarships without pointing me in the right direction. It was she who had pushed me to seek functions incompatible with my character. It was she who would now overwhelm me with reproaches, tell me about our financial difficulties, make me measure my stupidity and my inadequacy. No! No! I could not tolerate this.

  It was a stormy, depressing heat. By dint of turning, I was sweating profusely and walking like a man drunk. In fact, I was drunk, drunk with bitterness and anger. However, the essential was acquired: I had prepared all my answers, I was loaded with grudge like a cotton-powder mortar. I was ready. I would have the last word.

  You can, sir, regard me with disgust. I agree. But I have to say it the way it is. Now imagine the kind of madman that I was when I heard half past twelve and when I headed towards the rue du Pot-de-Fer, with the hurried air of a man who won well his food.

  CHAPTER-III

  The corridor that pierces our house, at ground level, is dark from the door, like a burrow. Innumerable steps have worn the pavement in the middle, so that it seems, throughout its length, dug with a channel where the muddy water brought there by the shoes stays. It is not a residue of the wash water: the concierge is old and never washes.

  This corridor is, for me, a poignant place, one of those places that are part of our soul. All my joys, all my distresses, all my fury had to go through this rolling mill. They have left indelible marks on the walls, stains other than those imprinted by the humidity, fierce smells that I am the only one to perceive, a thousand rough memories which always slow down my pace and make me water with melancholy.

  The sun, the cause of all oblivion, has never seen this corridor since the day lost in the p
ast when the masons buried it under the house like an Egyptian tomb under a pyramid. Maybe that's why the hallway is so teeming with ghosts.

  I like it, as we like these diseases which are part of our habits, as we like the flowers painted on the wall during the nights when we do not sleep.

  I like the rectangle of pale light that, on winter evenings, the gas spout on the sidewalk cuts out on the wall of my corridor.

  I love the humble and bland odor that prowls, with the air currents, in this intestine of my house. If I rise again in five hundred years, I will recognize this smell among all the smells in the world. Do not make fun of me; you may treasure dirtier, less confessable things.

  If I happen to come back from one of these walks where we have tasted many new things, experienced a thousand desires, if I happen to come back from a beautiful day like a purifying bath, my corridor falls on my shoulders and says to me: "Be careful! You're never just a Salavin ”. This warning freezes me, but it is beneficial for me, because it is useless to give oneself an illusion.

  As you can see, even in my story the corridor works; it delays me, it cools my story; it paralyzes me as it almost paralyzed me that day, the day of my adventure.

  But, I told you, I had too much momentum: I crossed the corridor like a quagmire cluttered with brambles; I was torn, I passed nevertheless, and, with a single movement, I found myself on the landing of the first floor.

  There, vegetates our old concierge, in a darkness haunted by culinary odors, under the sputum of an eternal beak Auer with a pipe full of water. The light dies and is reborn a hundred times a minute, and, during its agonies, we see a bull's-eye open on the twilight of the interior courtyard.

  Our concierge is finishing up at the same place where it was planted in the past. She dies by the head, like poplars. She is almost mad, and almost completely blinded by a double cataract which gives her milky pupils. Apart from that, she recognizes us all, her tenants, with the step, with the breath, and with many other small signs which inform it without it being able to analyze them. Something comparable to the sensitivity of sedentary molluscs.

  The concierge knocked on the door and said to me:

  --Louis, there is a letter for you and a catalog for Marguerite. You'll give it to her by the way, boy.

  Marguerite is our neighbor, a seamstress. I took letter and catalog and I continued the ascent. I went up quickly, so as not to give my resolutions time to spread out. The spinning of the stairs gave me a well-known slight dizziness. In spite of the tension in my mind, I never failed in the habit, as old as my life, of spelling, passing on the second floor, the tackle of Léggneux: specialist in espadrilles and soles of cords. He's a slum industrialist, a brick-eater. But let's not waste time with Lépargneux.

  Arrived on the fourth square, I entrusted the catalog to Marguerite's doormat and immediately, I made, with two fingers, my little noise against our door. There is a doorbell, I have keys; yet I never use it all. I have a way of hitting. It simplifies life.

  My mother came to open me and I did first, that day, as usual, because the hours of daily life form an all-powerful machine whose successive pieces grab us, push us and manipulate us disregard for our decisions. This means that I kissed my mother, put my cane in the big earthen jar, hung my felt on the coat rack and went into the kitchen to wash my hands. I was obeying old tyrannical forces, but I had lost none of my anger that wriggled inside me like a cat in a bag.

  My mother followed me into the kitchen. She gently lifted the lid of the casserole dish with the end of her handle, and she said to me, shaking her head:

  --Louis, I made you a little saddle of leg. Meat is expensive right now; but I was happy to make you a little saddle of leg, you like it so much!

  What did this leg of saddle come to do, tell me, in the midst of my torment? Do we really have the idea of talking about cooking to a man struck by injustice, to a man in the grip of despair and fury? This saddle of leg fill me with humiliation, it covered me, for myself, with ridicule. I was deeply crumpled; I had the distinct impression that my mother was making fun of me.

  And then, why talk about the price of meat? I knew that meat was expensive. Was it really time to talk to me about the cost of living, when I had just lost my place? I assure you that I received in the face, like a slap, the sentence of mom. Yet I say nothing, so as not to spoil anything of my resentment, to leave it whole, formidable, without reply. I quickly reviewed all of my answers. They were ready; peremptory, scathing, arranged before my eyes like weapons in the rack.

  So I prepared to go into my room to take off my shoes with noise, as I had decided. At the last moment, I did not have the courage. I thought: "It is better to wait for a good opportunity, for example that mom speaks to me again about this saddle of leg".

  Our meal began. My stomach was tight, shriveled. I did not eat willingly. I looked at the bottom of my plate and I spread the pieces of meat to see the faults of the earthenware. I know exactly all the faults of our old plates.

  I felt the look of my mother who was attached to me, who never let go of me and I thought that "it had to be seen", that my disgrace was written in full on my face. I conclude that I was a poor lord, powerless to conceal his feelings. This earned me more resentment.

  Between dishes, I waited, without saying a word. I didn't want to leave my hands on the table. I feel a kind of modesty for my hands. If I had a big secret, my hands would betray me: they are incapable of pretending. So I let my arms hang, which are very long, and, with the tips of my fingers, I tormented my socks, which is a grotesque mania that I cannot get rid of.

  My mother said to me with particularly offensive gentleness:

  --Leave your socks, my poor Louis, you're going to make holes in them.

  I put my hands back on the table, trembling with rage. Why "poor Louis"! I don't like being taken into commiseration, especially when I don't deserve anything else. And then, why attack my habits, my tics? I have passed the age when a man of my caliber can try to improve. My mother's remark seemed to me not only useless, because she had already made it to me a thousand times, but also insulting in the situation in which I found myself. In addition, I felt it was not difficult to recommend me the care with regard to my socks at a time when our poverty would perhaps turn into misery.

  I was on the point of giving free rein to the ready-made sentences which swelled my throat; but, where to start? They crowded at the end, like mad sheep who all wanted to cross a narrow door at the same time. So that, once again, I say nothing.

  I finished my lunch by looking at the furniture, the walls, the fireplace, the objects witnessing my existence and accomplices of many secret thoughts: the cookie rabbits, on the buffet, the pendulum which carries a bronze figurine and who knows about me stories she would do well to keep for herself. I looked at the Tyrolean landscape, in its frame, this landscape of mountains where the best dreams of my childhood are consumed, dried up.

  none of these trinkets, none of the furniture wanted to make common cause with me.

  They all looked at me insolently. I felt that at the first word of the quarrel they would all be on my mother's side, all against me.

  As we were finishing the meal, I saw on the corner of the sewing machine the letter my concierge had given me.