The Bark Tree (27 page)

Mme. Cloche then starts anxiously contemplating the turnip watch she’s holding; she’s beginning to get worried, to be afraid. Taking advantage of the confusion, Florette tickles Clovis, but the latter is in no mood for fun and games. He shares the avuncular anxiety. Then the heavy tread of Mme. Dominique is heard.

“Dominique! Dominique! have to go and get a doctor!”

—oooooo—oooooo—

When the doctor had gone, the members of the wedding party sat in silence around the table, which was soiled with cigar ash and wine stains. Bits of vegetables or meat, which had jumped out of the dishes like absurd acrobats, were scattered all over it, wilting in little pools of gravy. Pips and pieces of peel were mixed up with this debris; a flower petal was transfixed by a huge fishbone, for a bunch of flowers was shedding its petals in the midst of this dilapidation. Upstairs, they could hear Suzy walking up and down in Ernestine’s room; old Taupe was there too, and Mme. Dominique. The rest of the wedding party were hanging around in the dining room, their eyes vacant, their stomachs full. The two children were pinching each other with violence, but in silence. Mme. Cloche, very pale, was scratching the tablecloth with the nail of her index-finger, her favorite gesture; but the others didn’t budge. Camélia came as far as the door to sniff, looked at the silent assembly, and then went back into the shadows. The two waiters lent by the Restaurant des Alliés had gone. Dominque coughed every so often. Suddenly, he noticed that Mme. Pic wasn’t there.

“Huh, where’s your missis then?” he said to Pic.

“Ursule? Huh, where is she then? She may be upstairs, I don’t know,” replied Meussieu Pic, who was falling asleep.

“I think she went out,” said Mme. Peter.

But they didn’t press the point.

Then, five minutes later, Peter stood up and exclaimed:

“It’s rotten, though, just sitting here and not doing anything. Not being able to do anything. Absolutely nothing.”

He sat down again, his eyes moist. Dominique coughed.

Saturnin, irritated by his sister’s habit, said to her:

“Stop scratching like that. You’re not a mouse.”

Mme. Cloche stopped; she was getting paler and paler, and seemed to be thinking hard. Her tuberous nose was throbbing, her eyes were passionately animated; with despair, rage, hope and anger.

Florette, who had been pinched a bit too brutally by Clovis, started sniveling. Meussieu Pic took her on his knees, mumbling poor little thing, pore lil thing, pawlthing, pawlthing, pawlthing.

“Ah, shurrup,” said Dominique, exasperated.

The dealer in dried and salted goods shurrup, and advanced once more toward sleep. A few moments later, Mme. Dominique came down, poured herself out a large glass of wine and gulped it down.

“She’s getting worse,” she said abruptly, and then went upstairs again.

Themistocles, who had discovered a stray bit of bread on the table, was modeling a little ball into the shape of a phallus.

A bell rang. It was the doctor coming back. He climbed the stairs with speed, like a dead leaf raised by the wind. Then, five minutes later, he came tumbling down to the door and disappeared, his shoulders hunched. Mme. Dominique came down again.

“Well, what did he say this time?” asked Dominique.

“Znothing he can do, he says.”

“Znothing he can do,” Peter repeated, automatically.

“But what is it she’s got?” asked Mme. Cloche.

“He said the name of an illness, but I can’t remember it,” replied Mme. Belhôtel. “Tsan illness you don’t get better from, tswot he said.”

The company shivered.

“Isn’t there any way of saving her?” asked someone.

“No, the doctor, znothing he can do, tswot he said.”

No one spoke; then someone again asked:

“Has she got long?”

“Quarter of an hour, twenty minutes at the most, tswot he said.”

No one spoke; then someone again asked:

“She in pain?”

“No. Zjust gently fading away. She’s near her end, tswot he said.”

“How extraordinary,” said someone, pensively.

Mme. Cloche, with a backhander, flattened a fly that was shitting on the tablecloth. Themistocles, with a flick, ejected his bread phallus through the window. Mme. Dominique poured herself out another large glass of wine, and went up again to watch over the deathbed.

“Isn’t it a shame,” says someone, “dying at that age.”

“Alas, we die at every age,” says Meussieu Pic.

“She was a good girl, a good girl,” says Dominique, deeply moved.

“Isn’t it a shame,” says someone, “dying at that age.”

“And they can’t do anything for that illness.”

“We don’t even know what it is.”

“We don’t even know what it’s called.”

“She’s forgotten what the doctor said.”

“Isn’t it a shame to die at any age,” says someone else.

“All the same, when you’re young, when you haven’t had anything out of life.”

“All the same, what a shame, all the same, what a shame.”

“We don’t even know what she’s dying of.”

“The doctor said a name, but we don’t know.”

“And us, we can’t do a thing, we can only wait till it’s over.”

“What a shame, all the same, what a shame.”

“Ole Taupe now, you could understand him dying, but Ernestine
...
”

“Why’d she marry him? Why youth with an old man? Why?”

“And why is it the young one that’s dying, and not the old one? Why Ernestine and not Taupe?”

“How should we know? how should we know?”

“What a shame, all the same, to die at that age,” says someone.

Then, once again, no one spoke. They aren’t crying; after all, they aren’t children. Ernestine—but who is she? She is about to disappear, so they say. She’s upstairs in bed, and it will soon be as if nothing has happened. Ernestine—but who is she? “My sister,” one will answer. “I’ve hardly seen her three times in the last ten years. We were the same age, us two brothers, she was just little; we went away to earn our living, more or less well; Ernestine, we didn’t really know how she was getting along. We sent New Year’s cards, and birthday cards. We were fond of her.” But who is she—Ernestine? “A little waitress I made pregnant,” Dominique will answer. “She worked well; not a lot, no, but she wasn’t afraid of hard work. Day and night, I used to go to her room. Like with Germaine, like with Camille, like with Marguerite, like with the other one too, the one with straw-colored hair. She knew how to keep the customers, an she never complained. The kid, no one ever saw it. The river’s looked after it all right. Ernestine—I was very fond of her.”

But who is she—Ernestine? “Dominique’s waitress,” Saturnin and Meussieu Pic answered. But who is she—Ernestine? “My sister-in-law,” answers Mme. Peter. But who is she—Ernestine? “The bride,” answers Florette. But who is she—Ernestine? “My accomplice,” answers Mme. Cloche. But who is she—Ernestine? And they are all thinking: She’s something that’s upstairs and that’s dying. Ernestine—that’s not me. Ernestine is someone else, someone else that we don’t want to be, that we don’t want to see. Some of them might perhaps want to know how it’s happening. She isn’t in pain, it would appear. But is she talking? Is she delirious? Does she know she’s going to die? Because we know
we
aren’t going to die. She can’t have much more than ten minutes now. That’s not much. At least
we
have the whole night, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow; well—days. Days and days. And old Taupe, what’s he got to say about all this? What could he be thinking? Because really, it’s a little peculiar, marrying a young woman and then she goes and dies on her wedding day. No, that’s never been known. Old Taupe, what could he have to say? Zno getting away from it, it’s all very sad.

The members of the wedding party are becoming a sort of worried and amorphous magma. Their anxiety weakens and dissolves them; it makes putty of them. Because it’s a minor anxiety, something very ordinary and a bit degrading. Not an anxiety that’d get you rolling on the floor, not for the moment, at any rate.

For the moment, they’re bored. They are waiting—it’s almost as if they’re waiting for a train. But this particular train, they’re not the ones that are going to take it. It’s the person that’s up above.

If you look a bit closer at it, the magma turns out to be mere semblance. You can discover its molecules. You can perceive the individuals. It is composed of Dominique, who is worried, and Peter, who is sad, and Themistocles, who is sick at heart, and Mme. Cloche, who is seething, and Florette, who is sleeping, and Meussieu Pic, who is dozing, and Mme. Peter, who is doing accounts in her head, and Mme. Saturnin, who is profoundly affected by this lugubrious event, and Mme. Pic, who isn’t there.

“Hm, that’s true,” says Dominique, “Mme. Pic, we don’t know where she is.”

No one answers, as the family concerned is snoozing, as has been said above.

But the facts soon take it upon themselves to answer the tavernkeeper. Facts—let us rather say: events. For there is a ring at the door, and the sniffing Camélia goes to open it. Four shod feet tap on the treads of the staircase with their discreet heels, for someone in the house is on her death-bed.

Sh! Sh! The four feet reach the first floor, pass the dining
-
room door, and continue their ascent.

“Good God!” cries Peter. “The old girl has gone and fetched a sky pilot!”

—oooooo—oooooo—

Ernestine, with a friendly gesture, invited the crowd into her room, adopted the position of Socrates drinking the hemlock, and uttered these words:

“It was nice of you, Madame Pic, to think of me, but your curé, you know, well, you know what you can do with him, because I know your curé, I’ve seen him often enough, him and his dirty tricks, to know the sort of stuff he pulls, and snot only this one, it’s the ones I knew when I was just a little girl, too, they never deprived themselves of their nasty little pleasures with anything they could get hold of, from their check handkerchiefs to the little boys in the catechism class. Anyway, as you see, Madame Pic, if you thought you were going to inflict your mumbo jumbo on me, you were barking up the wrongest tree you ever could bark up, and your curé, he can stuff his crucifix back in his pants that he hides underneath his soutane. Anyway, even so, it’s nice of you to let me know nicely that I’m going to die. Praps I mightn’t even have known. You know, Madame Pic, I wasn’t so crazy about knowing, but now that you’ve shown me your gent in black I know what’s going to happen. Cept that I don’t really know. Anyway, members of the wedding party that are here to listen to me jabbering, I’m going to tell you a little about what’s going on. Snot that I want to teach you anything or start preaching at you. They don’t have me registered at the town hall for that sort of thing; even so I could do it just as well as that gent in black that’s making such horrid faces at what I’m saying. And so, members of the wedding party, open your lug-holes, like we used to say in my village where I was born, and I’m going to make you a little speech; that’s as good a way as any to use up the time I’ve got left to live, doncha think? To start with, I must tell you, then, that the fact that I’m going to disappear amazes me a little. Somehow, I can’t quite understand how it’s going to happen. I know that everyone can do without me quite all right, and that they’ll go on living after me; even so, I can’t quite essplain this peculiar adventure to myself. Ten minutes, or an hour, mnot quite sure which, from now
...
”

“Ten minutes at the most,” says Mme. Belhôtel.

“Thanks, Madame Belhôtel. I’ll see that I finish in time. So as I was saying, in ten minutes from now I’ll be disposed of, obliterated, blotted out. That—now that’s really peculiar. Snot that I believe in the immortality of the soul, as the abbé would say, or in life after death, like the woman that sells newspapers would say, you know the one I mean, the one that’s a spiritualist. I don’t believe in all that. I’ve thought about it. Imagining yourself just like you are, only not having any eyes, or arms, or legs—doesn’t make sense. On account of I’ve realized that what you are, it’s not just a little voice that talks in your head, but it’s your whole body, too, that you can feel is alive, and everything you can do with it. If you haven’t got a body any more, how can you say that it’s still me? And so, to come back to what I was saying just now, when I find it surprising that I’m going to disappear, snot that I’m thinking about life after death or my soul in heaven or in hell or any sort of imaginative stuff like that. I’m talking, as you might say, objectively. When something else disappears, that’s already odd. But me.
That’s
just staggering. A tree catches fire—there’s still the smoke and ash left; and yet the tree’s gone. It’s like me. The decay will be left, but the little voice that talks in your head when you’re by yourself, there won’t be anything left of that. Mine, when it stops talking, it won’t be talking anywhere else. That’s what’s strange. Tisn’t that it worries me much especially. People can do without me. Zno doubt about that. And I can do without myself all right. Snot that I’m trying to make any propaganda for the spiritualists—I might as well use the right words. Even so, there’s things you can’t stop yourself thinking. On the yuther hand, it’s just as crazy to think that there’s any reason for you to be on earth, but all the same I can’t stop myself thinking: Here I am, dying, and what the hell will I have done here? I’ll have rinsed out some glasses and done some dishwashing—no doubt about that; I’ll have slept with some men who were a pretty lousy bunch, in the main—in the moral sense of the word, that is; I’ll have had a child that was immediately done away with; I’ll have been beaten as a child, after which I’ll have somewhat wallowed in the mud. And I’ll have married old Taupe, yes, I was forgetting, I’ll have married old Taupe. I can’t help saying that if that’s all I’ll have done, I haven’t got much to boast about. And after that, what would I have done? Well that’s another story. I’ll say some more about that in a minute. For the moment, I’m giving you a lecture. Well, coming back to that, I must have plenty of screws loose to ask myself the sort of questions I am asking myself, don’t you think? What was I doing among you all? Well, I used to do the dishes. Why try and split hairs, eh? Members of the wedding party, what the hell are you doing here?”