Fancies and Goodnights

OLD ACQUAINTANCE

The apartment, on a fifth floor in the huitième arrondissement, was pervaded by the respectable smell of furniture polish. The Parisian ménage of 40,000 francs a year smells either thus, or of a certain perfume, which indicates quite a different way of living.

Monsieur et Madame Dupres, admirably fitted by temperament for the rotund connubialities of a more spicily scented dwelling, nevertheless had dwindled away twenty years of life in the austere aroma of furniture polish. This was because of an intense though unacknowledged jealousy, which had early inclined both parties to the mortification of their own flesh.

Monsieur had been jealous because he had suspected that Madame had not been altogether free from certain regrets when they married. Madame had been jealous rather in the manner of a miser who underpays his servant and therefore suspects his honesty. It is true that on the rare occasions when they visited the café, Monsieur would look round for a copy of La Vie Parisienne, and if there was a picture in it that interested him, his eyes would remain riveted on it for five minutes at a stretch.

Hence the unvoluptuous furniture of Parisian puritanism, and hence its weekly anointings with the pungent resins of respectability.

Now, in the bedroom, the smell of medicine was added. Madame Dupres lay dying of a frugal pneumonia. Her husband sat beside the bed, unfolding his handkerchief in hopeful expectation of a tear, and craving damnably for a smoke.

«My dear,» said Madame faintly, «what are you thinking about? I said, 'Get the gloves at Pascal's. There the prices are not beyond all reason.'»

«My dear,» replied her husband, «excuse me. I was thinking of long ago; how we used to go about together, you and I and Robert, in the days before he went to Martinique, before you and I were married. What friends we were! We would have shared our last cigarette.»

«Robert! Robert!» murmured Madame Dupres. «I wish you could be at my funeral.»

At these words a ray of light fell into a long-neglected corner of Monsieur's mind. «Holy saints!» cried he, slapping his knee. «It was Robert, then, all the time?»

Madame Dupres made no reply; only smiled, and expired. Her husband, a little at a loss as to what to do, kissed her lifeless brow once or twice, tried kneeling by the bedside, got up, and brushed his knees. «Twenty years!» he murmured, stealing a glance at the mirror. «Now I must let the doctor know, the notary, the undertaker, Aunt Gabrielle, the cousins, the Blanchards. I must call at the Mairie. I can hardly get a smoke at the Mairie.»

«I could have a puff here, but people coming in would smell it. It would savour of a lack of respect for the dead. Perhaps if I went down to the street door, just for five minutes … After all, what are five minutes, after twenty years?»

So Monsieur Dupres descended to the street door, where he stood on the step, conscious of the soft air of early evening, and inhaling the smoke from his long-awaited cigarette. As he drew in his first puff, a smile of the utmost satisfaction overspread his plump features.

«Ah, my poor Monsieur Dupres!» said the concierge, emerging suddenly from her den. «How goes it with Madame? She suffers?»

Conscious of his cigarette and his smile, Monsieur Dupres felt he could hardly explain that his wife had passed away but a minute before. «Thank you,» said he, «she suffers no longer. She sleeps.»

The concierge expressed optimism. «After all,» she said, «Madame is from Angers. You know the proverb about the women of Angers.»

She prattled on in this vein; Monsieur Dupres paid no attention. «I will go upstairs,» thought he, «and make the sad discovery. Then I can return and confront this old cow with a more appropriate countenance».

«And then, my God! there is the doctor, the notary, the funeral arrangements, aunts, cousins … My cigarette is done already, and I scarcely noticed I was smoking it. In a civilized country a bereaved should be left alone with his regrets.»

The concierge retired, but would undoubtedly soon return to the attack. Monsieur Dupres felt that he could do with another cigarette, but this time a cigarette smoked under better conditions, so that its healing task might be accomplished unhindered. His nervous condition demanded a seat in a modest café, a glass of Pernod before him, and all about him the salutary air of cafés, which is infinitely more fragrant than furniture polish.

«A cigarette, a Pernod,» thought Monsieur Dupres, «and then a good meal! A good meal calls for a glass of cognac afterwards; the digestion requires it, the doctors recommend it. And yet — what is one glass of cognac?»

«I will tell you,» said he to a passing dog. «The first glass of cognac is utilitarian merely. It is like a beautiful woman, who has, however, devoted herself entirely to doing good, to nursing, for example. Nothing is more admirable, but one would like to meet her sister. The second glass, on the other hand, is that self-same sister, equally beautiful, and with leisure for a little harmless diversion… . Twenty years!»

Monsieur Dupres went upstairs for his hat.

He decided to go to the Victoire on the Boulevard Montparnasse. It was there they used to celebrate, he and she and Robert, in the old student days, whenever they were in funds. «It will be, in effect, an act of homage,» thought he, «far better than disturbing her rest with doctors and cousins. And the cuisine used to be superb.»

Soon he was comfortably seated at the Victoire, with a monster Pernod before him. Every sip was like a caress, and, like a caress, led to another. Monsieur Dupres ordered a second glass, and permitted himself to glance at the pages of La Vie Parisienne.

«There is no doubt about it,» said he to himself, «life is what you choose to make it.» He looked about him in search of a little raw material. «Those two girls over there,» thought he, «are probably good-natured to a fault. I wonder if they wear little articles like those in this picture.»

His imagination conjured up a scene which he found incredibly diverting. He was compelled to snigger through his nose. He experienced an ardent desire to slap somebody. «What in the world have I been doing,» thought he, «all these twenty years? Nothing!»

He looked up again, with the intention of darting a certain sort of glance at the two young ladies who had appealed to his fancy. He was mortified to see that they were gone.

He looked around the café, in the hope that they had only changed their table, and saw, to his overwhelming surprise, sitting only a few feet away from him, with a monster Pernod before her, none other than Madame Dupres herself, apparently in the best of health, and wearing her grey hat.

She was at once aware of his regard, compressed her lips, and stifled a giggle, which exploded like a soda-water within. She then fixed him with an eye as quizzical as a parrot's eye. Monsieur Dupres, taking up his glass, made haste to join his spouse. «My dear,» said he, «I came out to recover my calm.»

Madame made no answer, only downed the second half of her Pernod at a single swig, and, replacing the glass on the table, fixed her eye unwaveringly upon it till her husband signalled the waiter. «Another Pernod,» said he. «In fact, bring two.»

The power of conscience is so great, in a small way, that Monsieur Dupres, on being discovered in the café, could not help feeling that his wife knew his most secret intentions, even those concerning the two young ladies. He anticipated a volley of reproaches. You may imagine his relief when he saw that Madame was cocking her eye at him in the most tolerant and understanding fashion over the rim of her glass, the contents of which were drawn up as if by magic into the refined pouting of her lips. «Marie,» said he with a smile, «perhaps we have lived too narrowly, as it were. After all, this is the twentieth century. What a magnificent figure of a woman you really are!»

Madame Dupres smiled indulgently. At that moment the door swung violently open, and a man entered, who looked about him on all sides. Monsieur Dupres looked at this man. «Impossible!» said he. «As I was saying, Marie, I have a delicious idea. Prepare yourself to be shocked.»

Madame Dupres, however, had noticed the newcomer. She smiled delightedly, and waved her hand. Smiling also, but not evincing any surprise, the newcomer hastened over.

«Robert!» cried Madame Dupres.

«God in heaven!» cried Monsieur. «It is Robert.»

No words can express the felicity of these three old friends, bound together by memories which were only mellowed by the passage of twenty years. Besides, they were already half tight, for it was apparent that Robert also had been indulging in an apéritif or two. «Fancy seeing you!» said he to Monsieur Dupres. «What a small world it is! There is really no room to do anything.»

Monsieur Dupres was equally incoherent. He could do nothing but slap Robert on the back. They had a last round, and moved into the restaurant on the other side of the partition.

«What have you been doing all these years?» asked Robert as they seated themselves.

«Nothing very much,» said Madame Dupres.

«Oho!» cried Robert, smiling all over his face. «Is that so? What a magnificent evening we shall have! Tonight we drink the wine we could never afford in the old days. You know the wine I mean, Marie?»

«You mean the Hermitage,» said Monsieur Dupres, who already had his nose in the list. «Eighty francs! Why not? To the devil with eighty francs! A wine like that puts all sorts of ideas into one's head. Champagne first. Why not? Like a wedding. Only better.»

«Bravo!» cried Robert. «You have neatly expressed it.»

«What shall we eat?» said Monsieur Dupres. «Study the menu, my children, instead of looking at one another as if you were raised from the dead. We must have something spicy. Marie, if you eat garlic, I must eat garlic. He! He! He!»

«No garlic,» said Robert.

«No garlic,» said Madame Dupres.

«What?» said her husband. «You know you adore it.»

«One's tastes change,» said Madame.

«You are right,» said her husband. «That was what I was saying when Robert came in. I wish the fal-lal shops were open. Marie, I would like to buy you a little present. Something I saw in a magazine. Heavens, what wickedness there is in the world! The air seems full of it. Marie, we have wasted our time. Here is the champagne. Here is a toast. After Lent, the Carnival!»

«After Lent, the Carnival!» cried the others, in the highest good humour, touching their glasses together.

«Why be ashamed?» said Monsieur Dupres, laughing heartily. «We have been married twenty years, Marie. Robert has been in Martinique. There, they are black. What of it?»

«What of it?» echoed Madame, filliping Robert on the nose and giggling uncontrollably.

«Embrace one another!» cried Monsieur Dupres, suddenly, and in a voice of thunder. He rose in his chair to put an arm round each of them. «Go on! Give her a kiss! She had a weakness for you in the old days. You didn't know that, my boy. But I know. I know everything. I remember on the night of our nuptials, I thought: 'She has a weakness for somebody.' Twenty years! Marie, you have never looked more beautiful than you look tonight. What is twenty times three hundred and sixty-five?» Overcome by the enormous figure that resulted, Monsieur Dupres burst into tears.

While he wept, the others, who were as drunk as he was, leaned across the table, their foreheads now and then colliding, while they chuckled inanely.

With the arrival of the brandy, Monsieur Dupres emerged into a calmer mood. «The thing to do,» said he, «is to make up for lost time. Do you not agree with me?»

«Perfectly,» said Robert, kissing him on both cheeks.

«Regard her,» said Monsieur Dupres. «A woman of forty. Oh, if only those little shops were open! Robert, old friend, a word in your ear.»

Robert inclined that organ, but Monsieur Dupres was unable to utter the promised confidence. He was capable of nothing but a sputter of laughter, which obliged Robert to use his napkin as a towel.

«To the devil with your little shops!» said Robert. «We need nothing. There are cafés, bars, bistros, boîtes, night clubs, cabarets, everything. To the boulevard, all three!»

With that, he sprang up. The others unsteadily followed him. On the street everyone looked at them with a smile. Madame's respectable grey hat fell over her nose. She gave it a flick, and sent it equally far over the back of her head. They linked arms, and began to sing a song about a broken casserole.

They visited several bars, and emerged from each more hilarious than before. The men, crouching down so that their overcoats trailed along the ground, shuffled along in imitation of dwarfs, as they had done in their student days. Madame was so excessively amused that she was compelled to retire into the midnight shadows of the little alley that runs between the Rue Guillaume and the Avenue des Gascons.

«I suppose,» hiccuped Monsieur Dupres, when she rejoined them, «I suppose we should soon be going home.»

Robert expressed his contempt for this notion wordlessly though not soundlessly. «Mes amis,» said he, facing round, and putting a hand on a shoulder of each, while he surveyed them with a comical and a supplicating face, «mes amis, mes amis, pourquoi pas le bordel?» At this he was overcome by a fit of silly laughter, which was soon echoed by the others.

«It is, after all, the twentieth century,» chuckled Monsieur Dupres. «Besides, we must consider our friend Robert.»

«It is in the nature of an occasion,» said Madame. «It is a little reunion.»

Accordingly they staggered in the direction of an establishment known as the Trois Jolies Japonaises, the staff of which would no doubt have worn kimonos were it not for the excessive warmth of the premises. This warmth was the undoing of Monsieur Dupres. They had no sooner seated themselves at a table in the lower salon than he found it necessary to cool his face on the glass table top, and immediately fell sound asleep.

After a humane interval, gentle hands must have guided him to the door, and perhaps given him a gentle push, which set his legs in motion after the manner of clockwork. At all events, he somehow or other got home.

Next morning he woke on the narrow sofa in the dining-room of his apartment, and smelled again the refreshing odour of furniture polish. He found his head and stomach disordered, and his mind half crazy. He had only a vague memory of great dissipation the night before.

«Thank heaven she has been spared this!» thought he, looking guiltily at the closed door of the bedroom. «It would have upset her appallingly. But what? Am I mad? Do I remember her somewhere last night? What poison they serve in these days! Yet … No, it is impossible!»

«I must call the doctor,» he said. «The undertaker, too. Notary, aunts, cousins, friends, all the damned fry. Oh, my poor head!» As he spoke he was proceeding towards the bedroom, and now he opened the door. His brain reeled when he found his family business would not after all be necessary. The bed was empty. Madame Dupres was gone.

Clasping his brow, Monsieur Dupres staggered from the room, and more fell than walked down the five flights of stairs to the conciergerie. «Madame!» cried he to that experienced vigilant. «My wife is gone!»

«I saw her go out last night,» replied the concierge. «I saw her grey hat go by soon after you had left.»

«But she is dead!» cried Monsieur Dupres.

«Impossible,» replied the concierge. «I would not discompose you, Monsieur, but Madame was from Angers. You know the proverb.»

With that she retired into her lodge, shrugging her shoulders.

«It was, then,» cried Monsieur Dupres, «a plot, between her and that abominable Robert! I had better notify the police.»

He took the street car to the Châtelet, and, just as it was jolting along at its fastest, he thought he saw them, still drunk, in broad daylight, staggering round a corner in the Rue de Clichy. By the time he had stopped the car and hurried back, they had utterly disappeared.

Feeling completely overcome, Monsieur Dupres gave up his errand, and decided to go home and rest a little, and took a taxi-cab to get there the sooner. This taxi was halted in a traffic block, and from it Monsieur Dupres saw quite distinctly, in a cab passing across the very nose of his own taxi, his wife and his friend, locked in each other's arms, scandalously drunk, and quite oblivious of his existence. «Follow that cab!» cried he.

The driver did his best. They followed a cab all the way to the Porte de Neuilly, only to see an elderly gentleman, probably an ambassador, descend from it.

Monsieur Dupres paid the fare, which was no trifle, and made his way back on the Metro. He had just descended from the train, when he saw two people getting in at the very far end, who were experiencing some difficulty in negotiating the narrow door, for each had an arm around the other's waist. He started towards them but the doors slammed all along the train, and in a moment it had pulled out of the station.

Monsieur Dupres leaned against the wall. «Is it not my old friend, Dupres?» asked a man who had just come onto the platform. «I see it is. My dear fellow, are you ill?»

«Ill enough,» replied Monsieur Dupres, utterly shattered. «My wife has left me, my dear Labiche. She has left me for Robert Crespigny, and they are behaving abominably all over the town.»

«No. No, my dear friend,» replied the other. «Set your mind at rest, I implore you. We husbands are sometimes even more suspicious than we should be. Crespigny cannot have taken your wife, my dear fellow. I saw him only three months ago, back from Martinique and in hospital. He died a week later. Out there, their excesses are something formidable.»