Bark Tree Read online

  “Go on, is that what you said?”

  “Just like I told you.”

  “But why did he say you were a swine?”

  “All that, that’s because of the first business, the letters he wrote to my mother. Squite true that I was a little nasty to him, but that’s no reason to try and kill me, like he already has once.”

  “He was boozed, eh?”

  “Hang on. So then I said to him: ‘Do you wishter speak to me, M’sieu?’ And then he banged on the table, the glasses flew all over the place: ‘I’m fed up,’ he shouted, ‘I’m fed up with all these swine that don’t have any guts.’ Yes, that’s what he said, but it was Le Grand he meant when he said that. ‘I’m fed up with all these swine that don’t have any guts, and this kid that plays with me like a cat playing with a mouse. A kid. All these creatures who look on and never do a goddamn thing.’ Yes, a kid, he dared call me.”

  “What’s it all mean, what he was saying?” young Nécessaire interrupted again.

  “Well, the guy’s sick,” explained Sensitif, emphatically.

  “And then,” added Théo, “you need to understand who Le Grand is. I finally found out. He’s a rich guy who doesn’t have anything to do and amuses himself watching other people live. Which means that Narcense, who’s starving to death, he says so himself, and hasn’t got a bean, he’s had enough of this guy who’s taking it easy acting the voyeur.”

  “Oh, a voyeur!” exclaimed young Nécessaire, inexplicably.

  “How d’you know that about Le Grand?” questioned Edgard, the son of M. Sensitif senior.

  “I realized it from what my father said. Because my father, from what I guessed, Pierre Le Grand was watching him too, doing all this and that; and he used to follow him in the street.”

  “No!” exclaims, incomprehensively, Paul N.

  “Yes, that’s how it was.”

  “I don’t know,” insinuates Sensitif, “that’s odd, a man that follows men, like that.”

  Théo laughs (sic).

  “You’re getting ideas into your head. Pierre Le Grand, well, he just kidnapped a woman.”

  Nécessaire shuts his eyes and his ears tingle. Sensitif leans over:

  “Who is she?” he vibrates.

  “Oh but,” Théo goes on, “I haven’t finished yesterday’s story yet. Everything in its proper place, eh? Well, I’d got to the point where Narcense was starting to break the glasses. People were afraid. The manager came up, you know, the bald one with the little beard. ‘What d’you want with me?’ shouts Narcense and he flings a glass in his face. Then the waiters jumped on him; Le Grand said to take him to a room upstairs. And there, it was as if he was delirious, a very thin man; he wrecked everything; his nose was bleeding and he was puking ... It lasted a good half hour. After that, he looked as if he was dead. Then my father and Le Grand took him to the hotel. There he went to sleep. But that’s not all. This morning, at 7 o’clock, Le Grand came and fetched him in his car and took him away, I don’t know where. And what’s more, in the car, there was a woman with him. Guess who?”

  The others remain silent.

  “Catherine.”

  “No?”

  “No?”

  “Yes, Catherine’s his girl now.”

  “Well, that’s a funny one.”

  Sensitif, giving a little cough, asks:

  “What about your mother, what does she say about all this?”

  “If anyone asks you, you must say you don’t know anything about it,” replies Théo, who likes historic words.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  “Natch,” went on Sidonie, “everyone’s going to wonder why you’re marrying ole Taupe that hasn’t got a bean.”

  “Yes, that’s a difficult one to essplain,” Ernestine agreed.

  “Gotta get our brain boxes working,” declared Mme. Cloche. “It’s ticularly for Dominique and his wife that we’ve got to find a likely essplanation.”

  “Strue,” Ernestine once more agreed. “M’sieu Belhôtel, he’s going to think it’s peculiar. What’ll we tell him?”

  The two women fell silent. The sweat radiating over their skin, which was sprinkled with dust. The CHIPS shack was melting in the August sun. This was the time of day when they were manipulating the chloride and sulfuric acid in the factory with the blue windows. The two women were alone.

  “And who’s going to pay for the wedding breakfast?” questioned Mme. Cloche.

  Ernestine didn’t answer, but then hazarded:

  “Old Taupe.”

  “No, he won’t give anything away so long as we haven’t taken anything.”

  “Well then?”

  “Haven’t you got any money saved up, Ernestine?”

  Ernestine blushed.

  “Yes, Madame Cloche, I’ve got a savings bank book.”

  “Well then, you’ll pay for it. We’ll have the wedding breakfast at Dominique’s. We can pay him back later.”

  “That’s right, Madame Cloche.”

  Two truck drivers came and interrupted this important confabulation. While Ernestine was serving the two dust-covered men a liter of white wine, which she embellished with a few piquant pleasantries destined to reawaken their eroticism, which might have been deadened by their exhausting work, Mme. Cloche, with one fist on her hip and the other supporting her chin, was putting her brain box to work. Her nephew’s letters were not calculated to reassure her; Narcense’s arrival at X ... , the brawl that had followed it, his departure with Le Grand, all this boded no good. For it was quite clear that he’d come to demand his share of the loot, in exchange for giving them some information. And that information could only be about her own visit! What an absurd thing to do! And the very same day! when he’d shouted something at her from the train! that she hadn’t understood! Ah, if only that idiot of an Ernestine had agreed right away! None of this would’ve happened. Stead of which, she’d had to try and play it her way; she’d wanted to bring it off on her own. But Ma Cloche was there. What an old fox, huh! she thought, referring to herself, and young Ernestine had after all had to agree to give her half Taupe’s treasure. As for that one, he was obviously an old rogue; he agreed to everything; talmost looked zif he was letting himself be married on purpose. And not a sausage to be got out of him! Yes but, after the wedding, they’d soon see about getting his small change out of him. Funny thing was, he wasn’t as old as all that after all: only sixty. He looks much much older. Natch, not a word to Ernestine about the new conspiracy that had got under way at X.... Mustn’t scare the little thing. As it was, she wasn’t feeling too happy about it. The most awkward thing was to get Dominique to accept her marriage to Taupe. After all, she was what you call his concubine, and he’d promised her all this and that when he’d got his brothel. So he wouldn’t be very pleased. That was a nuisance. What were they going to tell him?

  The two men had gone; Ernestine came and sat down with Mme. Cloche again.

  “And who’ll we invite to my wedding?” she asked.

  “I’ve already thought about that,” replied Sidonie. “There’ll be me, natch; and then Dominique, Eulalie and Clovis; and then Saturnin and his missus. With the two of you, that makes eight. And then there’ll be your relations. Who’re they?”

  “Vonly got two brothers; there’s Themistocles, that’s an N.C.O. in the Zouaves, and it just so happens he’s on leave at the moment; and then Pierre, that’s married. He’s a magician, plays the music halls; he calls himself Peter Tom the Anchorite. I’ve got some cousins in the provinces, too, but they won’t come.”

  “Then that makes three more, that makes eleven.”

  “And then my girl friend Suzy.”

  “That makes twelve.”

  “And ole Taupe, he’s sure to invite the Pics.”

  So they’d be at least fifteen; apart from that, they couldn’t find a valid reason to explain why Ernestine, young and almost pretty, and an ordinary waitress in a bistro, should marry a self-styled beggar.

  “If we leave it like
that, everyone’ll say that it’s because Dominique’s got you pregnant,” says old Cloche, “and the child’s got to have a father.”

  Flies were fluttering around their brains.

  “What the hell does it matter if they say that,” exclaimed Ernestine, confidently.

  “Yes, that’s true, we don’t care. Here, give me a Cointreau, Ernestine.”

  Impelled by the effort of thought, Sidonie was scratching the table with the nail of her index finger, a familiar gesture.

  Could they also say that Ernestine had developed a liking for the junk business? That old Taupe had won her heart? If the idiot didn’t always claim to be so badly off, none of this would present any difficulty. But he was really lousy. And yet, after all, he was someone; everyone knew he’d been a gent and that he’d lost all his money in the Russian Revolution. The most difficult is Dominique. How to get him to swallow it? This was going to cause more trouble, this business. She’d tell him ’at Ernestine had fallen for Taupe. That swot she’d tell him, her brother. She was perfectly entitled to get married to anyone she wanted to, wasn’t she? And then, after all, Dominique, he’d be very pleased that it’d worked out like that for Ernestine. And Mme. Cloche was very pleased, too, that it should work out like that in her mind, because all this was making her feel tired. Whereupon, in came old Taupe.

  “Hello, Madame Cloche, Hello, my little Titine,” and he pinched her waist.

  “Hands off, I tell you. Y’not to touch me till we’re married.”

  “Isn’t she naughty,” said the sexagenarian. “I’ve just been to the town hall; it’s all fixed. We’re going to get married on the 25th of August.”

  “It’s the 25th, then?”

  He sat down, and didn’t look as if he was thinking about anything much.

  “I’ll have a white wine,” he declared automatically, moving his hand about in his pants pocket.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  The beach was strewn with bodies without number, which were turning it from golden yellow to fly-black; there were some very little ones who cried without respite, and some very big ones who slept all the time. There were some who had breasts, and there were some who hadn’t; there were some in bathing suits, and some with more clothes on; some were deformed, and some were formed; some were bulky, and some were transparent. The ensemble was not impressive. Sitting on a broad, flat stone, that he had chosen with care, Etienne was following with listless eye the reduced activity of his balneal colleagues. Some suddenly got up and went to have a dip, and then came back to snooze until it was time for the well-filled aperitif. Sometimes the women going by caught his eye: Etienne was thinking of Narcense, of that man who, tormented by love and poverty, behaved in such a strangely agitated fashion. He saw him again, hanging in the forest, and the sole of his shoe with a leaf stuck to it; he saw him again, struggling, being taken away by the waiters. And the correspondence with Théo, and the meeting in the Langlumet restaurant. He noticed Alberte with Mme. Pigeonnier; then young Sensitif waved to him with great elegance. The water was lovely today, the people around him were saying. Pierre and Narcense, who had been gone for two days, hadn’t given any sign of life. Nor had Mme. Pigeonnier’s maid, and this worried Mme. Pigeonnier. It didn’t seem to affect Théo particularly. Odd, if what Pierre had insinuated was true? Then he wondered. “Why am I not Narcense?” and felt uneasy about the meaning of such a question.

  He had been on his flat stone for about an hour, when a hand touched his shoulder. He followed it. It was Pierre, whose eyes were shining with excitement.

  “Come somewhere quiet, I’ve so many things to tell you.”

  And in spite of his habitual calm, he was practically trembling. They went to the end of the little jetty and sat down. Pierre spoke:

  “First piece of news: you and I are dangerous crooks; at the moment we’re preparing a coup which ought to bring us a million: Mme. Cloche is also concerned with the same business and Narcense, another gangster, has refused to work with her. As she is suspicious of us, she has got her nephew to spy on us.”

  “I don’t quite follow,” said Etienne.

  Then Pierre described in detail the Cloche-Narcense interview just as Narcense himself had recounted it to him.

  “The strangest thing of all,” he commented, “is that the old woman isn’t mad, and that it really does seem that a million could be behind our machinations. But how we can look as if we are preparing the said swindle, that’s something that seems very odd to me.”

  Etienne didn’t say a word: the fact that, after having looked like a silhouette in Pierre’s eyes, he should have become a gangster in those of Mme. Cloche, started him off on meditative paths such as his grey matter had never yet set its neurons on.

  “It’s obvious,” continued Pierre, “that all her conjectures are based on your visits to Blagny. How could you expect that anybody as artful as Mme. Cloche seems to be could conceive of someone going to have a drink at her brother’s just for the pleasure of it?”

  “One day,” said Etienne, “I gave Belhôtel a potato peeler; that must have seemed funny to them, too.”

  “And that business at Les Mygales, they know about that, don’t they? With all these data, Mme. Cloche’s effervescent brain has had something to work on, and so we’ve become dangerous gangsters. The transformation isn’t particularly unpleasant, so long as that romantic midwife doesn’t set the cops on our heels. Though it’s true that, you and I, we’re irreproachable from all points of view? isn’t it?”

  “Do we know?”

  “Marcel, you’re becoming skeptical; a dangerous obstacle to your meditation.”

  “It isn’t being skeptical, to destroy error, and what graver error is there than to think you know what you don’t know? Now, do I really know whether you aren’t a thief and a murderer?”

  Pierre didn’t answer; even though he didn’t find either of these hypotheses particularly unpleasant, as he said to himself in these words. Taking advantage of Etienne’s silence, he went on :

  “There’s one way of finding out, and that is to find the little spy, Mme. Cloche’s nephew.”

  “What for?” Etienne asked politely, just to look as if he were interested.

  “It won’t be difficult; he’s staying with a midwife; there can’t be many, here. We’ll easily find him.”

  “All right, let’s try.”

  They discovered where Mme. Corcoran lived, without trouble; but that day the midwife was out visiting, and young Clovis must have been amusing himself somewhere, either down at the sea or in the country. The description they were given of him was too vague to rely on; he was due back about 7. While they were waiting, they walked up and down, talking of this and that. Etienne referred to Catherine’s disappearance; Pierre didn’t hide from him the fact that she had become his mistress and that she was waiting for him at Z ... , at his brother’s, as was Narcense himself. It was then that Pierre realized sadly that he couldn’t parade all Catherine’s revelations; he was always forgetting that this young man had to keep up the appearance of being a paterfamilias. Another thing he wouldn’t have been able to do.

  At about 7 o’clock, a few steps away from Mme. Corcoran’s house, they saw a child of thirteen or fourteen who looked like Clovis to them. He was carrying a basket full of shrimps, or stones, or rubbish, or which may well have been empty, and he didn’t see them. Pierre called: “Clovis!” Clovis raised his head, and saw them. They didn’t look so terrible, but, as this unexpected meeting, the child lost all his self-control. He dropped the basket and scrammed. Pierre Le Grand caught up with him and held him by one arm. The brat started yelling for help. A passing fisherman said to Pierre: “What d’you want with that kid?” A lady exclaimed: “What a brute!”

  Pierre let go of Clovis, who fled. The two mens’ attitude elicited some stern comments.

  The latter made themselves scarce, leaving the ill-informed crowd engulfed in its error.

  A few steps farther on, Pierre burst out laughi
ng: “I don’t think we acted very cleverly there.”

  “I’m afraid not,” agreed Etienne. “For international gangsters, it isn’t very impressive.”

  Pierre didn’t answer.

  —oooooo—oooooo—

  It is with as much surprise as indignation that we have heard about M. Système being bitten. We would like to inform the canine race that such deviationist behavior will not be tolerated within the area under the jurisdiction of the commune. Dogs were made to bite the dust, and not good citizens.

  *

  Little Octave Tandem, five years old, found a rusty knife in the street. He lost no time in taking it to the police station. The voice of conscience had spoken to this child.

  *

  Mme. Tendre Soucoupe, while clearing her dining room table, dropped a glass made of Czechoslovakian crystal. The purely material damage will be reimbursed by the France Assurance and Co., 11 rue des Moutons-Pressés, in the cantonal county town of the canton.

  *

  Some practical jokers having inserted a bullet in the head of M. Oréor Serventi, and this by means of a rifle disposed to this effect, the consequence has been a passage from life to extinction of the person incriminated. The wags were immediately taken to the recruiting office and appointed corporals first class.

  *

  A wine party was held last night in honor of Rude Agricole, postman in Blanc-Yeux, to celebrate his forty years of service. The mayor gave a little impromptu speech which impressed with its charming good nature. The most charming cordiality reigned throughout in this charming assembly. A dance brought this charming evening to a close. Next day, Rude Agricole resumed his duties, saying: On the fiftieth now. This charming utterance earned him the applause of the whole village who had hastened to the charming spot.