Midnight Confession: A Novel Page 3

  My mother's gaze must have followed mine, for she murmured almost immediately:

  --It's probably a letter from Lanoue. I think I recognized the writing. You didn't open it.

  It was true. I who wait with such feverish impatience for the mail which hardly ever brings me anything, I who never open a letter without thinking that it contains the great news capable of upsetting my future, I had not opened this letter -the.

  I opened it with a feeling of dismal mistrust: it could only be bad news. I was navigating in one of these passes where we are offered to the blows of fate, which is rarely done for lack of profit.

  It was nothing, nothing at all. Lanoue announced to me that he was taking his vacation and asked me to go and see him at the first opportunity.

  --You will go tonight, said mom.

  A sentence that I hadn't prepared at all came to my lips and escaped, without my being able to remember it. I replied:

  --No! I will go this afternoon.

  No sooner had I articulated these words than I guessed the imminence of the great crisis. I no longer had to retrace my steps. War was declared. I felt the fiery face, the beating temples, the upturned lips like those of a pug who takes up a challenge.

  My mother would surely answer: "How? This afternoon? And the office "? I did not leave him the time and I proffered, with an explosive force:

  --I'm not going to the office this afternoon. I will no longer go to Socque and Sureau. It's finish! It's finish! I lost my place.

  I was standing, stiff; but I still felt like I was picked up, ready to pounce. I was blowing hard; I was waiting.

  My mother had come to sit in her chair near the window. She looked up without hurrying and looked at me.

  My mother wears glasses, because of the age. She has warm blue eyes, shimmering. When she wants to see well in front, she raises her head to better use her glasses.

  This is how she looked at me, peacefully, for a great minute. And I saw his beautiful gaze fixed on me, this gaze charged with worried tenderness, this gaze which has not left me since I was born. I felt my legs tremble, tremble. Then my mother murmured in a voice so natural, so deep, so sure:

  --What do you want, my Louis, a place, it can be found. It is not a great misfortune.

  O supreme wisdom! O goodness! It was true, it was not a misfortune. I catch a glimpse of it. It was true, no misfortune had happened to me. So why was I so unhappy, why was I so miserable?

  I took a step, two steps, and then I felt that I was no longer the master, that the pack of rabid beasts which ravaged me was going to flee in disorder, to deliver me. I had the heartbreaking feeling of being saved, drawn from the abyss. I fell on my knees before the poor woman, I hid my face in her dress and began to sob with fury, with frenzy; sobs that came out of my belly, breaking like bottom waves, chasing everything, sweeping everything, purifying everything.

  CHAPTER-IV

  A storm roams endlessly through the world of men. Happy the hot hearts that are visited! Happy the parched countryside that this storm quenches!

  I don't hide the fact that I cried. I have only too many things to hide, I can admit these tears: I owe them the best moment of my life.

  I told you, I was on my knees before my mother, I was prostrate before so much simple kindness, before so much affectionate divination. And I was in no hurry to leave, I who never thinks but to change places.

  Mom said nothing; she had put her hands on my head. She must have been very moved; I felt however that with the tip of a nail she scratched a small stain on the collar of my jacket: she is so careful for me, so caring for me and so proud of me, the poor woman, as if he really was someone may be proud of me!

  I gradually regained my senses and I said:

  --Mum! We who are having financial difficulties.

  And my mother replied, with simplicity:

  "But, my Louis, we have no difficulty in money."

  It was true: we were poor, but we had no difficulty with money. I had to agree.

  Little by little I felt invaded with radiant joy. My mother did what all mothers do on these occasions: she painted my hair, tied my tie, she passed a soft hand over my face that housework cannot make rough.

  Then she opened the mirrored wardrobe, her wedding wardrobe, and there was for me a fine embroidered handkerchief, a little cologne and even a sugared almond.

  I ate the sugared almond containing the last jolts of my sobs. I was ten years old, five years old, I was a little one, I would have let myself be rocked. In fact, I think I let myself be rocked. Let's not talk about this.

  I understood very well that mom would not ask me for any explanation. For that alone, I would have liked to throw myself at his feet again, kiss his shoes.

  Well, I did better: I gave him all the explanations imaginable. I told her all my day; I told her all the details. I omitted nothing, neither Mr. Jacob, nor my finger, nor the ear of the fat man. The poor woman was smiling. The revolver made her tremble a little, but she quickly resumed smiling, laughing even to assure me that all this was unimportant, without gravity.

  I know that this is all important and serious. My mother, however, made sure to make me forget it. O the beautiful, the dear instant! The more I humiliated myself before this holy figure, the more ennobled, grown, redeemed I felt. This is a singular thing and which I am not in charge of clarifying for you.

  I can still see a scene from this memorable day: I was sitting in the Voltaire armchair, I spoke with fire, with gaiety, and my mother, squatting in front of me, was taking my shoes off gently and passing me my slippers, because she knows very well that I don't like to stay a couple of hours at home without putting on slippers and old clothes.

  We continued our conversation, laughing out loud. My life, my future never seemed more clear to me than that day. Never did humanity inspire in me more frank and more devoid of sympathy.

  Everything I touched was welcoming and fraternal. I went into my room and I felt that the furniture greeted me with a silent hurray.

  My room is small and crowded. It's my kingdom, it's my homeland. I hold, from unknown ancestors, a venerable sofa which occupies a whole wall between the dresser and the bed. To follow my story well, I don't want to take into consideration the few hours - what am I saying? - the countless hellish hours that I spent on this sofa. For the moment, all you need to know is that this sofa is, in my eyes, a sacred place, because it is spread over it that, sometimes, I have possessed the world in dreams.

  That day, under its discolored cover, my sofa seemed radiant to me. He reminded me of all the readings we had done together, because I always read lying down, to forget my body as much as possible, to be almost dead to my own life and entirely with my heroes.

  I began to poke around the room to find an old piece of cigarette: a very cold butt, that's what I like. I leave cigarettes unfinished, on purpose to find them the next day.

  I had no trouble getting what I needed and I started smoking, lying on my back.

  I smoked at home, in the back of my sofa, in the afternoon, on a weekday. In truth, it was extraordinary, admirable. Tobacco tasted all the more miraculous because you can never smoke in the office during the day. I'm not talking about Sunday, this poisonous day! Tobacco therefore tasted of freedom, and life tasted of tobacco itself.

  From the couch, I saw the little boards that bent under the weight of my books. Looking fixedly at the back of the volumes, I saw the whole undulating in small waves, like the water of a stream. It's an old illusion that still amuses me, whenever it doesn't horrify me. That day, I was delighted.

  I spent an oily, succulent, concentrated hour on my couch, one of those hours we can talk about for twenty years. Then I went to the window to look at the universe.

  We were in August. A freshness of sewer rose from the roadway, with the smell of vegetables and the cry of the merchants in the small car crawling constantly on the pavement of my neighborhood. The street seemed deeply cut, with a chisel, in the rocky mass of the buildings. All the windows were open and we could see people, as we see, at low tide, leaving the animals of a colony that lives in the rock.

  If you don't know the rue du Pot-de-Fer, do me the favor of not going to explore it. I know it would disgust you. But I don't like to hear it bashing: I prefer to be alone in saying bad things.

  I could make out, in the depths of the accommodation, all sorts of details which, in other circumstances, would have seemed miserable, sordid and which, that day, were curious and touching. I would gladly have spoken to some neighbors whom I generally do not seem to see.

  My mother called me. I joined him, singing at the top of my chest, so that my mother said to me for the third thousandth time:

  - Too bad you don't want to learn singing; you have a pretty little tenor voice.

  Mom had surprised me again: she had pulled out two thin glasses like soap bubbles and a bottle of Cinque Terre wine from the cupboard. We have this drink from a vague cousin who has stayed in Italy.

  I am not greedy at all, but this glass of powerful wine was a delight.

  Mother said:

  --Take this, before going to see Lanoue; take this to finish going up. And, if you want to stay for dinner with Lanoue, stay.

  This drop of alcohol transposed my joy into a register such that it became essential for me to walk, to consume myself, to wear myself out, to exhaust myself.

  I got dressed in fresh clothes, kissed my good mom and screwed myself up on the stairs at top speed.

  CHAPTER-V

  Like a vein of food flowing in the thickest of the city, rue Mouffetard descends from north to south, through a shaggy, congested, tumultuous region.

  Moored at the Sainte-Geneviève mountain, the Mouffetard country forms a steep, refractory reef, against which the great waves of the new Paris break.

  I like rue Mouffetard. It resembles a thousand surprising and diverse things: it resembles an anthill in which we have set foot: it resembles those torrents whose rumble procures oblivion. It is encrusted in the city like a busty parasite. She does not despise the rest of the globe: she ignores it. She is plentiful and vaulted, like a sow.

  The Mouffetard country has its own customs and laws which no longer have any meaning or force beyond the Monge River. The stranger who, coming from the center, gets lost in the rue Blainville or place Contrescarpe is, at certain hours, sucked up like a wisp by the maelstrom Mouffetardien. And, immediately, the cataract involves it.

  Rue Mouffetard seems devoted to a fierce gluttony. She carries on backs, on heads, at the end of a multitude of arms, many nourishing things with powerful scents. Everyone sells, everyone buys. Tiny traffickers carry their business in the palm of their hand: three heads of garlic, or a salad, or a brush of thyme. When they have traded this merchandise for a big floor, they disappear, their day is over.

  On the banks of the torrent accumulate mountains of raw meats, herbs, white poultry, obese squash. The flow eats away at these riches and takes them away throughout the day. They are reborn at dawn.

  The houses are painted in brutal colors which seem the only fair, the only possible. Each door shelters a merchant of frying, and the aroma of overheated fats rises between the walls like the incense claimed by a carnivorous deity.

  I am telling you all this because when I left my home, rue Mouffetard was the first step in my happiness.

  It was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon. Rue Mouffetard calmed down: it was in the morning that it had its big attack.

  Passing rue Mouffetard one day when one is happy, one day when one is satisfied, it is a rich affair. I let myself slide to Lac des Gobelins, like a traveler in a Pirogue along a tropical river. Everything was a revelation to me. I was coming to fullness minute by minute.

  In the delicatessens there were fleshy girls who treated life like a dance; they honored the pâtés with ritual gestures, cozy caresses. Oh! the sweet pâtés!

  Sordid alleys, like the Passage des Patriarches, concealed a shadow of an overseas color, an eastern shadow where my thoughts gave conquering recognition. I expected the sight of a beautiful merchant of cooked herbs, a large creature who always seems languid by the charming weight of her natural ornaments; this view was granted to me in passing, and just at the right moment. On that day, was it possible that something was refused me?

  The glass of Cinque Terre wine shone inside of me like an ember. I walked with an aerial step. I was covered in blessings. I was promised to all adventures.

  I was, for more than twenty seconds, a cobbler in the hollow of a shop that smelled of Russian leather. Twenty seconds: half a century of philosophical life in a cramped retreat like a thimble.

  I was a tide dealer, among a thousand freshly colored fish, in the midst of a herd of lobsters that I had myself, at dawn, drawn from a steaming sea, studded with archipelagos.

  I was a market gardener, a wine-grower, a bullfighter. A bunch of bananas carried me in the sands, following a caravan; but the scent of the saltings immediately opened a smoky farm in the Cévennes solitudes.

  How good it is to be happy! How simple, how easy! Really, sir, how do men manage not to be always happy, with all that is given to them for that?

  When I arrived at Saint-Médard church, I saw a former comrade, a man named Delaunay, whom I had known during my stay at the Maison Moûtier. He bought tomatoes from one of these gossipers who crowded the estuary on rue Mouffetard with their baskets.

  He came to me overwhelmed and told me a whole confused story about his sick wife, a dead child, what do I still know?

  I felt upset; tears came to my eyes. I was so good that day! God! how pitiful and good I was that day!

  I could not contain the impulses of my heart; I say to Delaunay:

  --Do you need money? Because, you know ...

  He refused, looking at me in amazement, with concern. I looked at him effusively: my drunkenness annexed his despair. It may be monstrous to say, but his pain aroused in me an ardent sympathy which was not unpleasant to me. I tell him:

  --Can I help you with something? Do you need me?

  I put myself at his disposal. I promised to go see her. I left him on protests of fidelity, of devotion.

  I did not go to see him. I don't even know what happened to him and I never worried about him again. However, that day, I would have probably sacrificed many things so that he was not unhappy.

  The shadow he cast on my joy only made it more brilliant. In less than five minutes, she had regained complete possession of my heart. She filled it like a tumor; it was almost embarrassing, heavy to carry. I tell you about it Too much; of this joy. Forgive me: it was not my fault that I had joy that day. I was tempted to cry out.

  This famous joy carried me away, like a puffy veil pulls a boat on the water; she made me go up, at good speed, the rue Monge, a powerful siphon which, towards evening, sucks the center of the city and spreads a swarming flood over the southern regions.

  A little later, I see myself in the deserted landscape that surrounds the Halle aux Vins. A refreshing smell of broken open casks frolicked along the railings: it was for me.

  I'm not sure where I went after that. My dreams were constantly mixed with the sensitive universe, so much so that in reality I ceased to exist in a specific place until around six o'clock. Perhaps even I was, during this time, in several places of the world, perhaps nowhere. At six o'clock I woke up on the asphalt on the Boulevard Bourdon.

  It was a real test. Boulevard Bourdon is a formidable place for people who are not sure enough of themselves. If you are not in a state of grace, do not cross boulevard Bourdon on a summer afternoon. He is sad and hot; the shimmer and the odors of the canal give the walker a sickening vertigo.

  I triumphed on the Boulevard Bourdon and emerged gloriously onto the Place de la Bastille, resounding like an anvil and watered with rays.

  The Faubourg Saint-Antoine saw me pass in a burning fog, like a man intoxicated with difficult successes. Shortly after, I approached rue Keller, where Lanoue lives. I continued to spend my happiness lavishly and I did not see the bottom of my purse.

  CHAPTER-VI

  Lanoue is a comrade from childhood, the survivor of a buried world. Lanoue is a million memories and a man on the market, a man I like. Lanoue has always been part of my life. He was not one of those with whom, around the twelfth year, I swore to maintain eternal bonds of friendship. These, I don't even know if they are still alive. I have never done projects with Lanoue, or so few! And that's probably why he remains involved in everything that happens to me.

  I love Lanoue dearly; in other words, the feeling I feel for him seems to me pure, vigilant friendship; but it is undoubtedly much pride to believe oneself capable of a real affection.

  Lanoue does not know anything, I think, of the character of the friendship which I carry to him. Something which is still a form of pride pushes me to conceal the most spontaneous inclinations as weaknesses. And then, Lanoue does not know that he is my only friend. I always let her believe that I had many other fascinating and valuable relationships. Can I admit to Lanoue that I am a very poor nature, incapable of many friends?