The Bark Tree (25 page)

Then they sit down again.

Then they talk.

“Florette, take your elbows off the table,” Mme. Pic starts.

—oooooo—oooooo—

When there is nothing left of the fish but its skeleton. Meussieu Pic thinks it’s time to get in some of the jokes from his repertoire; Themistocles, too, has the same thought. Both of them, with quivering nostrils, start watching for the keyword from which the anecdote will blossom. But at the moment, the conversation is desultory, which makes their hunting difficult.

“Will you do some tricks for us, then?” Ernestine asks Peter.

And Dominique asks Saturnin:

“Still only one tenant?”

Mme. Dominique answers Themistocles:

“No thank you.”

And Suzy answers Meussieu Pic:

“Not yet.”

Mme. Cloche, over the heads of the two children, harpoons the magician and asks him:

“Why’re you called an Anklewright?”

“Anchorite,” replies Peter. “It’s a Greek word that means: that you hardly ever eat or drink; a fakir, as you might say.”

“Seems to me that you eat and drink or right though,” Dominique objects.

“Ah yes. Here. But on the stage, I hardly eat or drink at all.”

“Ah!” say most of the bewildered listeners.

“Has anyone ever seen people eating and drinking on the stage?” remarks Meussieu Pic.

“Well, really!” protests Peter, “what about sword-swallowers?” (They laugh.)

“Oh go on, that’s idiotic, what you’re saying,” Themistocles says to him. “It’s like the guy from Marseilles who
...
”

“It isn’t idiotic. I do hardly eat or drink at all on the stage.”

“Even so,” retorts Meussieu Pic, who’s sticking to his idea, “it’s very rare for a magician to eat and drink on the stage.”

“That’s just what makes me different,” says Peter, with a knowing air.

They’re afraid they haven’t understood; Themistocles, who is never afraid of not understanding, formulates the general uneasiness.

“You’re pulling our legs. If you’re like the others, that can’t make you different.”

“But I’m not like the others; They don’t eat
anything
on the stage. Ever seen a magician eat on the stage? No, eh. Well, me, I eat just a little. Get it,
just a little,
that’s what makes me different. To be quite precise, I eat an apple, and then I take it out of one of the audience’s pockets. That, Madame?
...
”

“Cloche.”

“Is why I call myself the Anchorite.”

“Well, strue, that’s clever,” Dominique admits.

“Oh, Pierre, he’s very intelligent,” Mme. Peter suddenly murmurs, “he’s very intelligent, but he never has any luck, he can’t seem to make a name for himself.”

“What a bitch!” exclaims the magician, causing general consternation (Florette is the only one who thinks it’s very funny). “What a bitch! she will insist on saying that I’m not lucky. She keeps on saying it in every way she can think of. Obviously, that brings me bad luck.”

“You’re imagining things,” Ernestine tells him.

“And then, it’s stupid to shout it from the rooftops, that I haven’t made a name for myself. What does that make me look like now, eh? A half-wit.” (They laugh.)

The leg of mutton makes its appearance.

“Here, to show you that I’m someone after all, would you like me to make the leg of mutton disappear? The whole leg, or just the pope’s-eye?”

Everyone laughs and protests. Clearly, he’s getting it all his own way. Themistocles smiles; Meussieu Pic wonders whether, apropos of the leg of mutton, he couldn’t slip in the story about the Jew, the lamppost and the camel seller. But he hesitates too long; the conversation gets off on another track. A remark of Dominique’s about the dog that nearly bit Florette is its source. The subject of dangerous dogs, even though less prolific than that of swimming fatalities, nevertheless produces possibilities of sufficient abundance for them not to be exhausted before the guests have reached the bone of the leg of mutton. Mme. Saturnin, who is now opening her mouth for the first time, tells how her parents went six months without hearing from their son, because their dog couldn’t bear postmen. In Themistocles’ regiment, so he says, they have done away with bugle calls because they got on the nerves of the colonel’s greyhound. They thus pass from dangerous dogs to dogs that are merely cantankerous, and from these to quadrupeds in general. Pic waits patiently until they gradually get down to the gasteropods to bring out his story about the Jew, the bishop and the snails. Alas! his expectations are once again thwarted; the arrival of the cauliflower au gratin causes the animal kingdom to be abandoned for the vegetable kingdom and, by an abrupt twist, for which Dominique once again seems to be entirely responsible, they come back to the lovely day they’ve just had, the eharm of country life and the cultivation of the crimson clover.

While Ernestine is giving Mme. Dominique an account of their boating expedition, during the course of which Mme. Cloche nearly came into contact with the river water, Suzy steps up her flirtation with Peter, Mme. Pic reminds her daughter that elbows are not to be put on tables, and Totocle is plunged into profound inner jubilation, for he has just discovered an excellent pun; all he has to do now is to find the right place for it; the moment Meussieu Pic distinguishes himself to any extent, he’ll say: “You’re a wit, old Pic.” And they’ll laugh like anything.

“Hey, Uncle Sat,” says Clovis to the Concierge, “you promised to give me a nice book to read on my vacation and you never gave me one.”

Unclesat pretends he hasn’t heard; it’s true that he’s completely forgotten about his promise.

“Hey, Saturnin,” intervenes Mme. Cloche, whose deep voice makes the teaspoons vibrate, “carnch hear wo’ Cloclo’s saying cha?”

“Ah yes, a nice book; well, I’ll buy you one when you go back to school.”

“Huh, yes, you’ll buy me a textbook.”

“You don’t seem to have much confidence in your uncle, Clovis. That’s not very polite,” says Mme. Dominique indulgently.

“How old is the old boy?” the sergeant major asks her in a very blue-blooded manner (though he’s never seen blue blood on the battlefield).

“Thirteen.”

“He’s big for his age, isn’t he?” Peter observes to his brother.

The latter, who hadn’t prepared any more remarks, takes refuge in interjections.

“Hm! Hm!” he grunts, like a gourmet discovering a nice ripe Camembert.

“Has he passed his grade school exams?” asks Mme. Peter.

Mme. Dominique swallows her saliva before she utters the incendiary phrase:

“He’s starting at the lycée this year.”

And Dominique, in a casual tone of voice, adds :

“Yes, we’re sending him to the lycée.”

People look at Clovis; he blushes proudly.

“He’s going to be an engineer,” says his father. “We shall make the necessary sacrifices.”

“You’re absolutely right, Meussieu Belhôtel,” says Mme. Pic approvingly, “to sacrifice yourselves for your child, and to want to make someone of him.”

“It’s better for children to be ashamed of their parents than for parents to be ashamed of their children,” sententiates Meussieu Pic.

Immediately after which, he has a vague idea that that’s not very flattering to Dominique. Whereupon Themistocles decides to put his oar in, he turns toward Meussieu Pic and says point-blank:

“You’re a wit, old Pic.”

“
Me,
a wittol!” (he suffocates). But Meussieu I won’t allow you to insult me like that! To say nothing of my wife!
I
respect the French army, Meussieu; and
you,
you ought to respect the sanctity of the French family. Me, a wittol, ho! At my age, to be insulted by a, by a
...
Ho!”

He gets up and starts waving his arms about wildly. The ladies calm him down. Madame Pic looks puzzled; fortunately, she doesn’t know what a wittol is. Themistocles, alarmed at the effect he has produced, tries to justify himself.

“But it was a pun!”

“Pun or no pun, Meussieu, you have insulted me! And my wife! And
...
”

“I was only saying that you were a wit, Meussieu Pic! A wit!”

“Of course,” says Dominique, laughing, “a wit, old Pic!”

“Haha,
civis romanus,
you’re a wit, old Pic! Ha ha!”

Taupe has just spoken for the first time since the napkins were unfolded. And yet he’s talkative by nature; this evening, though, he hasn’t said a word or a phrase, and no one can know what he’s thinking about. The pun at the expense of his old friend the dealer in dried and salted goods, however, brings him out of his shell, as we have just seen.

“Come on, Jérôme, you don’t want to lose your temper on a day like this! for a mere trifle!”

“Ah yes, ah yes, a pun! Oh, very good, very good! I wouldn’t want to lose my temper for a mere nothing! Oh, very good! But tell me Sergeant Major Troc, you must see a lot of rivers in your profession, don’t you?”

“Rivers? No!” replies the astonished sergeant major. “Why should I?”

“Oh, I’m always hearing people being told: ‘They soldier down the river.’”

And he sits down again, satisfied with his revenge. The other guests are a little limp.

—oooooo—oooooo—

When this incident has blown over, and as no one wants any more cauliflower, the two waiters lent by the Restaurant des Alli
é
s transport onto the table an impressive quantity of assorted cheeses. Meussieu Pic, who is reputed to be a connoisseur, usually loves to hold forth about the various qualities of Brie and the precautions to be taken in handling Pont l’Evêque, but he is still too much affected by his brush with the sergeant major to be able to take the floor with the necessary authority.

“Oo, good, Roquefort,” exclaims Ernestine, delighted.

Taupe smiles, but this hardly changes him, for he seems to have decided to confine himself to this uncompromising type of dumb show. In the meantime, the attention of the company in general, having described a somewhat rugged circle, comes back to its favorite subject, to wit, the magician.

“Mussed oo loh trang?” asked Mme. Cloche, with her mouth full.

“What?”

“You must do a lot of traveling, I said.”

“Hah! don’t talked me about traveling! A week here, two weeks there. France today, Belgium tomorrow. I even been as far as Syria and Constantinople.

“I’ve even been,” Clovis corrects him.

“Where’s that you’ve been, young un?” asks Peter, who seems to be impervious to this linguistic nicety.

“I said I’ve been and not I been,” replies the future pupil of the lycée.

“Ah,” says Peter, who doesn’t bother about such trifles and, without trying to go any further into the insinuations of the kid, whose mother points out to him that he is speaking without being spoken to, which is extremely bad manners, particularly at a wedding, and even more so coming from a future pupil of the realm of secondary education, continues: “Constantinople! Ah, what a wonderful city! The Golden Horn! The Bosphorus! The Dardanelles!”

“Ha ha, the Dardanelles!” roars Themistocles. “My regiment won the right to wear the red aglet, there.”

“Were you there?” asks a lady.

“Oh no, I was too young.”

“No one is ever too young to serve their country,” observes Peter, sententiously.

“Well said, Meussieu.”

Pic, whose emotions have been soothed by a solid chunk of Gruyère, thus makes his reappearance.

“Even so, at thirteen, I couldn’t have been in the war in the Dardenelles!” protests the sergeant major.

“It has been known, children of that age joining up,” remarks Meussieu Pic, in a distant and faintly scornful voice.

“What about Bara and Viala,” cries Clovis.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, be quiet,” Mme. Dominique mutters.

“But,” says Peter, approvingly, “the boy’s right! Bara and Viala, they were children, and yet they were heroes.”

“I made up for it,” retorts Themistocles, giving his breastplate a great slap, thus causing the four decorations thereon aligned to reverberate.

“Tell the ladies where you picked up all that,” his brother advises him.

“Have you finished taking the piss out of me?”

“Come on, Totocle, don’t get annoyed,” Ernestine intervenes, “You know very well that Peter will have his little joke.”

“Me?” protests the latter. “I wasn’t joking in the least. It’s very interesting to know where you pick up things like that.”

“Judging by what you say, Meussieu the Anchorite, it would seem that you are a pacifist, am I not right? Well, Meussieu the magician, pacifists, I despise them.”

“Meussieu Pic!”

“Oh, Meussieu Pic!”

“Oh come on now, we don’t want any arguments,” Dominique decrees.

“That’s right,” says Ernestine, in a shrill little voice, “we don’t have to talk about war.”

“No point in starting any political discussions,” says Mme. Dominique B.

“Yes, we’re at a wedding, not at an election meeting,” says Mme. Saturnin B.

“Daddy’s getting cro-oss!” Florette shouts, clapping her hands excitedly.

“Oh, come on, Jérôme, you’re not going to start arguing all over again.”

“Be quiet, wife! I’ve said what I had to say. I’m a man who speaks his mind.”

“I accept Meussieu’s apologies,” the magician calmly proclaims.

“But I haven’t apologized!” the old man protests.

“It’s fine the way it is,” Saturnin approves. “Seeing that this meussieu accepts your apology, the matter is now closed.”

“Of course, of course, I accept Meussieu Pic’s apology! The matter is closed. Let’s change the subject.”

“Yes, but after all,” stammers the dealer in dried and salted goods, “I haven’t
...
”

“Come on, Jérôme,” his wife says to him, “finish your Gruyère. You’re always last.”

“Who wants smore cheese?” asks the proprietress.

Calm reigns once more.

“It,” says Themistocles artfully to Mme. Cloche, “seems to me that you’ve missed your vocation. You ought to’ve been a judge.”

“
Me,
a judge?”

“Yes! You’d have been a very wise one, Madame Cloche. You’re doing such good justice to the meal.”