The Bark Tree (26 page)

This is not generally considered very funny.

“He’s daft, that fellow,” mumbles Sidonie, emptying her glass for the twelfth time.

—oooooo—oooooo—

Whereupon the two waiters lent by the Restaurant des Alliés bring in a
gâteau
with cream and butter and vanilla and angelica and crystallized fruits, oh, la la! it makes them tremble! And what a size it is, the
gâteau!
Zenough for everyone. Florette can’t get over it and Clovis sits stock still, quivering with emotion.

“Well, Madam’ Belhôtel,” says Ernestine, “you’ve certainly done us a treat. Talk about a wedding breakfast—this beats the lot.”

“Long live Madame Belhôtel,” old Taupe suddenly yells, and then immediately relapses into inaction.

“Long live Madame Belhôtel,” they shout in chorus.

It’s quite true—talk about a wedding breakfast, this certainly beats the lot. Not everyone is of this opinion, though; Themistocles, for instance, thinks there’s a shortage of girls, Mme. Pic considers the company on the vulgar side, and her husband was hoping for a more copious menu. But who could dream of insisting that the wedding breakfast of a waitress in a suburban bistro should be as sumptuous as that of a princess?

The ovations over, everyone throws himself on his portion and wolfs it down, sensually.

“It’s terrific,” says Dominique.

“Gentlemen don’t usually care for sweet things,” remarks Mme. Pic, as if it were a reproach.

“Dominique, he likes everything what’s good,” says his wife.

“Aren’t so many good things in this world,” adds the tavern
-
keeper. “No point in letting them pass you by. Have to take advantage of life.”

“Of course,” agrees the sergeant major, eating a piece of angelica that Clovis, at the other end of the table, had been coveting.

“Even so, there are other things than eating and drinking,” says Mme. Pic in an inspired voice.

“Naturally,” retorts Peter, “there’s walking, hunting, sleeping, doing nothing
...
”

“There is the Ideal, Monsieur,” Mme. Pic articulates, “Alas! our civilization is deficient in Ideals,” she adds, harvesting with her teaspoon the remains of the whipped cream wandering about on her plate.

“We’ve had Politics; now it’s Morals,” murmurs Suzy.

“That’s not fair, what you’re saying,” begins Mme. Dominique Belhôtel, whose brain is beginning to be disturbed by a multiplicity of glasses of wine. “No, it’s not fair. Frinstance, Dominique and me, we’ve got an ideal, and that’s that Clovis, he should become an engineer.”

“And Themistocles’s ideal,” adds Peter, “is to become a second lieutenant when he’s forty-five.”

“And Peter’s ideal,” murmurs Mme. Peter, “is to have his name up in big letters outside the Empire.”

“Silly fool, who wants to know what you think, eh? My ideal is to be free, and for people to damn well leave me in peace.”

“To be free, that’s terrific,” says Ernestine dreamily.

“It’s pretty difficult to get people to leave you in peace,” Suzy adds.

“Pah, pah, all that’s just fine words,” says Dominique. “As we were saying: Eating, Drinking, and Sleeping.”

“No,
no,”
yaps Mme. Pic, “that’s not what
I
call the Ideal. The Ideal is your Family, and your Country, it’s Art, Duty, Religion
...
”

“And Property,” says Meussieu Pic, finishing her sentence for her.

“Oh la la,” mutters Suzy, “things aren’t looking up.”

“Property, that’s the origin of a lot of misery,” and old Taupe suddenly starts waffling in a monotonous voice, like an automaton whose secret mechanism has long been sought and which has been accidentally set in motion by pulling on one of its toes. “The secret of happiness is not to possess anything. To live happily, we must live apart, and be poor, because the less we possess, the more we escape our fate. Yes, that’s right; the more we escape our fate.”

These definitive words worry the assembled company a little; this speech seems to them inopportune, out of place, in bad taste even. Their uneasiness turns into anxious embarrassment when they hear Mme. Pic, in a curt voice, utter these words:

“But Meussieu Taupe, you
possess
a wife, now.”

This is just what the others didn’t dare say; but they consider it a cruel remark. What can old Taupe reply to that? He replies very simply:

“That’s stupid, what you’ve just said, Madam’ Pic, it’s stupid, foolish and unkind.”

A great silence spreads out in front of each face; Meussieu Pic looks as if he has bitten his spoon so hard that he can’t get it out of his mouth, and his spouse, after having imitated the behavior of something sitting on a pincushion, exclaims in a sprightly manner:

“Oh! Meussieu Taupe, you will have your little joke. Look Florette, I’ve already told you not to put your elbows on the table.”

“Mme. Cloche does,” retorts the child.

“You’ll get your face slapped in a minute!” yells her mother.

“I’m setting your child a bad example, Madame Pic, aren’t I?”

“Oh! but not in the least, Madame Cloche.”

“Ideal
...
ideal
...
” Meussieu Taupe mumbles, absent
-
mindedly.

“It’s true, how can we live without ideals?” Themistocles feels obliged to say. “Without ideals, we live like animals.”

Mme. Pic casts him the grateful glance of a bitch being allowed to keep one puppy. But Dominique, on the other hand, makes no concession to her.

“Eating, drinking, sleeping, that’s my ideal, and I’m not budging.”

“And women,” adds Themistocles, abruptly deserting Mme. Pic’s camp.

“Materialism is the scourge of our society,” groans the latter.

“Sanctimonious old cow,” says someone, in a sufficiently low voice for everyone to hear without looking as if they do.

Mme. Pic’s eyes become bloodshot; Meussieu Pic’s become atrocious.

“Do you know the story about the Englishman and the sack of flour?” Themistocles suddenly asks, with a presence of mind of which his brother thought him incapable.

“That’s right, tell us a story,” says Mme. Dominique, backing him up.

“Oh yes, let’s have a little laugh,” sighs Suzy.

“Ah! the story about the Englishman and the sack of flour,” says Meussieu Pic, who has finally disengaged his teeth from his teaspoon, “I have a feeling I know that one. It’s not the story of an Englishman who buys a sack of flour from an Armenian, is it?”

“From a Greek,” Themistocles corrects him.

“In my story, it’s an Armenian who sells a sack of corn.”

Themistocles lowers his nose in his plate in disgust, and lets the dealer in dried and salted goods finish the story. He congratulates himself on having done so, however, because it doesn’t have the slightest success. It’s more a strategic retreat than a defeat, and that wit, old Pic, in the end only wins an emPyrrhic victory.

—oooooo—oooooo—

Meanwhile, the two waiters lent by the Restaurant des Alliés are putting the fruit on the table and inquiring as to everyone’s wishes with reference to coffee and liqueurs. Mme. Cloche, who has drunk eighteen glasses of wine, scorns the fruit, folds her napkin meticulously, and orders a Cointreau. She sighs. The two children have disappeared; nobody takes any notice. Most of the guests look like tomatoes drying in the sun. Suzy and Peter are even closer to each other than they appear to be. Mme. Pic, having a care for her dignity, suppresses some tendentious hiccups. Through the open windows comes a little fresh air, with an aftertaste of coalsmoke.

“You’ll let us see your tricks soon, Meussieu Peter, won’t you,” says a lady.

“As soon as I’ve drunk my brandy, I’ll be at your disposal.”

“Why don’t we sing something?” suggests Suzy.

Now there’s a good idea. Ernestine and Suzy each comes on with a nice sentimental tune. Dominique sings of the baneful effects of the gaming table; Themistocles, more gayly, assures them that he’s got a good scheme, and Meussieu Pic makes a big hit with a little song relative to the planting of bananas. Taupe declares he doesn’t know anything. Mme. Pic declines. Mme. Cloche, requested to show her talents, bellows out a lugubrious tale about a crippled sailor whose fiancée prefers to marry a young man who is quite a gentleman to start off with but who later becomes an alcoholic and goes mad; the fiancée then tries to find the crippled sailor, but his comrades have eaten him one day when there was a west wind, and all that’s left of him is a little bit of his calf preserved in brine. Choking with emotion, Mme. Cloche does away with the contents of her glass of Cointreau before she goes on: the fiancée takes the little bit of his calf and eats it, and then throws herself down from the top of a lighthouse into the homicidal Ocean, singing: ’Tis the tale of a sailor boy, a sailor boy of France
...

This lugubrious adventure makes a considerable impression.

“You might have sung us something a bit more cheerful,” says Dominique.

“I yonly know two songs; that one, and then the one about the tragic guillotine. I chose the one that wasn’t so sad.”

“It’s Mme Belhôtel’s turn, now,” says Suzy.

Ernestine gets up and goes over to the window.

“Smatter?” asks Suzy.

“Don’t feel so good.”

“You ill?”

Ernestine doesn’t answer.

“Well well, certainly are some stars, this evening!” says she, then takes a few unsteady steps.

Peter gets up to help her.

“Go ahead without me. I’ll go and lie down for a few minutes. You stay there, Taupe.”

Suzy escorts her; they both go out. They wait in silence. Mme. Cloche leans out of the window. Suzy comes back with the two children.

“It’s nothing. She’s lying down in her room.”

“She duh want anything?”

No, she doesn’t want anything.

“Snot serious, is it?”

No, it’s not serious.

“Where’ve you been, Florette?” Mme. Pic asks severely.

“I was playing with Clovis.”

“Hm! why weren’t you playing here?”

“Ida know.”

The two children sit down again. They look at each other without laughing. Just no way of being left alone, thinks Florette. She agrees with Peter: the ideal is for people to damn well leave you in peace. That day will come; when she’s grown up. And
how
she’ll put her elbows on the table. And
how
she’ll have fun with the boys in the dark. And
how
she’ll go home just when it suits her. They’ll see! As for Clovis, he feels slightly embarrassed where Suzy is concerned; the thing is, Suzy, she isn’t a little girl, she’s a woman, a real one. And furthermore, his uncle, who is giving him an amused look, terrifies him more than his father, who’s frowning at him. In short, he is slightly embarrassed.

“What are you looking at over there, Aunt Sidonie?”

“Getting a bit of fresh air, dear.”

After a silence:

“It’s true, what Ernestine said; certainly are some stars this evening.”

One by one, the assembled company leaves the table; some of its members verify Mme. Cloche’s statement. Dominique hands around some cigars.

“There’s the Great Bear,” says Themistocles, pointing to something or other with the tip of his cigar.

“And there’s the polestar,” adds Meussieu Pic, doing ditto.

“It’s funny, all those little lights,” says Mme. Cloche pensively.

“Those little lights, Madame, are big suns, only they’re so far away from us that they seem no larger than a pinhead,” pontificates the dealer in dried and salted goods.

“Well I never!”

“And there’s some that’s so far away that you can’t see them,” adds the sergeant major.

“Howd we know they exist, then?” asks Mme. Dominique.

“You can see them through glasses, and the bigger the glasses are, the more you can see. Astronomers count millions and millions of them like that,” replies Meussieu Pic, who has been very well informed on this subject by the Abbé Morue.

“Isn’t science wonderful!” exclaims Suzy.

“I want to be an astronomer!” exclaims Clovis, fired with sudden enthusiasm.

“Don’t spose the gents in that profession get very rich,” Dominique thinks aloud.

“In the old days,” says Mme. Pic, who’d managed to keep quiet for ten whole minutes, “no one counted all those stars, and they were much happier.”

“Sgot nothing to do with it,” Peter declares.

“Yes, woss use of astronomy?” questions Mme. Cloche, following this new line.

“It’s absolutely no use,” Saturnin answers.

“There, you see!” Mme. Pic triumphs.

“It’s been useful enough to show that the sun doesn’t go around the earth, like they say in the Bible,” Peter throws at her, sure of this effect.

Mme. Pic, who has no hope of converting the professor of white magic, registers this blow by abstracting all the remaining
petits-fours
from the table.

“Astronomy is useful in the navy, too,” adds Themistocles.

“I remember that my grandfather, who was a master mariner, knew all the stars by name,” says Meussieu Pic.

“Have all the stars got a name?” asks Mme. Cloche, thunderstruck.

“Every one.”

“Well I never!”

Mme. Cloche, much affected, opens her bag and extracts a large checked handkerchief; she makes immoderate use of it, and then puts it back in its receptacle.

“What are you doing with that dove?” Peter asks her.

“What dove?”

“The one that’s in your bag.”

“I’ve got a dove in my bag?”

“Take a look.”

She obeys, and a dove escapes from the open bag, flutters about a bit, and then alights on the frame of a color print. Applause.

“That’s just nothing,” says Peter. “Child’s play! Child’s play! The performance is really going to begin, now.”

“Why don’t we ask Ernestine to come,” Suzy suggests.

“That’s right! Maybe she’s better.”

“No, she isn’t better,” says old Taupe, emerging from the corridor. “She looks ill.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Dunno.”

Old Taupe sits down, in a daze.

“Have to get a doctor,” he adds.

Then they really get going. Suzy and Mme. Belhôtel go up to Ernestine’s room. The men, no point in their going. What could be the matter with her? Indigestion? Migraine?